This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

At Manchester Small-Scale Experimental Machine and other articles, User:Eric Corbett has styling the reference sections in a novel way using Template:style-nt that he created recently, to give himself control over text point size, whether or not an edit button appears by the headings, whether they show up in the TOC or not, and what-all. The coding looks cryptic, and it's hard to discern any good reason for not going with the usual default style that one gets with normal section and subsection heading markup. He keeps putting it back, with little justification; see User talk:Eric Corbett#What does Template:style-nt do?. Does the MOS have anything to say about editors going their own way on such styling? Dicklyon (talk) 04:28, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

What does it do? What's the point of writing documentation if nobody reads it? Eric Corbett 04:55, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

This template should probably be submitted to WP:TFD. The headings are the way they are and users really shouldn't be trying to Make Their Pages Perfect With Respect To Their Preferences. There is also a bit of false documentation regarding whether bold headings are allowed by MOS--they aren't. --Izno (talk) 05:15, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

That's not what the MoS says at all. What it explicitly discourages is the use of the semicolon as in ";pseudo-heading" to produce bold headings, not bold headings per se. And it strongly encourages the use of heading markup as in "===Real heading===" for accessibility reasons, which this template supports. But I'm interested in which part of the MoS you're using to justify your assertion that "users really shouldn't be trying to Make Their Pages Perfect". Do you have a link? Eric Corbett 06:45, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

Focusing on the template issue is really to miss the point. I could, for instance, achieve a similar result to the template by prefixing a normal section header with something like <div id="section-header" style="font-size:14px;"> and suffixing it with </div>, or I could even override the default look of a level 3 header - or any other - by writing a new CSS definition. What would the MoS have to say about that, and why should it care? Eric Corbett 07:12, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

Yes, you could do that, and it would likely get reverted (I see you've made a pointy edit to that effect at already). The use of the template is more insidious, as the naive editor will see it and just think it's some widely used way of making some consistent styling, rather than your personal idiosyncratic way of styling, which is what it really is. Can't we all just use a consistent style? Aren't you a software engineer? Have you not bought in to the advantages of coding with a shared and understood style guide? Dicklyon (talk) 14:23, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

Why would it get reverted? In what way does it go against the guidance in the MoS? Of course we could all use a visually consistent style, this one for instance, which is more aesthetically pleasing than the default site-wide css for level 3 headers. Is it necessary to point out that the purpose of such css definitions is so that they can be overridden? And it's rather insulting to call my demonstration, clearly labelled as such, as pointy, but insulting behaviour appears to be your forte. One final thing: inconsistency in other areas of the MoS is actively encouraged, date formatting and spelling are two obvious examples. Is your next campaign going to be to force a single date format down everyone's throats? Eric Corbett 14:35, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

That sounds uncomfortable. Dicklyon (talk) 14:46, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

To address the broader question: MoS is a guideline primarily about the most common WP-writing "style" (spelling, grammar, tone, layout, etc.) questions and problems. It is not the One True Source of all common sense and consensus on Wikipedia, the general operating principle of which is that what has been working fine for a long time and is well-accepted by the community is the consensus, even if it was not established in a particular discussion. If someone changes something about that de facto consensus, and the change is met with little or no objection then widely adopted by others, it becomes part of the new consensus. Otherwise, we'd have to have millions more consensus discussions and a huge database to keep track of them, a project that might exceed the scope fo WP's actual public-facing content. "MoS doesn't have a rule stopping me" doesn't equate to "I can do anything I want". Otherwise MoS would have to be longer than The Chicago Manual of Style combined with New Hart's Rules, to account for every imaginable style idea. PS: I have no objection at all to adding an explicit MoS rule against using CSS tricks (manual or templated) to alter the default formatting of headings and other page elements, except inline CSS within a heading to make it conform to a particular MoS expectation. There may be some other already-accepted tweaks of this nature, such as ToC template options to suppress display of level-3 and lower headings in some cases when necessary to prevent excessively long tables of contents. If there's something wrong with how elements like the headings work on Wikipedia, and it can be addressed in CSS, then the idea should be proposed at Mediawiki talk:Common.css for inclusion in the site-wide stylesheet. If it's a sweeping change, it should probably be proposed at WP:VPTECH first.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:45, 8 May 2018 (UTC)

One more question: what does the name style-nt mean? nt for "next thing" maybe? Dicklyon (talk) 14:24, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

What does it matter? I would have preferred to call it simply {{style}}, but a template with that name already exists. Eric Corbett 14:40, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

So why not style-ec? It matters because the Template namespace is intended to be understandable and usable by editors; it's not your personal playground. Dicklyon (talk) 14:46, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

I've really done with discussing anything with you, anywhere. You're quite impossible to deal with. Eric Corbett 14:51, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

In what way? His point is correct and sensible, though what this template is named is the least of the concerns about it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:45, 8 May 2018 (UTC)

A specimen, for delectation. I like gadgets, this is fun! Batternut (talk) 11:08, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

Apparently WP isn't meant to be fun. ;-) Eric Corbett 12:00, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

When misinterpreting WP as a CSS hacking playground and display case of Web-styling wizardry, that assessment is essentially correct. WP is meant to be an enjoyable environment in which to work on building an encyclopedia, but it's not even intended to be "fun" for readers, but simple and informative. It's not an entertainment website or a MMPORG, nor a place to flex one's Web coding skills in personally aesthetic ways. This is all covered at WP:NOT (#GAME, #WEBHOST, and some other sections).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:45, 8 May 2018 (UTC)

