Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style

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WikiProject Manual of Style
This page falls within the scope of WikiProject Manual of Style, a drive to identify and address contradictions and redundancies, improve language, and coordinate the pages that form the MoS guidelines.
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[edit] The original problems (specific and general)

I was led to this page because of objections to my removal of hyphens after -ly adverbs.
(See User talk:Wavelength#Hyphens - thanks for the ref.)
After several weeks of discussion, followed by a short respite, I have these questions:

  • Specifically, if I were now to correct again the hyphenated expression in Electric guitar#Sound and effects, paragraph 4, to "specially designed sound cards", would I have the support of the Manual of Style?
  • Generally, what exactly is necessary before the tag "under discussion" can be removed from Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Hyphens, subsection 3, point 4?

-- Wavelength (talk) 02:19, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

This section was previously the fifth subsection of another section, now archived at
Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 106, section 16: "Hyphens after -ly adverbs (rationalised section)".
My questions have been answered at User talk:Wavelength#Your questions about MOS and hyphens
(permanent link: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Wavelength&oldid=260226642,
section 13, "Your questions about MOS and hyphens").
-- Wavelength (talk) 22:11, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Other English-language style guides

Editors of the English-language Wikipedia may be interested in examining other English-language style guides, and possibly adding some of them to their collections. Comments are welcome.






At Citizendium, there is CZ:Manual of Style - Citizendium,
but what seems more like a style guide is CZ:Article Mechanics - Citizendium.


At Knol, the closest thing to a style guide that I could find is
Best Practices: Writing Good Knols - a knol by Knol Help.
-- Wavelength (talk) 07:00, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Here are some more.

-- Wavelength (talk) 19:56, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Valuable work, Wavelength. I intend to look through those when I have time. Earlier you wanted to discuss the idea of documenting sources for MOS. I thought at the time that it was not a bad idea. Myself, I'd have little trouble doing so: I have an extensive collection of guides to punctuation and style in general. But in fact the task is special, here at MOS. It isn't like an article; other guidelines, and even Wikipedia polices, don't provide such documentation. We ought to be able to justify here on the talkpage what we say in MOS. Quite often, though, that justification will go beyond existing guides and have more to do with discovering solutions tailored for the online WP environment. No existing guide does that. We are doing it! I'm the last person to advocate setting aside the major or even lesser guides as respectable precedents. But they don't address what we must. I may have more to say when I've looked through these online resources.
–⊥¡ɐɔıʇǝoNoetica!T– 22:50, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
Thank you, Noetica, for your interest. The section on documenting sources is now archived at
Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 105 (section 35: "Guideline-by-guideline citation of sources").
Also, here is another link.
-- Wavelength (talk) 01:15, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
One can see previous versions of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style
at http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style.
-- Wavelength (talk) 00:05, 27 December 2008 (UTC)
  • Beside each guideline in the English Wikipedia's Manual of Style, there can be one or more abbreviations indicating the style guide(s) supporting the Wikipedia guideline. For each guideline tailored for Wikipedia, there can be the abbreviation "WP".
  • One area where guidelines can be tailored for Wikipedia is that of Wikipedia:Spoken articles (Category:Spoken articles).
  1. Have any guidelines been established so far? (If handwriting is to typing as speaking is to speech synthesis, then speech synthesis may be easier to analyze and manage than natural speaking.)
  2. Should a speaker observe American and British English pronunciation differences or other pronunciation differences at the time of recording an article?
  3. Should revisions be made by the original speaker of an article?
  4. Is it acceptable for an addition to be spliced onto/into a previous version, or for portions (corresponding to deletions in the text) to be erased from the recording; or should the entire article be spoken again?
  5. Are there guidelines for speed, pitch, intonation, volume, pausing, or other features of discourse?
  6. Does someone "proofread" ("proof-listen to"?) spoken articles?
  7. Is Wikipedia prepared for vandalism of spoken articles?
Additional ideas and information might be available from the organization Toastmasters International.
-- Wavelength (talk) 20:45, 2 January 2009 (UTC)
[I re-organized my message and changed a few words. -- Wavelength (talk) 00:41, 5 January 2009 (UTC)]
I have just found the page Wikipedia:WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia/Recording guidelines.
-- Wavelength (talk) 05:29, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Article tone

