Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style

See also
Wikipedia talk:Writing better articles
Wikipedia talk:Article titles
Wikipedia talk:Quotations
Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)
Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/quotation and punctuation

New category

I'm trying to carve out some kind of monthly job (several of us have volunteered, but more are welcome!) of patrolling some of the style guidelines pages and talk pages, answering questions, and especially, doing monthly summaries of changes for the benefit of article reviewers. We're not going to be able to cover the 68 pages in the "style guidelines" cat, but then, we shouldn't; we have no business fiddling with most of those pages. I've created Category:Manual of Style, and I don't have a strong preference for what goes in the category, but I have some ideas about which style-guidelines pages stay out:

1. Pages that don't read like style guidelines. WP:Article development is a great page, but it reads much more like pages in the "editing guidelines" and "how-to" cats than like WP:MOS, WP:Layout, etc. People expecting something prescriptive would be disappointed; other people might stay away from it thinking that it's another boring MoS page (in their view), when it's really very helpful. [None in this category now]
2. Subject-specific pages. Really, what business do I have looking at a style guideline for anime? The question of whether a new style guideline for film was official or not just came up in WP:VPP here, and my feeling is, it's as official as it needs to be, until and unless someone suggests that it's not. We can't be running around vetting every style guide that pops up, because we don't have time for it, and we won't know as much as the subject experts do. If there's a contradiction, if a problem comes up, we'll deal with it then.
3. Pages that have a flavor of being policy-related or controversial. It's not hard to pick these out: just look at the talk page and see if there's a lot of yelling. WP:Avoid Neologisms is an example. That page is in three different cats, and it will certainly live on, but I don't think we actually need it in our core MoS-cat, and it would be more trouble than it's worth to maintain it. It will be good enough for day-to-day work just to tell people which dictionaries, glossaries and style guides are helpful.

All of this is negotiable; feel free to add or delete pages from the new cat. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 04:50, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Rather than monthly summaries, which I'd hoped would be covered already in my initiative earlier this month, I think we urgently need to gather information relevant to rationalising the jungle of MOS subpages, to underpin a strategy of gradually, bit by bit, merging some of them and addressing conflicts between them. TONY (talk) 08:55, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Tony, I was talking about your initiative; let me rephrase. I meant that I'm trying to carve out some kind of role for myself (and anyone is willing to join of course) that involves participating in your initiative, plus watching style guidelines pages. I'm happy to follow your lead on that; you know what article reviewers need. On the jungle of MOS subpages, one editor has made a good start on that and will be ready to present his findings by the end of the week. (Can you feel the drama?) As for merging and addressing conflicts, one technical problem is that renaming or moving sections breaks links. I asked several related questions about this over at Wikipedia:Bot requests#Does anyone know of a bot that fixes links to sections as the sections get archived?, and the only answer so far is that Cluebot III may be useful. Anyone have any advice? This has been one thing making me hesitant to do any heavy lifting. [Solved by ClueBot III] - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 14:06, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Okay, I finished the walkthrough for everything in the style-guidelines cat. The theory in adding CAT:MOS to some of the style guidelines is that we want editors to feel like CAT:MOS is a learnable amount of material, the material is intuitive and not terribly controversial, it's not too much of a burden to watchlist everything in the cat (for those who care), and everything in the cat reflects well on Wikipedia. Here's the key to the following list of articles that I left in the style-guidelines cat but didn't add to CAT:MOS:

• S (example: WP:Stubs): "subject-specific" pages. For instance, most editors won't need all the information on stubs categories in WP:Stubs, and if they do, they'll know where to look; they don't need to read it before they need it.
• P (example: WP:Avoid weasel words): these pages aren't "policy", but they concern policy in some way. For instance, WP:WEASEL helps people comply with WP:NPOV. It's important not to lead people to confuse policy with guidelines.

Some pages were a judgment call. I think WP:Manual of Style (pronunciation) is a little scary for some editors, and it's not something you have to learn ahead of time; you can wait until you want to learn IPA (if ever!) before reading it. So I marked it with "S". None of my judgment calls are intended to "demote" or "promote" a guideline.

• S Wikipedia:Articles on elections
• P Wikipedia:Avoid neologisms
• P Wikipedia:Avoid peacock terms
• P Wikipedia:Avoid weasel words
• S Wikipedia:Canadian Wikipedians' notice board/Style guide
• P Wikipedia:Citing sources [much of the "style" content in this is also in WP:Footnotes, which is in CAT:MOS]
• S Wikipedia:Conservation status
• P Wikipedia:External links
• S Wikipedia:History standards for China-related articles
• S Wikipedia:Lists [WP:Embedded lists is in CAT:MOS]
• S Wikipedia:Lists (stand-alone lists) [should probably be merged into WP:Lists]
• S Wikipedia:Lyrics and poetry
• S Wikipedia:Manual of Style (Ireland-related articles)
• S Wikipedia:Manual of Style (Japan-related articles)
• S Wikipedia:Manual of Style (Korea-related articles)
• S Wikipedia:Manual of Style (Latter Day Saints)
• S Wikipedia:Manual of Style (Macedonia-related articles)
• S Wikipedia:Manual of Style (anime- and manga-related articles)
• S Wikipedia:Manual of Style (biographies) [about biographical articles; the WP:BLP policy covers any material of a biographical nature]
• S Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) [this page is linked from many CAT:MOS pages, in order to focus on specific helpful sections]
• S Wikipedia:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages)
• S Wikipedia:Manual of Style (flags)
• S Wikipedia:Manual of Style (mathematics)
• S Wikipedia:Manual of Style (medicine-related articles)
• S Wikipedia:Manual of Style (music)
• S Wikipedia:Manual of Style (pronunciation)
• S Wikipedia:Manual of Style (trademarks)
• S Wikipedia:Manual of Style (use of Chinese language)
• S Wikipedia:Music samples
• P Wikipedia:Pro and con lists
• S Wikipedia:Proper names [diacritics, transliterations, capitalization of animals]
• S Wikipedia:Scientific citation guidelines
• S Wikipedia:Simplified phonetic transcription for Lithuanian
• S Wikipedia:Spoiler
• S Wikipedia:Stub
• S Wikipedia:Style for U.S. presidential election, yyyy
• S Wikipedia:WikiProject Films/Style guidelines
• S Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Style guide

I removed the "style guidelines" cat from:

• Wikipedia:Avoid statements that will date quickly (it may become historical soon)
• Wikipedia:Citing sources/example style (it's a how-to guide, and disputed)
• Wikipedia:Disambiguation and abbreviations (this was already marked as a content guideline and has much in common with naming conventions)
• Wikipedia:Hatnote (Since WP:Disambiguation is a content guideline rather than a style guideline, this should be too)
• Wikipedia:No disclaimers in articles (moved to content guideline)
• Wikipedia:People by year (it's a spinoff of the editing guidelines page WP:Categorization of people, so I moved it to that cat)
• Wikipedia:Soft redirect (editing guideline)

If all this is okay, we need to un-redirect the style-guidelines template (it's currently redirected to the MoS-template), and re-assign the templates. (If anyone has a problem with this, we can certainly leave them as they are, but currently, these pages more or less randomly begin with either "This page is part of the Manual of Style" or "This page is a style guideline". I don't feel strongly about what it says at the top, as long as people who patrol style guidelines reach consensus on how to deal with the various pages.) See WP:Village pump (policy)/Archive 44#Style guides for how I propose we deal with new pages that people use to develop new style guidelines. The items in the Style template also need to be changed, and the Duke has suggested that the last sections should be collapsed, which is a great idea. I had to remove the entire (uncollapsed) Style template from WP:Captions because it didn't leave enough room for examples. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 19:32, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Style template

There are a little under 400 pages that list the Style template, which gives that long blue sidebar. Almost all of them are either style guidelines or User pages. Is there any general objection to removing that template from pages that aren't? Some pages look a little bit like style guidelines pages but aren't, such as WP:NAME, which is policy, and WP:EDIT, which is a how-to page. I think a sidebar is more likely to stick in someone's head than a cat at the bottom of the page, and it seems to me it would be best not to confuse people about the nature of the page. If people argue after I remove the style template, I'll report back. I don't see this as necessary, just potentially helpful. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 18:44, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't see a problem with a user having the template on their page. They likely put it there as a reference for themselves, and I don't think we should mess with it. ···日本穣^{? · Talk to Nihonjoe} 19:38, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. Besides, restricting WhatLinksHere to the WP namespace only is more manageable; it looks like I'll finish today. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 22:27, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

←I did finish today; here's the report.

Added to "Wikipedia style guidelines" cat:

• S Wikipedia:Manual of Style (Ethiopia-related articles)
• S Wikipedia:Manual of Style (Islam-related articles)
• Wikipedia:Manual of Style (capital letters) [also added to CAT:MOS]
• S Wikipedia:Manual of Style (command-line examples)
• P Wikipedia:Manual of Style (infoboxes)
• S Wikipedia:Manual of Style (writing about fiction)

See above for what S and P mean. I don't think it means anything in particular to add the cat, it just makes articles which clearly already claim to be style guidelines easier to find than having to sift through Special:WhatLinksHere. However, if people are watchlisting these pages and they've had problems with the contents, this would be a logical time for them to speak up, and I'll report here if any conflicts arise. To play it a little safer, I left messages on the talk pages of the following pages that also claim to be guidelines:

• WT:Record charts
• WT:WikiProject Hawaii/Manual of Style
• WT:Manual of Style (poker-related articles)
• WT:Manual of Style (U.S. state and territory highways)
• WT:Manual of Style (Portuguese-related articles)
• WT:WikiProject Novels/Style guidelines
• WT:Manual of Style (Iceland-related articles)
• WT:Manual of Style (chemistry)
• WT:WikiProject Aviation
• WT:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Style guide

I removed the Style sidebar from 3 pages that considered themselves naming conventions instead, and since they dealt with article titles, I think they're right:

• Wikipedia:Manual of Style (U.S. state and territory highways) [in Naming conventions cat]
• Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Indic) [added Naming conventions cat]
• Wikipedia:Romanization of Russian [in Naming conventions cat]

I also removed the Style template from a number of pages that were historical, proposals, etc, to reduce clutter in the "WhatLinksHere" page.

Feedback on any of this is welcome. Tomorrow, I'll hit the "Template:Style guidelines" pages that haven't been covered yet in this sweep, with the same goals: ask first, then add the "Wikipedia style guidlines" cat to make them easier to find. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 03:23, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

One change; moving WP:Words to avoid out of CAT:MOS. It probably deserves a "P" label (see above). - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 14:02, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Update on Wikipedia:Manual of Style (U.S. state and territory highways): there are 3 pages worth of stuff that could be distributed between a "naming conventions" page and a "style" page; input on how to tell the difference between these two types of pages and how to sort the material would be welcome. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 16:13, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Recommendations from sweep of style guidelines

Okay, all done. I looked at "WhatLinksHere" in the WP namespace for {{style-guideline}}, {{style-guide}}, {{style guide}}, and {{style}}. I have now change the {{style-guide}} and {{style guide}} pages to {{style-guideline}} pages. I also looked at what's currently in the {{style}} sidebar, and I previously looked at Category:Wikipedia style guidelines. I have moved any page that used one of the above templates into the cat, unless it had very little activity or it seemed to fit better in a different guidelines subcat (see CAT:G). The main goal is to allow people to quickly find all the pages that claim to be style guidelines.

