Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Abbreviations

DICE Awards vs. D.I.C.E. Awards

Seeking guidance on this revert. User Rhain seems to think it's okay to render an initialism or acronym with full points between the letters. My understanding of MOS:ABBR is that we would never do so unless it was included in the name of a work. What's other folks' understanding? —Joeyconnick (talk) 04:16, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

To be clear, my edits are less concerned with the use of full points specifically (though I personally think they're more appropriate in the case of this particular backronym—and I'm yet to see anything explicitly prohibiting it), and more so with maintaining consistency with the article title, and across the encyclopedia generally. – Rhain ☔ (he/him) 04:35, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

Consistency doesn't trump our guidelines. Attempts to bring pages more in line with our guidelines cannot be reverted on the basis of "it's done against guidelines in other places". That would mean we'd never be able to improve articles because all someone would need to do is point to one other case where guidelines weren't followed and be like, "See! It's done this way here so we need to continue ignoring guidelines everywhere!" This is one of the most frustrating fallacies that people promulgate at Wikipedia. —Joeyconnick (talk) 19:15, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

Well, technically, IGNOREALLRULES is a policy. This is more a matter for RfC or another forum to hash out through consensus, given there are decent, policy- and guideline-based arguments on both sides. ~ Pbritti (talk) 19:23, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

Except there are not, and IAR only applies when a rule must be ignored to objetively improve the encyclopedia. WP:CIRCULAR applies, too: Wikipedia content (including the article and the reader-facing category) is not a reliable source, so us having an article and category that need to be renamed is not "evidence" that the bad name is "correct", especially when our style guide says clearly not to do this. We absolutely do not need an RfC to come to a conclusion that the guideline that says to write acronyms as "DICE" not as "D.I.C.E." means to write this acronym as "DICE". RfCs suck up community time and energy and should not be expended on trivia like telling someone what the guideline says and that they have not found a "magical exception". And "I'm yet to see anything explicitly prohibiting it" = "I didn't read the guideline about acronyms and initialisms."  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:23, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

The specific portion of this guideline in question was introduced on 27 October 2010 after what was ultimately five* editors expressed interest in supporting a change (four in discussion, plus the editor who made the change to the guideline; see archived discussion Chicago MoS and US/U.S.). Wikipedia is primarily driven by consensus, and the RfC process prevents BOLDly modified policies or localized consensuses from interfering with good editing. A four-person discussion from 13 years ago seems like a thin rationale to insist that a particular portion of a guideline is followed. My only opinion here was that guidelines shouldn't be taken as unchallengeable writ, especially when good editors reasonably disagree. ~ Pbritti (talk) 21:29, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

No one really cares who came up with what line item when and how many were involved back then. The fact remains that it is an accepted and community-followed guideline used every single day. If the community did not agree with it, then it would not be there or would not say what it says (not in a major guideline like this; some of the micro-topical naming conventions pages and such, not so much; no one really pays any attention to them and some haven't been substantively revised since the late 2000s or early 2010s). No guidelines on the entire system have been so heavily negotiated over so long a time as MoS. If you really think consensus is going to change in favor of "A.B.C.D." acronyms and initialisms instead of "ABCD", you're welcome to open an RfC, but it will be WP:SNOW opposed. If you want to spend your time here digging around in history of P&G pages trying to find things that didn't have an approval process that personally satisfies you and then nominate them for deletion or "reconfirmation" you're going to have a very rough time and will be regarded as WP:POINTy. Anyway, Rhain's disagreement isn't "reasonable", but out-of-left-field defiance from personal preference and willful misinterpretion of very clear guidelines.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:14, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

This is a rather personal response. Good-faith engagement with reforming the MOS doesn't warrant circuitous accusations of being POINTy. Presuming Rhain's disagreement is because of something other than exactly what they say it is without providing evidence is casting aspersions. No reason to escalate this, so don't. ~ Pbritti (talk) 22:47, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