There doesn't seem to be a section here on the appropriate tone for articles, and who the target audience is. I think those things ought to be defined. Is that included elsewhere? Some editors write as for a scientific journal. Their style is ultra-formal, argumentative, and beyond the comprehension of the average reader. I take the approach that someone who knows nothing about the subject should be able to understand every word of the article (assuming that person is high school age or above). Am I way off base here? ThreeOfCups (talk) 03:38, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

There's WP:MTAA, but I agree that mentioning those points here, too, could be useful. -- Army1987 – Deeds, not words. 11:10, 29 December 2008 (UTC)
That's a good guideline, and WP:JARGON is short and useful. I generally see article reviewers complain if it looks like you didn't even make the attempt to make it accessible, or if they couldn't get through the first paragraph, even if you did try. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 17:22, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

[edit] St. Louis-San Francisco Railway

Was the move of this to St. Louis–San Francisco Railway correct? It seems kind of silly, since it reads fine with the normal dash, and as far as I know the company just used a normal dash. (They usually called themselves the Frisco though, so it's hard to find, for instance, a map where they use the full name.) --NE2 20:15, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

It's still wrong: St. Louis – San Francisco Railway (there are internal spaces in the items, so the dash needs to be spaced too. Tony (talk) 02:38, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Foreign words & Eng. trans.

MOS correctly suggests using italics for phrases etc., but in what order? Should we use "Syndicat des instituteurs du Dahomey (Teachers' Union of Dahomey)" or "Teachers' Union of Dahomey (Syndicat des instituteurs du Dahomey)"? I was taught the former, but that may be a Linguistics thing. Tks Ling.Nut (talk—WP:3IAR) 21:47, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

I see both, a lot, on and off Wikipedia, and my sense has always been that the first phrase is the one you want your readers to focus on. There's no guidance on this in American style guides that I'm aware of. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 17:15, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

[edit] A sentence that needs revising

In the Subsection Wikipedia:ENGVAR#Formatting the sentence following sentence 'Do not place a currency symbol after the value (123$, 123£, 123€), unless the symbol is normally written as such. Do not write $US123 or $123 (US)' should be changed to Do not place a currency symbol after the value (123$, 123£), unless the symbol is normally or in some nations written as such (123€). Do not write $US123 or $123 (US) dues to the fact that the Euro in some nations is placed after the number in others it is before it is therefore not a suitable exampled of not what to do . Any thoughts ?安東尼 TALK 圣诞快乐 22:50, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

This is the English Wikipedia, so we should be use the format used in English. I looked up, and according to our article Linguistic issues concerning the euro English uses €1.23 (and so do Irish and Maltese, so it is the only format used in English-speaking countries). I don't like that (it's inconsistent with 1.23 m for metres), but c'est la vie. -- Army1987 – Deeds, not words. 01:37, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
Okay I just thought it needed brining up. D'accord et Merci 安東尼 TALK 圣诞快乐 13:33, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

(Italian sucks in many other respects, but at least you can write "Sono alto 1,88 m e ho pagato questo 1,88 €" without any useless inconsistency. Now I've discovered that in English one must remember which symbols go before and which go after, too. -- Army1987 – Deeds, not words. 13:49, 31 December 2008 (UTC))

[edit] RfC for WP:BOOSTER

There is a request for comment about whether or not WP:BOOSTER documents a standard consensus and good practice that all editors and school/college/university articles should follow as an official policy or guideline. Madcoverboy (talk) 18:59, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

I'd like to wait on the results from your RfC and poll going at WT:UNI first; those are the people I would turn to on this. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 02:33, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

For me it seems superfluous. There is already a policy about neutrality, and another about articles being based on verifiable references. Perhaps I am missing something? Stealthaxe (talk) 05:25, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Display prefences for coordinates

Please be aware of an attempt to change the way coordinates are displayed by {{Coord}} (and thus in other templates which call it). This is being falsely presented as a bug in that template, used in around a quarter of a million instances, apparently in order to circumvent the need to obtain consensus to make such a change. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 22:44, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Adding 2 policy pages to WP:Update