I've been a little surprised not to see any friction or reversions, but then, most of the style guidelines pages are like that: lots of civil discourse, not a lot of drama. The notable exceptions are the pages where material foreign to the page, generally policy-related, is being dragged in to support a fight somewhere else, which suggests a fix: don't let that happen. You can see what may or may not be a current example at WT:Layout#"References and notes" or "Notes and references". I'll wait and see what response I get in this thread, and then go back and look at WP:Layout and other CAT:MOS pages to see if there is consensus for moving some of the policy-related material on to other pages (such as moving material on citation to WP:CITE).

The point of the new cat CAT:MOS is to identify those style pages that that don't seem to be restricted to a specific kind of article or wikiproject, and that don't regularly struggle with policy-related issues. I hope that a lot of people will watchlist these pages; they don't see a lot of action, and when they do, there's generally a good reason for it. I suggest we shorten the "Style" sidebar to the pages in CAT:MOS, plus style-guidelines pages I've marked with "P" in this section, plus possibly a few additional pages, plus links to the style-guidelines cat and the editing-guidelines cat. The {{Style}} sidebar is already so long that we can't include it on some of the style-guidelines pages (such as WP:Captions) because it gets in the way. Sure, WP:Summary style is important, but not more than the other editing guidelines. Sure, Ethiopia-related articles are important, but do we really want to be in the business of saying which subjects and wikiprojects are important and which aren't? Let's back as far away from being "the man" as we can, and let any battles fought over inclusion/exclusion in the "Wikipedia style guidelines" cat be fought page by page. Most of the people who take it on themselves to maintain styles guidelines pages are doing a very good job and have a good sense of whether a page is ready to be called a style guideline.

Report of recent activity

Removed "style-guideline", "style-guide" or "style guide" template because of inactivity on the page, left msg on talk page:

• Wikipedia:WikiProject Numismatics/Style/Currency article
• Wikipedia:Portal guidelines

Moved to editing guideline:

• Wikipedia:Article message boxes

Added Wikipedia style guidelines category:

• S Wikipedia:Colours
• S Wikipedia:Taxobox usage
• S Wikipedia:Manual of Style (Philippine-related articles)
• S Wikipedia:Captions
• S Wikipedia:Profanity
• S Wikipedia:Manual of Style (legal)

Added Wikipedia style guidelines category and Manual of Style category:

• WP:How to copy-edit

- Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 16:35, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

I propose that we use an infobox that says something like "style guideline supporting the core-content policies" for the pages I've marked with "P". (To get why I think these pages should be denoted differently from other style guidelines pages, read the talk pages. These pages have a different constituency with different priorities.) The CAT:MOS infobox might say "general style guideline" or something similar; as long as no one is confused, I don't think it matters. There are so many pages that have "Manual of Style" in the title that it doesn't mean much, and I don't see any reason to ask anyone to move their pages. But I don't think "Manual of Style" in an infobox is helpful, because the phrase means different things to different people. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 17:45, 10 May 2008 (UTC) [tweaked 23:54, 10 May 2008 (UTC)]

Okay, unless I missed something, the {{Style}} template in the WP namespace has now been removed from pages which are not in Category:Wikipedia style guidelines. (No one has reverted me on this yet, but we'll see. The idea is that a graphic sticks in people's heads more than words do, so it's important that the graphic not be misleading.) Pages recently added to the cat after leaving messages on the talk pages are:

• Wikipedia:Manual of Style (poker-related articles)
• Wikipedia:Manual of Style (Portuguese-related articles)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Novels/Style guidelines
• Wikipedia:Manual of Style (Iceland-related articles)
• Wikipedia:Manual of Style (chemistry)

- Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 19:30, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Accessibility and images

Is WP:MOS#Images out of sync with Wikipedia:Accessibility?

* Avoid floating the table of contents if possible, as it breaks the standard look of pages. If you must use a floated TOC, put it below the lead section for consistency. Users of screen readers expect the table of contents to follow the introductory text; they will also miss any text placed between the TOC and the first heading.

SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:37, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

I made this change to keep WP:MOS in sync with WP:Accessibility. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:23, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

I completely support the change. DrKiernan (talk) 12:34, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

I added back in the word Exception as this was not discussed here. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 00:58, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Bot being made, to convert " &emdash; " to "&emdash;"

I've requested approval for a task for my bot, which would convert " &emdash; " to "&emdash;", in article mainspace. It would use AWB, and I would do it by looking through "What transcludes page" - Template:Cite journal, then all the other cite templates, followed by Template:Unreferenced. It may not get every single article, but a large majority of them. What are the thoughts of others here? The request is here. Steve Crossin (talk) (review) 10:15, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

I fully support this, as I've grown tired of doing it manually. · AndonicO ^Engage. 10:36, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Why do people key it in fully like this? Why not convert all to the symbol? — TONY (talk) 10:46, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

To make a point obvious to most of us: because some people prefer the full form, to be sure what they are getting; in some systems it becomes habitual to do so. Changing style by bots is disruptive; please stop suggesting it. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:39, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

No, please do suggest it, more and more. We need to tighten up the use of these signs. MOS now expresses pretty well the way they should be used, and we need only follow it. Proper usage of these items, like so much proper usage, makes for a smoother, clearer reading experience, even if a reader happens to be only subliminally aware of their function.

In some cases an mdash might be used as a minus sign, and then what this bot does would be a mistake. (In that case the &emdash; should be changed to &minus ; and the spaces before and after left intact, except that when the minus sign indicates a negative number rather than subtraction of one thing from another, then there should be no space after it.) Michael Hardy (talk) 23:02, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

No no, never an em dash: an eN dash may be used in place of a minus sign, but mathematicians much favour the minus sign, which lies between en dash and hyphen in length. A hyphen is not acceptable to signify the minus. TONY (talk) 02:17, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

It should be done as a series of manual AWB runs. If it is in some cases being used as a minus, this is wrong, not to mention rare if it is actually ocurring at all, and it not looking right any longer is a signal to editors to fix it. But I agree with Hardy that if it can be actually corrected in the AWB run it should be. Also (in answer to Tony), it should be entered as a character entity code like that because in many fonts the hyphens, en dashes and em dashes (and minuses) are completely or nearly indistinguishable, and the only way for many editors (myself included) to be certain that the correct character is being used is to use the entity code instead of the raw Unicode character. I make the conversion manually any time I encounter a Unicode en or em dash while editing, actually. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 01:36, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

...And I do the opposite. (I also substitute double spacing after full stops with single; I know it's irrelevant, but the double spacing is completely, utterly useless.) The long name is too intrusive in the edit window; if you want to see if you have a hyphen or an en dash, I suggest using preview. Em dashes can be told apart.

In any event, I'd like to note another erroneous usage of em dashes: in lists. En dashes should be used there, but dash usage is not given much attention by most editors. For Unicorn's sake, even in the Good Articles list there are em dashes... Whose idea that was, I wonder. Waltham, The Duke of 01:56, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes, agree with His Grace. I know Sandy has raised this matter at least once. On the en-dash article-title matter, when the ridiculous proscription against en dashes in those titles was expunged last year (about time, too), a few hardy souls ran the line that it would cause technical difficulties in search, etc; this was roundly scotched by several experts who convinced us with their up-to-date knowledge. It's in the MOSNUM talk archives somewhere. TONY (talk) 02:17, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Such confidence! I disagree.

First, if you want the HTML mnemonic entity this is not "&emdash;" but "&mdash;".

Secondly, I loathe no-space em dashes in the browser window. The web, as you may recall, is not paper. The ways in which it isn't include: (i) most browsers don't know that you can wrap immediately in front of or immediately after an unspaced em dash, and their ignorance results in immensely jagged right edges where a spaced dash would allow wrapping. (ii) Browsers don't know that apparently unspaced em dashes need a judicious application of thin spaces if they're not (at least in certain widely-used fonts) going to attach themselves to those characters that have wide midriffs.

Hooray for spaced em dashes! I shall continue to use them. -- Hoary (talk) 09:27, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Hoary, what's wrong, then, with a spaced en dash? That's what MOS prescribes if you want to space it. TONY (talk) 11:00, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Nothing wrong with them that I can see. If you fire volleys of them at me, I'll say that they don't appeal to me all that much – but they don't bother me either. -- Hoary (talk) 11:11, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Since the Manual of Style is a guideline, you are perfectly free to use spaced em dashes in the articles you write. It would be bad etiquette, however, to change unspaced em dashes to spaced ones, considering that it is the former option that the Manual supports, and for good reason. Jagged edges or not, it is better for a word to wrap with the following em dash, because the alternative is to have lines beginning with stray dashes. That is not good style by anyone's standards. Besides, it makes for an easier reading experience to allow readers to see interruption in a sentence before the visual break of a line change. Don't mess with flow, please. :-) Waltham, The Duke of 00:19, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

You say that to have lines beginning with stray dashes [...] is not good style by anyone's standards. It's perfectly fine style by my own (which may of course be debased). Chicago 13th ed (the one I happen to possess here) doesn't seem to say anything on the matter. Which typographers' or (more pertinently) web designer's style guide does say this? -- Hoary (talk) 09:06, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, I guess I was carried away there. But it seemed perfectly obvious to me that most people would object to having a line start with a dash. Apart from that, I think my other points are still valid. As far as dash usage in general is concerned, I believe that most manuals are not very consistent on the matter... At least so I hear. Wikipedia has to make its conventions. Waltham, The Duke of 14:15, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Funny, it had never occurred to me that they might object to it. Time permitting, I'll try to locate my copy of Hart's Rules and see what that says.

My own underinformed guess is that bizarre rules are invented arbitrarily. A few years ago, every word processor manual wittered away about how to avoid, or how to set the degree of enthusiasm for avoidance of, "widows" and "orphans". (Perhaps they still do but I no longer bother to look.) Yes, the WP page sternly says "Widows are considered sloppy typography and should be avoided." Where the hell did that notion come from? I've always suspected that some harmless drone working on WordStar or similar dreamt it up, and that it was then unthinkingly copied to WordPerfect, etc. I note that that article cites something called The Elements of Typographic Style; if that work (which I don't know) is inspired by those old fools Strunk and White I'd expect it to contain any amount of horse manure. -- Hoary (talk) 14:33, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

You might look at Strunk and White again; they do much less twittering about punctuation than (for instance) we do. I do not recall their mentioning widows or orphans; they are guidelines for effective prose, to which this page is largely irrelevant.

Widows and orphans are nineteenth-century shibboleths; partly marks of conspicuous consumption, being easier to avoid with a variable-spacing machine and lots of pages to absorb white space than for a country editor. The justification was that a couple words isolated by a column break were easier to misplace, and harder for the reader to follow, than an extract of more than a line. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:07, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Strong objection to the encouragement of gender-neutral language

I seriously and strongly object to the section of the article which suggests that users should "consider using gender-neutral language where it can be done without loss of neatness and precision." This policy is pointless adherence to political correctness which contributes nothing but convoluted sentences an gratuitous indulgence of minority group's requests. It encourages neologisms and assumes fact which just plain don't exist. Most importantly, it is arguably incompatible with other sections of the manual of style and policies.

