
{| style="float:right; background:transparent" |- | |- | |} This Manual of Style has the simple purpose of making things easy to read by following a consistent format — it is a style guide. The following rules don't claim to be the last word. One way is often as good as another, but if everyone does it the same way, Wikipedia will be easier to read and use, not to mention easier to write and edit. In this regard the following quote from ''The Chicago Manual of Style'' deserves notice: :Rules and regulations such as these, in the nature of the case, cannot be endowed with the fixity of rock-ribbed law. They are meant for the average case, and must be applied with a certain degree of elasticity. Clear, informative and unbiased writing is always more important than presentation and formatting. Writers are ''not'' required to follow all or any of these rules: Wikipedia:Editing policy is that perfection is not required. ==Article titles== ''Main article: Wikipedia:Naming conventions'' If possible, make the title the ''subject'' of the first sentence of the article (as opposed to putting it in the Predicate (grammar)). In any case, the title should appear as early as possible in the article — preferably in the first sentence. The first time the title is mentioned in the article, put it in bold using three apostrophes. Here's an example: notation, which indents both left and right margins. Indented quotations do not need to be marked by quotation marks. In a quotation of multiple paragraphs not using indented style, double quotation marks belong at the beginning of each paragraph, but only at the end of the last paragraph.
Use quotation marks or indentations to distinguish quotations from other text. There is normally no need to put quotations in italics unless the material would otherwise call for italics (emphasis, use of non-English words, etc.).
====Use straight quotation marks and apostrophes====
For uniformity and to avoid complications use straight quotation marks and apostrophes ( ' " ) not curved (smart) ones, grave accents or backticks ( ‘ ’ “ ” ` ).
If you are pasting text from Microsoft Word, remember to turn off the smart quotes feature by unmarking this feature in AutoEdit and "AutoEdit during typing"! Many other modern word processors have a ''smart quotes'' setting—please read the appropriate documentation for your editor.
Characters identical in appearance to left single quotation mark or right single quotation mark are used as letters in some Latin-letter transliteration systems and in some languages, for example to display the okina character in Hawaiian. The characters may also be used in discussions about the quotation marks themselves. If using a left or right quotation mark for such a purpose, to assure proper display on all browsers, do not type or paste such a quotation mark directly into the Wikipedia editor. Instead, use the HTML entities ‘ or ’ or the corresponding numeric forms: ‘ and ’ or ‘ and ’. If necessary to represent such characters as letters in article titles, the normal straight apostrophe ( ' ) should usually be used in place of the right quotation mark and the grave accent ( ` ) in place of the left quotation mark.
====Use of punctuation in presence of brackets====
Punctuation goes where it belongs. (A sentence wholly inside brackets will have its full stop within those brackets.) This means that bracketed clauses at the end of sentences do not include a full stop (like shown here).
===Serial commas===
The Oxford or serial comma is the optional last comma in a list in the phrases such as "ham, egg(,) and chips". Sometimes omitting the comma can lead to an ambiguous sentence, as in the example "The author would like to thank her parents, Sinéad O'Connor and President Bush." In these cases, there are three options for avoiding ambiguity:
* A final serial comma can be used to avoid ambiguity.
* The sentence can be recast to avoid listing the items if possible.
* The items in the list can be presented using a wiki list (like this).
In most cases, however, the presence of the final serial comma does not affect ambiguity of the sentence, and in these cases there is no Wikipedia consensus on whether it should be used.
Some style authorities support the mandatory final serial comma, such as ''Fowler's Modern English Usage'', the ''Chicago Manual of Style'', and Strunk and White's The Elements of Style, while other style authorities recommend avoiding the comma where possible, such as that used by ''The Times'' and ''The Economist''.
By common convention, and by consensus of the Trains wikiproject, the serial comma should never be employed when specifying the name of a railroad or railway. For example, "Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis Railroad", not "Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago, and St. Louis Railroad".
===Spaces after the end of a sentence===
There are no guidelines on whether to use one or two spaces after the end of a sentence but it is not important as the difference only shows up in the edit box. See Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style archive (spaces after a full stop/period) for a discussion on this.
===Contractions===
In general, we prefer formal writing. Therefore, avoid contractions — such as ''don't'', ''can't'' and ''won't'', except when you are quoting directly.
==Pronunciation==
See Wikipedia:Manual of Style (pronunciation).
==Scientific style==
''Main article: Wikipedia:Technical terms and definitions''
* For units of measure, use SI units in science articles, unless there are compelling historical or pragmatic reasons not to do so: (for example, Hubble's constant should be quoted in its most common units of km/s/Mpc rather than its SI unit of Hz). For other articles, either Imperial or metric units may be used. See Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)#Style for numbers, weights, and measures. Wikipedia Style for large numbers is ''10,000''.
* In articles about chemicals and chemistry, use the style of the IUPAC (IUPAC) for chemical names wherever possible, except in article titles, where the common name should be used if different, followed by mention of the IUPAC name. For general information see systematic name, and for organic compounds in particular see IUPAC nomenclature.
* In periodic table groups, use the ''new'' IUPAC names (these use Arabic numerals, not Roman numerals or letters).
* For mathematics and mathematical formulae, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics.
==Sections==
''Main article: Wikipedia:Section''
===Introduction===
The title or subject can almost always be made part of the first sentence, but some articles simply have names.
* The Pythagorean theorem is named for and attributed to the 6th century BC Greek philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras
:Achilles' heel ''.
* If a word or phrase is generally regarded as correct, then prefer it to any other word or phrase that might be regarded as incorrect. For example, "other meaning" should be used instead of "alternate meaning" or "alternative meaning", because not all English speakers regard "alternate" and "alternative" as meaning the same. The ''American Heritage Dictionary'' "Usage Note" at ''alternative'' says: "Alternative should not be confused with alternate." ''Alternative'' commonly suggests "non-traditional" or "out-of-the-mainstream" to an American-English speaker. Some traditional usage experts consider ''alternative'' to be appropriate only when there are exactly two alternatives.
==National varieties of English==
Cultural clashes over grammar, spelling, and capitalisation/capitalization are a common experience on Wikipedia. Remember that millions of people may have been taught to use a different form of English from yours, including different spellings, grammatical constructions, and punctuation. For the English Wikipedia, there is no preference among the major national varieties of English. However, there is certain etiquette generally accepted on Wikipedia:
* Proper names should retain their original spellings, for example, ''United States Department of Defense'' and ''Australian Defence Force''.
* Each article should have uniform spelling and not a haphazard mix of different spellings, which can be jarring to the reader. For example, do not use ''center'' in one place and ''centre'' in another on the same page.
* Articles that focus on a topic specific to a particular English-speaking country should generally conform to the spelling of that country. For example:
** article on the ''American Civil War'': U.S. usage and spelling
** article on Tolkien's ''Lord of the Rings'': UK usage and spelling
** article on ''Uluru'' (''Ayers Rock''): Australian usage and spelling
** article on ''European Union institutions and documents'': British and Irish usage and spelling
** article on the city of ''Montréal'': Canadian usage and spelling
** article on ''Taj Mahal'': Indian usage and spelling.
* When abbreviating ''United States'', please use "U.S."; that is the more common style in that country, is easier to search for automatically, and we want one uniform style on this. When referring to the United States in a long abbreviation (USA, USN, USAF), periods should not be used.
* If the spelling appears in an article name, you should make a Wikipedia:Redirect page to accommodate the other variant, as with Artefact and Artifact, or if possible ''and'' reasonable, a neutral word might be chosen as with Glasses.
* ''Words with multiple spellings'': In choosing words or expressions, there may be value in selecting one that does not have multiple spellings, if there are synonyms that are otherwise equally suitable.
* If an article is predominantly written in one type of English, aim to conform to that type rather than provoking conflict by changing to another. (Sometimes, this can happen quite innocently, so please don't be too quick to make accusations!)
* Consult Wikipedia articles such as English plural and American and British English differences.
* If all else fails, consider following the spelling style preferred by the first major contributor (that is, not a stub) to the article.
See also Wikipedia:Manual of Style (spelling).
==Pictures==
''Main article: Wikipedia:Picture tutorial''
Articles with a single picture are encouraged to have that picture at the top of the article, right-aligned, but this is not a hard and fast rule. Portraits with the head looking to the right should be left-aligned (looking into the article).
The current image markup language is more or less this:
:
==Archives== Because this page is so long, I have moved the archives list to an archive directory. User:Maurreen 17:12, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC) * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style--Archive Directory ==See also== * Wikipedia talk:Establish context * Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (capitalization) * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dashes) * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (titles) * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (jguk's changes) * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (Quotation marks and apostrophes) ---------------- Note: the most recent discussion (Feb 15–March 7) is chronologically archived at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style--Archive11 --------------- ==A proposal to simplify all of this== A number of points spring to mind: *Although this discussion is long, I think we are making progress - one final push may see us through to a good, workable solution. *It is advantageous to have one official style - that's the whole purpose of a style guide. It also gives a useful point of reference to all WPians who care about style. I therefore suggest (post-amendments - see below) to refer to this page as "official style". The term would give this page proper authority, whilst at the same time not using the term "policy", which some people think would mean the ArbCom would get involved if people broke it. *On the issue of usage, we need to be permissive - allow any standard form of English. Exceptions to this rule are damaging to this page (see above). *"Official style" should be as short as possible - people do not like lots of complicated rules! *This Manual of Style can and should be supplemented by a non-official page offering guidance on how to interpret it. To this end, I have made a working draft proposal on Wikipedia:Manual of Style/proposal (the first edit to this page was the current policy, so going to history and looking at the diffs will show what changes are proposed). Please feel free either to edit this page, or to offer comments either here on on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/proposal. I have also made a draft additional guidance page on Wikipedia:Guidance on applying the Manual of Style and Wikipedia talk:Guidance on applying the Manual of Style. All comments would be welcome, User:Jguk 22:00, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC) ==Style guides, national differences, etc.== I'd like to suggest the following: *Anyone making a complaint or a suggestion about the style guide should do so with the reader in mind, and not the editors. *Making a complaint or a suggestion based on national differences can be divisive, especially if it is not handled carefully. *If people are terribly offended by something they consider foreign, they might be wise to reconsider working on an international project. Some points from above are worth repeating: *Few people know their own language as well as they think they do. *Various publications have their own style. A lot ot things vary and it's seldom a problem to readers. Some points about style guides and writing for publication: *Probably few, if any, people agree 100 percent with any style guide. *Writers for probably any publication have their work changed. They don't always agree. They often don't know until after the fact. *Mature people accept these things and don't make a conflagration out of small matters. *A major reason for a style guide is consistency. Certain things are long-established in Wikipedia style. That should not be taken lightly. People who want changes for anything, especialy to things that are long-established, would be wise to consider their approach. User:Maurreen 02:41, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC) :I haven't looked at Jguk's links yet, so have no idea whether I'll agree or not, but I just want to respond briefly to Maurreen and say that I do agree with her point about writers and style guides. Writers learn a new style with each publication they go to. It's no big deal and professional writers don't fuss about it. I also agree that pointing out differences based on nationality is extremely unpopular at Wikipedia, and if the MoS continues to pursue that, people are going to vote with their fingers, so to speak. If the MoS is to be respected, it has to respect the prevailing culture and try to work with it, not against it. User:SlimVirgin 02:48, Mar 15, 2005 (UTC) ::It is for some of the reasons outlined above that I favour a permissive, rather than prescriptive approach: a MoS that allows any standard form of English, supplemented by non-binding guidance on how it is interpreted in practice. And having a permissive approach should, I hope, allow us to give MoS back some official status. ::On the issue of different national differences - it is really a question of give and take. We should take the largely accepted approach that most Wikipedians are able to accept as a compromise - and go with that. It's not a perfect approach, by any means, but it seems the best way to reduce needless edit wars and conflict. After all, is there really any benefit in me edit-warring to force the article on ''2005 in NASCAR'', to which I am the major contributor, back to British English when someone converts it to American English? Similarly, is there any problem with me continuing to write my major contributions to it in British English, since, whilst I am aware of many linguistic differences that we have, I am not fluent in the niceties of American English? IMO, the answer is no, but I shan't try to revert to BE if another editor converts to AmE. SV, I also hope the approach I am suggesting, which allows for a longer description of what "closely-related" means and which allows for differing opinions to be expressed in non-binding guidance, helps reduce our differences on this. ::I hope you look at both discussion drafts (on Wikipedia:Manual of Style/proposal and Wikipedia:Guidance on applying the Manual of Style and offer constructive comments thereon. As noted above, I hope, after all these discussions, we are nearly there. If we can get there by actually ''reducing'' the instruction creep for once, so much the better. Kind regards, User:Jguk 08:45, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC) :::I have mixed feelings about this. It takes us further away from having a style guide per se, and closer towards having a set of Yalta Conference rules on which national style to use when. (Assuming it's even clear which style each actually is.) But since this is already the case with spelling, perhaps doing the same thing with punctuation is merely "going with the flow": the same bun-fight will determine both, rather than having to have one over spelling, and then still not being sure one can copy-edit to MoS punctuation without someone complaining. User:Alai 03:41, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC) In the drafts what does ''standard English'' mean? User:Philip Baird Shearer 14:20, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC) ::I mean English as written in at least a semi-formal or formal context - eg as you'd write a business letter or exam, or as a broadsheet newspaper would write - as opposed to slang or dialectal, User:Jguk 16:25, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC) :::Perhaps a note at the bottom explaining this would be useful, or perhaps change "standard" to "formal". User:Philip Baird Shearer 10:12, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC) Would it be helpful if an author could include some metadata in an article indicating the variant of English she is using? This might help prevent inadvertent conflict and acrimony, where the style of English being used wasn't obvious to a contributor. This could be easily accomplished by placing a comment at the top of the page. <!-- this article is written in Canadian English --> I write in Canadian English, and I'm sure that many British and U.S. editors would take a look and decide that it's full of spelling errors, if they weren't familiar with it. ''—User:Mzajac User talk:Mzajac 2005-03-15 15:02 Z'' ::I don't think it would be helpful - labelling articles as being in one form of English is really the sort of thing we're trying to get away from. Make hidden comments if a change really irks you, but otherwise I'd recommend just going with the flow, 16:25, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC) :Michael, have a look at the "Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style--Archive11#Proposal:_Introduction_of_Style_Tags "-discussion above.
:I agree with you that articles started in Canadian English will probably be changed to British or American E. in the course of editing. If you're the first major contributor, I think you're free to add comments to your article and state what kind of English you're using. User:Flo 02:41, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC) :: Thanks for pointing out the discussion I missed. I notice someone else just added
::"British botantists" British botanists", I can do that directly, instead of "British Botantists|British botantists" British Botanists|British botanists".) User:Maurreen 04:08, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)
:Like every other literary institution, Wikipedia has appropriately evolved its own "house style". And I concur that the trend is away from capitalization in titles. Keep the wording of the section as it is now for the sake of a consistent user experience. User:Fawcett5 13:08, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)
::Some publishing houses, such as the long-established Brookers in New Zealand, have been pioneering what is now the WP style for years, if not decades. And it certainly has that distinct advantage for editors pointed out by Maurreen above. So let's use it if we feel like it and leave it alone if we don't like it! User:Robin Patterson 03:23, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)
:IMHO Wikipedia housestyle is embarrassingly awful. It is frequently semi-literate and makes a laughing stock of us sometimes. I had an academic colleague recently roar with laughter when we called an article ''Letter of credence''. He, and everyone else knew, that it should be ''Letter of Credence''. But everytime I capitalised correctly some neanderthal who didn't know what the article was about would lowercase it, making the article look like it was the work of someone who didn't know that a Letter of Credence is a 'formal diplomatic term', not just a loose collection of generic words. Capitalisation exists for a reason, to distinguish between formal names and descriptive words. So one can talk generically about a ''president'' but specifically about the ''President of Ireland'', generically about popes but specifically when talking about ''Pope'' as a title, generically when taking about someone getting ''advice'' (non-obligatory recommendation or guidance) but specifically when talking about a head of state receiving ''Advice'' (ie, binding constitutional instruction). But all these specific rules, and the guidance that should come from capitalisation, gets lost here with the ''make everything lowercase'' brigade. Fear''ÉIREANN''">User:Jtdirl 23:29, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)
::Well, Jtdirl, not everyone (not even every 64-year-old English-speaking university graduate) knew before today that "Letter of Credence" was a specific technical term. Your solution there, I suggest, (AFTER you have "corrected" it throughout the article!) is to add a note to the article's Talk page so as to reduce the likelihood that someone will ignorantly revert the capital. User:Robin Patterson 03:23, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)
:: BTW, I would have capitalized ''(n)Neanderthal''. But I don't necessarily think User:Jtdirl's failure to do so makes him a laughingstock. -- User:Jmabel | User talk:Jmabel 05:47, Apr 21, 2005 (UTC)
*Being an American, I always prefer to capitalize of all major words in a title; titles in sentence case strike me as being extremely odd and unprofessional, although I know it is the norm elsewhere. We should be allowed to use either style for titles according to our preference, much as we are not required to write all articles in British English. --User:M412k 14:08, 27 May 2005 (UTC)
==Commas and places==
Does anyone object to an addition along the following lines (and can anyone suggest better wording?):
:"In constructions such as 'city, country,' or 'city, state,' use a comma or other appropriate punctuation after 'country' or 'state'." User:Maurreen 04:17, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)
::Support, obviously. But perhaps using italics instead of quote marks, to avoid the whole vexed issue of commas-before or commas-after. Thus: "In constructions such as ''city, country,'' or ''city, state,'' use a comma or other appropriate punctuation after ''country'' or ''state''." And throw in an example to make it abundantly clear: "Acapulco, Guerrero, is a city and major sea port..." User:Hajor 04:33, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)
:::I don't think we should prefer one style over another here. Personally, first I prefer to try to avoid such constructions, but if I can't avoid them, I'd not have a second comma. I looked in all my favourite style guides, and couldn't find anything about the subject - so I guess it's not really a great hot potato. In Hajor's construction, would it anyway not be better to write "Acapulco, Guerrero is a city and major sea port..."?
:::I note that in general terms, on this side of the Pond, the trend is towards having a minimum of punctuation. It's best to stay silent on the matter and enjoy the wonderful mélange of styles that is Wikipedia than issue a directive that will be largely ignored, User:Jguk 06:59, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)
::OK, so that's what I get for trying to combat systemic bias in examples. Miami, Florida, then. ''sigh'' But more importantly: modern British punctuation doesn't hold that a phrase in apposition (which is what these are) needs setting off with commas? User:Hajor 07:28, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I don't understand. What's the systemic bias you are trying to combat? As far as the particular British English style, I've looked for an example of what people may use - but have failed. I think it's more a case of there not really being a need for constructions of "Place, Country" other than at the end of a clause. All the best, User:Jguk 08:10, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)
:Wikipedia:WikiProject Countering systemic bias, which is why I took my example from the least well known of the big three North American federal countries. Perhaps Nogales, Sonora, would have been a better option; too late now, I suppose. Re the UK usage, running a Google search on "in-newport-gwent site:guardian.co.uk" (or bbc.co.uk, telegraph.co.uk, etc.) is informative but, of course, not conclusive.
:On a related note, the current punctuation on "ITN" -- Charles, Prince of Wales weds Camilla Parker Bowles, who is now known as the Duchess of Cornwall -- looks dead wrong to me, but the comma I inserted arguing phrase-in-apposition was reverted, with the argument that it wasn't apposition, but rather his name. Counter-intuitive to me, but who am I to say? User:Hajor 15:53, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)
In general, I believe that place names should be given without any country/state information in article titles. However, when a number of places have the same name, it is usual to disambiguate by giving the location after a comma. Particularly in the United States, rapid settlement patterns led to numerous places sharing the same name, and the disambiguating style has become the norm even for unambiguous place names. This does not mean that this style is only used in the US: Newport, Gwent, is an obvious British version of this style (there are other Newports in Britain); Boston, Lincolnshire, is an international disambiguation that doesn't sound at all round. Local style and good English usage should work together to determine which system is more appropriate. Technically, when a comma is used in this way, it is a bracketing comma rather than a listing comma. Therefore, in text another comma is required after Miami, Florida, for the flow of the sentence not be interrupted. I think this style is better than parentheses in titles when it is called for. --User:Garzo 19:47, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)
:Those advocating a second comma after a state or country name are suggesting adoption of a construction that is used with ever decreasing frequency on both sides of the pond. It would be mistaken to make this official policy. User:Fawcett5 22:35, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)
::Concerning the "ever decreasing frequency": Do you have anything to back that up, or is it just your opinion? User:Maurreen 02:25, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Yes, it is being used less frequently, but that doesn't necessarily make it right. There is some misconception that the comma is part of the name, and thus exists for itself. A comma always has to have a role in the syntax of a sentence. I think the misconception is that it is a listing comma. When I write my address, I sometimes use listing commas to separate each element (when I can write it on different lines, I don't need them: they've gone out of fashion!). These place names look a little like addresses, and so the comma may feel like a listing comma. However, the comma is bracketing off ''additional information'': the ''where'' and ''which'' of places with the same name. As a bracketing comma, unless the phrase appears in isolation, or immediately before another punctuation mark, it should take a closing bracketing comma. This is as important, albeit not as glaring, as opening parentheses and not closing them. --User:Garzo 13:32, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I'm going to have to agree with Garzo there. If it's being used less frequently, that's only out of sheer laziness. When attention is paid to the proper placement of commas, even if it may not be entirely possible to regulate such a thing, it greatly increases Wikipedia's credibility. Improper punctuation smacks of poor workmanship. User:Rhymeless User talk:Rhymeless 02:08, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
==Citation-Style Recommendations?==
I've been trying to find a proper manual or recommendation for how to cite my sources in wikipedia. Should I just adopt MLA, Chicago, APA, etc, etc? I assume I ought to use foot/end-notes, is this correct? Have I just missed the page entirely in my searches? If it does exist, I believe it at least ought be linked to the manual of style. User:Jxn 07:18, 2005 Apr 14 (UTC)
*See Wikipedia:Cite sources. -- User:Jmabel | User talk:Jmabel 16:19, Apr 14, 2005 (UTC)
**Thanks, I added a link to the guide on the main manual of style to save others the trouble I went through. User:Jxn
== Example ==
Does there exist an example page (ie: a dummy sample) that possesses most/all of the aspects from the Manual of Stlye that I can refer to? I think it would be easier to use than trawling the Manual of Style. --User:Commander Keane 12:14, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)
:No. Most articles of any length - including almost all featured articles, are inconsistent with it in some respect. This is a fault with the MoS, rather than the articles, as the MoS has not adapted to deal with the expansion of WP and the variety of equally valid styles that different users use, User:Jguk 19:22, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)
::I think Commander Keane is asking if we could create a short article that actually fits the MoS and shows off the styles. The problem is that some of the style points are restrictions, such as no curly quotes, or too specific, such as the italicization of genus and species. --User:Sean Kelly User_talk:Sean Kelly 19:28, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)
:::That's what I thought he meant too. It's just that, with respect, I do not think it is a very good idea - some parts of the MoS are ignored more often than they are adhered to, and I don't think it would be useful to encourage people to change WP wholesale to comply with it. To see what well-written articles look like I would advise looking at Wikipedia:Featured articles and copying the styles there, User:Jguk 18:04, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
::::Wikipedia:Annotated article might be helpful. User:Maurreen 02:12, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)
::::Also, just for clarification, No. 8 in the Wikipedia:What is a featured article is: "Comply with the standards set by any relevant WikiProjects, as well as those in the style manual." User:Maurreen 02:18, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)
== National varieties ==
The first words of the article Internationalization and localization were recently changed from "Internationalization and localization" to "Internationalization (or internationalisation) and localization (or localisation)". Given that no human being could possibly understand one of these spellings and fail to understand the other, this seems just plain silly to me. As I understand our section on Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#National_varieties_of_English, it is also against policy. Could someone who has ''not'' got a personal stake in that article (which I do) please Talk:Internationalization_and_localization#Is_this_not_against_MoS_policy.3F and maybe revert? Thanks. -- User:Jmabel | User talk:Jmabel 05:03, Apr 19, 2005 (UTC)
== Deities begin with a capital letter ==
:Deities begin with a capital letter
''Proper names'' begin with a capital letter. Thus "There is no god but God, and God is the god both of Christianity and Islam, and his name is ''God''.".
