Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 219

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Film subtitles not separated by colon?

Star Trek Into Darkness and Star Trek Beyond really bother me; there is of course no colon in the logo, but it is obvious from the formatting that Into Darkness and Beyond are subtitles. I'm pretty sure when this and similar questions have been asked before the answer was that it was based on the format used on the poster billing block, and yes Star Trek: First Contact does have the same logo format but includes a colon in the billing block. But is that really a good reason to use this really awkward formatting? Moreover, if we are interpreting it as being an intentional move on the filmmakers' part not to format the title on the billing block with a colon (the former film is about a "trek into darkness" and the latter a "trek beyond [something]"), then shouldn't we be following rules for prepositions in headcaps rather than treating the "I" as the first word in a subtitle? Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 14:17, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

Both of those pages have had contentious article name change discussions which you should review before considering changing them or the advocating for the MOS to change. --Izno (talk) 02:04, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

Oh, I have no intention of RMing in the immediate future or even necessarily ever; I'm just asking some questions. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 23:56, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

We defer to the people who actually create works of art (even commercial films are works of art) in terms of their intentional titling choices (where practical) instead of imposing pedantic rules that are being intentionally flouted by the creators. It's their work to title, not ours. oknazevad (talk) 06:47, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

@Oknazevad: What about Talk:My Darling Is a Foreigner#Title? As a translator in Japan I can say with confidence that most Japanese artists can safely be assumed not to have intent when it comes to "titling their works in English", since the English lettering that appears on the covers, but MDiaF is something of an exception given that the author's native English-speaking husband was by necessity almost certainly consulted on various aspects of the work, and if the title formatting was anachronistic in the way a lot of such works in Japan are, he would have noticed.

Anyway, is it fair to assume intent one way or the other lacking a reliable source that says as much? A billing block lacking a colon is hardly a reliable source for the claim that the filmmakers intended to disregard normal titling conventions, and that interpretation would appear to be contradicted by the much more visible film logo that makes it look like a subtitle.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 23:56, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

Of course, we wouldn't draw our own conclusions about intent, as that would be a form of WP:OR, but given an interview or other reliable reporting which clearly states it, there's no good reason not to respect the intent of the creators. In the case of Star Trek Into Darkness, the play on words has been stated as intentional by the director and is not a technical issue with regards to the title as part of the article URL, so there is no reason not to use that styling. And poster billing blocks are actually very regulated by contracts that govern them (for US films it's the title officially registered with the MPAA) so although capitalization cannot be determined from that alone because they're always written in all caps, punctuation can be and the omission of the colon for STID in that overrides the styling of the logo. And to follow creator intent does not violate NPOV as some have claimed; indeed, not doing such is pushing a POV of hostility to creators of commercial works that has no place in this encyclopedia. oknazevad (talk) 04:25, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

Maybe so, but we don't know why they registered a particular title with the MPAA or whether there were bizarre reasons not to include the colon. It has since come to my intention that the producers made the argument publicly that Star Trek Into Darkness was a deliberate pun, but if we assume that the poster billing block is "word of god", then shouldn't we move Star Trek: Nemesis to the official title used on the billing block?

It seems to me like films in a particular series that were released after Wikipedia became the juggernaut it is today adhere strictly to poster blocking to appease the large swath of Wikipedia editors who only edit articles on contemporary Hollywood blockbusters and can't agree on anything, while films in the same series whose poster titles are formatted the same way but were released before c2005 are made to conform to Wikipedia's normal style guidelines. (Yeah, I'm sure official sources could be found that say "Star Trek Nemesis" was a deliberate pun...)

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 01:37, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

See this note: Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Titles#cite_note-5 WanderingWanda (talk) 09:00, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

Huh. I can hardly be blamed for assuming I wouldn't find a specific answer to one of my questions inscribed in the guideline itself. Thanks! :D Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 23:56, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

Star Trek into darkness is a double entendre. What is obvious to you may not be reliable. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 13:12, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

Well, wouldn't that make Star Trek Nemesis the enemy of the franchise?

It was! —SmokeyJoe (talk) 13:09, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

Yep. Some of these titles are intentionally without a colon. We generally know this is the case when we can find sources that say so. The one title I'm aware of where we're doing the wrong thing simply to mimic the logo is Spider-Man: Far From Home with a capitalized "From". The RM about that incorrectly supposed that because journalism sources virtually always capitalize "From" in any title [they nearly universally follow the four-letter rule, while WP and other non-news publishers usually use a five-letter prepositions rule, except high-academic sources mostly don't capitalize even long prepositions like "toward"] that WP was somehow also required to. It's cherry-picking to only consider sources that have a predetermined house rule to use "From", with no relevance to that film in particular. [sigh] I don't buy the billing-block argument (by itself), because that's simply WP:OFFICIALNAME. We have to consider what sources are doing, whether the sources have an innate house-style bias against what WP would do, what the billing-block legalese says, what academic (e.g. film journal) material does, what the official website is doing, whether the title card and the poster and DVD cover agree, what the press materials use, whether even entertainment journalism is consistent on it, and if so whether that's consistent with other journalism and with non-journalism sources, and etc. Considering it all, it is usually pretty easy to come to a conclusion on whether something is a subtitle. Even when we've done that, there is no reason to vary from what MoS would do capitalization-wise, unless other sources that don't have the four-letter rule are also capitalizing it. Thus Star Trek Into Darkness, because the title is both serving as a phrase about a dangerous space journey and also serving as a title and subtitle, so the the extent it's the latter (i.e., is Star Trek: Into Darkness without the colon), "Into" would be capitalized anyway. Not so with the Spider-Man movie. But, going and trying to RM that one again is time poorly spent. It probably will not work yet, and it will just be a lot of venting about trivia. After a bunch of film journals have covered the movie, and are not writing "From", then we have proof of division on the matter in the sources thus for following MOS:CAPS rule no. 1: not capitalize when sources aren't almost entirely consistent in doing so. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 21:44, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

I support going soft on the 4-letter to 5 letter preposition rule, because it smells of being an artificial distinction. Sticking to artificial distinctions hurts one's credibility.

Support recognizing justifications based on double meanings, even if shallow and unclear. Support allowing custom capitalizations based on half-baked arguments that the capitalization affects the meaning.

MOS:CAPS rule no. 1: "not capitalize when sources aren't almost entirely consistent in doing so" implies: "do capitalize when sources are almost entirely consistent in doing so". --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:15, 14 February 2020 (UTC)

Center-aligned captions

Some of the folks at WP:Wikiproject Military history have been using centering markup on captions in their articles (which looks very odd to me, and complicates the source). A discussion at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Military_history#Centered_captions concluded as "inconclusive" as to whether this idiosyncratic markup used only in that project was consistent with WP style. Can we discuss that here? Should MOS say something about adding formatting tags that override normal style as set in the selected skin? Dicklyon (talk) 04:02, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

It definitely should, but I would leave this alone for a month or so, to avoid "style debate fatigue" on the part of the editorship. Then RfC it here, with notice at WP:VPPOL, WT:MOSACCESS, WT:MOSIMAGE, Help_talk:Image, WT:Image, WT:IMAGEPOL, and anywhere else relevant, as a general matter. That was probably bound to come out as "no consensus" over there, because it was incorrectly pitched as a MILHIST-specific question (to MILHIST, as if seeking to have a territorial finger-pointing session), when it doesn't have anything to do with any particular wikiproject or subject. I've seen the same kind of centering done in occasionally in many other topics, and it is not consistently or even commonly done in that topic, so it's simply editorial idiosyncrasy. I see it as basically a WP:NOTWEBHOST issue, in a sense: WP doesn't exist for people to experiment with website design, or to override what the software and our consensus-built stylesheets are doing just so one can project one's own subjective vision of "the best" layout choices. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 21:04, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

It's annoying that it's basically one editor's preferred style, and in the discussion at the project, the project members just say they don't mind. He did this on dozens of articles in Feb. 2013, with misleading edit summaries as if someone had decided that centering was correct and normal was an error; here are some of the diffs with edit summaries:

But it can wait. Dicklyon (talk) 04:35, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

MOS:CAPTION couldn't be clearer: "The text of captions should not be specially formatted, except in ways that would apply if it occurred in the main text (e.g., italics for the Latin name of a species)", and I don't see anyone centering bits of prose. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 18:32, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

Quotation marks around a foreign title

If a foreign title appears within the prose of an article, should we use quotation marks for English or the language of origin? For instance, should we refer to "La Marseillaise" or «La Marseillaise» ?

MOS:CURLY says Do not use accent marks, backticks (`text´), low-high („ “) or guillemet (« ») marks as quotation marks. Not a "should", or "except when...", just "do not". I change them wherever I find them. Schazjmd (talk) 23:24, 12 March 2020 (UTC)

podcasts

What is the proper format of the title of a podcast? Lfstevens (talk) 18:04, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

Lfstevens, An episode is a short work like a song or an episode of a television series, so it's in quotation marks: "Episode 19: The Truth Revealed!" but the publication is a long work like a book, magazine, television series, etc., so it's italicized, "Next week on Listen to This, we'll discover who did it!" ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 20:01, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

Thanks! Lfstevens (talk) 07:05, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

New RFC on linking to Wikidata

I want to support wikidata in article main. Viruscorona2020 (talk) 10:03, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

We have had multiple discussions on this. Won’t fly unless Wikidata changes some of its policies. Blueboar (talk) 12:29, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

Multiple sic

Has there been any discussion on the handling of a quote with multiple errors or antiquated spelling? For example, an old poem with variant spellings. Multiple sics is awkward and shaming. I handled this in the second quote at [1] with a prefatory note instead of three sics, not finding any guidance here. If there is a preferred method, it would be useful to include it at MOS:SIC. O3000 (talk) 17:25, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

I'd say a note before or after would be better than multiple sics. A note could also explain any really obscure words/spellings/idioms that might be present.--Khajidha (talk) 17:04, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

What you've done looks just fine. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 17:30, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

Putting a single "[sic]" at the end of an error-riddled quote is the traditional way of handling it. Rather than calling out each item (which wasn't the original intent of the disclaimer), it applies to the whole quote, advising the reader that the original read... thus. -Jason A. Quest (talk) 19:03, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

I actually tried that first and think it makes sense. Don't know if that style is well known. O3000 (talk) 19:07, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

It's not "error-riddled" though, it just uses an earlier form of spelling. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 10:10, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

Sic is for one or two isolated errors/oddities that warrant gentle flagging to save the reader puzzlement, but no special attention. If there's more than that then an explanatory note is best. E Eng 17:43, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

Prime symbols for feet and inches?

MOS:CURLY says we use prime and double prime for subdivisions of degrees. What about for feet and inches? Primes, or straight quote marks? Dicklyon (talk) 16:10, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

None of these. These marks are not well-enough known in countries that don't use Imperial or US customary measurements for people to recognize what they are. Jc3s5h (talk) 16:12, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

Right. See first row of the table at Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Dates_and_numbers#Specific_units. E Eng 16:14, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

Capitalization of "Vol." and "No."

I raised this before, several years ago, and we did not come to a consensus conclusion about it. It appears to me that "mandatory" capitalization of these is no longer the norm in English usage, if it ever was. "No." tends to be capitalized more, because this looks like the usual rendering of the precomposed numero symbol, №. However, it is not that symbol. It is simply an abbreviation, and we do not capitalize other abbreviated latinisms like "e.g." and fl., even when also derived in English by mimicry of symbols (as was viz.). There are some mostly academic exceptions for aconyms (such as QED, and academic degrees), but this isn't an acronym. "Vol." is capitalized when used in a proper name, usually the subtitle of a book or other work. Both are typically (probably not always) capitalized in codified citation styles. Aside from such cases, it seems unreasonable to tell our editors to always write them "Vol." and "No." in running text, and seems to contradict MOS:CAPS (don't use capitals unless reliable sources are near-totally consistent in doing so for that particular case). And editors generally don't do it, especially in contexts like sport and music chart rankings, which probably account for most uses of "[n|N]o." outside of citations.

I thus suggest that we change the advice (about not using "#") to say to use number and plural numbers, or the abbreviations no. and nos., which may be capitalized in citation styles that require them in upper case. Similarly, change the further-down sentence about using "Vol." and "No." when referring to works, to now show these abbreviations in lower case, and also note that they can be upper-cased in citation styles that demand it. Actually, this can be a footnote which is referenced twice, instead of repeated twice in MoS's main wording flow. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 20:53, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

That makes sense. Unnecessary caps are just distracting, and many sources and styles have gone to lowercase on these. Dicklyon (talk) 04:36, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

Doesn't this still just come down to the referencing style in use, which is largely an academic style imported intact to WP (see WP:CITATION, {{Cite book}}, Help:Citation Style 1, The Chicago Manual of Style, et al. ) Uses within an article beyond that should not start changing such standards, just to (yet again) chase after this wikidogma. Andy Dingley (talk) 10:29, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

I'd welcome that sort of a change – no. and vol. rather than the capitalised versions. I pretty much only work on music articles, and the over-cap aspect of, say, album title, country/ies, chart compiler(s) and instances of "No." all appearing in a single sentence, or even multiple sentences, is every bit as bad as the overlinkng aspect (MOS:SEAOFBLUE) that we try to avoid. I know you're only referring to running text, but I can't understand the need to make a distinction: citations use "ed." and "p.", so why not "vol." and "no." there too. (Rhetorical question, that; thinking aloud.) JG66 (talk) 15:10, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

I support this. Popcornduff (talk) 15:28, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

Series

A series in British English is any sequence of episodic television where the episodes are scheduled at regular intervals. This can be proven by looking in literally any dictionary. It is unnecessary to define the term at this page. It is a term that every English speaker understands to mean a television show that appears episodically. This page states that "series" means the entire show in North America but not in England. That is untrue. In England the word may have a broader meaning for both the entire show and each season, but the way this page presents the word is incorrect. DrKay (talk) 10:41, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

Amend the "Titles" section to: "Use italics for the titles of works (such as books, films, television series (but not seasons), named exhibitions, computer games, music albums, and paintings). The titles of articles, chapters, songs, episodes, seasons or multi-episode storylines within series, research papers and other short works instead take double quotation marks."

Replace the footnote in the "names and titles" section with: For television series, use italics for the main title of the show as a whole and quotation marks for the titles of seasons, multi-episode storylines and episodes: "Miracle Day" comprises the entire fourth series (season) of Torchwood. When a season name is used as a subtitle attached to the main title of the show (as is common on stand-alone DVD releases), use italics for the entire string: Torchwood: Miracle Day was released on DVD in November 2011. DrKay (talk) 11:00, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

The OED, which you referenced in an edit summary, muddles this, but it does come out confirming that "series" is ambiguous in British English, and that it, not "season", is the term used.

First, under the entry for series, we encounter both uses in one example: "1924 / Art News 24 May 6/1 / There is to be given by the agency of the radio broadcasting stations a series of art lectures... In this first series it is proposed to discuss the great works..of the various countries and periods."
Second, under the entry for season, we find, surprisingly, no mention of the use of that term in relation to television under the main definition, which by itself would contraindicate its use for that purpose in British English. But it does appears as a 2007 draft addition: "Broadcasting (chiefly North American). A single series of a television or radio programme." [italics in the original]

It appears that "series" is not only a British term for what North Americans call a "season", but the term. So the ambiguity of the term, along with the non-use by British English speakers of "season" in its place, isn't a pedantic detail unworthy of clarification on this page. Largoplazo (talk) 11:37, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

I realize that British people are stupid, but I can assure you they do understand the meaning of the word "season" in relation to television: iNews says "The Split season 2 ", Metro says "The Greatest Dancer" season 2 ... Sex Education: Season 2 ... The Umbrella Academy: Season 2, etc.", The Express says "Doctor Who season 12", The Sun says "Victoria season 4", Vogue UK says "The Handmaid's Tale season 3 ... Killing Eve is back for its second season ...etc. Claiming they don't use the term is inane. DrKay (talk) 12:16, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

That doesn't alter the fact that when the word "series" is used, it's ambiguous for speakers of British English. Since the text at hand is discussing both things that the term refers to, it's necessary to be clear about which of those things we're using it to refer to, to keep the distinction clear. Largoplazo (talk) 12:39, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

My amendments do that. The amended version is clearer for a British English speaker because the current version makes an assumption about British English that's incorrect. DrKay (talk) 12:47, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

No, they don’t. As above, whilst many speakers of British English today understand use of the American word “season” in relation to successive batches of television programmes screened in succession followed by a break, British English usage is still to refer to such as “series”, with the overall programme being a “serial”. The word “season” is definitely minority usage here. Thus, for example, if you check the BBC website regarding one of its recent widely acclaimed serials “Line of Duty”, you will find that is billed as “Series One”, “Series Two”... etc., which is the way this programme would be referred to in casual conversation amongst British English speakers. This is distinctly different usage to American English and your edits to remove the distinction from the MoS are therefore not reasonable. MapReader (talk) 12:55, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

Utter rot. I'm British and that distinction is absolutely and totally wrong. DrKay (talk) 13:01, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

Did you trouble yourself with checking the BBC website, or any other RS, before posting here, or are we simply being subjected to a stream of OR? MapReader (talk) 13:34, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

Did you trouble yourself to look at the 5 sources I listed above, the OED which I mentioned in an edit summary, or any dictionary as I stated in the opening comment, or am I simply being subjected to a stream of abuse? DrKay (talk) 13:55, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

In Britain, designations like "Series One" and "Series Two" can be found and there is no distinction between this and U.S. usage? So you are implying that "Series One" and "Series Two" are U.S. usage. Well, I'm from the U.S., and I can tell you unequivocally that that is not U.S. usage. Not even as an alternative to calling the "Season 1" and "Season 2". So your assertion that the distinction "is absolutely and totally wrong" is absolutely and totally wrong. Largoplazo (talk) 17:47, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

Stop lying about me please. Putting words in my mouth that were never there isn't going to work when people can see what I wrote for themselves. DrKay (talk) 19:06, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

Come on now, I believe you are an admin so you can do better than this; you should be trying to wind down any personal aspect to this discussion, not ramping it up. You made a series (lol) of bold edits to the MoS, which is fair enough, but once you are reverted the onus is on you to put forward a specific proposed change and to seek other editors’ opinions. Although I do see that you concede a broader UK use of the word ‘series’ in your original post, my personal view is that the difference between British and US usage goes wider than that, with ‘series’ used in British where ‘season’ would be used in American, and often also ‘serial’ for ‘series’. If you look at MoS:TV you’ll see that it is written along these lines, at least as far as season/series is concerned. If you wish to change the WP stance on this, you’ll need to support your case with solid citations as per usage (not simply drawn from a dictionary) and make sure that any proposed change doesn’t introduce a conflict between the MoS and MOSTV (or of course changes both in parallel. Indeed MOSTV:talk might be the best place to take your proposal in the first instance) MapReader (talk) 19:26, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

You are a liar. I've already done all that. I've provided sources. I've suggested two options/compromises. You've provided no sources and offered no compromises, but OK, here's some more: Radio Times says "Lucifer season 4", The Guardian says "fourth season of Killing Eve", British Telecom says "Castle Rock season 2 ... The second season of ... Don’t miss new seasons of", The Telegraph says "Game of Thrones season 8". You can't get more quintessentially British sources. The claim that British people don't understand the meaning of "season" is easily proven to be false. DrKay (talk) 19:30, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

I have to say that your readiness to resort to personal abuse is unbecoming, particularly if you are indeed an admin. I don’t recall saying that there aren’t instances of American usage seeping into Britain (especially in relation to an actual US series like Lucifer); this kind of thing happens all the time, in both directions. I suggest that there remains nevertheless a significant difference in core terminology between the two Engvars. Anyhow, my suggestion would be that you have a think about what specific changes you intend to propose to the MoS and/or MOSTV, and start a new discussion, once you have settled on a single proposal, with reasons/evidence. If you post it here I suggest alerting editors in the TV wikiproject as to the proposal also. MapReader (talk) 19:41, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

I've already suggested specific changes twice. Your apparent incapacity to see that is obviously either stupidity or deliberate duplicity. I suspect it is the latter because no-one could be that stupid. DrKay (talk) 19:50, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

At the very least the footnote needs to be shortened to: "Series title italicized" is using series to mean the entire show as a whole. If a season or any other multi-episode storyline has its own title, it is a sub-work that uses quotation marks for its title: "Miracle Day" comprises the entire fourth series (season) of Torchwood. However, when a season name is used as a subtitle attached to the main title of the show (as is common on stand-alone DVD releases), use italics for the entire string: Torchwood: Miracle Day was released on DVD in November 2011. Otherwise, it's confusing. DrKay (talk) 12:58, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

It appears we simply need to make a distinction between the full collection of episodes, which are apparently referred to as series in US English and serial in UK English, and anything less than that (season [US]/series [UK], story arc, individual episode) with its own title. Only full collections use italics; anything less uses quotation marks. We don’t need to redefine the terms here, just succinctly state this in an unambiguous way. It's unfortunate there isn't a single unambiguous term for the full collection of episodes, but perhaps we can more fully explain the difference in a footnote if we need to. CThomas³ (talk) 19:48, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

What about "program(me)"? Or is that also ambiguous in its scope? "Show"? Just spitballing here. oknazevad (talk) 20:06, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

Thank you, oknazevad, for the suggestion. I was thinking that might work also, but we may run into problems with single-broadcast TV program(me)s that are not part of series/serials, in that these aren’t italicized either. But perhaps we just need something like "multi-episodic program(me)". CThomas³ (talk) 06:06, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

You do realise that the current page defines a serial as "a season ... or any other multi-episode storyline ... a sub-work". And yet, we have MapReader insisting that this definition remains in, while at the same time claiming (without evidence) that a serial is all episodes from all seasons of a programme. It's an obvious discrepancy that my suggested text avoids. I would also point out that this definition of serial has been in the guideline for less than 24 hours, having only been introduced 15 hours ago (and removed by me 2 hours later and then reintroduced 25 minutes after that). DrKay (talk) 21:15, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

Greetings DrKay. I do see that the current footnote is problematic, which is why I am suggesting we return to addressing the point the MOS is trying to make, and that is what to italicize and what to put in quotations rather than arguing over the definition of series and serial. If we can agree on some other term or concise phrase that means “the full collection of episodes in a program”, then we can avoid any ambiguity in series/serial entirely, as anything less than the full complement of episodes (with apparently an exception for a subtitle) is quoted rather than italicized. CThomas³ (talk) 06:21, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

A couple of quick points: serial could accurately be used to describe the whole programme (either British or American) in certain cases (i.e. if its narrative is ongoing throughout), but is rarely used as such - certainly not the British equivalent of the American 'series'. British usage is to use series for both one broadcast run and the entire programme - and by usage I mean in shows that are British produced; UK media is perfectly used to describing American production seasons as such, as some of the sources above show. A prominent exception is the 'classic' era of Doctor Who, whose high episode counts and the fact that each broadcast run was made up of distinct serials (multi-episode stories) lead to it using the 'season' terminology, borne out by production documents and innumerable sources. If distinction between series (single run of episodes) and series (entire life of a programme) is necessary, alternative terminology such as "production", "programme" can mitigate ambiguity. The guidelines need to have certain flexibilities for particular cases - there's no one-size-fits-all terminology. U-Mos (talk) 20:36, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

I think DrKay's objection and observations are actually correct, in a WP:TRUTH] sense, but the problem is we have a non-trivial number of non-American editors who are downright insistent that "season" is [North] American and "series" is British/Commonwealth [except Canada] and that they are directly synonymous but from conflicting dialects, with an implication of no flexibility on the matter. They want to use "series", "show", or "program" in North American English and "programme" or "show" in British/Commonwealth English (I think some Australians prefer "program" now). There have been way too many arguments about these, even if it's largely based on opinion/preference and insufficient data (i.e., is a mixture of PoV and OR). I'm not really sure how to get past that, other that by either going along with this harmless quasi-fiction/half-truth, or burying it completely and saying to use one set of terminology (it's easy to prove that "season" is universally understood in this sense, since at least the early 2000s, so it would actually comport with WP:COMMONALITY. It would just irritate a number of people for no certain gain. No brains are melting if we pretend it's not okay to use "season" to refer to British shows, and probably no brains are melting if we use "series" in reference to a British (or NZ, or Indian, etc.) show to mean what US and Canadian people call "season". (While "series" could have a broader meaning even to some British readers, if we do use it consistently enough just to mean "season", they know what we mean, in the same way they know that "citation" as used by WP means "cited reference" not "award" or "speeding ticket"). So, do we really want to try to change the presently stable situation? I don't care if a footnote gets copyedited. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 13:47, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

You don’t have to spend long on the BBC website, or any other UK media site, to see that ‘series’ is regularly used to mean what the Americans mean by ‘season’. Suggesting this is OR/POV/quasi-fiction is a tad offensive, don’t you think? That American terminology is often understood is a different thing from implying global acceptance; the same argument could be advanced for many terms within British English, which are often widely understood in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, India and South Africa, if not always within the US. MapReader (talk) 14:53, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

What part of:

"Series title italicized" is using series to mean the entire show as a whole. A season (also called a series in British English) with its own title uses quotation marks for that title, as a sub-work.

or

"Series title italicized" is using series to mean the entire show as a whole. If a season (also called a series in British English) or any other multi-episode storyline has its own title, it is a sub-work that uses quotation marks for its title: "Miracle Day" comprises the entire fourth series (season) of Torchwood. However, when a season name is used as a subtitle attached to the main title of the show (as is common on stand-alone DVD releases), use italics for the entire string: Torchwood: Miracle Day was released on DVD in November 2011.

do you find objectionable? DrKay (talk) 18:15, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

CURLY and ELLIPSIS

Nine months ago an editor suggested to discuss MOS:CURLY here, and I forgot to do this. Summary of technical issues:

Should titles within references really still be modified in 2019, ignoring the original title?
Is a rationale to avoid ordinary Unicode for some IE oddity in 2016 still relevant?
Was there ever a good reason to replace <q>…</q> in favour of US-ASCII approximations?

As US-ASCII fan supporting an older guideline for technical articles I'm curious what folks think about it as of 2020, Unicode is no "black magic" anymore. –84.46.52.252 (talk) 13:04, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

Are you saying there are cases where the original title of a reference is ignored? Hard to imagine. Dicklyon (talk) 04:04, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

Bad DEnglish on my side, original curly char.s within references are replaced by US-ASCII, i.e., left and right quotation marks:
single ‘(‘+’)’ and double “(“+”)” (background). –84.46.52.187 (talk) 18:36, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

Right; quote marks are rendered in WP style. So your questions were misleading. Maybe you can rephrase if you want to make a case for changing WP style. Similarly for MOS:ELLIPSIS, which you imply never had any good reason; I don't know, I wasn't there. Dicklyon (talk) 03:59, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

Only curly × quotations, for the 3rd bullet, e.g., A said, quoting B, <q>Can I quote you saying <q>foobar</q>?</q> rendered in green as
A said, quoting B, Can I quote you saying foobar?
Ecample for the 1st bullet, an original title=Our take on ‘foobar’-gate is not the same as title=Our take on 'foobar'-gate, who still needs the latter for what? –84.46.52.187 (talk) 06:39, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

I wish I could understand your point. Dicklyon (talk) 07:24, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

Taking those points in order: Yes, follow MOS:CURLY as long as MOS:CURLY is still there, because "the original title" (or quoted material with it's own internal quotation) using curly quotes is simply irrelevant. We regularly normalize (per MOS:CONFORM, MOS:TITLES) to WP style for quotation marks, case normalization, even italics around major works embedded in titles of quote-marked minor works, etc., in titles (both in running prose and in citations), and in block quotations, when doing so doesn't change their meaning but does make them more consistent, easier to parse, or better from some technical standpoint. On the "Why MOS:CURLY at all today?" question, I raise this myself about every 5 years or so to see whether there is still consensus that we need to advise against curly quotes. There were actually multiple reasons for it, but "that old browser" seemed to be the main one. I don't advocate either way on it, but we should still periodically ask the question, yet err on the safe side. On the … question: Yes, replace it, because "…" is awful. It's damned near unreadable at all in many fonts, and for many of us with poor eyesight even when wearing glasses, it's almost unreadable in any font. The idea that an ellipsis "is" a single precomposed character and "is not" three periods (full points) in a row is a modern fiction of Unicode nerds, based loosely on the expediency practice of some old-school typesetters who did in fact use single-block pieces of movable type for it, but were usually not going so far as to say that anything else was wrong. But beyond this, it is and always has been three regular dots. (I'm not sure how frequently people using [La]TeX also replace the three dots with a single char., but I doubt it's anything like a majority (despite huge overlap between that crowd and Unicode nerds; the ones who are not are mostly academics with way more important stuff to do that futz around with near-invisible typographic tweaking). Still, we mustn't go to the opposite extreme; the spaced . . . style is actually fairly commonly attested in off-site publishing, but is grotesque and pointless. PS: I have no idea why you're calling ... "US-ASCII". The same character is found on most keyboards, and is also part of Unicode. If you're trying to imply it's an Americanism, it's not. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 21:26, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

That's actually something of a reverse RAS syndrome; ASCII when expanded is American Standard Code for Information Interchange (italics mine). But it is probably someone trying to downcast Americans as if we weren't the superior nationality. ;) And apparently the IANA prefers referring to the encoding as US-ASCII per ASCII. --Izno (talk) 21:45, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

IANA is the servant of the IETF, RFC 20 exists, and UTF-8 is the only relevant extension of US-ASCII. Speaking as a non-US Windows-user and "inventor" of UTF-4,^[2] or in other words, Latin-1 is out (no Euro), and windows-1252 is "proprietary" (simplified, not really).

–84.46.52.151 (talk) 06:06, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

Good to find someone who at least understands the problem, it's 2020, and even NetScape 2.02 in 2002 could do …, but not hex. &#x…, only decimal &#… or named entities. And I'm only interested in CURLY here—now answered as dunno, let's wait for 2025—and <q>-elements (aka tags), replacing the latter by US-ASCII should be vandalism. Ellipsis aren't relevant, I don't recall a case where I used that in the article namespace, and if there's only a guideline against it, IAR is a policy, –84.46.52.151 (talk) 06:06, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

A big reason to exclude curly quotes is the difficulty of typing them on a normal keyboard. If anything, the increasing use of mobile phones and smaller laptops with fewer keys, typing has gotten harder, not easier. So curly quotes should still be excluded. Jc3s5h (talk) 15:41, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

, “ etc. is clumsy, but not worse than n+m dash, no-break hyphen, no-break space,   thin sp, or middot. –84.46.52.151 (talk) 18:04, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

Proper nouns

Hello, all,

I am hoping to find a couple of people who love the English language and all its quirks, who can explain whether and (most interestingly) why these phrases are correct:

This change affects the German and English Wikipedias.
This change affects German and English Wikipedia.

One of them sounds better to my ear than the other, but I don't know that the other is wrong. What do you think? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:08, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

I am certainly not qualified to speak about the nuances of English grammar. But, just reading those two sentences, the second sentence reads to me as if Wikipedia is a plural of 'Wikipedium' which I know to be nonsense. Both sentences sound equally correct to my ear if they both end with the plural 'Wikipedias'.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 20:30, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

Would "This change affects both the German and the English Wikipedias" fit? Martin of Sheffield (talk) 21:02, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

Try: “This change affects both the English and German versions of Wikipedia” Blueboar (talk) 21:08, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

The first is correct, the normal formation of a plural in English being to add an -s. The second is mock Latin - a plural form in Latin was to end a word in -a where the singular form was -um. For example the word “agenda”, derived from Latin, is actually a plural meaning “items to be considered”, the singular form agendum being the correct form if there is only one item of business. Similarly, addendum-addenda (item/s to be added). The second version only ‘sounds’ right because there are still Latin words such as this in everyday use where the -a ending denotes a plural. However the -pedia in Wikipedia derives from the word “encyclopaedia” (using the American spelling which drops the middle ‘a’), originally from the Greek with the -paed- part referring to the education of children (cf. the related paediatrics and paedophilic). The plural of encyclopaedia is encyclopaedias and hence the plural of Wikipedia is Wikipedias. MapReader (talk) 21:49, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

(edit conflict) @MapReader: That's perfectly correct as far as it goes, but consider that "German" and "English" might be parts or versions of Wikipedia regarded as a single entity. @ALL: Please also note that if the German Wikipedia is considered one entity and the English Wikipedia another, it is better to repeat the definite article: "the German and the English Wikipedias" Martin of Sheffield (talk) 21:58, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

Your “as far as it goes” actually meaning “as a correct answer to the OP’s question” about English usage. But I don’t disagree with your further response. Probably, this discussion shouldn’t be here at all, as we are not really discussing the MoS. But the question was an interesting one and I couldn’t resist a reply. MapReader (talk) 22:10, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

As MapReader said, this has nothing to do with our MoS and so belongs at WP:RDL. ―Mandruss ☎ 00:28, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

Which difference between the sentences are we supposed to be considering? There are two: 1) the presence or absence of "the" before "German" and 2) the presence of absence of the plural ending "s" on "Wikipedia"? --Khajidha (talk) 13:49, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

Agreed it doesn't belong here, but it is interesting to me too, so I'll comment. The presence or absence of "the" seems to matter. The phrase the English and the German Wikipedia is ellipsis for the English Wikipedia and the German Wikipedia, i.e. two singular proper noun phrases joined by "and" to make a plural noun phrase, so I would say definitely singular "Wikipedia" with a capital. Without the second "the", it's ambiguous between the implausible reading "the English-and-German Wikipedia" (one Wikipedia in English and German) and the intended reading "the English and German wikipedias" (where no capital is needed in our usual aggressively de-capitalizing style). Peter coxhead (talk) 16:45, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

And you still missed what I was asking about. The examples were "This change affects THE German and English Wikipedias" (the capitalized for emphasis" and "This change affects German and English Wikipedia." Yes, a second the could be added before English, but that first the seems necessary. --Khajidha (talk) 18:39, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

If you insist on continuing the discussion, I suggest focusing on the question as asked. One formulation is clearly correct and the other not. MapReader (talk) 21:21, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

I'm trying to determine what the discussion is. There are two differences in the original sentences. Are we supposed to comment on the "the" or the "s"? Or both? Is one of them simply a typo? If so, which? I agree that the first is correct, but the original poster should be made aware that there are two problems with the second version. --Khajidha (talk) 21:47, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

Both differences, please, Khajidha, and feel free to suggest the ideal phrase, if you prefer something else. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:27, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

Gender identity: inaccurate paraphrase of cited page

The page currently reads "Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Biography § Changed names calls for mentioning the former name of a transgender person if they were notable under that name."

But this is not an accurate account of what the linked page says: (emphasis added) "In the case of transgender and non-binary people, birth names should be included in the lead sentence only when the person was notable under that name." I attempted to add a similar clause here to clarify the scope of this guidance, and it was reverted. But it's an important distinction: I just encountered someone citing the phrasing here as justification for removing a trans person's former name from the entire article, as if that were WP policy. I'm not suggesting that any policy or guideline be changed, only that this page more accurately reflect the phrasing on the page it cites. -Jason A. Quest (talk) 18:57, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

That's because the section you cited only deals with the lead sentence for ALL name changes, it isn't designed to handle general content. The more general statement that the former names of a transgender person are not discussed if the person is not notable under those earlier names is the larger, more over-arching principle, and the information about the lead sentence is a part of that. After all, if the article isn't supposed to mention it anywhere, it of course can't mention it in the lead sentence. The reason why the link only mentions the lead sentence is that particular section of the MOS altogether only deals with lead sentences. It's style guidance, not policy on transgender people. The greater policy on transgender people informs that information, it is not secondary to it. --Jayron 32 19:07, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

What you just said is not what this page says. This page merely affirms that a birth name should be given if the person was notable under it, not that it may not be mentioned anywhere in an article if they were not. That would have very different and profound implications. If what you said is an actual policy, I would very much like to know where it's stated. -Jason A. Quest (talk) 20:04, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

I think I see the source of the confusion. Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Gender identity makes it look like it's OK to deadname someone as long as it isn't the lead sentence. This is definitely NOT policy; this page (by the way) only deals with style issue (how to organize information in an article), it doesn't deal with content policy (what should go into an article). The information you seek is located at WP:BLPNAME, which covers names of all sorts and not just of transgender people. Relevant here is "When the name of a private individual has not been widely disseminated or has been intentionally concealed...it is often preferable to omit it, especially when doing so does not result in a significant loss of context." In this case, if the transgendered person was never publicly known at the time of their life when they had their prior name the default is to not include it. You'll note that WP:BLPNAME does not carve out any exceptions for where those are located. --Jayron 32 20:35, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

BLPNAME doesn't cover transgender people [not "transgendered", please] who are no longer living. Furthermore, the part you quoted is specifically talking about "private" (non-notable) people (e.g. crime victims, whistleblowers, children), not someone who is the subject of an article themselves. If that presumption-of-privacy policy was meant to apply to birth names, the legal names of most Hollywood actors and the maiden names of countless married women, would be kept out of articles, which is rather obviously not what we do. What you're citing is not a policy on this question. You're doing what everyone else does, every time this comes up: trying to weave strands of policy written for other things into something that makes sense to you. And in the absence of a clear content policy, this page is constantly being cited as such; that's part of the reason I'd hoped to hold it to a higher standard of clarity. -Jason A. Quest (talk) 23:55, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

If the individuals were not notable under their birth names, then at that time they were private and non-notable. Secondly, the use of someone's pre-transition name for transgender individuals is often and frequently used as a way to delegitimize them as transgender individuals. Because of this, special consideration is given to these individuals under Wikipedia's "minimize harm" policy, as laid out in numerous policy pages. To claim this is the same as an actor using a stage name is disingenuous and a false equivalence. Please do not do so, and if you don't understand the nuance of the issues faced by transgender people, I highly recommend you stop editing in that area, lest you continue to create the problems you have been. --Jayron 32 14:25, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

American Indians - manual of style

Ran across an article using the out-of-date Indian to refer to the native people of America. Was wondering what the accepted terminology is today. I did a search of the Manual of Style archive and found a discussion, 12 years old, talking about "Native American" and "American Indian". Is there a preferred wikipedia nomenclature? I know Indian simply isn't appropriate anymore, but what should it be replaced with? StarHOG (Talk) 16:48, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

If we're specifically talking about Native Americans in the United States, then AFAICT existing practice would be to use more specific terminology wherever possible, and "Native American" where a general term is required. (See for example Category:Native American topics and subcategories.) "Indigenous" is the broader term and would be preferred for example if some of the peoples involved are in Canada. The best places to find past discussions appear to be the archives at Talk:Native Americans in the United States and WP:CFD. The members of WP:Indigenous might also be able to provide useful input. For general background, see Native American naming controversy. -- Visviva (talk) 17:23, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

Thank you so much! StarHOG (Talk) 13:42, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

Tweak to requirements set out in 'Section headings'

As it stands MOS:HEADINGS is split between guidelines that must be followed for technical complications that can’t be overridden by local consensus or Wikipedia:Ignore all rules (necessary), and guidelines which should be followed in the interest of being consistent (recommended).