1) It's political correctness. This is apparent from the very definition of PC (i.e., "language, ideas, policies, or behavior seen as seeking to minimize offense to racial, cultural, or other identity groups."). Why is political correctness inappropriate for an encyclopædia? Quite frankly, it is censorship for the protection of others, taking away the preferred style of writing for ages on end (English has had genders, in one form or another throughout its entire lifespan, it's only recently that we've lost the vast majority of said genders) to satisfy the will of a specific group of a specific agenda. No one would here would agree to support a PC motivated style change such as changing all instances of "homosexual" to "person who condones a different lifestyle choice without thinking less of other lifestyle choices" simply to avoid the chance that someone may be offended, yet that is the only reason I see here for using gender neutral language in inappropriate places. In summary, it's a pointless change that is nothing but indulging specific groups, and has no place on Wikipedia.

In answer to your spin on "political correctness", I'd call it "political inclusion". TONY (talk) 15:21, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

2) It's against precedent and policy. We have a diverse group of people on Wikipedia, each with his own customs and beliefs, as a result, we see clashes of customs and cultures. In the vast majority of these circumstances we choose the path based on the rules of the language and on common usage, not on avoiding offense to particular groups. An instance of this, particularly applicable to me, is the capitalization of pronouns for God out of respect. Wikipedia does not condone this, even though it is a simple change that would take little to no effort and serve to avoid offending Catholics and Christians in general. This is relevant in that it is a specific example of how proper academic usage is stressed over protecting a group from offense. Another specific example is the removal of "peace be upon him" from articles dealing with Muslims. Once again, this change is done in spite of the fact that it may offend some readers. What is the moral from all this? On Wikipedia, by precedent, avoiding offending people is not a valid reason for policy. This is in direct conflict with the first sentence of WP: Gender Neutral Language, "Gender-neutral language avoids constructions that might be interpreted by some readers as an unnecessary reinforcement of traditional stereotypes."

3) It encourages neologisms. Avoiding common and valid words like "chairman" or "fireman" and replacing them with words which haven't existed for any period of time, and which have been custom-created for this very purpose is silly. The gender neutral components, "chairperson" and "firefighter" respectively are awkward and unnecessary, and, as above, only serve to avoid offending a specific group. In order to avoid accepted an common words, which only have gender as a result of the nature of the language and no specific attempt to make a statement one way or another, we are often forced to use new and unaccepted words which have no place on an encyclopædia. For an extreme example, see this.

Er ... Adair, Red, American firefighter - that's the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Not that we have to do what they do, but at least the argument that the word has no place in a respectable encyclopedia is clearly wrong. --GRuban (talk) 03:13, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

4) The offense is imagined. Languages have gender for specific words, often arbitrarily. This is a fact of life. No one among us would think it reasonable or even sane to replace all occurances of gendered nouns within Latin, for example, with their neutral gendered companion, and no one among us would take offense that iudex is male and argentaria is female as we know that this isn't a statement of the suitability of a given gender for a given role, but an arbitrary construction of grammar serving only as a result of convention. Similarly, in English, it happens that "man" both means a singular male human and the whole of the human collective. It's only because specific groups are looking for the offense that it is received.

In the end, what do we have? A pointlessly politically correct convention that results in awkward prose and ridiculous and irregular neologisms, stemming from the will to avoid an imaginary offense to a group of people in blatant violation of the precedent set by Wikipedia policy. This doesn't belong on Wikipedia. Let's be sane.--Liempt (talk) 02:30, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

I am in complete and total agreement with Liempt. This has no place on WP at least until the point when it becomes common usage in the english language. I especially stress his point 2. It is definitly against precedent and policy as he explains. Chris M. (talk) 03:42, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Oh dear. I see on Liempt's page this announcement, among many others—"ANAL 5: This user is incredibly stringent with professional grammar". Could I suggest that you work on your writing technique before you start claiming such stringency? TONY (talk) 10:04, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Hi Tony. You know what, you're right. Perhaps I was exaggerating my prowess with grammar on my talk page. I have, after reflecting on your comments, removed the aforementioned userbox. The point I was trying to make was not that I was an excellent writer (I'm not) or even that my grammar is flawless (far from it), it's simply that I have taken the time to learn the rules of grammar on a theoretical level more than the average person. I think my main downfall is that I'm too hasty to post and thusly fall on my face as far as application of the rules goes. Thanks for the constructive criticism, even if it wasn't particularly related to the matter at hand.--Liempt (talk) 10:32, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Formal style guides are beginning to encourage more gender-neutral language, but the fact stands that English is not currently well-equipped with widely-agreed upon facilities to write in a gender-neutral and natural way. If and when the publishing world decided to move towards a specific type of gender-neutral language (I personally am a big fan of singular they), I would encourage following in their footsteps - meanwhile, it's just a source of stilted prose that distracts from the topic under discussion. I'm particularly annoyed by attempts to use female pronouns for gender-neutral subjects for the sake of "compensation." Pronoun usage should be something that fades into the background, not pops out of the page to make a political point. Dcoetzee 04:00, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

So many answers come to mind, but the only relevant one is: take it next door. You're mistaking WP:MoS for a policy page; we didn't say "use insane language to appease minority groups", and we didn't mean that, either. What's wrong with saying "Every student knows they should study" instead of "he should study"? Use a gender-neutral pronoun when you don't know the gender of the person and if it doesn't sound awkward; what's radical about that? There's nothing terribly wrong with saying "chairman", and the word still has many valid uses, but we would be misinforming our editors and readers if we told them that that word is preferable to "chair", because "chair" is much more common these days. If you want an NPOV fight, take it to WP:NPOV where it belongs. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 04:31, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Hey Dan, I appreciate the comments. I'll give you a bit of my rationale as to posting this here. The manual of style is used by many, many Wikipedians. I'd be willing to bet almost as much (if not more) as some policy pages. Many Wikipedians take it's word as gospel and use it as their primary guide. As a result of this, I believe this is just as important as any policy page, and faulty information here is just as dangerous as a faulty policy. That being said, I believe that it's also easily fixable, and I wanted to go ahead and change it, however, since I figured this would be a touchy issue so I decided to discuss it and gain community consensus before making any changes, bold as I may be.

As for what's wrong with it, I'd say, in the context of an encyclopædia, my four main points above. Saying "they" as opposed to "he" is gratuitous indulgence to prevent offense, which is against the no censorship policy. Sure, it's not a huge deal in the grand scheme of things, but it is a matter of principle. As to your "misinformation" point, we wouldn't be misinforming our editors by telling them to use "chairman" any more than we are misinforming them by telling them to properly use "whom", as it's way more common nowadays to improperly use "whom" (if at all).

In my mind, it's not about what's common, it's about what's right. --Liempt (talk) 05:25, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree with the discussion above, Wikipedia is not here to put a political agenda, and encouraging gender-neutral is nothing but a political agenda for equality. Not a bad one, by my feelings, but still a political agenda. SyG (talk) 10:01, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

I think that gender neutral language should have the same policy as English variants. Then we can have it both ways. The person who starts the article decides whether it will use the "language of the oppressor" or not. ;-) Gimme danger (talk) 11:39, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

I still think it would be a bad idea if we allowed the creator of an article to specify that the article should use the gender-neutral "co" or "ey". The "they" would be reasonable, but the term "gender-neutral pronouns" encompasses a wide variety of terms and blanket allowing all of them is not a good idea. If the singular "they" is to be found acceptable, which is probably fine, then that specifically should be listed, instead of all gender-neutral terms. Chris M. (talk) 11:59, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

No one is forcing anyone to use or avoid anything. It says "Consider using GNL where this can be done with clarity and precision". Even where it can be done with clarity and precision, no one is forcing you to un-man yourself. (Of course,consistency is required within articles, or we'll look like fools.) The fact that the guideline doesn't say "Consider not using GNL ..." is testament to the movement in the English-speaking world over the past god-knows-how-many decades towards the avoidance of exclusivity. The important thing is that our readers not perceive exclusivity; your or my rationalisation of gender-neutral or gender-specific language is less important that being exclusive where possible. But again, if you want to use gender-specific language in an article, all you may run up against is objections from other editors—not the MoS. TONY (talk) 12:12, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

My biggest concern is that using it at all, or advocating its use at all is nothing more than censorship for the prevention of offense, something which wikipedia is explicitly aligned itself against, as I have written in detail above. As such, I don't think leaving it up to the author is justified. If, in fact, we encourage singular they, we should also probably start adding buffer pages so innocent users don't see naughty pics and we don't alienate the extreme right, and spoiler tags for plot details (maybe even buffer these too). Of course, I'm being extremist, but that's simply an attempt to demonstrate my point. --Liempt (talk) 12:32, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

It's not censorship, though; censorship is the removal or concealment of content. Quotes, of course, are to be left alone, and refactoring existing (non-quote) prose into a gender-neutral form simply isn't censorship, it's just refactoring. The meaning should never be lost. If a sentence is male- or female-specific because the subject is definetely male or female, then it's incorrect to change to gender-neutral language, as is made clear on the actual page giving advice on GNL. SamBC(talk) 14:43, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

The Chicago Manual of Style advocates a form of invisible gender-neutral language that avoids "nontraditional gimmicks". I feel their guidelines make sense. We aren't asking people to write 'womyn' or 'grrrl', we aren't saying use 'sie' and 'hir', or even s/he . Our guideline is not encouraging neologisms, and all the talk about political correctness is alarmist at best. I think striving for "invisible" gender-neutral language is a good thing, but I think we could improve the section here in the MoS by specifying that neologisms and awkward constructs ("nontraditional gimmicks") should be avoided.-Andrew c ^[talk] 13:34, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

I think the current wording ("Consider using gender-neutral language where this can be done with clarity and precision.") is perfectly adequate and does not encourage silly use of artificial constructs. I suppose it could be reformulated to better express the intention, which I take to be "Avoid inaccurate or imprecise implication of gender due to use of terms that some might understand as gender-specific (even if only subconsciously). Nothing to do with censorship, everything to do with clarity, being understood, and not distracting from the information you are attempting to convey, in my opinion. As regards use of the singular they, it might not often be appropriate in a Wikipedia article but I don't think it should be implied that it is some new-fangled PC thing to avoid giving offense. It has been a normal part of the English language for centuries. It seems to be only recently that people have started objecting to it.--Boson (talk) 14:55, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

On review the current wording seems reasonable. The important thing is that the language is "invisible" and does not detract from brevity or the focus of the article; as long as this is the case, word usage is unimportant. Dcoetzee 18:25, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

What's this! We encourage "gender neutral" language?! Sounds like a feminazi conspiracy to me. Speaking of which, when are we going to move Flight attendant back to Stewardess? Kaldari (talk) 15:54, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

This is why there is no consensus for anything stronger than consider. Considering alternatives to one's prose rarely hurts, and there will be occasions when a gender-neutral phrasing will be stronger and clearer than the original, aside from all claims to virtue on the part of the unco' guid. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:09, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Liempt, you write: I have taken the time to learn the rules of grammar on a theoretical level more than the average person. Splendid, splendid. I hate to boast, but I have done the same. I wonder which route you took; my own was Radford's English Syntax, which, like every theoretical book on the rules of English grammar that comes to hand, ignores the syntactically uninteresting matter of gender-neutral phrasing. If, however, we turn to atheoretical, descriptive books on English grammar, I can think of no better than CGEL -- and sure enough, within its eighteen-hundred-plus pages there is room for this subject, particularly on pp.484–97, "Gender and pronoun–antecedent agreement". Of particular interest, and short and easy to read, are pp.492–94, which deal with "Purportedly sex-neutral he", "Purportedly sex-neutral she", "Disjunctive coordination", "Composite forms", "Singular they", and "Avoidance". What's most interesting here is the treatment of "singular they", which leads up to three samples for the reader's consideration: (i) Let me know if your father or your brother changes ___ mind; (ii) Let me know if your father or your mother changes ___ mind; and (iii) Either the husband or the wife has perjured ___ (in all three, the object coindexes with the subject).