• See Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2018 May 7#Template:Style-nt Jc3s5h (talk) 13:16, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

  I was about to suggest TfD.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:45, 8 May 2018 (UTC)

• I don't think this really has anything to do with references, apart from the fact that the headings being formatted are in reference sections. The issue is using markup to change the way that section headings are formatted. The MOS does not cover this explicitly, but that's because it does not try to discuss every convention. In this case, there is a clear convention across the project not to try to change the font, size, weight, or other aspects of section titles. So editors should just leave that formatting as is, rather than trying to achieve some kind of special heading formatting in specific articles. I don't think this needs to be in the MOS, actually - 99.99% of editors seem to follow the convention without any trouble, so it's just a matter of fixing any uncommon articles that don't follow the convention. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:18, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

  Agreed. This isn't about refs, but about consistency of standardized interface elements – or, rather, about unusual deviations from that consistency which don't seem to provide enough reader utility to cover the editorial cost of the divergence, or the cost to reader expectations in loss of consistency. There's a reason we don't do things like switch to a green background and a Celtic-y uncial font at articles about Ireland, and so on, despite the sense that "designer" types have that it would be fun and evocative to do so. WP is not a brochure, nor a Web-design experimentation platform. PS: Speaking of which, I'm strongly reminded of WP:TFD deleting quotation-stylization templates that attempted to mimic the blockquote styles of various blogging platforms.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:45, 8 May 2018 (UTC); annotated further: 23:36, 18 May 2018 (UTC)

  More on this matter at User talk:J3Mrs/Archive 16#The H3 template where I was shot down for daring to question the purpose of what was, at the time, the {{h3}} template (I shall probably be shot down for bringing up the matter here, but I see it as germane to the topic). When I first saw this thread, I hadn't actually realised that {{style-nt}} had originated as {{h3}} which is why I've not commented here previously. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 07:26, 19 May 2018 (UTC)

• Note: Multiple closely related templates&modules are being discussed at TFD Template:H4. Alsee (talk) 06:48, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

Advice is requested at Talk:Regional corporations and municipalities of Trinidad and Tobago#ndash vs hyphen in article titles. Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 07:26, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

This edit request to Wikipedia:Manual of Style has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

In Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Celestial_bodies, it says sun, earth, and moon are not capitalized except in astronomical use. MOS:CELESTIALBODIES says the same exact thing except with solar system added. I am questioning whether solar system should be added to Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Celestial_bodies because the article title of the solar system on Wikipedia is capitalized while on other sites it is not. I can't think of other ways solar system is used outside of astronomical use. 2601:183:101:58D0:34E8:552C:3EB8:46BF (talk) 20:07, 10 May 2018 (UTC)

@2601:183:101:58D0:34E8:552C:3EB8:46BF: Umm ... you seem to be requesting that this page not be changed but rather MOSCELESTIALBODIES (which you could edit directly) be changed and the article Solar System be moved accordingly. For this reason, your edit request is unanswerable on its face. If I am misinterpreting you and you actually think this page should proscribe the use of "Solar System" ... well, that's not going to happen because you made an edit request on this page, unless there is also consensus to move the article. It should, however, be noted that there is not currently a contradiction between that article's title and MOS:CELESTIALBODIES; the article is about astronomy, and specifically our solar system (i.e., it's using it like a name rather than a common noun). That this page doesn't go into quite as much detail as the capitalization subpage should be a given. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 01:43, 17 May 2018 (UTC)

I think (aside from the fact that one page contains extra detail, which is not necessarily an error) that the anon is misunderstanding. "I can think of other ways solar system is used outside of astronomical use" is an indication of this. If you say something like "There's a whole solar system of lobbyists orbiting around the senator", that's not something MoS (at either page) would have you capitalize, and this is not an oversight. Nor would it have you capitalize "the solar system of Alpha Centauri", for that matter. It means for you to capitalize our solar system when it is referred to as "the Solar System", a proper name. It the same as astronomical use of "the Sun" to refer to our star as a celestial body. But it's "She received a second-degree burn from extended sun exposure while unconscious in the desert". Here, it's a not a reference to the star, but a shortered version of "sunlight". If you were actually exposed to the Sun, literally, then you'd become plasma in under a nanosecond. Sun even in an astronomical sense isn't capitalized when it doesn't mean our sun as a celestial body: "the two suns of Tatooine" (celestial body, not ours); "Apollo was the sun god of the Romans" (our sun, not as celestial body in the literal sense, but as something the ancients didn't understand and deified); "My car gleams as bright as the sun" (our sun, not as a celestial body literally, but as a source of light we squint at, used in a figurative sense).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:14, 18 May 2018 (UTC)

Closing duplicate threads: This has also been forum-shopped or at least talk-forked to Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters#Solar System capitalization (closed) and Talk:Solar System#Requested move 23 May 2018 (speedy closure requested).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:11, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

The lead of our Katano, Osaka doesn't quite sit well with me. According to ja.wiki, the town of Katano was formally declared a "city" in 1971, but using "founded" brings to my mind an image of settlers venturing into the wilderness and establishing a new settlement. Our Takizawa, Iwate article describes a similar process with the word "promoted". There's also the problem of "new" municipal governments being established from mergers or dissolutions, which I also wouldn't think "founded" would accurately describe.

But this might all just be me and my hang-ups, so rather than changing it unilaterally (and I could almost certainly "get away with it") I figured I'd ask here. Thoughts?

