Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Abbreviations/Archive 5

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Archive 1 ← Archive 3 Archive 4 Archive 5

Quango must go!

From the Acronyms -- Exceptions -- Miscellanea section let us remove "quango". Unlike all the other exceptions, it is not a very familiar term. It would be very bad form to use it without explaining it. Consider the following two passages:

  • According to the BBC, the UK warship HMS Argyle (AKA 'The Old Rustbucket') was attacked by laser weapons of the USSR on October 13 1977 AD at 9:43am GMT...
  • The Flower Commission is a British quango organized in 1997. It is responsible for the development of new floral arrangements...

Well which is more intelligible? The first has nine acronyms but most literate English speakers will blow right by them. The second has one acronym which will send many readers to a full head-scratching stop. Remember, we are including "quango" in the list of acronyms you needn't define, presumably because they are assumed to be already known to the overwhelming majority of reasonably literate readers.

Of course you can winkilink "quango" to its article just as you can with "US" or "TV" and so on, but it is not ideal to sent the person away from the article just to understand the basic text, which is why the rule for all acronyms generally isn't "when using an acronym, don't bother to define it, just wikilink to its definition article".

Incidentally, the article quango's lede is "In both the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom, a quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisation (quango or qango) is [such and such]. The Forestry Commission... is an example of a quango." But the article Forestry Commission does even contain the term "quango". Possibly because it's not a quango but rather a Non-ministerial government department, according to it's lede. So rather a dog's breakfast there.

The quango article, after opening with a wrong example, does nothing further to convince me that here is a term understood on sight by basically everyone in the English-speaking world. I have accordingly removed it from the article. Herostratus (talk) 17:28, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

  • Support. Roger that - I endorse Herostratus' position above, and I will add that the term "quango" has no well understood meaning for 315+ million Americans, whereas most of the literate among us will recognize and understand BBC, UK, HMS, AKA, laser, USSR, AD, am and GMT (did I miss any?). Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 17:47, 12 October 2014 (UTC)
  • Support. Yeah, this is clearly British political jargon, like referring to "Beltway" in American politics. It's also weird that it's lower-cased like that. Is it done that way consistently, or is the article pushing a PoV about that. It seems unlikely that it would never be upper case and that the article shouldn't give QANGO and QuANGO as an alternative spelling the lead section. PS: The enormous pile of research I did above, on the "et al." question, indicates that this lowercased "it's not an acronym, it's a word" treatment comes from a single, rather daft, Newspeak-pushing style source, "The Guardian Style Guide", which wants to treat all acronyms and initialism like this, e.g. Nasa, Pin number, etc.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  11:37, 24 October 2014 (UTC)

Stops R US ?

Can the section on MOS:STOPS be moved to follow sections such as the one on acronyms?

Can the title be changed to something like "Stops following abbreviations" or "Full stops after abbreviations"?

Can it perhaps be edited so as to demonstrate an abbreviation without stops and/or so as to change the displayed example to a non-national example?

The section on MOS:STOPS may be suggestive that stops should be used in the use of acronyms and this is even before information on acronyms has been presented. It says: "If an abbreviation ending in a full stop ends a sentence, do not use an extra full stop (e.g. New York is in the U.S. and not New York is in the U.S..)"

At present the TOC currently reads:

1 Full stops
2 Acronyms
2.1 Exceptions
2.1.1 Ship names
2.1.2 Time zones
2.1.3 Miscellanea
2.2 Acronyms in page titles
2.3 Acronyms as disambiguators
2.4 Acronyms in category names
3 Contractions
4 Initials
5 Shortenings
5.1 Song-writing credits
5.2 Miscellaneous shortenings
6 Symbols
6.1 Unit symbols
6.2 Miscellaneous symbols
7 Latin abbreviations
8 Abbreviations widely used in Wikipedia
9 Special considerations

As MOS:STOPS relates to acronyms and endings I suggest the section be moved either to become a final subsection of Acronyms or be placed at a point in the text after acronyms, possibly to follow: Abbreviations widely used in Wikipedia.

Regarding the content of MOS:STOPS can a focus be placed in the content on following guidelines like WP:UCRN?

In reality stops aren't greatly used in Wikipedia: site:https://en.wikipedia.org/ US OR "U.S." OR UK OR "U.K."

and less so on the web: (US OR "U.S." OR UK OR "U.K.") AND "(States OR America OR American OR Kingdom OR Britain OR British).

I think that one of the reasons for the prevalence of stops in U.S. related articles in Wikipedia may be a result of misreading of MOS:STOPS in the form that it is currently written.

Gregkaye ✍♪ 12:00, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

I like the general idea. However, WP:UCRN is a naming convention criterion from WP:Article titles policy, and has nothing to do with in-article style. AT derives style rules from MOS, to which it expressly refers in something like 8 sections. PS: They're actually points, not stops. A lot of British-English speakers conflate the two, but the character is the point (period in American English, dot in tech-speak), while a stop is only one of its grammatical functions (ending a sentence), and expressly not this function.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  11:39, 24 October 2014 (UTC)

Initial–dot–space–initial–dot–space

I can't imagine why this is mandated (well, the default), against common practice in publications and among WP editors, myself included, and the recommendations for "Miscellaneous abbreviations" overleaf. The exceptions to the default are a garbled mess inviting dissonance practice in relation to wp:title and wp:mos. The dots and the spaces should be optional and the format in this respect article-consistent. Tony (talk) 02:20, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

Agree with TONY. Wikipedia should certainly support good and appropriate use of grammar but I don't think it is our place to prescribe on issues such as this. Surely issues such as WP:UCRN are the centrally important factors. WP:CONCISE might even get a say. Gregkaye ✍♪ 12:13, 3 October 2014 (UTC)
I think it should be a WP:RFC at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (MOS proper covers it, it's not some minor detail only appearing in MOS:ABBR), and advertised at WP:VPP since it borders on a WP:PERENNIAL disagreement. The UCRN and CONCISE rationales are invalid; they're part WP:Article titles policy, which does not address in-article style. AT derives its style rules from MOS, not the other way around. Personally, I think no space should be the standard, as it is with all other abbreviations. The US does not usually space initials, nor does India. Does the UK? I don't think so. As far as I can tell, the only reason we do it is that "William A. Spinks" is written that way, not "WilliamA. Spinks", so "W.A. Spinks" should be "W. A. Spinks". But that's, well, stupid. I don't agree with the idea of having it be up to either editorial choice, or "what [someone fudges the statistics to show their preferred version of] the majority of reliable sources do", since sources are simply not consistent on this, with only the rarest exceptions like Russell T Davies. In the rare case reliable sources overwhelmingly go along with a subject's preferred space, no space, or no dot at all (usually after extensive marketing efforts by the subject and their record label/book publisher/agent to "require" in-industry publications to comply), it's just like cases where WP:AT has decided to go with lower casing (k. d. lang). MOS then styles the article text that way too, because it abhors articles that contradict their title. This is a rare occurrence, and is not a general case of "AT conflicts with MOS and trumps it". That's simply an incorrect analysis of their relationship. Rather, MOS itself clearly allows that there will be occasional exceptions to its rules, and it makes them under pretty much the same conditions AT does - overwhelming proof that the real world expects the exception. I.e., MOS and AT simultaneously come to the same conclusion. Same goes for iPod, etc.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  12:28, 24 October 2014 (UTC)

Country names

I notice the table lists various country names including UK, US, USSR and UAE as not needing to be spelled out on first appearance. I am interested to know the rationale for this. I am not sure it is safe to assume that all of our readers will securely know what these abbreviations mean without it being explained. --John (talk) 08:48, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Why would you doubt that any reader of English would not know US and UK? In my mind, of the ones you listed, only UAE needs to possibly be spelled out. As far as USSR, any English-reading Baby Boomer of whatever country knows that, but as time passes less readers might know it. I don't think it should be spelled out though -- the wikilink provides ample and readily available clarification. If we can use unpronounceable jargon in scientific and medical articles (and Wikipedia is chock full of such usages/articles, many of them FAs), without any further explanation or aid other than a possible (but often omitted) wikilink, I don't personally think a wikilinked USSR merits spelling out without a similarly good reason. Softlavender (talk) 04:51, 23 August 2014 (UTC)
I would doubt that because I have experience of living and working in Southern Africa where English is the lingua franca but I would not bet money on many people knowing what UK and US stood for or which was which. I would imagine India will be the same. UAE I doubt if many people anywhere in the world know what it means. USSR I am less concerned with as it is historical, but it will inherently get less and less known as time goes by. The obvious solution is not to spell it out but to use "Soviet Union" instead. We cannot depend on a link to do the job because of WP:OVERLINK and the need to preserve meaning in print where there are no links. I propose changing this recommendation for the above reasons. Any response? --John (talk) 18:18, 28 August 2014 (UTC)
Just spell them all out at first appearance. There's no reason not to. PS: You'd be surprised what children don't know, and they're a major part of our readership. I'd bet good money that the majority of pre-teens in the US don't know what any of those stand for other than "US" (yes, even "UK", which average Americans know, incorrectly, as "England", like most English-speakers incorrectly call the Netherlands "Holland").  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  13:23, 24 October 2014 (UTC)

Revisiting et al.