As a theoretician, you may have bypassed this necessarily expensive book. Not to worry, you can read up on "singular they" right here.

Incidentally, I'm surprised by: This policy is pointless adherence to political correctness which contributes nothing but convoluted sentences an gratuitous indulgence of minority group's requests. It encourages neologisms and assumes fact which just plain don't exist. The policy (for policy it is, other than as "policy" is more strictly defined by WP for its own use) is not pointless, it's pointed. (The point may of course be one with which you disagree.) Which minority group, which requests? (My own group -- minority? majority? -- is one in favor of clear writing.) How does the policy encourage neologisms? (Or are you saying that they or the singular use thereof is a neologism?) What is the fact that doesn't (or what are the facts that don't) exist? (And is the term "political correctness" anything other than a rallying call for the conservatively or retrogressively inclined?) -- Hoary (talk) 02:38, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Hoary makes some good points here, especially the one concerning neologisms. (I don't recall ever running across a stray neologism in a WP article, but I'll keep keep my armor on just in case one ever leaps up and attacks me.) My view is that the current wording in the MOS is satisfactory. It might be helpful for Liempt to give specific examples of awkward phrasing encouraged by the current wording, but I find the generalized argument unpersuasive for several reasons, chiefly that the English language has been evolving since its birth and continues to evolve, and WP usage should respect that. The concept of what's "right" or "correct" is a shaky one when it comes to usage, to say the least. Incidentally, I'm sure the situation varies around the English-speaking world, but I must say I haven't heard or read the word "fireman" in many years. Rivertorch (talk) 05:49, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Oh yes, neologisms. Liempt seems most worried about them. He starts by linking to Wikipedia:Neologisms, which is not a warning against the use of neologisms but instead a warning against articles on neologisms, and a warning that starts The use of neologisms should be avoided in Wikipedia articles because they are not well understood, are not clearly definable, and will have different meanings to different people. He gives two examples, "chairperson" and "firefighter", which he says "are awkward and unnecessary", but which, he surprisingly adds, "only serve to avoid offending a specific group". If these two words really did serve to avoid offending a non-trivial group of sane, sober people, that would elevate them above, say [pauses while he looks around messy desk], "chewing gum", "CD-R" and "glue", good workaday terms that don't serve this sterling end. But I'd have thought that "chairperson" and "firefighter" also served to put across meanings: unlike the neologisms that the WP page discusses, they are well understood (as long as your English is up to snuff and your name isn't Rip Van Winkle), they are clearly definable [remarkably so, as, famously, many non-neologisms are not clearly definable], and they have the same meanings to different people. But whatever you think of their alleged awkwardness, they're hardly neologisms: they've been around for years. Liempt leads to a finale in which he says that [f]or an extreme example we should see Gender-neutral_pronoun#Neologisms. It's an odd section of an odd article, with a table that presents such freaks as "Xe" and "spivak" (most of which I'd never heard of, let alone felt myself forced to use in WP articles), but one that also presents, a little way after "he" and "she", "singular they", which is the subject of an article that's longwinded but that proves the word used in this way is no neologism, and instead used by excellent writers (and successfully pushed by them past copyeditors and other busybodies) for well over a century. If "singular they" was good enough for Jane Austen and her publisher, it's no neologism; and as it's an integral part of every lect of English I know of, it's good enough for me. -- Hoary (talk) 08:56, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

John Boddie and I were talking about gender-neutral language today, and I suggested he should comment here. He immediately replied, "Oh, I see how it is, you want me to be the fall person." - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 02:58, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Tony raises some interesting arguments. Upon reflection, I agree she has a point. Durova^Charge! 04:29, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Given that you want to make a point it is correct to use "she". It however does not follow that your point is correct; you know Tony is male and you know the convention is to use "he" to be gender inspecific. The convention is that you can use "he" when it is unclear or arbitrary. The convention also holds that when you explicitly know, you should use the correct form. Thanks GerardM (talk) 07:20, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Quote clarification required

The MoS states:

A long quote (more than four lines

What exactly does this mean? Four lines on an iPhone, or four lines on my 30" monitor? I believe it might mean "sentences", but I am not so sure. Clarity is needed, as well as some guidelines for flexibility in use. For instance, there are times where a single-line quotation should be blocked, if it is of importance.

Maury (talk) 17:14, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Last discussion was WT:Manual_of_Style/Archive_100#Blockquote for emphasis. Does that help? - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 03:01, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Church or church

The article Roman Catholic Church has a vote going on at present regarding the proper use of capitalization. It appears that in reading the MOS that it is confusing as to what is proper on wikipedia. As a result, the majority of editors feel that it is most appropriate to vote in support of referring to the RCC as the Church when not using the proper noun. Could you please clarify the proper usage and if anyone would like to add a vote it would be helpful. Thanks.--Storm Rider ^(talk) 00:39, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

See WT:Manual_of_Style_(capital_letters)#Church.2C_when_used_alone.2C_is_usually_lowercase for what the American style guides say. I like the fact that people are trying to be as sensitive and respectful as possible, but the style guides seem both stable and unanimous on capitalizing less often in the current editions, and there are many reasons to try to keep our style guidelines not radically out of line with what professionals do. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 02:27, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't think a vote is the way to fix this problem. If users feel the MoS is ambiguous on this issue, or flat out wrong, or if users are in conflict on what style to use, they shouldn't vote on an article by article basis, but have a centralized discussion to deal with these matters. I propose that we tackle that here and now. Let's re-examine how we discuss the capitalization of institutions in the Manual of Style. Let's here new proposals. Let's dig out style guides and figure out what we can agree upon and what needs to change to make the MoS more clear. We have already started discussing this on the Capital letters subpage. Is there a better venue for this discussion, or is it ok if we continue it there? Is anyone opposed to trying to open this dispute up into a site wide discussion?-Andrew c ^[talk] 14:12, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

I am really looking forward to this, but not now. Always seek to reduce urgency and heat in style guidelines discussions. Increasing urgency and heat is a sometimes useful technique in policy discussions, because everyone likes to talk about what's hot, and policy needs wide discussion to be worth anything at all. Style guidelines are sometimes harmed when people feel that they need to get in a response to every point that's made or risk "losing" on some urgent matter. The current WP:FAC for Roman Catholic Church is urgent; let's make sure that this isn't a make-or-break issue in that WP:FAC before we discuss it here. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 21:26, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

WT:MOSCAPS now has two sections on the subject. If we are going to discuss this in general, we should do so there; but should we? The RCC question involves so many essentially theological issues not shared by other organizations (What is a Church? What is the Church? What is the effect of caps on these?) that I doubt this is good occasion, or sufficient reason, to consider caps in general. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:31, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

My practice has been that when the phrase "the Church" is used as a abbreviation of the name "the Roman Catholic Church" or of the name of some other church, then it's a proper noun and should be capitalized, but in other contexts it's a common noun (e.g. "The church to which John Smith belongs practices infant baptism."---lower-case since it's not an abbreviation of the name of any particular church). Michael Hardy (talk) 22:43, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

That is a reasonable position. Our examples, however, say much more. We need a new section.

University

We can, I hope, agree that we should write:

The University of Delhi was founded in...

but

Any university offers courses in the arts and sciences.

Some of the discussion on the RCC would suggest that MOS is being read as requiring:

The Vice-President of India is the Chancellor of the University of Delhi. The university has a distinguished alumni body and faculty.

This is less than persuasive; both instances of University refer to the University of Delhi, and so both are proper nouns. This is a violation both of common sense and (at least in my university town, which is not Delhi) of idiom. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:18, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

I follow that it seems easy, but it turns out it's not easy. Again I ask, can we put this off so that it doesn't become a sixth thread in a very long discussion in a current FAC? - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 23:29, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

It would be just as well not to have this become a theological argument, so I am willing to postpone definitely. Our errors should not be used to darken counsel while we wait, however. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:33, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Good call on the "disputed" tag. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 23:35, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

"both instances of University refer to the University of Delhi, and so both are proper nouns." What a strange thing to say! Here's another example: "I'd like to introduce you to my friend Bill. He is an engineer." Would you say "My friend, Bill and He all refer to the same person, so all are propor nouns"? Hesperian 23:56, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps this is a better example: "Fleet Street is the street on which the British press were located until the 1980s." Would you say: "both instances of street refer to Fleet Street, and so both are proper nouns"? Hesperian 00:02, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

• No, it is a different example. Fleet Street being treated as an element of the class of streets; one cannot substitute one for the other. (This may in fact serve as a decent test: One can say The Vice-President of India is the Chancellor of the University of Delhi. The University of Delhi has a distinguished alumni body and faculty. with no problem but repetitiveness; Fleet Street is the Fleet Street on which the British press were located until the 1980s. is nonsense. )Septentrionalis PMAnderson 05:25, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Then I would be required to capitalise all occurences of street in "Fleet Street is where the British press were located until the 1980s. The street is a location on the London version of the Monopoly board game"? How about "I live on Fleet Street; sometimes my children play in the street"? Hesperian 05:41, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
    • Can we say I live on Fleet Street; sometimes my children play in Fleet Street, with no change of meaning? No. The second street does not mean Fleet Street, the geographical entity; it means the pavement. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:57, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

The church does not become a proper noun just because it is used in place of the actual proper noun. Where did this assumption come from? A proper noun is a proper noun; it is never a generic noun used in the place of a proper noun. This surprises me that it is so often repeated. The the Chicago MOS is clear that capitalization has become the exception and is often discouraged. I don't have a problem with arriving at a new policy, but whatever the policy is it should be observed by all. More importantly, no article should be held up as an example if it blatantly ignores MOS policies. --Storm Rider ^(talk) 00:36, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

No, the CMOS chooses to make a recommendation, a rule of thumb, which will serve as one possibility when no complication arises. (The section above, where Church and church by idiom denote different objects, is a perfect example of the complications which may arise.)

But the defenders of this ill-arranged exercise in dogmatism face a fork. When the matter is simple, their recommendation is simply wrong; when the matter is complex, any simple recommendation is wrong. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 05:25, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

I notice that Anatolian Shepherd Dog contains the text owners of dogs of this breed must determinedly socialize the dogs to turn them into appropriate companions. I suppose you advocate correcting this to owners of dogs of this breed must determinedly socialize the Dogs to turn them into appropriate companions? Hesperian 05:47, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

No. Again, it's a matter of sense; dogs in dogs of this breed means members of the species (which is why it needs the defining qualifier), and is so a common noun; the second dogs means the same thing, and therefore inherits the capitalization of dogs of this species. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:57, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

• There are doubtless many examples, however, where it is idiom to write dogs and no such explanation is available. I do not think we should say or imply Dogs is always right; but at the moment, we imply that Dogs and University are never right. This is not what English does. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:00, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

But the problem is ever more clearly that we are imposing a simple rule on a complex situation, and are therefore wrong. I would modify to make the example Any university and be silent on the matter at hand; if we do discuss it, we should add something like:

"When the noun is being used as a short form of the proper name,

The Vice-President of India is the Chancellor of the University of Delhi. The University has a distinguished alumni body and faculty.

then it is usually capitalized; when it is being used of the organization as a member of the class of organizations of the type,

The Vice-President of India is the Chancellor of the University of Delhi. This university, like most universities, offers graduate courses in the arts and sciences.

it should be lower case. The distinction between these is often more one of mood and emphasis than of meaning; one test is whether the proper name of the organization can be substituted for the noun without change of force."

Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:57, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Clarity is an important issue here too. Church can have several meanings, and capitalisation helps distinguish these. An example from the article in question:

"According to canon law, one becomes a member of the Catholic Church by being baptized in the Church. Christians baptized outside of the Church or those never baptized may be received by participating in a formation program such as the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults."

Without the capitalization of Church, confusion would soon arise as to whether one was being baptized inside or outside of a building or the mystical institution. Xandar (talk) 23:17, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

With regards to the capitalisation of the second occurence of university in The Vice-President of India is the Chancellor of the University of Delhi. The university has a distinguished alumni body and faculty, there are three positions you can take:

1. university is a proper noun in this context; the MOS should mandate capitalisation.
2. university is not necessarily a common noun in this context; the MOS should not mandate anything; and
3. university is a common noun in this context; the MOS should mandate lower case.

With regards to the first position, I think it is refuted by the fact that one could replace university by school, and this would be indisputably a common noun. I cannot see how changing school to university necessarily changes the may in which the sentence must be parsed, merely because its referent has University in its name. Fortunately this may now be a straw man, because if I have read Septentrionalis' most recent missive aright, he has now adopted position two.

I am more comfortable with position two, but I still don't think it is correct. What it boils down to is "it depends on the author's intent. Having already referred to University of Delhi in the previous sentence, the author is free to refer to the same in any of three ways: by repeating the full name University of Delhi; by use of the common noun the university i.e. "the previously identified definite article of class university"; or by use of the proper noun the University, being an abbreviated form of the full name." My objection to this is that University of Delhi has an accepted abbreviation, DU. This being an encyclopedia, I would surely be reverted if I decided to refer to it by UoD or UofD or UDelhi or any other novel abbreviation. Why then is it permissible for me to abbreviate it to University on a grammatical whim? I think that to use such an abbreviation would be wrong, if not in general then at least for an encyclopedia. I am therefore of the view that only the common noun interpretation is correct.

Hesperian 00:01, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

• Perhaps not the best example, considering that "university" and "school" cannot be exchanged in this way in British, or I think Indian, English. But in any case your objection to "abbreviation" does not really stand up. Consider any biography; is it necessary to refer to Charles Darwin with his full name at every mention? Perhaps it is a British/US thing, and perhaps spending too much time with things saying the likes of "Foo Company (hereinafter "the Company")", but position 2 seems correct to me. Johnbod (talk) 00:14, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
  • • Yes, I concede the point with respect to Charles Darwin/Darwin; I didn't think of that. Hesperian 01:42, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Changing The University to The school changes the force of the sentence, even in those dialects in which university would be a subclass of school. Therefore (2), which I have always held: The University has a distinguished alumni body and faculty and The university has a distinguished alumni body and faculty are saying slightly different things, only the first being exactly equivalent to The University of Delhi has a distinguished alumni body and faculty. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:31, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
    • Come again? How are they saying slightly different things? In both cases the [Uu]niversity is an unambigous reference to the same entity. Hesperian 01:45, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
      • They (probably) have the same truth value, but one denotes DU by a proper name, and the other as this member of the class of universities. Much the same difference exists between
        • This was observed by Charles Darwin; Darwin wrote... and
        • This was observed by Charles Darwin; the naturalist wrote....

      (Not quite the same; but posit that the article has already said Darwin was a naturalist.) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:55, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

      • Okay. Clearly neither of the above sentences can be declared to be wrong, or even stylistically inferior to the other; it depends on context, personal preference, and subtle nuances of meaning. I'm not 100% convinced that our University example maps perfectly onto our Darwin example, but the correspondence is more or less there. I'll concede the point that mandating against capitalisation of that example in the MOS would be "imposing a simple rule on a complex situation, and therefore wrong." Hesperian 02:25, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
        • Thanks. I hope this conversation will be as clarifying to somebody else as it has been to me. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:39, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
  • I do not know what the idiom is for DU; I merely quoted our article. Some universities do have multiple short forms, the equivalent here of the University, DU, and Delhi (for example, Berkeley and UCB', or Princeton, PU and the University). Some of these are of course only appropriate in certain contexts; Delhi would only be useful if it is clear that the University, not either of the cities, is meant. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:40, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

What, therefore, do we do? I made two proposals above; one is a rule of thumb, the other is to change our present examples to Any university... (desirable) and Any University... (undesirable) leaving the issue Hesperian and Johnbod and I have been talking about drowned in silence. We could also say The Vice-President of India is the Chancellor of the University of Delhi. The University has a distinguished faculty. depends on context, personal preference, and subtle nuances of meaning. Suggestions? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:39, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

My suggestion is that it's possible that we would be saving a lot of time if we were content to use style guides to help with this one, so let's have a larger discussion about that, whenever people are in the mood. I would prefer to finish up some other stuff first, but it's not a strong preference. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 03:27, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Style ruling needed: "British Isles" / "Britain and Ireland"

Hi, all. Not sure if this is the right place to post this, but here goes.
I see that there's an ongoing dispute about correct usage.

"The dispute appears to be over whether "British Isles" or "Britain and Ireland" should be used."
- from a post by Neıl 8 May 2008 at the second of the two references following.

There appear to be two editors who are very interested in this issue, but several others have also posted about it.
Previous discussion at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#Blind_reversion_of_edits.2C_despite_earlier_warnings and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive414#Wikistalking

I've looked for a definite and consistent guideline on this but haven't found one. I'd like to see discussion, resulting in a definite guideline being added to the appropriate page in the WP:MOS, and (probably) in the pages of relevant Wikiprojects.
Disclaimer: I have not been involved in this dispute in any way, and have no interest whatsoever in however it may shake out -- I'm just trying to attain Wiki-peace and consistency.
-- Writtenonsand (talk) 14:33, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

My experience is not sufficient, but there's a general point I want to mention. This might be an issue that looks hard but turns out to be easy. See the lead section of British Isles naming dispute, and in particular the last paragraph, that gives a Google search showing that "British Isles" is widely used nowadays in both senses, either including or excluding the Republic of Ireland. If that's true, then the approach that modern style guides take is: when one of the phrases used to describe something is likely to be misunderstood half the time (regardless of the reasons or trends), don't pick that phrase. Choose a phrase everyone understands (such as "Britain and Ireland" or "British Islands and Ireland"), at least until a clear winner emerges in the battle for ownership of the disputed phrase. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 15:46, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

The British Isles encompasses more than just Britian and Ireland. The Isle of Mann, for example, is neither part of Britian nor Ireland. JIMp _talk·cont 01:58, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Agreed, "British Islands and Ireland" is probably a safe alternative for what "British Isles" meant before 1922 (and some would say still does). - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 03:32, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

I disagree - though it is used in legislation with a specific legal meaning it is completely unfamiliar to most British people and will just confuse readers. Johnbod (talk) 04:02, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

I have to admit I am not uninvolved, because I have personally had an edit criticized for using "British Isles" (including Ireland). With that disclaimer, I would like to register my disapproval of any ban of "British Isles". I believe the sense excluding Ireland is marginal. The one including Ireland is unlikely to lead to confusion, at least for North Americans. Before I read about it on Wikipedia, the phrase "British Islands" was unknown to me, and my suspicion is most North Americans, on seeing it, will assume it is a mistake for "British Isles". Joeldl (talk) 04:25, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

So will most British people. Johnbod (talk) 04:30, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

British Isles is a geographic term not a political one. The Islands of Britain, Ireland, and all of the thousand or so smaller islands in the archipelago are the "British isles." it has nothing to do with which states occupy any of the islands. "Britain" is the island that contains England, Scotland and Wales, but strictly none of the lesser islands. "Great Britain" is the political union of England, Wales and Scotland, and therefore includes outlying islands of Britain, but not Ireland. The "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" is the political entity (formerly United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland) which changed in 1922. Xandar (talk) 16:01, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

My apologies, I looked quickly and saw that "British Islands" got 412K Google hits and seemed to have a consistent definition, but consensus here seems to be that it's not a useful phrase. I'll know better than to say anything about BrEng again :) Anyway...my point was that there might be a quick, style-based solution here: never use British Isles, since the Google search I referred to above shows that that phrase is widely used both to include and to exclude the Republic of Ireland, and as a general policy, we don't deliberately choose to use phrases which are likely to be misunderstood when there are alternatives. If this is a POV issue rather than a style issue, and I have a feeling it is, then you'll get faster results by taking it to a page like The NPOV Noticeboard. Btw, when you go there, be sure to repeat the phrase "lesser island" as applied above (apparently) to Ireland, and then count the seconds til someone refers to the "lesser island" of Britain :) - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 17:05, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't agree with that - "British Isles" is a geographic term, which does include Ireland, but which some Irish object to and don't use. I don't know who uses it to exclude Ireland? The problem is there is no alternative with wide acceptance - Atlantic Archipelago has certainly not caught on. This is very well trampled ground here - see the proposed guideling Wikipedia:British Isles. It doesn't really matter what you use anyway, as eventually someone like Bardcom will come along and change it. Johnbod (talk) 17:17, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

"well trampled ground"...Right, and if someone comes along here to start an NPOV war, I feel somewhat optimistic that we'll be able to show them the door (which may mean that WT:MOS is the place to discuss certain NPOV issues, because you can never get rid of these battles on policy pages...hm, I hadn't thought of that, I'll cogitate on this). My very small point is that British Isles says:

Encyclopædia Britannica, the Oxford University Press - publishers of the Oxford English Dictionary - and the UK Hydrographic Office (publisher of Admiralty charts) have all occasionally used the term "British Isles and Ireland" (with Britannica and Oxford contradicting their own definitions of the "British Isles")

and the phrase "British Isles and Ireland" gets over 50K Google hits, so there is clearly confusion in the air. If the confusion all by itself is a reason to avoid the phrase, then we nicely avoid a trip to some place like WP:POVN.