There’s one bullet point that I think should be moved from recommended to necessary;

* Not wrap headings in markup, which may break their display and also cause additional accessibility issues.

The issues with placing headings in markup include:

Navigation issues in the Wikipedia app (Android), often section headers are placed in the markup for Wikitables as a sort of pseudo-header / table divide. However, the app can’t handle this, and will remove it as a means of navigation in the contents section. This issue isn’t present in browser navigation, which is perhaps due to the auto-collapsing of elements to conserve data in the app. I haven’t tested the iOS version of the app, so input here would be helpful. Regardless, it needlessly excludes a segment of readers from a useful feature.
Using [edit source] next to section headers wrapped markup results in a mess of Wikimarkup when previewing. Without the start of the markup, the previewer can’t adequately display the change as it will appear when published. For experienced editors this probably isn’t an issue, but for novice editors (who ironically often get told to use the preview feature before publishing changes) it’s a confusing and unnecessary barrier when contributing to Wikipedia.
My understanding is that badly placed headers can cause issues for readers using assistive technology (e.g. screen readers), because headers are used to ‘skip’ through pages to find relevant information, when headings aren’t where they are expected to be, or are used improperly this can result in accidentally skipping important information (e.g. table captions or keys) or make it difficult to locate desired content within a page.

The images to right attempt to demonstrate some of the above described issues. For reference, they are all taken from the page List of Marvel Cinematic Universe film actors.

I think there are enough issues of significant enough inconvenience that it should become a necessary guideline, but welcome input that is both positive and negative (so long as constructive rather than dismissive).

I guess this could be considered an early effort to see if there's any potential for consensus being reached to make a change.

Thank you, Editing with Eric (talk) 15:33, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

Paula Vennells

A user (Pigsonthewing) recently reverted an edit without consultation which treated of a quotation of less than 40 words as not needing indentation. I am perfectly fine with indentations for block quotations of 40 words or more to be so treated, but not for things underneath that.

I note that the Wikipedia Manual of Style concurs with me about block quotations (as does MLA and MHRA style guides which are authoritative in their way), therefore I am seeking a resolution that this page will not be an exception to that as this user seems to want to make it. Knucmo2 (talk) 23:05, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

This isn't a court of appeal, and MOS is supposed to be applied with common sense. One reason a short-ish quote might be set off in a block is to parallel other quotes. Work it out on the talk page. E Eng 06:22, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

Typographical symbols used for notes and accessibility

I have been editing several types of articles lately to make them more accessible, particularly by adding table captions and alt text but also by enforcing MOS:COLOR at places such as Tom Brady#NFL career statistics. If you look at the legend provided before I edited, it only used color (or color and emphasized text) to signify things like, "This statistic is an NFL record". Consequently, I added a series of symbols to act as an extra visual cue but Bagumba brought to my attention that the symbols I arbitrarily chose are fairly non-standard per Note (typography)#Numbering and symbols. I think for consistency as well as accessibility, we should outline a preference for the order: *, †, ‡, §, |, ¶, #, Δ, ◊, ↓, and ☞. It seems like MOS:PUNCT is the most relevant place for this. Thoughts? ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 02:02, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for your efforts, Justin. I recommend looking at MOS:NOSYMBOLS; we found some time ago that screen readers like JAWS don't always read out all symbols, so I started creating templates that used images with alt text in place of symbols like † - see templates {{†}} alias {{dagger}} for an example, and the Category:Single-image insertion templates for a collection of them. In brief, symbols that you can type from your keyboard directly are safe to use for screen readers, otherwise the {{†}} and {{‡}} templates are good choices (especially as you can associate alt text like this {{dagger|alt=NFL record}} with them). --RexxS (talk) 03:34, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

RexxS, Nice. I get the reason why I see the templates as stand-ins for the raw symbol. Now that I know it's a best practice, I can use that. Do you have thoughts on the order of symbols I mentioned? ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 08:06, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

@Justin: I usually suggest the keyboard ones or the templated ones first (depending on the context), so either:

* # $ @ ^ {{†}} {{‡}}

or:

{{†}} {{‡}} {{hashtag}} * $ @ ^

would be my personal preferences. --RexxS (talk) 17:01, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

RexxS, It is definitely nice when they can be easily inserted with ASCII symbols but some easy-to-type templates like "{{dagger}}" are fairly painless as well.

Does anyone else have feedback to give on ordering these symbols, etc.? Is there are a better place to record this than the section at MOS:PUNCT? ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 21:28, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

The conventional order of these footnote symbols in English has a wide consensus for the first three symbols. The order is *, †, ‡. That is, 1. {{asterisk}}, 2. {{dagger}} 3. {{double-dagger}}. The Wikipedia entry (with sources) for Dagger (typography) states that the dagger ... "is a typographical symbol that usually indicates a footnote if an asterisk has already been used".^[1] and that a double dagger "... usually marks a third footnote after the asterisk and dagger".^[2]

For footnotes more than 3, there is less consensus – "beyond the ... double dagger, this order is not familiar to most readers, and never was".^[3] However, the Chicago Manual of Style Online – requiring a subscription or 30-day free trial to access – provdes this:

Where symbols are used, the sequence is as follows:

* (asterisk; but do not use if p values occur in the table; see 3.78)
† (dagger)
‡ (double dagger)
§ (section mark)
|| (parallels)
# (number sign, or pound)

Which is as good a guide as any. -- Ham105 (talk) 01:44, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

References

^ Eric Partridge (2004). You Have a Point There: A Guide to Punctuation and Its Allies. Routledge. p. 235. ISBN 978-0-203-37992-9.
^ Hoefler, Jonathan (4 June 2009). "House of Flying Reference Marks, or Quillon & Choil". Hoefler & Frere-Jones. Archived from the original on 5 February 2010. Retrieved 6 April 2010.
^ Robert Bringhurst (2005). The Elements of Typographic Style (version 3.1). Point Roberts, WA: Hartley and Marks. pp 68–69.

Spaced slashes

Seeking comment on this change, which removes spaces for examples like the NY 31 east / NY 370 exit. Personally, I dislike the look of the NY 31 east/NY 370 exit and, even more so, say, the divided town of Carmen de Patagones/Viedma, which seems to imply that there is a town optionally called Carmen de Viedma. Thanks. Doremo (talk) 14:49, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

No particular opinion on the edit, but neither of your examples requires any slash at all. the NY 31 east (NY 370) exit and the divided town of Carmen de Patagones (Viedma) or the divided town of Carmen de Patagones (aka Viedma). ―Mandruss ☎ 15:03, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

The examples simply present the issue as an orthographic problem. There are usually ways to rephrase such examples, but forcing that as the solution would be the equivalent of forbidding slashes between open compounds, which is not desirable. Doremo (talk) 15:12, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

<ec>In those examples, as you write them, I don't see any need for a space before and after the slash (solidus). It looks unnecessarily fussy (imo) to include spaces, because, certainly in the NY 31 east [etc.] example, a reader is not too likely to be surprised, I suggest, by the details presented after the slash. That's what an MOS "rule" often fails to allow for: in some cases, having the spaces provides a bit of oxygen and aids in comprehension; in other examples, it seems forced and gratuitous – in that a reader might register the spaces more than they'd ever register the lack of spaces where they might be welcome. I could see user:Oknazevad's reasoning when they made the change. JG66 (talk) 15:21, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

For what it's worth, The Chicago Manual of Style presents the spaced slash as a discretionary option in such cases: "Where one or more of the terms separated by slashes is an open compound, a space before and after the slash can be helpful. ... World War I / First World War." Doremo (talk) 15:30, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

As the one who made the bold edit (but didn't really think it so critical as to start a discussion when I was reverted), I'll stand by what I said in my edit summary: the guideline should be consistent for slashes and dashes. And the dash guideline, based on the long RFC discussion that hashed out the dash, was that the spaces are unneeded as context and consistency with items without spaces render them unneeded. That such a claim that dashes should be spaced recently creeped back in (dispute being explicitly rejected in the RFC) before I removed it again was what led me to look at the slash guideline. (well, that and the use of spaced slashes in constructions like Peter Parker / Spider-Man the cast lists of superhero films, which I frankly thinks looks like trash.) So I argue for consistency between both forms of punctuation, as the spaces look needlessly disjointive in both. oknazevad (talk) 22:19, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

Y tu mamá también

There's an ongoing discussion at Talk:Y Tu Mamá También#Requested move 3 May 2020 that might be of interest to watchers of this page. El Millo (talk) 18:23, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

Long section titles

Can we include some statement about keeping section titles short in MOS:HEADINGS?

Section titles like Being listed on a proposed sanction list based on the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act (at Carrie Lam and Chris Tang) and Being Accused of interfering with the academic autonomy of a lecturer of Education University of Hong Kong (at Chris Tang) are long-winded and not helpful. However, attempts to explain this to editors aren't always successful since it's not expressed in guidelines anywhere. — MarkH₂₁^talk 22:03, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

It says "Section headings should follow all of the guidance for article titles (above)," where it says "A title should be a recognizable name or description of the topic that is natural, sufficiently precise, concise, and consistent with those of related articles." [My emphasis] DrKay (talk) 05:52, 13 May 2020 (UTC)

@DrKay: Totally missed that, thanks! — MarkH₂₁^talk 06:04, 13 May 2020 (UTC)

New Zealand – "the" North and South Island

I couldn't find anything in the MOS about this, so I decided to raise it here. Wikipedia's article on the North Island of New Zealand states – accurately, IMO – that: In prose, the two main islands of New Zealand are called the North Island and the South Island, with the definite article. It is also normal to use the preposition in rather than on, for example "Hamilton is in the North Island", "my mother lives in the North Island".[3] Maps, headings, tables and adjectival expressions use North Island without "the". The citation given is the Guardian and Observer Style Guide. (The article on New Zealand's South Island includes a similar statement.) There has been a small amount of debate about this on Talk:North Island. I'm bringing this up because of a cringeworthy (IMO) sentence in the "British English" article Citizens Advice: "New Zealand has over 80 Citizens Advice Bureau sites situated on both North Island and South Island." However, I can envisage an argument over British vs New Zealand English if I edit the latter sentence. Perhaps Wikipedia needs a clear MOS policy on this point? Muzilon (talk) 03:03, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

Tagging User:Gadfium and User:Martin Kealey here, ftr. Muzilon (talk) 05:15, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

I can only say that as a native speaker of British English, I find the absence of "the" odd, and I would have assumed it was perhaps a New Zealand usage. The preposition is another matter; either "in" or "on" seem ok to me. Peter coxhead (talk) 20:42, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

This discussion looks familiar. --Izno (talk) 00:02, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

The RfC referred to in that discussion only covers the preposition debate ("in/on"), not the definite-article question ("the"). By way of comparison, I think most New Zealanders would say they live in the North Island or in the South Island, but on Stewart Island (the third-largest island of NZ, which is much smaller than the North and South Islands). As for the definite article, I've only come across the omission of "the" among some speakers and writers of British (and perhaps also American) English. A search of Google Books turns up several scholarly sources about the use of the definite article in this case. Muzilon (talk) 01:36, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

I would personally suggest being bold and just changing it. As a native speaker of American English, I can tell you it looks strange without the definite articles to my eyes as well; we would typically use them exactly as you have stated New Zealanders would, unless perhaps North were a proper name itself. I see nothing wrong with in versus on, either. Americans would tend to talk about being in Hawaii (the state) and on Hawaii (the island), but no one would assume one or the other strictly based on choice of pronoun (they would use the big island to eliminate confusion). CThomas³ (talk) 07:15, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

"The North and South Islands" are (arguably) geographical designations or regions rather than proper names, unlike Stewart Island and White Island, which are proper names. FTR, a search turns up many WP articles using "on North Island" without the definite article. Muzilon (talk) 01:55, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

It looks like on Google Books that "the North Island" in reference to New Zealand is more common than "North Island" without the definite article. Google Books has broader coverage in the United States because our fair use doctrine is much broader than the fair dealing doctrine used in many other countries. --Coolcaesar (talk) 02:25, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

OK, I've somewhat boldly changed the sentence in the Citizens Advice article. To avoid the "in/on" controversy, I've just used the word "throughout", which I hope is acceptable in any variety of English! Muzilon (talk) 08:35, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

When New Zealand's Land Information Minister announced the formalisation of "North Island" and "South Island", he said "As an integral part of New Zealand’s cultural identity and heritage, it is only right the names North Island and South Island be made official under the New Zealand Geographic Board Act 2008. I have also approved the Geographic Board recommendation to assign official alternative Maori names for the two islands, Te Ika-a-Māui (for the North Island) and Te Waipounamu (for the South Island)."^[1] I'd suggest that that second sentence was very carefully worded. Go ahead and call them the North Island and the South Island everywhere.Somej (talk) 06:02, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

Exceptions to Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Brackets_and_parentheses

The text reads in part, "If sets of brackets are nested, use different types for adjacent levels of nesting; for two levels, it is customary to have square brackets appear within round brackets." Are there exceptions to this? E.g. Round parenthesis inside of round parenthesis: "He told me that his boss (the president (George Washington)) was dead".

@Deacon Vorbis: ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 20:00, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

(edit conflict) So, there's currently a dispute over switching to brackets instead of using nested parentheses (pinging the other party (Koavf)). The MOS seems to say to switch parens to brackets in this case, but looking through the talk page archives, I can't find a ton of discussion about this, but that could just be bad search-fu on my part. In any case, I'd suggest that we simply drop this. Seeing brackets where you don't expect them is much more jarring and confusing than a nested set of parens, and can be confused with editoral comments/changes. –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 20:03, 16 March 2020 (UTC) I typed up a new thread at the same time; moving my version here to consolidate. –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 20:05, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

Deacon Vorbis, But that is exactly where I'd expect them. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 20:08, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

This "switch to square brackets" idea is nutso -- as already mentioned it looks like an editorial insertion. If a suspension or "parenthetical" is needed inside parens -- and there better be a damn good reason for this -- use dashes or recast the whole thing. I propose changing the current guideline...
If sets of brackets are nested, use different types for adjacent levels of nesting; for two levels, it is customary to have square brackets appear within round brackets. This is often a sign of excessively convoluted expressions; it is often better to recast, linking the thoughts with commas, semicolons, colons, or dashes.

... to ...

~~The temptation to use brackets inside of brackets is often a sign of convoluted structure; use a pair of dashes instead, or recast to link concepts with commas, semicolons, or colons.~~

E Eng 20:29, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

For someone who likes to moan about standard English rules in the MOS, I consider switching the kind of brackets to be standard English. :) In general, I would anticipate the internal brackets are not being used in the context of a quotation, and we don't provide editorial insertions elsewhere (in most cases). If I had a point to make, it's that you should never use parentheses in general when conveying parenthetical thoughts; either it's truly parenthetical in which case you probably shouldn't include it (c.f. WP:WEIGHT), or it's not actually parenthetical and the whole sentence(s) should be extracted from every pair of brackets, rounded or otherwise (some exceptions like units conversions may apply). So your suggested change does not go far enough. --Izno (talk) 21:08, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
Before we go on, are you saying you like to moan about standard English rules in the MOS, or are you reminding me of my continual moaning about that (not that I'd take offense at such a reminder)? E Eng 21:22, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
You particularly (I assume no offense would be taken). --Izno (talk) 22:07, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
I figured; it's just that grammatically your sentence says it's you. So then... You're right, I momentarily forgot to ride that hobbyhorse i.e. that MOS shouldn't try to teach standard rules of English that apply to any publication. But there's an exception: if for some reason we've found that a particular point is a chronic problem (especially if it keeps leading to dispute among editors) then sure, we should have a bulletpoint on it. However, I'm struggling to believe this falls in that category. So I'd like now to suggest that ideally we just drop the bullet, and failing that substitute my text above. E Eng 01:15, 17 March 2020 (UTC)
Mathematical formulas and computer code *must* be an exception to this. In most mathematical and computer science contexts, differently shaped brackets imply different meanings. In mathematical formulas, nesting of parentheses can better be indicated by using different sizes of same-shaped parentheses. Another context where bracket shape has a special meaning is inside direct quotes, where [stuff in square brackets] usually means some kind of editorial interpolation that is not part of the quote. In any case I prefer EEng's suggestion of telling people not to use nested parens to the current idea of starting with telling people to use them and then only as an afterthought mentioning that they're a bad idea. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:54, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
Correct on both counts. --Red King (talk) 23:54, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
David Eppstein, Yes, but we aren't talking about actual math statements or code: the example above is standard English running text that so happens to be discussing math. Obviously, when using standard English typography symbols to construct a mathematical formula, you should use them how it is standard among mathematicians: no one is arguing otherwise. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 19:35, 18 March 2020 (UTC)
- Where in the current guideline does it say explicitly that it does not apply to math, code, or quotes? —David Eppstein (talk) 20:06, 18 March 2020 (UTC)
@David Eppstein: Nowhere. Again, this was never in dispute. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 01:58, 21 March 2020 (UTC)
EEng, Agreed that the text should discourage nested bracketing and that it is almost always better and more clear to rewrite but there will be occasional times when it's useful. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 19:37, 18 March 2020 (UTC)
See my post above beginning "I figured...". I think we should just drop the bullet entirely per the principle that MOS shouldn't teach general good writing, unless someone can satisfy the WP:MOSBLOAT test. E Eng 20:00, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

Ping. Any objections to just removing the bullet? E Eng 23:42, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

Going twice... E Eng 01:01, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

Gone. E Eng 19:12, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

Writing "Source:[1]" above a table

Is writing "Source:[1]" (with [1] representing a source) above a table against the MoS? For example, see Denis Irwin. Is this acceptable, or is it best to have a "ref" column where to source each row (even if the source is the same)? Nehme₁₄₉₉ (talk) 15:57, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

Width is the precious resource in tables and should not be wasted on a separate column for sources, especially if they're the same in every row. See [4]. E Eng 16:27, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

So in general, to source tables, it's best to place the source next to the table's title (in case it is only one)? Nehme₁₄₉₉ (talk) 16:32, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

I suppose it's probably a good solution in general when there's one overarching source. Some tables have a caption box at the bottom and if that's present that might be a good place too. E Eng 16:46, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

@Nehme1499: Tables don't have titles. My advice for a single source would be to put it at the end of the table caption (as EEng did at Denis Irwin). That ensures that if the table is moved, copied or otherwise re-used, the source goes with it. --RexxS (talk) 19:30, 25 April 2020 (UTC)

Italicising latin abbreviations

I tried to start a discussion about our inconsistent instructions regarding italicising latin abbreviations at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Abbreviations last week, but apparently no one watches that subpage. If anyone has an opinion on the matter, can you chime in there? Kaldari (talk) 02:09, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

Be careful what you ask for. E Eng 05:12, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

Eponymous

Seeking style advice/comments on the use of eponymous (as here). It strikes me as redundant (i.e., already differentiated by the label "town"), much as we don't have "New York is a city in the eponymous state of New York" or "The Gulf of Mexico borders the eponymous county of Mexico" or "The Bristol Channel takes its name from the eponymous city of Bristol." Thanks. Doremo (talk) 17:14, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

See also [5]. E Eng 17:17, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

Use of commas in article titles with city and state geographical references

I guess I am looking for some clarification. I am referring to this section of the MOS (fourth bullet point down).

WP:MOS#Commas:

In geographical references that include multiple levels of subordinate divisions (e.g., city, state/province, country), a comma separates each element and follows the last element unless followed by other punctuation.

Correct:

He set October 1, 2011, as the deadline for Chattanooga, Oklahoma, to meet his demands.

Incorrect:

He set October 1, 2011, as the deadline for Chattanooga, Oklahoma to meet his demands.

So, my question. How are we supposed to handle article titles (not text within an article) where a geographic location is referenced? For example: 1993 Aurora, Colorado shooting ... and ... 2012 Aurora, Colorado shooting. (In one of those article titles, I placed the "extra" comma in; someone took it back out.) (And that has happened with other article titles, as well. Some keep the comma, some do not.) Some editors believe that the above section of MOS only applies to article text, and not to article titles. Some believe the contrary. As a result, we have inconsistency. What can/should be done? I always thought/assumed that this MOS policy extended to both text and titles. I cannot see why the policy would distinguish between the two (text versus title). Thoughts? Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 20:16, 29 March 2020 (UTC)

Those editors who believe it only applies to article text, do they have any argument why it shouldn't apply to article titles as well? El Millo (talk) 20:24, 29 March 2020 (UTC)

@Facu-el Millo: Well, to me, not a convincing one. You can check the Talk Page here, for some discussion on the topic: Talk:2012 Aurora, Colorado shooting ... the issue surfaces up repeatedly at that Talk Page. And, less so, here: Talk:1993 Aurora, Colorado shooting. This has happened, in my experience (over the years), with many other pages. But I cannot recall the specific article titles, off hand. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 21:03, 29 March 2020 (UTC)

And here is a direct quote from another editor, when I asked about this at the Wikipedia Help Desk: I think WP:MOS#Commas is about sentences in article text and doesn't apply to page names. Talk:2012 Aurora, Colorado shooting#Requested move earlier 5 March 2019 gave no support for two commas in 1993 Aurora, Colorado, shooting or 2012 Aurora, Colorado, shooting. I would also have opposed it. That's the opinion of one opponent (of the second comma). Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 21:08, 29 March 2020 (UTC)

It's strange. Reading the first discussion on adding the "Colorado" to the title, I still don't see the need for it. The year and the "Aurora" are enough disambiguation. Later, the suggestion of moving it to "2012 shooting in Aurora, Colorado" seemed like a good compromise. If I were the closer, I would've either given it more time or decide for the move, given that most opposing votes were based on Netholic's flawed argument and false premises. The thing with "2012 Aurora, Colorado, shooting" with the extra comma is that apparently too many people dislike it, so it will be very difficult to obtain consensus. Maybe you could try opening another RM where people choose between these two options. If more people choose either option than oppose the move altogether, then at least there'll be consensus that the title needs to be changed. El Millo (talk) 22:47, 29 March 2020 (UTC)

The issue (to me) is not really about that specific article title (the shooting in Colorado). It's about the rule/policy, in general ... as this rule applies to many different article titles. We should have a policy, one way or the other. For consistency across the encyclopedia. I think we already do ... namely, the MOS. Some people "think" that the MOS does not apply to titles. I don't know where they get that from? It seems like a "convenient way" to get what "looks right" or "feels right" to them or "to get what they want", despite being in direct contradiction to the MOS. The MOS, itself, I assume, is a consensus. The MOS gives perfectly clear examples. Also, why would the MOS set up a rationale for handling commas in article text ... and then -- without even saying so -- expect the exact opposite rationale for handling commas in article titles? Makes no sense at all. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 04:02, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

@Joseph A. Spadaro: I think the MoS is missing some nuances of English style here. When we use a place name to create a noun adjunct – that is, it modifies another noun – we are less likely to want to separate the final part of the compound with a comma.

As an example, if we had a Formula 1 car race in Birmingham, we might call it the "Birmingham Grand Prix". So if we had the US Grand Prix in Birmingham, Alabama, and the British Grand Prix in Birmingham, England, how would we distinguish them in running prose?

Lewis Hamilton won the Birmingham, Alabama, Grand Prix, but came second in the Birmingham, England, Grand Prix. ← correct according to MoS

Lewis Hamilton won the Birmingham, Alabama Grand Prix, but came second in the Birmingham, England Grand Prix. ← incorrect according to MoS

Of course, you don't need to see both in one sentence to illustrate the effect.

I don't know how it looks to others, but to me, the second version would be what I would naturally prefer because it feels wrong to break between the qualifier and its qualified noun. That is exactly the problem I see with "Aurora, Colorado, shooting" vs "Aurora, Colorado shooting", whether it's in an article title or in running prose.

You can actually put the article title aspect on one side for now, and ask whether you would naturally write

"The Aurora, Colorado, shooting took place in 1993." or

"The Aurora, Colorado shooting took place in 1993."

Once again, my !vote would be for the second one. YMMV. --RexxS (talk) 01:01, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

100% agree. E Eng 01:11, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

To both User:RexxS and User:EEng ... OK, granted ... that's how you "feel about it" or how "it looks to you". But that directly contradicts the MOS (at least, for article text). No? Are you (both) saying that the MOS is incorrect (on the issue of article text)? Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 03:57, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

Regardless of how you personally feel about it, what is correct according to English grammar? El Millo (talk) 02:12, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

As far as I know, the comma after the state is correct, as bad or wrong as it might look for some. El Millo (talk) 02:49, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

Despite what WP:MISSSNODGRASS may have led you to think in 7th grade, there's a surprisingly large set of usage questions which are not fixedly determined by grammar or correctness. The placement of commas, in particular, is often a matter of rhythm and pacing, in context, and not right versus wrong (think: Oxford comma). E Eng 03:19, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

I'm afraid that I have no opinion on what is correct. --English Grammar (talk) 03:43, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

The Chicago Manual of Style says: "Commas are used to set off the individual elements in addresses or place-names that are run in to the text ... to separate city and state or province, apartment numbers, and the like." It shows "Waukegan, Illinois, is not far from the Wisconsin border." and "The plane landed in Kampala, Uganda, that evening." as examples. It also advises rewording the phrase if it feels awkward because of this, but not removing the second comma. It compares "New Delhi, India, marketplace" with "a New Delhi marketplace" and "a marketplace in New Delhi, India." The Associated Press Stylebook says to "Place one comma between the city and the state name, and another comma after the state name, unless ending a sentence or indicating a dateline." Now, these are style guides external to Wikipedia and we do not need to abide by them, but we should have a rule of our own for this. We either put the second comma or we do not, we have to base that on something, and I doubt just the awkwardness of it will do as a valid argument. Can you find one or two widely known manuals of style that advise against using the second comma and in favor of just leaving the first one? Or maybe something of equal validity? El Millo (talk) 05:21, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

I agree that for article titles we probably need a rule, because uniformity's important there (though why I think that I can't quite say). I'm not convinced we need such a rule for article text, any more than we need a rule one way or the other for Oxford commas in article text (and do we have an Oxford comma rule for titles???). I'll say in advance that we've been through this before and as I recall all the style guides were against my idea of flexibility on this, so I may be too avant-garde on this one. E Eng 05:33, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

Well ... how we "feel about it" and "how it looks" should not be important. Why not have a consistent policy across Wikipedia, so that all similar articles are handled in a similar manner? And, plus, who says that the MOS applies to article text, but not to article titles? We are allowed to "pick and choose"? Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 03:46, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

I am no "grammarian" (or whatever they are called). But, it was my understanding that in an example like this (the Atlanta, Georgia, conference) the location/state name of "Georgia" is an appositive, thus set off by commas on both sides. (I believe?) And in an example like this (the February 21, 2019, conference) the year of "2019" is an appositive, thus set off by commas on both sides. I believe that is how it was explained to me ... and, indeed, it did make sense to me. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 03:52, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

Well that's WP:SISTERMARYCATHERINE -- the kind of explanation you get from nuns who think diagramming sentences is good for the soul. If 2019 was an appositive we'd write "Queen Victoria died 22 January, 1901" -- which we don't -- and "Queen Victoria died 22 January, 1901, at Osborne House" -- which we even more don't. The comma in "January 22 1901" is just a convention, probably because "January 22 1901" kind of runs together. Same with City, State -- it's just a convention. If someone wants to argue that accepted style for this convention is to write "In Smithville, Iowa, he had an accident" then fine, they can argue that that's the accepted convention. But this appositive stuff, like it's a question of grammar, is just pedantic nonsense. E Eng 05:07, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

"Nonsense" or not ... we need a rule. And, I'd argue, we already have a rule ... the MOS. It's hard to interpret the MOS as saying "this is how we handle commas in article text" ... and then the MOS (purportedly) remains silent on how to handle commas in article titles ... and then interpret/expect/presume that the MOS dictates handling commas in article titles in a manner directly opposite of how the MOS itself specifies (purportedly only for article text) ... Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 05:47, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

When I was in school and we learned the proper usage of commas, no teacher ever taught us a rule saying that "when the name of a state, not at the end of a sentence, qualifies the name of a city, it is set off by commas on both sides, except in the titles of articles on something called "wikis" that may exist 40 or 50 years from now". That people are simply declaring this matter of style to be different in article titles as though it were self-evident mystifies me. Anyone arguing against the following comma on the grounds that the general MOS guidelines magically doesn't apply to article titles just because it doesn't specifically mention them and that, therefore, the opposite approach must be taken for article titles is arguing irrationally. Largoplazo (talk) 11:58, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

@Largoplazo: Exactly. I agree 100%. The argument (against the double comma in titles only, but not in text) itself makes no sense (i.e., it is completely irrational). Plus, it is manufactured out of whole cloth, from nowhere. And to interpret that the MOS "silently implies" the direct opposite of what it explicitly states ... is beyond my comprehension. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 17:25, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

There seems no reason that the approach should be different between article titles and text. However (and I've raised this before, here and on a Music talk page, I believe), MOS:ELLIPSIS says we should set ellipses with a preceding, non-breaking space, yet I don't believe that's ever done in article titles – say, for films, albums and songs. It should be, surely.

On the issue of commas, why is it that a comma is needed after the year: "He set October 1, 2011, as the deadline ..."? If we were using dmy dates, which is generally the approach in British English, that phrase wouldn't be written as: "He set 1 October 2011, as the deadline ..." Isn't the sole reason for a comma in mdy examples to avoid the clash of numerals?

In my opinion (and it's only that), the sentence does not require a comma in either case:

He set October 1, 2011 as the deadline for Chattanooga, Oklahoma to meet his demands.

It's noticeable that the whole MOS and its subpages reflect a strong preference for commas, with Oxford/serial commas used throughout. At MOS:COMMA, in the third bullet-list item, we say "Modern writing uses fewer commas", so it's as if we're endorsing antiquated (that is, non-modern) writing habits by using them to the maximum. JG66 (talk) 07:14, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

First, as far as I know, non-breaking spaces are used so that something won't be separated into two different lines. That can't happen in an article title. Second, why do you think that the sentence doesn't require a comma in the case of the state? What is the basis for your opinion? Lastly, if we want our writing to be more "modern", according to MOS:COMMA, we should try to avoid the structure altogether, not just erase the commas that should go with it and use such structure incorrectly. El Millo (talk) 07:39, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

Okay, so forget the non-breaking aspect. MOS still advises a space before (and after) an ellipsis.

The same basis, I imagine, as for others' comments here – real life engagement with the language. But, actually, also from a GA reviewer or two over the years. They told me, and FWIW they were Americans, that the city–state descriptors should not carry a second comma.

The statement at MOS:COMMA appears in the context of commas and sentence structure, yes, but it still says what it says: modern writing uses fewer commas. JG66 (talk) 08:12, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

Taking things out of context changes what they actually mean, context is important. The statement doesn't call for using this structure incorrectly, it calls for avoiding it if possible. It doesn't say to just use it with fewer commas.

We have a Manual of Style for a reason. If there's consensus to change it so as to not use both commas –either everywhere or just in titles–, it's okay. Let's have an RfC, reach consensus to change the MoS and actually adhere to whichever ends up being the guideline. But arguments based on an unnamed editor's actions or on personal experience don't seem very sound to me. El Millo (talk) 08:31, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

Chill out. It says, "Modern writing uses fewer commas", which means that modern writing uses fewer commas. JG66 (talk) 08:47, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

Well, yes. But actually no. You know what I meant. Using fewer commas isn't just erasing them, it's rearranging the way sentences are written in order to have less commas. El Millo (talk) 01:36, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

It's also erasing some where they are awkward and break the flow of the sentence. When I was a young dinosaur, all words and phrases in apposition had to be set off by commas, but I've had to adjust to seeing things like My brother Nathan is here.. In the same way, we may have to adjust to reading The Aurora, Colorado shooting took place in 1993. --RexxS (talk) 11:19, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

My brother Nathan is here has a different meaning than My brother, Nathan, is here. The first one means you have more than one brother, the second one means he's your only brother. My understanding is that when the appositive is essential it goes without commas. In that example, you need Nathan in the first case to know which brother it is, whereas in the second case you don't. Here's a definition I found at a grammar and punctuation website: When an appositive is essential to the meaning of the noun it belongs to, don’t use commas. When the noun preceding the appositive provides sufficient identification on its own, use commas around the appositive. Doesn't it make sense to you? Regarding the modern writing issue, the MoS already says it: Modern^[f] writing uses fewer commas; there are usually ways to simplify a sentence so that fewer are needed (bolding mine). In order to have fewer commas, you have to rearrange the sentence. Just erasing them won't do. El Millo (talk) 19:21, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

Yes of course it makes sense to me. That's exactly what it says at the Apposition article, which is where you'll see I stole the example from. But you'll find that that "rule" is pretty much an invention of a grammarian who was trying to make sense of seeing some appositive phrases set off with commas and others not. There's all too often no way of determining whether My brother Nathan is here actually is a restrictive apposite, or is simply a victim of the modern fashion for dropping commas where you can do without them. And 99.99% of the time, nobody cares. --RexxS (talk) 20:27, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

I would oppose having the second comma in the titles and would support moving the ones with two commas to their one-comma counterparts. And support changing the MOS to explicitly state that. Useight (talk) 18:55, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

Status

So, what's the status of this? I'd like to see article titles be consistent in this regard. And I don't want to have to "reinvent the wheel" for consensus at each and every article Talk Page. Thoughts? Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 19:03, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

That's easy. Assuming nobody agrees with my analysis that nouns in apposition regularly drop the second comma when forming a noun adjunct, the MoS says the second comma has to be there. You can use that to short-circuit the search for consensus at every page. --RexxS (talk) 20:27, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

Easier said than done. At those Talk Page discussions, opponents simply argue "Yes, the MOS does indeed say that ... but the MOS does not apply to article titles, just to article text". That's the problem. As I outlined above. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 03:17, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

RexxS, I'd say a couple of us do agree with you on that, no? – or at least we've stated approaches that align in practice. You're right that citing the MoS guidance should be sufficient to ensure consistency between an article title and the text. I don't agree with the guidance, personally, but that wouldn't change the situation. This was my point above about ellipses (where, it so happens, I am in agreement with the MoS). I'm not aware of any talk page discussions or disagreements that have produced article titles such as ...And Justice for All, ...That's the Way It Is and Let It Be... Naked. I've always imagined that in each case, the unspaced ellipsis is simply the result of an editor's personal preference or a lack of awareness of MoS, just as one might see unspaced ellipses in the text. JG66 (talk) 04:31, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

To quote Cullen, "I am an administrator and here is my informed opinion: You are wasting your time with trivial pedantry. Whether or not a comma appears after a state name is a stylistic matter of no significance, and your time would be better spent doing some useful task that actually improves the encyclopedia for our readers." And your forum-shopping will not improve things. --Orange Mike | Talk 17:07, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

@Orangemike: Forum shopping? What the "F" are you talking about? Really? I was directed from Page A to go to Page B to go to Page C. And I did as was suggested. You call that "forum shopping"? And what exactly am I shopping for? What a piece of work. Really. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 18:53, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

Orangemike and, it would seem, Cullen328, I do think Joseph A. Spadaro's concerns are legitimate. As mentioned above, I don't like or support the idea of these commas, but the MoS does. It seems quite logical to think that if a style is applied within an article, per MoS, then it would apply also to the article's title. I know nothing about any dispute outside of this talk page (and I don't want to inflame any such dispute), but it is an issue that's perplexing: whether MoS applies to article titles, and whether it's okay to be stylistically inconsistent between title and text. JG66 (talk) 13:21, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

Status 2

Can we get a decision, one way or the other? I don't give a ~~shit~~ feces, if there is a comma or not. I am asking that similar articles be treated with similar rules. Unbelievable that people think that is asking a lot. To have consistency for similar situations. (Nay, exact same situations.) That's asking a lot? Wow. Unreal. And, of all places, in the MOS and its Talk Page! Just unreal. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 18:57, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

Personally, I think two commas is correct, but can see that people would consider titles peppered with commas a little unpleasing æsthetically. The whole "year place something-happened" pattern isn't great. Perhaps we could rearrange it: "Aurora, Colorado, shooting, 2012"?! Pelagic (talk) 02:01, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

That, from you, is enough, quite, aleck smart. E Eng 02:04, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

Chuckled, EEng, thanks. –Pelagic (talk) 03:13, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

It's a valid concern. It also used to bother me that we have so many factual inconsistencies between articles, but I've become resigned to the idea that it's an unavoidable product of the way the encyclopaedia is built. JAS, even if the MoS explicitly said what you're asking for, would it help long-term or just cause arguments about the guideline? I don't think it's great that the reaction has been 'meh, not important', but the regulars here (I'm not one) have probably seen much argy-bargy about seemingly small issues, like capitalising job titles, that never go away. Pelagic (talk) 03:13, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

Vectors

Regarding vectors. The ISO standard is there to facilitate consistency. Ignore it if there are good reasons. I would strongly suggest that we stick to it regarding vector notation. It is not difficult. Use <math>\boldsymbol{k}</math> for the vector symbol ${\boldsymbol {k}}$ , and <math>\mathbf{k}</math> for the vector constant $\mathbf {k}$ . The same notation should be used inline and for formulas to avoid confusion. (Skvery [□] (talk) 11:47, 16 April 2020 (UTC))

I stopped reading when I saw "ISO". ISO standards are too expensive for volunteer Wikipedia editors. I oppose the use of any ISO standard on Wikipedia, although I don't oppose freely available standards that just happen to be mostly the same as some ISO standard. I also refuse to discuss any standard unless the exact standard to be discussed is cited. Jc3s5h (talk) 11:53, 16 April 2020 (UTC)

Am I reading this correctly? What you say here: I don't oppose freely available standards that just happen to be mostly the same as some ISO standard seems to rather contradict what you wrote in your 2020-03-04T13:40 post at phab:T132308.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:41, 16 April 2020 (UTC)

Mathematicians in the wild tend to ignore ISO dictates. In some contexts, you're more likely to see arrows over letters. In others, you're likely to see no decoration on vectors at all. After all, a vector is simply an element of a vector space. The field of real numbers forms a vector space over itself (as does any field). Should variables for real numbers be decorated as vectors? Etc. –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 20:11, 17 April 2020 (UTC)

Putting this gently, the OP's suggestion is naive. Different areas of math, statistics, science, and engineering use different conventions for all kinds of things including vectors, sometimes for good reason, sometimes for bad reasons, sometimes for no reason. We're not going to force everything onto a Procrustean bed. E Eng 20:24, 17 April 2020 (UTC)
More strongly, I would suggest we completely ignore the ISO standards. Their choices of abbreviations for logarithms, for instance, are wrongheaded and counter to most practice in the mathematical and related literatures. Maybe they are useful for engineers but not for mathematicians. Also, in this specific case, I have no idea what distinction you or the ISO are trying to draw between "vector symbol" and "vector constant" — whether a named vector varies or is constant depends on context, is subject to change as the context changes, and is not intrinsic to its value. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:17, 17 April 2020 (UTC)
When you say "ISO standards" do you mean stuff like, "Must love dogs and enjoy long walks on the beach"? E Eng 21:24, 17 April 2020 (UTC)

Basically, it shouldn't matter what format is followed as long as it 1) appropriate for the topic at hand , 2) self-consistent within the article itself and 3) introduced appropriately within the article itself. --Masem (t) 22:18, 17 April 2020 (UTC)
Apparently you intend to simply ignore my strained joke. E Eng 22:41, 17 April 2020 (UTC)
@EEng: cf. "ANSI-standard pizza", in the Jargon File. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 01:07, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

RfC: Use of Large Quotes in article space, and the Cquote template

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Proposal 1A has consensus. Not reaching consensus, a small number of !votes advocated for a second stage implementation of 1C. With insufficient support and significant opposition, there was no consensus for Proposal 2 of either variant A or B. (non-admin closure) -SusanLesch (talk) 17:39, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

The Cquote template is used in many articles to set off quotes with large quote marks. The MOS says not to use it in articles and the template also contains that instruction.