Is there a guideline on italicising or not italicising "et al."? The rather short discussion in 2011 does not seem dispositive. Wikipedia talk:Manual of_ Style/Abbreviations/Archive 2#Et al.. There is some question whether "et al." has been fully assimilated into English. Most style manual avoid the question, by making an explicit rule, or saying in scientific writing the italics is not used. Joshi, Yateendra. "Latin phrases in scientific writing: italics or not". The use of italics for "et al." seems to be more prevalent in the UK, see e.g., Coxhead, Peter. "A Referencing Style Guide". The page at Help talk:CS1 errors used the unitalizied version, without comment. It is not listed in the WP:MOS#Abbreviations section nor on that main page at all. WP:MOS#Foriegn words continues to say:Use italics for phrases in other languages and for isolated foreign words that are not common in everyday English. "Et al." is certainly not common in everyday English. On this page I notice that in the Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Abbreviations#Miscellaneous shortenings section that "cf." and "viz." are italicised but that "et al." and "fl." are not. Again without comment. Right now it seems to be a matter of preference and not guideline, vis-à-vie the advice: Style and formatting should be consistent within an article, though not necessarily throughout Wikipedia. Where more than one style is acceptable, editors should not change an article from one of those styles to another without a good reason. --Bejnar (talk) 16:57, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