So, just to be clear on this, your idea of not escalating is making veiled threats and accusing me of aspersion-casing and bad-faith assumption? You're also not reading closely. I did not say Rhain is being pointy, I said it would be pointy to go 'digging around in history of P&G pages trying to find things that didn't have an approval process that personally satisfies you and then nominate them for deletion or "reconfirmation"'. It's not an accusation, it's a attempt at dissuasion (of both of you) from that sort of thing, because making trouble in that manner will be disruptive for the policy reason I already cited. I don't need to assume anything of any kind about Rhain, just observe their activity right here. Your enabling of this behavior by suggesting an RfC over a trivial matter that is already crystal clear in the guideline (and never in the entire history of Wikipedia misinterpreted so completely backwardly, I might add) is not constructive in anyway. The right process to settle the DICE Awards article title matter is WP:RM (and WP:CFR for the category, though the category will be speedily movable after the article title is fix). We don't use RfC to settle article-title disputes unless RM has repeatedly failed to resolve a matter, e.g. due to wikiproject cavnassing to vote-stack on a niche topic resulting in repeated stalemates).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:20, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

• I have absolutely read the guideline (multiple times, in fact, or else I wouldn't have made that comment) and to state otherwise is unproductive and dishonest. MOS:POINTS and MOS:ACRO suggest that full points in acronyms are often not used, but neither prohibit it and both explicitly give guidance on how to format such usage. – Rhain ☔ (he/him) 22:51, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

• You're badly misinterpeting them to mean what you wish they meant (wikilawyering). MOS:POINTS: "Modern style is to use a full point (period) after a shortening ... but no full point with an acronym." (By "shortening" it means things like "Eur." and "N. Am."). The only acronym/initialism exception (in the "exception" section linked to from that material) is "U.S.", which is optionally used in reference to the United States. The end. Neither section sanctions any other use of this style in WP's own prose; this by design, and essentially univerally accepted except by you (even Pbritti has not joined you and is only trying to make a "process" point, which is not actually valid because of WP:EDITCON). The reason both passages you cite address some punctuation quibbles when the "A.B.C.D." style is encountered is because the of U.S.'s lingering but declining usage, and because such acronyms are encountered in old titles of works and quotations from them. It has nothing to do with how to write "DICE Awards" and never will.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:14, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

• Perhaps I have misinterpreted, though certainly not willfully or in bad faith. MOS:ACRO says that Wikipedia "generally" avoids full point in acronyms, which implies exceptions based on usage in sources. If the only exception is "U.S.", then I'd assumed this would be stated more explicitly rather than implying there may be others. – Rhain ☔ (he/him) 00:07, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

As already exlained, the others are acronyms/initialisms is directly quoted material and titles of published works consistently written that way (consistently being the key word; e.g. When HARLIE Was One was originally published with a "H.A.R.L.I.E." spelling following the dominant convention of the era; that was changed to "HARLIE" in later editions, so WP uses that).

Anyway, in the DICE case, various sources are mimicking a text styling preferred (but not consistently) by the award-giver, AIAS, but the majority of them are not (and even if a majority were, it would have to be a near-total majority to matter). See their X/Twitter: they give it consistenly as DICE, including in the prominent logo [1]; their website does the opposite (at least in the current version, and except for the same "DICE" logo) [2]. But we don't care what the trademarkholder prefers, only whether a divergence from our style guide is found in an overwhelming majority of the independent sources about that particular subject. D.I.C.E. absolutely is not so found. This is just from the first page of search results, and DICE outnumbers D.I.C.E. by a landslide, when you subtract all the primary source usage from AIAS: [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13], and on and on (plus three examples of both styles in the same page: [14][15][16]). Not only is this demonstrated to just be a style choice made by publications to suit their own internal house-style guides, almost every single one of these is from the gaming press; it's not a decision being imposed by publications that don't know the topic, but by those that know it best. This completely fails the MOS:TM test: "regardless of the preference of the trademark owner ... only names that are consistently styled a particular way by a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources are styled that way in Wikipedia".