I have often erroneously used philosopher quotes instead of italics when using words as names for themselves. Maybe there should be a mention in "quote usage" referring back to "words as words".
User:Pmurray bigpond.com 00:09, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)
== More capitalisation: "the Church" vs. "the church" ==
I've had a couple of discussions in different contexts about this, but it probably needs a bit of "democratic centralism". Where a particular church is being referred to, should it be referred to as "the Church", on the grounds of an abbreviated reference to a full title containing the capitalised word "Church" (Catholic Church, United Methodist Church, etc), or should it be referred to as "the church", on the basis of referring to it as a descriptive, non-proper noun, and avoiding any possible implication of uniqueness, definitiveness, etc? (I think there are at least two NPOV issues: bodies which are incontestably churches, and which make contested claims to be "The Church" in some sense; and bodies which are contested even to the churches, but which indubitably have the word "Church" in their titles.) User:Alai 05:32, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)
:The obvious point first (just in case anyone misses it): the word should be capitalised in a proper name — ''the United Methodist Church'' and ''St Andrew's Church''. I believe that the word should also be capitalised when refering to the theological concept of the unity of Christian believers, the Body of Christ, the Church — "Pentecost may be described as the birthday of the Church". Where, dogmatically, a Christian denomination understands itself to be the only true church, it might be described as ''Church''. Thus, "Pope Benedict XVI is the new leader of the Church". I think this form should be avoided, as POV (it suggests that other churches are not part of the Church), and that individual organisations and Christian buildings be referred to as ''church''.
*''Church'' — in proper names and for the theological concept.
*''church'' — all other instances.
--User:Garzo 11:30, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)
:Two direct analogies, obviously, are Museum and Government. If the specific museum or denomination has been mentioned, capitalization is an option. If the ''idea'' of government is the issue, capitalization is an option.
Wikipedia does not capitalize Reality or Life or Church otherwise. --User:Wetman 15:33, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)
:My feeling is that when "church/Church" is being used as a referent to an entity whose proper name includes a capitalized "Church", then the capitalized form of the referent should be used as well. I believe it is well-understood in such cases that "the Church" is a shortening of the proper name and not an endorsement of special status for that particular entity. As Wetman points out, a similar situation occurs with "Museum", which I think perhaps illustrates less contentiously the principle we should be applying: if the subject has already been established to have "Museum" in its name, to have it referred to by "the Museum" is only natural. ''Example'': "... tried to donate his masterpiece to the Museum of Bad Art; however, the donation was declined. A spokesperson for the Museum explained the decision as ..." This is what seems natural to me, but YMMV. -- User:Antaeus Feldspar 23:00, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)
::The standard rule is straightforward. Is the word ''church'' being used generically or as a shortened proper noun for a specific religion (ie, is it just a way to avoid constant usage of the full name)?
For example.
* Visitors to the church were amazed by its stained glass windows. (''There 'church' is simply referring to a building.'')
* Pope Benedict XVI is the oldest pope in the History of the Roman Catholic Church for 250 years. John XXIII, though often thought of as older, actually was a younger head of the Church. (''There 'church' is simply shorthand for 'Roman Catholic Church'.)
* The Anglican Church's Lambeth Conference of that year was crucial to the Church's evolution of teaching on sexual matter. (''Again 'Church' there means Anglican Church, so it is capitalised.'')
* The Christian Church of the years after the apostles lacked a central structure. Yet still the Church survived. (''There too the 'church' is specific, and short for a proper noun, the 'Christian Church', so is capitalised.'')
* There are many churches in the United States. (''There the term is used generically, not specifically referring to any specific one.'')
The trick is simple. When one reads back the sentence, can the name of a clear specific organisation be fitted in to the text before the word 'church', with 'church' simply a shortened version of the full name. If it can, it is capitalised. If it can't, it isn't. Fear''ÉIREANN''">User:Jtdirl 23:17, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I'm aware of this usage, but it's not at all clear to me that it rises to the level of a "standard rule". Do you have a reference? (Ideally a publisher's or newspapers style guide or something at such a level.) User:Alai 02:18, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)
:I agree that the above is not standard (which is not to say that there is an opposing standard). The above would at least generally not comply with Associated Press style. Maybe we should leave it up to individual editors. User:Maurreen 05:54, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)
::Judging by the Guardian Style Guide's take on capitalisation issues, I'd predict they wouldn't, either. Any such source that definitely would? User:Alai 01:42, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)
It is ''elementary'' English taught in schools - sometimes called ''Implicit Proper Nouns'' (IPNs) and ''Explicit Proper Nouns'' (EPNs). If a word though appearing not be a proper noun is in reality a shortened version of a proper noun then it is treated as a proper noun for capitalisation purposes. It is a way to avoid clumsy repetition of long proper nouns that make text complicated to read.
Two examples
''Number 1''
Rather than writing ''The Roman Catholic Church's decision to elect as Roman Catholic Church's head one of the Roman Catholic Church's most outspoken conservatives has shocked many members of the Roman Catholic Church'' (which is a tangled mouthful) one can write ''The Roman Catholic Church's decision to elect as the Church's head one of its most outspoken conservatives shocked many members of the Church.'' The capitalisation tells the reader that the word ''church'' is not generalised but is specific: the same church named in full at the start of the sentence. Technically if you lowercase the last ''church'' it could be misinterpreted as meaning the church is in broadest sense, ie, not specifically Roman Catholic but the broad Christian Church.
''Number 2''
* Example 1: ''Various Church leaders attended the installation of the head of the Roman Catholic Church''.
* Example 2: ''Various church leaders attended the installation of the head of the Roman Catholic Church''.
Both sentences look the same but mean something different. In Example 1 the capitalised ''Church'' shows it is an Implicit Proper Noun, linking it to the proper noun in the sentence, ''Roman Catholic Church''. So the ''Church'' leaders are Roman Catholic Church leaders: cardinals, bishops, etc. Example 2, by lowercasing ''church'' shows that it is not an IPN. So the ''church'' is generic, not specific. So ''church'' does not mean ''Roman Catholic Church'' but ''any'' church. So it refers to non-RC figures like the Anglican Church's Archbishop of Canterbury, the head of the Lutheran Church in Rome, etc etc.
It is something English teachers recommend strongly to ensure that the reader knows unambigiously what ''church'' is meant in the sentence. Copywriters do it all the time in academic texts and encyclopaedias. It is more used in British English than in American English but my American publishers are sticklers for it; they say they prefer Irish and British authors to American ones because there is less work involved in copyediting, as the meaning of sentences are clearer on account proper use of IPNs.
Newspapers (and so their style guides) used it less often for technical reasons.
* 1. It was more difficult to do in the pre-computerised days of hard metal. They tried to avoid cutting between upper and lowercase letters because it was more time-consuming to do in a job where you hadn't much time (and once a style is decided in a newspaper, it is next to impossible to change it even when technologically there is no need for some of the rules anymore. If you think wikipedia has a lot of rules, you should try working in a newspaper!)
* 2. Their attitude was - the paper will be used for wrapping chips in tomorrow so who cares if we don't get every capital (or even every spelling) right.
But what is written here is appearing in an encyclopaedia, not a newspaper, so it has a far longer shelf-life. Many articles deal with far more complicated subjects, at far longer length, than a 300 word piece in a newspaper. And we are using modern technology. So there is no justification in using a standard that loses the benefits of capitalisation, when the whole point of upper casing is to add clarity to sentences and minimise misunderstanding. Wikipedia is already poorly regarded academically, not because of the standard of its contents (some of which is first class, some not so) but because of its notoriously illiteracy and poor use of grammar. (I have already heard one academic roar with laughter because some idiots kept lowercasing an article's use of capitals that were there to specify that the article was about a formal legal term. What the lowercasers didn't realise was that when lowercased the term meant something totally different, and the article went from being a first class piece to a semi-literate piece of junk.
From marking academic papers and theses, I know that failure to use IPNs in many universities will result in an automatic docking of 8%. Overall failure to capitalise correctly will see 18-25% docked ''automatically''. If wikipedia wants to be taken seriously it needs to follow high standards in a number of areas, and one key one is to know ''how'' and ''when'' to capitalise. And that flows from knowing ''why'' somethings are capitalised and some things aren't. That key to that is knowing whether some words though at first glance look as though they should be lowercased are actually ''implicit proper nouns'' that as a result should be treated as a normal proper noun. Fear''ÉIREANN''">User:Jtdirl 02:34, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)
:This is another archaic holdover that's not in common usage everywhere. Capitalizing a word that is not within a proper noun context just ecause it could be used that way really doesn't make a lot of sense. To claim that newspapers don't do it because it was hard to typeset and they didn't care if they got it right or not is complete nonsense, as the guidelines have been used and enforced long after those two feeble explanations were even issues. It's used because it makes more sense logically. User:DreamGuy 03:34, Apr 25, 2005 (UTC)
::That is a classic. You write about clarity of language in one of poorest written comments on the page, littered with grammatical, linguistic and spelling errors!!! Usage of PNs is ''elementary english'' that 12 year olds learn in most of the english-speaking world even if not maybe in your school. As to the newspaper stuff, that is ''what the newspapers themselves say.'' I write for newspapers. I have done copy-editing for newspapers. And ''if'' you had actually read and understood what I wrote you would know that style books for newspapers all originated in the hot metal age. The newspaper industry is notoriously bureaucratic and once a rule has been set down it does not change. So rules set when they could not for practical purposes use capitals except in limited cases are still followed because of archane demarcation rules about changing the conditions of work of journalists. One of those conditions (I know from personal experience in the National Union of Journalists) was that 'we didn't have to obey IPN standards under our 'hot metal' contracts. You can't change the rules without giving us (financial) compensation.' And newspaper bosses aren't going to pay more money, so the hot metal style remains, even though it is notoriously illiterate. If you are going to write about clarity of language, DreamGuy, it would help if you actually possessed some. Fear''ÉIREANN''">User:Jtdirl 04:15, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)
#It is not helpful to insult people.
#Possibly some of this is regional differences.
#Not all newspaper style is as cemented as the experience of Fear''ÉIREANN''">User:Jtdirl apparently suggests. At my newspaper, for example, we make some style changes every year.
#If we want to get into this deeply, my suggestion would be to use some references.
#Another option is we could just drop it, move on, and leave the issue to individual editors. User:Maurreen 05:20, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Here's an example, from the Concise Columbia Encyclopedia, third edition: "Roman Catholic Church, Christian church headed by the pope, the bishop of Rome. ..." User:Maurreen 05:28, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I think the usage of "the church" is more NPOV and should be the established standard regardless of usage in other areas, including for uses of the body of Christ since using "the Church" pushes a specific theological concept that is not accepted by all Christians. I can see some logic in using "Church" for an IPN but only if such a style is standardized in the US and UK. 16:36, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)
* Disagree (and I am not a Christian). A "church" is typically a building or a single congregation, a "Church" is a denomination. -- User:Jmabel | User talk:Jmabel 15:42, Apr 27, 2005 (UTC)
A month on: has anyone found a pronouncement in an authoritative style guide (or anything even vaguely resembling such) to justify either position? Either particularised to churches (as per the buildings vs. denominations argument/suggested usage), or as regards references vs. abbreviated proper nouns in general? I've drawn something of a blank on this in the ''Oxford Guide to Style'' (though I'm still pretty sure what the Guardian'd say). User:Alai 22:01, 31 May 2005 (UTC)
== Punctuation and brackets ==
I did not find any rules on where to put punctuation, when brackets are used. Should it appear inside the brackets (like this,) or outside (like this), or should there be any different rules for commas, full stops and question marks (like this)? −User:Woodstone 20:30, 2005 Apr 23 (UTC)
:Punctuation goes where it belongs. (A sentence wholly inside brackets will have its full stop within those brackets.) This means that bracketed clauses at the end of sentences do not include a full stop (if you see what I mean). Kind regards, User:Jguk 20:43, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Sounds reasonable. I just wondered, because I saw so many differences existing in arcticles. I will add this guideline to the styleguide. −User:Woodstone 21:22, 2005 Apr 23 (UTC)
== Proposed style for episodic descriptions ==
I have been working on the Ed, Edd n Eddy entries for the past several days, and have conceived a rather straightforward 'template' of sorts for this type of article. Please look at the layout I have applied to this article and sub-articles (the episodes) and tell me if you like it, and if it should be appended to the Wp MoS.
User:DeadSpam 2300, 2 May 2005 (IST)
== Dashes ==
Caesura's [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style&diff=prev&oldid=13168796 edit] to change a pair of en dashes to em dashes was reverted. May I ask why? According to ''Chicago'', em dashes are used for breaks of this nature, whereas en dashes are used for ranges, open compounds, and so on. Is it different elsewhere? — User:Knowledge Seeker User talk:Knowledge Seeker 07:57, 3 May 2005 (UTC)
:I'd un-revert it and cite Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dashes). —User:Mjb 09:27, 3 May 2005 (UTC)
::Yeah, sorry. I've never seen em dashes used parenthetically anywhere else in Wikipedia, only en dashes. After I checked the dash#Em dash article, it seems they were incorrectly spaced, but the re-revert fixed that. User:Noisy | User talk:Noisy 10:21, May 3, 2005 (UTC)
== Serial comma ==
The following was removed from the article:
:''Serial comma can also be problematic: consider "They went to Oregon with Betty, a cow, and a piano." See serial comma for further discussion.''
The comment on removal was:
:''removed sentence which is problematic only if serial commas used inconsistantly; also, the MOS should follow the MOS in puncuation placement''
I am not convinced that this is only a problem with serial commas used inconsistantly, but I don't think this example adds to the MOS, so I ahve moved it here. -- User:Chris Q 15:09, 3 May 2005 (UTC)
:I agree with the removal.
:User:Nohat, please notice that three people have disagreed with your addition. If it's important to you, please try to build consensus on the talk page. User:Maurreen 16:22, 3 May 2005 (UTC)
::I think the current situation is misleading—it makes out the Oxford comma to be some kind of punctuation panacea, which it is not. Some kind of nod should be made to the fact that a policy that always uses the serial comma can result in ambiguities. User:Nohat 16:28, 3 May 2005 (UTC)
:::For one thing, can you find a more realistic example: one that has been published without being contrived for demonstration purposes? User:Maurreen 16:33, 3 May 2005 (UTC)
::::I do not like or use the serial comma as I find it generally unnecessary. However, I do acknowledge that there are some circumstances where a serial comma can be helpful: this is when an item in a list includes a conjunction. I don't think the serial comma leads to ambiguities, but I think it can overburden the punctuation of a sentence. --User:Garzo 18:13, 3 May 2005 (UTC)
:::::But serial comma ''does'' create an ambiguity in the sentence "They went to Oregon with Betty, a cow, and a piano" or for that matter any NP of the form [NP1, NP2, and NP3] whre NP2 can be interpreted as an appositive of NP1. Another example: "After the lights came back on, the only people left in the room were Betty, a maid, and my sister." User:Nohat 19:04, 3 May 2005 (UTC)
::::::Is this really an issue with the serial comma? It seems the following sentence has just as much ambiguity: "They went to Oregon with Betty, a cow, Hank, a horse, Jimmy, a pig, and Joseph." Are there seven travelers or four? —User:Sean Kelly User_talk:Sean Kelly 22:45, 19 May 2005 (UTC)
:::::::That's not a good example, since it can only mean that there are seven travelers. If there were four, semicolons would be used, as follows: "They went to Oregon with Betty, a cow; Hank, a horse; Jimmy, a pig; and Joseph." Note that the use of a semicolon before "and" is accepted much more widely than the use of a comma before "and." In fact, I don't know of any style guides which forbid the serial semicolon, though there may be some. User:Factitious 09:14, Jun 23, 2005 (UTC)
::::::::I'd only use a serial semicolon after a colon, and I wouldn't use a colon there. Brackets, maybe. User:Markalexander100User talk:Markalexander100 09:41, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)
:::The MoS says "pages will either gradually be made to conform with this guide or this guide will itself be changed to the same effect". Here many pages do not use the Oxford comma (which is the serial comma's more common name this side of the Pond) and many pages do. There should be no surprise about this - whilst having or not having a mandatory Oxford comma is permissible in all forms of English, in North America more people use it than don't, and outside North America more people don't use it than do. Though this is not a rule - there are plenty of counter-examples both ways, but the point is that there is a large proportion of people that don't and a large proportion of people that do use the mandatory Oxford comma.
:::Therefore, as long as WP encourages edits from anyone wherever they are in the world, some pages will be written without Oxford commas, others will. Since both styles are permissible in standard written English - and if we actually tried to enforce either a pro- or and anti-Oxford comma we'd piss a lot of people off very quickly, I suggest that this guide is changed so that it conforms with what is already standard WP practice and makes clear that both styles are OK, User:Jguk 19:00, 3 May 2005 (UTC)
I agree with jguk. I was taught to not use the final comma: in those circumstances where ambiguity exists, you should use the semicolon. In my nigh on fifty years of reading fiction and non-fiction, I don't ''recall'' ever seeing a final comma ... and I'm sure it would have stuck out like a sore thumb if I did. User:Noisy | User talk:Noisy 19:40, May 3, 2005 (UTC)
:I'm one of the "use serial comma" people. We were taught to use it. It also seems more natural to me, as commas are often used where pauses occur in sentences and when I read aloud "Cheese, bacon, and mayonnaise make everything better", I pause after both "cheese" and "mayonnaise". — User:Knowledge Seeker User talk:Knowledge Seeker 20:01, 3 May 2005 (UTC)
Strange that there's no mention of semicolon (";") in this (nearly non-) debate or in the serial comma article. If you have a list of items in which one of the items is a phrase that contains commas, be it for appositives or otherwise, then you just use a semicolon instead of a comma as the separator between list items, right? However, in the case of "Betty, a cow, and a piano", if Betty is the cow, then the ideal phrasing would probably, IMHO, be "a piano and Betty, a cow". Perhaps someone should look this up in ''Chicago''? — User:Mjb 21:27, 3 May 2005 (UTC)
:''Chicago'' says, and I quote:
::"In a series consisting of three or more elements, the elements are separated by commas. When a conjunction joins the last two elements in a series, a comma is used before the conjunction . . .:
:::Attending the conference were Farmer, Johnson, and Kendrick.
:::We have a choice of copper, silver, or gold."
:::(Chicago Manual of Style, 14th Edition, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993, Chapter 5.5.)
:However, I would also go with the semicolons as they leave no room for confusion. User:Onlyemarie 22:29, 3 May 2005 (UTC)
I also agree with jguk. Official policy should not take a stand on this issue. User:Nohat 21:29, 3 May 2005 (UTC)
:Now, that is good. I believe that the use and non-use of the serial comma both have pros and cons, and none of these are all that significant. Let each editor follow their own aesthetic on this matter, and let us agree only to worry about a serial comma when its presence or absence might confuse. --User:Garzo 21:40, 3 May 2005 (UTC)
What about having a section along these lines (feel free to propose improvements):
:''Oxford comma''
:
:''The Oxford comma (sometimes known as the'' serial comma '') is the optional last comma in a list that ends in "and" or "or". For example, it's the second comma in "ham, egg, and chips". Many writers always use an Oxford comma in these situations, others only use an Oxford comma where it is necessary to avoid ambiguity or otherwise improve the reading of a sentence. Wikipedia has no preference between these two styles.