It's less assimilated than "en masse" and "per se", which is less so than "e.g." and "i.e.", "re:", and "interregnum", in turn less so than "etc.", "versus", "per capita", and really common legal terms like "post-mortem", "pro bono" (many still italicize the legal ones, though we do not do this, pretty much ever, for somewhat analogous New Latin/ISV science and medical terminology, even when it coincides with the Latin or Greek originals, e.g. "foetus"). "Et al." is arguably more assimilated than "ibid." and "op. cit.", "in vivo", and "sine qua non", though not by much. Sources vary in their handling of latinisms in this familiarity range, leaning toward italicization, but leaning back away from it for abbreviated forms used in citations (at least when the style guide in question is aimed at an audience, like academics or journalists, who don't like italicization).
  • Editage.com isn't a reliable source, it's user-edited content just like AskExperts.com and About.com, created by self-styled experts who are often full of it.
  • The New Oxford Dictionary for Scientific Writers and Editors (2009, the first update since 1992) explicitly does italicize "et al.", which has its own entry. It also does this with "'c.'" (which it prefers over "'ca.'", unlike some other sources), but not with "etc.", "i.e.", "e.g." (which do not have entries). There are no entries for, and I did not run across usage of "op. cit", "cf.", "ibid.", etc., but we can infer from it italicization of the first two that it would italicize these as well. It also does not engage in the noxious practice of italicizing only part of cross-references (e.g. "see chirality"); it doesn't italicize them at all, while many others do, in whole or part.
  • The New Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors (2005) About "et al.", it says "not ital. in general use, sometimes ital. in bibliographies", which is the primary use of the term on WP. Italicizes "c." for circa (and prefers it over "ca." for some reason, even though it also has an entry for "c.", not italicized, standing for 'century' or 'centuries'. Also italicizes "et seq.", Does not italicize "cf.", "op. cit." or "ibid.", though if pressed I'd bet money the editors would say that works that italicize "et al." would do so with these, too. Predictable, it does not italicize the very common "etc.", "i.e." and "e.g."
  • Chicago Manual of Style (16th ed., 2010) recommends in the italics section "Commonly used Latin words and abbreviations should not be italicized", listing "et al." and "ibid." specifically. As is often the case (because the work is so palimpsestuous, with different editors veering from staunchly rigid and conservative, to desperately trying to keep up with the Internet), Chicago contradicts itself, saying elsewhere, in the abbreviations section, "Italic versus roman type for abbreviations: Chicago italicizes abbreviations only if they stand for a term taht would be italicized if spelled out." It gives OED for Oxford English Dictionary, but then repeats the "ibid." example, even though we would certainly italicize ibidem, as would Chicago itself. [Note that it also ignores it's own advice here and refers to itself as "Chicago", as if it meant the city, instead of Chicago, an abbreviation of Chicago Manual of Style, itself an abbreviation of University of Chicago Press Manual of Style. While it's comprehensive in scope, it's so unreliable since at least the 15th edition that it can't actually be relied upon, except where confirmed by other style guides. It has many other errors in it, referring to the wrong authority for common names of horticultural plants, mistakenly expanding "TPC/IP" as "transmission control protocol/Internet protocol" (it should be capitalized, because they're published standards, i.e. titles of works, namely DARPA, now IETF, RFC 793 Transmission Control Protocol and RFC 791 Internet Protocol, respectively; we capitalize them properly on WP. There are dozens more errors Chicago I've found myself, and comprehensive review would find a really troubling number of them.]
  • Chicago Manual of Style (14th ed.): Going back to when Chicago had stable editorship and goals, we find that it classifies "et al." not as a "general" abbreviation like "etc.", and "e.g.", but among its list of "purely scholarly abbreviations". While Chicago does not italicize any of them (in the section on italicizing loanwords, it says ""Roman type should be used for such scholarly Latin words and abbreviations as the following: ibid., et al., ca., passim, idem"), what we have here is a rationale we can weigh: Chicago does usually italicize foreign words and phrases, but not these, because they're "scholarly" as distinguished from common or simply foreign, and it classifies the scholarly ones together regardless of abbreviated status. This is quite different from some other sources, which italicize or not based solely on familiarity in general-audience works, or would normally do so but de-italicize all abbreviations. MOS recognizes no such special class of "scholarly" words, which leaves us to ponder the other sources and their rationales. Chicago, neither the current ed. nor this one, predating the public Internet, is useful to us on this question.
  • "The Guardian Style Guide" says: "Use italics for foreign words and phrases .... Foreign words and phrases: Italicise, with roman translation in brackets [where necessary, which it wouldn't be for "et al.", if it really is a foreign word or phrase and not an anglicised one, in which case it is roman with no accents (exceptions: exposé, lamé, pâté, résumé, roué)." The Guardian does not address "et al." specifically. This is a guide for news style, and recommends many expedient/sloppy things MOS would not, so it's almost surprising that it goes with italics here. While "et al." is fairly common in academic writing, it is not "anglicised". It does show better-assimilated latin abbreviations in roman, with no dot: "e.g.", "etc". However, much of it is completely incompatible with MOS, recommending daft nonsense like "Nasa", "Nato", "pin number" (which is 2x stupid), "pdf", "awol", and (I couldn't make this up), "season affective disorder (Sad)", which is is pretty close to insane
  • "BBC News Styleguide" [sic] doesn't address italics at all, since it's mostly intended for broadcasting.
  • "English Style Guide: A Handbook for authors and translators in the European Commission" (7th ed.) states "Foreign words and phrases used in an English text should be italicised .... Exceptions: words and phrases now in common use and/or considered part of the English language, e.g. role, ad hoc, per capita, per se, etc." It doesn't address "et al." specifically; "common" is subjective, and its questionable whether "et al." is assimilated enough to be "considered part of the English language" proper, or we wouldn't be having this dicussion; no one, pretty much, ever italicizes "etc." and "versus" any longer, as they are fully assimilated into English (much as the french word "rôle" has become English "role" and lost its circumflex accent in English about two generations ago (after the advent of mass-market roleplaying games in the 1970s).
  • The EU "Interinstitutional style guide" (2011) [one of the only style guides in the world besides WP:MOS that uses sentence case for titles and headings, BTW] says "Write all Latin abbreviations in roman. ... Latin words should usually be printed in italic...." It defers to the New Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors" on which ones are so assimilated they don't need italicization.
  • "Introduction to Basic Legal Citation" (Peter Martin, Cornell U., 2011) italicizes, and says in particular to do so with "the cross reference words: 'id., 'supra,' and 'infra'" ... When 'e.g.' appears ....", strongly implying it would also italicize "et al." in general contexts. It does not do so when "et al." is used in the name of a legal party in a case citation, because roman type is mandatory for the entire party name in legal style. It does not italicize extra-common examples like "etc." The Cornell guide summarizes The Bluebook, the ALWD Citation Manual and other (US) legal sources, so we needn't examine them separately (and, for once, I don't have copies of them anyway).
  • The "Journal of Irish and Scottish Studies Style Guide" (revd. FV 2008) says simply "Use italics for foreign words or phrases which have not been fully accepted into the English language." It does not directly address "et al." It does not italicize extra-common cases like "etc.", nor some less frequent ones like "ibid.", so it probably would not italicize "et al." despite its italics-use rule.
  • The "Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society Style Guide" (2011) appears to be identical to the "JISS Style Guide", above, almost word-for-word, except it does italicize where JISS does not – "Latin indicators such as ibid and op cit. ..." – and so would likely italicize "et al."
  • The "Language Journal of the Linguistic Society of America Style Sheet" (2011) is essentially incompatible with MOS, demanding "Do not use italics for emphasis, or to mark common loanwords or technical terms: ad hoc, façon de parler, ursprachlich, binyan, etc." In WP's context, none of those words would be considered "common" other than "ad hoc". It also recommends many other rules MOS would reject, e.g. usin gboldface for "forms originally written in the Greek alphabet", and using small caps for technical terms at first occurrence and (gasp!) for emphasis, where MOS would use a link, and bold, respectively.
  • "The Times Style and Usage Guide" (2010), like the The Guardian's, is a news-style manual that does many things MOS would not. It says that "uncommon, non-anglicised foreign words go in italics, but err on the side of roman (eg, in extremis, hors d'oeuvre, angst, de rigueur) ...." and "write in roman when foreign words and phrases have become essentially a part of the English language (eg, elite, debacle, fête, de rigueur, soirée); likewise, now use roman rather than italic, but retain accents, in a bon mot, a bête noire, the raison d'être .... When Latin phrases are in common usage, use roman rather than italics, eg, caveat emptor, quid pro quo, QED, ex parte injunction, habeas corpus".
  • "Modern Humanities Research Association Style Guide" (2nd ed., rev. 2.3, 2009) de-italicizes, but inconsistently. It specifically mentioned "et al." as not italicized, but insists on italicizing "circa" and "c." for no stated reason.
  • The "National Geographic Style Manual" (2012) gives only "Foreign words that have not become anglicized, on first use only, in text and legends." It does not address "et al." specifically, nor anything in a similar stage of assimilation such as "op. cit." It does not italicize extra-common cases like "etc." and "i.e."
  • The "Oxford University Style Guide" (internal, 2012) says to "use italics for foreign words and phrases embedded within your text", without addressing "et. al". It recommends many styles MOS would not tolerate, such as "eg J R R Tolkien" ... eg Oxf instead of Oxon" ... bid, p 229, as if their "." key were broken. It illustrates some Latin abbreviations without italics ("ibid", in previous example), but italicizes unabbreviated Latin words.
  • The Handbook of Good English (Edward D. Johnson, Facts on File, rev. & upd. ed., 1991) only says, vaguely: "Use italics for isolated foreign words if they are too uncommon to treat as English words, but not for foreign proper nouns and proper noun phrases except when special emphasis or clarity is needed." The work itself studiously avoids latinate abbreviations, and doesn't even have a single case of "i.e." or "e.g." in it. It has an entire section on "etc." (yes, really – I double-checked that it wasn't just a case of italicization of words-as-words) and italicizes it, so we know that it would go with italic "et al."
  • The Los Angeles Times Stylebook (1981): "Use italics for foreign words or phrases ... when they seem sufficiently unfamiliar to justify them: cacique, couscous, de facto, quid pro quo, au jus, ad infinitum, ad nauseam, amicus curiae. Do no use italics for foreign words ... when they seem to have become assimilated: adagio, aria, ad hoc, cacciatore, concierge...." Does not address any abbreviated forms.
  • The Copyeditor's Handbook (Alice Levine, U. of Calif. Pr., 3rd ed., 2011) does not italicize any latinate abbreviations typically used in citations and other academic writing, including "et al."
  • The Yahoo! Style Guide (Chris Barr, et al., St. Martin's Griffin, 2010), which focuses on online style, says "Foreign words should be in italics when possible". It does not illustrate "et al.", and does not apply this to "e.g.", "i.e." or "etc." I can't find examples in it of "ibid."/"ibid.", etc.
  • Right, Wrong and Risky: A Dictionary of Today's American English Usage (Mark Davidson, W. W. Norton & Co., 2006) gives various examples of latinisms it considered fully assimilated (and contradicts LA Times above, de-italicizing several cases such as "de facto", "quid pro quo", etc., and giving roman-type examples many readers would not recognize, such as "cui bono?", "rara avis", and "infra dig", so I'm not sure it's much use here. The one case I can find of "et al." is italicized, in the entry for "etc.", but this may be for words-as-words purpose (the book italicizes all of its examples that are not in quotation marks).
  • The Associated Press Stylebook (2013) recommends quotation marks for foreign words and phrases, I kid you not. Being news style, it has many other points that MOS would never accept. It treats "etc." and "vs." as assimilated into standard English, but does not address other, less frequent, abbreviated latinisms.
  • Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed., 2005) never italicizes any entries, including for "et al.", not even foreign words with accent marks (e.g. the entry "dénoument"). It does always italicize Latin (etc.) words in etymologies. The style guide at the back suggests not italicizing any word appearing in its A–Z entries, so it would not italicize any abbreviated latinisms that occur in English language works, unless they're very peculiar ones (it has A–Z entries for everything you'd expect, like "op. cit." and "viz." and so on).
  • Webster's Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language (Random House Gramercy, 1996) does italicize foreign words and phrases, and does not do so with "et al.", "op. cit.", etc.
  • Webster's New Explorer Encyclopedic Dictionary (Merriam-Webster, 2006) does not italicize any entries, including foreign words and phrases, but does italicize them in etymologies. Usage guide in the back has the same suggestion as the M-W Collegiate.
  • The Tormont Webster's New Encyclopedic Dictionary (Houghton Mifflin / Tormont, 1987) does not italicize any entries, including foreign words and phrases, but does italicize them in etymologies. It is unrelated to the M-W publications, and has no usage guide.
  • Random House Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (2001) does not italicize any entries, including foreign words and phrases, but does italicize them in etymologies. Usage guide in the back says "Words and phrases from a foreign language should be put in italics .... Words of foreign origin that have become familiar in an English context should not be italicized", so presumably it would not italicize "et al."
  • The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011) italicizes neither foreign entries nor even foreign words in etymologies, instead using italics for surrounding words in etymologies, e.g. "< L.Latin", and it has no usage guide.
  • The American Heritage College Dictionary (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010) does not italicize any entries, including foreign words and phrases, but does italicize them in etymologies. The usage guide in the front says: "Italicize foreign words and phrases not yet assimilated into the English language". It gives "Sturm und Drang" as an example, but the entry for this phrase is not italicized, nor are any others. As it italicizes this phrase in actual usage, but also provides an entry for it, appearance in the dictionary is thus not by itself considered an indication of assimilation (the opposite of the case for the major Merriam-Webster dictionary, above).
  • Webster's New World English Grammar Handbook (2nd ed., 2009) says: "Use italics for foreign words and phrases, but note that many words and phrases of foreign origin have been absorbed into the English language and are no longer italicized." It then suggests consulting a recent dictionary, but this is useless advice because most dictionaries do not italicize loanwords. The book has no section on abbreviations.
  • Gardner's Modern American Usage (Bryan A. Gardner, Oxford U. Pr., 3rd ed., 2009) gives the same general "if an imported term hasn't been fully naturalized, it should appear in italics" advice as many of the others do, but illustrates using roman type even for relatively uncommon cases, with diacritics, e.g. "décolletage", which I think most would rightly italicize. Gardner specifically de-italicizes "et al.", because he sees it as the people-only equivalent of "etc.", used properly only for inanimate things. I.e., he's making a judgment not based on familiarity, but on symmetry; it's one form of consistency at the cost of another. (Note: Gardner is the author of The Redbook: A Manual on Legal Style, and his MAU shows a bias in the direction of American legal style.)
  • The Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors (2003, published as part of Oxford Style Guide) gives the abbreviation of "et alia" as "et al." and the abbreviation of "et alibi" as "et al.", suggesting a purely familiarity-based approach and one that assumes most readers are familiar with the more common expansion of "et al." This volume as been replaced by the publisher with the one I cited toward the top of this list, but they're significantly different publications, and worth examining separately.
  • The Oxford Guide to Style (2003, published as part of Oxford Style Guide), specifically advises "et al." despite observing that et alii is italicized. [Note: et al. is an abbreviation for et alia (neuter), et aliae (feminine), and et alii (masculine).] This sub-volume updates, a bit, the old Hart's Rules, but has in turn been replaced by the The New Hart's Rules, cited below.
  • New Hart's Rules: The Handbook of Style for Writers and Editors (2005, Oxford U. Pr.'s replacement for The Oxford Guide to Style) contradicts is earlier version, suggesting specifically that et al. is usually in roman type in "general" context, but is often italicized in bibliographic use, which is what most WP usage of it is.
  • Merriam-Webster's Guide to Punctuation and Style (2nd ed. 2001) specifically de-italicizes "et al."
  • Merriam-Webster's Concise Dictionary of English Usage [Spine title Merriam-Webster Usage Dictionary] (2002) specifically de-italicizes "et al." So does it's older Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage ed. (1994).
  • The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage (revd. & exp. ed., 1999) does not address this, and is excessive news style that is fundamentally incompatible with MOS (it doesn't even permit italicization of genus and species, or of foreign phrases, or even titles of major works, except in The New York Times Book Review, where it follows similar patterns to the other news style sources above.
  • Wired Style: Principles of English Usage in the Digital Age (Constance Hale & Jessie Scanlon, Broadway Books, revd. & upd. ed., 1999) does not address this, but follows a similar pattern of (usually) italicizing foreign words and phrases not fully assimilated into English.
  • The Columbia Guide to Online Style (Janice R. Walker & Todd Taylor, Columbia U. Pr., 2nd ed., 2006), does not address this, and mostly dates to 1998, so is obsolete. [Whatever revision was done for the 2006 ed. was woefully insufficient, and the number of outright factual errors, e.g. about HTML markup, is shocking.]
  • New Oxford American Dictionary (3rd ed., 2010), does not italicize any entries, including foreign words and phrases, but does italicize them in etymologies. It has no usage guide. So, it's entry "et al." doesn't inform us either way.
  • The Columbia Guide to Standard American English (Kenneth G. Wilson, Columbia U. Pr. / MJF Books, 1993): Regarding even "i.e." and "e.g." it says "note carefully the punctuation and typeface (roman or italic) requirements of use; these may vary with the publisher. Most editors put them in italics...." It says that "et al." is regularly used enough "it often is not printed in italics", suggesting that it should be by default, like "i.e." The Columbia does not italicize "etc." We can tell from the above that in the 21 years since this was published that italicization of "i.e." and "e.g." have been dropped by almost everyone, but this is less certain of the principally citation-oriented abbreviations like "et al.", "cf.", "op. cit", etc.
  • I've skipped various paperback dictionaries that are just abridged versions of larger ones.
  • I'm missing several unabridged dictionaries I own, because I'm not sure what box they're in. If I find them in short order, I'll update this with info from them. Likewise, I have OED on CD-ROM, but it's a late-2000s Windows XP CD-ROM that I'll have to find, and see if it will run on Win 7, Win 8 or (in a VM) Mac OS X. All of the above is basically a trial run of using my entire physical and online library of style guides to research a question. It was very time consuming, but I'd probably get a bit faster at it, especially after I'm done weeding out which sources are too divergent from MOS, or just internally self-contradictory and error-ridden (e.g. Chicago 16th ed.) to be useful, and which are revisions or abridgments of earlier works with different names.

 — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  09:18, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

Conclusions

The conclusion we can draw with certainty from all of those sources are:

  1. Real-world usage is mixed.
  2. Off-WP style sources' recommendations are mixed, but lean toward roman type for "et al." and other such abbreviations, with inconsistent exceptions ("c."/"ca." being the most common).
  3. Some sources are certain that majority/default usage is italicized.
  4. Roman type is found most often in (perhaps among others, and not limited only to) journalistic and legal sources, with usage more mixed in scientific and academic.
  5. The rationales (explicit or reasonably inferable) for roman type (and for italicization) vary widely; not all of them in favor of roman are even compatible with one another (i.e. they converge on roman by coincidence).
  6. Not all of these rationales are compatible with or relevant to the concerns of MOS, and many of those in favor of roman are wildly incompatible with MOS on numerous points, making them essentially irrelevant.

Thus: Our MOS should do what we, the editors who care to build it, think is most useful for the largest number of readers, i.e., for the roughly average reader, not for academics, journalists, or other specialists in particular.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  09:18, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

What to do based on those conclusions

  • My position on this is that, given the above research (which has changed my mind):
    • We should retain italicization of: "c." (when it means circa, and we should prefer "ca." which is not confusable for an abbrev. of 'century'), "fl.", "et al.", "et seq.", "cf.", as well as (to the limited extent we ever use them here) "op. cit.", "ibid." (or "ib." but prefer the former), "id.", "q.v.", "q.q.v", "ff.", "viz.", and similar terms of art (e.g. the unabbreviated "sic" and "passim") in formal, academic writing and citation. (Some of these are mostly going to just appear in quoted material.)
    • We should use roman type for "etc." (and "&c." when it appears in quotations, but deprecate that otherwise), "i.e.", "e.g.", and "vs." [note: "v." in legal case names], all of which are common today even in the most informal text messages.

    The MOS-facing and reader-facing rational for this is that only the latter three are familiar to nearly all marginally competent readers of the English language (e.g. middle school/junior high school in US terms – about the 7th post-kindergarten year of education), and English-as-a-second-language learners with enough fluency to partake of mainstream, adult-level, English-language written media without difficulty. All of the others terms, while very familiar to college-educated English-speakers, are not at all familiar to pre-pubescents, nor to "average joes and janes", like the stereotypical laborer or grocery cashier, and these people are large Wikipedia readership constituencies, even if they do not fit the demographics of our typical editors. We italicize them because they are foreign loan words/phrases that are not fully assimilated into English the way "etc." has become. While "et al.", "c."/"ca.", "cf." and "sic" have gained limited traction in less formal writing beyond that attained by "q.v.", "ibid.", etc., it does not rise to nearly the level of everyday acceptance of "etc.", "e.g." and "i.e."

    PS: One concern latent in many of these style guides is that italicization of some of these terms in immediate proximity to italicized titles of works, and other uses of italics, e.g. "see Corazo (2004)", may be confusing. But WP's doesn't italicize as many things in citations as some other publishers (and fields of publishers) do, and our predominant citation style is template-parameter-based, and well-separates italicized citation elements in visual output: Doe, Jane; Guy, Sum Yung; Persson, Pat; et al. (2014). The Mysterious Book. Bookworm Press. pp. 12–13. {{cite book}}: Explicit use of et al. in: |last4= (help), for example; or Doe, Jane; Guy, Sum Yun; Persson, Pat; et al. (2014). "The Obtuse Article". Proceedings of the Academy of Underwater Basketweaving. X (7): 12–13. {{cite journal}}: Explicit use of et al. in: |last4= (help). Many of the other style guides just hate italics (and dots). Others sacrifice one form of consistency ("et alia/alii/aliae" + "et al.") for another ("etc." + "et al.") which is not a net gain of any kind. Others contradict each other directly as to what is and is not assimilated "enough" into English (as understood by the target audience of the stylebook in question). None of these are important for or to MOS (or WP). Another wants to draw some elitist distinction between academic and general usage, relegating italicization to only non-academic foreign loan words/phrases. Finally, still others want to draw some kind of as-if-magically-transmuted distinction between foreign words and their abbreviated forms, while MOS recognizes no such distinction other than punctuation and that we favor avoiding the abbreviated forms except in parentheticals.

    PPS: Don't put any stock in "Style and formatting should be consistent within an article, though not necessarily throughout Wikipedia." That was inserted without consensus, and it contradicts the actual primary function of MOS, which has always been site-wide consistency. Otherwise we would not need any MOS but one sentence: "Use any style attested in reliable sources, as long it is consistent within the article, and default to the style chosen by the first major contributor." That would be much simpler, but WP would be an unbelievable mess. MOS evolved specifically because that situation was the original, informal status quo in WP's early days, and the results were intolerable.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  09:18, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

Above sea level

Can above sea level be abbreviated as ABS? NickGibson3900 Talk Sign my Guestbook Contributions 06:04, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

AMSL or maybe ASL is much better. SchreiberBike talk 06:33, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
But use "above mean sea level (AMSL)" on first occurrence. This not SpecialistPedia.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  09:27, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

Not referring to something (eg a title) in full

I wrote the Songs from the Black Hole article, about the album Songs from the Black Hole. Is it OK to refer to the album simply as Black Hole after the first mention? I'd really like to be able to write something like "Cuomo worked on the Black Hole songs...", for example. I think readers will understand, but it might not look proper enough. Popcornduff (talk) 20:48, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

Father

I see no entry in wp:Manual_of_Style/Abbreviations#Abbreviations_widely_used_in_Wikipedia for abbreviating 'Father'. There are entries for Reverend and Monsignor. I think a well-used abbreviation is Fr (with or without following period). This can also stand for 'Fray', but the context will make clear which. Unbuttered parsnip (talk) mytime= Mon 10:49, wikitime= 02:49, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Templates

Should this page mention templates such as {{circa}}/{{c.}} or {{floruit}} (also compare {{sic}})? These are felt to be useful by some, but not necessarily known even to experienced editors. I for one have no idea how many there are. Therefore, I would appreciate a list. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 20:51, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

Washington, D.C.

I was not able to spot a guideline on this specifically, so I figured I may as well ask. This one seems strange, possibly confusing in some contexts, without the full stops:

  • Washington, D.C.
  • Washington, DC

Thoughts? djr13 (talk) 03:50, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Our article is at Washington, D.C.. I figure if the article is under that name, that is the consensus on Wikipedia for how to handle it. Hope that helps. SchreiberBike talk 08:02, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Shortenings examples

The Shortenings section of the article uses the words rhino and bike, neither of which I want to see in normal article prose, except in quotes. If a Wikipedia article needs to discuss the commuting habits of someone, it should say something like "John Jones usually commutes to work by bicycle", or "John Jones usually bicycles to work"; it should not use the word "bike", which aside from excessive informality can also be taken to refer to a motorcycle. I am horrified that it says "words such as rhino are fine". The word "rhino" is not fine. If John Jones was gored by a rhinoceros, it should say "rhinoceros", not "rhino". —Anomalocaris (talk) 09:26, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

I completely agree with you. Chris the speller yack 15:37, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

Contractions

It says "single-word contractions are acceptable as long as they are not ambiguous". I don't think "gov't" ot "dep't" belong in Wikipedia aticles, except of course in quotations. These words might be considered abbreviations rather than contractions, but other than standard expectations of usage, how is "Mr" as a contraction of "mister" different from "gov't" as a contraction of "government"? —Anomalocaris (talk) 17:46, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

Appropriate usage of "i.e." and "e.g." on Wikipedia

See Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style § Appropriate Usage of "i.e." and "e.g." on Wikipedia for a discussion on whether "e.g." and/or "i.e." should be followed by a comma consistently on Wikipedia. —sroc 💬 10:42, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Possessives

Re this edit - West Coast Railway Company has been initialized as WCRC after its first use. That paragraph is talking about the company as an entity, thus the use of the possessive WCRC's instead of thw plural WCRCs would seem to be correct, but I've got a gut feeling that somewhere it is written in the MOS that the apostrophe is not used. For that reason, I've not reverted the edit. I'm comfortable with either, but if it is to be reverted then the reason should be stated and linked to in the edit summary. Mjroots (talk) 07:49, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