PS: I never said you were doing anything in bad faith. In my experience, nearly everyone who tries to "creatively" reinterpret P&G pages using nit-picks about their precise wording or syntax, to get a meaning out of them that is the opposite of what is clearly intended, is actually operating in good faith: they always seem to really believe that whatever stylistically weird thing they want to do to agree with a trademark holder is really, really, really something WP should write that way for various subjective reasons that have nothing to with our style guide, article title policy, NPOV policy, etc. Good idententions don't mean you're right about what this guideline means or correct in your notion that you've found a magical exception. It's one thing to do "D.I.C.E." because you saw it in a category name, it's quite another to argue and argue that it must be right when all evidence is telling you otherwise.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:20, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

I was never trying to "argue that it must be right"; I was just explaining my interpretation. In any case, I stand by the actual point I made in my original comment: my edits are less concerned with the use of full points specifically and more so with maintaining consistency. My reversion was performed appropriately. – Rhain ☔ (he/him) 08:53, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

Contractions defined incorrectly

The policy includes the following definition: "A contraction is an abbreviation of one or more words that has some or all of the middle letters removed but retains the first and final letters." In fact, many contractions are formed by removing the initial letter, and as such are excluded from the definition and therefore the policy. The string it's, for instance is not itself a contraction. Rather 's is a contraction of is with the apostrophe replacing the initial letter i. Similarly, it is not let us that is contracted as let's but rather us that is contracted as 's (The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, p. 934). The clitic forms of am, are, have, and will are all contractions (CGEL, p. 1615). Even if one were to ignore these cases, other contraction missing the first letter are 'tis, 'twas, 'twill, 'twould (arguably all contractions of it), 'em for them, and 'cause for because. Also ol' for old should be considered a contraction.

The definition also fails for the negative form of auxiliary verbs. There are no words from which one can remove one or more middle letters and arrive at ain't or won't. "Forms like won’t are commonly regarded as 'contractions' of will + not, and so on, but there are compelling reasons for analysing them differently from cases like she’ll (from she + will), they’ve (they + have), etc. Won’t is, by every criterion, a single grammatical word, an inflectional form of will. She’ll is not a single grammatical word, hence not an inflectional form" (CGEL, p. 91) This then extends to the negative forms of the other auxiliary verbs isn't, haven't, can't, etc., which, though historically formed by contractions should no longer be considered such.

As a result, the definition should be revised. I propose:

A contraction is an abbreviation of one or more words that has some or all of the middle letters removed or any letters replaced by an apostrophe. For the purposes of this policy, the negative inflectional forms of auxiliary verbs ending in -n't also qualify.

The policy is an anachronism, but as long as it's in place, the definition should be coherent. Brett (talk) 12:27, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

It is time to allow contractions of auxiliary verbs

It's time to reconsider the general prohibition of contractions in articles.

Background

Unless I've missed something, the most recent significant discussion about the topic was held in January and February of 2011.

I'm specifically addressing the use of contractions of auxiliary verbs, such as 'll and 're, along with their negative forms using the -n't negative suffix. The proposal is not related to other contractions such as ol' for old, 'em for them, ne'er for never, etc. Also, non-standard forms, such as ain't along with less common forms such as should've still require specific guidance. These, however, don't need to be dealt with under the topic of contractions generally.

Precedent

The times have changed, and the sense that contractions are informal has mostly dissipated. As far back as 1964, Rudolf Flesch wrote in The ABC of Style,

It's a superstition that abbreviations shouldn't be used in serious writing and that it's good style to spell everything out. Nonsense: use abbreviations whenever they are customary and won't attract the attention of the reader.

The 1989 Webster's Dictionary of English Usage entry for "contractions" says,

Contractions became unfashionable in the 18th century and continued so until the early 20th century at least; in 1901 a correspondent of The Ladies' Home Journal was still wondering if can't, couldn't, and won't were permissible. Today many handbooks for writers recommend contractions to avoid sounding stilted.