Thus, rule and practice are not in good alignment. How should we fix this (if we should)? Should the quote marks be removed from those articles that use it by modifying {{Cquote}}? Or should the MOS be changed?

-- DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 00:01, 29 December 2019 (UTC) and Herostratus (talk) 14:26, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

Additional background material

This is {{Quote}}:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Sit amet porttitor eget dolor morbi. Scelerisque mauris pellentesque pulvinar pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus.

And this is {{Cquote}}:

“

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Sit amet porttitor eget dolor morbi. Scelerisque mauris pellentesque pulvinar pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus.

”

Most of the earlier Cquote discussions are linked from Template talk:Cquote/MOS discussions. Particularly relevant are:
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 184#RfC: What (if anything) to do about quotations, and the quotation templates?, and
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 188#Proposal to stop supporting pull quotes

DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 00:01, 29 December 2019 (UTC) and Herostratus (talk) 14:39, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

Specific proposals

Proposal 1: Change {{Cquote}} to match the documentation.
- Proposal 1A: Replace {{cquote}} with the code from {{cquote/sandbox1}}, with results that can be seen at Template:Cquote/testcases1. This would have the effect of converting {{cquote}} into {{quote}} in all mainspace uses, all at once. Make similar changes in {{rquote}}.
- Proposal 1B: Replace {{cquote}} with the code from {{cquote/sandbox2}}, with results that can be seen at Template:Cquote/testcases2. This would have the effect of converting {{cquote}} into an error message in all mainspace uses, all at once.
- Proposal 1C: Replace {{cquote}} with the code from {{cquote/sandbox3}}, with results that can be seen at Template:Cquote/testcases3. This would have the effect of adding an error message to all mainspace uses of {{cquote}}, all at once.

DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 00:01, 29 December 2019 (UTC) and Herostratus (talk) 14:26, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

Proposal 2: Change the MOS to match the usage.
- Proposal 2A: Remove the proscriptive clauses from the MOS etc. and replace them with nothing -- neither encourage, nor discourage, use of {{Cquote}}; just don't mention it. (This entails removing "(and especially avoid decorative quotation marks in normal use, such as those provided by the {{cquote}} template)" from the third sentence of WP:BLOCKQUOTE, and "also" from the fourth sentence. And remove similar proscriptive language from the documentation of {{Cquote}} and any other appropriate language.)
- Proposal 2B: Remove the proscriptive clauses from the MOS etc. and replace them with explicit allowance of {{Cquote}}. This entails editing the beginning of WP:BLOCKQUOTE to something like along these lines:

Format a long quote (more than about 40 words or a few hundred characters, or consisting of more than one paragraph, regardless of length) as a block quotation, indented on both sides. Block quotations can be enclosed in {{Quote}} (which just indents) or {{Cquote}} (which adds large quotation marks). Do not include text quotation marks at the beginning and end of blockquoted text. Block quotations using a colored background are discouraged.

And making appropriate edits to the {{Cquote}} documentation and elsewhere as appropriate.

Herostratus (talk) 10:25, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

Survey

As proposer, I support proposal 1 , converting all uses of {{cquote}} into MOS-compliant blockquotes without needing to edit thousands of articles. The MOS on this issue has had consensus for years, the need is to bring articles into compliance. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 00:04, 29 December 2019 (UTC)
- The original proposal 1 was renumbered as 1A. I nevertheless object to anyone rewriting a signed individual statement of mine, as Herostratus did here and below. WP:TPO is relevant here. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 15:58, 29 December 2019 (UTC)
Support proposal 1C. I think it's going to cause confusion for the typical editor when one expects the template to render a decorative block quote but it doesn't, so I would rather the template trigger the visual cue that it is not to be used in the article namespace. The benefit of it doing that outweighs the cost of running the bot to replace it in the article namespace. I prefer proposal 3 over 2 because it continues to display the content to minimize the impact of accidental use on the readability of the article. But I would support using proposal 1 until that replacement process is complete, so the immediate compliance can be had right away without obtrusive error messages. --Bsherr (talk) 04:56, 29 December 2019 (UTC)
- Template documentation exists for a reason, and will explain the differential output. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 07:49, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
Support proposal 1C as per Bsherr. A one time run on ~16000 articles is not a massive replacement, and makes things clear for editors. Galobtter (pingó mió) 06:07, 29 December 2019 (UTC)
Oppose 2: if quotation marks are needed around a quotation, they do not need to be the massive, decorative (and IMO ugly) quotes of {{cquote}}. Consistency in presentation (i.e. using blockquote for all quotes) makes things clear for readers. Also per the overemphasis arguments below. Galobtter (pingó mió) 17:12, 30 December 2019 (UTC)
Support Proposal 2. 2A and 2B are fine, for my part I support 2B. Here're my reasons:
1. Change the documentation on merits of reader experience: Quotation marks are the universal signal to English speakers that the material contained between them is a direct quotation. {{Quote}} uses only indentation, familiar to readers of serious texts but not everyone.
2. Change the documentation on grounds of staff gruntlement: like it or not, a lot of editors seem to continue to want to present quotations using {{Cquote}}. In spite of the MOS's flat-out prohibition, and occasional outbreaks of people "fixing" these "errors", we have about 17,000 articles that use {{Cquote}} to present quotations -- 10% of articles, as opposed to 85% for {{Quote}} (the other 5% is {{Quote box}}), in spite of the fact that it's explicitly prohibited, and also people keep deleting it because "the rule says so". Generally, rules here are supposed to codify common practice, within reason. Micromanaging editors by imposing an order to stop using a tool they find useful and superior as they write and present material -- that is, the actual work of the project -- for insufficient reason is not a good way to grow and nurture a group of volunteers.
3. Change the documentation on ground of upholding Wikipedia process. The admonitions not to use {{Cquote}} in articles was put into the MOS in 2007 by an editor on his own initiative, after an extremely short discussion ([Quotation marks around block quotes (ie: cquote template) here]) which if anything told him not to. Nobody noticed, or cared enough to roll it back, or whatever; it happens. So that editor "got away" with making this new rule. As you all know, once a rule is put in place (however it's done), it's very hard to get the supermajority necessary to remove it -- it's a weakness of the Wikipedia that if you can sneak something it and get away with it for a while then you have the whip hand. So we're stuck with this editors personal rule, which he (and others) continue to enforce on grounds of "fixing format to follow the rule". It stinks, it stinks to high heaven. Exploiting our constitutional weaknesses is not usually looked on kindly and is not how rules in the Wikipedia are supposed to be made. I don't want to reward or valorize this sort of thing and I hope you don't either.
4. Change the documentation on merits of the aesthetics: There's no need to present the reader with a wall of text. Section breaks help some, and images break up the layout, but sometimes you don't have these in your toolbox. {{Cquote}} (and it sidebar version {{Rquote}} can help with this.

Herostratus (talk) 15:39, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

Quote marks are not "the universal signal" of quotation, or block quotation could not exist, yet it is the dominant style across all English-language publishing for large quotations. A "lot" of editors do not want to use the decorative template. The vast majority of our block quotations are done with {{Quote}}. Most uses of {{Cquote}} are old, pre-dating any cleanup attempts, while conversion of them to {{Quote}} goes unreverted in over 99.5% of cases (I've done this experimentally with hundreds of instances), and only a vanishingly small percentage of our editors personally go around inserting this decorative template instead of {{Quote}}. So, the rule does codify common practice even by Herostratus's own numbers (only 10% of usage is {{Cquote}}, shrinking all the time). And see WP:CONSENSUS: a guideline in place since 2007 and followed almost all of the time except by people who don't read the guideline (and who virtually never object when their inappropriate choice is gnomed to comply with MoS) and by a tiny handful of "resisters" (see WP:BATTLEGROUND) self-evidently has consensus. A few people being loud about their dislike of it here is insufficient to overturn it. WP:CCC doesn't mean "a rule is invalid if 10 people don't like it." There would have to be a massive showing of a change of consensus. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 06:27, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

Support 1A The current Cquote is used normally to ovr-emphasise a cherry-picked quotation. This proposal will have the effect of educing it to a more appropriate display. for an encyclopedia These of the current cquote is editorializing--appropriate to newspapers and magazines, where editorializing is expected.. It hanse real use in an encyclopedia , at least not in mainspace. DGG ( talk ) 07:38, 30 December 2019 (UTC)
Support 1A as the least obtrusive of the solutions. Oppose any variant of 2 as setting up another long nightmare of multiple styles that don't add any value to our articles but waste a lot of editor time converting them back and forth or setting up policies to prevent them getting converted back and forth. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:50, 30 December 2019 (UTC)
Support 1A—quick and unobtrusive way to bring articles into MOS compliance, to be replaced by 1C after all uses of the box in mainspace are gone, to help editors who are adding quoteboxes pick the right template per Bsherr. Oppose any variant of 2 because these quote marks do nothing to add to encyclopedic value and just clutter the page, while overemphasizing certain points of view. Quotes (even quoteboxes, IMO) have their place on Wikipedia but we have to be careful to keep them to their place lest we endanger NPOV. b uidhe 10:05, 30 December 2019 (UTC)
Support Proposal 2 per the good reasons listed by Herostratus. Quotation marks are not decoration; they are punctuation. Changing the punctuation of thousands of articles in a broad-brush way without inspecting the effect on their meaning would be outrageous. As the supposed rule never had consensus in the first place and it is widely ignored, it should be voided per WP:NOTLAW and WP:CREEP. Andrew🐉(talk) 10:36, 30 December 2019 (UTC)
- They are not punctuation in that context (or, rather, are redundant punctuation mis-serving as decoration). Block quotations (with or without giant quotation marks) are block-indented; this is what sets them off as quotations. WP did not invent this style; it is what is used in around 99.9999% of professionally produced publications. (Even newspapers and magazines do not do this decorative stuff with block quotations, they do it with pull quotes, which is not what this template is being misused for on Wikipedia.) Just auto-converting this template's output to that of {{Quote}} will not have any negative effect at all, except possibly in bonehead cases, where someone has ignored even the documentation of the template and attempted to do something with the template that wasn't contemplated by its designers. That'll be a handful of cases to repair manually. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 06:27, 30 January 2020 (UTC)
Strongly Oppose any of proposal 2–A or B: MoS is just fine. GenQuest ^{"Talk to Me"} 14:46, 30 December 2019 (UTC)
Support proposal 1A: Kill the C-Quote in articles. It's distracting, ugly, and serves no purpose which is not already handled by the much more professional looking {{Blockquote}}. GenQuest ^{"Talk to Me"} 14:46, 30 December 2019 (UTC)
Support 1A, Oppose both 2A and 2B - Ealdgyth - Talk 17:51, 30 December 2019 (UTC)
Support proposal 1A, agree with what GenQuest and other have said. MB 18:19, 30 December 2019 (UTC)
Support prop 1 I would prefer 1B and deprecate its use entirely, but I would not oppose 1A either which seems to be most popular. — Wug·a·po·des 19:58, 31 December 2019 (UTC)
Support 1C per MOS.--Srleffler (talk) 22:40, 31 December 2019 (UTC)
Support 1A/1C. This is a fantastically small aberration in consistent usage we can easily remove with very little fuss, so let's do it. (I'd say that {{cquote}} should ultimately be dumped entirely so it can't inadvertently be used anymore anyhow, but that's neither here nor there.) Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 23:16, 31 December 2019 (UTC)
Support proposal 2 for the reasons described by Herostratus. The entire point of cquote is to draw attention to the quote and the large quotation marks help with that. Otherwise, we may as well just keep quotations in regular body text. --Coolcaesar (talk) 16:38, 1 January 2020 (UTC)
You're quite right that the purpose of cquote is to draw attention to the quote. The template is designed for pull quotes. The problem is that editors often ignorantly use the template for block quotations. That is not what the template is for, and block quotations generally should not be highlighted in that way. This incorrect usage dominates the use of cquote in articles; cases where cquote would actually be appropriate are rare.--Srleffler (talk) 19:52, 1 January 2020 (UTC)
It was not designed for, and was never used for, pull quotes. We don't use pull quotes here, basically never. At some point in the template's history, somebody just wrote into the documentation that it was for pull quotes. Probably just the whim of a single misguided editor, so basically near to vandalism (I haven't checked, but it's hard to imagine any kind of serious discussion ending in the idea that pull quotes should be supported, since we don't use them and shouldn't.) Herostratus (talk) 23:58, 1 January 2020 (UTC)
Balderdash. Its style is borrowed completely from pull quotes as used in various magazines, and in my sporadic cleanup sprees, I have found it used both for actual pull quotes (which repeat material, in showy form, already found embedded in the regular prose) and fake pull quotes, in the sense of not being found already in the main text but serving the same encyclopedically inappropriate purpose of drawing undue attention to a particular party's statement. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 07:49, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

@Coolcaesar: The "reasons described by Herostratus" are demonstrably wrong. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 08:18, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
1A, then 1C after all extant uses are corrected, per Buidhe's reasoning. The in-mainspace behavior change proposed for {{cquote}} should also be done with the other "decorative quote" templates (borders, boxes, centring, sidebars, etc.), though we should fork one to {{Document excerpt}} for a sidebar containing a document excerpt (i.e., something that is serving the same function as an image, but is presenting wiki-formatted text from a document rather than a facsimile of it). This is a well-accepted use of quotation sidebar templates. I would simply take the features from the extant quote sidebar templates and combine them into a single template (with output and parameter names consistent with the majority of the other quote templates – one of them is markedly divergent and should be deprecated), and document it as only for use with document excerpts.
Strongly opposed to any variant of proposal 2, which is just 'shopping to try to get a different result than what MOS:BQ says, and is not responsive to an RfC about how MOS:BQ should be implemented. Its premise is false as are Herostratus's rationales in support of it, as I'll lay out in the discussion section below. MoS implements a single standard for a reason (since 2006 if not earlier). The fact that we didn't actually get around to implementing it because of a technological hindrance to doing so (and 1A will fix that) has simply led to "monkey see, monkey do" additional uses of {{cquote}} and other decorative quote templates, because editors mostly do not read the style guide or the template docs, they copy-paste what they find in one article into another and fill it in with different content. It does not indicate a consensus against what MoS says, just an implementation drag. So remove that drag. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 01:39, 2 January 2020 (UTC); revised 12:48, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
To be clear: oppose 2*, and 1B; 1B in particular is ridiculous and was just inserted as a FUD move. 2* amount to "IAR means 'a rule I don't like doesn't apply to my articles, just because WP:IDONTLIKEIT.'" But we all know that's not what IAR means. This is not an RfC to change what MoS says – that would require a very strong new WP:CCC consensus against its current wording, which is obviously not going to happen. The RfC is just about fixing the problem that a template deployed a long time ago has caused a mess too difficult to clean up manually, but which is very easily rectified by simply changing the template output with a namespace switch, instead of manually changing the template call in thousands of instances. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 01:50, 6 February 2020 (UTC)
1A is my first choice, and 1C is my second choice. Also, I like User:Buidhe's idea of doing 1A now and 1C later (possibly much later). WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:11, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
Oppose all proposals here. This template resembles a pull quote, which as described in that article is a design element like an image rather than being part of the running text. We use images relevant to the article and section to break up the wall of text, and pull quotes should be acceptable in the same way when the section is about a specific quote rather than something that is represented in graphical manner. Uses of {{cquote}} may need review for cases where <blockquote> or {{rquote}} is more appropriate, but IMO neither a total ban (proposal 1) nor a blanket approval (proposal 2) is appropriate. Anomie ⚔ 12:50, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
@Anomie: That's really off-topic. Pull quotes (an unencyclopedic style found mostly in magazines) are no longer sanctioned for use in Wikipedia articles (per two RfCs or other such discussions several years ago; one to deprecate them, and one to stop even suggesting they could sometimes be used). Whether something "resembles" a pull quote is neither here nor there (except this: the fact that the purpose of a pull quote is to psychologically manipulate the reader into continuing to read, and with a particular idea or emotion in their head, means that pull quotes or anything masquerading as them are a WP:NPOV problem, by definition). Whether you think MOS:BQ should or shouldn't call for only <blockquote> (or its {{Quote}} wrapper) is also basically irrelevant to this thread; it does, and it has since at least 2006. This RfC isn't about changing the guideline, it's about how best to technologically implement it. If you want to change it, that's a very different kind of RfC. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 16:09, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
@SMcCandlish: Err, proposal 2 is explicitly about changing the guideline. I find the rest of your dismissal as similarly incorrect, but I'm not going to waste time arguing with you about it. Anomie ⚔ 18:02, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
"Proposal 2" was tacked on after the RfC opened, as an "anti-RfC", and has virtually no support. What you just wrote is a dismissal (i.e., an empty, handwaving refusal to engage); what I wrote is a point by point rebuttal of your OP, which is in no way dispelled by ignoring it. The point of it wasn't even to argue with you but to get you to reconsider what you've posted (whether you want to talk about it or not). — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 18:24, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
Support 1A. These big quote marks do not match other elements of our house style for articles. Sandstein 16:21, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
1A now and actually not 1b or 1c. Just silently pass through the parameters. --Izno (talk) 16:42, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
Just to clarify, just silently pass through the parameters until such time as a bot can replace the templates in mainspace, at which time I prefer the 1B approach (and not 1C still, as I would prefer not to render anything correctly whatsoever, so as to avoid tempting innocent or otherwise users into using the template anyway). --Izno (talk) 21:45, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
Support 1A There is no need for the large quotation marks as flourishes; they merely take up space and interfere with nearby images. Much simpler than forcing fixes in its uses. As punctuation quotation marks are needed to set off a quotation within running text, but when the quotation is already set off in an indented paragraph they are not mandatory. Reywas92^Talk 21:21, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
Support 1A per existing consensus not to use {{cquote}} in article space. Strong oppose 1B and 1C which would cause a massive and immediate influx of confusion and complaints from editors, and also would be damaging to our readers' experience. If we did have an error message of some sorts—which I am opposed to—then I would strongly advise that it should mention that {{quote}} is the template to use in place, so that people who came across the error message would know how to fix it. Also, whilst we should be getting rid of pull quotes, lengthy quotes and other misuses of quotes where we see them, I oppose editors going through usages of {{cquote}} and changing them to {{quote}} en masse, as it would not be an improvement if 1A was adopted, it causes unnecessary disruption and it would do damage if consensus ever changed in favour of {{cquote}}'s current version. — Bilorv (talk) 18:56, 4 January 2020 (UTC)
Support 2A. I would amend the MOS to allow the use of {{cquote}} the way I prefer to use it, for quotations used epigraphically (see two sections in 2017 Los Angeles Measure S and this section of Disappearance of Tiffany Whitton for examples. But only that ... the quotes are a distraction when used with inline blockquotes. Also I totally second Herostratus. Daniel Case (talk) 23:32, 5 January 2020 (UTC)
Oppose 2A and 2B – Support 1A – best to continue to work toward phasing out the big decorative quote marks. Dicklyon (talk) 02:37, 6 January 2020 (UTC)
Support 1A and Oppose others There is already consensus to deprecate. 1B and 1C have a deficit for readers (as opposed to editors). I acknowledge the concern that 1A may cause confusion to some editors but believe that the deficit of the options (1B % 1C) outweighs this IMO but it does not mean that potential editor issues might be otherwise addressed. There probably needs to be something in big flashing letters at the documentation. A bot run (or two or three) to convert occurrences. An edit summary for the bot run that has big letters - preferable flashing. Later runs could even add hidden comments. Eventually the message will get through. Regards, Cinderella157 (talk) 07:19, 6 January 2020 (UTC)
Pleased to see this issue being addressed/revisited because, to my mind, the large quote marks add undue emphasis to the quoted content when in fact any sort of block quote treatment is based purely on word count. Support 1A, if it's the most committed measure, and Oppose others. Not wanting to distract from this point, but it's reminded me that there is still an option to include quote marks (that is, "Fat-quotes") at Template:Quote box, which would seem inconsistent with moves to phase out decorative quote marks, per Dicklyon above. JG66 (talk) 09:10, 6 January 2020 (UTC)
Support 2A or 2B as per User:Herostratus. The speech marks look better and make much more sense. Wikipedia should move with the times. (WP:5P5) TBH anything works as long as it's one or the other... >>BEANS X2^t 17:01, 6 January 2020 (UTC)
"Look better" is just WP:ILIKEIT; it's meaningless as an argument in an RfC. The rest of what you said doesn't track, either. If putting giant quotation marks around block quotations "ma[d]e much more sense" than block indentation, then why would all major English-language (and most non-English) style guides direct writers to use block indentation? Your argument is basically a form of WP:OR, or rather just outright defiance of all reliable sources on writing. And "WP should move with the times" doesn't make any sense; there is zero evidence of any kind – presented here or anywhere else anyone has cited – suggesting that there is a trend in publishing away from the block-indentation of block quotes and toward using giant quotation marks around them. What we do know, contrariwise, is that the style is common in magazines for pull quotes (which are not the same thing as block quotes, but are an attention-getting, i.e. a PoV-pushing, stratagem), and that the style is also used as the default markup for thread quotations in a few web-board software packages (WP:NOT#FORUM, and we don't care what forum software is doing, except maybe inasmuch as it may inform what the devs decided to do with talk page threading, and look what a dismal failure those efforts have been, with en.Wikipedia and many other WMF projects explicitly rejecting WMF's pet talk-threading projects as unworkable and basically "un-wiki"). — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 15:22, 14 January 2020 (UTC)
Support proposal 2, with a slight preference for 2A. The distinction between block quotes and pull quotes is a completely pointless one, which hundreds of editors clearly don't follow. Why shouldn't anyone put quote marks around a direct quote? The MOS prohibition seems misguided to me. Let people use cquote if they want. Modest Genius ^talk 15:12, 13 January 2020 (UTC)
For the same reason that virtually every style guide on earth says not to put quotation marks around block quotations. You're making a WP:IDONTKNOWIT pseudo-argument. Just because you're unfamiliar with English writing norms doesn't mean our guidelines should go against those norms. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 15:22, 14 January 2020 (UTC)
I notice you didn't actually provide a reason, just accused me of being "unfamiliar with English writing norms". I'm not. Modest Genius ^talk 16:58, 21 January 2020 (UTC)
The admonition not to put quotes around block quotations refers to quotes in the text -- that is, of the same size, font, and color as the text. That is, don't do this:

"Quote marks don't belong here"
— Pinckney Pruddle

Which is really quite different what we're talking about here with {{cquote}}. Herostratus (talk) 06:19, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

Support 1A. These quotes completely unbalance an article. Much better to just convert them into something not quite so jarring. -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:16, 13 January 2020 (UTC)
Support 2 The symbols make it clear that these are quotes. Blocks of text are occasionally use for other purposes. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:07, 20 January 2020 (UTC)
Except not. Block quotations are done as indented blocks without quotation marks in almost all other publications. And quotation marks are used for far more (quotation-unrelated) purposes than indented blocks are (most often titles of minor works; and "scare-quoting" of things like nicknames; and many words-as-words cases, especially where italics are already being used for something else like foreign phrases; and various other things.) — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 06:27, 30 January 2020 (UTC)
Support 2 per Herostratus. An illustrative pullquote is no less encyclopedic than an illustrative image. (Heck, I've seen articles pass FAC with pullquotes in them.) Guidelines should follow practice, not the other way around. It seems that the issue here is not so much that consensus changed as that it never existed; in any event, consensus is best judged by the actual practice of the editing community, not by talkpage discussions that only a tiny fraction of editors will even be aware of. And as Herostratus has ably demonstrated, the current text of the guideline is (and seemingly always has been) out of step with the actual working consensus of working Wikipedians. Allowing a 14-year-old non-consensus to dictate current practice would be simply bizarre. (Also, 14 years ago we had a much less hidebound concept of guidelines, so having an ill-considered "rule" buried in the MOS wouldn't have struck most of us as a big deal if we had noticed it at all.) -- Visviva (talk) 07:07, 27 January 2020 (UTC)
You don't seem to be following the discussion. This is not about "an illustrative pullquote", it's about using pull-quote stylization for things that are block quotes, not pull quotes. And "per Herostratus" at this late a date isn't a very meaningful comment if you do not address the refutations of Herostratus's arguments. And he did not demonstrate any such thing as "out of step with the actual working consensus"; his own numbers show an overwhelming majority implementation of {{Quote}} over {{Cquote}} (and he didn't even account for major decline in use of {{Cquote}}, i.e. increased compliance with using {{Quote}} over time). — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 06:27, 30 January 2020 (UTC)
"Not agreeing with you" and "not following the discussion" are two separate things. Nobody's argument has been refuted; it's basically a question of personal preference, how important using just one format is to one, to what degree layout should be determined by individual editors and what degree by top-down fiat, and so forth (and the answer to that is "somewhere between 0% and 100%, with the exact number fluid depending on circumstances", so it's a question of arguing over where the line goes here). These aren't the kind of things that can be decisively proved one way or the other.

Sure, only 10% of block quotes use {{Cquote}} -- that's still some many thousands (don't have the exact figures right at hand), which isn't so bad considering that, after all, you (on your own dime) put in in admonitions in the MOS that it's flat-out not allowed to to be used....

"Decrease in use", if true, is surely partly because you and people of similar Procrustean mind go around deleting uses of {{Cquote}} to match your own aesthetic preference. Yes, doing that will cause usage to drop, but so? Herostratus (talk) 16:50, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

Ah, thank you for making it clear that this is just a "lash out at people who don't want to join me in waging war against our style guide" nonsense. If your message can't refrain from focusing on contributor instead of content, and trying to imply that people who actually bother to follow the style guidelines are somehow a problem, then there's no point in entertaining you further, per WP:DONTFEED. (Perhaps more the point, I would be real money that the vast majority of recent additions of cquote in mainspace are by you and by a few other editors with a long-term habit of trying to "lobby" against guideline material that doesn't suit your tastes. So, see also WP:KETTLE and WP:FAITACCOMPLI.) If you don't understand that use of your pet template dropping to 10%, and dropping further all the time, when it used to probably be around 35% or so, is a clear indication of a consensus against its use, then I'm not sure anyone's going to be able to get through to you. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 23:13, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

Support 2B per Herostratus (and others). Second choice 2A. Oppose 1 which is unduly autocratic and against longstanding (de facto) consensus. Bring back Daz Sampson (talk) 13:34, 1 February 2020 (UTC)
Support Proposal 1 (any implementation). Pull quotations have been deprecated by RFC. Consequentially, all instances of {{Cquote}} are either pull quotes that we need to get rid off or block quotations using the wrong tempalte. I oppose Proposal 2 based on DESiegel's comment below: decorative quotation marks make a quotation leap off the page, giving it undue attention. Indentation helps readability, decorative quotation marks don't, and are just a distaction. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 23:30, 2 February 2020 (UTC)
Support Proposal 1. Changing the MOS because some editors won't follow consensus guidelines seems like the tail wagging the dog. --Tenebrae (talk) 23:19, 4 February 2020 (UTC)
Support 1A as first choice. I like the idea of eventually moving to 1C once we've removed all mainspace instances, but I would support it as a second choice and 1B as a third choice. I oppose both 2A and 2B; while I agree that someone did a nice job making that template, it's clearly undue weight for anything inside it, and therefore inappropriate for any mainspace page. CThomas³ (talk) 00:14, 5 February 2020 (UTC)
Support 1A and strongly oppose all versions of 2. As per Tenebrae, to do otherwise is just to changing the MOS because some editors won't follow consensus guidelines, and sets a bad precedent. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:57, 5 February 2020 (UTC)
Deprecate all pull quotes WP is not a newspaper, in the sense that we are an information site and not a work that needs to unnecessarily dramatise our content. Yes, quotation markes are needed as punctuation, but they do not need to be super-sized. Pull quotes exactly super-sizes the punctuation and are decorative. They serve to give subjective emphasis often to the detriment of purposeful and other useful information. They are often deliberately used to give undue emphasis or otherwise sensationalise selected content in much the way as soapboxing, and I do not consider such to be encyclopaedic purpose. As such, their use ought not to be allowed, let alone condoned. Just because many editors like them, and because these editors have inserted them into 17,000 articles is neither here nor there. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 10:51, 5 February 2020 (UTC)
Support 1A. Oversized quote marks are inappropriate for an encyclopedia as they have the odour of the yellow press and blogsites. Would accept 1B or 1C as alternatives. · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 11:42, 5 February 2020 (UTC)
Depricate in main-space but do not change existing uses. This can be done by bot-replacing all uses of {{cquote|...}} with {{cquote|2020RfCexempt=yes|...}} then changing the behavior of {{cquote}} to throw up a big ugly warning if it is used in mainspace (or draft: space for that matter) without |2020RfCexempt=yes. As for option 1B or 1C, I'm not picky. I would also be okay with replacing the prominent blue curley-quotes with more subtle ones when 2020RfCexempt is set to yes. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 16:10, 5 February 2020 (UTC)
There's no such thing as date-based "grandfathering" exceptions from Wikipedia guidelines or policies. All our articles are in state of perpetual flux, even WP:FAs; they are not works we published once upon a time and keep in a fixed state. See WP:CONTENTAGE, WP:OLDARTICLE; this is a classic "argument to avoid" on Wikipedia. The last time someone tried to impose something like this (via a WP:SUPERVOTE while closing an RfC they actively said they didn't like the outcome of), it had no effect whatsoever; the community consistently applied the rule change across all articles, regardless of age, through a serious of RMs over the course of the following year or so. Anyway, this wouldn't work. The main reason we still have any new cases of {{cquote}} in mainspace (aside from a few usual suspects adding it out of "guidelines I don't like don't apply to my articles" defiance) is editors (who mostly don't read MoS except to look up something specific) just copying what they see in one article and pasting it into another then swapping in their content. If instances of that template remain in mainspace they'll continue to "spawn" new instances over time, inevitably. Analogy: imagine what would happen if we allowed personal attacks against biography subjects to remain in ~10% of our articles instead of doing our best to eliminate all of them. The solution is to remove it from mainspace, or prevent it doing anything unusual in mainspace; cure it or become immune to it. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 16:45, 5 February 2020 (UTC)
Actually, date-based grandfathering happens in Wikipedia - even this year's new WP:Partial blocks mechanism specifially allows editing restirctions to be enforced into partial blocks, provided that those editing restrictions did not exist as of 09:37, 11 January 2020 (UTC). If memory serves, there were some "grandfather clauses" in place with when the Draft: namespace became live and when Draft:-namespace related speedy deletion criterias went live. However, I will admit my memory is not 100% reliable. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 17:50, 5 February 2020 (UTC)
Nah. User restrictions have nothing to do with whether a particular sliver of mainspace content is subject to the same policies as the rest of the content (which it is). Nor do CSD time-windows; those are about restraining administrative over-enthusiasm for deletionism; they don't pertain in any way at all to whether our content can be magically excempt from the WP:P&G that apply to all the rest of it. Same goes for things like time-limited WP:AC/DS things (1RR at a page for a month); that's also about restraining people and their behavior, not about applicability of content rules to content. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 01:39, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

@SMcCandlish: and others who may have missed the html comment above: I have no problem with human editors replacing {{cquote}} with {{quote}} on a page-by-page basis. In fact, I would recommend that cquotes be "looked at and considered for changing" on sight. However, I expect editors to ask themselves "is the change an improvement in this particular case?" I just don't want a mindless bot doing it because there will be occasional cases where it might be appropriate and a bot can't use judgement. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 18:01, 5 February 2020 (UTC)
I understand the feeling, but the problem is we're all volunteers here. If it were practical to do all this manually – even with WP:AWB – it would have been done years ago already. I know from experience how tedious it is. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that in 1% of cases there's some mystically unique reason that {{cquote}} is being used reasonably at a particular article (and that's being very generous). The drain on editorial productivity to manually put those back after a bot run is 99 × less than than the human cost of manually getting rid of the rest of them. It's actually worse, because some kind of excuse to maybe use {{cquote}} at some article doesn't require that it be used; that is, the already-inflated 1% are all entirely optional. As I noted in my own !vote, we likely do need a variant template specifically for document excerpts (e.g. a sidebar of a passage from a historical document, serving the same purpose as an image but being marked-up text instead of a scan/photo). However, that wouldn't be based on {{cquote}} anyway, but on another variant, probably {{rquote}} (a large proportion of the surviving uses of that template in mainspace are in that vein already, so we should probably convert those that are not to {{quote}}, then rename rquote to something like {{document excerpt}} and rewrite its documentation). — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 01:39, 6 February 2020 (UTC)
Strongly oppose 1B. I don't have a strong opinion about whether the cquotes should remain or not but there is no justification for replacing a very large number of fully functioning template instances in mainspace with an error message on what is (in at least a large part) a matter of style and aesthetics. 1C does not have the same issues because it does not remove information from articles. Thryduulf (talk) 16:26, 5 February 2020 (UTC)
Yeah, 1B would never fly and I argued strongly against including it; it's a red herring and FUD. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 16:45, 5 February 2020 (UTC)
Documentation for pull quotes mandates that these only be used to repeat content already in the article. That being the case, substituting the template with an error message ought not to result in any loss of information. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 17:43, 5 February 2020 (UTC)
Yeah, but then we deprecated pull quotes, period, via RfC quite some time ago, because it's an unencyclopedic style from magazine writing (the entire purpose of it is emotionally manipulating the reader). Someone already linked that RfC in this discussion somewhere. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 01:39, 6 February 2020 (UTC)
Support 2A this is one of those needless conformity problems that crop up from time to time. There is no reason, and certainly no rational justification, to intentionally break thousands of pages just because usage doesn't match the MOS. The MOS is a best practices document, it is not policy. The premise that this RfC is founded upon is therefore invalid and the entire RfC based on a misconception. If there are specific worries about NPOV on specific articles, then those can be addresses on the article talk pages, where any other NPOV issue is discussed. That is a very poor reason to ban or break a popular template. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 16:50, 5 February 2020 (UTC)
You don't seem to read the RfC options; only the silly 1B would break anything. That option was inserted despite the RfC drafting stage making it very clear it has no chance and would just serve as a scare tactic. It's disheartening to see that is actually having that effect. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 01:39, 6 February 2020 (UTC)
To be honest, I'm weary of having my character assasinated here, my motives misconstrued, and my competence deprecated. This's not how we are supposed to communicate here, so please stop. It actually doesn't put your arguments in a good light to go on like that anyway. Herostratus (talk) 02:35, 6 February 2020 (UTC)
Hmm. But it was made clear this option had no chance; I was not the only one to say so clearly. I warned that it was basically a straw man/boogeyman that would confuse people and cloud the issue, and we now see that it is having that effect. That doesn't say anything about your character, motives, or competence, only about the presence of a pseudo-option that shouldn't be in there. Unfortunately one editor supported it, and several accepted it as an alternative to their main choice, so it's too late to strike it. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 05:58, 12 February 2020 (UTC)
Support 1A Use standard and simple quotation format. Flourishes or decorative styling do not fit with overall Wikipedia standards. It's just noise. The only reason to have these is the kind of ornamentation proscribed by WP:DECOR and WP:IMAGERELEVANCE. Doing it with text doesn't make it less superfluous. Agree with SMcCandlish that this quickly gets into POV pushing territory and pull quotes. Choosing which quote to put in blockquotes already invites some engineering of what the reader's eyes are drawn to on the page, no need to invite even more of it. Also, we should let the browser format <blockquote> rather than make up a format. Just a side note, SMcClandish you are into WP:BLUDGEON territory as far as I have seen others called out for it. Your point is made... —DIYeditor (talk) 17:02, 6 February 2020 (UTC)
Half support 1A (!). Yes to killing cquote, whoever it was above who wrote The current Cquote is used normally to ovr-emphasise a cherry-picked quotation. got it in one. But I don't understand the implications of hacking template:rquote: how important to the page design to have a floating quote box? Would it be better to convert rquote to template:quote box? I don't know but there is a risk of collateral damage if is converted blindly to template:quote. --Red King (talk) 18:08, 6 February 2020 (UTC)
Support 1A as there is no need to make people unlearn a template they use. Gnomish editors can convert cquote to quote, and AWB can include it as a standard correct, but there should be no hurry to turn this to an error message. If the effect of cquote is needed for some reason (eg for this discussion, better subst it now). Graeme Bartlett (talk) 01:01, 7 February 2020 (UTC)
Support 1A or simply redirect. All the best: Rich Farmbrough (the apparently calm and reasonable) 12:44, 9 February 2020 (UTC).
Support 1A and go further and would wish to discourage in the first place the practice of pulling a sentence or two out of an article and highlighting it in superlarge text. Anyone who has worked on a newspaper knows how easy it is to change the meaning of a story with the headline, and the selection of the extract to be highlighted can easily be OR. Or often appears arbitrary and random, done just to put ANY OLD WORDS in larger font just to break up the page. I have also seen examples where highlighted quote is replicated in the article, and edited out one such just recently. Removing the superlarge quotation marks would be a small step toward my dream. MapReader (talk) 06:44, 12 February 2020 (UTC)
Support 1A or functionally similar redirect. Having - supporting and understanding - multiple options that are nearly identical in form and function with only trivial differences is not a good use of our limited volunteer time. ElKevbo (talk) 21:22, 13 February 2020 (UTC)
Unarchived after requesting closure at WP:ANRFC. Cunard (talk) 08:38, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

Section pinned until it is closed. Cunard (talk) 22:53, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

Threaded discussions

Threaded discussion re merits of the proposals

I should note the policy basis for these proposals. Any quote marked off as cquote or rquote does is inherently given significantly greater attention, and distracts from the article as a whole. In almost all cases, that will give such a quote Undue Weight, thereby violating WP:NPOV. In theory such a template could be used only in the few cases where a quote deserves very heavy weight. There are a few such cases. But that hasn't happened in the past, and I don't think it would happen in the future. So I think the tool of cquote must be removed from article space, not just to comply with the MOS, but to avoid NPOV violations. Editors who disagree with that view will no doubt not support any of the proposals I have made, and will prefer the current situation, or perhaps some different proposal. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 07:41, 29 December 2019 (UTC)
I Will will mention, for the record, that I strongly oppose both 2A and 2B, and would rather that the current situation be retained than that those be implemented. I note that there is no mention of the NPOV issue or how these proposals would, as it seems to me, only make that worse. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 14:54, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

So, something you hear is that {{Cquote}} ought be removed because it is used for POV purposes, to overemphasize some point. This is reasonable but not really a strong argument in my opinion, because:

I haven't seen that. Probably happens, but I haven't seen evidence of {{Cquote}} used for toxic POV purposes with a greater frequency than plain block quoting.
If it's a problem, it's mostly block quoting itself that's the problem. A {{Quote}}d quotation is (let's say) 3/4 as prominent as a {{Cquote}}d quotation. Most of the emphasis is is calling out the quote as a blockquote, the large quotation marks only add a bit of extra emphasis. And the 2016 RfC didn't show support for banning block quoting altogether.
Anything can be used for POV purposes. The main source of POV is article text. Categorization is commonly used for spin... going around putting people in Category:Catholic American writers when they never went to church as an adult, to valorize Catholicism; you see this all the time, and rolled back all the time. For U.S. Grant, an editor has to choose between a picture of his birthplace (promotes Ohio) or where he lived (promotes Missouri). The solution is not to ban text or categories or images, but to fix specific problems when they arise.
I mean, after all, emphasizing certain things is what we do. Right? I'm writing about Pinckney Pruddle, I choose to write a long section on his political career and a short section on his sporting career, emphasizing the latter and de-emphasizing the former because I think that's the best service to the reader. Is this wrong? If I blockquote Franklin Roosevelt's "We have nothing to fear..." quote rather than something else he said, is this wrong?