User:Jguk 12:07, 6 May 2005 (UTC)
:I would prefer to use the title ''serial comma'' for it. It is also known as the ''Oxford comma'' and the ''Harvard comma'' (and perhaps has other names). However, ''serial comma'' is the most neutral. The ''Chicago'' has great influence in USA, where the use of the comma is the norm. Elsewhere, there is much more freedom whether to use it or not. I don't believe that this MoS should compel editors to use or not use this comma. The occurrences of lists where the presence or absence of a serial comma affects comprehension are not all that common: let's just use common sense with it. --User:Garzo 12:41, 6 May 2005 (UTC)
::Agree with the title change to "''serial comma''" since many editors are not familiar with the other names and it is more descriptive. 14:07, 6 May 2005 (UTC)
:::Happy to change "Oxford" to "Serial" and "Serial" to "Oxford" in the above. (Note that "Oxford comma" is the more common name for it in the UK - and also that "serial" can be misleading in that it only refers to the last optional comma in a series, not the other mandatory commas.) User:Jguk 16:23, 6 May 2005 (UTC)
::::I was taught that it isn't necessary, not that you shouldn't use it (I'm from the same side of the pond as jguk). I generally do use it as it reads closer to the way I think of the list, but if it is ambiguous at all I don't use it or substitute it. I like this proposed version, as it fits nicely with most the regional varieties of English guidelines, and this seems to be a case of similar usage differences. I have a mild preference for "Serial comma" over "Oxford comma" as that is where the article is, and it seems to make sense for Wikipedia's MoS to be consistent with the title of a Wikipedia article. User:Thryduulf 19:56, 6 May 2005 (UTC)
:As long as we're reopening the issue of the serial comma, I'd make the following suggested policy: that both uses are allowed, and, unlike the British/American English policy, we also allow editors to freely change either to the other. This seems to be pretty much what people are doing anyway; build the sidewalks where people walk. Of course, any ambiguous wording should be avoided and corrected, in general. User:Dcoetzee 23:52, 6 May 2005 (UTC)
::If the style is going to be changed, I suggest being more concise, perhaps like this: "Wikipedia has no preference concerning the serial comma." User:Maurreen 03:30, 7 May 2005 (UTC)
:::I'm all in favour of being concise. One option would be to remove the comments on the comma completely - leaving it implicit that we have no guideline. However, this would have the disadvantage that anyone looking here for guidance would not know that we had no preference. If we are to be explicit (which seems the better option) then I think:
:::(1) We need to explain what we mean - and I think the term "serial comma" is not so self-explanatory as to require no explanation.
:::(2) Explain why it is an issue.
:::(3) Make the advice as accessible to all - ie use straightforward language, and acknowledge that the more common term in the UK by far is the "Oxford comma", rather than the "serial comma".
:::I partly agree with Deco's point. I am unconcerned if editors freely change from one approach to another (as long as an editor trying to change a style backs away from doing so if edited back, and as long as no editor deliberately goes out of their way to edit as many pages as possible into their preferred style). The bit I disagree with is the need to state that point here. It would make the advice more complicated and, as Deco notes, people are already doing what he proposes anyway - and the revised guidance won't pretend to ban that practice either.
:::Amending my earlier suggested wording, I have the following for further (brief - as it seems we are agreed on the basic tenets) discussion:
:
:::::''Serial comma''
:
:::::''The so-called Oxford or serial comma is the optional last comma in a list in phrases such as "ham, egg, and chips". Many writers always use a serial comma, others only to avoid ambiguity or to improve the reading of a sentence. Wikipedia has no preference between these two styles.''
:::User:Jguk 09:16, 7 May 2005 (UTC)
I like it; I think that should be the wording. We may just want to draw attention the point in question, "ham, egg[,] and chips", but otherwise it's grand. --User:Garzo 16:44, 7 May 2005 (UTC)
=== Post Change discussion ===
:There being no other comments for a couple of days, and there being general agreement on the principle of the change, I have added the text suggested above to the MoS. Kind regards, User:Jguk 18:23, 9 May 2005 (UTC)
::I reverted the revert since there were no objections raised in talk and the reverter did not explain his position here. 21:36, 9 May 2005 (UTC)
:::Agreed. This change represents the consensus that there should be no specific guidance. User:Nohat 21:46, 9 May 2005 (UTC)
I have significant reservations about this change. I must admit that I'm not a serial comma user, rather dislike it, and consider the arguments for it being in any sense logical, as opposed to merely an arbitrary convention, to be pretty weak; so in that sense I'd not be at all sad to see it go. But I'm concerned about the precendent that a change to a "do your own thing" stance sets: one could iterate such "but some people won't like it" arguments over ''every'' point in the MoS, and end up saying nothing about any of them -- a "comparative essay on usage", and in effect no house style whatsoever. (Indeed, jguk's Wikipedia:Manual of Style/proposal is a further step on the way to doing as much -- and if there's any danger of a "package deal" effect coming into play, I'd far prefer serial commas and "logical" quotes, as at present, than end up with no serial comma and "aesthetic" quotes, or some system where we have to determine stylistic questions on a per article basis, or otherwise balkanise the article into different usages, as already arises with US vs non-US spelling.)
If such a change is to be made, I'd prefer it were in the form of an outright deletion. Having a "Manual" that discusses something without coming to any conclusion as to the correct use seems to me to be pointless: "instruction creep" in the form of a longer document, without the benefit of any actual "instruction". User:Alai 22:32, 9 May 2005 (UTC)
I think a compromise of the above suggestion and the existing solution would be best. My suggestion is therefore:
:''A serial comma is the optional last comma in a list in phrases such as "ham, egg, and chips". It should be used whenever there may be ambiguity in the sentence. For example, "The author would like to thank her parents, Sinéad O'Connor and President Bush" may imply that those two people are the author's parents.''
:''Contrary to this, it is common convention to not use a serial comma when specifying the name of a railroad. For example, "Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis Railroad", not "Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago, and St. Louis Railroad"''
I prefer using one to not, but there are too many people that don't use it for us to force it on them. User:Violetriga User_talk:violetriga 22:43, 9 May 2005 (UTC)
:::The problem here is that, quite frankly, you shouldn't use a comma to disambiguate in "The author would like to thank her parents, Sinéad O'Connor and President Bush". It'd be bad writing to have such a sentence in the first place - the syntax is poor. To see my point, think about how you might read the sentence to someone in a way to avoid the same ambiguity. It's difficult, if not impossible, to succeed. What would be better would be to recast the sentence: "The author would like to thank Sinéad O'Connor, her parents and President Bush", User:Jguk 05:16, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
::The first paragraph is reasonable (I thought about suggesting that ''should be'' become ''may be'', being against prescription). The second paragraph is a nonsense: railways should not have their own style. The absense of the serial comma is due to the list being one of modifiers to the verb. Anyway, I don't feel that ''to not use'' is a place to boldly go without thinking where it might lead. --User:Garzo 23:46, 9 May 2005 (UTC)
:::Actually this isn't a "railways" rule, but a rule for proper use of a proper name. As Strunk said "In the names of business firms the last comma is omitted, as "Brown, Shipley and Company." [http://www.bartleby.com/141/strunk.html#2]
::::Oh dear: special case within a special case. But surely this is covered by the more general rule of preserving original usage? Whether that usage is itself "stylistically correct" is a subsidiary issue. User:Alai 01:24, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
:::::LOL - I agree the original usage is a better way to go - it also is supported by the fact that we should generally call people/companies/groups by the name they call themselves. 01:30, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
I strongly object to a few days discussion among a small number of people making such a drastic change to a long-standing part of the MoS, that affects the entire project. A handful of opinions expressed within a few days of the issue being re-raised hardly represents a consensus among the thousands of Wikipedia editors. Was the issue publicized on the Village Pump? Going's on? Mailing list? Anywhere? I don't want to have to take to checking this talk page every couple days to see if there is an issue I care about that has been re-opened. Chicago and Strunk & White both support serial commas, serial commas solve ambiguity more often than they cause it, and have been the Wikipedia standard for years. I strongly object to this change. And I am sick of people making this an AE vs. BE issue--I attended public school in the US and was taught to NOT use them--it wasn't until I was an adult professional writer that I adopted that style. User:Niteowlneils 23:56, 9 May 2005 (UTC)
:I supported the change in support of the Internet slang#K principle. Additionally, sometimes making the change is the only way to see if there are in any true objections. This is a wiki, if concensus is truly against the change it will be obvious to all soon. 01:04, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
::Just to put in my perspective: I agree with Niteowlneils's views as expressed above. I personally prefer the serial comma for noun lists, since that is how I was trained to write. Although, I have to admit I didn't know the Strunk rule about business firms — I just looked up the names of several famous American law firms and they all follow that rule. --User:Coolcaesar 01:20, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
Incidentally, and in response to Niteowlneils, the change does not affect the entire project - all it does is to bring the MoS in line with what has already happened on the project. The previous guidance just didn't reflect what has actually happened on Wikipedia where many, many articles do not use the mandatory Oxford comma convention. The MoS has always stated that if it goes out of kilter with what is happening on Wikipedia, it will change. The revised wording is just following that principle. Kind regards, User:Jguk 05:16, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
:If this was "already what happened in the project", why did a majority of editors in the last Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style archive (Poll: always use \"U.S.\" and Oxford commas?) reject your proposal to remove the longstanding rule? (And that wasn't the first time.) Why, if it's "what already happened", did you not advertise that you were going to strike a whole section of the style guide, other than a few comments in the middle of one talk page? User:Jonathunder 05:59, 2005 May 10 (UTC)
::You'd have to ask them - but from memory there was only 1 vote in it (it was certainly evenly balanced) - and certainly not enough to say there's a big wave in support of forcing everyone to use the mandatory Oxford comma. It's quite a minor change (not a big, earth-shattering amendment) and it was discussed above. I did not advertise the change as, although I proposed the new wording, I did not initiate the discussion, which was already tending towards allowing a variety of styles (which is what already happens in practice) before I added my support. And I strongly disagree that every change to this page needs to be advertised everywhere, User:Jguk 06:28, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
:::I understand, Jguk, that you would prefer the Manual of Style to be less prescriptive and to have editors follow their own preferences more often; however, I disagree. Having a consistent style is preferable, in my opinion. I am not crazy about using "logical quotes", and I detest not capitalizing all the major words in article titles. But I prefer those to haphazard mixtures, especially within the same article. I would like the text to stay the way it was. — User:Knowledge Seeker User talk:Knowledge Seeker 06:31, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
::::As noted, we already have inconsistent practice throughout WP on the Oxford comma - this change to the MoS merely reflects that. There will be no changes to WP at all as a result of the MoS change. I look forward to your comments on straight quotation marks below:) User:Jguk 06:55, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
I have been asked to comment on this most recent incarnation of a never-ending debate, presumably because I've passionately argued in the past to recommend (but not necessarily require) final serial comma use. Here are my observations, for whatever they're worth:
* Anyone making edits to the Manual of Style who can't be bothered to spell correctly should be automatically reverted. (It's ''inconsistent'', not ''inconsistant'', no matter what common dialect you use.)
* Anyone making edits to the MoS based primarily on what they learned in school, insisting it's the ''right'' way, should also be automatically reverted. They display an amazingly parochial view of the world, and are too foolish to be considered responsible editors.
* Most others making edits to the MoS tend to promote only those arguments that support their position and work hard to refute even logical arguments against them. There is little spirit of broad consideration and reasonable compromise.
We don't expect people without a serious mathematics background to make appropriate changes to Axiomatic set theory, yet everyone feels qualified to update the Manual of Style because they've learned how to speak English in grammar school. Many MoS editors make changes without troubling themselves to read prior debates on their pet causes. As a result, the MoS can be expected to suffer from its own style whiplash, rendering it impractical as a guide. Frankly, I (and likely many other otherwise responsible editors) no longer pay any attention it, so there's no point in asking for my unworthy opinion. — User:Jeffq User talk:Jeffq 07:12, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
::Are we ready to re-insert the revised version (there seems to be little support for continuing including guidance that does not reflect current practice)? User:Jguk 19:11, 12 May 2005 (UTC)
:::No. Have you not read the comments above? Have you not looked at the last poll on the subject, where a majority specifically rejected this? Have you not read the many comments there and in the archived pages since by editors on both sides of the Atlantic who said the serial comma is not what they were originally trained to use, but that they do use it because it reduces ambiguity? User:Jonathunder 22:05, 2005 May 13 (UTC)
::::The change is not prescriptive. It doesn't suddenly say you must not use the mandatory Oxford comma. It recognises that there are also those who have been taught not to use the mandatory Oxford comma, and that in some parts of the world it is rare (for instance, over here, the main national newspapers, most publishers and everyday business language does not use the mandatory Oxford comma). It also recognises that already very many WP pages do not use the mandatory comma. It also recognises that users of one style of English should not on WP prescribe to others that their usage is wrong. And so it is permissive - making it quite clear that pages may or may not adopt the mandatory Oxford comma. It also makes it clear that the alternative to not using the mandatory Oxford comma is not to never have an Oxford comma - it is to use it only where it is necessary to avoid ambiguity or to improve style.
::::If you read the comments in the most recent discussion you will see comments both from those who use and those who don't use the mandatory Oxford comma - but are quite prepared to accept that there are those who write in a different style than them and do not seek to dictate that their preferred style is followed.
::::Also, please bear in mind that in reality the change will have no impact whatsoever on any WP article. It is merely bringing the MoS in line with existing practice. Kind regards, User:Jguk 22:18, 13 May 2005 (UTC)
:::::I still don't get it... WP is riddled with spelling errors. Does that mean the MoS should allow misspellings? No: There are inconsistencies, and when we see them we fix them. The MoS needs to take a stand or else it's useless. It doesn't matter if it doesn't reflect current usage. For the record, I disagree with the recent change. —User:Sean Kelly User_talk:Sean Kelly 23:23, 13 May 2005 (UTC)
:::::BTW, I propose arbitration. Get a committee together, decide a policy, and set it in stone. This wavering is getting ridiculous. —User:Sean Kelly User_talk:Sean Kelly 23:34, 13 May 2005 (UTC)
I don't care much about serial commas either way. But because User:Jguk says WP tendency is not to use them, it would help if he provided evidence that shows a representative proportion. User:Maurreen 02:11, 14 May 2005 (UTC)
:I make my observations having read many WP articles. Given that we have over half a million articles, it's not really practical for me to list out all the articles that do not have a mandatory Oxford comma and compare them to the number of articles that have an Oxford comma which would probably not be added by someone who does not automatically use it. I can only suggest you look at more articles - particularly those that have large contributions by non-American editors, as the mandatory Oxford comma is much more prevalent amongst American contributors.
:Regarding Sean's point, I strongly beg to differ. One of the reasons WP has expanded so fast and worldwide has been the acceptance of different styles. Any editor can edit an article without his style being arbitrarily changed (as opposed to improved) - and therefore editors do not suffer the annoying habit of their texts being arbitrarily changed. This approach also makes WP a more welcoming approach to users worldwide. For example, I'm sure if WP had adopted a policy of only using one form of standard English throughout all WP, it would have only a fraction of the editors and readers that it has.
:The policy that we really need on usage can be reduced to three bullet points:
:*Any form of standard English is permissible
:*Be consistent within each article
:*Do not arbitrarily change which form of standard English is used
:As a practical matter, it would also be sensible to observe that where a particular article relates to a topic closely-related to one part of the English-speaking world there is a tendency for that article to use a form of standard English used in that part of the English-speaking world. However, it would be best if this remained an observation rather than a firm requirement.
:Kind regards, User:Jguk 07:18, 14 May 2005 (UTC)
=== Compromise? ===
:''The Oxford or serial comma is the last comma in a list in the phrases such as "ham, egg, and chips." In a series of three or more terms with a single conjunction, use the serial comma. However; if the serial comma creates ambiguity or if there is more than one conjunction, clarity is preferred over this convention. For example: "They went to Oregon with Betty, a cow, and a piano." Additionally, for business firms (railways) the serial comma is usually (always) omitted.''
I am proposing a compromise. I think the current "there is no guidance" is not useful since 1) it is A style guide, 2) this is not an official policy page, and 3) best practices should be encouraged. Note that after reviewing my Strunk & White from 11th grade English I have changed my view (see my comments above). User:Trödel|User_talk:Trödel 21:53, 17 May 2005 (UTC)
::Trodel, if you were to pick almost any style guide outside N America (except for OUP and Fowler's, which is published by the OUP) you will see the opposite guidance given. The other problem is that where there is potential ambiguity, more often than not it is because the sentence is written badly, and changing the syntax to avoid the ambiguity would be better stylistically. Kind regards, User:Jguk 06:36, 18 May 2005 (UTC)
:::I agree re rewriting. The rule I really like instead is: ''In a series of three or more terms with a single conjunction, use the serial comma. If the serial comma creates ambiguity consider rewriting the sentence. For example: "They went to Oregon with Betty, a cow, and a piano." should be "Betty went to Oregon taking only a cow and a piano."
:::I didn't realize this is a'' 'cros the pond'' issue. I won't worry about it. User:Jesus is the Christ User talk:Jesus is the Christ 21:44, 18 May 2005 (UTC)
I'm willing to accept the compromise, largely as writen now, with just three more statements:
1) Ambiguity should be avoided. I don't know why that sentence was removed. Our aim is clear writing. 2) If we can avoid ambiguity by adding one simple comma rather than rewriting the sentence, editors are free to do so. 3) In the style guides listed, include the OUP and Fowler's. They are both influential and highly regarded by many throughout the English speaking world. User:Jonathunder 09:02, 2005 May 19 (UTC)
== MediaWiki 1.5: time to drop straight quotation mark requirement? ==
''See'' Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (Quotation marks and apostrophes)
== commas ==
Someone sent me a link to this manual of style. It had a whole section about commas, what other style manuals say, when you should use them, and a memorable example using Sinead O'Connor. Now I can't find it. What happened? User:CDThieme
:It was never as comprehensive as that. Please see above for the recent related discussions. Kind regards, User:Jguk 12:55, 14 May 2005 (UTC)
What we have is one or two editors dedicated to making the style manual completely "nonproscriptive" - to the point of deleting references to other manuals, deleting longstanding language about avoiding ambiguity, deleting examples of clear and unclear uses. It is unfortunate. User:Jonathunder 20:41, 2005 May 14 (UTC)
Here is a source I encourage you to consider: http://webster.commnet.edu/grammar/commas.htm
"Use a comma to separate the elements in a series (three or more things), including the last two."
This is preferred in academic work such as an encyclopedia. User:CDThieme 00:27, 15 May 2005 (UTC)
:There is not universal agreement that such commas are mandatory; therefore Wikipedia policy makes no assertions about requiring editors to include them. User:Nohat 01:37, 15 May 2005 (UTC)
::Nohat is quite right - there are plenty of style guides that mandate using Oxford commas at every opportunity, and plenty of style guides that say only to use it where necessary to avoid ambiguity (although, in practice, where the latter style is adopted, sometimes they are used stylistically too). On the whole (and please bear in mind that there are many exceptions to this), the main American style guides support mandatory use of the Oxford comma, the non-Americans mandate against it (with the most notable exceptions being OUP and ''Fowler's Modern English Usage'', but they are very much in a minority). Kind regards, User:Jguk 07:35, 15 May 2005 (UTC)
I restored the original text. I understand the objections, but there clearly is not a consensus to for this modification. Proposed changes to the Manual of Style must have considerable agreement to be implemented; the scope of the discussion should be wider and more should support such a change before it is made. — User:Knowledge Seeker User talk:Knowledge Seeker 06:19, 16 May 2005 (UTC)
:I restored the original wording again. It is not my intention to "force" anyone to do anything. I understand arguments both for and against use of the serial comma, and indeed I might support modifying the Manual of Style to not favor one so strongly. However, this is longstanding text that was based on significant discussion in the past. Old polls are not binding, of course, and one may wish to be bold and try a new change. However, the amount of opposition to this change clearly shows that there is not consensus to modify the Manual in this manner. In fact, I believe that there should be considerable support for a modification to be incorporated into the Manual—certainly nothing as contentious as this. Perhaps the Manual is due for this change—but I cannot agree with a handful of editors making a change when another handful are actively opposing it. There needs to be more discussion, and more agreement before a change of this nature is warranted, in my opinion. — User:Knowledge Seeker User talk:Knowledge Seeker 08:05, 16 May 2005 (UTC)
::I would think that the amount of controversy over the issue is a good reason for being nonprescriptive over it. User:Markalexander100User talk:Markalexander100 08:14, 16 May 2005 (UTC)
::Surely it should be obvious that there isn't consensus support for the ''old'' version either. Sitting around on the talk page arguing about it isn't enough. If we waited until there was consensus here for every change nothing would get done. Why don't we try to come to a compromise on the wording? User:Nohat 08:25, 16 May 2005 (UTC)
The whole style manual is already nonprescriptive in that contributors are not expected to follow any or all of the rules. What the manual does is provide guidance for those who like to copyedit. I think what we most need to keep in mind is "what will most aid the reader?" When a reader sees a list of countries and there is not a comma before the conjunction separating the last two, the reader may well wonder if this a country like Serbia and Montenegro. In a list of islands, are the last two intended to be grouped, like the Turks and Caicos? Or in a list of ancient weapons, are the unfamiliar last two used together, like bow and arrow earlier in the list? (All of these are taken from lists I've seen in articles lately, not contrived examples.) If the reader has to re-read the sentence, or has to puzzle over that for even a bit, we have not communicated as clearly as we might have. That is precisely why so many style manuals recommend the Oxford comma. If this style manual drops the recommendation, it still needs something addressing how to avoid ambiguity. What will be the clearest to the most readers? User:Jonathunder 16:58, 2005 May 16 (UTC)
:What will be clearest to readers? is indeed the right question to ask. Unfortunately there is no one answer here. Many many people (a heavy majority of non-North Americans and a minority of North American) do not use a mandatory Oxford comma and get by in life quite easily. And suddenly using them where they are not necessary will only confuse or inhibit the flow of the text for readers so used.