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 01:33, 17 May 2018 (UTC)

• Reading the Japanese version, it sounds like that's when it went from being a -chō "town" to a -shi "city". The ja.wp version describes the -chō as being "市制前の名称" ("the name before municipal organization"?) I get the feeling that that's something like "incorporation". Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 01:45, 17 May 2018 (UTC)

No doubt - alternatives might be "achieved city status", "was declared a city" or something. Not founded if there was a pre-existing settlement. Johnbod (talk) 02:01, 17 May 2018 (UTC)

@Curly Turkey and Johnbod: What about cases like Ōshū, Iwate, which was apparently "created" in 2006 from two cities, two towns and a village that had existed before without any specific connection to each other? I'd still be averse to saying "founded" when describing municipalities that were created from mergers even when no city called "Ōshū" had existed before. (BTW, I'm pretty sure the name of the city is just as arbitrary as it sounds.) It may be hypothetical because that article currently uses "established", which I'm fine with, but I'm pretty sure there are a lot of places like this in Japan and maybe elsewhere (not Ireland, if I recall, and I don't know a lot about others). Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 07:07, 17 May 2018 (UTC)

"Merged" or "amalgamated" work—or "formed as a result of the amalgamation/merging of XXX and YYY". That was part of the whole 平成の大合併 about a decade-ish ago. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 07:29, 17 May 2018 (UTC)

Yes - "founded" is really only appropriate for greenfield sites, or where there was just a little village. It's mainly appropriate for once-colonial places, or imperial whims. Johnbod (talk) 13:06, 17 May 2018 (UTC)

The term "incorporated" seems to be the more appropriate term, as far as I know, from municipal corporation. A city is incorporated rather than founded.--Jayron32 16:17, 18 May 2018 (UTC)

"Achieved" and "promoted" are PoV wording that presupposes that towns are worse, somehow, than cities. A neutral term would be "designated".  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:33, 18 May 2018 (UTC)

Towns are not worse, but lesser. Are majors "worse" than colonels? The term "incorporated" does not help when a town goes to a city. Johnbod (talk) 16:45, 20 May 2018 (UTC)

You're making my point for me, really. There is no hierarchical relationship between "city" and "town" (except perhaps within a particular municipality defined as a city and which has named its encompassed boroughs "towns" just to be a pain in the backside of collective understanding). If I live in the town of Apple Valley, California, the nearby cities of Victorville and Hesperia do not have jurisdiction over me (or control over my town's local government). If I serve under Major D'Lemma, and she answers to Colonel Korn, I also answer to Korn. They cases are not even remotely parallel. Anyway, the entire notion is still biased. Just read what you said: "Towns are ... lesser." This simply isn't a true statement categorically, only by particular rubrics that happen to interest you, such as perhaps the population level, the square mileage, or the tax monies in the coffer. By various other measures, cities are lesser. Some typical examples are quality-of-life and safety-related, including crime rates, suicide rates, frequency of deaths by fires and car wrecks, pollution levels, and many other things. Many towns also have longer and richer histories than many cities, with many of the latter being less than a century old, especially in difficult ecozones like Arizona that take significant modern technology to be support large human settlements.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:47, 23 May 2018 (UTC)

I think you're making my point here - none of this matters in the slightest for the issue at hand. What about villages? They can be lovely too. So what? Johnbod (talk) 15:03, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

So, they aren't in a better/superior/commanding versus worse/lesser/subordinate hierarchy, in which wording like "achieved" and "promoted" might make sense. I thought that was pretty clear in my first post, especially since we have wording like "designated" that is accurate (the labels are an official designation, not a law of nature) and doesn't have this PoV problem, nor the reader confusion (hell, writer confusion) problem of "founded" or "established" being used for something that was actually founded/established long before the city designation.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:19, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

This started off dealing with Japanese cities, now it is appearing to be US-centric. Frankly if any city hasn't got roots of a thousand or more years it ought to be called a modern town. :-) Consider the cities of Heidelberg, London, Rome, Athens and then approach on bended knee. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 13:27, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

• I noticed the same thing in another article, there are three people claiming to be the first mayor of a location. One was mayor when it was part of another township, one was mayor when it was incorporated as a township on its own, and the final one was mayor when it was reorganized as a city. The obituaries all call them the first mayor of the location and the local government does not keep a canonical list. --RAN (talk) 14:55, 20 May 2018 (UTC)

  So we should simply be specific: "first mayor of the township of Foo", "first mayor of the city of Foo", or whatever the case may be. Sometimes this requires better research than that performed by an obit writer.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:47, 23 May 2018 (UTC)

• Local government reorganisations, like rail-replacement buses are a local speciality round my way. Take a look at City of Rochester-upon-Medway to see multiple ways of describing the disruption. ClemRutter (talk) 08:04, 23 May 2018 (UTC)

  Rochester. The only English town to lose its city status by accident. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:49, 23 May 2018 (UTC)

Is their a stylistic difference we should be aware of between en-us and en-gb usage of semicolons? There obviously is a difference in what we call conjunctival adverbs - does this permeate further?--ClemRutter (talk) 19:02, 22 May 2018 (UTC)

In both variants, AFAIK there's no pedantically fixed standard, and use or non-use of the semcolon varies between writers. The article on the semicolon has some opinions on its use. Here's a New Yorker article: Semicolons; So Tricky. Here's a fairly standard note on British usage from the university of Leicester (England): Using the semi-colon and colon^{dead link}.
IMHO there's no encyplopedic reason to insist on any particular usage or to correct an article's usage of semicolons; however, {{Use xxx English}} tags should always be respected. — Stanning (talk) 20:20, 22 May 2018 (UTC)