Herostratus (talk) 11:07, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

If you "haven't seen" PoV-pushing uses of it, then a) you are not looking, even a little bit, and b) you cannot be in a position to evaluate those uses. "I have never seen an elephant. But I bet it is just like a squid." No, it's not block-quoting itself that is the problem, it's using colorful, decorative gimcrackery to practically force the reader's eye to something an editor wants to unduly emphasize. The style was borrowed directly from magazine-style pull quotes, the sole purpose of which is to catch readers' attention and cajole them into reading more out of an emotional response to the unduly highlighted material. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 07:56, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

On Herostatus's "Proposal 2": This RfC is about how to implement the extant wording of MOS:BQ (the "use <blockquote>...</blockquote> or a template wrapper for it" core meaning of which has not changed since 2006) through templates. The counter-proposal is a forum-shopping attempt to relitigate, to try to say that MOS:BQ is "the wrong version" – 14 years late. So it is not actually responsive to the RfC question, but is just a bunch of FUD. And its premise is just false. It's not the case that lots of editors prefer {{cquote}}, it's just that after consensus arose to use <blockquote>...</blockquote> / {{quote}} consistently and to discourage (later to just disallow) pull quotes, we failed to actually implement the removal of {{cquote}} from mainspace, which in turn led to "monkey see, monkey do" spread of it to new articles as editors copy-pasted the first quote template they encountered to another article and just changed the content inside it, without reading template documentation or MoS.

Other, hyperbolic claims by Herostratus in support of the idea are also bogus. "Quotation marks are the universal signal to English speakers that the material contained between them is a direct quotation" is just false on its face, twice over: Quotation marks are not used around block quotations in any major style guide. Ever. And quotation marks are used for a variety of other purposes that have nothing to do with quotations, such as titles of minor works, and "scare-quoting" dubious phrases. There is no "lot of editors" who prefer to use cquote; there's a tiny handful of editors who've ever spoken up with a preference for using it, and a larger number of editors who just willy-nilly reuse whatever templates they run across in other articles. Combined, they're still a small minority. All told, the total number of mainspace uses of {{quote}} dwarf by those of {{cquote}} (by about a 5:1 ratio and climbing), even before you factor in raw <blockquote> usage. Finally, it is not possible to "sneak" something into the most-watchlisted guideline on the entire system. Even a minor tweak to MoS is examined by multiple people. MOS:BQ is the result of multiple discussions over many years, not just one, and has been refined further since then with even more discussion (e.g., to remove grudging acceptance of pull quotes).

There's also the WP:Fallacy of the revelation of policy at work here. "So-and-so editor wrote this and added it" isn't a rationale against anything, since everything on WP was written and added by someone. MOS:BQ has stood the test of years – over a decade – and this is intrinsic evidence of its consensus, which need not be unanimous (see WP:IMPLICITCONSENSUS). Consensus can change but on this is hasn't, and it won't. Use of cquote in mainspace has declined, not risen. More than once, I've randomly picked about 100 articles and converted all their uses of cquote to quote (or to an inline quotation, when the template was wrongly used for a very short quote), with less than a 1% revert rate. What do you think Herostratus's revert rate would be if he changed 100 articles to use cquote instead of quote? Besides, MoS has said to use <blockquote> for block quotations since at least 2006.

And none of this is news; I'll quote Mzajac from December 2006: "It is chronically misused: the MOS calls for HTML <blockquote> elements. Proponents say this template [Cquote] is only for special call-out quotes [i.e. pull quotes], but that is just BS: everyone knows it has been placed for thousands of in-line long quotations. Novelty typographical treatments like this make the encyclopedia look like a bad joke. Replace it with template:Bquote [i.e. what today is Template:Quote], which is 100% compatible, and provides semantic, accessible output." What changed a few years ago was we realized that MOS:BQ said to just use <blockquote>...</blockquote> while {{Quote}} was directly equivalent but not mentioned, so we added it as an obviously acceptable replacement. Waaay back in 2007, and based on WT:MOS discussions, accessibility discussions, TfDs, and numerous other threads, I added to MoS that {{Cquote}} should not be used (since it is not equivalent to <blockquote>, and many concerns had even then been raised about its misuse in mainspace). In the intervening years, various people tried to editwar it back into MoS as permissible and did not get consensus for this. Along the way, we explicitly deprecated pull quotes, and then when they all seemed to be gone, removed mention of them about a year later (though we may need to put it back in; I've run into at least two pull quotes in recent editing). We also built MOS:ICONS, and over time it has evolved to discourage not just little pointless decorative images, but misusing Unicode, dingbat fonts, CSS tricks, emoji, etc., to achieve the same decorative effects without strictly using images – and that obviously includes (and was specifically intended to include) things like giant-quote-mark decoration. (I would know what the intent was, since I wrote much of that guideline material, as well.) Efforts by Herostratus to portray any of this as some kind of conspiratorial coup are simply nonsense. The only "bullshit" that "stinks to high heaven", to turn Herostratus's words back onto him, is his failure to see that MOS:BQ is the product of at least 14 years of consensus formation.

TfD has been deleting MoS-noncompliant quote templates for over a decade. See, e.g., WP:Templates for discussion/Log/2009 October 8#Template:", the deletion – on MOS:BQ grounds – of a template that did the same thing as what is now {{Quote}} but put quotation marks around it. The only reason {{Cquote}} survived TfD a few months before that was respondents' confusion about its legit uses in project and user namespaces versus its misuse in mainspace (back then, the idea of having a template do different output on a per-namespace basis was novel and would not have occurred to most editors.) See also WP:Templates for discussion/Log/2014 October 11 for a whole raft of deletions and mergers of quotation templates; note especially deletion of {{Quotation1}} because it used table markup instead of <blockquote> (i.e. because it was contradictory to MOS:BQ). Then see WP:Templates for deletion/Log/2006 August 25#Template:Selective quotation, deleted on the basis that it "causes harm to the appearance of articles that is much greater than any benefit it might provide .... with a very large and intrusive inline marker." That's exactly what {{Cquote}} does, except with four intrusive markers (two at start, two at end). Next, see WP:Templates for discussion/Log/2014 October 20, another entire page of quotation template deletions and mergers. At WP:Templates for discussion/Log/2014 November 29, {{bq}} was merged to {{Quote}}. (Though {{Quotation}} was not at that time, it was later, after some parameters were made compatible.) This is just a sampling of the relevant TfD discussions. In short, the entire and quite long history of these things on WP is continually toward fewer templates, with more consistent output, more compliance with MoS, and fewer dubious formatting options (many unencyclopedic output formats were dropped in the course of these mergers). And TfD has explicitly deferred to MoS as where we decide how block quotations will be formatted in Wikipedia articles [6].

Finally, there is no aesthetic problem with block quotation, or with a work mostly consisting of text. Our block quotation style is the same as that used by all major publishers, for centuries. And most books that are not written for children consist primarily of text, including other encyclopedias. Under no excuses should we violate WP:UNDUE to draw especial attention to some party's wording just to tweak the layout. WP:NOT#WEBHOST; you can use your own website to engage in whatever webpage design ideas strike your fancy. The last time someone tried to do that with quotation templates in mainspace, it was promptly nuked at WP:TFD [7].
— SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 09:53, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

I find the comments by SMcCandlish above quite persuasive. Indeed they put the ideas i had in mind more clearly than i had fomulated them, no doubt based on that editor's long and extensive MOS work. I still do not find the arguments of Herostratus at all persuasive. The suggestion that most editors who have used {{cquote}} in mainspace have done so because they read the MOS and disagreed, or even looked throguh the available quotation templates and chose cquote as the best for that article is at best without supporting evidence. Many, perhaps most, editors work by seeing tools and techniques used in one or a few other articles, and imitating what seems to work. People assume that anythign sued in mainspace is approved and appropriate. This is often incorrect, which is why WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS is usually not a persuasive argument in AfD and similar discussions. This is, I think, what SMcCandlish means by "Monkey see, monkey do" editing. And there is nothing wrong with it, as a first approximation. But when another editor points out things that do not comply with the MOS, or better yet edits to bring an article into MOS compliance, the response should not usually be to revert, unless ther is a good argument why a particular article is an exception. Nor should one try to change the MOS just out of personal preference. I still have not seen any response that I consider persuasive to the argument that large quote marks lend themselves to cherry0picking and unduse weight to a particular quotation. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 16:23, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
To clarify, virtually all of us learn WP by the same imitative process; I know I did. Finding and absorbing the P&G and /doc material is a very slow process, and also absorbing corrections and hints from other editors is a major part of the process. I was also virulently opposed to some of what MoS said when I first started editing (and I still disagree with about 50 things), but figured out after a while that its value is in its stability and its function of setting a/some/any rule where the absence of one leads to chaos and conflict; it's not what the specific rules are in most cases (except where there's a very strong reason to prefer one option over another, e.g. for MOS:ACCESS reasons). Anyway, we've seen the monkey-see-monkey-do effect in action, in sweeping and bad ways, before. The insistence of one wikiproject on capitalizing the common names of species of one type of organism led inevitably to a perception that capitalizing species vernacular names was "just the Wikipedia style", and imitative application of it to any/all other organism, until the attempt to capitalize "Mountain Lion" and a few other such things finally broke the camel's back and led to a lower-casing shift that took another 4+ years to resolve and clean up in the mainspace, after intense levels of constant conflict about it (pretty much the worst WP:DRAMA I've ever seen). Similarly, the ability in the 2000s to have dates auto-format (for logged-in users) to match their preferred date order, if the date was linked and it was a complete date, led to people wikilinking every single date they came across, complete or not, until the community couldn't stand it anymore and had this functionality repealed; that also took years of drama and drudgery to resolve (and was the proximal cause of MoS being put under WP:AC/DS). People just obsessively lose their shit over MOS/AT matters, too intensely and too often. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 17:22, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
I want to call attention to the discussion at Talk:Factorial#quote vs cquote. In this edit on Factorial, I changed an instance of ~~quote to cquote~~. Herostratus reverted that change, and a talk page discussion was stated. Another editor reinstated my change after some discussion, and Herostratus reverted again. After further discussion, during which there was pretty clear consensus for my change (as I read the discussion, but check it out), yet another editor reinstated the change, which has remained stable since then. At the same time that I made the edit to Factorial I made similar changes to 9 other articles, and to another group of ten a couple of days later. All were chosen from the first page of the what-links-here list of {{cquote}} (after limiting to mainspace trasclusions). I believe that Herostratus reverted two other articles, and that no one else objected or reverted any of the changes. A micro-sample of what working editors feel is worth reverting, as one data point in judging current consensus on the issue. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 16:37, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
That should have read "I changed an instance of cquote to quote", as the linked edit plainly shows. My editing error here. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 17:45, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, my I-got-reverted rate of under 1% when converting Cquote to Quote wouldn't've been possible if {{Cquote}} were an actual preference of many editors, nor if my edit-summary citations to MOS:BQ as my rationale were citations of a bogus guideline that consensus didn't really accept. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 17:22, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
In the survey, Daniel Case writes of using quoted "epigraphically" and that the current cquote behavior is appropriate for such use. But it is my view that this kind of use, where a quote stands at the head of a section and serves as a sort of theme for the section, is itself thoroughly unencyclopedic. Such an epigraph often stands at the head of a chapter or multi-chapter section in a novel, and sometimes in a work of non-fiction. Such a quote may also stand at the start of an essay. But there it is expressing the opinion that the quote usefully summarizes or sets the tone for the longer work that follows. In a Wikipedia article, such an epigraphic use of a quote nessicarily conveys to the reader a similar opinion in Wikipedia's voice, and so is inappropriate however it is formatted. It is a particularly egregious case of undue weight, and only shows how apt cquote is in tempting editors into such violations. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 14:23, 10 January 2020 (UTC)

I was away for the weekend and missed getting notified re this. I think, DES, that you have a rather limited view of how epigraphs are, or can be, used. While I'll allow that some editors would doubtless use them to express opinions or steer the reader to a preferred conclusion, that problem is scarcely unique to the epigraphic use of this template, and when it occurs we have many, many, policies and tools to deal with that.

I see an epigraphic quote as simply putting a section's focus out front, be it the lack of centrality hitherto experienced in Los Angeles or the fateful way Ms. Whitton was living, to refer to my two examples. Daniel Case (talk) 01:02, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

Threaded discussion re techical aspects of implementation, and meta-discussion of the RfC itself

There's currently a proposal 1A listed, but it looks identical to #1B, and the sandbox and such are red links. What's supposed to be here? –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 00:34, 29 December 2019 (UTC)
Proposal 3 is a late suggestion. It is essentially a combination of 1A and 1B. I will have the sandbox template and test cases up and working shortly. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 00:37, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

The examples for proposal 3 are now working. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 00:52, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

The original proposal 3 has been renumbered to 1C, but I object to the editing of my existing commetns, and have reverted the changes to them. I will not further edit the comments of others, as per WP:TPO. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 17:25, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

@Deacon Vorbis: DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 00:53, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

See also recent discussion at Template talk:Cquote § Proposed changes re .7Bcquote.7D and subsections under that. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 00:55, 29 December 2019 (UTC)
Do I see correctly that there are only 9 transclusions in the article namespace right now? --Bsherr (talk) 03:51, 29 December 2019 (UTC)
You do not, Bsherr. What links here showing only transclusions for article space, shows it used on over 16,000 articles (32 pages of 500 plus a partial page) counted just now. X!tools shows a transclusion count over 39,000, but I think that includes all namespaces. I have myself edited to remove it on more than 20 articles, just as examples. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 04:31, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

The monthly report linked in the sub-section below shows Page count: 16069; Transclusion count: 24168 DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 04:35, 29 December 2019 (UTC)
Ah, I see my misstep. Thanks. --Bsherr (talk) 04:44, 29 December 2019 (UTC)
I could wish, Herostratus that you had just added proposals, not renumbered existing ones, to which Bsherr and Galobtter had already refereed to by number, not to mention myself. Wouldn't they have done as well as just 4 and 5? In any case I ask any eventual closer to note that those comments, if not later revised by their authors, refer to what is now listed as 1B and 1C. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 14:54, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

Pinging User:Bsherr, User:Galobtter, User:DESiegel: In all instances (including your comments under your signatures, I edited the text to match the changed numbering system. This, "1" became "1A", "2" became "1B", and "3" became "1C". Begging your pardon, and done only in the interests of clarity.

Given permission to add proposals, I judged that 1,2,3,4,5 numbering system was inferior to a 1,2 system with 1A, 1B, and 1C and 2A and 2B as subsidiary values. It's hard enough getting a decision in a binary question, and impossible on a 5-proposal one. 5-proposal ones are fine for RfC in the manner of "What are people's thoughts on this, so we can move forward with further discussion". But we had one of those in 2016 and actually many such discussions over the last decade-plus. It's time to put paid to this ten-year running sore and a binary question's the way to do it.

A 1,2,3,4,5 system is only going to end up with roughly 10-30% of "votes" given to each proposal. People voting for 1, 2, and 3 are going to be counted differently. With this system, votes for 1A, 1B, and 1C can all be ascribed to "1", and Bob's your uncle; which specific technique (A, B, or C) to use can be then adjudicated on plurality, or strength of argument, or something.

I'm prepared to "lose". That's the Wikipedia way. We all win when the feeling of the community is engaged with a good quorum and the result is an actual decision backed by community consensus. I can't even care that much anymore on the merits; I'm worn down; but I'm still standing because I refuse to be bullied and see my colleagues bullied and harassed and worn down based on bullshit like this. But either way, let's just end this twelve-year nightmare. Herostratus (talk) 15:59, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

Of course I am happy to oblige the edit to my comment. I am a bit disappointed that we are combining the policy and implementation questions, however. I am inclined to agree with "2B" on the policy question, but if the result is no change to policy, I prefer "1C". But I'm not confident an all-in-one RfC will account for such nuances. --Bsherr (talk) 19:50, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

Indeed, the more I think about this, the more I want to ask that the RfC as written be aborted in favor of deciding the policy question ("1" or "2") first. Is there any objection to that? --Bsherr (talk) 19:54, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

Me too. So far this is shaping up to be like what the she for ships discussion might have been if English had seven genders to choose from. E Eng 21:57, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

Right... well, the RfC was published, and there were some issues, so we fixed it quick while in flight. It's better now; 1A,B,C are all just "1" and same for 2A,B. It's not like seven genders, it's more like "Vote for She or It for ships, period. If you vote for She, you may optionally also specify whether amphibious vehicles should be She or Xe, whether ships that are called boats (e.g. submarines) should be She or Ze, and whether former ships that have transitioned to a sunken state should be She or Ve." Anyway, it's here now, it's better than it was, and it's live and it's WP:CENT, so... I dunno. Anyway, only User:DESiegel could do this. Herostratus (talk) 02:07, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

And I would object to Bsherr and EEng's idea, even if this were not already CENTed. It would be an illegitimate bait-and-switch to train-wreck a simple and straightforward RfC (about how to implement a guideline in some particular detail), by sticking in a "down with the guideline" noise proposal and screwing around with the proposal numbering multiple times, and yadda yadda, then try to claim that the guideline itself was somehow in question just because the RfC was derailed. Fourteen years of guideline stability isn't erased with a quick WP:GAMING stroke, sorry. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 18:44, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

Meta-notice: Since discussion has turned increasingly to WP:UNDUE questions, I've notified both WT:NPOV, and WP:NPOVN of this discussion. And since it has been dragging on without a clear consensus for some time, and could affect a large number of articles, I've also notified WP:VPPOL. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 23:56, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

Template mechanics

(edit conflict) Sorry in advance for all the dumb questions, but template code tends to be a bit unreadable for me if I didn't write it myself . Looking at the test cases for #1, they seem to use the most basic parameters of {{cquote}}. If there are so many uses out in the wild, do any of them use the weirder formatting parameters that aren't supported by {{quote}}? What's the intended behavior for these? (Just saw the pointer to discussion in the edit conflict, will go see if any of that discussion answers my questions). –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 01:00, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

My intent was to use and allow for all the parameter supported by {{cquote}} which have rough equivalents in {{quote }}. Thje parameter specifically intended for formatting the large quote marks, or positioning the quote in non-standard ways, such as bgcolor, float, width, quotealign, wide, and qcolor are intentionally ignored and will have no effect in mainspace. In userspace (indeed everywhere but mainspace) they will continue to function e3xactly as before DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 01:08, 29 December 2019 (UTC)
Deacon Vorbis There are far too many existing article-space invocations of cquote to determine what parameters have been used in them. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 01:11, 29 December 2019 (UTC)
Re There are far too many existing article-space invocations of cquote..., please see the Template Data monthly report, which tells you exactly how many articles use each parameter, including unsupported parameters, as of the most recent monthly analysis. – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:30, 29 December 2019 (UTC)
Thank you, Jonesey95 I didn't know about that. Based on that there seem to be no more than about 100 uses of any of the parameters I am ignoring in the modified version, a volume which would would be easy enough to modify individually one way or another. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 01:46, 29 December 2019 (UTC)
Some above are suggesting that a bot be created to directly convert cquote calls into quote calls, aftt an initial change in the template. That could be done. But because of the difference in parameters, i think the logic would be a bit more complex than some might assume, making that more trouble and perhaps take longer. But it could surely be done. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 07:45, 29 December 2019 (UTC)
Especially if some of us pre-normalize some oddities manually. Since I already have an occasional habit of clearing out 100+ cquotes at a time, I'll sign up for some of it. Doing it manually helps find other problems, too, like the quote templates used for non-quotations, mixed styles in the same article, genuine pull quotes, tiny quotations that belong inline being done as block quotes, copyright-violating piles of excessive quotation, off-topic quotes, encyclopedically inappropriate quotes, citations put into the quoted material instead of in the lead-in sentence to the quote or in the sourcing parameters, etc., etc. It's just really tedious to repair it all by hand. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 16:53, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

I don't really see the complexity. It's hardly unusual for an organization's current membership to differ from its original one. Anyway, take a look away Member states of the Commonwealth of Nations. Countries pop in and out of that one all the time. Largoplazo (talk) 22:11, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Dummy post because a fellow editor wanted to delay archiving. E Eng 16:23, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

Shortcuts for ndash and mdash

It is possible to set things up so that n-dash and m-dash can be typed in as -- and --- as in Latex, rather than requiring special characters to be searched for and inserted?

The manual of style says:

"To enter them, click on them in the CharInsert toolbar to the right of the "Insert" dropdown beneath the edit window (in the Monobook Skin), or enter them manually as – or —, respectively. Do not use a double hyphen (--) to stand in for a dash."

To be sure, this would also require that coding be done to not convert things like "-->" to "–>". Would that make it too awkward? Or could we at least have &-- and &--- be Wikipedia shortcuts? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Editeur24 (talk • contribs) 16:05, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

We already have ---- translated to <hr>, so it's within the ability of the devs to do the job. I doubt that anybody would object to making it easier to insert endash and emdash, but in all honesty, I doubt anybody would see it as much of a priority. If you want to pursue the possibility, it needs a phabricator ticket to be raised. --RexxS (talk) 16:39, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

We've been over this 1000 times. Yes, it would have been nice had this been thought of way back when, but it's 20 years too late now. Forget it. E Eng 18:23, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

The only outcome I can see is an abundance of en dashes where em dashes were intended. -- is commonly used, both spaced and unspaced, to represent an em dash in plain text; --- is never used as such.
That said, I can’t imagine any side effects; I don’t think I’ve ever encountered consecutive dashes in peer-reviewed wikimarkup outside of HTML comments. —96.8.24.95 (talk) 05:36, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

It's a great pity this wasn't done early on. Tony (talk) 06:39, 2 May 2020 (UTC)
Using -- and --- would fit the original spirit of wikitext being lightweight, "readable" markup. Perhaps they could slip it into Wikitext 2.0! Pelagic (talk) – (18:04 Sun 03, AEST) 08:04, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

rather than requiring special characters to be searched for and inserted? That's hardly the only alternative. We have available to us –, —, {{ndash}}, and {{mdash}} (as well as various have-it-your-way redirects), all of which offer the advantage of clarity. Depending on one's font and eyesight, ndash can be mistaken for mdash or vice versa. It's a few more characters to type, but how often do you need them? Not a Big Deal. ―Mandruss ☎ 08:31, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

You need at least the en dash to write professional-standard English. Tony (talk) 09:17, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

Not sure what you're saying. I haven't suggested we not use ndash – or mdash. When I spoke of ambiguity, I was referring to the coding, not the rendered article. Clarity is important there, too. ―Mandruss ☎ 09:23, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

FYI, there's a bot that changes the dash templates to dash characters, so using the templates doesn't avoid the difficulty in visual discernment in the source. But I ordinarily use them anyway, or the HTML entity codes—I haven't settled on one or the other for some reason! Largoplazo (talk) 10:41, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

That bot should be decommissioned, and I doubt it has been vetted by the community (I may be giving the community too much credit). ―Mandruss ☎ 10:46, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

Being clear on spaced en dashes once and for all

This comes up periodically and the wording at MOS:DASH shifts a bit this way then a bit that. In a previous well-attended discussion (still on this page as of this writing, I think), we concluded that page numbers with hyphens in them should be given as ranges in the form "5-1 – 5-3". We've previously decided that (I think in similarly numeric context) that if one or both things on either side of the conjoining en dash contains its own space or hypen, we use a spaced en-dash between the two items. Another time we decided, more broadly, to do this if the material on either side contained spaces or dashes. These sections did not agree. I fixed that a few days ago ("space, hyphen, or dash" in both places now), and no one's head exploded. However, because this was not entirely clear and consistent, we have a lot of case of "foo-bar—baz quux" and "Ay Bee–CeeDee", when we should probably have spaced en dashes in there.

I just ran across Good cop/Bad cop, and this needs to move per MOS:DASH and MOS:SLASH to use an en dash. It appears to need to go to Good cop – bad cop (with redirs from Good cop–bad cop, Good cop-bad cop, etc.). I don't want to go propose this move if we're not actually certain this is what is want; maybe someone is certain it should really be Good cop–bad cop], despite the spaces. If so, then we need some really clear rationale for when to use a spaced en dash and when not to in these constructions. That is, if we're going to have WP:CREEP that calls for oh-so-special variances, in an already complicated section, they have to be justifiable concisely and memorably and with enough buy-in that people will accept and follow them. I'm skeptical that is possible, so I advocate just doing spaced en dash any time one or both sides of the "equation" are complex by way of spaces or internal punctuation. Last I remember a long discussion about this in such broad terms, several years ago, there was not unanimity on it, so let's try to figure it out this time. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 14:02, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

I'm 90% sure in the big giant dash RFC all those years ago consensus was not to space endashed when there was spaces on either side, so New York–Los Angeles flight, not New York – Los Angeles flight. Indeed, I distinctly remember that being the main example debated because people claimed that not putting in the spaces would make it easy to misread as a new flight between York and LA, which was shot down as confusion being unlikely and clear from context, and there's no reason to punctuate New York–Los Angeles flight any differently than say Chicago–Dallas flight. So there already is established consensus not to use spaced endashes when the elements have spaces. It seems that in the years since there's been some erroneous drift away from that, but it needs to be re-instituted. oknazevad (talk) 14:19, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

I don’t believe these two edits are correct: [8] [9]. That is, pro-establishment–anti-intellectual alliance and Seeliger–Donker-Voet scheme should just contain an en dash, not a spaced en dash. The analogy with page numbers does not seem valid, since these are not page numbers. More generally, where does the instruction The en dash in a compound is always unspaced, except when either or both elements of the range include at least one space, hyphen, or en-dash; in such cases, {{snd}} between them will provide the proper formatting. come from? (Note that this contradicts the adjacent example Seifert–van Kampen as well as the instruction Do not use spaces around the en dash in any of the compounds above..) I can’t say I’ve ever seen professional English writing use spaced en dashes like this. Hftf (talk) 12:45, 27 March 2020 (UTC)

Getting back to this belatedly (sorry I missed the comment), that's why I removed the paragraph calling for spaces, even alluding to the lack of spaces in the examples in my edit summary. It was in line with the RFC consensus, as I said in my previous comment. oknazevad (talk) 15:50, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

Thank you @Oknazevad:, however, the issue still persists, and I am unable to edit the page. Hftf (talk) 16:41, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

MOS:COMMENT in this guideline vs Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Hidden text

This page says that Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Hidden text is the main page. The text on this page is "Invisible comments are useful for alerting other editors to issues such as common mistakes that regularly occur in the article, a section title being the target of an incoming link, or pointing to a discussion that established a consensus relating to the article. They should not be used to instruct other editors not to perform certain edits, although where existing consensus is against making such an edit, they may usefully draw the editor's attention to that."

At the "main page" it says under inappropriate uses: "Telling others not to perform certain edits to a page, unless there is an existing guideline or policy against that edit. When it is a mere local consensus that a certain edit should not be performed, the hidden text should be worded more softly to suggest to the editor to consult the talk page (or archive page if appropriate) for the current consensus prior to making the edit. Since consensus can change, it is inappropriate to use hidden text to try to prohibit making a certain edit merely because it would conflict with an existing consensus."

That wording was discussed at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Hidden text#Protecting consensus in active, controversial articles in December 2018 but with only two editors taking part, User:Objective3000 and User:RexxS. Doug Weller talk 09:54, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

@Doug Weller: I don't see any significant different between the guidance on the two pages. Perhaps if you could give a hypothetical example of where you perceive a conflict, it would help? Since the RfC at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Hidden text #RfC on status of this page discussed the relationship fully, I would expect MOS:COMMENT to reflect the main page at WP:HIDDEN.

There's a slight ambiguity with the use of "consensus", which ought to say "local consensus" in each case. That insertion would avoid anyone thinking that it was meant to apply to policies and guidelines (which, of course, have project-wide consensus).

The guidance should produce consistent results from either page. For example, I often objected to hidden text that said "Don't add an infobox without getting consensus first". If there were no explicit prior consensus, the hidden comment should not be there; if there were explicit prior consensus, the hidden comment should say "Before adding an infobox, please review the consensus established at <link to discussion>". A different example would be "Don't add their academic title; see MOS:CREDENTIAL" where forbidding the addition is a consequence of a policy or guideline.

The only missing case that I can think of is where discretionary sanctions have been imposed on a controversial page, and a particular edit had been rejected by a local consensus leading to a DS being created to forbid it. I think that has grown in regularity since we last discussed it in 2018. In those sort of cases, I think it would be appropriate to have a hidden comment stating "Don't add <a particular statement>; That is subject to a discretionary sanction -see <the FAQ or whatever discussion>."

Would it help if the text were revised to pick up those two points? --RexxS (talk) 14:04, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

@RexxS: I think it would. I'm not sure about the word "mere" as local consensus is important so long as it doesn't clearly disagree with policies and guidelines, and I'm not really happy with the last sentence at MOS:COMMENT, it's too authoritative, perhaps easy to game. Doug Weller talk 14:59, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

The situation I saw a couple years back is where local consensus is very strong for existing text, the text is a source of constant edit warring, and is not based on guidelines or discretionary sanctions. The Pirate Bay site bounces up and down regularly, the article was heavily read, and the status constantly changed suggesting they were gone forever (which would be fine with me if true). The hidden text was added by consensus. Some while later, a sysop removed it citing MOS. I reverted the sysop explaining the problem and claiming a valid IAR use. The sysop agreed. But, it would be nice to find a way to avoid using IAR as that doesn’t always go over so well.

The current RfC[10] is another example. It’s difficult to argue IAR in an RfC. O3000 (talk) 15:25, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

I've just suggested a compromise wording at that RfC. Looking at the prior discussions, I can see a general agreement about wording in the article, but it's not uncontested. Especially in those circumstances, I don't think it's right to use hidden text to prohibit the edit. I know that it helps prevent edit-warring if the text just says "Don't do it", but that really should be reserved for policies and guidelines, not for a local consensus which can change far more easily. The other problem is that habitually using hidden text to prohibit edits can be abused – I've seen examples of "Don't add an infobox. See previous consensus" where infoboxes have never been mentioned anywhere in previous discussions. --RexxS (talk) 16:56, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

When aren’t US/U.S. abbreviations too informal?

The wording may in MOS:NOTUSA’s

When the United States is mentioned with one or more other countries in the same sentence, U.S. or US may be too informal, especially at the first mention or as a noun instead of an adjective (France and the United States, not France and the U.S.).

suggests that some situations of mixing the abbreviations with other full country names is acceptable. When is this so?

My impression is that the general consensus is to avoid the abbreviation in such a situation, but the may wording leaves it somewhat ambiguous. This question comes up because I am finding disagreement on interpreting this at Talk:Battle of Huế#MOS:NOTUSA violations, regarding phrases like US and South Vietnamese victory. — MarkH₂₁^talk 07:39, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

It's out of Chicago Manual of Style from many years ago. (Could be post-colonial defensiveness by Americans: shout me down.) I never had much respect for the notion that US and UK are informal (or, for example, UAE or PRC, when the reader knows it from the context). Tony (talk) 11:22, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

I consider it significantly more acceptable in formal writing as an adjunct rather than a noun, as it avoids both the adjective "American" (to be avoided when it may cause ambiguity, or in a parallel construction with attributive forms of other countries) as well as the adjunct "United States" (which is long and unwieldy). In your specific example, though, I'd prefer "American" to match "South Vietnamese". -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 22:34, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

@King of Hearts and Tony1: Do you know if there any past consensus, via RfC or otherwise, on this part of MOS:NOTUSA?

King of Hearts: I agree that the abbreviations are less cumbersome as adjuncts, but should it still be used where other full country names are used as adjuncts? I’m guessing that you preferred to match the adjectival form of South Vietnamese with American. Is that your stance in general for sentences with one abbreviated country name adjunct + one full country adjective? Isn’t that the only real case with abbreviated country name adjuncts though? I don’t think full country name adjuncts are very common. — MarkH₂₁^talk 05:26, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

IMO the worst option is to mix an adjective with a noun form (whether full or abbreviated). Full adjuncts are used when the country has no adjectival form, e.g. New Zealand. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 05:31, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

Comment: An RfC has been opened here for this issue as applied to Battle of Huế. Participation is welcome. — MarkH₂₁^talk 08:10, 10 May 2020 (UTC)
I don't see that any of the RfC options use the abbreviation and am struggling to see how it is relevant to this? MapReader (talk) 15:13, 10 May 2020 (UTC)
@MapReader: The RfC asks whether instances of U.S. and US be replaced with United States or American where another country's full name (e.g. South Vietnam or South Vietnamese) is mentioned in the same sentence. There are two open RfCs on the talk page, the link here is to the first one. — MarkH₂₁^talk 00:09, 13 May 2020 (UTC)

Capitalizing b in Black

AP just revised their style guide to capitalize the b in Black when referring to Black people or culture as have the LA Times, NBC News, USA Today and other media outlets. Wikipedia appears to be inconsistent in this regard -sometimes Black is uppercased, sometimes it isn't. Can we please revise the Wikipedia Manual of Style in order to adopt a consistent style and can we agree that Black should be uppercase? Article on AP's decision is here: https://apnews.com/71386b46dbff8190e71493a763e8f45a 104.247.241.28 (talk) 19:29, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

This has already been brought up on the WP:MOSCAPS talk page. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 19:39, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

use of AD and BC in English and on Wikipedia

It's a little chilly. --Izno (talk) 14:28, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

In a recent edit, I added the following:

"Place AD before the year number; BC is placed after the year number (for example: AD 70, but 63 BC)."

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anno_Domini:

"Traditionally, English followed Latin usage by placing the "AD" abbreviation before the year number.[note 2] However, BC is placed after the year number (for example: AD 2020, but 68 BC), which also preserves syntactic order."

It was reversed with the following note:

"This isn’t the standard used across WP, and it’s not the clear standard by consensus. This could be a viable topic for discussion though."

There are three reasons for the change I made, which was reversed:

1. Latin: AD is the abbreviation for the Latin phrase "anno domini", which means "in the year of the lord"—n.b. the case ending for anno (IN the year).

2. English style and tradition: As indicated in the article on Anno Domini (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anno_Domini) as well as many English style books, English followed this Latin tradition for AD while not doing so for obvious reasons in the case of BC, which is an English abbreviation for the English phrase "before Christ."

3. syntax: as noted in the article on Anno Domini, the placement of the Latin abbreviation AD before the year number as well as the placement of the English abbreviation BC after the year number retains the way English speakers would have read (the order of) the text and number in Latin and in English: "in 63 BC" (in 63 before Christ), not "in BC 63"; likewise "in the year of the lord 70," not "in 70 IN the year of the lord."

Languages as well as grammar and styles that develop in them have ways of retaining small vestiges of its history. The syntactic placements of AD and BC point to the Latin of the former and English of the latter, as English writing tradition has preserved them. Even though people rarely read AD as "anno domini" or "in the year of the lord," as they rarely read BC as "before Christ," the writing convention of placing AD before and BC after the year number "remembered" how one would have read them. Whereas there is no good reason to discontinue the Latin-English tradition (usually from not knowing the abbreviations and their historical usage), there are good reasons for retaining the traditional distinction between AD and BC, which is unnecessary in the case of using BCE and CE to refer to the same dating tradition of BC and AD while avoiding the reference to Christ and lord (since they are both abbreviations of the English phrases "before the common era" and "common era" (which could be a discussion for another time, e.g., "common" for whom?). --Kangna (talk) 16:53, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

That discussion's been had. And had. And had. Check the archives. We didn't just fall off the turnip truck. E Eng 13:16, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

I agree that "AD" is traditionally placed before the year, and would therefore support its being the "preferred" form. – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 03:53, 17 June 2020 (UTC)
No Pedantic WP:MOSBLOATery that gives gnomes one more thing to go around annoying people by "fixing". E Eng 04:02, 17 June 2020 (UTC)
No - I agree with EEng. Sweet6970 (talk) 10:44, 17 June 2020 (UTC)
No EEng puts it well. Timrollpickering (talk) 11:32, 17 June 2020 (UTC)
No Placing AD before a date is out dated and pretentious. Blueboar (talk) 11:44, 17 June 2020 (UTC)
Yes, I think it went out around AD 1900. E Eng 12:24, 17 June 2020 (UTC)
No Pedantic and bloat, as EEng rightly says. Peter coxhead (talk) 12:48, 17 June 2020 (UTC)
No per EEng, Blueboar etc. Johnbod (talk) 14:18, 17 June 2020 (UTC)
No. This is Wikipedia, not a Victorian almanac. If we're going to have such a rule—which would be pointless bloat—if anything it should be to deprecate putting AD before the year. ‑ Iridescent 15:05, 17 June 2020 (UTC)
- I would support a recommendation to this effect. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:08, 18 June 2020 (UTC)
No. For the reasons stated by Blueboar and EEng. --Coolcaesar (talk) 15:28, 17 June 2020 (UTC)
No. Per Blueboar and EEng. --Khajidha (talk) 19:45, 17 June 2020 (UTC)
No. If we're going to standardise it should be CE/BCE. Otherewise, as above, let's not give people yet another pointless thing to edit war. Guy (help!) 08:14, 18 June 2020 (UTC)
No. The OP is correct in his interpretation of "AD", and is free to use it in his personal writings (as I tend to do). However this is the English Language WP and we can't assume that either our readers or editors have any knowledge of Latin. Therefore WP's convention is reasonable and needs to be retained. (BTW, terms such as "pedantic" and "pretentious" are extreme POV and tell me more about you than it adds to any argument.) Martin of Sheffield (talk) 08:45, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Entity encoding

Hi all, I just want to confirm something. I personally prefer entity encoded ndash and mdashes and I know others like Unicode. I've always been under the impression that if an article consistently uses Unicode dashes then we should maintain using unicode dashes. However, if the article is using entity encoded dashes then we should use entity encoded dashes.