I don't think there is any basis for argument; the possessive requires an apostrophe and an 's'. If the MOS says otherwise (and I'm sure it doesn't), then the MOS needs to be fixed. Chris the speller yack 10:44, 16 April 2015 (UTC)
Mjroots: Yes, when pluralizing the apostrophe is not used.
I agree with Chris the speller and Bob the Angry Flower[1]: Never add an apostrophe when pluralizing. Always add an apostrophe when indicating possession. If the MOS says otherwise, the MOS needs to be fixed. --DavidCary (talk) 13:59, 6 July 2015 (UTC)
I agree the apostrophe is absolutely required for a possessive. DBAK's edit was correct. -- Alarics (talk) 15:13, 6 July 2015 (UTC)
So: several members of the Royal Society would be several FRSs ? Looks odd.109.155.250.28 (talk) 13:56, 7 July 2015 (UTC)
Not nearly as odd as several FRS's. -- Alarics (talk) 15:07, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

Jr. and Sr. punctuation

Why does the table instruct editors to follow "First Last, Jr." format? No consensus for using the comma has been reached during discussions in archives. fdsTalk 23:03, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

Misplaced non-breaking spaces in wiki links

Can we please get a cautionary note about inserting non-breaking spaces into wiki links? I would be grateful if whoever is stewarding this MOS section would clarify this with a sentence or two of guidance for gnomers -- inserting non-breaking spaces into wiki links often breaks the link to the linked article, thereby defeating the purpose. Inserting non-breaking spaces into the "piped" portion of a pipe-link is okay, of course. Thanks. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 00:04, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

"Rev." vs "Revd"

Resolved
 – Added as requested.

I was startled to come across this page that suggests that "Rev." is the only acceptable contraction of "The Reverend". Firstly, this does not agree with our article on the subject. Moreover, it does not comply with British styles, which generally prefer "Revd". See, for example, Debretts, Crockfords, the Church of England and Oxford University. The Catholic Church in England and Wales uses this style too (see [2], as does the Methodist Church ([3]). Other organisations differ (the Guardian, the Telegraph and the BBC all prefer "Rev"), but there seems to be sufficient use of "Revd" to make it an acceptable alternative.

Apologies if this has been brought up before; I certainly couldn't find it in the archives. Relentlessly (talk) 13:23, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

  • This is one spot where the MOS ought to be modified to include both "Revd" and "Rev'd, Rt Rev'd, etc." as appropriate forms. I have this issue at a FAC I am doing. Anglicans worldwide consistently use The "Rev'd" or "Revd"—"Rev." is something the Presbyterians do. JackTheVicar (talk) 22:19, 21 October 2015 (UTC)
  • Added. Relentlessly (talk) 17:30, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

Replacement of 'St.' and 'St' by 'Saint' in titles

Resolved
 – RfC closed in favor of following WP:COMMONNAME on this.

For your information: Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 123#Replacement of 'St.' and 'St' by 'Saint' in titles.
Peco Wikau (talk) 22:31, 17 December 2015 (UTC).

Which one is the odd one out?

Please do not hover over the links. I have a point with this (or more than one..). Which one MUST not belong on the list here in the article (we could skip some that could be there, but nobody would wander about). E.g. which one (or more, or none?), must always be spelled out on first use (even when linked)? In case you can spell out, does it matter? Can you, honestly say, that the average person would know what the spelling out would be and does it matter? If you answer, please comment out the actual words and I'll finish the game be revealing.

3568 ASCII, A.D., AIDS, Airbus, A.M., AK-47, amphetamine, ASAP, ASCII, ASN.1, ATM, [A|V]DSL, BASIC, BBC, BLT, Blvd., Boeing, care package, CEO, CIA, CTO, DEC, DHCP, DNA, DOS, DRM, EADS, etc., EU, FAQ, FBI, FDA, FORTRAN, GDP, Gestapo, GIF, GIMP, GNU, HIV, HTTP[S], HURD, IANA, IBM, IEEE, Interpol, ISIS/ISIL, KFOR, KGB, LASER, LCD, LED, LOL, Nabisco, NATO, NAZI, NY, OEM, O.K., OSHA, PDP-11, PHP, PIN, PKI, RPG, SAT, Scuba, S & W, SQL, TCP/IP, UN, URL, US, UTF-8, VHDL, VISCII, Warsaw, Wine, XML. comp.arch (talk) 15:02, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

Comp.arch. is an external link. Fully half of them are redirects. I can tell that without even hovering on them. Is that the tell? Cheers! {{u|Checkingfax}} {Talk} 03:10, 17 January 2016 (UTC)
  • WP:NOT#GAME; if you have a point, please spell it out; we have better things to do than play "guess what I'm thinking".  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  20:04, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

Using sourceable abbreviations

I've added a short MOS:ABBR#Use sourceable abbreviations section, describing current actual practice in such regards, and covered in shorter form at the main WP:MOS page. It is cross-referenced from MOS:TITLES#Abbreviation of long titles. I also added a bit on handling of partial acronyms like "CinC" at MOS:ABBR#Acronyms. I do not believe these will be controversial in any way; mostly just technicalities.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  20:01, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

@SMcCandlish: What do you think constitutes sourceable? I know Soetermans is interested in this question. A common case (at least in video games) is that abbreviations will be "common" but not used by reliable sources. OTOH, for example this Google search for TLOU, which returns no uses of the phrase "TLOU" but does return (at least for me) almost all results relating to The Last of Us. --Izno (talk) 20:58, 18 February 2016 (UTC)
Thanks for the ping, Izno. At WP:VG this has been a minor yet recurring issue. Most of WP:VG/RS is written for an audience familiar with video game terminology, so titles and concepts are often abbreviated. AoM redirects to Age of Mythology for that reason, and it mentions the abbreviation. Loz: oot redirects to The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and its abbreviation isn't mentioned. --Soetermans. T / C 21:21, 18 February 2016 (UTC)
"What do you think constitutes sourceable? A common case (at least in video games) is ... not used by reliable sources." Well, that one's self-answering, isn't it? We'd apply the same sourcing standards as we would for anything else. "TLOU" for games in The Last of Us series does appear in reliable sources [4]; same goes for "AOM" or "AoM" for Age of Mythology [5] The point of the provision is that people should, e.g.:
  1. Not give World Pool-Billiard Association as "WPBA" just because they think it should be done that way. The reliable sources (including WPA's own website) use "WPA" (WPBA is a different organization in the same field, and even if it weren't, it's up to the organization whether they want to include what's after a hyphen in their own self-abbreviation or not). Similarly, it's up to Fédération Internationale Féline whether to use FIFe, rather than the "FIF" that some might expect (much less the "IFF" of an English translation of their name); and the FIFe acronym was chosen on purpose for continuity with their old name Fédération Internationale Féline d’Europe (FIFE), a decision that the RS respect and use [6]; it's not Wikipedia's place to second-guess it.
  2. Not give Brighter than a Thousand Suns as "BtaTS" or "BTATS", because this initialism cannot be found in reliable sources [7]; the only place you'll find it is in fan-written discographies, if even there.
Both of these are WP:NOR problems, and the latter case is a also a WP:JARGON problem. It's not WP's job to make up short-hand forms of things because we think we're clever. Most editors already understand this, but I still reasonably often encounter fake, unsourceable acronyms in articles, so it seems worth covering. We should definitely cover it in MOS:ABBR since it's already covered in MOS proper, and the main guideline's section on abbreviations says to see this sub-guideline for more information, so it should have, well, more information. :-)  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  22:48, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

Order of abbreviation and its full expansion

Resolved
 – Same issue as the thread above this.

Qualifier: I'm a fairly new/inexperienced editor.

So: I think it'd be nice for this page to explain where to use an abbreviation and where to use the full expanded version of the thing the abbreviation represents. For example, in most of the articles I've read, if there's an abbreviation, the first time around the full title is used and it's followed by the abbreviation in parentheses, and the rest of the article simply uses the abbreviation.

With that in mind, I've made this edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Trade_dress&diff=prev&oldid=699116829 . Can someone tell me what they think of this? Is it a good rule of thumb, and if so, can someone add it to this article? Thanks! --Nc4096 (talk) 10:25, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

I think that's addressed now. Basically, it's a WP:COMMONNAME matter. If our article is at the acronym title, use the acronym first, then expand it. If it's at the full name, give the expansion, then the acronym. This seems to reflect current practice, anyway.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  08:48, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

PS: See also the thread immediately above this one; same answer, and that was decided at a Village Pump RfC, so I think we're good on this one. Going to mark it resolved as well, on that basis.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  08:51, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

Apps?