:The examples usually given for where Oxford commas help are usually pretty poor sentences anyway. Try reading them out, when you have the full flexibility of tone and gesticulation, and think whether you truly can distinguish what you want to distinguish. Essentially, often such sentences can be reordered to give a better formulation.
:I'm not convinced by your examples. Compare the following:
::''Yugoslavia broke up into Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia and Montenegro''
::''Yugoslavia broke up into Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Serbia and Montenegro''
::''Yugoslavia broke up into Slovenia, Serbia and Montenegro, Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina''
If you list the new countries from south to north without an Oxford comma:
:''The former Yugoslav republics of Macedonia, Serbia and Montenegro, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia and Slovenia...''
would that tell the reader there are in fact five countries, not four? Would it be clear? User:CDThieme
:There are also two other points:
::(1) There's no point making subtle distinctions - they will pass many readers by (in particular those not used to the mandatory Oxford comma)
::(2) The alternative to having a mandatory Oxford comma is not to never have an Oxford comma, it is to have it only where it helps resolve ambiguity or improves the flow of the text.
:WPians already use both styles - in practice this has been accepted for a long while. All we're suggesting here is stating what practice is. And can we please make the text shorter. It's gotten far too long! Kind regards, User:Jguk 18:36, 16 May 2005 (UTC)
Could someone please just set up a vote on this issue? —User:Sean Kelly User_talk:Sean Kelly 19:44, 16 May 2005 (UTC)
:Having read the archives now, I see there already was a vote on this. A majority decided to keep the Oxford comma recommendation. User:CDThieme
They could, yes, but keep in mind that Wikipedia is not a democracy. —User:Simetrical (User_talk:Simetrical) 00:49, 17 May 2005 (UTC)
If there is not a consensus about what this style manual should say, indicating what most other style manuals say will be helpful. I know I found it helpful, so added that back. User:CDThieme
:It's probably quite easy to find 100 style guides pointing in each direction though! User:Jguk 21:26, 18 May 2005 (UTC)
::Probably, by why is that a consideration? This guideline is a "Manual of Style", not a guide to which styles there's a rough consensus (much less unanimity) for among ''other'' style manuals. Doubtless reporting different views without recommending one has a place, but is it really here? User:Alai 23:52, 18 May 2005 (UTC)
::Agreed - we should make a recommendation if we can reach consensus User:Trodel 00:00, 19 May 2005 (UTC)
:::It seems the only consensus that we'll ever reach on a recommendation would be something to effect of "Use serial commas when necessary to avoid ambiguity. You can use also final serial commas if they are not necessary to avoid ambiguity, but such commas are not obligatory." Final serial commas have such an incredibly tiny impact on the stylistic feel of articles, that recommending one style over another seems needlessly prescriptive, especially considering that we already have plenty of stylistic policies that are left to the editor's discretion. User:Nohat 00:20, 19 May 2005 (UTC)
As others have said above, it is helpful to outline what other style manuals say. The ones listed demonstrate this is not a "side of the pond" issue. User:Jonathunder 16:46, 2005 May 26 (UTC)
:I'd be keener on this were this not supposed to be a "Guidelines" page. Putting non-guidance commentary on such a page surely increases the perceived complexity of such, without actually adding anything material to it. As previously suggested, I'd be more in favour of explicitly splitting up the MoS into different documents (or at least clearly demarcated sections) according to whether it's actual "guidelines", related commentary, or perhaps even actual policy, should consensus for that latter ever arise. User:Alai 18:50, 26 May 2005 (UTC)
== Pink box ==
I'm removing the pink box from the top of this page. It's obvious that the alternative proposal isn't going to generate a consensus for adoption, and since this is a page frequented by WP newbies, it seems particuarly irritating to have the most glaring thing on the page be non-content. Besides, talk pages, not project pages, are the place to call attention to proposed changes. —User:Wahoofive (User talk:Wahoofive) 21:20, 17 May 2005 (UTC)
:Makes sense, but why did you comment out the request that people take extra consideration before editing the MoS? User:TreyHarris 21:31, 17 May 2005 (UTC)
For the same reason. It's a message to editors, not readers; this usage is recommended on Wikipedia:How to edit a page. —User:Wahoofive (User talk:Wahoofive) 22:40, 17 May 2005 (UTC)
== Diaeresis in English ==
I've noticed that a handful of pages use the diaeresis in certain words (e.g. 'coöperation' and 'reëstablished'). I'm inclined to believe that unless this form of these words are used exclusively across Wikipedia, that particular usage should be eliminated. Wikipedia's own page on the subject states that particular usage has become rare. Surprisingly, I have seen no mention of it on the style guide. I'm inclined to Wikipedia:be bold and remove them myself, but I don't want to get flamed for some obscure reason. Opinions? --User:Bletch 02:45, 18 May 2005 (UTC)
:I've never personally seen those two in common use, but I do like seeing 'naïve', for some reason. —User:Sean Kelly User_talk:Sean Kelly 03:18, 18 May 2005 (UTC)
::Actually you are right; naïve (and names like Chloë) seem to be in regular use. --User:Bletch 12:05, 18 May 2005 (UTC)
I'd remove the diaereses where they are no longer commonly used in English (although if you are quoting someone who used the form "coöperation" you may choose to leave it as is. Only a few words, such as naïve, naïveté, and the names Zoë and Chloë still on occasion retain their diaereses. Kind regards, User:Jguk 19:08, 18 May 2005 (UTC)
== Disambiguation page style survey ==
A proposal for a supplementary Manual of Style for disambiguation pages. Please register your votes and comments on that article's talk page. Wikipedia:Disambiguation/Style. —User:Wahoofive (User talk:Wahoofive) 17:16, 18 May 2005 (UTC)
*Survey closed. Motion passed. Added to list of Supplementary Manuals of Style. —User:Wahoofive (User talk:Wahoofive) 04:02, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)
== How do I set the background color of a page to something other than white? ==
I know it can be done because a long time ago I remember seeing it. Its actually for the Wikibooks site, I have a kid's book, http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Gramma's_Grammar , and I'd like to color the pages up a bit. Can anyone help me? Thanks!! --User:Karlwick 01:57, May 21, 2005 (UTC)
:''Response put onto user's talk page'' —User:Sean Kelly User_talk:Sean Kelly 03:31, 21 May 2005 (UTC)
== Titles of scientific theories? ==
Does the Manual of Style have any suggestion on capitalization of theories? I ask because the articles on relativity are inconsistently capitalized; for instance, using both "Special Relativity" and "special relativity". I think it would be better to have a consistent usage (at least within an article, although it's still silly if different articles use different capitalizations for the same theory). ''Chicago'' (8.157, 15th ed.) suggests: "''Laws and theories.'' Names of laws, theories, and the like are lowercased, except for proper names attached to them." Examples given include "Avogadro's hypothesis", "the big bang theory", "Boyle's law", "(Einsten's) general theory of relativity", and "Newton's first law". Any suggestions? — User:Knowledge Seeker User talk:Knowledge Seeker 05:02, 21 May 2005 (UTC)
== Bolding within articles ==
The Manual of Style states: "The first time the title is mentioned in the article, put it in bold using three apostrophes.". Should this be interpreted to mean that ''only'' the first time the title is mentioned is the appropriate place to use bold, or could there be other places to use bold within the article? User:Evilphoenix 17:30, May 21, 2005 (UTC)
:What's an example? —User:Sean Kelly User_talk:Sean Kelly 18:03, 21 May 2005 (UTC)
::I've found some editors using bold for all proper nouns (that might be a local cultural – non-English – thing), others use bold for emphasis (instead of italics). Neither is correct. Bold is very little used in most publishing contexts, its main use being to mark cross-references, for which we use links. It can be used to distinguish a certain sub-set in a list or table, and some people like to use it to mark a volume number in a bibliographic reference. The answer to User:Evilphoenix's question though, is generally "no", with one major exception: when the title of the article is supplemented by variants of the title. For example:
:::Santa Claus (also known as Father Christmas, Saint Nicholas, Saint Nick, Kris Kringle or simply Santa) is...
::Does anyone disagree with any of that? User:Mel Etitis (Μελ_Ετητης)">User talk:Mel Etitis 19:32, 21 May 2005 (UTC)
:An exception I employ is to make bold sometimes the term that the reader might have used searching the article, but which is a redirect. I'm a lumper not a splitter (context gives meaning), and I use bold sometimes for a subset of the main subject, which would be diminished, however, by being set off in its own isolated mini-article. --User:Wetman 00:23, 22 May 2005 (UTC)
::I agree with Wetman. For some stubby articles about places or roads that are unlikely to be expanded, I often attempt to merge the info under the next larger entity. IMO, any redirects that are not obviously variants of the article title should be also be bolded, preferably as near to the opening of the article as practical. 00:54, May 22, 2005 (UTC)
:::Where an article includes a glossery of terms, I have used bold to indicate that a term is an entry in the glossery. for a recent example, see The Dark is Rising Sequence. User:DESiegel 00:59, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)
::::I think that's probably a logical extension of the subsidiary definition principle articulated above, and seems fine to me. Perhaps some of this is worth distilling into a short elucidation in the MoS itself. User:Alai 02:19, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)
== i.e. and e.g. ==
:''Scholarly abbreviations of Latin terms like ''i.e.'', ''e.g.'', or ''n.b.'' should be avoided and English terms such as ''that is'', ''for example'', or ''note'' used instead.''
I think we should begin enforcing this idea more often. Particularly "i.e." and "e.g." are often confused for one another, and there are all sorts of inconsistent ways to "spell" them ("ie." "ie", and "IE" are common variants, not to mention the issue of whether or not a comma should follow; it seems nine times out of ten the comma is forgotten). Who else wishes to wage war against these two traitors who go by the names of "i.e." and "e.g."? - User:Furrykef (User_talk:Furrykef) 04:23, 26 May 2005 (UTC)
:I think that would be a mistake. ie and eg are common enough - and whilst some people erroneously think ie is synonymous with eg that's really not a big problem as long as the articles actually use the terms correctly. I've always been surprised that ie and eg are described as "scholarly" - it seems a quite inappropriate adjective to me. We really ought to revise the advice so that we avoid less well understood Latin - viz, vide, qv (and I was going to add etc but that would be ambiguous!), User:Jguk 05:29, 26 May 2005 (UTC)
::I really see no problem with i.e. and e.g. The fact that people confuse them shouldn't affect anything. I think that the biggest issue with all of these latin-derived abbreviations is that they often make your writing look lazy (e.g., putting quippy examples in parentheses makes your sentence look sloppy). —User:Sean Kelly User_talk:Sean Kelly 06:32, 26 May 2005 (UTC)
:::If people don't know how to use them, that's because they're ignorant apes; it's not a reason for those of us who do know how to use them not to. N.b., however, is patronising: we shouldn't be telling readers what they should and shouldn't note. User:Markalexander100User talk:Markalexander100 06:49, 26 May 2005 (UTC)
::::I on the other hand am ''sick'' of correcting typos, incorrect usage, etc. on Wikipedia and think we should do everything we can to prevent other people from shooting themselves in the foot with it. Besides, what exactly do these abbreviations give us? So we save a couple letters... so what? I think it's better to have a consistent rule that favors clarity and plain English. The point of a style guide, especially for a collaborative work such as this, is consistency ''and'' minimizing the possibility of needless errors. Besides, remember we write as a whole community. If you think not being able to use these abbreviations crimps your style, you may want to think about why your style is so important here in the first place. ;) - User:Furrykef (User_talk:Furrykef) 14:14, 26 May 2005 (UTC)
User:Markalexander100, your attitude is snobbish. If i.e. and e.g. can be substituted with plain English, then why use the less-understood acronyms? One of Wikipedia's goals is Wikipedia:Access, and the use of Latin terms to sound slightly more high-brow goes against that. --User:Poiuytman User talk:PoiuytmanUser:Poiuytman 07:21, 26 May 2005 (UTC)
:::Yours is patronising. I like to assume that the readers of an encyclopedia can read without moving their lips and don't drag their knuckles on the floor. ;) We have a separate simple version for the likes of them. The abbreviations are more concise and can be useful to prevent repetition. User:Markalexander100User talk:Markalexander100 07:26, 26 May 2005 (UTC)
::::I'd like to avoid calling attitudes names, please. ;) Anyway, I consider being concise by eliminating letters, rather than needless words or phrases, not to be an issue worth worrying about. Neither is the prevention of repetition at the expense of clarity, in my opinion. - User:Furrykef (User_talk:Furrykef) 14:14, 26 May 2005 (UTC)
Poiuyt Man is right that we should not use terms to sound slightly more high-brow, and sometimes it would be better if "ie" is replaced by "that is" and "eg" by "for example", but sometimes the style flows better if we keep "ie" and "eg", so we shouldn't rule their usage out (and similarly with contractions). I think the Latin abbreviations "ie", "eg" and "etc" are well-known enough to treat them as assimilated with English, but we should shy away from others, User:Jguk 07:37, 26 May 2005 (UTC)
:I'd like to note that jguk's post above also "misspells" ''i.e.'', ''e.g.'', and even ''etc.'' by omitting their periods. Not ragging on you or anything, jguk, just noting further how often these abbreviations are spelled "incorrectly" even by people who otherwise speak perfectly fine English. - User:Furrykef (User_talk:Furrykef) 14:14, 26 May 2005 (UTC)
::Misspell? I think you need a lesson in punctuation!!! :) Seriously though - N American punctuation, which I take it you are used to, is pretty much the same as what almost everyone worldwide was using in the English-speaking world in the 19th century. Since then, N America has remained static, whilst the rest of the world has veered towards less punctuation. I have seen it in my short (31-y-o) lifetime: outside N America, punctuation is on the wane. I'm sure it will reach an apogee before weloseallpunctuationaltogether! But certainly nowadays, outside N America, there is a trend towards writing them ie and eg, though admittedly many still do use i.e. and e.g.. Not sure really what all this means, but thought you might be interested to know:) User:Jguk 19:37, 26 May 2005 (UTC)
:::That's why I put "misspells" and "incorrect" in quotes, you see. I was taught, and I understand that it isn't necessarily "correct" to the point that everybody else is wrong, especially as people often disagree on how to capitalize and punctuate certain abbreviations, that it's always "i.e." and "e.g.", with a comma after them when used in a sentence. But for consistency it would certainly be good to settle on a single style, in which case this style would probably prevail. - User:Furrykef (User_talk:Furrykef) 21:35, 26 May 2005 (UTC)
:Most manuals of style suggest that the common abbreviations ''i.e.'', ''e.g.'' and ''etc.'' (''id est'', ''exampli gratia'' and ''et cetera'') should be replaced by plain English. I have even heard the abbreviations used in speech. Even though most people do understand what these letters mean, their use is considered a point of bad style. The argument is not about anything else but style. Most editors I have worked with demand that I use ''that is'', ''for example'' and ''and so on'' instead. --User:Garzo 20:02, 26 May 2005 (UTC)
::You are joking??? What sort of illiterate dunces don't know what ''eg'', ''ie'', ''etc'' mean? As to writing ''and so on'', my publisher would shoot me if I tried to write such garbage. This is supposed to be an encyclopaedia and it isn't our job to dumb down to lowest common denominator illiteracy. If people don't know what they mean, they should sue their teachers for incompetence! Fear''ÉIREANN''\user_talk:Jtdirl 20:33, 26 May 2005 (UTC)
:::I don't think some foreigners would appreciate being lumped into the "illiterate dunce" category. (By the way, I'm not going to discuss "etc." here because it isn't confused with anything except, rarely, "et al.", and the phrase "et cetera" occurs ''far'' more often than "i.e." or "e.g." do in vernacular speech. I don't have any problem with this abbreviation, myself.) Yes, it's true that we don't need to dumb down our text to the lowest common denominator, but it's also true that we don't need to use abbreviations for seemingly no reason other than to save a couple of letters when this is of no concern to us in the first place. Given that "i.e." and "e.g." ''are'' often confused, one ''does'' lose clarity when using these abbreviations. I don't think it's a good trade. - User:Furrykef (User_talk:Furrykef) 21:35, 26 May 2005 (UTC)
:I actually said that these abbreviations are commonly understood, and I do not believe that removing them is ''dumbing down'': there is nothing clever about them, smug but not clever. Fowler and Chicago both consider them to be bad form in formal writing. It is a choice of style that we are talking about here, not one of correctness. --User:Garzo 22:41, 26 May 2005 (UTC)
::If Fowler and Chicago agree, I find that persuasive, since each is a leading authority on its side of the Atlantic. User:CDThieme 23:24, 26 May 2005 (UTC)
:::Now ''that'' is funny. Fowler is known in academia and in English teaching as ''Howler'' for the amount of nonsense it contains. And many students in third level institutions in Europe, if they use Chicago, have their written work returned unmarked, with the comment - "under no circumstances are students to submit text based on the Chicago Manual of Style." My own academic colleagues will not touch it with a barge pole and on their first day starting undergraduate or postgraduate level they receive a handout instructing them that the C MoS is not acceptable. Theses have been returned, with students told to rewrite them completely if they use C MoS. One lecturer last year famously told a class of third years that the Chicago MoS was unfit even to be used as toilet paper. Much of what is controversial on wikipedia is stuff based on the C MoS, with some Europeans saying bluntly that they will not use it under any circumstances. Fear''ÉIREANN''\user_talk:Jtdirl 23:46, 26 May 2005 (UTC)
::::What MoS are undergraduate students told to use? —User:Sean Kelly User_talk:Sean Kelly 00:02, 27 May 2005 (UTC)
::::Do you have perhaps anything to say on this matter that does not involve insulting people or manuals of style? You know, like actually defending your point of view instead of ad hominem? - User:Furrykef (User_talk:Furrykef) 01:26, 27 May 2005 (UTC)
::::This isn't the first time Jtdirl has contributed to such discussions with "anecdote and attitude", rather than, say, a citing a style guide he himself would consider acceptable (much less, authoritative), or some other such ''verifiable'' piece of compelling evidence. Personally I'm entirely in favour of using i.e. and e.g. (with punctuation, and used the right way 'round...), but I can't see that the above is in any way a useful way of arguing for their inclusion. User:Alai 19:28, 27 May 2005 (UTC)
:::::I agree entirely with Jtdirl. I also agree with Gareth that ''It is a choice of style that we are talking about here, not one of correctness''; what I don't understand is why some people want to impose their own style on others. User:Markalexander100User talk:Markalexander100 01:50, 27 May 2005 (UTC)
::::::This idea seems to center around the idea of "style" as a personal thing, as in, "that's my style". Well, we're working on an encyclopedia. Having a "my style" doesn't really work when you're editing an encyclopedia. You must act in the interests not only in the interests of yourself, but also of your peers and your readers. And I think it is certainly in the best interests of Wikipedia as a whole to avoid these abbreviations. - User:Furrykef (User_talk:Furrykef) 03:38, 27 May 2005 (UTC)
:::::The purpose of the manual is not to specify one acceptable style: it is to define the range of acceptable styles. A little tolerance would not go amiss. User:Markalexander100User talk:Markalexander100 03:59, 27 May 2005 (UTC)
::::::And this includes all the millions of variations of ways to abbreviate (and confuse the abbreviations of) expressions that are easy enough to spell in full, does it? :P - User:Furrykef (User_talk:Furrykef) 05:32, 27 May 2005 (UTC)
::::::Certainly it's ''possible'' to specify a range of acceptable styles, but that does not mean to say that it's within the purpose of the MoS, or necessarily a good idea, for it to allow a set of alternatives ''in every case''. The purpose of a manual style is typically to establish a certain degree of internal consistency, over and above simple "generally agreed correctness". If we simply include a range a popular styles, drawn from a variety of incompatible style manuals (or otherwise, based on existing practice, or practices there's a demand to allow), then this ceases to itself be a manual of style in any useful sense. User:Alai 19:28, 27 May 2005 (UTC)
I fully agree that abbreviations should be avoided. Wikipedia is not paper. User:Exploding Boy 02:01, May 27, 2005 (UTC)
I will now, in an unabashedly biased way, summarize what I perceive to be the current arguments for and against.
Arguments against using i.e. and e.g.
# Capitalization and punctuation is almost always inconsistent even throughout a single dialect within Wikipedia, leading to mundane copyediting for consistency (it is incorrect in American English to use "ie", "IE", or "ie.", for instance)
# They are often confused for one another
# Almost all style guides advise against them
# We have perfectly good English expressions for what these mean in the first place and they're really not that hard to type
# I'm just going to go about replacing them most of the time I come across them anyway
# Allowing them lowers the quality of Wikipedia as a whole because of people misusing these abbreviations as addressed in points 1 and 2. It may be that ''you'' know how to use them correctly, but please keep in mind that you're not the only editor here.
# Using them sacrifices clarity (see #2) in favor of saving a few letters. Is that really a good trade?
Arguments for using i.e. and e.g.