Am I correct in my understanding? The general principle being that we use what is established. - Chris.sherlock (talk) 05:49, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

And then some editors use the actual characters – and —, and some use templates like {{endash}} and {{emdash}} (though possibly "subst"ing them to yield the actual characters). I think it matters not one ι (or ι or ι) whether a consistent means of producing non-Latin-keyboard characters is used throughout the source code of a page. When MOS issues guidelines for consistency, it's for the benefit of the reader's experience, and concerns what's displayed, not how it's displayed.

For the sake of comprehensibility by editors, I could understand having a guideline that says to use either an actual character or a means of producing it (whether via a character entity reference or a template) that makes it transparent to the editor what character will be displayed, in preference to a numeric entity code (Unicode). But I don't see any point in asking editors to devote any time to enforcing consistency among the transparent approaches. Largoplazo (talk) 11:45, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

I don't see any advantage of using an html entity over its unicode equivalent, beyond ease of initial entry, other than for  . On the other hand, wikitext that is strewn with a large number of html entities is usually harder to read, as suggested in our article Character encodings in HTML #HTML character references, which also implies that they may open open up a security vulnerability if incorrectly escaped in code. But that article is not authoritative. I think I have seen a bot that changes entities to unicode equivalents, so I wouldn't waste time trying to change unicode characters to entities if they have been changed. --RexxS (talk) 17:21, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

If discussing the code point itself, then using the numerical encoding makes sense. Otherwise, named entities are more readable, where they exist.

I'll also insert "special" characters directly, either from a touch keyboard or via the Insert panel (can't remember its proper name, and do note it's only available when using "classic"? wikitext editor). Yes, entering them directly means some changes aren't obvious on diffs (e.g. en and em dashes are particularly hard to distinguish in our default fonts), but that on its own isn't enough to motivate me to do the extra typing.

In any case, I see no need to follow the prior usage in an article: unlike ENGVAR or CITEVAR, the style used isn't visible to the reader.

— Pelagic (talk) 03:34, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

My concern is that edit-mode text is already littered with strange stuff for novices (especially embedded reference text), which probably doesn't help our early drop-out rate. Em dashes are closed on en.WP, so the unicode string is very hard to parse in edit-mode when squashed into continuous running text. I see nothing wrong in moving unicode strings for en and em dashes to their characters, if an editor is willing to do it on occasion. Tony (talk) 06:49, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

I prefer html entity encoding because on a number of occasions I have not been able to tell if someone has used a hyphen, mdash or ndash. It is much easier and shows the intent of the author which style is to be used. It's hard to know if someone is using spaced emdash or an unspaced endashes throughout the article, or if they are using it wrongly. I also don't think that it's terribly hard to understand - it literally uses the words "ndash" and "mdash" in the text. So as per Pelagic, a named entity encoding is quite easy to understand. I also don't think it will stop anyone from editing - if they add in a Unicode mdash and ndash it's quite easy for a script to change this if the convention of the article is to use named entity encoding.

Do you have any hard data to backup the claim that use of named entity encodings are causing editor dropoffs? - Chris.sherlock (talk) 11:15, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

html entity encoding may be easier to input or understand, but it contributes to the clutter in edit mode, making it more difficult for the other elements to be parsed as a whole. The author's intention doesn't really come into it (because authors often get it wrong), whereas the adherence to the MOS does. I can never be bothered to work out for myself which is which, but that's where automated tools can come in handy: a carefully written algorithm can really help by taking the dirty work out of trying to parse the differences between for example the - (hyphen), − (minus sign), – (ndash) and — (ndash), and correct them where appropriate to ensure compliance with the MOS, don't you agree?

-- Ohc ^¡digame! 21:58, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

Only if you can see they were added correctly in the history, which is impossible as some of the scripts don’t note they have changed the entity encoding in the edit summary. It’s actually not easier for a number of us to tell which is the dashes being used. It’s editor unfriendly to add dashes that look incredibly similar, to the point where I find it hard to distinguish between ndashes and a regular hyphen. I’m also unclear how it’s hard to parse entity encodings. - Chris.sherlock (talk) 19:03, 17 April 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia:AutoEd changes entities to Unicode. --Bsherr (talk) 12:43, 16 April 2020 (UTC)

Remember that our edit interface includes a special characters menu that inserts characters, not entities. While some of us may know our entities or alt codes, our priority should be "anyone can edit". --Bsherr (talk) 12:43, 16 April 2020 (UTC)

Sure, but have you noticed how difficult it is to distinguish between ndashes and regular hyphens? If the edit box showed the differences more clearly, I wouldn’t have an issue. As it stands now, I find it hard to know which is being used, and which is being used incorrectly. - Chris.sherlock (talk) 19:05, 17 April 2020 (UTC)

Absolutely. And BTW, if you find – awkward-looking and fiddly to type, {{ndash}} is much less so. E Eng 19:12, 17 April 2020 (UTC)

Oh! That is actually nicer. I’ll use that :-) thanks! - Chris.sherlock (talk) 19:58, 17 April 2020 (UTC)

It's clear enough from your user page that it's the huge bee buzzing in your bonnet, but you shouldn't let it stress you out: the rules are clear enough. you should just sit back and trust the bots and scripts to do the work.

--Ohconfucius (on the move) (talk) 19:45, 17 April 2020 (UTC)

Actually, whilst it is something I feel strongly about, it was the sheer arrogance and rudeness of Tony1 that made me quote him on my user page (what is written there was not my words, but his). And the rules on what to use are clear enough, it says it’s fine to use entity encoding. And I don’t trust your script, it has had so many reports of problems that how can I trust it? Not to mention the edit summaries are misleading. - Chris.sherlock (talk) 19:56, 17 April 2020 (UTC)

"WhilST" is something better left behind with Enid Blyton. "are clear enough, it says it’s" – that's comma splice, which will make the reader trip; so is "And I don’t trust your script, it has had so many". Finally, "Not to mention that the" would be easier here. Your anger-management problem may be rooted in a deep lack of confidence in your ability to write at the level required for WP articles. But I may be wrong. As Ohconfucius says, calm down. Focus on the good-faith changes I made to your prose, which is too often imprecise. I don't mind assisting again, but you've decided to point your rifle at me from a trench. And give some leeway to those who find it perfectly easy to distinguish between open en dashes – and closed em dashes—the only arrangements allowed on WP. I'm glad you're no longer spacing em dashes with your favoured unicode. Tony (talk) 01:43, 18 April 2020 (UTC)

Personally I prefer whilst to bridge. E Eng 03:09, 18 April 2020 (UTC)

It just doesn't matter. It's like using   or {{nbsp}}. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 12:38, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

Commas

Just wondering where condition/comma guidelines are. For instance: Although Donald Trump is the President of the United States many people disagree with his ideas versus Although Donald Trump is the President of the United States, many people disagree with his ideas. If this isn't addressed, should we append this into the MoS? Augend (drop a line) 01:12, 25 April 2020 (UTC)

@Augend: MOS:COMMA is the section of MoS that deals with commas. The question of using a comma after an introductory phrase is complicated by a lack of uniform guidance between different style guides. I'm not at all sure you would get a consensus to add the guidance you suggest to the MoS, but you can certainly give it a try. --RexxS (talk) 19:41, 25 April 2020 (UTC)

@RexxS: I see that, but in most forms of English I've met we always add a comma after an introductory phrase. It's more formal, imo. Augend (drop a line) 19:55, 25 April 2020 (UTC)

@Augend: you don't have to convince me. --RexxS (talk) 20:09, 25 April 2020 (UTC)

I ignore the thing on principle. ——SN 54129 21:01, 25 April 2020 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I think that's a introductory clause, not an introductory phrase. --Bsherr (talk) 22:19, 25 April 2020 (UTC)

Claus introductory. E Eng 23:20, 25 April 2020 (UTC)

Yes, but the legal technicality, not the man. --Bsherr (talk) 11:12, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

The job of MOS is spell out English Wikipedia's house style -- the sorts of things that vary from publication to publication but which should be uniform within any particular publication. It's not its job to give guidance on good writing in general. Good writers might go either way on this, so it's not a MOS issue. Do what you see as fit, and if there's disagreement work it out on the talk page of the article. E Eng 21:58, 25 April 2020 (UTC)

I agree this doesn't belong in the MOS. In fact, I'd argue that at least the first point of MOS:COMMA (dealing with parenthetical commas) doesn't belong in the MOS, either. pburka (talk) 00:50, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

I agree that it doesn't belong in the MOS. Excessive content in the MOS is to the detriment of the MOS. It belongs instead in the essay WP:Writing style, who should be a how to on how to write for Wikipedia, an internal exception to WP:NOTHOWTO. User:Anita5192's Writing style is a good starting point, editor guidance ideally with be in harmony with mainspace articles. The first sentence cannot be logically misread, but with the comma, it is considerably more readable. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:04, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

When I edit Wikipedia I try to follow as closely as possible the guidelines in my hardcopy manuals-of-style/grammar-books, unless I know of a conflicting principle in the Wikipedia MOS articles. There are a few such Wikipedia MOS articles that I don't agree with, but I follow them anyway—perhaps this is because Wikipedia originated in Great Britain and British English is somewhat different from American English. In any case the comma has perhaps more guidelines in my books than any other punctuation and those guidelines are usually the most lenient. I will quote here what one of my sources recommends regarding the subject at hand:

Modifying clauses and phrases are usually set off by commas if they precede the main clause. But you can omit the comma if the clause or phrase is brief and its grammatical distinctness from what follows is clear. Never omit a comma if the sentence would become even momentarily ambiguous without it.^[2]

—Anita5192 (talk) 03:02, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

Sorry Anita, but Wikipedia was founded in the US by two US citizens (Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger) and its servers are based in the US so is subject to US law. Most of the time it tries to be neutral between US and English variants, but sometimes has to make a judgement call. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 09:09, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

I'm glad you cleared that up because I was beginning to think I'd lost my marbles. E Eng 02:14, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

Use the comma. Even the style guides that make commas for some introductory phrases optional only do so with very short ones, and that example obviously does not qualify. We can probably tolerate "In 2006 they moved to France.", though I also fix this when I run into it and I'm not too busy to bother. (I fix it because it's awkward and potentially confusing news-style writing, and WP is not written in news style, as a matter of policy.) But an example like the one this opened with should be fixed as an outright error; even a low-end journalist wouldn't write like that. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 12:42, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

References

^ Williamson, Maurice (11 October 2013). "Names of NZ's two main islands formalised". Beehive.govt.nz. New Zealand Government. Retrieved 10 April 2020.
^ Crews, Frederick (1977), The Random House Handbook (2nd ed.), New York: Random House, p. 335, ISBN 0-394-31211-2

360-degree panoramas

You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Images#360-degree_panoramas. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 00:30, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

English variety for the European Union

Hi! I happen to watch WP:MOS (although for a different reason) and I saw the last edit of yours. Why do you say that version you removed was incorrect? It doesn’t seem to be particularly correct to me to include British English, given that the UK is longer appartement of the EU, and it certainly does not feel right to exclude Maltese English given that Malta is. I’m curious what your reasoning was; could you clarify that for me?—R8R (talk) 14:03, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

Certainly R8R (also Alexander 8620, Ahecht, and Jdforrester), and I have taken the liberty of copying this across from my talk page to the Manual of Style talk page.

The Wikipedia Manual of Style for all English Wikipedia articles "always has precedence should any contradiction arise" and "new content added to this page should directly address a persistently recurring style issue."

This is not about which countries are and are not members of the European Union. It's about edits which changed the (English) Wikipedia Manual of Style instructions on what variety of English to use in one of several examples given; the examples are given to show that strong ties to a particular variety of English are best respected. The example in question is asserting that British English (or Irish English) are the correct choices for the English Wikipedia in articles about institutions of the EU. The edits I reverted were changing that advice, to assert that English Wikipedia articles about the EU should be written in Maltese English.

Maltese English is "heavily influenced by Italian, not only in vocabulary (... pronouncing Franco-Latin loan words in English in an Italian style) but extending to phonology, with the English being heavily accented".

Of the 24 official languages of the EU, three (English, French and German) are "procedural" languages. "Strong ties" is not narrowly defined as formal membership of a political body; commonalities of geography, history, culture, populations, politics, etc all form "strong ties". Although the "varieties of English" we are discussing are an internal construct of Wikipedia and not something used or recognised by the EU, commonalities forming strong ties has meant that the "procedural" (per EU) "variety of English" (per Wikipedia) used by the EU is de facto British English. It was used by the EU and its predecessors before the UK was a member, and will continue to be used now the UK no longer is. Along with English, the 24 official languages of the EU include the Irish language and the Maltese language (but not "Irish English" nor "Maltese English").

In summary;

The UK leaving the EU is entirely irrelevant here,

It would not be sensible to require Maltese English be used in articles about institutions of the EU,

Were the edits to stand the example would be a poor one to illustrate the advice being given,

There is no "persistently recurring" style issue over using British or Maltese English needing to be addressed by altering the Manual of style.

I hope that makes sense, cheers! Captainllama (talk) 02:54, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

I agree and, further, the MoS states that where organisations use a particular variety of English, that variety should be used in WP articles relating to that organisation. Looking at the official EU website, AFAICS the English used is British throughout. I don't expect anyone is going to be editing all those webpages introducing whatever are the Maltese English variations, just because the UK has left the EU! Plus, of course, the UK retains "ties" with the EU despite its departure, by dint of its historical involvement. MapReader (talk) 08:39, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

(Copied across from Captainllama's talk page to here where it will get fuller attention): Thank you for the explanation. It indeed makes sense that English will continue to be an important language in the European Union even now that the UK has left, and there is indeed no doubt that that variety used in continental Europe will predominantly be the one used in Britain. However, what I don't understand is the specific difference between Irish English and Maltese English; why is the former a proper variety to use for describing the EU alongside British English whereas the latter isn't?--R8R (talk) 10:22, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

We don't actually have an article on Maltese English (redirects to a single para), because it doesn't exist as a formal written language or variant. Irish English is not much different; the Irish Times effectively uses British English except when quoting or imagining speech, and perhaps the odd phrase. Scottish English is actually slightly more different, especially in preserving different legal terms. So as far as turgid formal stuff like EU policy documents etc go, we are really talking about BE, even after the UK leaves. Johnbod (talk) 15:27, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

Can we please, please recognise that we are writing for an international audience and stop pandering to those who think that some articles should be written in a special variety of Australian, Irish, NZ, Maltese, Indian, etc. English? The differences between US and Commonwealth English are unfortunately unavoidable (thanks, Noah Webster!), but let's not fragment things further. Crikey, do the needful, brahs! Pelagic (talk) 02:39, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

All articles about Tyneside and anything within it should be written in Geordie.

Sarcasm aside, there's no more reason why British English is now inappropriate for articles about the EU than there is why it isn't appropriate to use it for articles about Mercosur or the Commonwealth of Independent States. Largoplazo (talk) 13:06, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

I agree with User:Pelagic. When editing, we need always to bear in mind the mission is to create a universal encyclopaedia, so the language used must be accessible to all readers. We should work towards WP:COMMONALITY and not favour or permit the development or proliferation of Engvar ghettos. --Ohconfucius (on the move) (talk) 20:06, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
- @Ohc on the move: I'm OK with modifying templates so that de facto British English is generally used with former British colonies in Asia and Africa, so that we have COMMONALITY but do keep in mind the idea of ENGVAR (that the article should be tied to the variety of English used in the country). And likewise articles about the Philippines should de facto stick to American English, with any Philippine words explained. Perhaps the templates of former British colonies can be modified. I do note that India (along with other South Asian countries) uses its own variety of English, but it may be necessary to express lakh/crore amounts in ways non-South Asians can understand. WhisperToMe (talk) 01:15, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

More clarity required on "Strong national ties to a topic" in relation to the EU

At the moment, the "Strong national ties to a topic" section here says: An article on a topic that has strong ties to a particular English-speaking nation should use the (formal, not colloquial) English of that nation. For example: followed by nine examples of articles which have a strong tie to a particular English-speaking nation. But there is another example too, "Institutions of the European Union", which does not have any ties to a particular English-speaking nation, but to the European Union - which is a trading bloc with 27 member states. Could we change the wording to clarify why that EU article should be written in British or Irish English. Is it:

Any article with strong ties to the European Union or to any nation which is a member state of the European Union?
Any article which is about the European Union itself, or one of its institutions?
Just articles about institutions of the European Union?
Something else?

The reason I raise this subject is because there is a discussion ongoing between myself and Getsnoopy at this talkpage thread to try to decide whether the "1755 Lisbon earthquake" article, which was originally written in American English, should be converted to use British English (Portugal has been a member state of the EU since 1986). -- DeFacto (talk). 10:13, 1 May 2020 (UTC)

Consider that in 1755 British North America had "strong ties" with the UK! Way to far back to be considered an EU institution - MOS:RETAIN and common sense applies surely. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 10:34, 1 May 2020 (UTC)

The answer is that as per the MoS, the variety of English used should reflect the variety used by the institution itself. Take a look around the EU website and you will see that it uses British English. MapReader (talk) 13:18, 1 May 2020 (UTC)

@MapReader: so just in articles covering EU institution business then? -- DeFacto (talk). 13:20, 1 May 2020 (UTC)

Certainly, I agree that EU membership has nothing to do with the Engvar that should be used in an article about, say, Portuguese history. MapReader (talk) 14:28, 1 May 2020 (UTC)

Is there actually a difference between standard British English and standard Irish English in formal prose? Everything I see at Hiberno-English is either colloquial or about the dialect(s). Maybe we can do something like {{Commonwealth English}} to indicate that an article should use British-ish English, without referencing any ties to the UK? Regarding the actual question of "should we mandate Commonwealth English at all", I think we should do the following in order of precedence: 1) if the institution has a preference, use it; 2) if it deals primarily with one country, use the country's default English style (to be determined in some objective way), even if not an English-speaking country; 3) if it deals with Europe in general, use Commonwealth English. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 13:33, 1 May 2020 (UTC)

Re 1) the English at many foreign institutions' websites is best described as "broken" (or often mixed) rather than a particular style that dictates what WP should use; re 2) non-English-speaking places do not have a default English style; one cannot define a default English style for, say, Denmark, let alone Antarctica or the Moon; re 3) there is no basis for applying "Commonwealth English" wholesale to the European continent, as though it were some kind of British territory. Doremo (talk) 14:35, 1 May 2020 (UTC)

You can still make generalizations though. It's pretty obvious that Mexico predominantly uses American English and France uses British English. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 14:42, 1 May 2020 (UTC)

If only that were the case (for France). They are supposed to use BrEn, but many don't - Germany is worse. Johnbod (talk) 15:03, 1 May 2020 (UTC)

Such generalizations remain irrelevant per MOS:TIES (neither country is an English-speaking nation) and they would not override MOS:RETAIN. Doremo (talk) 15:00, 1 May 2020 (UTC)

Well, except that's not entirely true. If we're using the definitions of what constitutes an English-speaking nation as one where either it is official or where a majority speaks it, then countries like Germany, Norway, etc. get included in that list. And my argument is that EU member states have English as an official language by way of being a member of the EU, as they conduct all official activities in it and teach it to their population. Getsnoopy (talk) 20:47, 1 May 2020 (UTC)

Except it's entirely true. Germany and Norway are German- and Norwegian-speaking nations. They are not English-speaking nations. Doremo (talk) 09:55, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

No, it's an official language for EU institutions, not necessarily for member states. See the official language in their respective articles (Germany, Norway) - Germany has one (German) and Noway has two (Norwegian and Sámi) English isn't mentioned as an official language of either. -- DeFacto (talk). 12:02, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

I think the situation, as discussed many times before, is pretty clear. Articles about institutions of the EU and other official EU things should use British/Irish/Maltese English, as the last two remain members. In practice these varieties will normally be identical for this sort of topic. Articles about non-English speaking member states are fair game, as are articles about eg South America. Perhaps we should add to the policy, as the question is asked fairly often. Johnbod (talk) 15:03, 1 May 2020 (UTC)

I agree with Johnbod except for one point: English is an official language of the EU, therefore the English variant they use (which is Southern English) is the correct one regardless of UK membership. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 15:58, 1 May 2020 (UTC)

That's fine, as long as it's clear that this is the rule for articles about aspects of the EU as such. It doesn't apply, say, to articles about France. --Trovatore (talk) 17:22, 1 May 2020 (UTC)

Can you point to a reference that officially specifies which variant of English in EU activities? If it is official then we use that variant for EU articles (but not necessarily for member states when not talking in the context of the EU). If the specific variant is not officially specified (eg, just vaguely specified as "English") then there are no strong ties, the articles can use whatever the first editor chose and MOS:RETAIN rules. Stepho talk 21:32, 1 May 2020 (UTC)

The EU uses Oxford English officially, but with the exception of the -ise verb suffixes instead of the -ize verb suffixes. So from a WP perspective, that's essentially either British English or Oxford English. Getsnoopy (talk) 07:06, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

@Getsnoopy: so that spelling exception means it is explicitly not Oxford English, it is standard British English. The only difference between those two variants is that Oxford uses the 'iz' spellings, whereas standard uses the 'is' spellings, and as you mention, paragraph (b) in that reference says they use 'is' and not 'iz'. -- DeFacto (talk). 09:36, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

@DeFacto: It's not that simple because there are many other differences between British and Oxford English. British uses enquiry where appropriate, while Oxford always uses inquiry; British uses nett whereas Oxford uses net, etc. In all of these cases, the style guide says to prefer Oxford spelling. The only exception they make is the '-ise' suffixes over the '-ize'. So this would make it Oxford English in basically all forms, but since the defining feature of Oxford spelling is the '-ize' suffixes, I said it's either British or Oxford from a WP perspective. Getsnoopy (talk) 18:59, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

Well then, is the consensus then that all articles pertaining to Germany, Norway, and other countries where English is a majority (though non-official) language be written in British/Oxford English? The point is to determine what constitutes an "English-speaking nation". Getsnoopy (talk) 20:47, 1 May 2020 (UTC)

Absolutely not. Languages you learn in school don't really count, or at least not as much. If you could show that a majority in those countries spoke at a "near-native level", that might be different. --Trovatore (talk) 21:00, 1 May 2020 (UTC)

Well, that's exactly the point. There's not really anything to show that the level at which the number of English speakers in a country are at, not even for Anglophone countries. The WP article on the matter just cites the numbers and sometimes cites speakers' fluency in some countries (e.g., The Netherlands). WP policy is to determine whether a country is English-speaking based on whether it's an official language or if a majority of its population speak English. This is how we're able to justify things like US English for US-affiliated articles, and even Indian English for India-affiliated articles. Getsnoopy (talk) 07:06, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

I don't agree that it's "WP policy" to consider a country English-speaking just because a majority speak English at some level! That would be an absurd standard. English is so widespread that that would include most countries. A majority of native speakers should certainly be enough. "Official" status, purely for official purposes, should in my opinion not be enough. India is maybe a bit of a special case; my impression is that most University-educated Indians speak English quite well. --Trovatore (talk) 17:26, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

@Trovatore: Agreed; except that if an India-related article uses US English (and/or mdy date format), my practice is to retain it. Tony (talk) 06:14, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

None of those are English-speaking nations - and it's the nation, not the people, tht matters here - by either of the normal definitions. English isn't an official language in either and English isn't the majority first-language in either. -- DeFacto (talk). 09:45, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

Well obviously, if it's a majority first-language, that means that the count is based on people, but I take your point about being a majority first language. Getsnoopy (talk) 18:59, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

The most important thing is to ensure that spelling is consistent. The nature of WP as an international project means that there's often a mishmash of "colour" and "traveled", or "centre" and "fill out a form" in the same article. This however in my experience doesn't seem problematic for the European-centred articles. If spellings of more than one code exist within an article, the next is to ensure how to harmonise. I would not accept such mishmash as a legitimate variant, and would align the article to either commonwealth or American. --Ohconfucius (on the move) (talk) 08:16, 10 May 2020 (UTC)
I would add that, on the European continent, date formats are universally dd-mm-yy in their native languages, so it would seem more logical to adopt the dd-mm-yyyy format for European articles. By the same token, Asian cultures tend to big-endian, so month would come naturally before date. Would the community accept that WP:TIES covers this? --Ohconfucius (on the move) (talk) 08:25, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

According to Date_format_by_country, many parts of Europe use yyyy-mm-dd in their native format (eg Sweden). So forcing dd-mm-yyyy on them seems a poor fit

Most of Asia is indeed big endian. But they use yyyy-mm-dd, so forcing mm-dd-yyyy (better described as mixed-up endian) on them also seems a poor fit. Stepho talk 08:45, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

Almost every country in the world uses dmy. Even the US military uses dmy. ymd has some adherents, mdy almost none outside the US non-military. MapReader (talk) 15:07, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

I was just about to post about the listing of Institutions of the European Union with British or Irish English as the appropriate variant. Not that I expect it to make a difference for spelling, but since Brexit the ties of Institutions of the European Union to British English are weaker than they used to be. Should we change the relevant variety to Irish English, select some other topic where both British and Irish English would be relevant (say, Geography of Europe), or delete this entry altogether? --Metropolitan90 (talk) 16:36, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

Jeez, this is still going on? Don't bother changing it - there will be no difference between British and Irish English on these topics, and there are also the Maltese to consider, also using British English. Note this official EU style guide, already linked above. Johnbod (talk) 20:54, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

@Johnbod: I agree that the actual English under the hood doesn't need to change. The template can be modified to clarify that X topic has a tie to Y country/international organization, but that Y country/organization uses British English or something to that effect. WhisperToMe (talk) 01:22, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

Revisiting curly quotes, again

I'm revisiting this age-old question because the explanation given in MOS:CURLY as well as in the FAQ above are utterly unconvincing. In fact, the short FAQ answer directly contradicts the answer right below it, for why we distinguish between hyphens and dashes. The former says "Users may only know how to type in straight quotes (such as " and ') [...] when editing," yet the latter correctly explains "The "Insert" editing tools directly below the Wikipedia editing window provide immediate access to all these characters," referring to en dashes and em dashes, but the same obviously applies to curly quotation marks.

Which leaves the second reason, stated both in MOS:CURLY as well as the FAQ: "Not all Web browsers find curly quotes when users type straight quotes in search strings." Ignoring that this argument only applies to Microsoft IE and Edge (which have a combined market share of about 5%), it is equally true for hyphen versus dashes. Internet Explorer's finder does not find Sofie’s Choice when the user types Sofie's Choice, but it also doesn't find Gauss–Markov theorem when the user types Gauss-Markov theorem. The latter even tricks Google's Chrome and Mozilla Firefox, so taking the search-within-page argument to its logical conclusion, we would have to revoke MOS:DASHES first and foremost. We obviously won't do that (I hope so!), but it begs the question why we keep MOS:CURLY when a much stronger MOS:DASHES is in place? Further, the search-within-page argument would also preclude us from properly using umlauts or any kind of accents, since Poincare won't find Poincaré (as with curly quotes, this is an IE-and-Edge-only problem).

To my knowledge, MOS:CURLY is the only MOS guideline that recommends against the use of the correct typography in favor of a more simplistic one while citing (antiquated) technical reasons. In my opinion, it's time to get rid of it. ^[EDIT] The same argument actually applies to MOS:PUNCT, which prohibits the use of curly apostrophe in favor of straight ones (citing the same antiquated technical reasons), while immediately contradicting itself when recommending the use of "their correct Unicode characters" for ayin, okina, etc.^[/EDIT] --bender235 (talk) 20:31, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

I personally strongly dislike curly quotes for aesthetic reasons, but I fully agree with your argument. I see no objective reason to retain that requirement. —⁠烏⁠Γ ^(kaw) │ 20:45, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

If the majority of Wikipedians decided that straight quotation marks are prettier than curly ones, that's a decision I could actually live with. But we shouldn't give phony technical explanations that are immediately contradicted by all our other MOS guidelines. If the (IE and Edge only) search-within-page argument is a valid concern for us, we should get rid off MOS:DASHES and plenty of other guidelines, too. But if not, we should eliminate MOS:CURLY. --bender235 (talk) 21:32, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

ITYM raises the question^[a], and I agree. However, I'd like to see templates for wrapping text in paired punctuation and options for those templates in the Wiki markup bar, rather than having editors enter the actual characters or their character entities.

As for searches, I'm not sure that Poincaré will find Poincaré if one explicitly uses the glyph and the other uses combining. Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 21:50, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

I think there's a difference between MOS:CURLY and MOS:DASHES. Don't the “curly” quotation marks and the "straight" quotation marks both serve the same function appropriately? While an emdash (—) or an endash (–) are the appropriate symbols for different uses, of which a double hyphen (--) is merely a stand-in. If there's no choice "more correct" than the other, then it makes sense for us to choose the easier one, which would be the "straight" quotation marks. El Millo (talk) 23:29, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

Most style guides actually recommend the use of curly (or "smart") quotation marks. Word processors convert straight ones into curly ones, and so on. --bender235 (talk) 23:50, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

If there's a way to type straight ones and have them automatically turn into curly ones, then I'm completely in favor. El Millo (talk) 00:04, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

Why? Your typed hyphen doesn't turn into an en dash automatically either (in Word it does, but not on Wikipedia). That's what we have WP:COPYEDITORS for (I'm one of them). --bender235 (talk) 00:24, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

I can find style guides that recommend using curly quotation marks. I can't find any that recommend capriciously changing what the author wrote; "smart" quotes are dumb; consider what they do to code. Make it easy for the author to enter paired quotation mark when that is his intent, but don't introduce errors behind his back. Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 00:27, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

I'm not sure I understand. Do you oppose Wikipedians editing someone else's contribution to an article, changing "text" to “text”? --bender235 (talk) 03:46, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

Personally I think curlies look much better, and the technical arguments against them sound painfully quaint. And I'm pretty sure something like smart quotes is available, or can be easily added, in most interfaces. The real problem is we're going to end up with one more of those eternal style-preference scabs that will get picked over and over. We'll probably need one of those first-major-contributor rules. E Eng 23:37, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

How so? We don't have these issues with en dashes or diacritics, do we? --bender235 (talk) 23:52, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

"Smart quotes" considered harmful. I'm pretty sure that something to automatically substitute characters is available. I'm also pretty sure that it creates more problems than it solves - don't got there. Make it easier to enter paired quotes when that is the intent, and let that be all. Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 00:27, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

I agree with you that there's no need for automatic changes. But this is not even what this discussion is about. It's about the guideline that prohibits curly quotes, while all other guidelines encourage the use of "correct Unicode characters" for all kinds of symbols and letters. --bender235 (talk) 03:46, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

Is your proposal to encourage the use of curly quotes and "prohibit" straight quotes, or to allow anyone to use whichever they prefer? El Millo (talk) 03:50, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

The MOS does not prohibit or require. It says what is preferred, so that editors will generally move in that direction. People use curly quotes all over, and wikignomes convert them to straight. It could go the other way if we decide. Dicklyon (talk) 03:52, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

I wouldn't say "prohibit" straight quotes. After all, as Dicklyon rightfully points out, MOS are guidelines, not policies. I'd just replace MOS:CURLY with a recommendation along the lines of MOS:DASHES, or maybe MOS:LIGATURE.

What definitely needs to go is the phony technical explanations given at the moment, since it is obviously contradicting all our other style recommendations. --bender235 (talk) 15:22, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

If the idea is to say "Here's something that we've always required to be done this ONE way, and I'm suggesting that we open it up and give editors the freedom to chose from TWO ways based on their personal preference"... man, have you met your fellow editors? Hella Wikipedia's don't roll that way. (For my part, it'd be fine.)

If the idea is to say "Here's something that we've always required to be done this ONE way, and I'm suggesting that we instead require to be done this OTHER way"... what problem would you be solving? Herostratus (talk) 04:07, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

I know this has been a long-standing MOS guideline, and the usual stare decisis mentality in Wikipedia makes it hard to change these things. My point is that (probably from the very beginning), this recommendation for straight against curly quotes is in clear contradiction to all our other MOS guidelines that recommend the correct (albeit non-keyboard) character over the easy shortcut, whether it be Gauss–Markov theorem over Gauss-Markov theorem, or 5× champion over 5x champion, or Ngô Bảo Châu over Ngo Bao Chau. The MOS:CURLY is the only guideline recommending the exact opposite, and giving an explanation that (although actually nonsense) if taken at face value would require us to eliminate all other existing MOS guidelines favoring correct characters and symbols. --bender235 (talk) 16:35, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

@Bender235: Just to make it clear: your proposal is to change the recommendation from straight quotes to curly quotes, and not to put them as equal options. Correct?

Count me as another who would be supportive of keeping the recommendation strict but changing it to curly quotes. I would not be supportive of opening up yet another gratuitous style inconsistency across our articles. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:10, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

To answer clearly: yes, I would prefer a MOS:CURLY in line with all our related MOS guidelines, stating something along the lines of "the use of “” over "" is recommended." --bender235 (talk) 18:34, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

I would certainly support that change. —⁠烏⁠Γ ^(kaw) │ 07:14, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

Any English Manual of Style is arbitrary. That we prefer in one case easily-produced straight quotes versus curly isn't any great loss, and we're better off with fewer of our already ridiculously broad allowances than more. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 18:38, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

There having been no significant changes in computer keyboards or Wikipedia editing facilities since the last time this was discussed, I favor retaining straight quotes. Jc3s5h (talk) 18:42, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

Furthermore, since the last discussion of this, "All of the reasons Wikipedia uses straight instead of curly quotes are no longer relevant in 2019", was an RFC and this discussion is not an RFC, I will not recognize any result of this discussion as changing the consensus. Jc3s5h (talk) 18:54, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

Your personal preferences for straight quotes be as they may, but do you at least acknowledge that the explanations given in the 'curly' footnote on MOS as well as the FAQ above are in direct contradiction with all our other MOS guidelines, for instance MOS:DASHES? --bender235 (talk) 23:07, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

OK, but so what if it's in direct contradiction with all our other MOS guidelines? It's not written anywhere that any one punctuation guideline has to be compatible in approach to other guidelines about other, entirely different, punctuations. It's just a historical accident. It's not a problem. The reader doesn't care. Herostratus (talk) 05:17, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

I am a fan of using correct typographical characters and I like how the curly quotes look. I think it would significantly improve the visual quality of Wikipedia if we used proper quotes. This change would present a huge logistical issue though. If we said any given article could have either style as long as the article is consistent throughout (like English variants) then some articles will be one way and some another and this will be visually confusing for readers. If we did not make a binary change to the guidance I think we'd just have a mess. I'm not sure if big changes like this have been made on Wikipedia in the past and whether they were done incrementally or all at once. Clearly this would need to be a widely-advertised RfC and not just a quick discussion. —DIYeditor (talk) 03:23, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

If it was me, I wouldn't bother taking it any further.

If you're trying to *introduce* choice where there isn't (that is, permit both kinds of quotes), I'd say forget it. The entire history of the MOS had been people trying to clear up ambiguous situations by creating clear, strict rules mandating one particular way of doing things. This'd be going the other way... I can't see it.
If you're trying to switch from straight to curly, you're likely to get a 50-50 (55-45, whatever) vote on straight-versus-curly. It's pretty much a matter of aesthetic preference, so no argument is likely to be objectively clearly the stronger. So, no change.
If you do get an unexpected supermajority in favor of curly quotes, what has really been accomplished. It's fine now, it'd be fine if you changed it, and fine if you didn't. Herostratus (talk) 05:17, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

@Herostratus: I agree with you that we should avoid a WP:ENGVAR or WP:CITEVAR type of outcome. MOS guidelines, although just guidelines and not policies, should give unambiguous and clear-cut advice. As for whether it's just an "aesthetic preference," I agree too. But then call it just that in the explanation for MOS:CURLY! The current 'curly' footnote on MOS as well as the FAQ above pretend that straight quotes are inevitable for some technical reason, when in fact it should say something like: "back in 2003, someone made the decision that we prefer straights over curlies, and 17 years of path dependency later here we are." At least that would be honest. Because I actually wonder how many Wikipedians use straight curlies simply because this technical mumbo-jumbo in the 'curly' footnote deters them from doing otherwise. --bender235 (talk) 13:55, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

@Bender235: Oh, yes, with that I agree. I'd be all for taking out out the mumbo-jumbo in the rule. Herostratus (talk) 16:10, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

@Herostratus: Fair enough. Could you point me to the relevant RfC in which the community concluded that we prefer straight quotes over curly ones, so I can adjust the FAQ and footnote reasoning accordingly? --bender235 (talk) 22:27, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

I have to agree with Herostratus on this. I'm personally a fan of curly quotes, but there's a WP:BROKEN issue here; this just isn't worth the editor effort (which would be a headache both for reaching consensus and for implementation) it would be sure to be. Perhaps if we wait another decade, the AI will be smart enough that we'll have the tools to make a clean and easy switch. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 07:29, 23 May 2020 (UTC)

I, too, like typographically correct glyphs. But a big problem with curly quotes is the so-called "smart quotes" feature of editors that often make mistakes, ever since the ‘80s. Dicklyon (talk) 05:29, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

I think we're getting ahead of ourselves. This really isn't about a potential auto-correct feature in the Wikipedia editor, which may or may not be buggy. It's purely about the current MOS guidelines, or actually not even that: it's about the validity of the reason given for the current MOS on straight vs. curly quotes. --bender235 (talk) 13:59, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

Just to copy over some points from the previous discussion that I started last year, responding to the MOS’s explanation of our current guidelines:

Consistency keeps searches predictable. Though most browsers do not distinguish between curly and straight marks, Internet Explorer still does (as of 2016). Internet Explorer’s current market share is 2.56% and shrinking fast as Microsoft actively discourages its use in favor of its new Chrome clone (Chrome and Firefox both find curly quotes correctly).^[1]
Straight quotation marks are easier to type reliably on most platforms. On Mac, Windows, and Ubuntu, they are no more difficult to type than dashes. On Android and old versions of iOS, they can easily be accessed by holding down the apostrophe or quotation mark key as appropriate. On new versions of iOS, they’re even easier to type, because “Smart Punctuation” is automatically enabled in Settings, automatically replacing ' with its curly equivalent. Desktop version users can also insert them via the character insertion menu (currently under Symbols but this can be changed).
MediaWiki's use of series of single quotes to create italics and boldface makes using these features complicated and error-prone for content that begins or ends with apostrophes. When editing pages using default settings (i.e. monospaced font), the two types of quotation marks are easier to tell apart than you might expect when reading. Click the edit button and see for yourself: '’ It’s actually less complicated than say, distinguishing en and em dashes in the source editor. What’s more, curly apostrophes actually fix a problem with MediaWiki surrounding formatting. Currently, if someone tries to write something like ''The Signpost'''s, the result is an improperly italicized apostrophe (The Signpost's), or worse if the italicized texts anywhere near bold text. As such, we need to currently use ''The Signpost''{{'}}s (The Signpost's). With curly quotes, this problem is removed, just type ''The Signpost''’s (The Signpost’s).