Should it be written out as applications? (On a personal note, I still call them programs.) LA (T) @ 07:35, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

Depends on context. If its software for mobile devices, it should remain "app[s]", because that's a term of art for that subset of platforms (and it also applies to a few other things, including Windows Metro apps, and Chrome/Chromium apps). For Windows, Mac OS, or Linux desktop (GUI) software, it should be the full word "application[s]" (or something more specific). For commandline software, the terms "program[s]" and "script[s]", as the specific case may be (or even more specific terms like "shell(s)", "daemon(s)", etc.), are more appropriate. No one calls usermod an "application" or an "app", unless they've only used Unix/Linux for, like, a day or two. :-) "Program[s]" can be used generically, as can "software", and (in the correct context) "code". And "scripts" can also apply to certain things in a GUI context, e.g. AppleScript.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  09:00, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

Merge discussion

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Biographies#Section merge for proposed section merge of Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Abbreviations#Initials (the only human-naming matter I can find that is not in the guideline for that topic) into Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Biographies#Names (the guideline, obviously, for that topic).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  05:41, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

MOS:ACRO and MOS:BOLD/MOS:BOLDTITLE for incoming redirects

See current discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Somewhat related discussion. Please comment there, not here. --Francis Schonken (talk) 09:23, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

J. J. Watt or J.J. Watt

The discussion currently active at Talk:J. J. Watt#Requested move 2 December 2016 features arguments for either variation. Greater participation is invited. —Roman Spinner (talk)(contribs) 04:01, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

e.g., i.e. and etc. vs eg, ie and etc

Whilst I acknowledge that many international style guides will advise you use 'e.g.', 'i.e.' and 'etc.', all major UK style guides (including that of the UK government) say it should be 'eg', etc. For this reason, I suggest changing the MoS to have an alternative option ('eg', etc) for UK articles. This means US articles can remain with full stops/periods being used after the initials, but UK articles can comply with UK standards. --Sb2001 (talk) 16:11, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

italicization of acronyms/initialisms for otherwise italicized titles

I thought for sure that this inquiry would be addressed somewhere, but I can't find it, so I'm bringing it here and hoping someone can point me in the right direction: should acronyms or initialisms be italicized when they're representing something that, if spelled out whole, would be italicized? For example, if I want to repeatedly refer to Star Trek: The Next Generation in an article by its reliably-sourced initialism, after spelling it out whole on the first instance, would I refer to TNG or TNG?

I assume the former, and that's how I've been operating up until now, but I recently read an otherwise reliable, third-party source (to which I cannot link because I've already forgotten what it was) that was italicizing its initialisms. So I decided to find or get the consensus on the issue. Thank you! — fourthords | =Λ= | 16:33, 26 October 2016 (UTC)

? Of course they should be italicized. Have been doing so for a long time, and on lots of Star Trek and others articles. TNG means The Next Generation. They're the same thing. And thanks for the SOP mention, I've never really read that or focused attention on it, should be a good read. Thanks. How does it affect removing italics from a previous edit, is that in the SOP somewhere? Randy Kryn 23:00, 19 February 2017 (UTC)
Going to ping SMcClandish and Dicklyon who are both pretty aware of the rules and regs on Wikipedia grammar, to see what they think of this question. Thanks for bringing it up, and I'm surprised it's not already addressed. Randy Kryn 13:14, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

I hate to bump a thread, but I've still yet to either find an answer elsewhere or attract attention here. This needs addressing. — fourthords | =Λ= | 14:31, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

TNG, per "Italics should be used for the following types of names and titles, or abbreviations thereof: Major works of art ..." of MOS:TEXT#Names_and_titles. Batternut (talk) 09:42, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

That. That's what I've been looking for all this time. It feels odd, but if that's the consensus, then I'm happy to comply. Should this consensus be included on this page somewhere? — fourthords | =Λ= | 16:31, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

Abbreviations of italicized titles are also italicized: "J. R. R. Tolkien's LotR takes longer to read than it does to watch all the Star Trek movies, from ST:TMP onward." "A citation to Enc. Brit. isn't a very good one here, because that's a tertiary source." Etc. The fact that some sources don't follow this convention is of no consequence at all; they are different publications with their own house style guides, which are not our house style.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  18:57, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere

This discussion has forked, into an RfC at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Text formatting#RfC: some italicisation questions regarding catalogues, sets, collections and types of creative works.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  20:45, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

"Vancouver style" and MOS

The {{citation}} templates have the vauthors/veditors parameters and the name-list-format=vanc option, which apparently contradict the general WP style MOS:INITIALS (although some journals might be using this as their house style, it does not really count as a "consistently preferred style" for that person's name). This looks especially bad when one article has a mixture of citations with "normal" and this Vancouver style. I think that name-list-format=vanc must be disabled, and vauthors/veditors must produce their output in a punctuated and spaced format according to MOS:INITIALS. Moreover, the use of vauthors/veditors should be discouraged, as they force to mangle people's names. — Mikhail Ryazanov (talk) 21:44, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

Of course each article should have a consistent style, but if an article uses Vancouver style consistently for references, that is an acceptable style. MOS:INITIALS is not meant to say that citations using initials have to be re-written to use full names; that MOS page is about using names in the running prose. Featured articles use initials in some cases, such as [8] and [9] which were recently on the main page; so we cannot say there is a consensus that our well-edited articles use full names. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:27, 25 January 2017 (UTC)
I am not against using initials instead of full names, but against writing, for example, "Tolkien JR" instead of "Tolkien, J. R. R." or "J. R. R. Tolkien" and the complete impossibility to use non-Latin names with this style. — Mikhail Ryazanov (talk) 21:33, 25 January 2017 (UTC)
It seems to me that is an issue for editors at each article to decide in the context of the citations. The number of citations to names not written in an extended Latin alphabet are very small. I cannot remember the last time I saw a reference with the names in Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Arabic, or Indic scripts that would make it hard to initialize them if that was the established style. If there are entire scientific disciplines that use Vancouver style, I don't think we can claim it has fatal flaws. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:28, 26 January 2017 (UTC)
As far as I know, there are no entire fields using that style, these are just quirks of some journals and organizations, no need to copy them here. And regarding the extended Latin alphabet, the "true" Vancouver actually forbids all "non-English-like" Latin, that is all diacritics and letters like æ, ø and so on, which clearly affects almost the whole Europe (and the ban of Cyrillic scripts affects the rest of Europe) and both Americas outside the US. Though the current WP implementation is much more relaxed about "Latin", still there where complains about some Turkish letters, for example. But to make it worse, the style mandates even more ridiculous things [10]:

D'Arcy Hart  becomes  Hart D
W. St. John Patterson  becomes  Patterson WS
De la Broquerie Fortier  becomes  Fortier D
Iu. A. Iakontov  becomes  Iakontov IuA
G. Th. Tsakalos  becomes  Tsakalos GTh

So, since all this looks like a huge loss of information, and {{citation}} anyway does not follow this silly style strictly (plus, making the last 2 examples work without errors requires some additional effort), I do not see any reason why we should have it here. I understand that copy-pasting to vauthors is much easier than converting to a normal format, and that is why I said that "vauthors/veditors must produce their output in a punctuated and spaced format according to MOS:INITIALS" — the templates already use Lua to do all formatting, so implementing this change will be very simple. — Mikhail Ryazanov (talk) 03:58, 26 January 2017 (UTC)
MOS:INITIALS does not apply to citations. Furthermore Vancouver system is one of the styles that is explicitly mentioned in WP:CITESTYLE. IMHO Vancouver formatted author lists are much cleaner looking and easier to read. The use of any initial, whether or not it is followed by a period represents a loss of information. With |name-list-format=vanc, full authors names can be stored and retrieved in metadata. The best long term solution may be to move all citations to Wikidata and add a preference setting so each account could tailor the way they would like to see citations rendered. Boghog (talk) 04:02, 22 February 2017 (UTC)
Why do you think that MOS:INITIALS does not apply to citations? In my opinion, having different styles in the article text and in the references is a very strange idea. Regarding WP:CITESTYLE, I know that it mentions Vancouver, but since Vancouver contradicts MOS:INITIALS, this might be a good reason to discourage it there. (And I frankly do not understand how changing names from the usual "I. I. Rabi" to the weird "Rabi II" makes them easier to read; plus see the examples above.) — Mikhail Ryazanov (talk) 05:36, 8 March 2017 (UTC)
This highlights the main, unsolvable issue with citation styles: one person above says they find Vancouver style easier to read, another says they find it harder to read. There is no right answer to that disagreement, it is just a matter of taste. Because there is no correct answer, we allow each article to have its own citation style. Some editors may prefer one style, and some may prefer another, but we need to remember this is completely a matter of personal preference, not something that we can resolve through discussion. It is not our place to say that a style such as Vancouver - which is widely adopted in medicine - is flawed and unusable. The fact that numerous people use it professionally is evidence that some group must find it to be just fine. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:43, 8 March 2017 (UTC)
Then why do we have MOS:INITIALS at all, if it is just a matter of taste? — Mikhail Ryazanov (talk) 20:05, 9 March 2017 (UTC)
Because the overall consensus is that it is better for the WP context and is more helpful for readers. Citation styles have diverged from this common sense approach, quite a while ago, due to a WP:LOCALCONSENSUS problem; there is outright and unreasonable hostility on the part of a clique of controllers of WP:CITE that dates back to a dispute in the 2000s with MoS editors who mostly are not even around any longer. It's an old feud that most people don't even remember. The current guideline forking is just territorial posturing.

The fact of that matter is that a routine usability study could in fact easily and reliably determine whether a particular citation style is less or more readable and understandable than another, on average. The problem is that such studies take time and cost money. I really doubt WMF or anyone else would pay for them, though maybe someone looking for a graduate research problem to take on might think to do it. Anyone with a communications, linguistics, cognitive science, or related background will probably be able to accurately predict the outcomes of such usability testing, but they would need to be done anyway.