# I like them, dammit!
I know I've conveniently ignored a few counterpoints to my arguments against, but that isn't the point. So far there aren't really any good arguments ''for'' it in the first place even if you attack my arguments with counterpoints. I think people on the opposing side had better get to working on that. :) - User:Furrykef (User_talk:Furrykef) 18:09, 27 May 2005 (UTC)
:The case in favour of using them is that they are now fully assimilated into the English language. We might as well pick any other English word and take a dislike to that for all you're saying, User:Jguk 19:40, 27 May 2005 (UTC)
::That doesn't necessarily mean that they're good expressions to use. I think we can agree that, for instance, the word ''fuck'' doesn't really belong anywhere in article space except as part of a quotation, title, or whatever -- albeit for entirely different reasons, but the point is just because a word is fully assimilated into the English language doesn't mean we ''should'' use it. I do concede that your point isn't entirely invalid, though... I did say I was unabashedly biased when I put that list together. ;) - User:Furrykef (User_talk:Furrykef) 20:01, 27 May 2005 (UTC)
:::I have to agree completely with jguk on this one. You make a good argument for why one should avoid "i.e." and "e.g." in general, but they're still grammatically correct in formal writing, and we have no reason to suggest they shouldn't be used. There are scores of other words and phrases that are often confused and have clearer substitutes. For example, "it's" and "its" are confused a million times over, and it's almost always better to avoid the pronoun. Should we tell people not to use them? I think not: stylistic choices like these should be made on a case-by-case basis. —User:Sean Kelly User_talk:Sean Kelly 21:48, 27 May 2005 (UTC)
::::You say I make a good argument, yet see no reason they shouldn't be used? I'm confused here. ;) As for a "case by case basis", I don't see why they should be necessary at all, ever. As for your counterexample, certainly "its" and "it's" are both necessary words. They're also far more common than "i.e." and "e.g." and are actually commonly used in speech as well as in writing, whereas, although it has been noted above that these abbreviations have been used in speech, it's exceedingly rare. More to the point, the encyclopedia would suffer more much more from the prohibition of "its" and "it's" than if they weren't prohibited. I don't think that's true of "i.e." and "e.g." - User:Furrykef (User_talk:Furrykef) 23:09, 27 May 2005 (UTC)
:::::I know people who, when they were taught to write formally, were told not to use the pronoun "it", and graded down if they did. In my field of study, mathematics, we are taught to eliminate "it" from our vocabulary when writing proofs, since "it" is unnecessarily ambiguous. Personally, I wouldn't mind at all to see "it" eliminated from the encyclopedia ;). I guess what I'm saying is that, though your reasons are all good, in the end it's all a matter of taste. I would rather tell people to write in a clear, succinct manner than to tell them which words they should avoid. —User:Sean Kelly User_talk:Sean Kelly 00:22, 28 May 2005 (UTC)
::I think the part about "e.g." and "i.e." in the MoS should be removed. We don't need it. If an editor wants to use "e.g." and "i.e.", why not? The current MoS is too long, it should stick closer to the KISS priciple. User:Dumbledore 17:09, 31 May 2005 (UTC)
:::By the way, Oxford and Cambridge both give e.g. and i.e. with full stops [http://dictionary.cambridge.org/define.asp?key=38964&dict=CALD] [http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/ie?view=uk]. I like Mr and Dr without punctuation (because it's logical), but I don't really like eg and ie. The Times likes eg and ie though... User:Dumbledore 17:15, 31 May 2005 (UTC)
::::I agree with Dumbledore - we should allow eg and ie (also WPians are already using them in practice anyway). I do think foreign words and abbreviations that are not assimilated into English shouldn't be used without explanation though, User:Jguk 07:42, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I have no problem with them if, but only if, they are used correctly. If my students use i.e. and e.g. interchangeably or write them without dots, it is a clear sign they don't know what they stand for, and I have them resubmit the work in English. User:No Account 01:05, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)
:Incidentally, it is becoming increasingly common to see them without dots in standard British English, with an increasing number of publications eschewing them, User:Jguk 07:49, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)
::For example, the Guardian style guide is with jguk on this one. But this ''is'' a style guide, not an exercise in the documentation of what's becoming increasingly common. Every MoS I've checked mandates a particular punctuation, and so should this one. (Or ban 'em, as at present.) User:Alai 02:14, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)
:::This style guide is different, however. Publications enforce one style for consistency. We don't do this - instead allowing editors to use whatever style they are used to (subject to internal consistency within any one article). This helps encourage more people to submit articles and has helped WP grow (after all - whilst most editors positively welcome constructive improvements to their text, and for typos to be corrected, my guess is they also get pissed off if arbitrary changes are made.
:::Of course, in this instance there is a difference. We can just permit them (as permitting them would hardly require them to be used). I do prefer a ban on abbreviations or foreign terms that have not been assimilated into general English usage though, User:Jguk 07:08, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)
::::Your characterisation isn't really accurate. The MoS does that in ''some'' instances (pointlessly, in my view; better just to shorten the page, than discuss something without saying anything one way or the other); and you may think it should do so in more (or in all), but in fact it does mandate some stylistic considerations, as a glance at the page will reveal. In so far as it mandates anything, at least. Editting to the MoS is surely by definition not making "arbitrary changes" (even if the content of the MoS itself might arguably be somewhat arbitrary is some instances). It's clear that some people can get very touchy about having their text tampered with, but to deploy this as an argument against guidelines as to which style is the more desirable seems to me to be mistaken on several grounds. Firstly, it's pretty unwiki, philosophically speaking; we're otherwise pretty explicit that one should expect to have one's text editted mercilessly. Secondly, it's inconsistent: why worry about people getting pissed off about ''only'' such changes? My guess is that for most people, MoS type issues are the least of their worries. But lastly, because it's entirely counterproductive: "anything goes" doesn't prevent disgruntlements and edit wars, it facilitates them, as we can them simply endlessly flip-flop between two different "equally good" versions, that each set of editors prefers for one reason or another, without policy/guidelines assistance in terminating the process. User:Alai 07:27, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)
===Scratch from MoS!===
I'd like the
:''Scholarly abbreviations of Latin terms like ''i.e.'', ''e.g.'', or ''n.b.'' should be avoided and English terms such as ''that is'', ''for example'', or ''note'' used instead.''
scratched from the MoS. I've traced the addition to that by User:Ortolan88 at [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AManual_of_Style&diff=6056936&oldid=6056742 Sep 21, 2004 @ 21:36] with an edit summary of "prevent measles" (made it *that* much harder to find). However, I find no discussion in the archives (Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style--Archive Directory) pertaining to this addition. So it would seem that this was unilaterally added 8 months ago (by an admin no less..''if'' he was an admin 8 months ago...).
I see no benefit of having this in the MoS especially since it's not required to be followed. I call bollucks on the entire list presented by Furrykef: they are perfectly acceptable and used and I'm sure I could find a list of complaints about...anything...really. And considering it was unilaterally added it doesn't belong here. User:Cburnett 03:42, Jun 5, 2005 (UTC)
Oppose scratch. Even the Toronto Globe and Mail ''Style Book'' says to use ''i.e.'' only in direct quotes. I think the Latin tags are stuffy and opaque. Somewhere in the Wiki help guides I've read that the model reader is supposedly a bright 12-year-old - certainly these dusty crusty relics would only confuse that model reader, especially if the reader's first language isn't English. We'd be better off fixing spelling throughout Wikipedia. --User:Wtshymanski 13:55, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)
:Did you say a bright ''twelve-year-old''! Why not add ''from an isolated bluecollar community in the Idaho panhandle''! --User:Wetman 05:03, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)
#Neither "i.e." nor "e,g," is a Latin tag.
#If we're going to assume that readers are too ignorant to understand commonly used abbreviations like these, why not just translate everying into Simple English and have done with it?
#I know of no bright twelve-year-olds who wouldn't recognise "i.e." and "e.g."; yes, they might confuse them, but then they might confuse "alternate" and "alternative", "uninterested" and "disinterested", "infer" and "imply", "ingenious" and "ingenuous", etc. — should we avoid all those too? User:Mel Etitis (Μελ_Ετητης)">User talk:Mel Etitis 09:15, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)
:Oh scratch, bin, burn, do what ever you want with that ridiculous sentence but please keep it out of the MoS. We have got to presume that readers did more in their English class than sleep. What exactly is so difficult about ''ie'' and ''eg'' anyhow: how ''exactly'' is so difficult to understand the different meaning attached to two letters, depending on whether it is ''ie'' or ''eg''? Most people on Wikipedia are well beyond an age where they should know exactly what they mean. If they don't by the time they leave high school, then they should sue their teachers for incompetence. Fear''ÉIREANN''\user_talk:Jtdirl 13:58, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I oppose the scratch.
# We're writing Wikipedia for a large reader community and many members of that community can probably understand "for eaxmple" far better than they can understand "e.g.".
# One need only look at the writing community on Wikipedia to quickly conclude that even among people who claim to understand what i.e. and e.g. mean, they don't.
User:Atlant 17:59, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC) Throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Whatever the advantages or disadvantages of i.e. and e.g., ''n.b.'' (and ''note'', for that matter) is particularly insidiuous and almost always used in a POV way to call attention to facts that the author thinks are important. I don't ever remember a time when ''n.b.'' or ''note'' was used in a way that wasn't both condescending and biased. User:Nohat 19:08, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC) ---- It's already been scratched by User:Markalexander100 (I would have but I've been involved in reverts over it) because it was unilaterally added (i.e., no consensus) and, now, there's no consensus to keep. So it's now the burden of the supporters to draw consensus to put it on the MoS — ''the way it should have been done when it was originally put on.'' So, if there's anyone that desires to have it put onto the MoS the ''correct way'', then by all means start it. My vote is still against it and not just because I don't find the arguments for it compelling, but it's strictly a personal style issue. If editor A wants to use it, then fine use it. If editor B doesn't want to use it, then fine don't use it. If editor A and B get into a revert war over it, then it should be settled just like any other style conflict. Be it over "e.g." or contractions (some styles do say to not use contractions because it's less formal) they can be settled the same. If you're worried about it causing more conflicts because it's *not* in the MoS then I'll be quick to point out the conflict arisen here because it *was* in the MoS and articles (e.g., Electrical wiring (UK)). I hope my usage of latin phrases (e.g., "i.e." and "e.g.") didn't confuse the 12-and-under crowd arguing this... :) User:Cburnett 19:18, Jun 6, 2005 (UTC) == BC/BCE == does wikipedia have a guideline for the BC versus BCE debate? -User:Lethe | User talk:Lethe 00:46, May 27, 2005 (UTC) *It has a Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/BCE-CE Debate. Will that do? —User:Wahoofive (User talk:Wahoofive) 05:38, 27 May 2005 (UTC) (An excellent argument for KISS). User:Markalexander100User talk:Markalexander100 02:01, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC) :I have created a Wikipedia:Eras/Compromise proposal. Please discuss the proposal on Wikipedia talk:Eras/Compromise proposal (not here). User:Kaldari 19:55, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC) == Italics -- Wikipedia and encyclopedias in general == There is currently a dispute on Talk:Wikipedia#Italics, concerning the italicization of "Wikipedia" in the article namespace. The Manual of Style currently has no specifics regarding the italicization of encyclopedias (although they most likely fall under "books"), and whether media being in paper or online form matters for italics. --User:Poiuytman User talk:PoiuytmanUser:Poiuytman 09:14, 27 May 2005 (UTC) ==Paintings?== I came here to look for the consensus on names of paintings because every article seems to use a different style. Since names of paintings are often quite long, using no marker at all (quotation marks or italics) makes their use in text often fairly confusing. I notice that this page mentions for italics ''books, court cases, movies, albums, TV series, magazines, ships, computer/video games'', and ''major orchestral works'' and for quotation marks "short stories, articles, statues, short films, songs, individual episodes of TV shows", and "poems". I'd prefer italics for paintings, but I could live with quotation marks as well. If the consensus is mentioned elsewhere, I think we should mention it here, too. User:Rl 08:59, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC) :Oxford GtS would suggest italics, don't have other references immediately to hand. Seems logical to me, as aside from collections and exhibitions which are somewhat transitory, there's not the same concept of longer composite works as in other media. Strongly agree we should mention it either way, once we have a general inkling as to which is preferrable. User:Alai 01:55, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC) ::Agree, italics makes sense for paintings. — User:CatherineMunro\User_talk:CatherineMunro 04:25, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC) :Same as ever. The iconic genre is not capialized. All titles are capitalized. Thus: :: A Madonna and Child by Pontormo. ::''Madonna and Child,'' by Pontormo. ::A portrait of Louis XIV by Rigaud. ::''Louis XIV,'' by Rigaud. :::Makes perfect sense. Thanks everyone, you have been most helpful. If this is a consensus, we should work it into the Wikipedia:Manual of Style and the Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (titles). User:Rl 07:30, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC) Oops—pardon me. It seems I've just duplicated this question over at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (titles). It's worth noting that there is actually a partially conflicting policy on that page; most visual art isn't mentioned, but for some reasons statues are named...and quotation marks instead of italics are called for. I concur with the above uniform style suggestion (italics), however. --User:TenOfAllTrades(User_talk:TenOfAllTrades) 03:34, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC) == Policy on terminology consistency? == One thing that I've noticed in a number of articles is the inconsistent use of terms even when there are no overriding contextual reasons to do so. For example, take the abbreviation for World War II - a number of articles use the abbreviation WWII [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Whatlinkshere&target=WWII], and others use the abbreviation WW2 [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Whatlinkshere&target=WW2]. For the Nanking Massacre, some articles use that term [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Whatlinkshere&target=Nanking_Massacre], and others use "Rape of Nanking" [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Whatlinkshere&target=Rape_of_Nanking]. It seems to me that there should be a MoS policy stating that barring any contextual, technical, or dialect issues, articles should use the same terminology as the primary article article. This has the added benefit of centralizing debates regarding terminology in the relevant articles; people that lose an argument on how to name article XYZ would not be able to fight their fight on the articles that link to XYZ. Comments? --User:Bletch 23:58, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC) :Yes. Are you crazy? The last thing a big free-flowing project like this needs is a rule to stifle creativity. While it may be possible to come up with one way of saying World War II that is the best way for so doing, to remove the ability for anyone to write it as WW II because they "lost" some argument somewhere misses a whole bunch of the philosophy behind Wikipedia. Highlighted links are not meant to be "titles" which may have all sorts of constraints (including disambiguations and the fact that articles frequently encompass multiple related terms) and words in text should not be straight-jacketed into article titles either. A link is just a link, a way for the reader to explore a subject further. By holding the pointer on the link you can see the article to which that link will lead. The person writing the article (and others who modify it) may have all sorts of reasons to express things the way they do without stilting things by making links exactly match titles and vice versa. In fact, Wikipedia options for setting up links are the way they are just for the reason that good writing, scholarship, and multiple backgrounds of contributors make plasticity in this aspect of writing/editing absolutely necessary. I think your idea could have merit in only a limited number of cases at best - User:Marshman 01:41, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC) ::Well much of those disambiguation justifications fall under what I previously said about contextual reasons. For obvious reasons, an article on Brazil would link to its national sport by usingFootball (soccer) , whereas an article on the New England Revolution may use Football (soccer) , because of the differing context. But there are many cases where inconsistency exists without any reason. --User:Bletch 21:53, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)
:Simply because consistency ''within'' an article is a virtue (it aids the reader, the only recommendation a virtue requires), that doesn't mean that lack of consistency among articles is a sin. --User:Wetman 22:39, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)
==NOR==
Don't revert my edits, Philip, you don't own this page. Why would I need to seek consensus for adding that the NOR policy, along with NPOV, takes precedence? They both take precedence, because they're policies. User:SlimVirgin User_talk:SlimVirgin 20:04, Jun 20, 2005 (UTC)
#REDIRECT Style guide
Can somebody write an article about manual? (i.e. instruction manual). It´s very usefull, i.e. http://www.instruction-manuals.co.uk/
#REDIRECT Wikipedia:Manual of Style
#REDIRECT Style guide
See other meanings of words starting from letter:
Words begining with Manual_of_style:
Manual_of_Style
Manual_of_Style
Manual_of_Style
Manual_of_Style
Manual_of_style
Manual_of_style
Manual_of_Style--Alpha_Archive1
Manual_of_Style--Alpha_Archive2
Manual_of_Style--Alpha_Archive3
Manual_of_Style--Alpha_Archive4
Manual_of_Style--Alpha_Archive5
Manual_of_Style--Archive1
Manual_of_Style--Archive10
Manual_of_Style--Archive11
Manual_of_Style--Archive12
Manual_of_Style--Archive2
Manual_of_Style--Archive3
Manual_of_Style--Archive4
Manual_of_Style--Archive5
Manual_of_Style--Archive7
Manual_of_Style--Archive8
Manual_of_Style--Archive9
Manual_of_Style--Archive_(U.S._vs._U.K._2)
Manual_of_Style--Archive_Directory
Manual_of_Style--Draft_Trim
Manual_of_Style--Draft_Trim_discussion_archive
Manual_of_Style/Archive_6
Manual_of_Style/Dashes
Manual_of_Style/Draft_trim_(November_2004)
Manual_of_Style/Draft_trim_(November_2004)
Manual_of_Style/External_links
Manual_of_Style/proposal
Manual_of_Style/proposal
Manual_of_Style/See_also
Manual_of_style/Titles_of_color_articles
Manual_of_Style/Wikipedia_Manual_of_Style
Manual_of_Style_(biographies)
Manual_of_Style_(biographies)
Manual_of_Style_(biographies)/Archive_April_2005
Manual_of_Style_(biographies)/Archive_Feb_20_2003
Manual_of_Style_(biographies)/Proposed_interim_policy_for_Honorific_prefixes
Manual_of_Style_(biographies)/Proposed_interim_policy_for_Honorific_prefixes
Manual_of_Style_(biographies)/Proposed_interim_policy_for_Honorific_prefixes/archive
Manual_of_Style_(biographies)/Survey_on_Style-Prefixed_Honorary_Titles
Manual_of_Style_(biographies)/Survey_on_Style-Prefixed_Honorary_Titles
Manual_of_Style_(biographies)/Survey_on_Style-Prefixed_Honorary_Titles/Archive01
Manual_of_Style_(biographies)/Survey_on_Style-Prefixed_Honorary_Titles/Archive02
Manual_of_Style_(biographies)/Survey_on_Style-Prefixed_Honorary_Titles/Ballots
Manual_of_Style_(biographies)/Survey_on_Style-Prefixed_Honorary_Titles/External_Style_Usage
Manual_of_Style_(biographies)/Survey_on_Style-Prefixed_Honorary_Titles/Ratification
Manual_of_Style_(biographies)/Survey_on_Style-Prefixed_Honorary_Titles/Vote_Corralling
Manual_of_Style_(China-related_articles)
Manual_of_Style_(China-related_articles)
Manual_of_Style_(dashes)
Manual_of_Style_(dashes)
Manual_of_style_(dashes)
Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers
Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)
Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)
Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)/archive1
Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)/archive10
Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)/archive11
Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)/archive12
Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)/archive13
Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)/archive14
Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)/archive15
Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)/archive16
Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)/archive17
Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)/archive18
Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)/archive2
Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)/archive3
Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)/archive4
Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)/archive5
Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)/archive6
Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)/archive7
Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)/archive8
Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)/archive9
Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)/archive_dash_discussion
Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)/Eras
Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)/Eras
Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)/Eras_-_Archive1
Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)/proposed_revision
Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)/proposed_revision
Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)/vote
Manual_of_Style_(disambiguation_pages)
Manual_of_Style_(disambiguation_pages)
Manual_of_Style_(disambiguation_pages)/Archive_1
Manual_of_Style_(guidance)
Manual_of_Style_(guidance)
Manual_of_Style_(headings)
Manual_of_Style_(headings)
Manual_of_style_(headings)
Manual_of_style_(headings)
Manual_of_Style_(hyphens)
Manual_of_Style_(Japan-related_articles)
Manual_of_Style_(Japan-related_articles)
Manual_of_Style_(Japan-related_articles)/Survey
Manual_of_Style_(jguk's_changes)
Manual_of_Style_(Latter_Day_Saints)
Manual_of_Style_(legal)
Manual_of_Style_(legal)
Manual_of_Style_(links)
Manual_of_Style_(links)
Manual_of_Style_(lists)
Manual_of_Style_(lists)
Manual_of_Style_(lists_-_embedded_lists)
Manual_of_Style_(lists_-_stand_alone_lists)
Manual_of_Style_(lists_-_stand_alone_lists)
Manual_of_Style_(lists_of_links)
Manual_of_Style_(lists_of_links)
Manual_of_Style_(Mormonism)
Manual_of_Style_(music)
Manual_of_Style_(music)
Manual_of_Style_(Names)
Manual_of_Style_(national_varieties_of_English)
Manual_of_Style_(national_varieties_of_English)
Manual_of_Style_(personal_pronouns)
Manual_of_Style_(pronunciation)
Manual_of_Style_(pronunciation)
Manual_of_style_(pronunciation)
Manual_of_Style_(Quotation_marks_and_apostrophes)
Manual_of_Style_(sister_projects)
Manual_of_Style_(spaces_after_a_period)
Manual_of_Style_(spelling)
Manual_of_Style_(spelling)
Manual_of_Style_(Thailand-related_articles)
Manual_of_Style_(Thailand-related_articles)
Manual_of_Style_(titles)
Manual_of_Style_(titles)
Manual_of_Style_(trademarks)
Manual_of_Style_(trademarks)
Manual_of_Style_(U.S._vs_American)
Manual_of_Style_(US_vs_American)
Manual_of_Style_archive_("See_also")
Manual_of_Style_archive_("U.S."_or_"American")
Manual_of_Style_archive_(abbreviations_and_acronyms)
Manual_of_Style_archive_(capitalization)
Manual_of_Style_archive_(chemical_names)
Manual_of_Style_archive_(citing_references)
Manual_of_Style_archive_(external_links)
Manual_of_Style_archive_(foreign_languages)
Manual_of_Style_archive_(gender-neutral_pronouns)
Manual_of_Style_Archive_(Layout)
Manual_of_Style_archive_(links)
Manual_of_Style_archive_(Names)
Manual_of_Style_archive_(national_varieties_of_English)
Manual_of_Style_archive_(numbers)
Manual_of_Style_archive_(personal_pronouns)
Manual_of_Style_archive_(places)
Manual_of_Style_archive_(Poll:_"U.S."_and_serial_comma)
Manual_of_Style_archive_(Poll:_always_use_"U.S."_and_Oxford_commas?)