I think there definitely is a sense of “this is the way we’ve always done it” that makes it hard to bring about change in this area, but IMO it’s a change we definitely should make. —pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 14:12, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

Saying that once-upon-a-time the use of curly quotes was problematic for <reasons> is fine and I think should be done. Do not make a rule that straight quotes are out and curly quotes are in. Do not make that rule.

For me, with this browser and this monitor, curly quotes are more distinct than straight quotes when viewed within the wikitext editor (though they appear slanted as if italicized) but when the page is rendered, it is the reverse, straight quotes are more distinct:

‘'’“"” → ‘'’“"” – this using the glyphs directly

‘'’“"” → ‘'’“"” – this using the html entities

Were curly and straight quotes equally distinct, and were curly quotes as easy to type as straight quotes, and were there a built-in mechanism to ensure that left-curly-quotes all have matching right-curly-quotes (smartquotes works nearly 100% of the time) then, perhaps I could be convinced that curly is better than straight. If I have to work at it, sod that for a game of soldiers.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:14, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

There is more stuff to distinguish than mentioned by Trappist the monk:

‘'’′“"”″ → ‘'’′“"”″ – this using the glyphs directly

Prime and double-prime are important to those who edit astronomy articles. Jc3s5h (talk) 17:21, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

Notes

^ "begs the question" is something quite different.

References

^ http://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share

Order of categories

Do we have any advice about how to order the categories on a page? Should it ideally be alphabetical, or by importance, or something else? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 07:33, 23 May 2020 (UTC)

MOS:CATORDER. Nikkimaria (talk) 14:35, 23 May 2020 (UTC)

@Nikkimaria: Oops, thanks, I hadn't found that. I added a few redirects so hopefully it's easier for the next person. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 03:48, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

Obama example

Unsure what purpose it serves, especially as recently edited. Tony (talk) 08:43, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

The point of the example is to illustrate the use of present tense in an "X is a former Y" construction, not to report any particular article's text. I've reverted the change. --RexxS (talk) 12:17, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

The construction "X is a former Y" isn't used nearly as often as "X is a Y who held position Z". Why tell editors "do it this way" when we don't do it that way, not even in the article in question? Perhaps there is a better example to use?--Trystan (talk) 13:24, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

It's best to keep examples simple and to only vary the key point (tense in this case) between two contrasting examples. To do otherwise is potentially confusing. Certainly both examples would have to be changed to have otherwise equivalent wording, and there is no reason to include all the extra verbiage when the example is about tense, not what number president he was. —DIYeditor (talk) 13:30, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

How about changing it to "Buzz Aldrin is a former astronaut"? That's from a recent Featured Article, and the example would actually be a simplified version of the lead ("Buzz Aldrin is an American engineer, former astronaut and fighter pilot." The problem with the Obama example is that there is a better way to say "was President of the United States" than "is a former President of the United States", and that better way is what is actually used in the article.--Trystan (talk) 13:52, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

First of all, that example would have to read Buzz Aldrin is an American engineer and former astronaut and fighter pilot to make sense (unless you're saying he's no longer an astronaut but still a fighter pilot) and even then it's not so good. Second, he's probably a former engineer too, and if you're going to argue once an engineer, always an engineer then I'll need to know why that doesn't apply to astronauts and fighter pilots too. E Eng 14:02, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

I changed the wording of Buzz Aldrin to "is an American engineer, and former astronaut and fighter pilot" before I saw your reply here. I think if you have earned a degree in something you could be considered still that but it is potentially inconsistent and confusing when contrasted with a career or job. —DIYeditor (talk) 14:17, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

(did not notice EEng's reply before typing this) Not sure, frankly I'm confused why Obama is a politician but Aldrin a former astronaut? Or why George W. Bush is a businessman even though he is presumably retired. Clearly Aldrin's "engineer" is something he is qualified to be whether he is actively practicing it or not so that is not confusing. —DIYeditor (talk) 14:14, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

To clarify, I am suggesting the example could be: "Buzz Aldrin is a former astronaut (not Buzz Aldrin was an astronaut)". That way, it matches (in a simplified way) the full lead of the article.

As for why some roles become past tense before others, I think there are interrelated issues of identity and sourcing. It is relatively easy to determine that someone no longer holds a specific office, or no longer goes on space missions. It is much harder to pinpoint when someone stops being involved in business or politics (that tends to be a gradual transition, and one that is consequently difficult to verify). Other than death, we don't know when a writer has written their last sentence or a comedian has told their last joke, so we default to "is".--Trystan (talk) 14:58, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

This is a bad example because Obama is definitely no longer President but it's not clear Buzz is no longer an astronaut if George W. Bush is still a businessman and Obama is still a politician. Buzz might fly a jet fighter again for all we know, by your reasoning. Let's keep it simple and stick to unambiguous examples. —DIYeditor (talk) 15:03, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

Guillemets and low-high quotation marks in non-English text

Regarding this revert...

We're not intending to change «» and „“ to "" in non-English languages that use those as standard, are we? I mean in inner text, like:

English English "Russian «Russian»" English.

English English "Croatian „Croatian“ Croatian" English.

-- Beland (talk) 18:35, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

I also assume we're not supposed to change these in pure non-English text, like in the parameter that's the Russian title of a web page we're citing (where I see a lot of guillemets). -- Beland (talk) 18:37, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

Oh right, we've had this discussion before. This is what MOS:CONFORM says. -- Beland (talk) 18:51, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

Looks like you've reached consensus! E Eng 20:29, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

I added a pointer to MOS:CONFORM from that bullet point on this page. -- Beland (talk) 17:50, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

MOS:GEO - Czechia / Czech Republic in articles

I noticed a user changing "Czech Republic" to "Czechia" in numerous articles. I reverted some of the changes, quoting MOS:GEO: Places should generally be referred to consistently by the same name as in the title of their article. But it occurred to me that it's not entirely clear - does it mean only within the place's main article, or all articles? See a similar question here: [11]. Since it looks like this user's activity consists almost entirely of doing that, going back for some time, I'd like to get some clarification before reverting any more of their changes.

My first instinct is that a user should not set themselves on a mission to change every instance of something to their preferred style, all across Wikipedia, without prior consensus (i.e., MOS:STYLEVAR and its relatives). Particularly when there have been several discussions about moving the main article to "Czechia" which have all failed, and there is now a moratorium on further move discussions.

In the same vein though, I might be skeptical about someone changing every existing instance of "Czechia" to "Czech Republic", unless there's fairly clear agreement that that's what MOS:GEO means. On the other hand, I do think consistency is usually a good idea.

If MOS:GEO doesn't support consistently using "Czech Republic" in articles, should there be (or is there already) a rule or principle similar to MOS:ENGVAR, MOS:US etc., i.e., keep an article internally consistent, and based on the first non-stub revision if no other reasoning applies? --IamNotU (talk) 18:43, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

Common sense would suggest that links should generally match article titles. Yes, some descriptive titles wouldn't work and there might be some "adjectivized noun" uses and suchthat would require piping , but with most articles you are simply using them in the sentence.--Khajidha (talk) 13:07, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

Kerckhoffs's's's's'ssss...

Kerckhoffs's principle or Kerckhoffs' principle? --Guy Macon (talk) 16:16, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

You can either go for popular ways or formal grammar. Usually the former wins. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 18:14, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

The former, or the formal? E Eng 19:14, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

Unfortunately "former". Martin of Sheffield (talk) 21:00, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

Depends whose style guide you use. Does Wikipedia have a preference?

I like the Guardian's logic - if it's a name you pronounce with the s, then add the s. So write "James's hat", but not "Mephistopheles's book". Popcornfud (talk) 19:32, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

Arguably, "James's hat" can be pronounced different ways: James hat ... or ... Jame-ziz hat. No? Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 20:36, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun. But no one talks like anymore.--Jack Upland (talk) 20:46, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

It is a perennial debate at the home of Newcastle United F.C.. See St James' Park#Stadium description. Feline Hymnic (talk) 20:53, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

Joseph A. Spadaro, I've never heard "James hat" in my entire life... and someone very important to me is called James. Popcornfud (talk) 20:57, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

Thanks. That may be true. But, I have definitely heard both pronunciations: James and Jame-ziz. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 21:09, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

Is MOS:PLURALNOUN insufficient to answer the question? --Izno (talk) 23:13, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

Izno, thanks. So basically the Guardian style I mentioned above, based on pronunciation. Popcornfud (talk) 23:16, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

I actually misidentified the section--it should be MOS:POSS "Singular nouns". Same result. --Izno (talk) 23:55, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

(edit conflict) For 'Kerckhoffs' principle', you should be looking at the section above that: MOS:POSS. The advice there has changed in a fairly arbitrary manner over the years, but the present guideline is pretty poor, because it depends on each individual's idea of what is difficult to pronounce:

If a name already ends in s or z and would be difficult to pronounce if 's were added to the end, consider rearranging the phrase to avoid the difficulty: Jesus's teachings or the teachings of Jesus.

I think that's much less useful than previous advice, which also gave clear examples of multisyllabic names of foreign origin taking just the apostrophe, like Archimedes' principle. The advice to rephrase is equally sub-par. Who is going to re-write "Mephistopheles' head" as "the head of Mephistopheles"? --RexxS (talk) 23:57, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

I am still unsure of what to do. It does seen that we should not have an Archimedes' principle article and a Kerckhoffs's principle article. Scholarly sources differ (which of course I knew because I checked before asking here):[12][13]

I also found the "If a name already ends in s or z and would be difficult to pronounce if 's were added to the end, consider rearranging the phrase to avoid the difficulty" part of MOS:POSS to be subjective and not helpful in this case; nobody is going to change the article title to "The Kerckhoffs principle".

So, what should I do? --Guy Macon (talk) 01:41, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

According to the sections of the Manual of Style that were linked here, the appropriate thing to do with proper but not official names is to use 's even if it ends with an s or a z. That means Archimedes' principle should be changed, and Kerckhoffs's principle should stay as it is. El Millo (talk) 01:56, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

Which is exactly why the the sections of the MOS linked now contain deficient advice. Sources overwhelmingly use "Archimedes' principle" because the convention in English has been that multisyllabic names of Greek origin take just the apostrophe to form the possessive. On Google Scholar, you find 42,100 results for "Archimedes' principle" -wikipedia and just 572 for "Archimedes's principle" -wikipedia. That's 74:1.

Kerckhoffs' principle is a closer case: "Kerckhoffs' principle" -wikipedia = 1,350 results; "Kerckhoffs's principle" -wikipedia" = 107 results; 12.6:1. I know which one I'd use for the title. --RexxS (talk) 11:59, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

Does WP:COMMONNAME still take precedence over the Manuel of Style when there's that little a difference between one title and the other –not difference in searches but in actual characters between the titles themselves–? We're comparing "Kerckhoffs'" with "Kerckhoffs's", these are hardy different names. There's no example even slightly similar to this one amongst the ones listed at COMMONNAME, we should discuss if we apply it here. El Millo (talk) 16:45, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

No, WP:COMMONSENSE takes precedence over unhelpful rule-bound mindsets. Wikipedia naturally follows sources. Guidelines document practices, not prescribe them. --RexxS (talk) 19:53, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

So, yes, COMMONNAME takes precedence. El Millo (talk) 20:53, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

There is a very long article at Apostrophe that suggests that it is WAY too complicated to have a brief MOS entry. I would just refer editors to that article. --Red King (talk) 18:53, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

For learning more about the history and details of the apostrophe, wonderful resource. For answering the question "Kerckhoffs's principle or Kerckhoffs' principle?", not so much. --Guy Macon (talk) 19:21, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

Is there something still awaiting resolution or clarification in this thread? E Eng 21:56, 29 May 2020 (UTC)

Foreign words – Chinese, Hebrew, Greek alphabets

I am pretty new to Wikipedia, so I don't know how to search Talk archives very well, but I tried. I didn't find a discussion of whether or not to include foreign alphabets when transliterated terms are used, e.g., in the "Eve" article (this is Mother's Day, after all),

"Eve" in Hebrew is "Ḥawwāh" and is most commonly believed to mean "living one" or "source of life"...

I think the foreign symbols should be included (though of course the draft entry might do it with just transliteration or just symbols, for ease of entry-- I am speaking of the ideal style). Thus, the ideal would be

"Eve" in Hebrew is חַוָּה (Ḥawwāh) and is most commonly believed to mean "living one" or "source of life"...

The reason is that different readers will find both original and transliteration useful. I am personally an example of someone who likes both, because I don't know Hebrew but I do know the Hebrew alphabet. Even when it comes to Chinese, where I only know a few characters, I like to see the character--- more than the transliteration, in fact--- because I want to be able to check or search for the "real" word, and sometimes to see what the character components are (e.g., is the very simple character for mountain part of a compound character). The original symbols are easy to ignore for people who just want transliteration--- as easy as the transliteration is for people who just want the original.

So I propose a Manual of Style entry making inclusion of the original symbols best practice for Chinese, Hebrew, Greek, Cyrillic, Arabic, Devanagari, APL, and so forth. There is still the question of the particular style of symbol (Chinese: Complex, Simplified, or Japanese kanji), but probably that is addressed in some other Talk thread--- though not, I think, in the Manual of Style.

As I said, I'm a Wikipedia novice, so I didn't want to be so bold as to change the Manual of Style without putting the idea up on Talk first. If nobody responds, though, I'll work up an edit of the Manual of Style. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Editeur24 (talk • contribs) 17:25, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

There are a few examples in WP:MOSBIO:
- A Greek example in its Examples section
- An Arabic example in its MOS:FULLNAME section
- An example on not overdoing it in its MOS:NICKCRUFT section

Basically, it's subject to editor consensus too whether and how names in original script are given in the lead sentence. --Francis Schonken (talk) 17:53, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

For why we don't automatically have a MOS guideline on everything, but by default leave it to editors to work stylistic questions out on the talk pages of individual articles, see WP:If MOS doesn't need a rule on something, it needs to not have a rule on that thing. E Eng 19:46, 10 May 2020 (UTC)
Keep in mind that there are several contemporary and ancient dialects of Hebrew, and the context affects which transliteration is appropriate. See, e.g., Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Hebrew). Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 20:07, 10 May 2020 (UTC)
Right, and if MOS had a guideline on this, it would have to address which dialect to choose, and then there'd be arguments and a Hebrew version of WP:RETAIN and everything else. So far I'm not seeing any evidence that editors are having any trouble working this out for themselves on individual articles. E Eng 21:34, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

The proper formatting for that is:

''Eve'' in Hebrew is {{lang|he|חַוָּה}} ({{lang|he-Latn|Ḥawwāh}}) and is most commonly believed to mean 'living one' or 'source of life'...

See (respectively) MOS:WAW, MOS:FOREIGN, and MOS:SINGLE. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 12:46, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

Revisit deletion of Template:Malaysian English?

It has come to my attention that back in 2014 the template Template:Malaysian English was deleted, with the discussion here: Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2013_December_30#Template:Malaysian_English.

We have Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#National_varieties_of_English (ENGVAR) which states under the header "Strong national ties to a topic" that "An article on a topic that has strong ties to a particular English-speaking nation should use the (formal, not colloquial) English of that nation."

This means that if an article has significant ties to only one country that has a recognized variety of English, it is obligated to use the standards from that country. This is why I disagree with the rationale (expressed in several posts in the TFD) that there aren't any articles that use (formal, standardized) "Malaysian English"; these articles should as per ENGVAR.

Malaysia does/did have a recognized variety of formal, standardized English (read page 70 which refers to this, and how it was original jointly of both Singapore and Malaysia), and we have ENGVAR templates for various English-as-a-second language places in Africa and Asia (Ghana, Nigeria, Hong Kong, Philippines, etc.).

If it's OK I'd like to ping the participants of that discussion so it can be deliberated with this information. WhisperToMe (talk) 19:37, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

If I may attempt to be helpful, that deletion discussion seemed to hinge on the fact that the template was only in use on one article. Could I suggest to you that creating a list of articles where you believe the template should be used would be an essential prerequisite to reopening the debate? --RexxS (talk) 21:24, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

@RexxS: I have ideas for ten which should, under ENGVAR, use "Malaysian English" (meaning the or a formal, standardized version of English predominate in Malaysia): Kuala Lumpur, Ipoh, AirAsia, Malaysia Airlines, Perak, Sarawak, Sabah, Malaysia, and Petronas Towers. Under ENGVAR if the article does not use the country-specific version, it should be switched/modified so that it does so. If in practice, it would be almost identical to British English, the template could say "This topic has ties to Malaysia, which generally uses British English" or something to that effect. WhisperToMe (talk) 00:40, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

As I look into my crystal ball for 2025, I see templates for Malaysia, Australia, Liverpool, Liverpool over 50's, Bronx, South Bronx, West Bronx, West Bronx bus riders, and hundreds more. As an Australian, I'm happy to just have British and American templates. Stepho talk 23:12, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

It would be amazing to read an article written in West Bronx riders English. Maybe we’ll need to split off a separate West Bronx bus riders Wikipedia too, so that Simple English Wikipedia doesn’t get lonely! — MarkH₂₁^talk 02:59, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

@Stepho-wrs: @MarkH21: Cockney would be fun too! Or Texas English! Anyway, in seriousness, the MOS already says that only formal varieties of English are covered under ENGVAR. WhisperToMe (talk) 00:40, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

Is there any difference between formal Malaysian English and formal British English? Aside from a few words for things Brits might not encounter. And not colloquialisms or slang. Is it possible to distinguish a Malaysian doctoral dissertation (for example) from a British one. If not, I don't see the point in having it. --Khajidha (talk) 19:51, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

@Khajidha: There's a 2007 academic conference article on researchgate which says that "Malaysian English" (the varieties of English used in English language media in Malaysia) and "Manglish" are two different things. There is a section called "Words or phrases only used in Malaysian English".

The 1994 article I mentioned above stated that there are different varieties of English in Malaysia, with one being of Malaysians educated in English medium schools before say the 1970s/1980s and a newer generation educated in Malay medium schools which has Malay influence in its English. (there's also a colloquial Malaysian English which isn't relevant). The article concludes that it would be difficult for a single standard variety of English in Malaysia to appear due to Malay replacing English as the interethnic/prestige language (though the 2007 article notes the increased importance of English that occurred since then)

On a more general note: If a country has a particular affinity to use a particular variety of English, but it in fact has little difference from say British English, there could be a modification to the template where it says "This topic has a tie to X country, which uses British English". That way the readers know that it's not like a British guy happened to be the first one to make the article.

WhisperToMe (talk) 00:40, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

I don't see the point of blessing various dialects as good for use at enwiki. This is the English Wikipedia written for and by those where English is the primary language. Historical accidents mean that English is the primary language in a small number of places, each of which has their own style variation. That means color and colour are ok. It does not mean that, for example, "in the year 2020" is needed instead of "in 2020" where the latter would not cause confusion to people where English is the primary language. I don't know what variations Malaysian English might have, but why should an article at enwiki be written using their variations? Johnuniq (talk) 01:08, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

@Johnuniq:. ENGVAR only says to use formal varieties of English, not colloquial dialects. There are words and numbering types (lakh and crore are used in Indian English) that are unique in formal versions of English used in some countries.

I do feel in reality British English (if the Malaysian English media/education systems use this type) should be used for Malaysian English (with any special Malaysian vocabulary explained for non-Malaysians) but I believe that means a modified template explaining that the article should use formal varieties predominate in a country, and that say the former British colony mainly uses British English in the media or something to that effect.

WhisperToMe (talk) 01:19, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

In regards to the varities of English used in Malaysia, an example would be this article in The Star: "Online boost for kerepek business" - "PONTIAN: It’s all about kerepek (crackers) for Noor Hidayah Mat Isrin." While say a UK or US article may use "crackers" a Malaysian article might use a Malay word, define the term for non-Malaysians, and habitually use the Malay word in the article. WhisperToMe (talk) 01:26, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

It's quite fine for a Malaysian newspaper meant for readers in Malaysia to use words like kerepek - the readers are likely to know what it means. But an article about a Malaysian topic is also going to be read by readers not familiar with Malay languages or culture. We have to assume that our readers have a grasp of basic English - we should not impose a need to understand multiple dialects. For example, I am a car fanatic. If I want to read up on PROTON Holdings then I should not be expected to know about peculiarities of Malay English. Stepho talk 05:10, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

@Stepho-wrs: I agree that the article needs to be comprehensible to non-Malay readers. ENGVAR does say that "Use universally accepted terms rather than those less widely distributed, especially in titles." Speaking of which there was a discussion about some content at Talk:Uttar_Pradesh/Archive_1#Terms_need_to_be_comprehensible_to_non-Indian_readers_without_having_to_check_the_wikilinks where I argued that certain items needed to be defined within the article to cater to non-Indian readers WhisperToMe (talk) 08:20, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

We need to delete way more of these nationalistic templates. For writing in an encyclopedic register, there are basically three Englishes: Commonwealth/British, American, and Canadian (which is essentially a mixture of the other two, using mostly North American vocabulary with mostly Commonwealth spelling). In formal writing, the rest of them are generally indistinguishable from Commonwealth/British, except the rare American-based exceptions like the English used (to the extent that it is at all) in the Philippines and Okinawa. We do not need templates for Jamaican, Scottish, Indian, etc. Englishes. Just three. Nor do we need obnoxious giant talk-page and edit-notice banners. The "silent" templates that go at the top of the article page are entirely sufficient. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 12:51, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

Use of e.g. versus e.g.,

I have noticed entirely inconsistent use of e.g. and e.g., (i.e. whether a comma follows or not) to introduce examples (both in running text and in parenthesis), and find no reference to the issue in the MoS or on the current Talk page. You might like to address it, at a minimum to point out it should be done consistently one way or the other within a page. There are probably similar issues with i.e. and i.e., and maybe other common abbreviations. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 118.93.106.61 (talk) 05:29, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

It's currently covered under Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Punctuation and spacing and further under Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Abbreviations#Miscellanea. I can't think of a clearer way to include this in the main MoS that wouldn't also apply to the whole Miscellanea section (AD, BC, a.k.a., n/a, &c). {

\mathbb {JPG}

} 06:20, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

Neither of those links address the question at all. The answer is that it is a difference in usage between American English, which includes a comma, and all other varieties of English which follow the British usage of not including a comma. Hence you are not going to be able to establish a common WP-wide approach and, strictly, it should follow the same rules as WP:ENGVAR. MapReader (talk) 06:32, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

People have different views on this. One is that it should always have a comma (or a colon, when introducing a long list) because the plain-English equivalent, "for example," would normally use one. However, commas are declining in English, and some writers prefer to drop them when they can, especially for short phrases that aren't unclear without one; those editors' mixed use is intentional and considered by some to be valid (i.e., we are not going to get consensus on this, and trying to "legislate" a hard rule on it will be called WP:CREEP). Compare: "House cats are similar to great cats (e.g. lions) in that ...", versus "Her political platform includes many proposals considered progressive-left, e.g., universal health care, increased taxation of the wealthy, and a guaranteed minimum income." So, some will argue this variability in style is a feature, not a bug. And many uses of "e.g." are actually better reworded ("including", "such as", "for example", etc. – depends on context, can actually make the precise meaning clearer, and some of these do not usually take a comma while others do). I personally prefer to be consistent with the punctuation after "e.g." and "i.e." within the same article, but can understand the rationale for doing it differently in different cases. Indeed, the argument can be that any instances of "e.g." in the senses of "including" or "such as" should not have a comma after them because "including" and "such as" themselves would not. Anyway, what I won't sit still for is dropping the comma from sentence-introductory phrases just because they are short ("In 2019 they moved to Boswana."). That's pure news style, which WP does not use. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 23:35, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

I used to be of the e.g., class, but have switched. It's easier, and does nothing to reduce the ease of readers' recognition. My view is that MOS should allow either, but insist on within-article consistency (but for quotes, etc, of course). Tony (talk) 02:27, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

Unclear instructions in Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Music samples

"A Vorbis quality setting of 0 (roughly 64kbit/s) is usually sufficient." 0 on OGG sounds like around 128kbit/s, sounds a lot better than 64kbit/s. In file properties it shows 1411kbit/s so it could cover original WAV of 1411kbit/s quality or 320kbit/s MP3 and then OGG quality setting of 0 isn't a solution. So how it should be done? Eurohunter (talk) 00:07, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

You know who might be able to help with this? Binksternet, that's who. E Eng 16:51, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

Responding to ping. At Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Music samples, we are instructed that the audio sample must be lower quality than the original. The advice is to set the OGG quality to zero (there's a lower setting of negative 1) which I think is sufficiently reduced in quality. Another way to reduce quality is to provide a monaural sample of a stereo original, or to reduce the sample rate from 44.1 kHz or 48 kHz to something like 32 kHz.

Hope that helps. Binksternet (talk) 17:18, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

Thanks! Ping Eurohunter. E Eng 17:23, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

@Binksternet: As I said OGG quality can be set lowest to 0 which results in 1411kbit/s instead of 64kbit/s. I'm doing something wrong? Eurohunter (talk) 18:21, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

A setting of zero is fairly low quality. Nothing close to 1411 kbps should be coming out of that setting. You're looking at "file properties" to get 1411 but maybe the computer operating system isn't measuring the right stuff. A better metric is file size. You should be seeing a smaller file size than the original, which for OGG files is an indicator that your quality has been reduced. Binksternet (talk) 18:36, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

@Binksternet: Zero sounds like 128kbit/s so it isn't that big difference and whole song has then 1,3mb. In Winamp it actually shows 64kbit/s. I noticed 64kbit/s OGG sounds like 3 times better than same 64kbit/s file but in MP3. Is it expected or something went wrong? Eurohunter (talk) 19:08, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

I wouldn't worry about it. You did the right things – your due diligence – and now you can upload your OGG file as an audio sample. Binksternet (talk) 19:37, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

@Binksternet: Thank you. Eurohunter (talk) 20:12, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

And what am I? Chopped liver? E Eng 21:32, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

Humor in the Manual of Style

I believe that the purpose of the Manual of Style is to be useful to editors, given that it is a guideline for—let's see here—"all English Wikipedia articles". As a guideline, it exists "to document the good practices accepted in the Wikipedia community". I strongly believe that a guideline can best do this when it's easy to read and understand, hence my recent edits.

Guidelines don't normally have "entertaining the reader" as a secondary goal, or as a goal at all. I searched all over and found no traces of {{humor}} or any similar templates, no mentions of the Department of Fun, and no Wikipedia policy anywhere to suggest that guidelines should strive for humor. (Particularly when it's, you know, the freaking Manual of Style for all of English Wikipedia.)

@EEng: Judging by your edits, you seem to believe not only that humor for its own sake is okay here, but that it should be here—even when that hurts the manual's ability to function as a guideline by making it harder to understand. Your edit summaries have both been personal attacks on my sense of humor (and nothing else—not so much as an allusion to the page you were editing). I'm very confused as to the reason behind your edits. Please let me know which policies you were following, or how your edits . — Ardub23 (talk) 01:57, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

@Ardub23: it's an April Fools' thing, if April Fool's Day in Wikipedia goes by UTC, then it's no longer April 1st. I guess it should already be deleted. El Millo (talk) 02:23, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

@Facu-el Millo: I thought the same thing at first, but the disputed phrase was like that for months at least, and WP:FOOLS requires April Fools' jokes to be tagged with an appropriate template anyway. — Ardub23 (talk) 02:46, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

How odd... I thought your post here might have been your idea of an April Fools joke! Look, you said, "I like humor as much as the next guy" [14], but since I was the next guy that's obviously not true, so I said, "No, you do not 'like humor as much as the next guy'" [15]. That's not an attack.

To answer your first question: I'm helping the Manual of Style as a guideline by making its provisions more memorable (plus I'm improving the editing experience by making project space less of a deathly dull all-work-no-play purgatory). I'll turn your second question around: what policy are you following? E Eng 03:03, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

It was alright joke, and if mainspace and "Help:" are the only places where we can't put April Fools' jokes, then I guess the MoS is allowed. But April 1st is over, shouldn't we remove the joke already? El Millo (talk) 03:25, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

And you can still joke everyday at talk pages, right?. El Millo (talk) 03:29, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

(ec) I find this OP by User:Ardub23 very worrysome. Not only is humor, let alone a failed attempt to, a bad form to convey a MOS guideline. Especially when not announced as such (by template e.g.), one must assume it is not understood. Not as humor, not as a guideline.

Then hiding behind an April 1 defence, mind us: not by the editor themselves but by an advocate User:Facu-el Millo here who does third-person interpretation, is inacceptible talk. This is about a MOS, ffs.

Extra troubling is that Ardub23 has to state that Your [EEng] edit summaries have both been personal attacks, which EEng does not seem to recognise. There is a pattern with this, including the advocacy. -DePiep (talk) 03:32, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style is not the place to post allegations of wrongdoing. Please stop. Take it to ANI, take it to Arbcom, or drop the stick.

Regarding your opinion that humor is not allowed in a MOS guideline, I suggest that you draft an RfC detailing exactly where you believe humor is forbidden and see what the consensus of the community is. --Guy Macon (talk) 03:43, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

@DePiep: I was just trying to solve the problem and try to get EEng to cool down a bit and maybe delete his joke himself. I was writing something serious in response to him about treating others better and how it is best to keep "play" separate from "work" in here, but I thought he might not take it well and I didn't publish it. I'm sorry if it looked like I was genuinely condoning his behaviour. El Millo (talk) 03:47, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

When you bunch figure out which way is up (and I'm not talking to G.M. here) give us a buzz. E Eng 04:11, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

@EEng: I was following WP:GUIDELINE § Content:

"Be clear. ... Be plain, direct, unambiguous, and specific. ...

"Be as concise as possible ... Omit needless words. Direct, concise writing may be more clear than rambling examples."

I don't see where in this (or any) policy it says to make guidelines "memorable" or "less dull". Any other questions?

— Ardub23 (talk) 04:41, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

It doesn't say not to either. Any other answers? E Eng 04:56, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

Yes, actually, it does say not to. Right under § Content. "Be clear." "Omit needless words." — Ardub23 (talk) 05:10, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

You seem to have copy-pasted the wrong text. We're looking for the parts that say "Be forgettable" and "Be dull". E Eng 05:22, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

Is breaking the policy twice not enough? How many policies do you need to violate before it counts? Or do you not understand how a phrase which self-describes as both "awkward" and "lengthy" conflicts with the policy of being clear and concise? — Ardub23 (talk) 05:46, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

Ardub23, you believe that a policy is being broken. EEng, you do not. To both of you, repeating your assertion that of course your interpretation of the policy is the only correct one is clearly a waste of effort and has a 0% chance of convincing the other. There are two ways to resolve this, and neither involves more of what I am seeing above. One of you can post a clearly-worded RfC (I suggest discussing the wording first) so that the consensus of the community can decide which one of you understands the policy. Or the one who claims a violation can go to WP:ANI and report the violation and let the administrators decide which one of you understands the policy. Please note that nothing that I have written in any way takes sides or indicates what my opinion is on this. --Guy Macon (talk) 06:55, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

(ec) @Guy Macon: re your post a clearly-worded RfC: see this, which makes sense in this stage.

re nothing that I have written in any way takes sides or indicates what my opinion is: yes you did. Above, in this thread, you wrote your opinion that humor is not allowed in a MOS guideline [16], thereby putting words in my mouth as if I am claiming some "is forbidden" stuff, quod non. Then in there is another start-an-RfC diversion. All this, your approach here saying "go elsewhere" does not reflect the basic steps in WP:DISPUTE, that says: go-to-the-talkpage. In doing so, you are stifling the debate, not resolving it. That is not helpful. While instead, as a less involved party here, you could have put some grease in the flow.

Meanwhile there is an editwar going on, which I understand we can not stop & resolve on this page? -DePiep (talk) 08:26, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

Please do not attempt to stuff words into my mouth. You are heading for Yet Another Block if you continue this sort of behavior. Saying that an obviously intractable content dispute should be decided by RfC instead of going on and and on about it in a discussion that have no chance of reaching an agreements is NOT equal to taking sides in the content dispute. I advised you to take it to RfC only after you and others had a lengthy talk page discussion that failed to reach anything resembling agreement. That and I told you that your accusations against another editor (I expressed no opinion about the merits of the actual accusations) do not belong here. I advise either dropping the stick or posting an RfC. Yelling at each other some more is unlikely to have any beneficial effect. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:05, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

Disregard the argument that humour makes Wikipedia "less of a deathly dull all-work-no-play purgatory". If someone doesn't enjoy editing Wikipedia they are free to stop at any point. This isn't Kiddies First Style Guide that needs to resort to desperate unfunny attempts at humour to grab attention. Ardub23 provided a policy based reason why they made the changes (WP:GUIDELINE § Content), the reverting editor didn't put forward any policy based argument and so can best be interpreted as 'I just don't like it'. Editing with Eric (talk) 08:24, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

I think it would be more useful to focus on the specific disputed edit rather than on philosophy at this time. I support Ardub23's change. Fumblerules are fun in context but not in the actual manual. Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 10:03, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

Is there a policy to that effect? Aren't you just expressing a philosophy? (For the record, BTW, the text at issue wasn't anything I wrote.) E Eng 10:29, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

In the WP:BRD cycle, we clearly are in the D. This also implies that ~~the disputed edit should be reverted into the status quo ante~~. (note afterwards: As was done, see RexxS below. DePiep) Currently this most recent edit by EEng during this discussion, ~~constitutes WP:EW~~. -DePiep (talk) 11:26, 2 April 2020 (UTC)
The edit warring has stopped, on pain of sanction. I think you'll find that the status quo ante is the same as the current version by EEng. It has been like that for at least the past year until Ardub23 changed it on 1 April 2020. My understanding of BRD is that Ardub23 boldly changed a stable version (B), EEng reverted it (R), and the next step should have been discussion (D) – presumably initiated by the person wanting to change the stable version. IMHO, it should be relatively easy to settle the matter. --RexxS (talk) 12:08, 2 April 2020 (UTC)
I stand corrected. Thanks for the clarification. -DePiep (talk) 17:05, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

Poll

A The stable version was: Avoid writing and/or unless other constructions would be lengthy and also, or alternatively, would be awkward.
B The changed version was : Avoid writing and/or unless other constructions would be lengthy or awkward.

So, who wants to keep A, and who wants to change to B? Reasoning would be helpful. --RexxS (talk) 12:08, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

I would go with B. I read through A several times, and it seems to be both lengthy and awkward, also less clear, which I consider more important.· · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 13:37, 2 April 2020 (UTC)
To clarify: I prefer B. A appears awkward, is longer and to my mind is less clear. The better clarity is my main reason for preferring B and would remain so if the other considerations did not exist. I consider clarity of meaning to be of primary importance in rules and guidance. · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 19:23, 2 April 2020 (UTC)
So on balance you think B is clearer? MapReader (talk) 20:13, 2 April 2020 (UTC)
B as it is more straightforward. Newyorkbrad (talk) 13:42, 2 April 2020 (UTC)
The problem with B is that we had an editor who insisted that "or means one or the other, but not both" [17] so after some back and forth, in desperation I submitted [18] — Preceding unsigned comment added by EEng (talk • contribs)
C Avoid writing and/or unless other constructions would be lengthy and/or awkward.