However, no amount of reasoning is ever going to mollify the fans of particular, obtuse citation styles used in particular fields, because of the specialized-style fallacy: "If journals in my field do it this particular way, this is the only way to do it, and every other approach is Wrong." That territorial instinct is not going to just go away. It's a palpable part of how professionals (and even non-professionals, like undergrads in a particular major) "feel" when they read and write. While their moodiness about this is trivial compared to the comprehension needs of our broader readership, never underestimate the amount of pointless drama and bickering those hurt feelings can generate. This sort of thing has caused squabbles that have lasted for 8 years or longer, and resulted in resignations and bans. PS: I agree with Boghog that the ultimate solution for this is user preferences re-rendering citations on the fly to suit particular preferences.
 — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  22:54, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

Abbreviations in the lead of video game articles

Hi everyone,

@Izno: and I both edit video game related articles often. We can't seem to agree on a minor issue, and that is the introduction of abbreviations in the lead section. For those not familiar, video games are often referenced to by their abbreviations as a shorthand, especially online. So instead of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, gamers and game websites use abbreviations like loz: oot. Note that the abbreviation redirects to the article of Ocarina of Time. There are couple of these kind of abbreviations, like GTA V -> Grand Theft Auto V, TLoU -> The Last of Us, AoM -> Age of Mythology, LOTR: BFME2 -> The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth II. Now, on the WikiProject Video games, I've tried to reach some consensus on this several times, but without any luck. To be perfectly clear, I personally don't think we should use these abbreviations; Wikipedia is written for a large audience and video game websites (which we use as reliable sources) write for people familiar with video games. We haven't found a middle ground as of yet, but I thought of a different solution: what if we would use {{efn}} in the lead? We could mention the abbreviation in a note, so it still is mentioned but without it appearing in the lead. Does this comply with WP's general abbreviation guidelines? soetermans. ↑↑↓↓←→←→ B A TALK 16:24, 10 March 2016 (UTC)

I would efn any abbreviation that is common in user forums, but when there is a common industry use of an abbreviation that appears regularly in articles, that should be included in the lede. Grand Theft Auto as GTA or Call of Cuty as COD are two strong examples of the last, while I'd argue that something like TLoU is more a forum term and shouldn't be included. If anything, the industry-common term examples are likely more exceptional, and we should default to efn any that aren't clearly used regularly in industry. --MASEM (t) 16:41, 10 March 2016 (UTC)
Abbreviations still need to be sourced. We don't have user reviews for reception sections or link to user-submitted websites either, so why should we start making an exemption for the abbreviation? Besides, if a reliable source actually uses it, then we can confirm it is in fact commonly used. And concerning TLoU, Kotaku uses it quite often. And that's the whole thing, for WP:CONSISTENCY we can't have it both ways; either we do mention AoM, KotOR, COD, ROTT, GoW or we don't. soetermans. ↑↑↓↓←→←→ B A TALK 16:54, 10 March 2016 (UTC)
  • Agreed, but more stringently: {{efn}} any abbreviation used prominently by reliable, secondary sources. (If an abbreviation is prominent, it should have a definitive source.) czar 17:42, 10 March 2016 (UTC)
I personally really dislike such abbreviations. I refer to Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time as Ocarina of Time and I refer to Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas as San Andreas, but using initialisms always just confuse me... However, I suppose I'm with Czar here: if reliable sources use them, we can use them within reason, at least as an alternative name. ~Mable (chat) 19:14, 10 March 2016 (UTC)
  • Make them redirs and give them as alternative names, if a reliable source can be found using them (hint: gamer forums are not reliable sources), but don't otherwise use them in encyclopedic prose. No one but big fans of the games in question knows that these things stand for. This is no different from how we treat other subject in other media. R.E.M. fans refer to one of their songs as "ITEOTWAWKI(AIFF)" or just "ITEOTWAWKI", and Tolkien nuts all know what "TLoTR:TRoTK" or "LoTR:RotK" or "LTR:RTK" mean, but this is insider jargon, not encyclopedic writing. Keep in mind that virtually anything can be abbreviated (I'm bummed that the current season of BCS is over but stoked that DM and FWD are ongoing; have you any idea what TV shows I'm referring to?), and it is not our job to account for all abbreviations (see WP:NOT#INDISCRIMINATE policy, for starters).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  01:54, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

PRC

I have removed PRC from Countries and multinational unions, as not like the others, not exceptional. The country is commonly known as China, and not abbreviated. It is formally known as the People’s Republic of China but in contexts when it’s used it’s usually spelt out in full, and the common name 'China's is also used as it’s much more likely to be recognised. This means 'PRC' should never be used on its own. It is normally only used when "People’s Republic of China" has already appeared, to save on typing/redundant repetition. I.e. it is used like any other abbreviation, not on its own so not an exception.--JohnBlackburnewordsdeeds 07:34, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, that makes sense. I'm hard pressed to think of any reason we'd use "PRC" without first using "People's Republic of China". Maybe in a table using some particular set of country codes, but those would be templated and linked, obviating any confusion as to their meaning.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  22:41, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

Overcapitalization of "vol." and "no."

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#Overcapitalization of "vol." and "no.", which is also relevant to MOS:ABBR, but pertains to material in the main MOS page.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  22:34, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

The "Related matters: dropping the dot, and MOSABBR" subtopic, in particular, notes that these abbreviations are missing from MOSABBR despite the frequency of their use.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  03:41, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

Widely used abbreviation for public limited company

Under section Abbreviations widely used in Wikipedia, the table lists: Public limited company PLC.

I propose changing this to "Public limited company plc or PLC". Public limited company notes that the lowercase is used in legal contexts, so it tends to appear on documents as the formal name. Approximately 80% of articles with this meaning of the acronym in their titles have it all-lowercase. Uppercase PLC seems to be valid, but a minority use (at least in article titles). – Reidgreg (talk) 19:46, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

The Guardian style guide agrees that it should be lowercase; 'plc not PLC' (https://www.theguardian.com/guardian-observer-style-guide-p). I would say you are right to suggest both 'plc' and 'PLC' as other style guides recommend the latter. --Sb2001 (talk) 16:02, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. I've gone ahead and made the change. For the record, here is a brief discussion at the Language Reference Desk archives (in agreement). – Reidgreg (talk) 14:13, 4 April 2017 (UTC)
Not a good idea. It is not MoS's job to try to reflect every possibility, but to pick one of them – hopefully the one which makes the most sense for the WP context. That is usually maximum internal consistency, both to avoid reader confusion and to avoid editorial junk-waving disputes. It is not to cherry-pick one field's preferred house style over another and try to impose it on Wikipedia, especially at the expense of introducing conflict between different MoS pages, as a move like this does.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  22:38, 4 July 2017 (UTC)
Some companies state their name with 'plc', whilst others use 'PLC'. I think that it is a good idea to keep to what they, themselves, use. Otherwise, drop the caps. It seems to be more common to write 'plc' in real life. -Sb2001 (talk) 22:42, 4 July 2017 (UTC)
No, and no. 1) See MOS:TM; we do not change our style to match the preferences of trademark holders. 2) Acronyms are capitalized by convention here; it's AIDS, not "aids". The exceptions to point 2 are: a) acronyms that have become so assimilated as words and are pronounced as such that the average person doesn't know they originated as acronyms (e.g. laser and radar); and b) Latinisms, that happen to be acronyms/initialisms, and the style of which was ossified by the 19th century: "c.", "q.v.", and so on (see pointer in thread below to lots of material at WT:MOS about this latter class.) PLC is not an old Latinism from the early Victorian era, and it is not an assimilated acronym pronounced as a word; no one says "puhllkh" or something like that when reading "PLC" aloud; it is sounded out as "pee-ell-see". There is no reason to treat this any differently from "UK", "EKG", "HIV", etc. The fact that some publications have their own house style has no effect on whether WP follows its own (especially given that it's based on the mainstream, general formal English guides of both sides of the Atlantic, and over decade of strife and reconciliation has gone into producing as much commonality with as little drama as possible.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  23:10, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

PS: See end of previous thread above, #italicization of acronyms/initialisms for otherwise italicized titles. It should not be necessary to point out again and again that WP has WP house style and follows it, while other publishers use their own house style. The fact never goes away, and it is the answer to about 98% of "I wanna make a style change across Wikipedia" proposals. It was the answer in the 2000s, it is now, and it still will be in the 2020s.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  23:18, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

I do understand, but it is SO rare to see 'PLC' in the UK. I have no idea why, as to me it would make more sense. I do not know what companies house do. That is probably the 'proper' style. -Sb2001 (talk) 23:20, 4 July 2017 (UTC)
Except the argument is that some companies use "plc" and some use "PLC"; you can't change the argument mid-stream. But it doesn't matter. The "rare" argument, an argumentum ad populum position which no one could prove without a tremendous amount of research, is also a non-starter, for multiple reasons (not least of which is it's only true in one place if true at all). Turns out, it's easy to disprove in seconds with a Google advanced search limited to UK sites: Gfinity PLC (London), XLMedia PLC (Jersey), Hunting PLC (London), SysGroup PLC (Liverpool), Progility PLC (London), Awilco Drilling PLC (London), all from the first two pages of search results. (Some are inconsistent, e.g. Glinwell PLC in metadata, "Glinwell plc" in logo; "plc" is common in logos for the same reason ® and ™ and "Inc." are so often very small, so as not to distract from the company branding, and you'll often find lowercasing of "co.", "inc.", "llp", "llc", "corp.", etc. in American logos that do not drop them or make them tiny). Most trademarks and other product, including albums and book titles, are given in SCREAMING ALL-CAPS as a marketing technique, yet we still do not permit that style here. It's is the same "do it because [some of] the companies do it" argument you and Reidgreg are relying on here, and it's an argument Wikipedia consistently rejects. The "lots of articles already use 'plc'" argument is the tedious "other stuff exists" fallacy. MoS is intended mostly for cleanup; no one is required to read it before editing, and people naturally write the way they are familiar with. This does not prevent us cleaning it up later, nor does it permit changing text to be non-compliant on purpose (about which, see concern raised at your talk page [11]).