Manual_of_Style_archive_(pronunciation)
Manual_of_Style_archive_(punctuation)
Manual_of_Style_archive_(quotes_and_quote_marks)
Manual_of_Style_archive_(regions_and_directions)
Manual_of_Style_archive_(sexuality)
Manual_of_Style_archive_(ships_as_"she")
Manual_of_Style_archive_(spaces_after_a_full_stop/period)
Manual_of_Style_archive_(spaces_after_a_period)
Manual_of_Style_archive_(spelling)
Manual_of_Style_archive_(spelling_1)
Manual_of_Style_archive_(spelling_2)
Manual_of_Style_archive_(spelling_3)
Manual_of_Style_archive_(spelling_4)
Manual_of_Style_archive_(style_guide_errata)
Manual_of_Style_archive_(versions_of_English)
Manual_of_Style_Archive_(visual_design)
Manual_of_Style_archive_(visual_presentation)
Manual_of_Style_for_China-related_articles
Manual_of_Style_for_China-related_articles
Manual_of_Style_for_Japan-related_articles
Manual_of_Style_for_Japan-related_articles
Manual_of_Style_for_Japan-related_articles/Macrons
Manual_of_Style_for_Japan-related_articles/misc
Manual_of_Style_for_Japan-related_articles/name_table
Manual_of_Style_for_Japan-related_articles/Naming_order
Manual_of_Style_for_Japan-related_articles/Naming_order
Manual_of_Style_for_Japan-related_articles/Naming_order/archived_votes
Manual_of_Style_for_Japan-related_articles/Romanization
Manual_of_Style_for_Japan-related_articles/tessaiga
Manual_of_Style_for_Thailand-related_articles
Manual_of_Style_for_Thailand-related_articles
Manual of Style
{| style="float:right; background:transparent" |- | |- | |} This Manual of Style has the simple purpose of making things easy to read by following a consistent format — it is a style guide. The following rules don't claim to be the last word. One way is often as good as another, but if everyone does it the same way, Wikipedia will be easier to read and use, not to mention easier to write and edit. In this regard the following quote from ''The Chicago Manual of Style'' deserves notice: :Rules and regulations such as these, in the nature of the case, cannot be endowed with the fixity of rock-ribbed law. They are meant for the average case, and must be applied with a certain degree of elasticity. Clear, informative and unbiased writing is always more important than presentation and formatting. Writers are ''not'' required to follow all or any of these rules: Wikipedia:Editing policy is that perfection is not required. ==Article titles== ''Main article: Wikipedia:Naming conventions'' If possible, make the title the ''subject'' of the first sentence of the article (as opposed to putting it in the Predicate (grammar)). In any case, the title should appear as early as possible in the article — preferably in the first sentence. The first time the title is mentioned in the article, put it in bold using three apostrophes. Here's an example:
article title == (heading) markup for headings, not the ==This is a heading==
which produces
:This is a heading
If you mark headings this way, a table of contents is automatically generated from the headings in an article. Sections can be automatically numbered for users with that preference set and words within properly marked headings are given greater weight in searches. Headings also help readers by breaking up the text and outlining the article.
* Start the first word and any Noun#Proper noun in headings with a capital letter, but leave the rest of the heading lower case.
* Avoid links within headings.
* Avoid overuse of sub-headings.
==Capital letters==
===Titles===
Titles such as ''president'', ''king'', or ''emperor'' start with a capital letter when used as a title (followed by a name): "President Nixon", not "president Nixon". When used generically, they should be in lower case: "De Gaulle was the French president." The correct formal name of an office is treated as a proper noun. Hence: "Hirohito was Emperor of Japan". Similarly "Louis XVI was the French king" but "Louis XVI was King of France", ''King of France'' being a title in that context. Likewise, royal titles should be capitalised: "Her Majesty" or "His Highness". (Reference: ''Chicago Manual of Style'' 14th ed., par. 7.16; [http://www.guardian.co.uk/styleguide/page/0,5817,184841,00.html ''The Guardian Manual of Style''], "Titles" keyword.) Exceptions may apply for specific offices.
In the case of "prime minister", either both words begin with a capital letter or neither, except, obviously, when it starts a sentence. Again, when being used generically, no capital letter is used: "There are many prime ministers around the world." When reference is made to a specific office, upper case is generally used: "The British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, said today..." (However to complicate matters, some style manuals, while saying "''The'' British Prime Minister", recommend "British prime minister". A good rule of thumb is whether a definite article (the) or an indefinite article (a) is used. If ''the'' is used, use "Prime Minister". If ''a'' is used, go with "prime minister".)
American English and British English differ in their inclination to use capitals. British English uses capitals more widely than American English does. This may apply to titles for people. If possible, as with spelling, use rules appropriate to the cultural and linguistic context. In other words, do not enforce American rules on pages about British topics or British rules on pages about American topics. In regards to pages about other cultures, choose either style, but be consistent.
===Religions, deities, philosophies, doctrines and their adherents===
Names of religions, whether used as a noun or an adjective, and their followers start with a capital letter. Mormonism requires special care — see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Mormonism).
Deities begin with a capital letter: ''God'', ''Allah'', ''Freya'', ''the Lord'', ''the Supreme Being'', ''the Messiah''. The same is true when referring to Muhammad as ''the Prophet''. Transcendent ideas in the Platonic sense also begin with a capital letter: ''Good'' and ''Truth''. Pronouns referring to deities, or nouns (other than names) referring to any material or abstract representation of any deity, human or otherwise, do not begin with a capital letter.
Philosophies, doctrines, and systems of economic thought do ''not'' begin with a capital letter, unless the name is derived from a proper noun: lowercase ''republican'' refers to a system of political thought; uppercase ''Republican'' refers to a specific Republican Party (each party name being a proper noun).
===Calendar items===
The names of months, days, and holidays always begin with a capital letter: June, Monday, Fourth of July.
Seasons start with a capital letter when they are used with another noun or are personified. Here they function as proper nouns: "Winter Solstice"; "Autumn Open House"; "I think Spring is showing her colours"; "Old Man Winter".
However, they do not start with a capital letter when they are used generally: "This summer was very hot."
===Animals, plants, and other organisms===
''Main articles: Wikipedia:WikiProject Tree of Life#Article titles and common names, Wikipedia:Naming conventions (fauna)''
Whether the common names of species should start with a capital letter has been hotly debated in the past and has remained unresolved. As a matter of truce both styles are acceptable (except for proper names), but a Wikipedia:Redirect should be created from the alternative form.
===Celestial bodies===
Names of other planets and stars are proper nouns and begin with a capital letter: "The planet Mars can be seen tonight in the constellation Gemini, near the star Pollux".
The words ''sun'', ''earth'', and ''moon'' are proper nouns when used in an astronomical context, but not elsewhere: so "The Sun is a main sequence star, with a spectral class of G2"; but "It was a lovely day and the sun was warm". Note that these terms are only proper nouns when referring to a specific spectral body (our Sun, Earth and Moon): so "The Moon orbits the Earth"; but "Pluto's moon Charon".
===Directions and regions===
Regions that are proper nouns, including widely known expressions such as ''Southern California'', start with a capital letter. Follow the same convention for related forms: a person from the Southern United States is a ''Southerner''.
Directions (''north'', ''southwest'', etc.) are not proper nouns and do not start with a capital letter. The same is true for their related forms: a road that leads north might be called a ''northern'' road, compared to the Great North Road.
If you are not sure whether a region has attained proper-noun status, assume it has not.
==Italics==
Use the '' ''This is italic.'' The Pythagorean theorem is named for and attributed to the 6th century BC Greek philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras Tom and Jerry — Pairing of names from Pierce Egan's ''Life in London'' Sodium hydroxide (sodiumoxygenhydrogen), also known as caustic soda or lye In quantum physics, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle Buddhist meditation, meditation used in the practice of Buddhism, "includes any method of meditation that has Enlightenment as its ultimate aim." (Kamalashila 1996) ''See also:'' Internet troll, flaming ==See also==
:* Internet troll * flaming float property because it breaks rendering on some browsers when large fonts are used.
===Formatting issues===
Formatting issues such as font size, blank space and color are issues for the Wikipedia site-wide Cascading Style Sheets and should not be dealt with in articles except in special cases. If you absolutely must specify a font size, use a relative size i.e. font-size:80%; not an absolute size, for example, font-size:4pt.
===Make comments invisible===
Avoid highlighting that the article is incomplete and in need of further work.
Similarly, there is little benefit to the reader in seeing headings and tables without content.
If you want to communicate with other potential editors, make comments invisible to the ordinary article reader. To do so, enclose the text which you intend to be read only by editors within <!-- and -->.
For example, the following:
:hello <!-- This is a comment. --> world
is displayed as:
: hello world
So the comment can be seen when viewing the HTML or wiki source.
===Avoid self-referential pronouns===
Wikipedia articles cannot be based on one person's opinions or experiences. Thus, 'I' or 'we' can never be utilized, except, of course, when they appear in a quotation. For similar reasons, avoid the use of "one," as in: "One should note that some critics have argued in favor of the proposal," as it sounds more personal than encyclopedic.
==See also==
* Style guide, the Wikipedia entry on "style guides". Contains links to the online style guides of some magazines and newspapers.
* Wikipedia:Annotated article - the article contains annotations that show how it should be edited preferentially.
* Wikipedia:Avoiding common mistakes gives a list of common mistakes and how to avoid them.
* Wikipedia:Be bold in updating pages should define your attitude toward page updates.
* Wikipedia:Cite sources explains process and standards for citing references in articles.
* Wikipedia:Editing policy has even more editing guidelines.
* Wikipedia:How to edit a page is a short primer on editing pages.
* Wikipedia:Introduction is a gentle introduction to the world of Wikipedia.
* Wikipedia:Perfect stub article shows what you should aim for at a minimum when starting a new article.
* Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines is the main stop for policies and, well, guidelines.
* Wikipedia:How to edit a page#Wiki markup explains the mechanics of what codes are available to you when editing a page, to do things like titles, links, external links, and so on.
* Wikipedia:WikiProject sets out boilerplates for certain areas of knowledge.
* Meta:Reading level (discussion)
Wikipedia style guidelines
ga:Lámhleabhar Stíle
minnan:Wikipedia:Siá-chok ê kui-hoān
ta:விக்கிபீடியா:நடைக் கையேடு
vi:Wikipedia:Cẩm nang về văn phong
Manual of Style
==Archives== Because this page is so long, I have moved the archives list to an archive directory. User:Maurreen 17:12, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC) * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style--Archive Directory ==See also== * Wikipedia talk:Establish context * Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (capitalization) * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dashes) * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (titles) * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (jguk's changes) * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (Quotation marks and apostrophes) ---------------- Note: the most recent discussion (Feb 15–March 7) is chronologically archived at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style--Archive11 --------------- ==A proposal to simplify all of this== A number of points spring to mind: *Although this discussion is long, I think we are making progress - one final push may see us through to a good, workable solution. *It is advantageous to have one official style - that's the whole purpose of a style guide. It also gives a useful point of reference to all WPians who care about style. I therefore suggest (post-amendments - see below) to refer to this page as "official style". The term would give this page proper authority, whilst at the same time not using the term "policy", which some people think would mean the ArbCom would get involved if people broke it. *On the issue of usage, we need to be permissive - allow any standard form of English. Exceptions to this rule are damaging to this page (see above). *"Official style" should be as short as possible - people do not like lots of complicated rules! *This Manual of Style can and should be supplemented by a non-official page offering guidance on how to interpret it. To this end, I have made a working draft proposal on Wikipedia:Manual of Style/proposal (the first edit to this page was the current policy, so going to history and looking at the diffs will show what changes are proposed). Please feel free either to edit this page, or to offer comments either here on on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/proposal. I have also made a draft additional guidance page on Wikipedia:Guidance on applying the Manual of Style and Wikipedia talk:Guidance on applying the Manual of Style. All comments would be welcome, User:Jguk 22:00, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC) ==Style guides, national differences, etc.== I'd like to suggest the following: *Anyone making a complaint or a suggestion about the style guide should do so with the reader in mind, and not the editors. *Making a complaint or a suggestion based on national differences can be divisive, especially if it is not handled carefully. *If people are terribly offended by something they consider foreign, they might be wise to reconsider working on an international project. Some points from above are worth repeating: *Few people know their own language as well as they think they do. *Various publications have their own style. A lot ot things vary and it's seldom a problem to readers. Some points about style guides and writing for publication: *Probably few, if any, people agree 100 percent with any style guide. *Writers for probably any publication have their work changed. They don't always agree. They often don't know until after the fact. *Mature people accept these things and don't make a conflagration out of small matters. *A major reason for a style guide is consistency. Certain things are long-established in Wikipedia style. That should not be taken lightly. People who want changes for anything, especialy to things that are long-established, would be wise to consider their approach. User:Maurreen 02:41, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC) :I haven't looked at Jguk's links yet, so have no idea whether I'll agree or not, but I just want to respond briefly to Maurreen and say that I do agree with her point about writers and style guides. Writers learn a new style with each publication they go to. It's no big deal and professional writers don't fuss about it. I also agree that pointing out differences based on nationality is extremely unpopular at Wikipedia, and if the MoS continues to pursue that, people are going to vote with their fingers, so to speak. If the MoS is to be respected, it has to respect the prevailing culture and try to work with it, not against it. User:SlimVirgin 02:48, Mar 15, 2005 (UTC) ::It is for some of the reasons outlined above that I favour a permissive, rather than prescriptive approach: a MoS that allows any standard form of English, supplemented by non-binding guidance on how it is interpreted in practice. And having a permissive approach should, I hope, allow us to give MoS back some official status. ::On the issue of different national differences - it is really a question of give and take. We should take the largely accepted approach that most Wikipedians are able to accept as a compromise - and go with that. It's not a perfect approach, by any means, but it seems the best way to reduce needless edit wars and conflict. After all, is there really any benefit in me edit-warring to force the article on ''2005 in NASCAR'', to which I am the major contributor, back to British English when someone converts it to American English? Similarly, is there any problem with me continuing to write my major contributions to it in British English, since, whilst I am aware of many linguistic differences that we have, I am not fluent in the niceties of American English? IMO, the answer is no, but I shan't try to revert to BE if another editor converts to AmE. SV, I also hope the approach I am suggesting, which allows for a longer description of what "closely-related" means and which allows for differing opinions to be expressed in non-binding guidance, helps reduce our differences on this. ::I hope you look at both discussion drafts (on Wikipedia:Manual of Style/proposal and Wikipedia:Guidance on applying the Manual of Style and offer constructive comments thereon. As noted above, I hope, after all these discussions, we are nearly there. If we can get there by actually ''reducing'' the instruction creep for once, so much the better. Kind regards, User:Jguk 08:45, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC) :::I have mixed feelings about this. It takes us further away from having a style guide per se, and closer towards having a set of Yalta Conference rules on which national style to use when. (Assuming it's even clear which style each actually is.) But since this is already the case with spelling, perhaps doing the same thing with punctuation is merely "going with the flow": the same bun-fight will determine both, rather than having to have one over spelling, and then still not being sure one can copy-edit to MoS punctuation without someone complaining. User:Alai 03:41, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC) In the drafts what does ''standard English'' mean? User:Philip Baird Shearer 14:20, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC) ::I mean English as written in at least a semi-formal or formal context - eg as you'd write a business letter or exam, or as a broadsheet newspaper would write - as opposed to slang or dialectal, User:Jguk 16:25, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC) :::Perhaps a note at the bottom explaining this would be useful, or perhaps change "standard" to "formal". User:Philip Baird Shearer 10:12, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC) Would it be helpful if an author could include some metadata in an article indicating the variant of English she is using? This might help prevent inadvertent conflict and acrimony, where the style of English being used wasn't obvious to a contributor. This could be easily accomplished by placing a comment at the top of the page. <!-- this article is written in Canadian English --> I write in Canadian English, and I'm sure that many British and U.S. editors would take a look and decide that it's full of spelling errors, if they weren't familiar with it. ''—User:Mzajac User talk:Mzajac 2005-03-15 15:02 Z'' ::I don't think it would be helpful - labelling articles as being in one form of English is really the sort of thing we're trying to get away from. Make hidden comments if a change really irks you, but otherwise I'd recommend just going with the flow, 16:25, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC) :Michael, have a look at the "Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style--Archive11#Proposal:_Introduction_of_Style_Tags "-discussion above.
:I agree with you that articles started in Canadian English will probably be changed to British or American E. in the course of editing. If you're the first major contributor, I think you're free to add comments to your article and state what kind of English you're using. User:Flo 02:41, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC) :: Thanks for pointing out the discussion I missed. I notice someone else just added
<!-- Spelling: en-CA, -ize --> at the top of Canada.
:: Canadian English was just an example.
:: What I think will happen more often is that an article's regional English may be non-obvious. An editor will miss the single occurence of "gray" in section seven, and write "tyre" in a minor edit of section two. After a while you have a mix, and it's a waste of time to try to track down who used the first Britishism or US-ism, but it may be considered rude to arbitrarily pick a language. Tagging the article early on would avoid this.
:: Also, this may have useful applications down the road. Perhaps Wikipedia could use the info to add standard metadata like <html lang="en-US"> to the page, or a future spelling-checker feature could flag inconsistencies. ''—User:Mzajac User talk:Mzajac 2005-03-17 19:59 Z''
:This has been proposed and discussed before, but I don't think anyone's ever spoken about a "future spelling-checker" feature in this context. That, I feel, makes the proposal even more compelling. User:Hajor 14:54, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)
:: Pure speculation on my part. But I could see something along the lines of the automatically-generated lists which catalogue wiki code errors, etc. ''—User:Mzajac User talk:Mzajac 2005-03-18 15:38 Z''
:In the first discussion, I was the one who initially proposed to use such tags. I've realised however that it's quite a sensitive issue... Nationalities don't "own" articles, but for some editors, tags might suggest they do. I agree with Michael - if the first major contributor clearly states what style/spelling he or she used, it will simply save time later. User:Flo 15:49, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)
::Somebody mentioned the spelling comment in the Canada article (which has been removed by User: Jguk. I added the comment to provide spelling information for editors. Jguk objected, saying "everyone is welcome to edit articles", which is of course true. My spelling comments are not intended to deter editors, but rather to help copy-editors. Suggestion:::
<!-- Note for copy-editors: Spelling is en-CA, -ize --> User:SpNeo 03:05, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)
:::If you think that such spelling comments are not necessary, have a close look at: [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=NATO&action=history&limit=500&offset=0] and count how many times the spelling has been changed and reverted. I consider this a waste of time. User:SpNeo 03:14, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)
::::Spelling comments may be really helpfull for many of us who are non-native English speakers, and have learned a specific dialect of English (e.g. British or American) so we are unaware wether a particular spelling is correct in a less "common" (for us) dialect (say Canadian, or Australian). Most Europeans learn British English, so may think other spellings are odd or even incorrect, just because we are unaware of it. --User:Xavic69 06:30, 2005 Mar 31 (UTC)
Can't wikipedia replace British spellings with US spellings (and vice versa) on the fly based on a user preference?--User:Will2k 14:17, Apr 18, 2005 (UTC)
== Removal of guidelines ==
I'm not wild about removal of parts of the guidelines ("quotes", vs "quotes,") simply due to their being under discussion. Perhaps there should simply be an "under discussion" notice on the section. And in any case, it ought to apply equally to the ''whole'' punctuation section, not just punctuation-in-quotes -- the serial comma rule and double quotes marks would equally be removed under the proposed revision. User:Alai 05:06, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)
:I agree. The removeal is not customary or needed. User:Maurreen 06:19, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)
== Separate page for national differences? ==
Maybe people who want to fight about national differences should just take that to a separate page. I'm not sure any of this has been productive. User:Maurreen 06:14, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)
:Have you seen my proposals referred to above? ''Inter alia'' they achieve this, User:Jguk 06:44, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)
::We are apparently looking at this from two very different perspectives. I'm not sure the gap can be bridged. User:Maurreen 06:51, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)
My perspective is to have a formally expressed official style that is short, to the point, permissive and is already in line with what WPians do - and supplement it by comments on how that official style is interpreted (which is where the national differences discussions will belong). One advantage is that the non-binding supplement could represent more than one view - which should minimise many of these arguments. What's your perspective? User:Jguk 06:59, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)
:More on my perspective:
:*Serve the reader.
:*Do not engage in edit wars.
:*Major style changes should have a compelling reason (which I haven't yet seen).
:*If approved, your proposal appears that it would make most articles require editing to conform to something new. I do not see that as warranted.
:*It appears that your proposal is a further attempt to change the style regarding "U.S." and serial commas. I'm not certain of the specifics, but my memory is that you have not let these issues rest for a month out of the last six. I believe they deserve a rest of at least six months.
:The way to minimize arguments is to suggest and discuss instead of argue, to concede to references when there is no compelling reason to go against them, to let suggestions wither away when they don't gain sufficient support, to consider priorities. And so on. User:Maurreen 07:35, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)
::I would agree that we should serve the reader, but I think the current guidelines do not do that at all. The reader is served by having punctuation, spelling and grammar rules match as closely as possible the ones for their country if they are reading a topic about their country. The current stylebook chooses to make it so every article always has incorrect usage for every reader in one way or another because of the use of a bizarre hodge-podge of blended rules. I would disagree that most articles here would have to be changed, as I was editing articles here for months before I ran into anyone actually following the complicated and counterintuitive rules actually in the style guide. I think the style guide should reflect the common editor's working consensus on this issue to follow the spelling, grammar and punctuation rules for their particular country if the topic is about their country, to write what you know on others and to not object if someone from that particular country makes style changes that are more appropriate there.
::
::Your comments further above that people who do not like to see foreign rules applied to local topics should just not work on an international project is akin to telling people to love it or leave it with no regard for even pretending to listen to another side. Claims to avoid edit wars and remain civil are fine and good except that you reverted things repeatedly yourself to line up with a style that is not policy but only treated as such when you want it to be. It appears that your objections to improvements to the manual of style are largely based upon intertia and doing what is easier for you, not what is better for the reader.