Except that comma and semicolon usage in various articles here is often wrong by all "standards". If you think you're going to get some moratorium on cleanup of their abuse, think again.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:33, 23 May 2018 (UTC)

Just a question that came up while training- you have to check before you give too forceful an answer! ClemRutter (talk) 22:50, 23 May 2018 (UTC) ;}

Sure. I was responding to Stanning's serious misstatement, "there's no encyplopedic reason to insist on any particular usage or to correct an article's usage of semicolons", which is just flat-out wrong in both parts. Otherwise MoS would have nothing on semicolons, nor would off-WP major style guides, but of course they do, because there are actual norms of use, most of which are cross-dialect.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:21, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

I made an edit to change the wording "in particular" to "usually" to more accurately reflect the content of the § Article titles guideline, which state, "Capitalize the title's initial letter (except in rare cases, such as eBay), but otherwise follow sentence caseb (Funding of UNESCO projects) not title case (Funding of UNESCO Projects). This does not apply where the title would be title case in ordinary prose". I summarize this that usually, not always, section headings should use sentence case, not title case. Dicklyon previously made an addition to the guideline, stating that "In particular, they should use sentence case, not title case (capitalize only the first word and proper names in headings)". This wording implies that in all cases the section heading should use sentence case, ignoring the exceptions mentioned in the article titles guideline. Therefore I changed "in particular" for "usually". Thinker78 (talk) 06:14, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

I saw that one, and pondered on which was right, concluding that neither reflected the meaning. Have you considered just using the humble colon to connect the two independent but closely related sentences. --ClemRutter (talk) 09:48, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

The only thing at title that's particularly relevant to headings is the capitalization; the "usually" or colon doesn't really connect this remark as intended. So I went back to "In particular" and noted that there are exceptions. See if that's more satisfying now. Dicklyon (talk) 14:16, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

Saw those edits... I like how it is with the "in particular" but then mentioning there are rare exceptions. I was wondering though... other than eBay, iPad, etc... are there any other exceptions? It says "except when the title would be title case in ordinary prose" but I'm having a hard time thinking up an example of that. Does it simply mean when the title of a work, for instance, is included in a section or article title, say "Imagery in A Clockwork Orange"? Or am I missing some other weird case? —Joeyconnick (talk) 18:13, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

I don't know. If and when exceptions are needed, I'd expect them to be obvious. Dicklyon (talk) 21:21, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

And it's not rational to assume that if one statement is simple, and another details some rare exceptions, that the exceptions don't apply because the other section didn't mention them. Much of the main MoS page is a glossing over of details and exceptions, the goal at this page being to lay out generalities. This is even true of material in one section that defers to material in another section of the same page with more detail on whatever that little side matter is. I have no objection to rewording either or both bits, as long as the intended meaning isn't changed.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:26, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

Someone added a list of symbol definitions for equations in the Lateral earth pressure article. All the definitions are correct, and they will help reading the equations in the article. My question is whether this table should be its own section, whether it should be a table or a list, and other stylistic questions about its placement. It's not whether the information belongs in the article, it's how the information should be presented. The presentation is a very textbook sort of presentation, and textbook is one of those things which Wikipedia is not. So what say you style mavens? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Argyriou (talk • contribs) 00:06, 23 May 2018 (UTC)

Containing one element of a textbook, does not make it a textbook article. I expect symbols to be identified in a mathematical article. In articles on films, I expect the characters in the plot summary to be identified in a list or table. --RAN (talk) 02:53, 23 May 2018 (UTC)

@Argyriou: Presumably you refer to this edit; since it is a list of definitions, mark it up as a definition list, like this. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:55, 23 May 2018 (UTC)

Agreed that's the right markup. We even have a nice template system for it, covered in detail at MOS:GLOSSARIES.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:54, 27 May 2018 (UTC)

If it's not something we made up and it might be useful for other articles, maybe it should be its own article. We have many glossaries and other lists.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:27, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

Comments welcome at Talk:Bruce McArthur#>>>Swearwords. The source reads I'm tired of these f---ing f---ots but that supports and verifies that the (alleged) statement was I'm tired of these fucking faggots. By the letter of the MOS we should reproduce the bowdlerised version, but by its spirit I think we should reproduce the quotation exactly as (allegedly) said. Andrewa (talk) 16:20, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

I notified WT:Citing sources and WT:Verifiability about this thread, since it's more about sourcing than style.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:49, 27 May 2018 (UTC)