"British Isles" alone gets 22.5 million, the great majority of which will include Ireland. But the real problem is the lack of a satisfactory alternative. Actually I only get 24,300 for "British Isles and Ireland". Johnbod (talk) 01:38, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

And now for something completely different. I undented there because the formatting that {{quote}} uses doesn't look right if the main text is indented. I reached to type my usual "←" to acknowledge the undent, and then decided that this has officially become silly, unless people really are using indentation in the same way that messageboards use it. That is, if a single indent (for instance) in the middle of a long thread still means to people around here "I'm replying to the last person who posted without any indentation, not to the message right above me", then warning people about undenting makes sense. But I never see that, or I'm not aware that that's going on; when Wikipedians want to be very clear that they're responding to a specific post and not to the whole thread, they generally insert their response immediately under that post. Does anyone around here use "messageboard indentation" style in their indents? - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 17:44, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Current guidelines state that discussion is threaded. The exact quotation is "Use indentation to clearly indicate who you are replying to, as with usual threaded discussions." In my opinion, what you did is fine if there is really only one main thread of discussion (a few diversions along the way are fine). If the discussion is more complex, though, with multiple branching threads throughout, it's imperative that the threading remain clear. Powers ^T 15:28, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Okay, I wasn't aware that people do this often in article or style discussions, although it might be more common in policy discussions. I'll keep an eye out and keep asking. IMO, if few people do something, then it doesn't matter that it would be easier to follow the discussion if they did, and if the guidelines say something different, they should be changed. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 17:28, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

So you support letting people be confusing if they want to be confusing? Sometimes our guidelines are proscriptive rather than descriptive, especially in cases where setting them based on current practice is untenable. Powers ^T 17:56, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

If 60% don't do it and 40% do, then we should remind people from time to time what "messageboard indentation" is, and hope that that helps. If 95% of people don't do it, then we should save everyone some time and give up on trying to force it. Life's too short. Clearly, the reason that most people don't, on Wikipedia, is that they don't think they have to; they can simply insert their reply directly under the message they want to reply to. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 18:41, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

I've found standard threading to be fairly common; I'm not sure what you mean by "most people don't". Powers ^T 23:30, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Image placement: Inline or gallery

I noticed that some articles have an image gallery at the bottom while others put images inline with the text. I find that inline with the text improves readability and the gallery often lacks captions. Is there or should there be a guideline about this? Gallery example   Inline example   Thanks, Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 18:55, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Layout#Images has all the information you need. One tip, however: when you make such comparisons, it is best to use diffs for both parts; the archive will make no sense if the gallery is removed from the article at a later time. For a diff of the current version, click on "Permanent link" in the toolbox (sidebar on the left). Waltham, The Duke of 00:07, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Initial bolding

"Everybody knows" that the title word or title phrase is set in bold at its first appearance in the article. This manual says:

Equivalent names may follow, and may or may not be in boldface.

When an article begins by saying

The very important thing (VIT) that this article is about has been known since time immemorial....

I usually change it to

The very important thing (VIT) that this article is about has been known since time immemorial....

Is that explicitly considered entirely optional?

Also when it says

The very important thing (VIT) that this article is about has been known since time immemorial....

I also change it as above, so that the parentheses are INSIDE the bolded part. And I do the same with quotation marks, so that if it says

The "very important thing" that this article is about has been known since time immemorial....

then I change it to

The "very important thing" that this article is about has been known since time immemorial....

I've been doing this for about five years and no one's ever said a word to me about it. Have pros and cons of these sorts of things been discussed here, with the result that they've all been declared optional? Michael Hardy (talk) 20:09, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Regarding bolding VIT, WP:MOSBOLD says "...(including any synonyms and acronyms) in boldface", so yes. Regarding bolding the quotation marks and parentheses, I haven't noticed that anyone said one way or another. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 21:17, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, I have noticed something in Wikipedia:Manual of Style (titles): "The quotation marks should not be bolded in the lead section when the title of an article requires quotation marks, as they are not part of the title". That makes perfect sense to me—we should only bold the subject's name, not extraneous elements. Not to mention that not bolding the parentheses does not allow one to easily see that these are two names and not one. This is repeated in Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Punctuation, under "Article openings". Although certainly well-intentioned, I fear that your edits were mistaken, Mr Hardy. (I feel a sudden urge to say "You are the weakest link. Goodbye!")

This revelation is yet another indication of the urgency of the rationalisation of the Manual of Style. It needs quite a search for a non-insider to find that passage in the Manual... Poor Laurel stood no chance.

Sorry, I meant "Hardy". :-D Waltham, The Duke of 23:54, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

"Duke", I think you are guilty of an error. If the article is titled Book, it can begin by saying

Books were invented by...."

including the letter s in the bolded portion, and if the article is called impossibility, it could say

Things that are impossible don't happen very often.

...the form of the word being different from that in the title. That is appropriate and can cover quotion marks and parentheses in some cases. Michael Hardy (talk) 22:06, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Still wrong; books is a different form of book and impossible is a different form of impossibility. You can, within limits, alter a title, but that does not mean that you may add other elements to them. Quotation marks and parentheses are allowed when they are part of the title, which is rare; the acronym of Very important thing is VIT, not (VIT), and the subject itself is not called "Very important thing"—the quotation marks are added because of the form of the sentence, and could be substituted by italics. Waltham, The Duke of 18:55, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

the use of the parenthesis is a convention to separate the acronym from the title, and is widely expected. The virtue of putting it in bold is that , especially for an organisation, it will usually be referred to by the acronym later in the article, and it helps to spot it. DGG (talk) 14:16, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Linking bolded words

Something bugs me about the policy of not linking initial bolded words. Articles say things like

The Battle of Bettendorf was a battle fought in the year 2691.

instead of

The Battle of Bettendorf was fought in the year 2691.

or

Xmith's theorem is a theorem first proved by John Xmith in 1792.

instead of

Xmith's theorem was first proved by John Xmith in 1792.

The policy necessitates redundant words, and those sometimes appear stupid. If the battle of Bettendorf was actually a public debate about whether miniskirts should be worn on Sundays, so that the word "battle" is merely a metaphor, then that needs to be stated, but to say that a battle is a battle and and theorem is a theorem seems like needless extra words that convey no information and sometimes insult the reader. Michael Hardy (talk) 20:15, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

On the other hand, the vivid difference in color may overwhelm the signal of the bold text. This will differ from system to system, and from reader to reader; but it is better avoided. I'm not sure that battle and theorem should be linked in these cases; does the link add much? If it doesn't, take out the repetition and the link together. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:20, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Agreed with Sept. Editors often find clever ways around the redundancy, and it's important not to lose the "signal", as Sept says. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 21:19, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Agree with Anderson entirely. Don't link dictionary terms, please. TONY (talk) 00:34, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

"Theorem" has a very specific meaning in mathematics, which is often not appreciated by non-mathematicians. I would have linked it in this context. Hesperian 00:38, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

I think there is a certain flexibility to linking at first instance; a link can be placed at a slightly later point, especially if it matches with the context there. Waltham, The Duke of 23:32, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Names as names

What is the proper way to render a pen name, stage name, or nickname of an individual in a situation such as this?

• Boz was a pen name used by Charles Dickens.
• "Boz" was a pen name used by Charles Dickens.
• Boz was a pen name used by Charles Dickens.

In a sense, this seems to be an instance of a word being discussed as a word, and that it should thus be italicized. But I'm not sure; maybe names are names and don't require any sort of punctuation even in "words-as-words" usages. Is there any difference in the example above and these versions?

• Charles Dickens was dubbed Boz by his brother.
• Charles Dickens was dubbed "Boz" by his brother.
• Charles Dickens was dubbed Boz by his brother.

Thanks for any help! — Dulcem (talk) 01:00, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Although people can come up with all kinds of clear and easy-to-follow rules, there is no chance that all good editors will agree on this one, so my vote is that either is fine. I go with quotes whenever it is stated or implied that someone is saying something, as in the "dubbed" example. When you see a single skilled editor switching back and forth, the difference tends to be that the quotes have more of a sense of "so he says" or "let's call it this". WP:PUNC (in WP:MOS) and scare quotes may be helpful - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 04:14, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Although there might be disagreement about whether quotation marks or italics should be used, not using either is not an option. Personally, I prefer to restrict usage of quotation marks to as few uses as possible except for quotations, and since italics are used for words as words anyway, I should definitely suggest italics for the first case. It is about the second one that I am unsure; this seems to fall under Dan's description of "whenever it is stated or implied that someone is saying something", therefore quotation marks look perfectly acceptable. Waltham, The Duke of 23:27, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Regarding "not using either is not an option", agreed, in the examples given. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 23:37, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

In your opinions, would the same distinction hold in the following three cases?

• In 1979, Sarkisian changed her name to Cher.
• In 1979, Sarkisian took the name Cher.
• In 1979, Sarkisian started calling herself "Cher".

I'm uncomfortable adding any sort of emphasis to the first example, as you wouldn't write "The bank robber's name was 'Jesse James.'" You'd leave James's name unmarked. This is what is making me look slightly askance at any sort of distinguishing punctuation or style at all, as names are names and perhaps don't need to be marked out in a special way. Thanks again for the responses thus far. — Dulcem (talk) 23:44, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Cher doesn't need italics since the link is a clue that you're referring to the word rather than what the word means. (This used to be in WP:MOS but isn't there now; not sure where it went.) - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 00:59, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

That opens another can of worms over whether wikiliking something counts as some form of marking it. I'd rather know what the answer would be in all cases, not just if the name is wikilinked. So, ignoring the wikilinks, what form is preferred? — Dulcem (talk) 01:18, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

I doubt that wikilinking marks as a word. We want to wikilink "Sonny Bono was married to Cher." I agree with Dank that it is an arguable matter, depending on context, which is preferred; I think I would use quotes in the first example under Boz and italicize the second. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:25, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Agreed with Sept that wikilinking doesn't definitively mark a word-as-word, but it suggests that there is something special about the word, which I feel is good enough to keep "Sarkisian changed her name to Cher" from sounding odd without italics or quotation marks, and WP:MoS used to say this. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 03:13, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

If that were the case, are people marking ordinary dates as somehow special by autoformatting, i.e., linking, them? (We still can't seem to get WikiMedia to decouple the two functions.) TONY (talk) 09:53, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

I still do not believe that Cher should be left unmarked. Your example about Jesse James, Dulcem, has the distinction that it was his real name, and not an alias or nickname; this is a distinction that had escaped me so far, but which I believe is a meaningful one. We never mark real names, but pseudonames are... Well, they are fake. Waltham, The Duke of 14:43, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Point taken about James. But if Sarkisian is changing her name legally to Cher, doesn't that count as a non-fake name? — Dulcem (talk) 00:56, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Did we reach any consensus here on whether there are times that a wikilink makes italics or quotes unnecessary? I didn't get why this was taken out of WP:MOS; was it too precise, or not precise enough? - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 17:21, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

As I see it, Wiki-links should not influence in the least the quality of the prose and of the formatting thereof. They are just navigational tools, not formatting options. Printed pages, for one thing, do not display links at all, so their usage would make no difference there anyway. Waltham, The Duke of 09:02, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Kingdom of Gwynedd

What's the MOS's take on the current lead setup in the Kingdom of Gwynedd article? --Jza84 |  Talk  10:59, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

The paragraph on Nennius and Cunedda is not a summary of the rest of the article; it should be worked into a section on history or mythical history.Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:51, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Translating terms

I've noticed that the usual wikipedia style seems to be only translating the subject of an article in its first line, for example, Shaposhnikov Yevgeniy Ivanovich (Russian: Шапошников Евгений Иванович) would only appear in the article on Yevgeniy Shaposhnikov, not, for example, in the article on the Soviet Air Forces. Is this a currently applicable guideline or merely common, but uncodified, practice? Buckshot06 (talk) 11:20, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

No merely about it. Guidelines exist to record Wikipedia common practice; guidelines not supported by the broad consensus of practice are cruft. (Common practice, codified or not, can be altered by discussion on individual pages, of course; that's what {{guideline}} is phrased for.

As for this instance, I would not include the Cyrillic for every Russian name in Soviet Air Forces; so there would have to be some special reason to include it for Shaposhnikov. (Those marshals, unlike Shaposhnikov, who have no article, have at least a colorable reason, although you may find some articles if you adjust surname last and make links.) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 14:49, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Journalistic vs academic values

Well, three times in 24 hours the question has come up whether to favor academic or journalistic values. This might be another case where I'm weighing in on a question where my experience (especially with article reviewing) is not sufficient to say anything useful; we'll see. I have no idea what the outcome of this discussion will be; people seem to be all over the place on this one. I could be wrong, but I believe this could be the core of an issue that Sept and Gimmetrow have recently raised at Talk:Roman Catholic Church.