::I would larely agree with your last paragraph, but then I think if you'd actually follow it you'd admit that the style guide does need to be updated. What compelling reason do you have to force artificial style guidelines that conflict with every editor's normal rules of writing? Why don't you concede a point instead of arguing? What priorities of Wikipedia are possibly served by trying to keep a failed non-policy style guide exactly the same as the one that has been causing such grief? Please consider what you say and what it means for the good of Wikipedia in general. User:DreamGuy 11:27, Mar 16, 2005 (UTC)
==Jguk's proposal==
Wow, it's good to be back! Having the database read-only is like peering in from behind the Iron Curtain. Not that I'm addicted or anything ... Anyway, I've left comments about Jguk's proposal at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/proposal, but feel free to move or copy it here as preferred. User:SlimVirgin 07:51, Mar 17, 2005 (UTC)
:If the style guide is going to be revised, I urge at least keeping the style concerning first major contributors. User:Maurreen 08:18, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)
::I like the first-major-contributer rule myself, but there are others who don't, so I was thinking instead it might make sense to add that any changes to articles must be done ''sensitively'', and should be respectful of the work of previous editors who may have put a lot of time and work into them. Phrasing it that way won't sort out an edit war, but it will point people in the right direction. By the way, I just made a chronological archive of this discussion as the page was over 200 kb; feel free to sort it out as you see fit. I made a note at the top of this page which archive I put it into. User:SlimVirgin 08:37, Mar 17, 2005 (UTC)
:::If the first major contributor uses completely different rules for spelling, punctuation and grammar than the readers and other editors of the topic, there's absolutely no reason at all to keep the style incorrect just for the sake of keeping it the same. That's almost as bad as saying that an article needs to keep all the spelling errors of the original editor because the first editor is more important than all the others who follow. "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds," or so it's been said. In most cases the rules that should be used should be fairly obvious = version of English language taught there. That way if it's foregin language but uses British English (like much of Europe) or American English (Mexico, say) you go with what the English speakers there use. That way the largest number of ''readers'' will see what they expect, and most likely the same can be said for editors too, which would make everything more consistent and less likely to lead to fights with people trying to impose rules that make no sense for the article in question. Of course the wild card is those people who don't seem to understand any rules in the first place, but then that'll happen no matter what rules are adopted. User:DreamGuy 16:41, Mar 17, 2005 (UTC)
I have publicized the proposal at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy), Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals), and WP:RFC. User:Maurreen 16:44, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)
:In case it's not clear, I oppose the proposal. For one thing, Jguk has included material which is extraneous to any differences between national varieties of English. But I have several other reasons. User:Maurreen 07:39, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)
::What I like about Jguk's proposal is that it's shorter. The MoS should be as long as necessary and as short as possible. But what about the Usage section? In the proposal, it's extremely short. The four sentences are really good, but what about keeping spellings in proper names, avoiding e.g. ... It seems a bit too short to me. User:Flo 16:11, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)
:::Thank you for your support. The idea is to keep the MoS short, but allow for other non-binding guidance on Wikipedia:Guidance on applying the Manual of Style page (which I admit, needs developing further - please feel free to amend it), User:Jguk 17:25, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)
:I do like that the new proposal allows us to use i.e. and e.g. (though I've gotten into virtual edit wars over whether it's "e.g." or "eg."), since calling those "scholarly abbreviations" always struck me as a bit silly. I suppose I can live without n.b. and viz. --User:Angr 17:58, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)
==But so often it's just silly==
I just do want to remark: I am constantly amazed at the people who seem to have nothing better to do than to go through perfectly good, perfectly comprehensible articles, changing "-ise" to "-ize" or ''vice versa'', or changing the forms of the dates back and forth. I've started just ignoring them. -- User:Jmabel | User talk:Jmabel 09:05, Mar 17, 2005 (UTC)
:I've just added the following to Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/proposal, basically saying we may need to address the point you make:
::"I wonder whether it might be worth adding a paragraph stressing the importance of being sensitive to other editors' work. I've seen the MoS being used as almost a weapon by some editors (a very small number). It would be good to say explicitly that style issues and issues of national preference should never take precedence over substantive content issues or good writing; and should not be used to start edit wars. I'm not sure how to phrase this, and would need to think about it some more. I feel that if the MoS is to be respected, it must work with editors, not against them, and we should perhaps make that explicit somewhere in the text." User:SlimVirgin 09:17, Mar 17, 2005 (UTC)
Why can you not just drop attacks on the "national preference"? Articles which are perceived to be linked to a particular English speaking nation, will over time end up using that nation's English because many contributers tend to move articles that way. That the MoS recognize this tends to reduce conflict, all your suggestions which try get the Mos negate the use of specific national styles of English on articles perceived to be linked to a nation, will if adopted, encourage more edit wars not less and may well reduced the influence of the MoS. User:Philip Baird Shearer 13:36, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)
== What about hyphens? ==
Just to add to the confusion, I would like to point out that right now the MoS says nothing at all about hyphens after prefixes like "non" and "anti" and the like. At "non-" OED says, "In the majority of the compounds of ''non-'', the hyphen is usually retained; but it is commonly omitted in the case of a few, such as ''nonconformist'', ''nonentity'', ''nonsense'', in which the etymology has to some extent been lost sight of." But ''Collins English Dictionary'', which is also British, only hyphenates after ''non-'' if the next word starts with a capital letter (''non-Hodgkin's lymphoma'') or an N (''non-negotiable''). The American dictionaries I've checked only hyphenate between ''non-'' and a capital letter, but leave ''nonnegotiable'' without a hyphen. ''Anti-'' is even worse: OED gives ''anti-convulsant'' but ''anticonvulsive'', Collins usually hyphenates ''anti-'' before a vowel (except ''antioxidant'') but not before a consonant (unless capitalized, of course), and the American dictionaries hyphenate ''anti-'' only before capital letters and I. At the risk of being perceived as an American capitalist imperialist pig-dog, I suggest following the American dictionaries because the rules are easier to follow: don't hyphenate after prefixes unless what they're prefixed to is capitalized, or to prevent the jarring look of two lower-case I's next to each other. --User:Angr 18:55, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)
:I don't think we need a rule about this, User:Jguk 20:36, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)
If it comes to that, we don't need rules for any of the things covered in the MoS. But we have them anyway. --User:Angr 17:15, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)
::We need some rules about structure and Wiki-syntax, or the encyclopaedia really would look like a hotchpotch of articles. But we could certainly do with some simplification, especially on the divisive issues. Have you seen Wikipedia:Manual of Style/proposal? It's time we got rid of the unnecessary rules! User:Jguk 19:14, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)
User:Angr , I don't feel strongly either way. Can you draft something and put it here? User:Maurreen 04:43, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)
:Oops, you did that already: "Don't hyphenate after prefixes unless what they're prefixed to is capitalized, or to prevent the jarring look of two lower-case I's next to each other."
:If we do add hyphenation to the style guide, I would suggesting including something along the lines of favoring "re-election" to "reelection", although I can't think of good wording right now. User:Maurreen 07:07, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)
::I would actually prefer "reelection", and it's the one preferred by American dictionaries. British dictionaries prefer "re-election". The more I look into this, it seems there is a de facto preference for hyphens on Wikipedia and in the world at large ("re-election" gets way more Google hits than "reelection", for example). Which is why I shouldn't be the one to draft a proposal, because the proposal I would draft will be contrary to what most people are already doing. --User:Angr 07:39, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Personally I'd go with the Oxford definitions, but like so many other things, spelling checkers use a set of rules which may or may not conform to perceived national standards. So I think the best to go with any style, but if there is change or an addition to the text which leads to a dispute then go with primary usage. User:Philip Baird Shearer 10:23, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)
:In the case of "reedit" and "reelect", it would prefer "re-edit" and "re-elect" for better readablity. "Reedit" and "reelect" suggest "REEDit" and "REElect". User:Flo 04:49, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)
::See also previous discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style archive (punctuation)#Hyphens. The rule I was taught is that a prefixed word should be hyphenated if the addition of the prefix creates a vowel combination that usually represents a single phoneme. Thus, "re-election" is hyphenated because "ee" often appears as representing a single long "e", but "reopen" doesn't need the hyphen because "eo" has no such role. The rationale is that a reader seeing "ee" will tend to read it as a single vowel, and will need a fraction of a second to realize, from the rest of the word, that it was two separate sounds. The reader will have no such problem with "eo". Some people might make an exception to this rule for words that are very familiar in their prefixed form, like "cooperate", on which I could go either way. User:JamesMLane 17:35, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)
:::It wasn't that long ago that "co-operate" was spelled with a hyphen too (or a dieresis). Would you spell "re-operate" without a hyphen? Really the distinction is whether the combination is really its own word or whether it's perceived as a neologism or coinage. Do you spell "email" with a hyphen? Depends how long you've been using it. But there's no way to make a policy about that. Our policy should be: look it up in the dictionary. If different dictionaries have different spellings, we allow them all.—User:Wahoofive (User talk:Wahoofive) 17:49, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)
::::I agree with you that neologisms are often given hyphens at first, and lose them as they become more familiar ("goodbye" used to be "good-bye"). I also agree that making a policy for such gradual shifts would be difficult. "Goodbye" is now a clear case, but "e-mail"/"email" is still in transition. Use of hyphens for a neologism, however, is different from its other uses. The correct way to write out the number 123 is "one hundred twenty-three". Hyphens sometimes clarify the meaning, as in "new age-discrimination rules" versus "new-age discrimination rules". (These examples are from Hyphen.) I think that breaking up vowel combinations so as to improve the readability is another use that's different from the use in neologisms. User:JamesMLane 19:49, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)
:::::Incidentally, the correct way to write out the number 123 is "one hundred and twenty-three" not "one hundred twenty-three" :) User:Jguk 20:45, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)
::::::Actually, in school (at least every school I went to) we were taught to omit the 'and'. Another difference across the pond? —User:Sean Kelly User_talk:Sean Kelly 20:52, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)
:::::::I don't know - either that or a case of "don't believe everything you were taught at school", User:Jguk 22:14, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)
==Quotation marks, splitting the difference==
My understanding is that no one objected when Hajor stated an intention to reinsert into the style guide the material on splitting the difference for style on quotation marks. My understanding is also that there was no discussion to remove that material, either originally or recently.
Hajor's reinsertion was reverted. I am going to restore it. If anyone disagrees, I ask that you discuss it here and get consensus first. User:Maurreen 04:43, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)
:Personally, I agree with it, and with the "compromise style" it rationalises. Indeed, one might make a similar comment about the entire punctuation issue. However right at the moment, re-introducing it might be seen as advocacy against Jguk's "vive la difference" proposal, so I'd personally be cautious about doing so unless there was some evidence of a consensus to do so. User:Alai 23:54, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)
:I disagree with the current phrasing. As a foreigner I read "we split the difference between American and British usage" and had no clue what it meant. I had to read the discussion to understand. First, the fact: "Wikipedia uses the American quotation symbol (") and the British punctuation rules." Second, the rationale: "These are the best choices for reasons of symbol visibility and sentence logic." So finally the "split the difference" comment is not the fact, not the rationale, just a happy consequence. If you want it, then it should come third after the fact and rationale which are more important.--User:67.124.149.4 21:51, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I just found out about the reinsertion of that crazy "splitting the difference" rule because I first read the Manual of Style in February and had no idea it had changed until right now (because a BE contributor reverted changes I had made to the Supreme Court of the United States) page to bring it into proper AE style. Just for the record, I preferred the previous rule (which I understood as where contributors simply keyed in their additions in their native dialect and generally refrained from editing each other's dialect peculiarities). The current compromise rule is simply insane, because as some people have pointed out in the archived talk pages, the result looks equally ridiculous to English writers everywhere. --User:Coolcaesar 00:10, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)
:As I understand it, the actual ''rule'' was at no point deleted, at no point reinserted. What I was keen to see reinstated was the description of that rule as "splitting the difference" (which ''was'' deleted). Why? Basically, to head off further threads of the The manual recommends British-style punctuation on US topics??!?! kind. User:Hajor 01:53, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)
This manual of style requires some British English usage on pages which are dominated by American English, and some American English usage on pages which are dominated by British English. This is but one example of this. This does give a ridiculous result, as Coolcaesar notes - and the Manual regularly gets ignored (for obvious reasons) by many WPians.
Unfortunately all attempts to permit articles to be fully consistent with one standard form of English have met with rebuffs by those unwilling to give up their pet likes. It's a shame, and it means this Manual does not reflect WP practice - but until those users decide to stop dictate their individual preferred styles to others, it's not going to change, User:Jguk 07:22, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)
== Personal titles ==
What personal titles are allowed? Someone just went through and added "Chef" to some articles including Bobby Flay. To me, this opens up a can of worms, as these are not ''official'' titles. For example, one could go through every article on a conductor and prefix their names with ''Maestro''. – User:Flamurai (User talk:Flamurai) 09:23, Mar 28, 2005 (UTC)
:I don't think that it's a question of what's allowed, but of what's correct. Neither 'chef' nor 'maestro' are normally used as titles in English-speaking countries, so it's incongruous to use them as such in Wikipedia.
:On a related point, I've noticed one editor styling himself 'Dr John Smith, B.Sc., M.Sc., Ph.D.'; it's worth pointing out that, first, one uses ''either'' the prefix 'Dr' ''or'' the suffix ''Ph.D.'', and secondly, that one would normally only use the 'M.Sc.', as the 'B.Sc.' is implied. User:Mel Etitis (Μελ_Ετητης)">User talk:Mel Etitis 10:57, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)
::''one would normally only use the 'M.Sc.', as the 'B.Sc.' is implied'' Only if one attended a university with a tradition of considering that the difference between a B.Sc and an M.Sc is a fiver (or has it gone up in recent years?). At "normal" universities there is a difference. For example one might do a B.A. and then an M.Sc. or some other combination. -- Perhapse I am showing my ignorance here is it only Master's degree#MAs in Oxford, Cambridge and Dublin which can be purchased? User:Philip Baird Shearer 19:28, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)
== gender neutrality ==
I'm just noting there doesn't appear to be any discussion of gender neutrality in the Manual of Style. Shouldn't there be?
:There was discussion, no consensus. User:Maurreen 03:37, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)
See: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style archive (gender-neutral pronouns). The issue was also raised (though undiscussed) at Talk:Non-sexist_language#Poll_on_Wikipedia.27s_adopted_gender-neutral_pronoun. User:Hyacinth 01:25, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)
== Lead section conventions for films ==
I'm a newbie testing the potential of Wikipedia, and a problem has come up concerning stylistic conventions. I find it difficult to locate clear guidelines about this sort of stuff in the Manual of Style, so maybe you guys can help me out.
Background: See the history page of Spartacus (movie) for an exchange of reverts.
Then follow the brief conversation at User talk:Cburnett under "Spartacus (movie) title row".
I mean, this is so very petty... Considering that Casablanca (movie) is the only film page that has reached featured article status, I think that a discussion of the stylistic conventions could very well get underway. User:62.148.218.217 21:14, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)
:As mentioned at Cburnett's Talk page, the discussion has moved on to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Movies ("Intro format"). User:62.148.218.217 21:22, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)
== Italics ==
Hi! I have a question about the use of italics. Namely, in the article Pope John Paul I, I used them, then another editor came by and removed them. See [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pope_John_Paul_I&diff=0&oldid=11762863 comparison of both versions]. What approach would be stilistically correct? Thanks for your answer. --User:Eleassar777 16:19, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)
:I'm not quite clear what most of the italics were meant to signify; if you could explain your reasons for using then, it would be easier to give an opinion. Without knowing, my first reaction is that they shouldn't be there.
:I've noticed that many editors use italics for quotations, which is both non-standard and odd. Any idea why this is done? User:Mel Etitis (Μελ_Ετητης)">User talk:Mel Etitis 17:17, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I just thought that all quotations should be in italics, as it is more readable then (at least for me). I got the similar answer at the article's talk page. This should be explained in the Manual. --User:Eleassar777 17:49, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Italics are used for several different things, including indicating foreign terms, for emphasis, to refer to words (instead of to what they represent), and for short quotations. None of these are non-standard or odd, but they are a matter of editorial style. ''—User:Mzajac User talk:Mzajac 2005-04-1 19:10 Z''
:Brief quotations, a sentence or two, should be embedded in the paragraph and set off with quotation marks, as if they were conversation. Longer quotations, however, often read more clearly if they are separated in "blockquoted" indented paragraphs. Setting the quote in italics may help differentiate the blockquote from the rest of the text. Partly an esthetic decision. --User:Wetman 22:28, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Below is the explanation I wrote on Talk:Pope John Paul I when I edited the quotation and italicisation in the main article. Eleassar777 requested there that I add it to this article under italicisation. I think most of what I stated is already scattered throughout the italicisation & quotes sections, but I thought there might be a place for the last sentence, with the caveat that it applies to quotations short enough to be embedded in the text, not to long quotations offset in their own paragraph.
*For some reason, every quotation in the article had been italicised. I've fixed this, removing either the italicisation or quotation where appropriate. Quotation marks should be used when directly quoting, even if the attribution for the quote has to be inferred rather than being stated directly—Mark Antony knew that his "friends, Romans [and] countrymen" would demand vengeance for Julius Caesar's death—or to indicate that this specific use of the word might carry a meaning slightly different from its dictionary defition—With "friends" like these, who needs enemies?; The Italians were worried they would "lose" the papal throne. Use italics when discussing the word itself—He preferred ''use'' to the more pretentious ''utilise.'' If we italicise a word inside quotation marks, it should be for the same reason we italicise it ''outside'' quotation marks; words should never be italicised just ''because'' they're inside quotes.
User:Binabik80 04:35, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I just encountered this issue about italics/quoting with The Cantos. And while my changes ''may'' have been accepted, I have to admit that it is possibile that using italics for quotations is considered good practice in some English-speaking countries who copy the practice from (IIRC) French. In the novels of James Joyce (an Irish writer) & Alan Paton (a South African), dialogue is presented as follows. When the quotation begins a paragraph:
:--Good morning, said the teacher to the class.
And when the quotation is embedded in a paragraph:
:The teacher said, ''Good morning, class. Has everyone done their homework?''
Obviously, if this standard practice in these two countries, Wikipedia should acknowledge it & accept it. However, I know Joyce was an experimental writer & he may not be a suitable example for acceptible use (e.g., would you trust a spell-checker based on ''Finnegans Wake''?) And I can't remember if the other South African writer I've read (Nadine Gordimer) follows this same style.
I mention all of this not to stir up trouble, but to be sure our consensus is as inclusive as possible. -- User:Llywrch 17:28, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
:::Standard style guides state that italics are ''not'' used in quotations. Short quotes are embedded in the text and separated using quotation marks. Long quotes are given in block form. Each line is indented and quotation marks are not used. The reference goes outside the final full stop (period). Even when the original quote contained italics, these italics are replaced by an underline when quoting. The only time italics are used is when the author wants to emphasise something in her/his own text. User:Exploding Boy 17:44, Apr 6, 2005 (UTC)
::::Writers should use italics when their use would help the reader to understand or follow the text. The same is true for punctuation. Also, different fora look different to a reader, and style to adapt to the particular forum being used: or to put it another way, newspapers are different from typed letters, which are different from books, magazines and websites.
::::So the real question here is whether using italics for quotations will help a reader of Wikipedia to follow the text. The answer is, in some articles, yes; in other articles, no. In some circumstances, usage of italics for quotations helps a reader understand that it is a quotation - and on other occasions it's not necessary. And it's for this reason that we should not be prescriptive about the matter, User:Jguk 19:28, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
:User:Jguk's point is not often enough explicitly made: that these guidelines (not rules) for points of usage, whether for italics or anything else, and even consistency of usage itself, merely serve a more essential purpose: to guide the reader. Well said. --User:Wetman 21:05, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
:: Use of quotation marks surely is sufficient that a reader can understand whether he is reading a quotation. So in my opinion, inside quotation marks, italics should be used in the same manner as outside them. Another important thing for the reader is to be able to differentiate if they were used in the original or were only subsequently added. In general this means that when they appear in the quotation, it should be explicitly stated whether they were added by the editor or were already used by the source. --User:Eleassar777 21:27, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
...which is exactly why style guides call for underlining words that were originally in italics when quoting. We all know that Wikipedia is not paper, but it ''is'' supposed to be academic. We should be following widely recognized and used academic styles for the exact reasons those styles are used in other academic writings. User:Exploding Boy 21:37, Apr 6, 2005 (UTC)
:: Not all readers know these rules, so it is probably better to explicitly state than to underline. Another thing is the style guide of Wikipedia does not state that italics can also be used to emphasize (at least not in the section "italics"). --User:Eleassar777 21:54, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Yes, but people can learn. The fact that some people may not be familiar with academic citation styles does not mean that we shouldn't use them. User:Exploding Boy 22:09, Apr 6, 2005 (UTC)
:::The reason this guide is falling into increasing disrepute is the insistence of some readers on trying to impose their views on style on others. If the style you adopt can easily be understood by readers - that's great - keep using it! But if others adopt a slightly different style that is equally understood by readers - that's great too! Readers want content. Content has to be presented in a suitable style if it's to make the greatest impact - but which suitable style is used is largely irrelevant. To return to this specific point: We certainly should not be dogmatic on the usage of italics, User:Jguk 22:22, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
All this would be alleviated by stating that Wikipedia uses recognized styles: MLA for humanities topics, APA for psychology, Chicago for sociology, and so on. We could even simplify further by requiring MLA style for all articles. User:Exploding Boy 22:53, Apr 6, 2005 (UTC)
== Superscripted Ordinals ==
Is there a definitive guide that Wiki's using to define whether or not superscripted ordinals are to be used?
* Far as I can see we never use them. We write 4077th, not 4077th. -- User:Jmabel | User talk:Jmabel 05:05, Apr 9, 2005 (UTC)
** My opinion is that they shouldn't be used, but if you look at the pages on How to name numbers in English and superscript, they talk about how ordinals are "often" superscripted, yet those pages use both superscripted and non-superscripted. On most of the pages for U.S. states, superscripts are used very often.