Please see WP:VPP#Adding 2 policy pages to WP:Update. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 15:09, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Eyes needed

...at WT:PERFECT. I reverted Andy's edits, and I'm pretty sure he thinks I was acting improperly in a number of ways. Footnote: even though we get a fair amount of traffic in WT:MOS, we can go for months with no discussion and with no one but me checking the diffs in many of the other general style guidelines. Andy is claiming, quite correctly, that if it's just me arguing one side, that's OWNership, at least in appearance if not in fact, so I need to step back. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 02:44, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Per Andy's talk page, I've redeemed myself, but we still need someone to argue the case. If we can't get at least 2 people involved when there's a challenge to a general style guideline, then it would be better to delete the cat than to let pages change without comment. (And this isn't just a style problem, even major changes to policy sometimes go undiscussed for months ... did you know that WP:BOLD doesn't apply to policy any more, and hasn't since July? Wikipedia is doing better with content these days, but where have all policy fans gone?) - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 19:14, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Possessives of proper names

According to most style manuals (Chicago, Prentice Hall, McGraw-Hill), proper names take 's in the possessive, even when they end in sibilants. So it's Brahms's, Glass's, and so on.

There has been some contention about this on a number of pages recently (see discussion here, so, if no one makes any suggestions in the next couple of days to the contrary, I will update the MOS section on possessives. Regards, --Ravpapa (talk) 07:05, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

just for convenience, here's a link to the pertinent section of the MoS: WP:Manual_of_Style#Possessives. the part about the possessive form of nouns ending in sibilants is currently extremely unclear and in need of rewriting, no matter what the consensus is on what form is preferred on wikipedia.

:*i support the suggestion that the apostrophe-s form should be adopted (including for "classical/Biblical" names): Jones's, Moses's etc are clearer than the apostrophe-only forms. Sssoul (talk) 07:29, 5 January 2009 (UTC) edit: in light of the discussion below, i'm suspending my "vote" until Ravpapa clarifies whether he/she's retracting the proposal to make the apostrophe-s form the wikipedia-wide standard. Sssoul (talk) 21:13, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

  • I was taught in school that no s needed to be added after the apostrophe for the possessives of nouns ending in the letter s. For instance Jones' was preferred and not Jones's. Then again, I graduated from high school in 1976!--jeanne (talk) 12:51, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

jeanne, you are still a mere babe in arms compared to some of us. We all, I think, learned in high school that there is no 's for words ending in sibilants. But there is unanimity among style manuals today (well, at least those I know) that proper nouns take the 's no matter what. --Ravpapa (talk) 13:09, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Do you have a current online subscription to Chicago, Ravpapa? 7.17 says "The possessive of most singular nouns is formed by adding an apostrophe and an s", and 7.19-7.22 give 4 classes of exceptions to that rule, roughly: 1. it looks like a plural (politics'), 2. two or more syllables that ends in an eez sound (Euripides'), it ends in an unpronounced s (Descartes') (that one's optional), and "For ... sake" expressions. An alternative to these rules in 7.23 is to omit "the possessive s on all words ending in s". - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 14:21, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

I don't have an online subscription, and I am probably hopelessly out of date on these matters. My copy of Chicago is from 1993, my McGraw-Hill is from 1989, my Words into Type (does anyone use that anymore?) is from 1974. I have a bunch of others (Turabian, Strunk and White, Microsoft), but all at least 15 years old. Back in those days, we all wrote 's after proper names, but times change. I have no strong feelings about it one way or another, I just think we should be consistent. Even a statement that "you can do it this way or that way, just do it the same way throughout the article" would be fine with me. Age has mellowed me a lot. --Ravpapa (talk) 16:56, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