• Use attribution would be my solution: 'According to Title of Source, McArthur said: "I'm tired of these f---ing f---ots".' Or use something more specific, e.g. 'According to an article by I. M. Whoever, ...'.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:49, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
  • That would solve the problem, but it's a bit wordy and seems unnecessarily so to me... Surely, if I.M Whoever is a reliable source and states McArthur said: "I'm tired of these f---ing f---ots" in writing, we have verified by this source that McArthur in fact said "I'm tired of these fucking faggots"? But yes, it does overcome the more serious problem... McArthur did not say "I'm tired of these f---ing f---ots", and to cite this source as verifying that he did say this, rather than that he said I'm tired of these fucking faggots, is f---ing ridiculous. But a legalistic reading of the MOS did, in this example, lead to our article saying exactly that. Andrewa (talk) 09:18, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
    • "McArthur is quoted by Whoever as saying..."? This establishes that this isn't directly what McArthur said, just how the source quotes them. Ian.thomson (talk) 17:25, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
• The "style" question – the question of writing – is whether this quotation is actually necessary at all. That paragraph feels a bit too blow-by-blow for me: Some (apparently random) guy describes a ten-minute temper tantrum that has no direct connection to the "plot". Encyclopedias do more "telling" than "showing". If the person telling the story is just some random acquaintance, it should be omitted altogether; if it isn't, then the connection should be explained (e.g., "father of one of the murder victims" or "brother of the accused") and the content should be summarized concisely: "He had an explosive temper". WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:42, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
  • That's another issue that may apply to this particular example, but ISTM it's a content issue. Andrewa (talk) 09:18, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
• Unless there is an alternative source, we do not know for certain what McArthur did say. He might have said those "flaming flibbertigibbots". Unlikely, I know, but SMcC's suggestion avoids (mis)interpretation. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 17:21, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Strongly disagree. While I agree we do not know for certain what McArthur did say, that's splitting hairs. We know what the source says, and when we say they're reliable we assume that they're not deliberately misleading us! And to say that he said I'm tired of these f---ing f---ots when in fact he said flaming flibbertigibbots would be so misleading, it would be reasonable to call it deliberate. So it's not a guess (as the edit summary of that last post claims) that according to the source he said fucking faggots. It is the only sensible reading of the source. Andrewa (talk) 18:39, 27 May 2018 (UTC)

Just to clarify, I'm not suggesting that we ever guess what the source means. But I am suggesting that when a reliable source is clear and explicit as to what was really said, but employs bowdlerisation because of the source's own style and content policies, and when the bowdlerisation has only one reasonable interpretation (as in the example), then we should read the source as verifying the unbowdlerised version. Because that is the only reasonable reading of the source.

If, on the other hand, we publish the bowdlerised version while knowing full well what the source means, we are ourselves guilty of bowdlerisation. Which is of course contrary to policy, and surely the MOS should reflect this policy? Andrewa (talk) 18:51, 27 May 2018 (UTC)

See WP:BOWDLERIZE on precisely this point "However, when quoting relevant material, rendering a quotation as it appears in the source cited trumps this style guideline". WP is not bowdlerising, the original source is. If you are worried, use the format suggested above and add {{sic}} to clarify: 'According to Title of Source, McArthur said: "I'm tired of these f---ing f---ots sic".' See MOS:SIC for guidance. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 19:16, 27 May 2018 (UTC)

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Trademarks#Minor clarification to avoid interpretational conflict between MOS:TM and WP:TITLETM
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:59, 28 May 2018 (UTC)

Please see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Film#To be or not to be a subsection, on whether the use of a single ===Subsection=== (rather than two or more) within a ==Section== is compatible with good writing style. Please comment over there, not here. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:33, 28 May 2018 (UTC)

I've started a draft Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Portals, which would formalise the applicability of the MOS to portals, with just a few exceptions. Your feedback would be appreciated – discussion is taking place at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Portals § To what extent does the MOS apply to portals? (please respond there, not here). Thanks, Evad37 talk 16:35, 27 May 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for doing that. Looking good so far. Dicklyon (talk) 17:00, 27 May 2018 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Portals#RfC: Adopt as a MoS guideline

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Portals#RfC: Adopt as a MoS guideline . - Evad37 talk 03:00, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see Talk:Gender neutrality in languages with grammatical gender#Major update needed for Romance languages
People who edit here may be interested in it. The gist: there's a pattern of using the single character x as a stand-in for "a or e/i/o depending on your gender", and it's increasingly coming up in the proper names of organizations, forums, etc. So, we might want to address (in a footnote?) either here or at WP:GNL that good markup for this sort of thing is, for example, usuari<var>x</var>s or the equivalent usuari{{var|x}}s (rendered: usuarixs) as the shorthand for "usuarios/usuarias" or "usuaria|os" or whatever. This will alert editors that the x is not a typo but a metasyntactic variable. This mark-it-up approach is consistent with various advised uses of {{sic|hide=y}} or {{notatypo}}.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:13, 2 June 2018 (UTC)

Is it standard to render the x in a different font than the rest of the text, the way your markup does? That formatting looks ugly, because fonts are not designed to mix in the middle of words like that so the kerning is wrong. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:07, 2 June 2018 (UTC)

Please centralize the discussion at the thread pointed to. Avoding talkforks is why we make pointers from one page to a thread at another.  :-)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:42, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

An RfC concerning the categorization of biracial people has been opened at Wikipedia talk:Categorization/Ethnicity, gender, religion and sexuality#RfC on categorizing biracial people. StAnselm (talk) 04:31, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

It does touch on MOS:IDENTITY but seems mostly to be a WP:NOR dispute (including about the term biracial and when to apply it, though it's mostly actually about African-American in the context of Meghan Markle).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:43, 9 June 2018 (UTC)

It's somewhat unfortunate that the section on Possessives includes "Jesus" as an example (Jesus's teachings). Whereas it's fine to add apostrophe+s on names ending in -s the most well-known exception to this in many style manuals is Jesus, which adds only the apostrophe: Jesus' teachings. I'm not saying that MOS needs to adhere to what most style manuals do, I'm only saying that we shouldn't pick as our example to illustrate the general -s rule, the most famous example which is an exception to that rule in many style guides; we can pick something else. Here is Bryan Garner:

To form a singular possessive, add -'s to most singular nouns—even those ending in -s and -x (hence witness's, Vitex's, Jones's, Nichols's). ... There are three exceptions to this rule. The first is the standard one: Biblical and classical names ending in -s take only an apostrophe:, hence Jesus' suffering, Moses' discovery, Aristophanes' plays, Grotius' writings. (No extra syllable is added in sounding the possessive form.) The second exception is words formed from the plural. Thus General Motors should make General Motors'—e.g.: "A merger by General Motors will excite great interest in an enforcement agency simply because of General Motors's read General Motors'  size."