At WT:Manual_of_Style_(capital_letters)#Gabriel, we'd like to know if there's anything wrong with this text, which has been there for a while, I think:

The personal name of individual mythical creatures is capitalized (the angel Gabriel). [fixed quote 00:38, 14 May 2008 (UTC)]

It's claimed that there is nothing wrong with referring to an important figure to some Christians, Jews and Muslims as "mythical" because of this disclaimer (yes, it's a disclaimer in article-space, or the closest thing I've seen on WP) in the article Christian mythology: Template:Myth box Christianity.

"mythical" has special problems, but leaving that aside, the words "myth" and "mythology" really are used differently in different contexts. Some academics assert (I don't really believe it, but that's not the point) that "myth" does not carry any judgment about whether something is true or not, and those sources were consulted in this article. Journalists use the word "mythology" differently; I know that because AP Stylebook gives "Capitalize the proper names of pagan and mythological gods and goddesses: Neptune, Thor, Venus, etc", and the first definition in Websters Online is "an allegorical narrative". That's one huge advantage of looking at words from a journalistic rather than an academic viewpoint; in American English at least, you can often get a quick answer, because Chicago and AP Stylebook are both the result of a long-time process of consensus-gathering among, ultimately, hundreds of thousands of writers. (I can't say anything about BrEng.) There's no such thing as a "consensus of all authors", although if you subjectively (and perhaps arbitrarily) narrow your focus, you can sometimes drill down to find consensus among a specific set of academics.

But we can't throw academic values overboard just because academic research is hard, because Wikipedia is based on academic values every bit as much as journalistic ones; it's a question of figuring out which values take precedence when there is conflict. So, in the current question, should we favor academic values or journalistic values, and why? - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 14:47, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

P.S. Someone changed the text at WP:Manual_of_Style_(capital_letters) today, but it could easily change back, so the question is still valid. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 18:16, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

The text you quoted is not the text that has been there for the past few months. Anyway:

"Journalists use the word "mythology" differently; I know that because AP Stylebook gives "Capitalize the proper names of pagan and mythological gods and goddesses: Neptune, Thor, Venus, etc", and the first definition in Websters Online is "an allegorical narrative"". How do either of those things support your conclusion? Ilkali (talk) 22:12, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

"Allegorical" means "symbolic", not real. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 00:38, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Some myths may be argued to be allegories, especially in some renderings, but as a definition Websters' is terrible. The AP examples can all be described as both pagan and mythological; there might be some that could be said to be one but not the other. Johnbod (talk) 20:54, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

---

It's claimed that there is nothing wrong with referring to an important figure to some Christians, Jews and Muslims as "mythical" because of this disclaimer (yes, it's a disclaimer in article-space, or the closest thing I've seen on WP) in the article

But it did not refer to the angel Gabriel is "mythical", but rather it says he is among

mythical creatures or supernatural beings

Michael Hardy (talk) 00:13, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Quite right guys, I copied one of the newer versions by mistake. I just replaced the quote with the one that has actually been there for months, the one that called Gabriel "mythical". - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 00:38, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

On the general point, I would oppose making journalese our standard. It currently has a different set of flaws that the pretentious nonsense of Fowler's day; but it's not clear that it's any better than it was. (And applying CMOS to the particular case of Church may be a WP:ENGVAR violation, as some have suggested; it is certainly applying a generalization to a particular, very knotty, instance.) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:23, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

• I don't completely go along with the hard and fast distinction made here between journalists' and academics' "values". The registers overlap considerably. TONY (talk) 01:57, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, I don't have anything to say that always applies, Tony, but this may be a helpful way to frame the question. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 03:01, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

A significant minority of Wikipedia's editors who follow Commonwealth English often reject the notion that they are anywhere near reaching consensus on language issues. The same was true of a signficant minority of American writers in the 60s and 70s. I don't know if the reason is the same, but maybe it is. American style guidelines from the 60s read as if they were written by priggish schoolmarms. There was a big rebellion, and today, Chicago and AP Stylebook don't represent anything I would call either "elitism" or "journalese"; they are the product of long and wide consensus-building processes. Chicago is more complicated because it tries to represent consensus among groups that haven't reached any consensus among themselves (academicians, journalists, etc), so occasionally its guidance comes across as arbitrary. Still, they rely on an enormous bank of professional copyeditors, and that process has been going on for a while, and most American writers think that Chicago generally gets things right. AP Stylebook focuses on what has worked well in newspapers, magazines and (nowadays) blogs, and its guidance usually does represent consensus, but of a smaller group than Chicago tries to represent.

Whether the Brits are on a similar journey that will eventually lead to similar conclusions, I don't know. Written American English will never be as easy and universally understood (among native speakers) as French or German, because they (especially the French) have taken this approach for centuries while Americans are working on decades, and their dictionaries are much smaller, and they don't have the whole world trying to co-opt their language. Still, I think American writers have more or less arrived at mindsets that seem to me to be closer to the French and Germans than the British; for instance, American writers who hope to have a broad readership prefer to follow one set of orthography rules. Even American writers who have never heard of Chicago or AP Stylebook tend to comply, or try to, because they see the footprint these guides leave behind.

This doesn't apply, of course, to many academics and professionals, if they tend to read and write within just one specialty or profession, but that's another conversation. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 22:54, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Kodster

User:Kodster is using AWB to remove html code and insert diacritics. Not sure how I feel about this in every case, but I reverted the edit he just made to WP:MoS, and left this message on his talk page:

We prefer the html code to the diacritic or typographer's symbol for a number of symbols. I'm not positive that the diacritic ring that you inserted is one of them, but it probably is. The reasons are that html is likely to be preserved when the text is copied outside Wikipedia, and the diacritic is not; also, it is nearly impossible to look at those little circles and figure out what they are without the html code. I'll revert, but feel free to come talk about it on our talk page.

- Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 01:28, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

(copied from my talk page) Oh sure, I just used Auto Wiki Browser, and it did that automatically. Guess I didn't notice! Thanks for pointing that out and reverting it. I'll try to be a little more careful next time. :) Cheers, Kodster (You talkin' to me?) (Stuff I messed up) 01:29, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

PBS's edit

I did a quick copyedit on PBS's excellent recent addition. My only two goals were to make it say the same thing in fewer words, and to change "as you would find it in other reliable verifiable English sources" to "in English-language dictionaries and encyclopedias". From reading PBS's discussion above, I think he definitely didn't want people to be able to pick names out of any source, he wants them to follow proper usage, and I completely agree. I didn't change "If the foreign phrase or word does not appear often in English, then avoid using it (see Wikipedia:Avoid neologisms)." WP:Avoid neologisms doesn't talk about translation issues, so that might not be the right link. How about this? "If a descriptive foreign phrase or word does not appear often in English, then translate it." - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 20:00, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Why was it an "excellent" addition if you had to copy-edit it? TONY (talk) 01:27, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm glad you asked, because it was excellent in several different ways. First, this was a change that PBS has wanted to make for a while, and he was very patient, because several people asked for that. For myself, I wanted him to go slow because non-English orthography in Wikipedia is never going to be a settled issue; it's always going to be a contest between people who speak different languages, so I wanted to give everyone time to weigh in. Second, he was careful to match the language to the results of the debates at WP:NAME and WP:UE, rather than trying to slide in his personal preferences. And third, he left the language on the talk page for over a week so that we could copyedit it if we wanted to. There wasn't anything terribly wrong with it, I just decided at the last minute that there were a few phrases that could be deleted without changing the meaning. I could be wrong, of course. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 02:53, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Orthography ... spelling? I hope it's in AmEng, which is the established variety for MoS. TONY (talk) 10:42, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

The subject of the addition is spelling in article space. Remember that? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 14:51, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Avoid neologisms -- I was thinking of words that are commonly used in a foreign language but not often in English (with or without anglicization) to describe something, for example négationnisme/negationism.[1] --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 22:03, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

WP:NEO is kind of dense reading, and I'm not sure that people would be any closer to knowing what you want after they had read it. If you want to leave people free to make their own interpretation, what you wrote works fine. If you want to give them more guidance, you have mentioned WP:NCGN#Widely_accepted_name; that would work too. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 01:22, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

OK, What I will do is add something to WP:NEO about translations of foreign phrases, (because some people who contribute to this encyclopedia in English who's mother tongue is some other language can easily do this in good faith without knowing that they are creating a neologism as for words like négationnisme) and when it is bedded in I'll come back to this section. --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 08:33, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

That works too, and then I'd prefer that the section in WP:MOS link directly to the new section you're creating, rather than inviting people to wander around in WP:NEO. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 13:07, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Multiple columns in {{reflist}} deemed bad

"Howzat for a provocative headline, eh?" — superluser_tc

There have been some discussion on Template talk:Reflist about whether to remove multicolumn support from {{reflist}}. The simple solution would be to remove support for it in the reflist template, however, some users suggested it might be better to have a policy change? (I'm guessing they where referring to MoS?). So if you have any thoughts about that please consider taking part in the discussion.
— Apis (talk) 21:42, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Logical quotation

Arthur said that "the situation is deplorable." – in this sentence, does the period belong in or outside the quotes if the period was part of the quoted text? WP:MOS#Quotation marks seems contradictary as it states that the period should be inside when it "is part of the quoted text" and outside when "a sentence fragment is quoted". Epbr123 (talk) 00:07, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

If it's stated or implied that Arthur put a period after deplorable, or would have if he had written down what he said, then the period comes first; otherwise not. I dredged the WT:MoS archives on this recently, so if you're unconvinced, see WT:How_to_copy-edit#Logical_quotation. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 00:13, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Nothing about implied. If the dot is there in the original and the quote starts a WP sentence, yes, inside. If the quote starts within a WP sentence, outside. If the quote ends without punctuation in the original —in the middle of the quoted sentence—ellipsis dots are required. TONY (talk) 01:26, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

The distinction between starting a WP sentence or not isn't so clear cut in my reading of the guidelines. For example, isn't this example OK? Trevor said, "I hate it when goats come into my yard." — Dulcem (talk) 01:36, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

No. TONY (talk) 01:38, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

If Arthur was speaking rather than writing, then an "implied" period is the only kind of period Arthur could give us. But the way Tony is framing it is right. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 02:05, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

OK, what about, Arthur said, "I hate it when goats come into my yard. They are so smelly." Here we've got two sentences quoted. Does it make a difference? — Dulcem (talk) 02:12, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Tony knows quite a lot about Wikipedian usage, and I do remember seeing that in FAs, although that's not what I'm used to seeing. For instance, the Guardian's online style guide says:

quotation marks

Use double quotes at the start and end of a quoted section, with single quotes for quoted words within that section. Place full points and commas inside the quotes for a complete quoted sentence; otherwise the point comes outside:

"Anna said, 'Your style guide needs updating,' and I said, 'I agree.' "

- Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 02:18, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

That seems much more logical than the "logical" style we have now. — Dulcem (talk) 04:54, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

I strongly disagree. There is no reason to inject a comma into quotespace when it can just as easily sit outside. Ilkali (talk) 06:37, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

• Arthur said something.
• Arthur said "I hate it when goats come into my yard; they are so smelly".