::I have been returning superscripted ordinals to non-superscripted on several pages, when I received this rather haughty and annonymous message:
::I believe you may be confusing style guidelines for typewritten manuscripts with typography rules. Because many typewriters and word processing programs did not support the proper display of ordinals, many schools developed guidelines requiring that none be used. In typography, superscripted ordinals are not only common, they are standard. Since html does not yet have standard character codes for displaying ordinals (as it does for some fractions; i.e. ¼, ½, ¾) the most common method is the tag. Please consider fixing those you removed. Thank you. - 12.74.169.35 15:24, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)
::I have over 1,000 books, which, I assume have been set by typographers, and only one uses superscripted ordinals (it's a rather old book, at that). Although many of the books use the fancy numbers that drop below the bottom like, which could make ordinal tags look superscripted, I don't get the feeling that superscripted ordinals are "standard," at all. User:Madmaxmarchhare 17:34, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)
::But, instead of being a punk, I would rather find out for sure.
*Articles in encyclopedia space merely document common English-language practice, not Wikipedia's own style. -- User:Jmabel | User talk:Jmabel 18:03, Apr 9, 2005 (UTC)
*That's "interesting," but I'm not sure if it gets us any closer to a solution here :-) User:Madmaxmarchhare 17:26, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)
== Headings and Sub-Headings: Capitalization of Major Words ==
At the moment the Manual of Style section on headings talks about, "Headings begin with a capital letter just like any other normal text. So, capitalise the first letter of the first word and any proper nouns in headings, but leave the rest lower case."
This part of the Manual of Style is WRONG. Normal English usage is to capitalise the major words of headings and sub-headings. For example, to quote section 3.39 of ''The United States Government Print Office Style Manual 2000'':
"3.39. All principal words are capitalized in titles of addresses, articles, books, captions, chapter and part headings, editorials, essays, headings, headlines, motion pictures and plays (including television and radio programs), papers, short poems, reports, songs, subheadings, subjects, and themes. The foregoing are also quoted." [bolding of relevant words is mine]
So, we have Related Links NOT Related links being correct usage. We have other similar incorrect styles used on the Wikipedia for a long time. For article titles we have to capitalise in certain ways for disambiguation. However, for headings and sub-headings within an article normal English language rules for capitalisation of titles should be followed.
Back in March I asked on the talk page of that particular part of the Manual of Style for a reference to a style manual which applies the 'rule' which seems to have been put in place for the Wikipedia. I have not seen anyone put a reference in place. However, after a short search I have found a manual of style from a major American organisation (thus torpedoing the argument that capitalization of major words is a British usage only) which is directly the opposite of what is said with the Wikipedia's guidance.
So, we have an American manual of style, my education and the application of capitalization rules for headings that I have seen in the media to say that the person who put that 'rule' in the Wikipedia Manual of Style was wrong. I would therefore strongly urge that this be changed asap. User:David Newton 17:16, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)
:Further, to quote the ''Chicago Manual of Style'', 14th Edition:
:"In regular title capitalization, also known as headline style, the first and last words and all nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, and subordinating conjunctions (if, because, as, that, etc.) are capitalized. Articles (a, an, the), coordinating conjunctions (and, but, or, for, nor), and prepositions, regardless of length, are lowercased unless they are the first or last word of the title..."
:That is certainly contrary to the 'rule' for Wikipedia. User:David Newton 17:41, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)
:*Again, there is no "academy" for English, Wikipedia is quite entitled to adopt any style we want. -- User:Jmabel | User talk:Jmabel 18:11, Apr 9, 2005 (UTC)
::Yeah, our weird capitalisation for section headings has always irked me, too. You have my support for changing it. User:Binabik80 18:30, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)
:::Actually, Wikipedia is not weird, it's following the latest trends. Most places using style guides that were not simply copied over from the 1920s do not randomly capitalize words just because they are in a heading. Capitalizing words for no reason in headings is an archaic holdover from the 19th century. You only capitalize words that would be capitalized normally. It's simple, common sense, and if there are places doing it the other way I'd argue that they are the ones doing it wrong. User:DreamGuy 09:05, Apr 15, 2005 (UTC)
I wouldn't support the idea of changing one prescriptive method (which is, in the main, followed) with another one. But would support removing any prescription. Some people like what the MoS says, others (myself included) would prefer your method - but why not allow either? The important thing is to present things nicely so a reader can absorb the info easily - not to prescribe, User:Jguk 19:01, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)
*This last remark appears to be part of jguk's ongoing campaign against establishing style standards. -- User:Jmabel | User talk:Jmabel 23:07, Apr 9, 2005 (UTC)
::My views are consistent throughout - readers welcome a well-written, well-presented article, and that, rather than any diktats imposed by self-appointed style gurus, is what is important. Also, my remark is based on the MoS's statement that where practice diverges from what the MoS says, the MoS will change, which is presumably a point you agree with? User:Jguk 23:29, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)
:::Your views do seem perfectly consistent, but also, opposed to consistency. Header caps. seems to me to be one area WP is pretty consistent already, so why would there be any motivation to change the MoS on the basis of practice? Clearly the MoS can't (and shouldn't) attempt to be consistent with ''all'' existing practice (otherwise it'd include things like "arbitrarily change articles from British English to American English as seems good to you"); rather it should attempt to reflect usages that there's explicit (in terms of support expressed for the guidelines themselves) and implicit (in terms of said practice) consensus for. That's hardly a matter of "diktat" by self-appointed anyone. The "Manual of Style" should be, in my opinion, a manual of style, not an "editor's bill of rights". What purpose does the latter serve, other than maintaining inconsistencies for their own sakes, or for the sakes of validating unfortunate notions of ownership of article text. User:Alai 05:51, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)
:I agree that Wikipedia is not WRONG, it is simply ''different''. Headings look random when they are randomly capitalised, and they are thus harder to read. Note that the Chicago MoS does not indicate capitalization of only "major" words. User:Hyacinth 23:17, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)
:I have to disagree with David for the following reasons: 1) The headings in a Wikipedia article are only meant to loosely structure a page. They are not a formal division like chapters in publications, so I don't see why they should have headline capitaliziation. 2) Most headings in Wikipedia do not have any special capitalization, so it's too late to add this rule now. It would just create an inconsistancy. Also, I don't agree with jguk that we should remove the current wording, because I don't think it prescribes anything. Perhaps it can be rephrased to say "In a heading, there is no need to capitalize the rest of the words" instead of "...do not capitalize the rest of the words." --User:Sean Kelly 02:24, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)
::If all else were equal, I'd prefer capitalizing the main words in both headings and titles. But if David is suggesting changing the capitalization style for section headings and keeping the current style for article titles, I'm not sure about that, because it would be inconsistent between the two.
::The only advantage I see for our current downcasing style for article titles is that it doesn't require piping. (A hypothetical example: If I want to link to User:Atlant 17:59, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC) Throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Whatever the advantages or disadvantages of i.e. and e.g., ''n.b.'' (and ''note'', for that matter) is particularly insidiuous and almost always used in a POV way to call attention to facts that the author thinks are important. I don't ever remember a time when ''n.b.'' or ''note'' was used in a way that wasn't both condescending and biased. User:Nohat 19:08, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC) ---- It's already been scratched by User:Markalexander100 (I would have but I've been involved in reverts over it) because it was unilaterally added (i.e., no consensus) and, now, there's no consensus to keep. So it's now the burden of the supporters to draw consensus to put it on the MoS — ''the way it should have been done when it was originally put on.'' So, if there's anyone that desires to have it put onto the MoS the ''correct way'', then by all means start it. My vote is still against it and not just because I don't find the arguments for it compelling, but it's strictly a personal style issue. If editor A wants to use it, then fine use it. If editor B doesn't want to use it, then fine don't use it. If editor A and B get into a revert war over it, then it should be settled just like any other style conflict. Be it over "e.g." or contractions (some styles do say to not use contractions because it's less formal) they can be settled the same. If you're worried about it causing more conflicts because it's *not* in the MoS then I'll be quick to point out the conflict arisen here because it *was* in the MoS and articles (e.g., Electrical wiring (UK)). I hope my usage of latin phrases (e.g., "i.e." and "e.g.") didn't confuse the 12-and-under crowd arguing this... :) User:Cburnett 19:18, Jun 6, 2005 (UTC) == BC/BCE == does wikipedia have a guideline for the BC versus BCE debate? -User:Lethe | User talk:Lethe 00:46, May 27, 2005 (UTC) *It has a Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/BCE-CE Debate. Will that do? —User:Wahoofive (User talk:Wahoofive) 05:38, 27 May 2005 (UTC) (An excellent argument for KISS). User:Markalexander100User talk:Markalexander100 02:01, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC) :I have created a Wikipedia:Eras/Compromise proposal. Please discuss the proposal on Wikipedia talk:Eras/Compromise proposal (not here). User:Kaldari 19:55, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC) == Italics -- Wikipedia and encyclopedias in general == There is currently a dispute on Talk:Wikipedia#Italics, concerning the italicization of "Wikipedia" in the article namespace. The Manual of Style currently has no specifics regarding the italicization of encyclopedias (although they most likely fall under "books"), and whether media being in paper or online form matters for italics. --User:Poiuytman User talk:PoiuytmanUser:Poiuytman 09:14, 27 May 2005 (UTC) ==Paintings?== I came here to look for the consensus on names of paintings because every article seems to use a different style. Since names of paintings are often quite long, using no marker at all (quotation marks or italics) makes their use in text often fairly confusing. I notice that this page mentions for italics ''books, court cases, movies, albums, TV series, magazines, ships, computer/video games'', and ''major orchestral works'' and for quotation marks "short stories, articles, statues, short films, songs, individual episodes of TV shows", and "poems". I'd prefer italics for paintings, but I could live with quotation marks as well. If the consensus is mentioned elsewhere, I think we should mention it here, too. User:Rl 08:59, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC) :Oxford GtS would suggest italics, don't have other references immediately to hand. Seems logical to me, as aside from collections and exhibitions which are somewhat transitory, there's not the same concept of longer composite works as in other media. Strongly agree we should mention it either way, once we have a general inkling as to which is preferrable. User:Alai 01:55, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC) ::Agree, italics makes sense for paintings. — User:CatherineMunro\User_talk:CatherineMunro 04:25, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC) :Same as ever. The iconic genre is not capialized. All titles are capitalized. Thus: :: A Madonna and Child by Pontormo. ::''Madonna and Child,'' by Pontormo. ::A portrait of Louis XIV by Rigaud. ::''Louis XIV,'' by Rigaud. :::Makes perfect sense. Thanks everyone, you have been most helpful. If this is a consensus, we should work it into the Wikipedia:Manual of Style and the Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (titles). User:Rl 07:30, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC) Oops—pardon me. It seems I've just duplicated this question over at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (titles). It's worth noting that there is actually a partially conflicting policy on that page; most visual art isn't mentioned, but for some reasons statues are named...and quotation marks instead of italics are called for. I concur with the above uniform style suggestion (italics), however. --User:TenOfAllTrades(User_talk:TenOfAllTrades) 03:34, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC) == Policy on terminology consistency? == One thing that I've noticed in a number of articles is the inconsistent use of terms even when there are no overriding contextual reasons to do so. For example, take the abbreviation for World War II - a number of articles use the abbreviation WWII [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Whatlinkshere&target=WWII], and others use the abbreviation WW2 [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Whatlinkshere&target=WW2]. For the Nanking Massacre, some articles use that term [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Whatlinkshere&target=Nanking_Massacre], and others use "Rape of Nanking" [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Whatlinkshere&target=Rape_of_Nanking]. It seems to me that there should be a MoS policy stating that barring any contextual, technical, or dialect issues, articles should use the same terminology as the primary article article. This has the added benefit of centralizing debates regarding terminology in the relevant articles; people that lose an argument on how to name article XYZ would not be able to fight their fight on the articles that link to XYZ. Comments? --User:Bletch 23:58, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC) :Yes. Are you crazy? The last thing a big free-flowing project like this needs is a rule to stifle creativity. While it may be possible to come up with one way of saying World War II that is the best way for so doing, to remove the ability for anyone to write it as WW II because they "lost" some argument somewhere misses a whole bunch of the philosophy behind Wikipedia. Highlighted links are not meant to be "titles" which may have all sorts of constraints (including disambiguations and the fact that articles frequently encompass multiple related terms) and words in text should not be straight-jacketed into article titles either. A link is just a link, a way for the reader to explore a subject further. By holding the pointer on the link you can see the article to which that link will lead. The person writing the article (and others who modify it) may have all sorts of reasons to express things the way they do without stilting things by making links exactly match titles and vice versa. In fact, Wikipedia options for setting up links are the way they are just for the reason that good writing, scholarship, and multiple backgrounds of contributors make plasticity in this aspect of writing/editing absolutely necessary. I think your idea could have merit in only a limited number of cases at best - User:Marshman 01:41, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC) ::Well much of those disambiguation justifications fall under what I previously said about contextual reasons. For obvious reasons, an article on Brazil would link to its national sport by using
Manual of Style
#REDIRECT Style guide
Manual of Style
Can somebody write an article about manual? (i.e. instruction manual). It´s very usefull, i.e. http://www.instruction-manuals.co.uk/
Manual of style
#REDIRECT Wikipedia:Manual of Style
Manual of style
#REDIRECT Style guide
See other meanings of words starting from letter:
M
MA | MB | MC | MD | ME | MF | MG | MH | MI | MJ | MK | ML | MN | MO | MP | MR | MS | MT | MU | MW | MX | MY | MZ |Words begining with Manual_of_style:
Manual_of_Style
Manual_of_Style
Manual_of_Style
Manual_of_Style
Manual_of_style
Manual_of_style
Manual_of_Style--Alpha_Archive1
Manual_of_Style--Alpha_Archive2
Manual_of_Style--Alpha_Archive3
Manual_of_Style--Alpha_Archive4
Manual_of_Style--Alpha_Archive5
Manual_of_Style--Archive1
Manual_of_Style--Archive10
Manual_of_Style--Archive11
Manual_of_Style--Archive12
Manual_of_Style--Archive2
Manual_of_Style--Archive3
Manual_of_Style--Archive4
Manual_of_Style--Archive5
Manual_of_Style--Archive7
Manual_of_Style--Archive8
Manual_of_Style--Archive9
Manual_of_Style--Archive_(U.S._vs._U.K._2)
Manual_of_Style--Archive_Directory
Manual_of_Style--Draft_Trim
Manual_of_Style--Draft_Trim_discussion_archive
Manual_of_Style/Archive_6
Manual_of_Style/Dashes
Manual_of_Style/Draft_trim_(November_2004)
Manual_of_Style/Draft_trim_(November_2004)
Manual_of_Style/External_links
Manual_of_Style/proposal
Manual_of_Style/proposal
Manual_of_Style/See_also
Manual_of_style/Titles_of_color_articles
Manual_of_Style/Wikipedia_Manual_of_Style
Manual_of_Style_(biographies)
Manual_of_Style_(biographies)
Manual_of_Style_(biographies)/Archive_April_2005
Manual_of_Style_(biographies)/Archive_Feb_20_2003
Manual_of_Style_(biographies)/Proposed_interim_policy_for_Honorific_prefixes
Manual_of_Style_(biographies)/Proposed_interim_policy_for_Honorific_prefixes
Manual_of_Style_(biographies)/Proposed_interim_policy_for_Honorific_prefixes/archive
Manual_of_Style_(biographies)/Survey_on_Style-Prefixed_Honorary_Titles
Manual_of_Style_(biographies)/Survey_on_Style-Prefixed_Honorary_Titles
Manual_of_Style_(biographies)/Survey_on_Style-Prefixed_Honorary_Titles/Archive01
Manual_of_Style_(biographies)/Survey_on_Style-Prefixed_Honorary_Titles/Archive02
Manual_of_Style_(biographies)/Survey_on_Style-Prefixed_Honorary_Titles/Ballots
Manual_of_Style_(biographies)/Survey_on_Style-Prefixed_Honorary_Titles/External_Style_Usage
Manual_of_Style_(biographies)/Survey_on_Style-Prefixed_Honorary_Titles/Ratification
Manual_of_Style_(biographies)/Survey_on_Style-Prefixed_Honorary_Titles/Vote_Corralling
Manual_of_Style_(China-related_articles)
Manual_of_Style_(China-related_articles)
Manual_of_Style_(dashes)
Manual_of_Style_(dashes)
Manual_of_style_(dashes)
Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers
Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)
Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)
Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)/archive1
Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)/archive10
Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)/archive11
Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)/archive12
Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)/archive13
Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)/archive14
Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)/archive15
Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)/archive16
Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)/archive17
Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)/archive18
Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)/archive2
Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)/archive3
Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)/archive4
Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)/archive5
Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)/archive6
Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)/archive7
Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)/archive8
Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)/archive9
Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)/archive_dash_discussion
Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)/Eras
Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)/Eras
Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)/Eras_-_Archive1
Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)/proposed_revision
Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)/proposed_revision
Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)/vote
Manual_of_Style_(disambiguation_pages)
Manual_of_Style_(disambiguation_pages)
Manual_of_Style_(disambiguation_pages)/Archive_1
Manual_of_Style_(guidance)
Manual_of_Style_(guidance)
Manual_of_Style_(headings)
Manual_of_Style_(headings)
Manual_of_style_(headings)
Manual_of_style_(headings)
Manual_of_Style_(hyphens)
Manual_of_Style_(Japan-related_articles)
Manual_of_Style_(Japan-related_articles)
Manual_of_Style_(Japan-related_articles)/Survey
Manual_of_Style_(jguk's_changes)
Manual_of_Style_(Latter_Day_Saints)
Manual_of_Style_(legal)
Manual_of_Style_(legal)
Manual_of_Style_(links)
Manual_of_Style_(links)
Manual_of_Style_(lists)
Manual_of_Style_(lists)
Manual_of_Style_(lists_-_embedded_lists)
Manual_of_Style_(lists_-_stand_alone_lists)
Manual_of_Style_(lists_-_stand_alone_lists)
Manual_of_Style_(lists_of_links)
Manual_of_Style_(lists_of_links)
Manual_of_Style_(Mormonism)
Manual_of_Style_(music)
Manual_of_Style_(music)
Manual_of_Style_(Names)
Manual_of_Style_(national_varieties_of_English)
Manual_of_Style_(national_varieties_of_English)
Manual_of_Style_(personal_pronouns)
Manual_of_Style_(pronunciation)
Manual_of_Style_(pronunciation)
Manual_of_style_(pronunciation)
Manual_of_Style_(Quotation_marks_and_apostrophes)
Manual_of_Style_(sister_projects)
Manual_of_Style_(spaces_after_a_period)
Manual_of_Style_(spelling)
Manual_of_Style_(spelling)
Manual_of_Style_(Thailand-related_articles)
Manual_of_Style_(Thailand-related_articles)
Manual_of_Style_(titles)
Manual_of_Style_(titles)
Manual_of_Style_(trademarks)
Manual_of_Style_(trademarks)
Manual_of_Style_(U.S._vs_American)
Manual_of_Style_(US_vs_American)
Manual_of_Style_archive_("See_also")
Manual_of_Style_archive_("U.S."_or_"American")
Manual_of_Style_archive_(abbreviations_and_acronyms)
Manual_of_Style_archive_(capitalization)
Manual_of_Style_archive_(chemical_names)
Manual_of_Style_archive_(citing_references)
Manual_of_Style_archive_(external_links)
Manual_of_Style_archive_(foreign_languages)
Manual_of_Style_archive_(gender-neutral_pronouns)
Manual_of_Style_Archive_(Layout)
Manual_of_Style_archive_(links)
Manual_of_Style_archive_(Names)
Manual_of_Style_archive_(national_varieties_of_English)
Manual_of_Style_archive_(numbers)
Manual_of_Style_archive_(personal_pronouns)
Manual_of_Style_archive_(places)
Manual_of_Style_archive_(Poll:_"U.S."_and_serial_comma)
Manual_of_Style_archive_(Poll:_always_use_"U.S."_and_Oxford_commas?)
Manual_of_Style_archive_(pronunciation)
Manual_of_Style_archive_(punctuation)
Manual_of_Style_archive_(quotes_and_quote_marks)
Manual_of_Style_archive_(regions_and_directions)
Manual_of_Style_archive_(sexuality)
Manual_of_Style_archive_(ships_as_"she")
Manual_of_Style_archive_(spaces_after_a_full_stop/period)
Manual_of_Style_archive_(spaces_after_a_period)
Manual_of_Style_archive_(spelling)
Manual_of_Style_archive_(spelling_1)
Manual_of_Style_archive_(spelling_2)
Manual_of_Style_archive_(spelling_3)
Manual_of_Style_archive_(spelling_4)
Manual_of_Style_archive_(style_guide_errata)
Manual_of_Style_archive_(versions_of_English)
Manual_of_Style_Archive_(visual_design)
Manual_of_Style_archive_(visual_presentation)
Manual_of_Style_for_China-related_articles
Manual_of_Style_for_China-related_articles
Manual_of_Style_for_Japan-related_articles
Manual_of_Style_for_Japan-related_articles
Manual_of_Style_for_Japan-related_articles/Macrons
Manual_of_Style_for_Japan-related_articles/misc
Manual_of_Style_for_Japan-related_articles/name_table
Manual_of_Style_for_Japan-related_articles/Naming_order
Manual_of_Style_for_Japan-related_articles/Naming_order
Manual_of_Style_for_Japan-related_articles/Naming_order/archived_votes
Manual_of_Style_for_Japan-related_articles/Romanization
Manual_of_Style_for_Japan-related_articles/tessaiga
Manual_of_Style_for_Thailand-related_articles
Manual_of_Style_for_Thailand-related_articles
These materials are based on Wikipedia and licensed under the GNU FDL
YouTube.com videos better site than Turbo Tax 2007