HTH, Mathglot (talk) 09:07, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

Consider, perhaps, that it was chosen because some style guides make such an exception, others don't, and the intent here is to dissuade insistence on that variance because "my style guide at work says so". Also, as of the edition put out last year, The Chicago Manual of Style (which has much more buy-in than Garner's Modern English Usage, a.k.a. Garner's Modern American Usage until its latest version) has shifted strongly away from such exception-making, for the first time in generations (though it observes that some do use such exceptions; the Hafiz' and Beatrix' variants are also fairly common). The relevant material in CMoS – the whole set of chapters on grammar, punctuation, and spelling, actually – were actually written by Garner under contract. So, either his own position is shifting, or he gives conflicting advice in different books on purpose, but a purpose we can't, of course, psychically determine. And Garner isn't a linguist, he's an attorney. Many of the things he says about language are demonstrably wrong (e.g. "No extra syllable is added in sounding the possessive form" is only true in some regional dialects, and not a majority of them).

Regardless, the CMoS shift is an indication that "Jesus'" isn't a rule in a sense we should care about here, but a subjective preference of some American writers and editors primarily (it's neither exclusive to them nor consistent among them), and is slipping in acceptance because it's confusing and illogical (it seems to've been picked from the Elizabethan-era pre-orthography-standardization King James Bible, used by many American Protestant sects, and retained in the 20th century because it coincides with a particular, blurred pronunciation in some variants of US Midwestern English (and some other dialects, e.g. in parts of Texas that's /ˈtɛksəz/ !, though CMoS wouldn't care). But it isn't actually dominant across the language or even in the US. Our own conversations on this page show it; every time the issue comes up, editors from around the English speaking world and the US more narrowly tell us that they pronounce "Jesus" and "Jesus's" differently, with a distinct syllable added to the possessive (the suprasegmental length is apt to vary, and might be rather short; it is for me).

There is no escaping a simple fact: for every single point of English usage on which different self-styled authorities disagree, there will always be some subset of readers and editors who don't like the version we pick. So, MoS works best when it detects and defuses "style-guide thumping" that's likely to recurrently arise. E.g., we've done the same thing with capitalization of prepositions in titles of works, something that style guides disagree on even in the same field, like journalism, and which is often laden with style-guide-specific exceptions. We just swept away the exceptions as inconsistent and troublesome, and went with neither of the more extreme approaches.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:05, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

So there! Any more questions? EEng 14:06, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

sigh The intent isn't to WP:WIN, it's cover what the rationale is for the MoS wording, and why a "Garner says ..." observation isn't particularly meaningful as an isolated point, without both comparison to other style guides and awareness that Garner writes more than one of them (at least 4 to date), often inconsistently. (Aside: As far as I can tell, Garner has carved this niche simply by having been one of the editors of Black's Law Dictionary; it's what got his foot in the door to put out A Dictionary of Modern American Usage in 1998, when OUP figured there was a market for an American counter to the very British Fowler's (and of course wanted to publish both of them).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:36, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

Actually, that example is there simply to illustrate what "rearrange the wording" means with a practical example. It is carefully worded so as not to give the impression that it is an example of a possessive that is difficult to pronounce, or indeed the reverse (hence my revert of yesterday's bold edit, which changed the phrasing so as to make it such an example). We sidestepped the question of whether Jesus's is or is not "difficult to pronounce" and simply offered the two alternative phrasings to illustrate the preceding provision in the MoS. MapReader (talk)

That's a reason it's there. I'm pretty sure I wrote the wording in question.  :-)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:04, 12 June 2018 (UTC)

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see Wikipedia:Move review#List of Presidents of the United States. Some comments at WT:MOSCAPS has suggested there could be insufficient input so far to reach a clear consensus. Depending on how it turns out, MOS:JOBTITLES might require substantial revision, which could in turn affect the wording at the main MoS guideline. (That might or might not be a good idea, but people who watch this page should be aware of it either way.)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:12, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Biographies#Merge MOS:JOBTITLES to this MoS page.

The proposal is to merge WP:Manual of Style/Capital letters#Titles of people (a.k.a. MOS:JOBTITLES) to WP:Manual of Style/Biographies, where the rest of the material about human titles is (academic, post-nominal, honorific, regnal, etc.). A short summary and hatnote pointer would be left behind in MOS:CAPS (about the same as those presently at found at MOS:CAPS#Occupational titles pointing to MOS:CAPS#Titles of people; the relationship would simply be reversed).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:50, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

FYI

 – Pointers to relevant discussions elsewhere.