"you can do it this way or that way, just do it the same way throughout the article" is what the WP MoS currently says, albeit not at all clearly. Ravpapa, do i understand properly that you're no longer advocating changing the MoS to a clear preference for the apostrophe-s form? (and by the way: as long as the choice is up to the editors of a given article, there was no justification for the Richards/Watts/Jones edits that prompted this discussion. but anyway.)
meanwhile: thank you Dan for posting that clause from Chicago - that seems way overelaborate for wikipedia purposes! it seems like the viable options are:
  • 1] adopt apostrophe-s as the possessive for all nouns, whether or not they end in s: Jones's dog, Descartes's birthday, Euripides's wife
  • 2] adopt apostrophe-alone as the possessive for nouns that end in s: Jones' dog, Descartes' birthday, Euripides' wife
  • 3] accept either of the above as long as they're used consistently throughout a given article (ie, the current policy, but formulated way more clearly)
i personally prefer 1; until yesterday i was sure 2 was the wikipedia policy, so obviously i can live with that; and 3 is fine with me as long as it isn't misread as a basis for making arbitrary changes to articles. Sssoul (talk) 17:45, 5 January 2009 (UTC)
Me too :) [My comment got pushed down; "me too" was in response to "Age has mellowed me a lot."] I don't have much intelligent to say here, just a caution that we not let threads about punctuation (I suppose including apostrophe-s) predominate, because people grumble and stop reading, and also because we can't fix on Wikipedia what isn't fixed in the world. We're in a time of transition to more and more self-publishing, a trend in which Wikipedia is front-and-center. Editors sitting around copydesks like nuance, for instance the nuance of using apostrophe-s in cases where people are most likely to actually pronounce the s; that kind of thinking shows to their peers and their readers that they're on the ball, that they have a fine sensitivity for language. Self-publishing writers generally take the attitude: nuance be damned, I want to express myself without getting a PhD in punctuation-ology. So we've got a majority of writers now insisting on and following simple rules, for instance for whether singular possessive proper names ending in a sibilant sound take apostrophe-s. The problem is that half are insisting on a simple rule of "always" and half are insisting on a simple rule of "never"! It will be a little while before one side or the other wins, so I don't think a hard rule on Wikipedia is useful; either will turn off a significant number of skilled writers. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 17:14, 5 January 2009 (UTC)
so Dan, could you propose a clear wording for what you feel the wikipedia MoS ought to say about it? thanks Sssoul (talk) 17:45, 5 January 2009 (UTC)
ps: if Ravpapa is indeed retracting the proposal to make apostrophe-s the standard for wikipedia, the RfC can probably be closed - all that's really needed is a clearer formulation of the existing policy of "either way is okay". Sssoul (talk) 17:59, 5 January 2009 (UTC)
Let's aim for consensus among style manuals and Wikipedians. Unfortunately, in this case, there are a lot of links (and now there's one more!) I'll re-read them all if one or two others will read them with me. Apostrophe, WP:MOS#Possessives, WT:Manual_of_Style/Archive_92#Possessives of proper names ending in "s", WT:Manual_of_Style/Archive_100#Singular possessives ending in "s", WT:Manual_of_Style/Archive_102#Possessives, WT:Manual_of_Style/Archive_104#Possessive, and WT:Manual_of_Style/Archive_105#Possessives of common nouns in s. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 03:50, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