And that's when that smartaleck MapReader jumped in [19] with A. So we have three choices. But if we go with B, sooner or later we'll have the "or means one or the other, but not both" guy back. Of course, that could be solved by

D. Avoid writing and/or unless other constructions would be lengthy or awkward or both.

E Eng 13:55, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

A MoS that uses 'and/or' in the very same sentence that exhorted editors not to use such a formulation would merely be having a giraffe. At least my giraffe was more elegant. Nevertheless B is entirely sufficient: if either condition is met, it is immaterial whether the other one is, and/or is not. MapReader (talk) 14:04, 2 April 2020 (UTC)
B is the clearest and most straight forward. Though A does do a good job of illustrating what not to do. I for one appreciate the background EEng gave here. If the "or is always exclusive" guy shows up again, just point him to the definition of inclusive or and tell him to learn some actual grammar before commenting. We don't need to make a hash of the guideline to accommodate the hopelessly incompetent. oknazevad (talk) 15:33, 2 April 2020 (UTC)
Better watch it or DePiep will have you at ANI for personal attacks. Personally I don't care which version we use just so long as we're past the "no humor allowed" nonsense. E Eng 15:51, 2 April 2020 (UTC)
If you want humour, you should stick with A. Really I am impressed it survived so long; clearly WP doesn’t do irony ;) MapReader (talk) 18:41, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

@EEng: yeah, but waiting for permission by Guy Macon. Tabbed this though, and tagged 'nasty, unhelpful, possible trolling, mentioning-without-pinging'. Could be worse. -DePiep (talk) 19:15, 2 April 2020 (UTC)
I think it goes without saying that I support B, which follows WP:GUIDELINE § Content while A goes against it. The sentence right after it kills the "or is always exclusive" argument: "[or] would normally be interpreted to imply or both". I don't see any reason why this sentence would be an exception, which means C and D are just needlessly wordy. — Ardub23 (talk) 16:43, 2 April 2020 (UTC)
Neutral on which version to use, but I would note that A is purposely lengthy/awkward to illustrate the point. This is very much like the habit so many have of writing things like "you can ~~strike out~~ text that no longer applies" without in any way implying that the words "strike out" themselves do not apply. Again, I am neutral on whether such self-illustrating wording should be used on the page, but it was clearly done on purpose, and thus stating that A should be removed because it is lengthy/awkward is an example of begging the question. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:16, 2 April 2020 (UTC)
See Fumblerules. I am still waiting for any evidence that Wikipedia has a general ban against Fumblerules (which is a separate issue from the question of whether we should or should not use a fumblerule in this particular case). Again, I encourage those who assert that Wikipedia has a general ban against Fumblerules (which is essentially what you are doing whenever you cite the rule as if were a settled policy-based argument forbidding the fumblerule) to post an RfC to see what the consensus of the community is). --Guy Macon (talk) 18:59, 2 April 2020 (UTC)
But in order to be effective, the principle illustrated needs to align with the advice. "Eschew obfuscation" works because the language is so obviously overwrought. "Avoiding ending sentences with prepositions is the sort of thing up with which I will not put," demonstrates the knots that supposed rule can lead to. With Option A, the principle being illustrated is that alternatives to and/or are lengthy and convoluted. If anything, that undercuts the advice to avoid and/or.--Trystan (talk) 23:48, 2 April 2020 (UTC)
But "Eschew obfuscation" does not, in fact, align with its own advice. To the general point: hypocrisy is at least as memorable as rectitude. E Eng 23:57, 2 April 2020 (UTC)
"Eschew obfuscation" is so obviously bad that it serves as a useful reminder to write plainly. "...would be lengthy and also, or alternatively, would be awkward," is also intentionally and obviously bad, reminding the writer to avoid such constructions... by using and/or?--Trystan (talk) 01:01, 3 April 2020 (UTC)
If all else fails, yes -- that's what the guideline says. E Eng 17:17, 3 April 2020 (UTC)
So I guess it comes down to what you want the reader to walk away with. "Don't use and/or; it's unnecessary" vs. "Remember to use and/or; the alternatives are convoluted." If were are injecting humour to increase reader comprehension and retention, I would prefer it to reinforce the first takeaway, and not the second.--Trystan (talk) 18:21, 3 April 2020 (UTC)
B. (1) wrt "but 'or' does exclude one": no, only in mathematical logics and computers (where it is called XOR). In regular speech 'or' includes option 'both'. No need for hairsplitting, it does not introduce confusion. (2) Some subtle self-reference of attempt to humor: does not help when clarifying a guideline. At all. Even worse: those extra layers can and will confuse the explanation it seeks. (3) If need be for a situation not covered by this crisp B-sentence, add a second sentence (expressly subordinal somehow, and equally clear), or explain by unambigous examples. -DePiep (talk) 19:28, 2 April 2020 (UTC)
No, or can be inclusive or exclusive. For example "or can be inclusive or exclusive" is exclusive. E Eng 23:19, 2 April 2020 (UTC)
All right, except your opening ~~"No"~~ is incorrect. It can be both, as you say. In spoken & written popular language, it is both options. Only when transistor logic appeared, the XOR was introduced (crucially, in there). -DePiep (talk) 23:26, 2 April 2020 (UTC)
No, my no was not incorrect; it correctly asserted that your assertion no, only in mathematical logics and computers was incorrect. And XOR goes back to De Morgan and Boole at the very least, and probably Aristotle. E Eng 23:52, 2 April 2020 (UTC)
B. "Avoid writing and/or unless other constructions would be lengthy or awkward." No-one would surmise a construction both lengthy and awkward is therefore fine, exposing the "or is always exclusive" argument as grammarian claptrap. Captainllama (talk) 23:37, 2 April 2020 (UTC)
D, especially as it closely resembles Fowler (2nd ed., s.v. and/or): The ugly device of writing x and/or y to save the trouble of writing x or y or both of them is common in some kinds of official, legal, and business documents, but should not be allowed outside them. Dhtwiki (talk) 23:44, 2 April 2020 (UTC)
I think Wikipedia would look to its own Manual of Style first before consulting Fowler. Just below the disputed phrase, the MoS states that or is generally understood to imply or both, and it prescribes or both only when extra clarity is needed. As Captainllama pointed out, nobody reading sentence B would conclude that a lengthy and awkward construction is okay, so there's no clarity to be gained by spelling out or both; it's just extra words. — Ardub23 (talk) 02:47, 3 April 2020 (UTC)
B provides clear and direct advice. The added wording in Option A reinforces the notion that alternatives to and/or are convoluted, which is not the key message the section should convey. The wording in Option D suggests that "or both" is generally needed for non-exclusive "or"s, which is also not an example the MOS should set. Option B has the subtle, underrated humour of following its own advice. It invites the reader to wonder whether any clarification is needed, and then conclude that it isn't, as only the most ardent pedant would argue that "lengthy or awkward" does not clearly include "lengthy and awkward".--Trystan (talk) 18:21, 3 April 2020 (UTC)
B is better. Incidentally, "or" is the marked version in a positive proposition; "and" is unmarked. In a negative proposition, markedness is reversed. It causes great problems for non-native speakers, since as far as I can work out English is unique in this respect. In most languages, "or" is the default, and includes both additive and alternative meanings. It's not made easier by occasional inconsistency by native speakers. Style guides, including our own, recognise the ugly duckling that "and/or" is, and justifiably want to minimise its use (open the flood gates and we'd be writing it all over the place). Tony (talk) 10:32, 12 April 2020 (UTC)
B. Version A is hard to parse, C is a joke, and D is redundant. If we ever again have someone try to argue that the or in it is exclusive and that the rule thus can't apply to something that is both lengthy and awkward, just cite WP:WIKILAWYER and WP:COMMONSENSE, then otherwise ignore their inanity. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 12:35, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
Comment. This discussion has been open for a couple of months now. Any objections to going ahead and implementing B, based on the views expressed above?--Trystan (talk) 14:40, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
Comment:The obvious problem with B as a direction to editors is that it explicitly permits contributions that are lengthy, so long as they are not awkward, and/or those that are awkward, so long as they are not lengthy. MapReader (talk)…
- @MapReader: read SMcCandlish's comment above: "If we ever again have someone try to argue that the or in it is exclusive and that the rule thus can't apply to something that is both lengthy and awkward, just cite WP:WIKILAWYER and WP:COMMONSENSE, then otherwise ignore their inanity." So that wouldn't be a problem. El Millo (talk) 17:24, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
  I should probably have also added that throughout MoS and in many other guideline and policy pages, we regularly use inclusive or, and it is virtually never misinterpreted, due to the common-sense principle. That's the natural and default interpretation of or (and its equivalent in other natural languages). If Mommy tells you that you cannot have any cookies or watch any TV until you do you homework, every child knows that ignoring their homework and eating a cookie while watching TV will not be an out but will result in twice the punishment. The application of exclusive or is a mathematical concept that is also used in other avenues of formal logic, like computer programming languages, in which it has an exclusive definition. In natural language, when an exclusive or is intended, it is generally punctuated differently, with a comma or semicolon before the or (and sometimes the or is emphasized), and you can hear a pause and stress in the spoken version. It is better to be more specific when this is the intent, e.g. by using "neither x nor y", "either x or y", "x; alternatively, y", "x or y but not both", "x, or x then y, or y alone, but not y then x", or some other construction that gets precisely at the intended exclusive conditions. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 17:49, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
Comment: Just saw this. The consensus wording that resulted from the 2017 RfC I started on the WP:ANDOR guideline is "Avoid writing and/or unless ambiguity would result or unless other constructions would be too lengthy or awkward." The "unless other constructions would be lengthy and also, or alternatively, would be awkward" wording is the newer wording and seems to be an example of the lengthy and awkward example it's speaking of. So I also prefer B. Flyer22 Frozen (talk) 01:33, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

ENGVAR and LEADALT

I am hoping to get some information about best practices at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Lead section#LEADALT and significance. This relates partly to ENGVAR, as some "alternative names" are really alternative spellings. Please join the discussion over there. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:26, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Citations for lists

When an article includes a subsection that is a bullet list, what is the preferred way to cite the entire list. I ran across Danang Rubber Company#Products today with a citation for the list (section) in the header, which is incorrect per MOS:HEAD. Sometimes I have see a the word "Source" added at the end followed by the ref, but haven't see that documented as the "best" or "correct" method. I think the same situation occurs with tables and maybe other non-prose constructs. I don't think we want to be repeating the ref on every item. MB 00:22, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

GVSU Fieldhouse#Notable performances is an example where the ref is just "floating" at the end. This looks bad to me. MB 00:43, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

I usually try to find some type of introductory paragraph or even a sentence to have it apparent that the ref leading the list (or table) is the ref applied to that whole list (eg United States vehicle emission standards#State adaption of California Standards (ref 27 before the table in its current version). --Masem (t) 00:51, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

Another option would be to cite the first entry in the list... and include a text note in the citation saying “This citation applies to all entries in this list, except for those specifically cited to other sources” (or some similar language). Blueboar (talk) 00:59, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

What about developing some template that generates text like "The source for this entire section is <ref num>" for cases when there is no introductory paragraph/sentence. When editors use the "Source^[1]" method, it's not the word "Source" that is being referenced, so the refnum shouldn't be superscript. Since there appears to be no recommended way to handle this and there are various deficient methods being used... MB 19:18, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

It's not elegant, but I often prepend the list with something like: "In alphabetical order:" or "Based on ...:" and attach the reference to that. Even just repeating the section head works. SchreiberBike | ⌨ 19:27, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

New question

Hi - this question regarding part of the MOS might concern readers here - please see Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/Noticeboard#Master architect, master chef, master navigator, etc. $ɱ$ (talk) 23:43, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

RfC: Should "is" or "was" be used to describe periodical publications that are no longer being published?

This RfC concerns an attempt to establish consensus for a house style on which grammatical tense to use when describing publications that may still be available in archive or back-issue form, but are no longer being produced. Because it's an RfC on house style, there aren't sources produced below, and I've been unable to locate a policy or guideline that applies, so I've had no clear basis on which to assign different weight to one contribution over another.

There is no consensus to establish a guideline insofar as it relates to television media; but there is rough consensus that articles about periodicals that are no longer being produced should normally, and with commonsense exceptions, use the past tense.

I hope this helps; any comments, criticisms, complaints or queries about this close should be directed to my talk page in the first instance. Re-closed following appeal on my talk page—S Marshall T/C 21:38, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

When describing periodical works such as newspapers, magazines, journals, comic books, radio programs, televisions shows, podcasts, and web series that are no longer published, should we use "is" or "was"?

For example:

"Gourmet is a magazine that was published from 1941 to 2009" vs. "Gourmet was a magazine published from 1941 to 2009"
"I Love Lucy is a TV show that ran from 1951 to 1957" vs. "I Love Lucy was a TV show that ran from 1951 to 1957".

Note that the MoS guideline that covers this question is WP:WAS, which says By default, write articles in the present tense, including those covering works of fiction...and products or works that have been discontinued. Generally, do not use past tense except for past events and subjects that are dead or no longer meaningfully exist. However, attempts to resolve the question this RfC is asking by referring to this have not agreed on whether defunct periodicals should be considered to be "dead...and no longer meaningfully exist" -- see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#WP:WAS and defunct magazines.

If you believe some types of periodical should use "was" and the others should use "is", please make that clear in your response. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:43, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

Notifications:

WT:FAC. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:52, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
Pings to contributors to original discussion. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:09, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
WT:GA, WT:PR. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 14:15, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
WT:COMICS. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 15:02, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
WT:TV, notified by TAnthony. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 15:02, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
WT:MAGAZINES. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:10, 2 June 2020 (UTC)

Responses

Support was for magazines, newspapers, comics, journals, and any printed periodical that is no longer published. Neutral on the other periodicals listed, so far at least. I will post some more detailed notes in the discussion section, but briefly: every single reliable source I have checked so far uses "was" for printed periodicals. We need a very strong argument to go against accepted usage. If a substantial number of RS cites can be found for "is" in those cases, it comes down to preference; then I'd still argue for "was", but I would have to agree that "is" is not incorrect in edited prose. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:34, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
Update: still supporting was for printed periodicals; now also weakly supporting was for TV. See notes on usage in the discussion section for reasoning. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 19:47, 2 June 2020 (UTC)
Support was for magazines, newspapers, comics, journals - everything Mike says above goes for me too. Popcornfud (talk) 12:03, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
Support was per all of the above. Doremo (talk) 12:13, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
Support was per all of the above. In addition to the weight of reliable sources that prefer "was", it feels natural to to use "was" for the ended publication/broadcast, etc and "is" for the still ongoing. - SchroCat (talk) 12:33, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
was makes the most sense to me --Guerillero | Parlez Moi 13:07, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
Support was as and per Mike Christie. --Khajidha (talk) 13:13, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
Oppose enforcing "was", except where we are sure that no copies of the publication are still in existence. If copies exist, then "Gourmet is a magazine that was published from 1941 to 2009" seems perfectly correct to me. The same applies to radio and TV programmes. We have a similar situation with car articles, e.g. "The Jaguar E-Type... is a British sports car that was manufactured by Jaguar Cars Ltd between 1961 and 1975..." (my link and bold). -- DeFacto (talk). 14:33, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
Generally support was for defunct magazines, newspapers, and TV news shows, where the topic is more naturally understood as the whole publication operation rather than solely the end product, and is for extant works of fiction, including comic books and TV comedies and dramas. There is no bright-line rule, so flexibility is needed.--Trystan (talk) 14:35, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
It would be was for a description of the magazine: "X was a magazine published in the 1890s...," but is once it is contextualized, especially for a description of its contents: "In its editorials, X is very clear about what was considered acceptable in the 1890s." Fowler&fowler «Talk» 14:45, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
Partially support "was" for magazines, etc; oppose "was" for television, basically as per DeFacto's argument (and others) – IOW, the current guidance for TV, WP:TVNOW, is still correct, and should not be changed. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 14:52, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
Support was for magazines, newspapers, or anything that is periodic containing some current/news events. For those items being a current publishing enterprise weighs more heavily in the meaning of the term and choice of words that describes it. This is how it is different than other examples such as TV series. North8000 (talk) 14:54, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
Support is. Issues of Gourmet exist and I can hold one in my hand. It didn't stop being a magazine just because I can't buy a new issue. It's existence is current, and any reasonable reader will understand that "was published between [year] and [year]" means it's not being published anymore. In the unlikely event we have an article about a periodical that has been discontinued and no copies of it exist anywhere, was would be appropriate. It's hard to imagine such a subject would be notable, though. Argento Surfer (talk) 15:13, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
Support was for all defunct serials, whether print, audio or video, and "is" for the individual stories, issues and volumes. Only exception should be for publications with a pre-planned limited number of issues, e.g. a book published in serial form (The Old Curiosity Shop) or a miniseries (Roots), since these are whole works which stand on their own. pburka (talk) 15:22, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
Support "was" for magazines, newspapers, comics, journals, and any printed periodical that is no longer published only for sure no longer have any copies that exist; oppose "was" for television. Per MOS:TVNOW, even if a television series is canceled, the television series still exists in terms of streaming services, DVDs, and Blu-rays, and etc. — YoungForever^(talk) 15:27, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
- @YoungForever:, per WP:BLUE, if a printed periodical is canceled, doesn't the print series still exist too? Argento Surfer (talk) 16:24, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
  @Argento Surfer: See above. I clarified it more. — YoungForever^(talk) 17:32, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
Support is, usually, for TV series as described in MOS:TENSE and MOS:TVNOW. Especially for any work that has an overview, plot description, etc., which should be in the present tense on Wikipedia. Changing to "was" would not only require changing the lead sentence, but most of the lead section and possibly large swaths of the article to past tense, and/or lead to awkward mixed tenses. For example, if "Star Trek was an American science-fiction television series, then it "followed the adventures of the starship USS Enterprise (NCC-1701)", "The show was set in the Milky Way galaxy", "The ship and crew were led by Captain James T. Kirk" and so on throughout the article. Past tense for all that might be ok for Britannica's article, but that's not how we do it here. The example given of I Love Lucy is odd because after the opening sentence it describes the premise in the past tense, but later changes to present tense in the "Premise" section. It should all be present tense. I would bring up the idea of ephemerality in general - it might make sense to talk about defunct newspapers as well as cancelled TV news shows in the past tense, because the content was never intended to have a long life - yesterday's newspaper is today's fish wrapper - though that's debatable, since people often consult them for historical research. I think that a scientific journal for example would not be so ephemeral. But in any case, if people are still buying and watching old TV series on Amazon, they are certainly not things that "no longer meaningfully exist". --IamNotU (talk) 16:05, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
PS, Britannica isn't consistent - in contrast to Star Trek, they use "is" and the present tense for Lost: [20], which I find more natural. --IamNotU (talk) 20:11, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
Support is for consistency with books and artwork. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a novel by Mark Twain, the Mona Lisa is a painting by Leonardo da Vinci. People die; works of art, film and literature do not. I find the votes above that say "is for TV series, was for magazines" to be confusing and contradictory. Yes, a TV series still exists after cancellation, and a comic book series still exists too. What is the justification for making that distinction based on the medium the work is published in? — Toughpigs (talk) 16:15, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
Support was for all. The fact that a TV series still "exists" in some Platonic sense is irrelevant. It just isn't how people talk. TVNOW is wrong and should be overturned.
Side note: There are certainly locutions where it makes sense to talk about a discontinued TV series in the present tense — say, I Love Lucy is my favorite sitcom. That's fine, because it's comparing them with other sitcoms, past and present. But in a definition, I think you'll find if you do a well-controlled search, which would admittedly be challenging, that almost no one would introduce the show in the present tense.
As for artworks, I think the point is that a TV series is not a single work, but a collection of works. It doesn't have a narrative unity. While it's being produced, it's undetermined what it will do in the future. When it's over, that's no longer true, and the series is now properly in the past, even though the individual episodes make sense to talk about, as works, in the present tense.
But none of that justification really matters. The point is that the past tense is how people actually talk and write. Using the present tense here is jarring to readers, for no sufficient countervailing benefit. --Trovatore (talk) 17:10, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
- It just isn't how people talk. Which people? If someone said "tell me about Star Trek", I'd say "it's a TV show from the 60s, where people fly around in a spaceship". I really honestly would not say "it was a TV show". It still is. I still watch it sometimes. --IamNotU (talk) 19:52, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
  PS, Encyclopedia Britannica says "Lost is a fast-paced, suspenseful, and surreal series about a group of people who survive..." So it is how some people, including some encyclopedia writers, talk. --IamNotU (talk) 20:11, 28 May 2020 (UTC) [Sorry, it looks like this is a leftover from when the show was still running, see below --IamNotU (talk) 17:33, 30 May 2020 (UTC)]
  Well, Lost is a single story, so that would kind of make sense. The online EB uses a sentence fragment for the first sentence of its article on I Love Lucy, neither is nor was. --Trovatore (talk) 20:21, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
  Isn't being a 'single story' subjective, though? Lucy, Seinfeld, or the Simpsons are all a 'single story' compared to the Twilight Zone or Beyond Belief. Argento Surfer (talk) 20:26, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
  No, in my view, none of Lucy, Seinfeld, or The Simpsons count as a single story. --Trovatore (talk) 21:09, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
  Where, exactly, is being a "single story" established as criteria for anything in our guidelines? And um, your saying "in my view" proves Argento Surfer's point that classifying works this way is subjective. And who decides for a particular work? Not any one of us.— TAnthony^Talk 22:21, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
  It's not established in our guidelines. We're discussing precisely a proposed change to the guidelines, so that's irrelevant. In any case, I haven't proposed that a "single story" criterion be adopted; I would be perfectly content for us to describe Lost in the past tense. I'm just pointing out a reason that Brittanica might have made a different choice. --Trovatore (talk) 22:44, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
  
  I might be persuaded that it's reasonable to use the present tense for all narrative works, and that some TV series are narrative works. But it seems incredibly awkward to say that "Donahue is an American talk show which ended 24 years ago", or "Face of the War is an American news program about recent events in World War II." pburka (talk) 20:41, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
  Well put. I'm not ready to revise my opinion to be for fictional periodicals only, but I'll have to think about adding nuance. Argento Surfer (talk) 20:50, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
  I think it's perfectly fine to say: "Donahue is a 1967-1996 American talk show which aired in syndication" and "Movietone News is a newsreel series that that ran from 1928 to 1963". The work exists in the present tense, the events of its creation and distribution are in the past tense. I think that any attempt to split hairs by whether a work is a single story or not takes us down an unprofitable rabbit hole. — Toughpigs (talk) 23:31, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
  We can also avoid the rabbit hole by using was for all. --Trovatore (talk) 00:33, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
  
  It's ridiculous to say "The Johnny Carson Show is a half-hour prime time television variety show starring Johnny Carson [who died in 2005]", but that's essentially the opening sentence of that article right now. If we can say that the show was (is?) "short-lived" and that it was (is?) canceled, I don't see why we would speak of it in the present tense. Even though recordings of the show still exist, it's no longer an ongoing enterprise. pburka (talk) 19:56, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
Support is, per my comments in the discussion above. I really don't see how magazines are different than TV series, or how "was" makes sense on the merits. As quoted in the intro of this RfC, MOS:TENSE (WP:WAS) is explicit that we do not use past tense except for past events and subjects that are dead or no longer meaningfully exist. This has been the case for a very long time. Production of a magazine or TV series may have concluded, but installments (issues/episodes) still exist. Gimbels no longer exists in any form, just as Abraham Lincoln and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon no longer exist. I should also dispel any argument that availability makes a difference. The shows exist somewhere, but may or may not be re-released; magazines might never be reprinted, but hard copies exist in various places, including libraries and eBay. Magazines are like books in this regard, and we definitely don't use "was" for out-of-publication books (nor should we). As with reliable sources, these media should be reasonably available, but they need not be easily available. WikiProject Television's WP:TVNOW confirms the use of "is', has done so for a long time, and has been stringently enforced. That said, I was shocked to discover that somehow every article about defunct magazines I looked at uses "was". It seems like there must be a specific discussion or guideline somewhere for so many articles to violate what I would argue is the basic intent of MOS:TENSE? I don't have a horse in the magazine race so, as much as I think the practice is wrong, I won't fight an effort to keep magazines status quo (using "was"). I'm vehement though that the guidelines for television series, and WP:WAS itself, should not be changed.— TAnthony^Talk 17:20, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
- TVNOW has been wrong for a very long time. --Trovatore (talk) 17:26, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
  So you're basically saying that Game of Thrones does not exist? Your grandiose arguments about "no narrative unity" and "a collection of works" is, no offense intended, subjective nonsense. And if present tense was so "jarring" to readers we would have had backlash long ago. Finally "this isn't how people talk" isn't necessarily a valid argument; we commonly use contractions like "can't" in speech, but we explicitly do not use those in prose at Wikipedia.— TAnthony^Talk 19:05, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
  I'm not saying Game of Thrones does not exist. I'm saying that its Platonic existence is irrelevant. The "narrative unity" and "collection of works" stuff is, as I say, also mostly irrelevant; it just goes to explain why normal usage can reasonably make a distinction between I Love Lucy and Vertigo. As to whether you've had backlash, I haven't really been following the question, but I bet you have. The current Wikipedia tense is a real clanger and I think anyone who doesn't see that has just internalized the Wikipedia usage. --Trovatore (talk) 19:30, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
Support was for any periodicals. Magazines, newspapers, journals, and comics (I'm thinking Peanuts here, maybe it's different with serials) which have stopped publishing are no longer in existence. Two caveats: whether a television show is a periodical is up for debate and should probably be a spinoff discussion, and specific issues of a periodical, if notable, can still use is. SportingFlyer T·C 19:17, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
- "comics which have stopped publishing are no longer in existence." What if, like Peanuts, reprints are still being run daily and hardcover collections are still being printed? What if they're technically out of print, but a local bookstore still has new copies on the shelf? Argento Surfer (talk) 19:42, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
  - I guess Peanuts isn't a great example since it's functionally a brand now, but the "was" is appropriate because the publishing of temporal content has ceased. I'm not changing my opinion as I feel strongly about this and don't really want to comment further on this, but if you must respond, please ping me in the discussion thread. SportingFlyer T·C 23:40, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
Either as long as usage is consistent within an article. I have a weak preference for was because it makes obvious to the reader that the periodical is discontinued, but those in favor of is make good points that in certain situations would be preferable. TV shows still in syndication seems a very likely example. — Wug·a·po·des 20:39, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
Support is - Magazines, newspapers, books, etc. don't die, even when there is a discontinuation of publication. And the very next clause of the sentence will make it clear that it is no longer being published: "Life is a magazine that was published from NNNN to NNNN." Cyphoidbomb (talk) 20:47, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
Comment on the "present tense if the show is in syndication" argument that's popped up in a few places: tracking the distribution of television shows is very complicated. If a show is released on DVD, does that mean it still "is"? Does it become "was" when the last copy is sold? Is there a difference between a show stripped daily in syndication (e.g. Friends, for the last thirty years) and a show that was in syndication but is now exclusively streaming on HBO Max? (e.g. Friends now). If a US show is no longer syndicated or streaming in the US, but it's still in syndication in Latin America, does that count? If it does, then who volunteers to keep track of noticing when the last network drops the show? Etc, etc. — Toughpigs (talk) 23:41, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
Support was as being more natural. – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 00:26, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
Support "is" for all. I agree with every comment by TAnthony in this discussion, and MOS:TVNOW is reasonable, logical practice that should extend to all serial works. Individual works, such as novels, and individual episodes or magazine issues should of course also use "is". —⁠烏⁠Γ ^(kaw) │ 01:44, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
Prefer was for magazines and periodicals, for naturalness, because that makes clear that they've been discontinued, and because that's the main usage in RS. However, internal consistency in article is more important, and there may be certain articles where "is" works better. b uidhe 02:00, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
- For a good example why not to use present tense, consider "Arijský boj is a pro-Nazi Czech-language newspaper published between 1940 and 1945..." Thankfully Arijský boj and the ideology it represents are no longer meaningfully in existence. b uidhe 02:06, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
  - I don't see a problem with that sentence. —⁠烏⁠Γ ^(kaw) │ 04:47, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
Support is (...which was published/broadcast) for artworks and was for non-fiction such as news, journalism and current events coverage, regardless of medium or format. I think I'd group documentaries with artworks. Fiction comics, like other forms of fiction, should get is. Artworks live on as part of a culture, and have a presence so long as the culture exists whether or not a copy of the artwork exists. Note that lost films generally get is. Some flexibility should be understood and consistency within an article should be maintained. – Reidgreg (talk) 17:01, 30 May 2020 (UTC)
I would support this as a secondary choice if "is" is not adopted universally. —⁠烏⁠Γ ^(kaw) │ 21:24, 30 May 2020 (UTC)
Support is, as in this modification of an article's first sentence: The Gentleman's Magazine is a monthly magazine that was founded in London, England, by Edward Cave in January 1731 and which ceased publication in 1922. That is no less logical than talking about anything else produced in the past but still extant in the present, although TGM might be known to fewer people than some popular TV show produced long ago but still seen frequently in reruns. Dhtwiki (talk) 23:49, 31 May 2020 (UTC)
- "Is" is also wrong for TV shows no longer in production. Whether it's "logical" or not is not the point. It's simply not good English usage. --Trovatore (talk) 06:32, 1 June 2020 (UTC)
  - I can accept either "was" or "is" for periodicals and TV shows, but why does~~n't~~ "was" for even older but timeless works, such as paintings, seem unacceptable? Is it that the ongoing nature of TV series and periodicals is felt more strongly? It would be more logical if we could specify such impressions better, and good English rests on the ability to make such specifications. Dhtwiki (talk) 05:35, 2 June 2020 (UTC)
    - So if I'm speculating, I would say that I think you've hit the nail on the head about the ongoing nature being felt more strongly. But that's a side comment. We aren't going to be able to parse apart all the underlying logic, if any, of English verb tense here, and it's not our job. It is our job to pick a style that isn't jarring, and I Love Lucy is... is jarring. --Trovatore (talk) 19:34, 2 June 2020 (UTC)
      I've hesitated to get involved in this, but I do think "ongoing nature" is the crux. People look forward to the next issue/installment of magazines, TV shows, or newspapers, and so long as they can continue to look forward like that, the magazine (or whatever) is; when that can no longer happen -- when the machinery that produced those installments becomes defunct -- it becomes was. OTOH paintings, novels, and films spring out fully formed, and just are forever (though in the case of a lost film I suppose was might make sense). A difficult edge case might be a trilogy or miniseries, where there's the expectation of more, for a while, but you know from the start that there's a definite end. I think Ken Burns' The Civil War (documentary) is but I'm not entirely sure; same for The Lord of the Rings (whether the books or the movies). As for Star Wars (the franchise) I don't know if anybody ever knew, or now does know, where that's going so I dare not even speculate. E Eng 20:09, 2 June 2020 (UTC)
      Yes, this is nicely put. --Trovatore (talk) 22:05, 2 June 2020 (UTC)
      Trovatore has asserted many times in this discussion that using is to describe old TV shows "is not good English usage," "is jarring", etc, and the more times that they use that kind of phrasing, the more it feels like a personal opinion that Trovatore is insisting is a fundamental truth about human nature. I do not think that it is appropriate to state unequivocally that one of these options is obviously "good English usage" and therefore fundamental to the nature of human language, when the fact is that people in this discussion seem more-or-less evenly split on this. I disagree with Trovatore's assessment, and I believe that I am not personally a neanderthal mouth-breather who doesn't know what "good English" sounds like. This is clearly a matter of personal opinion and taste; if it was a basic component of human speech, then we wouldn't be having this discussion. I think that what sounds correct depends on the context. For example, if someone who had never heard of I Love Lucy were to ask you, "What is I Love Lucy?" then you would reply, "I Love Lucy is a television show," or "I Love Lucy is a sitcom." In that case, I think that it would sound jarring to say, "I Love Lucy was a television show." It's possible that some of the disagreement here is based on a different framing of the question that readers are asking when they come to a page. — Toughpigs (talk) 00:08, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
    I agree that there are different contexts where a different tense is appropriate. If I ask you what your favorite sitcom is, and it happens to be I Love Lucy, then sure, it makes perfect sense to say I Love Lucy is my favorite sitcom. But in a definition, no no no, this strikes me as completely unacceptable.
    As for it being a personal opinion, yes, there is obviously a subjective component to what is jarring and what is not, but that doesn't mean it's OK to be jarring. I think the editors who don't find it jarring have likely internalized the WP usage.
    In any case, there are somewhat-less-subjective approaches available for settling the question. We can look at the stylistic choices made by other high-register sources. I'm reasonably confident how this will come out. WP is going to be an outlier. --Trovatore (talk) 01:17, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
    That argument pathologizes people who disagree with you. The people that feel the same way that you do understand what "jarring" sounds like; the people who disagree have some kind of psychological block. I do not think that is a productive or persuasive argument, and the more that you repeat it, it gets progressively weaker. Toughpigs (talk) 01:51, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
    It is not a "pathology", per se. I hypothesize that they have internalized a usage created here; that's all. But yes, it does make their intuitions at variance with ordinary good English usage, and this will be possible to show by examining the corpus, as Mike Christie has made a good start at doing below. --Trovatore (talk) 02:01, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
We use present tense for extinct species and languages, two things that are much closer to "dead for good" than a magazine, and we use present tense for non-magazine works, because that's the correct way to write about them. I'm against changing the Wikipedia Manual of Style to conflict with the basic rules of composition taught in writing courses—that is, I'm against the adoption of a new mandate for "was". The comments from advocates for "was" are in general contradictory and hinge on either fundamental biases or a misunderstanding of the actual article subjects; the subject of an article for any given magazine is the creative work—not the business entity that led to the work's creation, nor is that entity's lifetime the deciding factor in considering the appropriateness of using present tense when referring to the the works themselves. Support for magazines as a special case among the commenters here is also superficial at best and in general non-substantial; the overwhelming consensus is that magazines are not different from TV series. (This is true even among many campaigning for "was"—they just wrongly advocate for using past tense for TV series, too.) Indeed, even among those asserting that magazines are a special case, there is no coherent argument put forth for why that is—for all the words written here, there's a dearth of any real justification for magazines differing in this regard from other creative works, such as films, film series, documentary series, TV series (whether fictional or non-), books, book series, audio records, etc. Furthermore, the primary proponent of the change starts by reasoning that use of "was" here should be dictated by the patterns purported to be observed in some sources, but the actual belief in that line of reasoning was revealed to be hollow—upon explaining that even if attempts to substantiate those claims showed that the claims were untrue, then it wouldn't affect the belief and that we should be using "was" anyway. The policy at WP:CONSENSUS establishes that it is the "quality of an argument" that that is to be taken into consideration, not superficial agreement or disagreement. In fact, this was repudiated prior to raising the RFC, so it's not clear why it's back in focus now. In summary: we must use present tense to describe magazines, and going out of publication doesn't change that. -- C. A. Russell (talk) 21:17, 1 June 2020 (UTC)
I assume I'm the "primary proponent" referred to here, and C. A. Russell says my belief in my own argument was revealed to be hollow, so here's the line of argument so that others can judge. We can argue from either existing usage or reasoning about the language or both. I have been unable to find any usage of "is" in edited prose for magazines (or TV shows, come to that, and will post some examples in the discussion section at some point). If all examples of usage I'd found were "is" I'd find it hard to argue that "was" is correct. As it stands the most that can happen is that some examples of "is" will be found in edited prose, which would imply at least it's acceptable to some editors out there. If that happens (and I'd like to see more than one or two examples) then the argument from usage is weakened and we'd all (not just me) have to fall back on reasoning. My reasoning would parallel some of the arguments made by others. Finally, since you're asking for coherent argument, I think it's not coherent to appeal to reason against established English usage, which has no obligation to stick to logic. If you're going to argue for a usage demonstrably different from every edited source consulted, the onus should be on you to show that English usage is to be ignored. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 21:30, 1 June 2020 (UTC)
What was the point of creating a separate "Discussion" section if everyone is going to dump their free-form discussions here instead of there? -- C. A. Russell (talk) 21:52, 1 June 2020 (UTC)
Was for newspapers, magazines, journals, and comic books per above. Is for televisions shows per MOS:TVNOW. Neutral on podcasts, and web series radio programs. Regards Spy-cicle💥 ^Talk? 09:58, 2 June 2020 (UTC)
Support was for defunct periodicals (including newspapers) and televisions shows that are no longer on air. I fail to see why we should treat them differently from one another. There is also no reason to split hairs and use "is" if a magazine is defunct but still available somewhere as has been suggested above and quite frankly doing so would be unworkable. "Is" can continue to be used for works for art (provided they haven't been destroyed), movies and novels, among others. Calidum 17:56, 2 June 2020 (UTC)
Was. The point is to aid the reader in quickly understanding the entity. A very important of an entity is whether it's current or not. "The Greens are a faction in Constantinople..." doesn't answer well the question "What are the Greens?". One has to read deeper into the sentence to find out the important fact that they're defunct (they have been for 1500 years, and that matters when trying to suss the entity). That's mental work. Not a huge amount, but it adds up in terms of reader-hours.

So then its matter of opinion, here, whether (let's say) I Love Lucy is current or not. I'd say it better serves the reader to use "was" for entities that have ceased to publish, or be manufactured, or be alive. It's true that Modern Racoon (ceased publication in 1987) exists in sense that physical copies may be held and even brandished. But I think that's pedantic. It's more important to the majority of readers (I would think) to immediately know if the entity has died, or has ceased publication or production or manufacturing. I think that Margaret Wise Brown would say "The important thing about Modern Racoon is that it is defunct. It was written for raccoons, and it had ads for trash can openers, and it cost four acorns, and the pages crinkled when your crumpled them, and it was sold by chipmunks. But the important thing about Modern Racoon is that it is defunct." We can't know for sure, but that's my best guess. Herostratus (talk) 00:14, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

Use is, for consistency with books, films, and everything else. People here seem to be confusing the publication (the work – that is, the magazines or newspapers you can hold in your hand or read in more mediated fashion via Archive.org or whatever) with the [usually defunct] legal entity that was the publisher. Those are separate topics, even if we cover them in the same article, and the central topic of the article is almost always the work (which remains extant, unless someone has tracked down every copy of every issue and destroyed it), not the entity. Where the entity is actually more notable, the article should be re-scoped and moved to be titled for the entity (or when both are independently notable, split into two articles). So: "The Promise' Land Times is a zine that was published by Kerry Wendell Thornley from [date1–date2]." I know it's an "is" because I still own several issue of that; they have not ceased to exist, even though he quit producing new ones and eventually died. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 13:01, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
- Stanton, any evidence that anyone is confusing the publication with the legal entity? That certainly is not the basis of my argument. I would argue instead that you are conflating the publication with issues of the publication. You can hold the physical issues in your hand, but not the abstract object that is the publication, which was an ongoing repetitive event when it was in print, and now is not. That abstract object is the subject of the article, and it is only weakly related to the legal entity. --Trovatore (talk) 17:22, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
  An example would be Stirring Science Stories, which published three issues under one publisher; the publisher went out of business but the magazine's run did not end. It was continued by another publisher for one issue, after which the magazine ceased to be published but that second publisher continued to be in business. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 18:48, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
  - - But I mean...I can hold Richard Nixon in my arms, dress him up and take him to to parties (provided I can dig him up and get away with it). He has a physical body that exists in the world (albeit somewhat thinner than in former days). Should we thus write "Richard Nixon is an American politician..."? Isn't, I don't know, the absence of life from his body kind of an important point that the reader should not have drill down into the third paragraph to find out? Or even down to the end of the first sentence or so?

Similarly, I can hold copies of the Saturday Evening Post and take them to parties, but so? What does that have to do with quickly and efficiently describing the entity Saturday Evening Post to the reader?

(Also, if you want to go down the pedantic path, individual copies of The Promise' Land Times are not, in and of themselves, The Promise' Land Times. Even if you collected all of them together, that still would not be The Promise' Land Times. Similarly, individual episodes of I Love Lucy that might appear on your television screen (or even all of them collected on videotape) are not I love Lucy, which was (that's right, was) a production effort consisting of various writers, directors, and actors, physical sets, financial arrangements, a history involving broadcast times and nielsen ratings and public commentary, and much else (in addition to also being a set of finished performances preserved on videotape). We do not write "The Saturday Evening Post is a collection of 12,243 magazines, with a total weight of 947 kilos and a total count of 403,976, 241 characters." There are more important things than physical existence of a finished product that the reader wants to know.) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Herostratus (talk • contribs) 16:30, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

I agree that physically existing copies of media do not hold much relevance to whether the media exists. But I think that the degree to which an article about a TV show is about the preserved performances available on videotape is much greater than the degree to which an article about a scholarly periodical is about its publications (versus the surrounding process that is / was responsible for publishing them). {

\mathbb {JPG}

} 04:33, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

Fine, then there are three levels of abstraction to keep track of, not just two. I still don't see a solid rationale for switching verb tenses for a select handful of particular media. It's just inconsistent for the sake of being inconsistent, in effect if not in intent. Every argument presented here for was can also be made to apply that tense to almost every other kind of work we are using is for, when the work is question is no longer in production. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 21:38, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

As I say, I don't see Lucy as a "work". Individual episodes are works; Lucy as a whole was more like a recurring event, and events in the past take the past tense.

That would be the "rationale", but the rationale is really kind of beside the point. As Mike Christie has shown, essentially no one else does what Wikipedia does in using present tense for series of which new episodes are no longer being shown. That's because it's just not good English usage to do so. It doesn't have to be logical; it's just English. --Trovatore (talk) 21:51, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

Was. Because they aren’t, but they were. MapReader (talk) 13:14, 4 June 2020 (UTC)
Was for periodicals. Make it clear it was discontinued. If I see "is", I automatically assume its still being published. No opinion on TV. Renata (talk) 15:31, 4 June 2020 (UTC)
Neither, work to avoid "to be" verbs in favor of more dynamic writing style - Use of the various forms of "to be" often leads to a dry writing style because "is" and "was" offer little informative value and may result in improper level of precision, indicated by this debate. Fundamentally, this RfC presents the false choice between considering works of art either "dead" or "living", when other options exist (see E-Prime). Taking the two examples given in the proposal, one might reword them as: Gourmet, the first U.S. magazine devoted to food and wine, operated from 1941 to 2009 and The television show I Love Lucy, starring Lucille Ball as the title character "Lucy", ran from 1951 to 1957 - or any number of similar ways. I believe this writing style strikes the balance far better than the limited two options presented. -- Netoholic @ 17:11, 4 June 2020 (UTC)
Your "more dynamic writing style" is someone else's "non-encyclopedic language". --Khajidha (talk) 18:06, 4 June 2020 (UTC)
I'm not sure about that. I think the examples that have been posted from specialized encyclopedias have shown that a flat declarative "X is/was a television show" is not the common opening for entries in those encyclopedias. — Toughpigs (talk) 19:15, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

Many business and formal writing guides teach avoidance of to be as a way to make communication more direct. Deciding between operated/published or aired/ran or a universe of other verb options, and variety of sentence word orders, feels to me much more interesting than debating between only past/preset of the single verb to be and limiting ourselves to a strict "X is/was Y" style. I confidently believe that, given this style as an option, individual topic areas will develop standard openings that convey even more "encyclopedic" style than we use today, so don't judge based only on my crude examples. -- Netoholic @ 20:51, 4 June 2020 (UTC)
While I'm less than convinced by the E-Primers in general, I could possibly be persuaded that it's a way out of this impasse. This has actually been used as a solution to a very similar problem at Wikipedia in the past.