I don't mind the preceding comma—said,—but it's fine without, isn't it? The thing about the final period is that if you want to highlight that "smelly" isn't the end of the quoted sentence, do this:

• Arthur said "I hate it when goats come into my yard; they are so smelly ...".

Otherwise, the default is the assumption that it is the end of a sentence, or it simply doesn't matter in the context. TONY (talk) 10:40, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Is the example at WP:MOS#Quotation marks wrong? – Arthur said, "The situation is deplorable." Epbr123 (talk) 11:43, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Agreed that different people seem to do different things, but I have to sit this one out, because I suck at Commonwealth English. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 14:12, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

What is this "Commonwealth English" that you claim people "follow" (supernatural religion?)? Canada is a Commonwealth country: do Canadians use CE? India is, too. TONY (talk) 14:15, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, am I saying something offensive? What term do you use for what is sometimes abbreviated "AmEng" and "BrEng" around here? - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 14:40, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

No Dank, there's not a molecule of you that could be offensive (leave that up to me). Sorry if my comment came over as brusque. CE has been bandied about as a blanket term for all varieties of English that are not North American or British. I know it's convenient, but I question its meaning. TONY (talk) 14:47, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Last time this term came up, somebody (as I recall, Tony) had objected to BrEng as a slight to the independent Englishes of the Dominions; Commonwealth was preferred as covering all of them and English English too. I don't mind being politically correct on this point, but it would be nice if there were consensus on what correctitude would be. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:05, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Both of you are right, I think; there's no such thing as Commonwealth English or BrEng, and I just hadn't caught on yet. Both American English and North American English (AmEng seems to mean the latter around here, but I generally avoid it as ambiguous) do mean something, and not because we're dealing with just one or two countries, but because writers over here have largely decided that they want it to mean something, that is, the forces that congeal consensus on the kinds of things that show up in Chicago and AP Stylebook have been winning over the forces of individualism for several decades now. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 17:12, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Those who value external Manuals of Style may wish to consider CMOS §6.10:

According to what is sometimes called the British style (set forth in The Oxford Guide to Style [the successor to Hart’s Rules; see bibliog. 1.1]), a style also followed in other English-speaking countries, only those punctuation points that appeared in the original material should be included within the quotation marks; all others follow the closing quotation marks. This system, which requires extreme authorial precision and occasional decisions by the editor or typesetter, works best with single quotation marks. (The British tend to use double quotation marks only for quotations within quotations.)

This is no evidence for the refinement presently under discussion; is there a source for it? (And the general advice is sound; WP editors are not known for "extreme authorial precision". We also recomend double quotation marks.) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:17, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Images

We have several desirable features for images (that they alternate left right and left; that they begin with a right; and so on.) It would be nice if all of them could be implemented for every article, but sometimes they can't be.

I don't see any reason, however, to have the requirement to face inward trump all the others; I can think of at least one image (the Cambridge statue of Newton "voyaging through the strange seas of Thought, alone") which should face outwards. But since people want to stress it, I've put it first. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 05:22, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

You're displaying more good sense than are the rulemongers.

I'd draw your attention to this nugget:

Since faces are not perfectly symmetrical, it is generally inadvisable to use photo-editing software to reverse a right-facing portrait image; however, some editors employ this controversial technique when it does not alter obvious non-symmetrical features, such as Mikhail Gorbachev's birthmark, or make text in the image unreadable.

which I suppose I could summarize as There's no rule against falsification but you shouldn't do it where it will easily be noticed by even the moderately observant.

"It is generally inadvisable" my orifice. If an image is worth inclusion, presumably that's because it would be informative. Assuming that WP wants to purvey information rather than misinformation, the particular image shouldn't be faked. (And the feebleness of the motive for this fakery makes the fakery ridiculous as well as wrong.) -- Hoary (talk) 09:22, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Agreed with Hoary. What page is that on? - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 14:00, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

On the very page we're discussing right here. -- Hoary (talk) 14:13, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

I have always skipped past discussions of images, but I agree, I can't see any reason for the WP:MoS to take a stand in favor of falsification of any kind. I follow that this was one of those "we can't be any better than the world" arguments; newspapers routinely flip photos (or used to; are they better-behaved these days?) But a flipped photo is a lie for editorial convenience; we can at least be better than that. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 14:45, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Looks like this does not represent consensus. (Since someone wrote this, there may not be consensus to condemn flipping either.) I will remove. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 14:57, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

• Looking at it again, it may have been intended as a statement of fact {"Some editors do this"), or even a weak condemnation, not a favoring. But I still see no reason to keep something so bland. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:00, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

You may well be right here. But context is (expectations are) important here. By delivering such a mild tut-tut, it seems to indicate that this is OK behavior. Well ... let's just zap it. (Although there may be rare contexts for the clearly announced, reasoned, flipping of images.) -- Hoary (talk) 15:35, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Indeed; this could apply in articles on art, especially discussing the reversal of images in copies in prints and so on. But as it is, the text should go, and be replaced with a ban, unless there is a good reason for the reversal, and it is clearly mentioned in the caption. Johnbod (talk) 16:14, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

I can think of many cases (probably most even) when flipping images would be perfectly acceptable. So don't put in any general rule against it at least.
— Apis (talk) 11:38, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

For example? Johnbod (talk) 13:57, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

• I'm also curious. Note that the present text would permit substantial photo-shopping, including flipping, if it is acknowledged, and is of service to the reader; but I don't see why flipping would be. (Flipping the picture of a symmetrical object, like undecorated pottery, would be largely harmless; but, by the same token, why bother?) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:42, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Alright, here are some examples:

• 
  A big cat
• Tea plantation in Sri Lanka.
  Tea plantation in Sri Lanka.
• 
  Nice cup of tea
• 
  There is even text on this one, although not visible at sub 300px.
• 
  Loris!
• 
  A little cat
• 
  A helicopter
• 
  A chimpanzee!
• 
  Really fast train
• 
  A Sphinx

I guess there could be situations where you'd prefer not to flip the car, but as long as it's clear it's been flipped I can't see any problem with it. If that isn't enough, I don't think a photographer would think twice about flipping, cropping or photoshopping an image before releasing it, so we usually don't have any control or way to verify this anyway. =/ (And yes, I don't have anything against the current text)
— Apis (talk) 18:50, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Are these examples of images that could be flipped? The car hasn't been. I suppose animals are mostly pretty symetrical, at least to a human view, but I don't personally approve of flipping landscapes at all. As the policy says, if there is a reason & it is in the caption, you can still do it. Johnbod (talk) 19:38, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes, non of them are flipped as far as I know, but I wouldn't mind if someone did it for some reason. Why not flip the tea plantation picture, it's a generic tea plantation? :)
— Apis (talk) 19:47, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

I mean, I have never done it and I don't know if it's being done, but if the tiger had been facing the other way for example, then it would have been hard to use in the info box for the tiger article, and I would have considered flipping it for that. Is that bad for some reason? I think there are valid reasons for doing it (and for not doing it in other cases) so it shouldn't be any specific rule against it, thats all. :)
— Apis (talk) 21:38, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

It depends whether you think authenticity and accuracy are more important than layout in WP. Suppose you actually lived on the tea plantation? Once you start that, you'll be flipping buildings and people, and Chinese writing because no-one can read it anyway. The Sphinx is not symmetrical (any longer anyway) and the detector and dominar are fair-use, which I imagine is another issue. No doubt we have many pre-flipped pics on WP, but where we can we should discourage it, imho. Johnbod (talk) 21:44, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Darye, flipping this image would probably be really bad (e.g. positioning of objects and people are likely to be of ceremonial importance)

I definitely agree that there are many cases when flipping would be bad! (added a tea ceremony example) I just think it is OK in many instances as well. Photographs isn't particularly authentic to begin with: the photographer begins distorting what a human observer would see the moment he takes the picture. Hes excluding anything outside the photo, changes lighting and color, distorts proportions and can use many other effects. He might even have arranged the picture, and the image might convey an entirely different message when taken out of it's real context. As long as it is clear that the image has been flipped (etc) I don't think there would be much harm in many cases, but it should always be done carefully. (I probably wouldn't mind even if I lived at that plantation, but I might be a bad example. I don't know anything about Florida copyright law, but I wouldn't have thought that was a problem).
— Apis (talk) 22:19, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

The colors of the helicopter aren't symmetrical either, I guess it depends on the circumstances whether the colorpattern is important?
— Apis (talk) 22:26, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Shorter or longer comments in the edit summary

I think it depends a lot on the page, but on this page, I tend to paste a phrase from my first sentence in the edit summary. I figure that people probably know whether they're interested in a topic or not, and if I give them enough to go on, they can save some time by skipping the comment. This would be overkill in the typical article, of course, because that's more a process of construction than of debate and providing links to past discussions. Should I follow the crowd and make my edit summaries shorter? - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 17:16, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

You can give a descriptive summary, I guess... After all, the box is titled edit summary for a reason, and that is not necessarily restricted to the main namespace.

I often use a plain Comment when I'm too bored to write anything else (or my comment is simply humorous), or Reply, especially in my talk page, but I often give a brief summary of my argument, or, when in a poll, a simple "Support" or "Oppose". Waltham, The Duke of 09:15, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

A chance to be rude or humorous. TONY (talk) 11:26, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Ordinals

Is there any particular reason why it is written that ordinals should not be written in superscript? It is the correct, traditional way to write 2^nd - not 2nd. Who decided this? It is open to discussion? EuroSong ^talk 18:49, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

The short answer, in American English, that Chicago says so, in section 9.8. This is a sufficient answer for some pages and not for others.

The longer answer is a lot more interesting...why have style guidelines at all? They can be useful when orthography (at the level of "encyclopedic writing", whatever that is) has changed over the last 20 years, because many of the sources our editors read will be 20 years old, and many of them (us!) went to school 20 years ago. 2^nd might be an example; I used to see that a lot more often than I do now.

Making a recommendation can also be useful when we see confusion over some issue that isn't all that important to us but is important to some editors, because their experience has led them to believe that one way is right and everything else is wrong. (This may apply to 2^nd, too.) I think Sept disagrees with me on this, but personally, it doesn't bother me if an editor thinks my judgment sucks and I'm being arrogant to offer a guideline. Well, it does bother me, but it bothers me less than if two editors who have to work together a lot have a falling out over language issues, which happens more than you'd think, because language issues are very hard, and often cause misunderstandings. When we notice particular points that tend to be divisive, we might be able to save a few relationships and help the encyclopedia by not giving people a choice, even though that pretty much guarantees that people will call us bad names.

Making a recommendation can do readers a favor by giving writers fewer options. Most writers on Wikipedia are actually really talented, at writing in a particular style that matches what they're used to. On the other hand, they don't know what readers from all over the world, or from different educational backgrounds, are expecting. Style guidelines help to democratize the encyclopedia.

One thing that style guidelines are not good at: they don't appeal to people who don't have much of a background in writing to begin with. Without that context, people will probably think we have no idea what we're talking about, and there's not a lot we can do about that.

- Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 20:43, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Minus

Regarding today's edit in WP:DASH: is a fourth dash necessary? (hyphens, en-dashes, em-dashes, minus signs). Here's a minus sign: −, and here's an en-dash: –. Other than the minus being higher by just a hair, I see no difference at all in Firefox or IE. Yes, I see what WP:MOSNUM says, but WP:DASH came first. What's the rationale for making rules that concern nearly invisible differences? - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 01:29, 20 May 2008 (UTC)