Style guides

Most recent editions of style guides for news and academic publishing allow or even encourage these forms, even in formal writing. These include Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style, Garner’s Modern American Usage, and the MLA Handbook [17]. The Chicago Manual of Style encourages the judicious use of contractions [18].

The AP Styleguide only urges only against "excessive" use of contractions. The main holdout seems to be the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed), which still says to avoid them.

Other encyclopedias and reference books

Such forms are commonplace in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. A sample follows

• "Its color and smell are simple impressions, which can’t be broken down further because they have no component parts." [19]
• "An explanatory coherentist might say that, for you to be justified in believing (H), it’s not necessary that you actually believe (1) and (2)." [20]
• "We’ll get there by considering how SEF deals with cases of late preemption such as the Suzy and Billy case." [21]

The same is true for The Canadian Encyclopedia.[22] Britannica allows contractions, but it can hardly be seen as a serious encyclopedia any longer.

Other books that just came to hand (no cherry picking):

NO: The Oxford Encyclopedia of Islam and Women doesn't, nor does Encyclopedia of Linguistics (Routledge), The SAGE Encyclopedia of Psychology and Gender, Encyclopedia of Climate Change (2nd ed; Salem Press), The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Child Development (2nd ed).

YES: The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Urban and Regional Studies, The Encyclopedia of Neuropsychological Disorders (Springer), Encyclopedia of Tribology (Springer).

The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language uses contracted auxiliary verbs throughout.

Universities

Some university writing centres still encourage students to avoid contractions, for example, Hull,[23] but others, such as University of Edinburgh [24] and Monash [25] have moved on.

Harvard seems neutral on the topic[26],[27].

Governments

The government of the UK allows them on their website [28]. The government of Canada (including the Supreme Court for its Cases in Brief) [29], though the Government of Australia continues to recommend avoiding them in formal contexts [30].

Overall, then there is a significant movement towards using contracted auxiliary verbs in formal writing, and Wikipedia should follow along. Brett (talk) 18:11, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

Possessive use

I have recently noticed the input of @Gawaon that possessives are not contractions. While this is true, as I have found, it could be confusing to other editors, including me before my research. As such, I propose that a new section be added to the page talking about possessives and how they are permitted, and have the contractions section link here. 2003 LN6 16:15, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

2003 LN6, i hope i may ask without appearing rude, because it certainly isn't intended that way: Is English a second language with you? I ask because i don't remember ever coming across someone for whom it was the first language who was confused by apostrophes of possession ~ plenty who don't understand apostrophes and try to add them in willy-nilly, to be sure, just not the other ~ so i'm having trouble understanding why we would need such clarification. Whom are you suggesting that it would help to add this section, and do people actually get confused by apostrophes? I'm not sure i have seen any possessives in Wikipedia which would have benefited from it. Happy days, ~ Lindsay^Hello 16:49, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

I'm takling about the possessive 's. For example, "The country has the world's third-largest land area[...]" (from United States). 2003 LN6 16:53, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

This is normal English usage. Whilst the apostrophe is sometimes used as a placeholder for omitted letters (a form of contraction), e.g. "can't" for "cannot", that's not the case with the possessive apostrophe. Consider: in a word like "world's", what letter or letters have been omitted? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 17:35, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

(Some) contractions use apostrophes and possessives use apostrophes, and they are two different things. I understand that you weren't aware of that, and that's fine, but the first sentence of the Contraction section already explains that [a] contraction is an abbreviation of one or more words that has some or all of the middle letters removed but retains the first and final letters (e.g. Mr and aren't). "Dave's", a possessive, is not a word that has some of all of the middle letters removed, so it isn't a contraction. I believe that's as clear as it needs to be. Largoplazo (talk) 22:42, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

Thank you! 2003 LN6 00:35, 15 March 2024 (UTC)