Please see:

• Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2018 June 7#MOS:NOTES – possible retargeting
• Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2018 June 5#MOS:AMEN – possible deletion
• Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2018 June 5#MOS:BRIT – possible deletion
• Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2018 June 4#Mos: – possible deletion (of "Mos:" not "MOS:")
• Wikipedia:Redirects_for_discussion/Log/2018 June_3#MoS: – possible deletion (of "MoS:" not "MOS:")
• Wikipedia:Redirects_for_discussion/Log/2018 June 3#Wikipedia:MOS: – possible deletion (of double-namespace version)

The "NOTES" one proposes that "MOS:" shortcuts should point to non-Manual of Style pages. The AMEN and BRIT ones are about ambiguity. The pseudo-namespace ones boil down to this: "MOS:" is a pseudo-namespace created, after a consensus discussion, to point to WP's Manual of Style and sections and subpages thereof, to deal with the decreasing availability of meaningful and memorable "WP:"-namespace shortcuts, and because there's often an MoS page and a content, naming, or other page about the same thing. However, pseudo-namespaces are actually in mainspace (articlespace). Some editors thus do not want to see a profusion of "typo redirects" like "MoS:CAPS", "mos:CAPS", "Wikipedia:MOS:CAPS", etc., while others are convinced that all redirects are necessarily "cheap" and always should be permitted even if only used by a handful of editors and of no use to readers.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:42, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

• There's some follow-up discussion relating to the now-closed RfDs about the pseudo-pseudo-namespace ones, at User talk:Amorymeltzer#mos:, MoS:, WP:MOS: junk redirects.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:06, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

Quick question... In a statement such as: “The media’s attitude toward(s) the military shifted during the war”, should we use “toward” or “towards”. Blueboar (talk) 17:42, 3 June 2018 (UTC) Blueboar (talk) 17:42, 3 June 2018 (UTC)

I believe "toward" is preferred for American English, and "towards" for British English. The same style generally applies to other directional words as well (e.g. forward/forwards). - adamstom97 (talk) 21:46, 3 June 2018 (UTC)

Isn't this a better question for the Refdesk? Primergrey (talk) 21:48, 3 June 2018 (UTC)

Yeah... but I knew I would get a quicker answer here. Thanks. Blueboar (talk) 13:44, 4 June 2018 (UTC)

Bryan Garner is my go-to guy for this, and he agrees with adamstom97 on AE/BE distinction. However, this may be the wrong word entirely in this situation. As Garner says, Misused for to. Toward implies movement. It shoudln't be used when the sentence would be served by to or against—e.g.,... followed by three bulleted examples. The examples include expressions like "objections toward" (use to), or "prejudice toward" (use against). Attitude isn't movement, so my guess would be that you should probably not be using toward here, maybe about? However a quick check of other online grammar resources seems to indicate a preference for toward/s with attitude. Ngrams shows the top ten prepositions after attitude, but doesn't include multi-word expressions like with respect to or vis-a-vis. Mathglot (talk) 04:06, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

An additional way we approach this, especially on WP, is MOS:COMMONALITY, which is more important than the argument to authority inherit in relying on a favorite style book. There is no intelligibility problem with toward, in any dialect, so it's preferable for concision. However, towards isn't an unencyclopedic colloquialism, even in American English, so MOS:RETAIN would suggest not going around changing it to toward just for the heck of it (especially not as a trivial edit unto itself), since the potential editorial kvetching would probably not be worth saving a character here or there. If I were writing a new article, or substantively overhauling an extant one, I would use toward (if it weren't better replaced by to, etc., as Mathglot says). Same goes for similar words like forwards, amidst, etc.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:41, 9 June 2018 (UTC)

This American finds the usage of "toward" in that construction to be extremely jarring. The point about movement sums up the usage I am familiar with. --Khajidha (talk) 04:13, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

If this isn't a suggestion to include some sort of guidance on this particular point to the MOS, then this entire discussion ought to be at the refdesk or a user's talkpage...no? Primergrey (talk) 00:13, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

Agreed, this is not WP:RDL. But (to me) it isn't clear that the OP does not propose an MOS change. ―Mandruss ☎ 00:20, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

My bad, per I knew I would get a quicker answer here. Make that: This is not WP:RDL, speed of answer irrelevant. ―Mandruss ☎ 00:22, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see Talk:Ellipsis#"Save As..." style.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:14, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

Additional input requested. This has turned completely circular in WP:IDHT fashion.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:32, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

Why is this page titled Wikipedia:Manual of Style, not Wikipedia:Manual of style? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:06, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

This should be a good one. EEng 07:19, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

I imagined it was based upon the ancient Manual of Stylos, the Greek etymology of the village being 'column' or 'pillar', with the MoS being the pillar that supports all good editing? But I am sure that other views are available... MapReader (talk) 09:58, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

Indeed. It was brought unto us by the ancients, passed down generation-to-generation by the Secret Order of Stylos (now a subsidiary of Brotherhood of the Cruciform Sword).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:07, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

There was a discussion about it way back when. The gist is that it's intended as a work, of sorts. It was also observed that various other project pages, like a lot of wikiprojects, use title case. I'm not sure anyone feels strongly about it these days. My only qualm would be that lowercasing these pages would produce an enormous redirect cleanup job, which might have to be done manually. The recent move of WP:Manual of Style/Biographies to WP:Manual of Style/Biography had the double-redirect-fixing bot actually fail to do its job. Just fixing shortcuts to that page alone took me about two hours. I don't know who'd volunteer to fix several thousand redirs to all the MoS pages. Also, we typically abbreviate it "MoS", which would no longer make sense if it was down-cased to "style". In short, I don't think a lower-case tweak would be worth the effort. We're going to have a consistency issue no matter what: either it's not consistent with our mainspace article titles, or it's not consistent with its own advice on how to style the titles of works like The Chicago Manual of Style. So, I think we should choose the path of least agony and leave it as-is.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:07, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