(outdent) thank you Dan - i'll try to help out. WT:Manual_of_Style/Archive_92#Possessives of proper names ending in "s" concludes with a recommendation to accept both versions, as long as consistency is maintained within a given article; i'll try to find time to wade through some more of those later today. meanwhile, should we close the RfC, at least until it's clear whether any radical change to the MoS is really being proposed? Sssoul (talk) 06:02, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Thank you Dank55 for the enlightening references. The article on Apostrophe was particularly helpful: it clarified just how muddled the picture is. In light of all this, I suggest we add something like the following to the section on possessives:
Kilometers of verbiage have been written on the proper way to write the possessive form of proper nouns ending in s. See, for example, Apostrophe. Here at the Wikipedia, we tend to agree with the majority of style manuals that the possessive form of proper nouns ending in a sibilant should be written with an 's; for example, "Jones's", "Glass's", and so on. But we are by no means autocratic on the matter. The main thing is, make sure you use a form consistently throughout an article; don't write "Glass'" the first time and "Glass's" the second.
--Ravpapa (talk) 06:15, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
Ravpapa, I'm sympathetic to the reasoning behind "kilometers of verbiage", but that won't work. I could go with "When to include the s after the apostrophe is an unsettled question, even in widely-followed style guides. Most style guides at least agree on ...; otherwise, aim for consistency within each article." - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 15:37, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
in light of that, i'm closing the RfC - it doesn't seem necessary, since no radical alterations to the guidelines are now being proposed. the wording of the clause in the MoS should be simple and direct. i'll try to come up with a proposal later today. Sssoul (talk) 07:15, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
okay, here's a first try at what i would consider clear, simple and direct wording:
The possessive of a singular noun is formed by adding an apostrophe and an s (my daughter's achievement, the boss's wife). For a singular noun ending in s, there are two schools of thought:
  • add just an apostrophe: James' house, Euripedes' plays, Moses' early life, Brahms' music
  • add an apostrophe and an s: James's house, Euripedes's plays, Moses's early life, Brahms's music
Either of those forms is acceptable in Wikipedia articles, as long as consistency is maintained within a given article.
i'd put a footnote after "two schools of thought" to point out the relevant links that Dan dug up; there's no need to go into all the gory details in the MoS itself.
is it also worth adding a short statement to the effect that once an article consistently uses one or the other of these forms, it's not appropriate to change it without making sure first that there's a consensus among editors who work on/watch over the article to support such a change? that should go without saying for *any* style points where there are two correct/accepted options, but maybe it's worth stating it anyway. Sssoul (talk) 16:17, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. --Ravpapa (talk) 17:12, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

I would like to reiterate my gentle plea for common sense: all singular names, whether it is John or Charles or what have you, should end with an apostrophe s to denote the possessive case. Somewhere in a time, long long ago, long before Wikipedia was founded, someone began a meme in which it was decreed that Charles (for example) should not get an apostrophe s simply on aesthetic grounds. But it seems to me that the issue here shouldn't be aesthetics, but whether or not Charles possesses something. If he does, such as a book, then it's Charles's book. Incidentally, and I could be mistaken, I think there's no quarrel about this with the Brits. I subscribe to The London Review of Books and The Times Literary Supplement, and they regularly use the apostrophe s. In the meantime, I see that Roland Burris's claim to take his seat in the senate was rejected today. Mysloop (talk) 18:52, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Mysloop, have you looked at any of the archived discussions that Dan provided links to (above)? i think you'll find them enlightening: an individual personal preference isn't sufficient grounds to make the apostrophe-s form the only acceptable one on wikipedia; you need a good wide community consensus to make that kind of change to the MoS. if you want to see if you can get a consensus on it, i suggest re-launching an RfC on this discussion. or you can agree to leave the choice up to the editors of individual articles, and make your "gentle plea for common sense" on the talk pages of articles that you contribute to. Sssoul (talk) 19:09, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Ssoul, no, I haven't looked at those discussions yet. I ought to. In the meantime, do you recommend that I continue my edits (I'd like to call up some other entries) and just take the responses I might get on a case-by-case basis? Thanks for your advice. Mysloop (talk) 23:28, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Mysloop, i've replied to your question on your talk page; this page is for discussion of the MoS.
one further bit of finetuning might be: i don't see anyone recommending the apostrophe-only form for words ending in ss - Glass's music is the only correct form. so the wording of the MoS might be:
The possessive of a singular noun is formed by adding an apostrophe and an s (my daughter's achievement, the boss's wife, Glass's music). For a singular noun ending in one s, there are two accepted forms:[1]
  • add just an apostrophe: James' house, Euripedes' plays, Moses' early life, Brahms' music
  • add an apostrophe and an s: James's house, Euripedes's plays, Moses's early life, Brahms's music
Either of those forms is acceptable in Wikipedia articles, as long as consistency is maintained within a given article. Once an article consistently uses one of these forms, it should be changed only on the basis of a clear consensus among the article's editors.
[1] For details on these two forms and the rationale for their use, see Apostrophe, WT:Manual_of_Style/Archive_92#Possessives of proper names ending in "s", WT:Manual_of_Style/Archive_100#Singular possessives ending in "s", WT:Manual_of_Style/Archive_102#Possessives, WT:Manual_of_Style/Archive_104#Possessive, and WT:Manual_of_Style/Archive_105#Possessives of common nouns in s.
does that cover it, and is it clear and straighforward enough for MoS purposes? Sssoul (talk) 07:36, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