Look up the history of the Whitechapel murders article. There was an editor who was insisting on beginning the article with The Whitechapel murders are.... I hope everyone agrees that at least that was bizarre. This editor would use edit summaries like If they were, then what are they?, which raises interesting metaphysical questions about the continued existence of past events but is not particularly relevant to English usage.

Anyway, I think we eventually settled on The Whitechapel murders occurred..., which poses no such conundra. Apparently now it reads The Whitechapel murders were committed..., which is no longer E-Prime (because it's passive voice) but still gets us out of this jam.

So instead of I Love Lucy is an American multinational television sitcom that originally ran on CBS from October 15, 1951 to..., how about I Love Lucy, an American multinational television sitcom, originally ran on CBS from October 15, 1951 to...? Seems to express the same information, and I think all sides here would agree that its verbs are in the appropriate tense. --Trovatore (talk) 17:38, 6 June 2020 (UTC)
I am (←see) definitely not an E-Prime purist and I don't think that standard would be reasonable to expect across the project. I raised it as an extreme example of a solution to that philosophical problem being raised here about identity. I like your Whitechapel murders example very much - great solution. -- Netoholic @ 19:41, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

I think this would be a good solution if there were any certainty that it could be universally applied, but it seems like it would very quickly become awkward (or impossible) when trying to construct a sentence with any complexity. It's a cute way to resolve an editing dispute, but making it a part of MoS would result in contorted language across the whole encyclopedia. { $\mathbb {JPG}$ } 08:38, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

I'm not sure it matters how other specialized encyclopedias format their opening lines, because "Cheese is a dairy product" is the standard Wikipedia style. A policy change of that is a much bigger discussion than this one about defunct magazines. You're reaching.— TAnthony^Talk 19:14, 6 June 2020 (UTC)
I definitely don't think we should try to impose such a solution on cheese. But it could be a way out for these sorts of articles, where we disagree on the ontological status (some see them about being about an artwork that persists, others as something more like a recurring event that has ceased to recur, even as the individual works (episodes) remain available). --Trovatore (talk) 20:51, 6 June 2020 (UTC)
Yeah, I could go along with that. I like I Love Lucy, an American multinational television sitcom, originally ran on CBS from October 15, 1951 to... a lot more than the originally proposed I Love Lucy, an American multinational television sitcom, originally ran on CBS from October 15, 1951 to... Gourmet, the first U.S. magazine devoted to food and wine, operated from 1941 to 2009., which sounds more like magazine style. But I am having a difficult time formulating exactly why one reads more encyclopedic than the other, which points to this being difficult to address in a style guide. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 21:38, 9 June 2020 (UTC); revised: 22:57, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
@SMcCandlish: my eyes can't pick out the difference between your two versions above; can you help me out? --Trovatore (talk) 21:53, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
Derp. Copy-paste error; I meant to quote this one: Gourmet, the first U.S. magazine devoted to food and wine, operated from 1941 to 2009. I think for one thing it's the dwelling on "a first"; it sounds like gee-whiz marketing language. Yet it's a salient fact that should probably be in the lead. It's just the exact phrasing style that seems off to me. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 22:57, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
Removing the word "first", of course, accurately still describes it, but to make the point about being "first" (an important distinction), you'd have to give the context of "U.S. magazine devoted to food and wine" later on anyway (otherwise it'd be "first what"). -- Netoholic @ 16:30, 12 June 2020 (UTC)
Support was for newspapers, journals, and other articles where the subject of the article pertains to an organization or institution surrounding the publication. If a newspaper or an academic journal currently exists, it's possible for old articles to be edited, updated, or retracted, as they have an ongoing responsibility for their content. The tense, in this case, conveys a substantial difference in how the reader ought to understand, and interact with, the publication. An article about a newspaper or an academic journal is as much about the publication itself as it is about the institution which *is* (or *was*) responsible for its content — e.g. while the New York Times article is about a physical publication, it also covers the editorial stances of the organization, its corporate history, staff, et cetera. A defunct newspaper *was* attached to an organization whose offices no longer exist, which is relevant to understanding it (i.e. you cannot call them to report a story or confirm figures that were published in an article). Meanwhile, a TV broadcast does not possess an ongoing relationship with the organization that created it. An anime that aired in 1986 *is* a piece of media that, when you watch it, you interact with in basically the same way as someone watching its original broadcast in 1986. I think that there is often a blurry boundary between a "magazine" and a "journal", so I don't really have a strong opinion on that, and could go either way. { $\mathbb {JPG}$ } 09:01, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
- Just a note here: As far as I know, no one has proposed using "was" for individual TV episodes. The proposal is to use was for series; the episodes of the series would retain is. Your "anime that aired in 1986" sounds more like an individual work or episode than a series; please let me know if I've misunderstood. --Trovatore (talk) 18:46, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
- Magazine names tend to be more bound up with those of their "production companies" than are those of television series, and that makes it confusing. Dhtwiki (talk) 23:10, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
  I think the "company" angle is a red herring. Periodicals and TV series are both experienced as ongoing, recurring events, and when they cease to recur, the past tense is appropriate. --Trovatore (talk) 23:27, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
  Magazines are frequently published by multiple different companies over the course of their existence. It's less common with TV series, but it does happen; The Expanse is an example, though the production company did not change -- I would imagine that's much rarer. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 23:40, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
  Sure. I just don't think that really has much to do with the verb tense. No one is really thinking about the company. --Trovatore (talk) 23:52, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
  I think some are -- SMcCandlish's response, for example, talks about the legal entity behind the periodicals. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 00:04, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
  Yes, but he did so in the context of supposing that other people were thinking about the legal entity. He wasn't proposing it as a distinguishing criterion himself. (To be fair, it's a possible reading of Herostratus's !vote immediately preceding. I'm not sure it's the intended reading, but it's a possible one.) --Trovatore (talk) 00:11, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
  See also the "I think it might clarify my point ..." post by JPG immediately below, as well, making an argument that specifically commingles the publication and the publishing entity. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 23:14, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
  
  I think it might clarify my point to imagine scenarios in which a defunct thing were to become "refunct". If a TV show receives a sequel or a reboot many years later, the new episodes are part of the same show — the original Space Battleship Yamato aired in 1975, and Yamato 2199 aired in 2012, which is still meaningfully Space Battleship Yamato (i.e. it is still a show featuring the spaceship Yamato, whose captain is Okita Juzo, et cetera). Contrariwise, if the New York Times became defunct (shut down its offices, liquidated its assets, fired its employees, dissolved the corporate entity, et cetera) and a new company started publishing a newspaper called "the New York Times", I claim it would not meaningfully be the same thing (i.e. a publication possessing ownership of, and editorial responsibility for, New York Times articles 1851—2020). A news publication or an academic journal isn't just a collection of articles — it's an institution that can exist without having any publications (whereas a TV show does not have any existence outside of its episodes). So it matters a lot whether that institution still exists. Whereas, is there any relevant fact to a TV show (beyond "is there an episode next week") that changes based on whether the production company is still around? { $\mathbb {JPG}$ } 04:23, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
  No, reboots are a different show. Battlestar Galactica (1978 TV series) and Battlestar Galactica (2004 TV series) were different shows, and they quite properly have different articles. There can be an overarching article on the franchise, certainly, but that's a different subject from the shows. As to whether the production company is still around, no, as you say, that's unimportant, but the argument in favor of was has nothing to do with the production company. --Trovatore (talk) 05:32, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
  They're still Battlestar Galactica, though. And enough articles about media franchises have separate media rolled into them that this is a significant issue. { $\mathbb {JPG}$ } 06:00, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
  If the article is about the franchise, I have no objection to is. That's a separate question from articles on series. It's really not generally hard to tell which one a given article is about. --Trovatore (talk) 06:03, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

Point of order: I just counted how many times people have posted in these discussions since June 1st. Here's the tally:

Trovatore: 21
Jacob Gotts (JPG): 9
Mike Christie: 9
SMCandlish: 6
Toughpigs: 5
C.A. Russell, Netoholic: 3
Dhtwiki, Herostratus, Masem, TAnthony: 2
Calidum, EEng, Khajidha, King of Hearts, MapReader, Primegrey, Renata, Spy-cicle: 1

I counted these up, because I've been feeling like Trovatore has (intentionally or not) been wearing everyone else down in order to "win" this discussion. In the last two days, Trovatore has responded to basically everything that anyone says, with flat assertions like "it's just not good English usage to do so," which seem to be subjective arguments masquerading as eternal truths. I'm pointing this out because I think that if this continues, Trovatore will make it seem like there's consensus for their point of view, when actually they've just repeated themselves so many times that other people give up and go away. — Toughpigs (talk) 03:44, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

I am, obviously, engaged in the discussion. I don't think I'm bludgeoning anyone. I'm just responding where I see things that should be responded to. --Trovatore (talk) 16:21, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

Support use of was under ordinary circumstances. Robert McClenon (talk) 08:29, 16 June 2020 (UTC)
Support was where the publication has officially ceased publishing/been formally discontinued, or where it's been so long since it was published last that it clearly has. Oppose using "was" in reference to broadcast media, per WP:TVNOW. Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 14:45, 16 June 2020 (UTC)
- Could you clarify what you mean by "per" TVNOW? TVNOW is under discussion in this RFC; it can't be used in support of itself. --Trovatore (talk) 17:01, 16 June 2020 (UTC)
I support is. I see a lot of sophistry above that really contorts how we should talk about these subjects in formal English. Particularly, we should distinguish the topic of a magazine, an issue, and its publishing entity. The collection in fact exists longer than any one issue does as it does not 'disappear meaningfully' until after the last specific printed issue has gone (which may be A Long Time). This is about precision in text, and "was" doesn't give us that at the end of the day. --Izno (talk) 17:02, 23 June 2020 (UTC)
I support was for already-defunct serial media (periodicals, television, radio), and is for serial media currently still in its original run as well as one-and-done standalone works (films, books, art). --Coolcaesar (talk) 18:39, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

Discussion

Posting a note here to point to the usage comments in the earlier discussion, here. I found multiple examples in reliable sources of "was" and no examples of "is" to describe defunct magazines. Frank Luther Mott is the author of the five-volume History of American Magazines (1930), probably the most authoritative survey of US magazines and surely someone whose text is likely to follow standard usage. If you want something more recent, in British English, there's Mike Ashley's The Time Machines (2000). I also cited Malcolm Edwards, a British editor and critic, and Eric Leif Davin, an American academic. I was unable to find a single case in which a defunct magazine was referred to using "is" (and these are not the only sources I looked at). Note in all cases these were magazines, not newspapers or comics, so I suppose it's possible that there is different standard usage there. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:44, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

I think we are dealing with a spectrum of things. I would find it confusing to refer to a defunct newspaper with "is", and don't want to end up referring to novels with "was". But in between, you have magazines, anthology magazines, comic books, anthology series, and serialized novels. Similarly, in visual media, you have a "was-to-is" spectrum from news broadcasts, talk shows, TV comedies and dramas, TV miniseries, TV movies, and film movies. Any hard line is going to be somewhat arbitrary.--Trystan (talk) 14:43, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

Toughpigs: you ask for a justification for saying that the medium a work is published in makes a difference to whether it should use "was" or "is". I (and several others commenting) aren't making that case; I'm arguing that the existing usage in reliable sources is justification for "was" for magazines, with no reference to other media. I would be interested in seeing RS usage for TV shows, in fact; if it shows "is" regularly then it would imply English usage really is divided by medium. But even in that case we don't need a justification by medium; the usage would be our guide, though we could speculate as to the reasons for the apparently inconsistent usage. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 16:30, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

A very quick look in Google Books landed me just one example usage so far: Talking Heads was a series of six critically acclaimed dramatic monologues penned for television by.... That's from Horace Newcomb's Encyclopedia of Television, 2014 edition. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 16:35, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

Some exceptions and some supporting examples of my statement above (sorry I don't have time to examine the previous discussion, nor to give the URLs, etc.:
- Exception for was (in Encyclopedia or other timelines:
  - The Cornhill Magazine is founded in London, with William Makepeace Thackeray as its first editor. The first British Open golf championship (in an encyclopedia timeline, recent one)
- Support for is after contextualizing, or in talking about the particulars.
  - Dickens's magazine is effectively a mouthpiece for the Owenite line on questions of the production of species. (about Household Words, long defunct, in a journal 2001)
  - The Cornhill Magazine is also notable for the five-year period from 1903 to 1908 during which time the schoolteacher W. A. Shenstone was responsible for the ... (2010)
  - When the Cornhill Magazine is founded a year later, Thackeray gives new life to the bowdlerisation in the name of women which took root in the (2000 journal article, jstor) in a narrative
  - An 1888 ad in Scribner's magazine is for exercise equipment. An 1894 article in New England magazine mentions that this company had a complete display of (recent)
  - This illustration for a 1907 Henry van Dyke story in Scribner's Magazine is called “She Took the Oars and Rowed Me Slowly Around the Shore.” Fowler&fowler «Talk» 16:44, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
I think that there may be a way to split the difference. Look at the opening of Scandal (TV series): "Scandal is an American political thriller television series starring Kerry Washington. Created by Shonda Rhimes, it aired on ABC from April 5, 2012, until April 19, 2018, for 124 episodes over seven seasons." The show is a television series, it was created by Shonda Rhimes, and it aired (past tense) from 2012 to 2018. The work itself exists, in the present tense. But the painting was created, the book was published, and the series was cancelled. — Toughpigs (talk) 16:57, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
My !vote above only addresses magazines; for TV shows I think this usage is probably right, though I'd like to see more usage examples. But for magazines it's definitely not the case that "is" is used. Fowler&fowler's list of quotes above gives some possible uses of "is", but you can make the case that these are exceptions -- none of them are simple declarative sentences: "Scribner's is a magazine". I have not seen a single RS usage of the straightforward declarative that uses "is", and I've found multiple examples that use "was". Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 17:06, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
I wasn't aware we based our MOS on reliable sources. Argento Surfer (talk) 17:14, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
I'm not trying to lay down a general principle, but wouldn't it be strange if we established a usage that no reliable source follows? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 17:34, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
I suppose, but I rarely come across a source that says something as dry as "Foo is/was a [periodical form]". They usually go for something more flowery, like "When the magazine Foo was being published...". That avoids the question we're addressing entirely by appropriately using a different past tense verb. The way I see it, the magazine doesn't stop being a magazine just because there hasn't been a new issue in a while. It still exists, and I can hold it. I appreciate User:YoungForever's clarification above, but what's the difference between a TV show on DVD and a newspaper on microfiche? Argento Surfer (talk) 17:44, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
As Argento Surfer says, I think it depends on whether the reliable sources are encyclopedias that have an opening sentence with the same construction. A newspaper article doesn't start with the sentence "Superman is a fictional superhero created in 1938"; that would sound utterly wrong. But that is the style of encyclopedias. — Toughpigs (talk) 17:47, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

I also did not address TV shows in my comment before. I look at it as the show was, but the individual episodes are. "I Love Lucy" was not a work. It was a collection of works. --Khajidha (talk) 19:45, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
And it isn't anymore? I think it still is. What about The Beatles Box Set or The Chronicles of Narnia? --IamNotU (talk) 20:34, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
As the Beatles Box Set is a physical product (not a creative work on its own), and did make it to sale, it retains is, not subject to what's being discussed here. The Chronicles of Narnia as a whole is a series of books and thus as a whole is content that retains is. --Masem (t) 02:12, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
This definition seems pretty arbitrary to me. You're subjectively choosing what's a "series" (Narnia was a single novel with sequels, not a seven book cycle like The Dark Tower) and what's just "a container". Argento Surfer (talk) 12:43, 29 May 2020 (UTC)

The usage quotes I mentioned are worth listing here, since they're examples of the same usage that we want as the first sentence of magazine articles: simple declaratives. Citation info is in the earlier discussion, above.

"Several magazines were published for traveling salesmen, most important of which was the Commercial Travelers' Home Magazine (1893–1902)..."
"The Universalist Magazine of 1819 was a four-page paper."
"The Royal American Magazine, or Universal Repository of Instruction and Amusement was an illustrated miscellany of forty octavo pages..."
"Stirring was in fact two magazines in one."
"Avon Science Fiction and Fantasy Reader was a good magazine with some sharp stories..."
"Mexico's leading pulp magazine of the period was Los Cuentos Fantasticos."
"In March, 1937, the Gaines and Mayer team began publishing yet a third comic book for Dell, also with a simple title: The Comics. It was a mixed bag of newspaper reprints and original comics..."
"The new magazine was more garish and more juvenile than its predecessor."

Yes, this simple declarative usage is rare, but it does get used, and it's exactly what we do as the first sentence of our magazine articles, so I feel it counts as examples of ordinary English usage. Do you think this usage doesn't bind us, or that there are sources out there that I haven't yet found that use "is"? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 19:56, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

I don't think these examples should bind us, but I've never been of the opinion that our MOS should be influenced by how other organizations style things. Argento Surfer (talk) 20:20, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

And MOS:CONFORM states explicitly that material here should conform to our MOS, regardless how it may be presented in a source. The whole point of the MOS is to standardize our style, since as you know even respected style guides can conflict with each other. For example, we italicize the titles of creative works; some external sources do, some don't, some capitalize the titles, but we stick to italics. And I'm sorry, the days of attention being paid to spelling, grammar and style in articles are over when it comes to online sources. We regularly see typos, inconsistencies, etc. there, so these days I wouldn't take anything I read as a style example we should be necessarily following.— TAnthony^Talk 22:32, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

The sources are all published books, and my point is partly that there is no inconsistency. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:40, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

"Lost is a fast-paced, suspenseful, and surreal series about a group of people who survive when their commercial passenger jet, Oceanic Airlines Flight 815, crashes on a remote island in the tropical Pacific." Encyclopedia Britannica, though their actual first sentences use neither "is" nor "was". --IamNotU (talk) 20:41, 28 May 2020 (UTC) [Withdrawn, per Masem's comment below.] --IamNotU (talk) 17:38, 30 May 2020 (UTC)
- If you look at the Info for that page, the "is" langauge was from the original authoring of the Lost article (while the show was on) and the changes made in the intro after the show was completed, but not to the body. So it's sorta a bad example. --Masem (t) 01:52, 29 May 2020 (UTC)

The logic I presented in discussions prior to this is to distinguish the "content" from the "container". Physical works are easy to see this with, the printed magazine the container for articles that are the content. The content is persistent and always is presumed to exist so is discussed in the present tense, while the physical magazine, the container, only exists as long as the work continues publication. When we move to broadcast and digital content the same analogy applies and can be seen consistent with how works are discussed in the media. With television series, the series is a container, while the episodes are the content in the same scheme. There's afew gotches where I've thought that this analogy may require a few extra bit of advice but every case I can think of I can logically sounding answers of application of tenses. --Masem (t) 02:04, 29 May 2020 (UTC)

I agree with Mike Christie. For simple declarative forms found in the first sentence of Wikipedia articles, involving tensed verb phrases of the form i.e. Foo (subject) + be (verb) + noun phrase, only the past simple, i.e. "was," is correct. All others, such as for example, involving the syntactic expletive and the verb "found," "It is the Strand Magazine that is founded in Arthur Conan Doyle's lifetime ..." and any I have listed above, are not in this form. Fowler&fowler «Talk» 10:30, 29 May 2020 (UTC)

I disagree with IamNotU's example from Britannica. The first sentence there: ""Lost, American television drama that aired on the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) network." is written in typical Britannica fashion in a bulleted, verbless, form. The second sentence is: "The show, which ran from 2004 to 2010, was one of ABC’s most successful series, ..." Only after the subject is contextualized, does Britannica employ the present tense: "Lost is a fast-paced, suspenseful, and surreal series ..." in talking about the contents. Fowler&fowler «Talk» 10:51, 29 May 2020 (UTC)

Something else participants in this discussion may want to consider is the rule of thumb that was in WP:WAS for a few months. It was added here, by Thumperward, in January. C. A. Russell removed it on 24 May, here, with an edit summary of "Undid revision 936057856 by Thumperward (talk) originally inserted against opposition from others, is now being used to undermine original stated intent". My interest in WP:WAS mostly relates to magazines, so the results of this RfC are all I'll need for guidance, but others may think it's worth re-adding as a useful statement of the principle behind WAS. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 16:21, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

Given that the Thumperward (unilaterally) inserted it, in his words, as a simple way to stop people using "was" (having been inspired by a truly idiotic edit war), we should consider:

it's not only not accomplishing that, but
is being used as evidence from folks eager to argue that it means we're supposed to favor of using "was"

... and how "useful" of a statement is it? About as useful as a security system that only allows burglars to enter the building. -- C. A. Russell (talk) 21:40, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

Out of curiosity I looked through some encyclopedias of TV to see if there was consistent usage there. As with magazines, it's not that easy to find simple declarative statements, but I found some. Note that the examples cited from Newcomb are all by different authors, so these either represent multiple authors' usage or a single house style edited for consistency.

"Primary (1960) was a breakthrough documentary." Tom Mascaro in Horace Newcomb (2014) Encyclopedia of TV p. 742.
"Dr. Kildare, the award-winning series that aired on the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) from September 28, 1961, through August 30, 1966, was one of television's most popular and influential medical dramas." Joseph Turow and Rachel Gans, p.757 of Newcomb.
"An Early Frost, broadcast on November 11, 1985, on the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), was the first American made-for-television movie and the second prime-time dramatic program to acknowledge the presence and spread of AIDS in the 1980s." Rodney Buxton, p. 777 of Newcomb.
"The Ed Sullivan Show was the definitive and longest-running variety series in television history (1948-1971)". Ron Simon, p. 785 of Newcomb.
The Encyclopedia of TV Pets by Ken Beck & Jim Clark (2002) generally uses "is set in" or "is about"; I could not find direct declarative sentences.
"Described by its parent network A&E as 'the gold standard of criminal justice programming,' American Justice was a weekly, 60-minute documentary series, tackling important issues from the perspective of the legal system". Hal Erickson (2009) Encyclopedia of Television Law Shows p.36
"Confession was one of the many locally produced half-hour "fillers" used by ABC to plug the gaps in its sparsely populated Prime Time schedule of the late 1950s" ibid., p. 61.
R.M. and M. K. Reed (2012) The Encyclopedia of Television, Cable, and Video. Couldn't find any direct declaratives; the closest was "This 64-episode, black-and-white series was one of two supernatural sitcoms to appear on the networks in 1964, joining "The Munsters" in treating horror comedically."
"This was an anthology series of longer-than-average television animation productions, chiefly serving as the airing of "pilots" for potential series, though a number of one-shot films were also produced." David Perlmutter (2018) The Encyclopedia of American Animated Television Shows
Vincent Terrace (2014) Encyclopedia of Television Shows. Can't find any direct declaratives; the closest was "New Prospect, Oklahoma, in 1901 is the setting". p.448.

Based on these I'm changing my !vote above to weakly support "was" for TV shows as well as magazines; weak, because I'm not as familiar with historical writing about TV as I am with magazine histories, so I'm willing to believe there are uses of "is" out there. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 19:45, 2 June 2020 (UTC)

Although the point being made by the was supporters is clear to me, I just can't imagine being convinced by it while, say, watching an episode of I Love Lucy or reading an issue of Solarman. Primergrey (talk) 01:59, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
If I were watching The Girls Want to Go to a Nightclub, and someone walked in and said "What's this you're watching?", I'd say "It's an episode of I Love Lucy". If they then said "What's that?" I'd say "It was a comedy show made in the 1950s". I agree that in the context of an individual episode we'd use "is". Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:23, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

In the above examples, the tenses are relatively context-dependent and different tenses make sense depending on the meaning of the sentence. For example, "The Ed Sullivan Show was the definitive and longest-running variety series in television history (1948-1971)" is a statement that would be materially changed by changing the tense — what it actually says is that, at one point, it was the longest-running variety series in television history. To change this to "is" would be making an additional claim that it has, to the present day, remained the longest-running series, which is not supported by the source material and would require verification. In other examples, changing to "is" would make no sense; "This 64-episode, black-and-white series was one of two supernatural sitcoms to appear on the networks in 1964" is a statement concerning an event which happened in 1964 (the series appearing on the networks) and is not ongoing. In general, these statements almost all seem to be clearly referring to events like the broadcast of the show ("was a weekly", "was a breakthrough") or to things that were true at one point and may no longer be true ("was the first", "was one of television's most popular"). Are there any examples of "was" being used to refer to the work itself (as opposed to a broadcast of the work, or its production)? { $\mathbb {JPG}$ } 09:18, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

I’d have to go back through those books and look for more examples, so let’s say for the sake of argument that I can’t find any examples as simple as “I Love Lucy was a TV show”. What is a plausible first sentence of a Wikipedia article about a TV series that does not contain some of the additional material you mention above that implies “was” should be used? I would prefer to argue from observed usage: if we agree that the usage should be “was” in every case listed because there is material that implies we are talking about the past, it seems counterintuitive to argue that there is a highly restricted form of the sentence that would allow “is”, which we have seen no examples of. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:25, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

If there is no other encyclopedia or reference work that uses the structure "X is/was a television show" as the opening sentence for each entry, and Wikipedia is (as far as we can tell) unique in this regard, then there are a couple possible conclusions. We could say that Wikipedia ought to use the opening-sentence structure used in another book or set of books, change the existing style on the 6 million+ existing articles, and retrain all the contributors. That would be interesting but I don't think it's super practical. We could also say, well, for better or worse, Wikipedia's style is unique, and then choose the is/was based on other factors besides what we find "in the corpus", which is generally what's happening in the section above anyway. It's worthwhile to look at these examples, but I don't think that the result gives us a clear direction either way. — Toughpigs (talk) 14:15, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

6 million plus? There are 6 million plus articles on defunct magazines and TV series? I don't think so. The change being proposed is significant, but not that big. Most Wikipedia articles have a perfectly reasonable choice of verb tense. It's only these few classes that are problematic. (Extinct taxa would be the next strange case, but that brings up another pain point because if you say Tyrannosaurus was an extinct genus it sounds like it's no longer extinct, so somehow those would all need to be reworded.) --Trovatore (talk) 19:01, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

I've tried to avoid talking about mental models in these discussions, but the extinct taxa example is very interesting. To me that has to be "is", and I think it's because I imagine the tree of branching classes/orders/families etc. as a actual object in some sort of platonic taxonomic space. "Extinct" is a valid adjective for some of the subtrees, but the platonic existence of those subtrees isn't affected by that any more than it would be by an adjective such as "interesting" or "important". However, I'd say that a taxon that is no longer considered to be part of that platonic tree "was" a taxon. Something in our brains is deciding what it is that we're seeing as a statement of existence or a statement of an ongoing process, and that's what controls the preference for "was". I don't know that this really helps with the discussion here, but for me it illuminates why people feel compelled to talk about models. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 19:14, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

Well, maybe best to defer that to another day. My intuition is "was" for extinct animals but "is" for extinct languages (there's still a right and a wrong way to say something in Etruscan, even if no living human can tell you what it is, but those dinosaurs are gone). But the RFC is about "periodicals" including TV series, not about these other classes of article, and we don't have to worry about them right now. --Trovatore (talk) 19:21, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

So you think that Etruscan is "alive" and Downton Abbey is "dead"? That's a very specific, subjective intuition. — Toughpigs (talk) 19:36, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

No I don't think Etruscan is alive. But I'm more inclined to treat it as a Platonic entity than I am for Lucy. Anyway the point is not so much my intuitions; it's the fact that we are a radical outlier on these tenses, and in my opinion we're an outlier for good reasons. The other publications are "right" (in terms of what sounds good in English) and we are "wrong". --Trovatore (talk) 20:10, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

The more I think about this, the less reasonable it seems to specify a single tense for referring to these works in MoS for anything besides the first sentence. While I still think that "is" makes sense to use for references to a creative work qua creative work, as Mike said above, it's unlikely for an article (or even sections within an article) to refer to a series in ways that consistently evoke the same tense. In fact, I'd say that the question of which tense is correct is only ambiguous in the very first sentence — as an example, here are the sentences from above adapted to be article introductions.

"Dr. Kildare is a series that was aired on the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) from September 28, 1961 [...]",
"The Ed Sullivan Show is a variety show that was the definitive and longest-running in television history (1948-1971)"
"American Justice is a documentary series that was a weekly 60-minute broadcast [...]"
"Primary is a documentary that was first broadcast in 1960 and described as a ""breakthrough"."

As you can see, there's not a lot of ambiguity here — things that happened in the past are referred to in the past tense, the existence of the work itself is referred to in the present tense. But, per Toughpigs, I think that a policy change should be evaluated based on how it affects existing articles (and this is why I think that the MoS should only dictate tense for the first mention):

I Love Lucy is an American multinational television sitcom that originally ran on CBS from October 15, 1951 to May 6, 1957, with a total of 180 half-hour episodes spanning six seasons (including the 'lost' original pilot and Christmas episode). The show starred Lucille Ball [...].
Maria†Holic is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Minari Endō, the author of Dazzle. The manga was first serialized in the Japanese seinen manga magazine Monthly Comic Alive on June 27, 2006 [...] The manga was initially licensed by Tokyopop in North America [...] The first anime adaptation animated by Shaft aired in Japan between January and March 2009.

Now, these both seem pretty comprehensible to me. With the second example, specifically, I'd like to point out another issue with "was" here — Maria†Holic is a media property consisting of print media, broadcast media, et cetera. And with something like Haruhi Suzumiya, there is a series of light novels, a manga series, two seasons of broadcast anime, two original net animations, several audio dramas, several video games, et cetera. If you wanted to perform a "wasing", you'd need to arbitrarily determine which of several media the article was "about". For example, was Happy Days a TV show that ended in 1967, or is it a musical that began touring in 2008 (and will it forever be because theatrical productions never get wased)? Is I think that a reasonable policy would only be capable of applying to the tense used in the first sentence — as Trovatore mentions, other publications do not seem to grapple with this issue at all, and I think it's mostly because most publications do not have a policy of always starting their entries on media with "Such-and-such is/was a blah blah blah". Since ours does, we have to figure out a way to make that one first sentence be consistent — but apart from that, I don't think enforcing a tense throughout the lead of an article would be very helpful. {

\mathbb {JPG}

} 01:32, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

We don't have a "policy" of starting articles with an is/was sentence. It's the most common form for the lead sentence, but there are lots of exceptions. I think Netoholic's suggestion to use a more substantive verb in the first sentence might make a lot of sense for this problematic class of article. One nice thing about it is that the first sentence can be transformed with very little thought (that's not to say it's bad to think about it, just that you don't have to, which is nice if we're going to be changing a lot of them). See my example for Lucy in this diff. --Trovatore (talk) 02:23, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

(As to the "not a lot of ambiguity" because the "existence of the work itself is referred to in the present" — the problem is that series and periodicals are not "works". Their individual episodes/issues are "works", but not the series/periodicals as a whole.) --Trovatore (talk) 02:27, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

You are correct. I'd meant to describe it as a general practice, rather than a concrete item of policy. {

\mathbb {JPG}

} 04:41, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

Dead fictional characters

Starting a side conversation about a related issue: Should we use "is" or "was" for dead fictional characters in a TV series of indefinite length? I see it both ways:

Chef (South Park): Chef Jerome McElroy is a fictional character on the Comedy Central series South Park who was voiced by Isaac Hayes.
Adam West (Family Guy): Mayor Adam West was a character voiced by actor Adam West on the American animated television series Family Guy.

King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 22:05, 5 June 2020 (UTC)

- "Is". The content of the events in the work of fiction are considered to be perpetually ongoing at any time, so a character alive at the start of the series "is" a character that may end up dead by the end of it. We have no idea where the reader's context is going to start from so we have to presume they will take the present. Eg: even if in show Chef is dead he is still a character on South Park, who just happened to be no longer a living character at the current point of the show's continuity by the latest episode. The only time a past tense should be applied would be for a character that had been planned out but never actually made it into the published work. I know of no good example of this, but this would be considered consistent with cancelled books and episodes. --Masem (t) 22:15, 5 June 2020 (UTC)
- Also another hypothetical case would be a character that is completely stripped out of a work by some means (censorship or the like) such that all distributed forms of the work have erased existence of that character but we know they they had existed at one point. But again, I know of no example for this case. --Masem (t) 22:16, 5 June 2020 (UTC)

No no no. We use present tense for fiction, per Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Writing about fiction#Contextual presentation and WP:FICTENSE, which notes Works of fiction are generally considered to "come alive" for their audience. They therefore exist in a kind of perpetual present, regardless of when the fictional action is supposed to take place relative to the reader's "now". Wikipedia:WikiProject Soap Operas#Tense also covers it well. We write all articles from a real world perspective; fictional characters are not real people, so they are not born and they don't die in any kind of real world context. They exist as fictional constructs.— TAnthony^Talk 15:58, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

- "Is". An work of fiction doesn't "occur" in any real-life interval of time, and even if it did, there's no reason why the last page/minute of it should be considered more real than any other arbitrary point. Even if my story is "It was a dark and stormy night. John Smith, who had died 500 years prior, remained dead." it's still the case that John Smith *is* a character in it. { $\mathbb {JPG}$ } 04:39, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
  - Yes. "Mayor Adam West was a character ... on ... Family Guy" doesn't make any sense, unless he was in early drafts only. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 21:09, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

Closing?

It's been 30 days, and new comments are rare. Per WP:RFCEND, "if the matter under discussion is not contentious and the consensus is obvious to the participants, then formal closure is neither necessary nor advisable". I'd say the consensus here is that "was" should be used for printed periodicals that are no longer being published, and there is no consensus on TVNOW so the status quo for TV series remains in place. C. A. Russell, TAnthony, Toughpigs, Argento Surfer: you're among those who argued most strongly for "is" for printed periodicals. Do you feel we need a formal close here, or do you agree with my summary? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 14:37, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

I'm fine with it, insofar as it's keeping the current status quo in both areas.— TAnthony^Talk 14:40, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

You feel “was” for printed periodicals is status quo? It was a revert of “was” that led to this RfC; I think it’s a change. An example under WP:WAS would be helpful but wouldn’t be required if it’s understood “was” is used for printed periodicals. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 15:13, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

I don't believe that there is/was a consensus. I think that people who advocated for "is" were relentlessly opposed in a way that people who advocated for "was" were not, by a single individual. I think that this contributed to the impression that there was a consensus. — Toughpigs (talk) 16:43, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

I think support leaned in favor of was and I don't think a formal close is needed, but I don't think it was strong enough to justify any modification to the MOS. I think the best suggestion to come out of this is to avoid the "Foo [form of to be] a magazine" construction in favor of something more dynamic. Argento Surfer (talk) 16:56, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

The current status quo is that the manual of style includes the universal prescription for present tense in writing, and some folks have ignored in magazine articles especially, but there's also no dedicated task force at this time systematically trying to eradicate the misuse. But I also don't know where the claim that there's obvious consensus for "was" comes from. (It also seems weird to selectively ping only a few of the folks who were opposed to the proposal while, say, SMcCandlish or Izno weren't included.) As an alternative to the status quo, if you're set on changing the guidelines we could continue pursuing that, but the current effort has been a poor. But I also don't see it going well a third time, though, unless as I mentioned several times before, we establish a rubric at the outset and someone steps in to ensure we're observing basic order and a method to test whether claims are well-founded or not. We've had two rounds of this, and they both devolved into an unstructured mess of less-than-rigorous claims and browbeating. -- C. A. Russell (talk) 17:55, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

I pinged a small group because if they didn't agree with my reading of the RfC it wouldn't matter what the rest of the "is" supporters thought; we would need a formal close. I saw no reason to bother everyone if the conclusion could be drawn with less trouble. To the rest of your comment, no, I don't think there's obvious consensus for "was", but I feel there was enough of an argument made by enough contributors to the conversation to establish that the result of the RfC is in favour of "was" for printed periodicals. But my opinion is irrelevant since we've asked for a formal close. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 18:35, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

Then we don't agree enough to avoid a formal close. I'll post at AN and ask for one. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 17:15, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

Requested here. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 17:19, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

Moved the request here; hadn't realized there was a dedicated noticeboard for close requests. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 18:47, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Is there any change that needs to be made to the guidelines (here or elsewhere) based on this discussion, before it goes to the archive? E Eng 18:13, 24 August 2020 (UTC)
EEng, I added a statement to #Verb tense to reflect the RfC closure. Is it appropriate to include a permalink to the RfC in the guidance? I cited it in the edit summary. Schazjmd (talk) 18:31, 24 August 2020 (UTC)
Citing in the edit summary is usually enough (and more than usually happens). If it's something unusually controversial you could add a WP:HIDDENCOMMENT in the source text as well, to make things especially easy for archaeologists and make someone tempted to change it think twice. E Eng 18:45, 24 August 2020 (UTC)
Good to know. I think I'll wait until it's archived, then permalink to the archived RfC in a hidden comment. Thanks for the advice. Schazjmd (talk) 18:54, 24 August 2020 (UTC)
That's fine, though for the record you can use a diff or permalink to any post-close version of the main talk page; then you don't have to wait for archiving. E Eng 19:46, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

[partridge-1] Eric Partridge (2004). You Have a Point There: A Guide to Punctuation and Its Allies. Routledge. p. 235. ISBN 978-0-203-37992-9.

[H&F-2] Hoefler, Jonathan (4 June 2009). "House of Flying Reference Marks, or Quillon & Choil". Hoefler & Frere-Jones. Archived from the original on 5 February 2010. Retrieved 6 April 2010.

[Bringhurst-3] Robert Bringhurst (2005). The Elements of Typographic Style (version 3.1). Point Roberts, WA: Hartley and Marks. pp 68–69.

[4] Williamson, Maurice (11 October 2013). "Names of NZ's two main islands formalised". Beehive.govt.nz. New Zealand Government. Retrieved 10 April 2020.

[5] Crews, Frederick (1977), The Random House Handbook (2nd ed.), New York: Random House, p. 335, ISBN 0-394-31211-2

[6] "begs the question" is something quite different.

[7] ttp://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share

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