Should Singapore English be included for Singapore-related articles? --occono (talk) 17:58, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

Stand by for a tongue-lashing (so to speak) (so to speak). EEng 18:07, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

We should not list anything that doesn't exist in a codified, formal written register with its own style guides, distinct from British/Commonwealth English in general (Canadian and Australian English do, and I think I saw one for New Zealand, and maybe South African). In virtually all other former countries of the British Empire where English is still used as a first language by a notable percentage of the population, they refer to British style guides like New Hart's Rules, New Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors (combined as New Oxford Style Manual), Fowler's Dictionary of Modern English Usage, The Cambridge Guide to English Usage, etc. Even most of the journalism and lower-register professional writing (business, marketing) follows the same shared conventions as BBC News (a dominant news provider in most of them), The Guardian, The Times, The Economist, etc.

I've been looking for years, and I cannot find any "produced for public use" style guides for places like Malta, Pakistan, Kenya, Grenada, Singapore, Belize, etc., etc. These dialects exist almost entirely as spoken dialects and informal writing based on it, but WP isn't written in informal English, so it's not an ENGVAR matter. Formal writing from such places is generally indistinguishable from British, aside from some locally specific vocabulary words (just as you'll find in Wales or Scotland). Editors branding "their" articles as being written in such dialects is a) nonsense and b) a recipe for insertion of unencyclopedic colloquialisms. There's a good reason we don't have templates for "This article is written in Texan English" and "This article is written in Cockney". There's more difference between Texan and Manhattan English, and between Cockney and Shetland English as dialects than there is between written formal Singaporean or Maltese English and written formal British English. Basically, WP isn't written in bar/pub talk, and we mustn't pretend otherwise just because a handful of editors want to slap huge flag-waving banner templates in articles' editnotices for territorialism and national-pride reasons.

PS: Listing Irish English is basically an "avoid an ethno-political shitshow" concession; at the formal written level it also follows British norms (and I have yet to see an Irish English style guide), but people might quite literally threaten each other over putting "Use British English" templates on Ireland-related articles.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:41, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

{{Use Commonwealth English}} and {{Commonwealth English}} and related templates and categories now exist. We should consider nominating templates we don't need for merger with and redirection to the Commonwealth versions.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:17, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

In sourcing for most contemporary entertainment, sources generally omit italics or the like to format the name of the work being discussed in the title of their articles. So it seems that most of our citations/references generally end up presented these citation titles without italics/etc. for named works. Should MOS:CONFORM apply to citation titles, considering that these are technically quotations ? I do know we frequently removal allcaps and other unreadible aspects of titles in citations, so it would seem logical to apply appropriate MOS-elements like italics where they can apply. --Masem (t) 13:21, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

Yes. Any given written source will do any of at least 10 different things in presenting the title of a major published work inside the title one of that source's articles (e.g. giving a movie title in the title of a review of the movie): 1) italics, 2) double quotes, 3) single quotes, 4) bold-face, 5) ALL-CAPS 1, 6) SMALL-CAPS (rarely), 7) underline (rarely), 8) some other font tweaking (rarely), 9) some combination of more than one of these, 10) no markup at all. This is just farcically messy, and trying to mimic the other publication's style, under their stylesheet, in our citations is "reader-hateful" and just not what we would do in any other circumstance (e.g. we do not mimic logo stylization per MOS:TM, we do not over-capitalize job titles and do other "specialized-style fallacy" mimicry of other organization's house style quirks). We already routinely down-case any SCREAMING ALL-CAPS HEADLINES to title case (or to sentence case, if the citation style in question demands that for article titles), and do other font normalization in our citations (e.g., if a title looks boldface in the original publication, we do not ape that stylization here). This isn't any different. For over 12 years, I've been doing cleanup of this sort, especially italicizing the names of books and films in review articles' titles (per MOS:TITLES), and italicizing genus and species scientific names in biology journal article citations (per MOS:LIFE), and as far as I can tell not one single person has ever reverted me on it. It's completely normal do this sort of MOS:CONFORM tweaking.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:22, 17 June 2018 (UTC)

This clearly makes sense, but it should be qualified somewhere, as I ask from seeing a recent dispute on a video game article. (assuming this is the consensus). --Masem (t) 15:21, 17 June 2018 (UTC)

Meh. We should generally avoid adding redundant line-items that simply re-state what can already be intuited from the existing ones and from actual overall editorial behavior. At an infrequent and weird dispute at an article talk page, maybe just point people to this thread (here now, or later at its eventual archive location). If we kept adding "rules" we don't strictly need (i.e., ones that do not address an actually frequent dispute type), we'd have thousands more lines in MoS, a major WP:CREEP problem.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:14, 17 June 2018 (UTC)

@Masem: Maybe this could be addressed in a footnote, if we can come up with a concise one. And/or maybe address it at MOS:TITLES instead of the main MoS page. Length is less of a concern in a topical MoS subpage.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:22, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

www.astronomia.sk | www.biologia.sk | www.botanika.sk | www.dejiny.sk | www.economy.sk | www.elektrotechnika.sk | www.estetika.sk | www.farmakologia.sk | www.filozofia.sk | Fyzika | www.futurologia.sk | www.genetika.sk | www.chemia.sk | www.lingvistika.sk | www.politologia.sk | www.psychologia.sk | www.sexuologia.sk | www.sociologia.sk | www.veda.sk I www.zoologia.sk