The horse is dead. Enough discussion. Sssoul, go ahead and make the change. Try to keep it pithy. --Ravpapa (talk) 12:29, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

There's no one answer that's going to make everyone happy. Some people will have problems with footnotes that point to archives, but only because we don't generally do that; we would usually point to the links that were pointed to in the archives. I don't see any harm in it. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 15:38, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
all right - hope it looks okay now. thanks for the help clarifying this point. Sssoul (talk) 16:32, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Well done. --Ravpapa (talk) 17:54, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

I tweaked to "For details on these two forms and the rationale for their use, see Apostrophe. Evidence that this issue is largely unsettled among professional style guides and among Wikipedians can be found in the archives at ...". It wouldn't bother me at all if anyone wants to fiddle with this footnote. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 00:04, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Donate header uses spaced em dash

I notice that the collapsed "Support Wikipedia: a non-profit project. — Donate Now" header at the top of all Wikipedia pages uses a spaced em dash, even though WP:DASH outlaws this. Is that odd? —TedPavlic | (talk) 18:14, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

So does the bloody {{mdash}} template. Of course it's a non-breaking space, which doesn't make any difference when a regular space appears before the template half the time, just creates a wider gap. By 2010 you'll be able to drive a compact car between the nearest words. — CharlotteWebb 21:32, 5 January 2009 (UTC)
I'm a fan of having a template that places an NBSP before an en dash, but that template should be called {{mdash}}. That is, nowhere on wikipedia should there be examples of spaced em dashes (except for examples of what not to do). So maybe {{ndash}} should be renamed {{mdash}} and people can decide whether they want to use an — or a {{ndash}} (which are functionally equivalent). —TedPavlic | (talk) 01:34, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Web Content Accessibility Guidelines

Should Wikipedia be working towards meeting the W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines? Please join discussion at Wikipedia talk:Accessibility#WCAG 2.0. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 08:24, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Green text color can't be seen by the color-blind

For readers that have color blindness, using a green colored font is not a good idea, for emphasizing text. Can someone change this? Thanks --Funandtrvl (talk) 20:32, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

See Color Vision - by Cal Henderson and Colors for the Color Blind.
-- Wavelength (talk) 21:41, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Ongoing hidden content discussion

Talk:Alexander Alekhine#Hidden solutions in diagrams: a number of articles on chess players and chess tactics include 'problems', where a chessboard is shown midway through a game, there being an optimal set of moves for one or other side thereafter. The captions on these pseudo-images include the sequence of moves, but hidden inside collapsible sections (eg). I removed the hidden styling citing both accessibility and 'not censored' concerns, but was reverted. Comments are appreciated. Happy‑melon 21:35, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] RfC: Small grammatical error - quote vs. quotation

This is a commentary on the MoS page itself.

There seems to be an error on the MoS page where the word quote is used and the word quotation is what should be used. The page also says to make sure that there is consensus on the matter before changing anything here. There are actually a couple of places where this word is misused. The first example noticed starts like this:

    Attribution 
    The author of a quote of a full sentence or more should be named;

Does anyone care to comment on that please ? Stealthaxe (talk) 05:21, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

I couldn't verify that distinction at dictionary.com, which defines the noun sense of the word "quote" as "a quotation". Perhaps you know something I don't. Art LaPella (talk) 05:41, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
Perhaps I've been out of school too long :-). I suppose if quote can now mean a quotation then there is no error. However I do still feel that there is an inconsistancy where sometimes quotation is used and sometimes quote is used. Also I noticed that quotes was used instead of quotation marks. Now I'm wondering if that is also allowed in standard usage these days. Online Merriam-Webster says it's ok. Ah, the dynamic of language. (graduated 1981)

Stealthaxe (talk) 07:00, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

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