WP is not written for the UK, but for the entire world. It cannot veer wildly from style and orthography to different style and orthography on an article-by-article basis, or readers get confused and editors devolve into constant bickering about the same trivia over and over again. MOS:ENGVAR permits some variation, when and only when there is no encyclopedic or reader-facing reason for the project to care one way or another. This applies to "neighbour" versus "neighbor", but it generally does not apply to handling of acronyms and abbreviations. Rendering them as harder to distinguish from regular words, from unit symbols, and from other material (especially for school children, for non-native, non-fluent users of English, and for those using screen reader software) presents serious comprehensibility, usability, and accessibility problems that cut to the heart of what Wikipedia is. This is also why we have a very limited number of acceptable date formats, have a strict system of markup for units of measure despite the real world being very random about it, do not veer back and forth between conflicting quotation styles, etc.
 — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  01:27, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

User:SMcCandlish: I know it is rare, because I live in the UK. I see 'plc' written every day. Also, I was responding to what you said about MOS:TM: I thought companies house may have a better idea. It is not just abandoning an argument, it is listening to what you are saying. -Sb2001 (talk) 16:00, 5 July 2017 (UTC)
But this is just WP:IDONTKNOWIT/WP:IKNOWIT stuff (repeated by Equinox below, in his comments about his bills). Google is not lying to you. When a dozen or more of the top two pages of search results for "plc", constrained to UK-only websites, return with "PLC" in them (and this bears out upon actually examining the websites directly), this conclusively disproves any claim that "PLC" is "rare" in the UK. It is not the dominant usage, but that's irrelevant. There is no rule that is anything like "In a given article, you must use the variant – of spelling, punctuation, or any other stylistic matter, of every single thing in your text – that is the most common variant encountered by readers who live in the exact same place as the subject of the article." If we had such a rule, the entire project would fail, because all our time would be spent researching stylistic trivia. We have our own style manual for serious reasons, and "stop wasting time on style trivia" is very high up the list.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  22:17, 5 July 2017 (UTC)
SMcCandlish, thanks for your always-thoughtful input (I hope your wrist is better). I did ask here and at the language reference desk, and on talk pages of some of the articles and contributors to those articles, and had the best of intentions. I honestly don't have any preference between PLC and plc. What had initially caught my attention were a number of pages with "Plc." in their titles (presumably in imitation of "Ltd."), and was checking for which was the preferred form. I know Wikipedia is not a democracy, but everything seemed to be pointing me toward plc which, at the time, I thought was acceptable as one of the exceptions to the rule (perhaps somehow fitting into MOS:ENGVAR). But I was probably just lazy and went with the solution of least effort – for that, I apologize. I expect that I'll accept your view of this when I have a little more time to reflect, though you didn't address my initial note the lowercase is used in legal contexts, so it tends to appear on documents as the formal name. But perhaps that's irrelevant to the larger style and policy issues you were kind enough to point out. Anyways, other than clearing up possible misunderstandings against my "editing pattern", I have no stake in this and little interest in defending the position I took three months ago. – Reidgreg (talk) 13:49, 5 July 2017 (UTC)
Not questioning anyone's intentions. I know that almost all style conflict stems from genuine desire to do what is "right" or "best", but these are intensely subjective views and inevitably lead to conflict; it's exactly like religion in this respect. Not fishing for apologies, or blame, just seeking a full-MoS discussion of the matter, because making an exception like this breaks a web of interconnection between multiple guidelines, and potentially opens a floodgate of "special exceptionalism". At this late a stage, it's very dubious that MoS needs any more exceptions of any kind, and should probably eliminate many of them inserted without a consensus discussion (I'm especially thinking of various bits to topical geekery that have slipped in).

WP's language reference desk has nothing to do with the Manual of Style, and this would not be first time that someone over there has said something that has led someone else to come to one of the MoS pages and try to change things without regard for the consensus processes that lead to MoS reading as it does (largely a hard-won compromise forged over several years of negotiation), and without awareness of the consequences of such a change aside from the article they want to do something different in. I think the language ref. desk needs to have a disclaimer on it somewhere that it is not connected in any way to MoS. My local public library has a reference desk, which will help me with, say, non-profit and government agency legal questions. Performing that research doesn't empoer either them or me to go change the library's own internal policy documents That's a pretty direct analogy. The only reason the matter comes up here is that people have a hard time distinguishing "I can create or work on any article here", something that rarely has consequences, from "I can work on shifting WP's internal governance" which actually does have consequences and requires caution. You can also get on the board of directors of the community library, but it isn't the same thing as asking or answering questions at its reference desk.

The legal/formal thing isn't of any consequence here. WP doesn't care much what the official names of things are (and they're sometimes radically different from anything the public is familiar with due to holding companies and mergers and re-branding. For titling purposes, we'll use the WP:COMMONNAME, which is almost always without any kind of corporate designation attached. For article prose, WP isn't written in legal style, the subject of all sorts of guides of its own, which conflict from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. It would not actually be possible for MOS to have a "write about all legal matters in legal style" rule, since there is no single legal style. And we have no such "write about topic X in X style" rule of any kind; resisting the insistence by specialists on specialized style only they understand is the main style conflict resolution time-sink on Wikipedia. WP needs more experts, but we need them to stop writing for other experts while they are here. Trademarks (including subcategories like servicemarks and wordmarks) are all "official names" too, protected in certain ways by law. We still do not stylistically imitate them (MOS:TM).
 — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  22:17, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

I don't have statistics either but as a lifetime UK resident I can definitely confirm that "plc" is common and "PLC" is significantly rare. Just look at your utility bills, or the finance section of a newspaper. Equinox ◑ 17:28, 5 July 2017 (UTC)
Your utility bills have the logo of your utility company. A logo is marketing, and we do not ape its stylization. I already addressed this above. WP itself already address this years ago; see MOS:TM and WP:OFFICIALNAME.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  22:17, 5 July 2017 (UTC)
Reidgreg, you say above Public limited company notes that the lowercase is used in legal contexts.. But the opening sentence of that article starts like this: "A public limited company (legally abbreviated to plc)... ". That's not quite the same, is it? That looks to me like pretty strong guidance right there. In the opening sentence of the article? That's a fact, isn't it. A legally protected fact? Martinevans123 (talk) 19:18, 5 July 2017 (UTC)
No such thing as a law that externally dictates how Wikipedia handles abbreviations or other style matters. You can stop fishing; you won't catch anything dangling bait in a bucket.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  22:17, 5 July 2017 (UTC)
Nor would I ever suggest such a thing. Even though, in so many other areas, Wikipedia tries to be ever so legally compliant? Maybe we're back to the preferred capitalisation style of the servers installed in Florida again. I'm suggesting that, because a given style is enshrined in law, at least in the UK where plcs exist, one might expect such a style to predominate in the normal usage and be used as a sensible guide as to what an encyclopedia should use. UK commercial law may be a bucket, but I'm dangling nothing, thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 23:07, 5 July 2017 (UTC)
Fallacious argument, because the premise is false. Lowercase plc isn't "enshrined in law", it's just a common legal style, which many British companies (see proof already provided) ignore in their own "official" names. If you can show us news sites, Web hosting companies, bloggers, etc., writing about British companies, or show the executives of such companies, being arrested and fined, and the statue under which this is happening, for using "PLC" instead of "plc", then maybe there's a legal argument to make.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  23:08, 6 July 2017 (UTC)
If there were a legal case, say John Smith v Widgets plc, I think as a title that would have to remain lower-case on Wikipedia. And one might argue that for consistency, plc should remain lowercase in an article with that. I'd hope that screen readers would pick up on plc like mph and many other lower-case abbreviations used on the Project. Because it's an all-consonant acronym/initialism, it can't really be mistaken for a word. Plus, you know, it having a particular connection to Britain. But I feel I'm repeating myself at this point. – Reidgreg (talk) 01:01, 6 July 2017 (UTC)
I don't see anyone arguing to change the case in a title of a legal or other work; as several others have pointed out in related discussions, this MoS stuff isn't about source citations.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  23:02, 6 July 2017 (UTC)
  • Companies House is very consistent on the matter: 'to form a public limited company (PLC), ...' but 'Tesco plc' etc. Their style is to use PLC when talking about PLCs, but plc when talking about the name of a company. –Sb2001 talk page 14:04, 29 July 2017 (UTC)
    • And Companies House's style is not WP's style. This is not CompaniesHousePedia, and we do not have their house style guide as a Wikipedia guideline. Also inferring what their internal rule must be from what you observe from a few cases is original research anyway. Do you have a copy of their internal style guide?  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  06:22, 13 August 2017 (UTC)

RFC: Periods in abbreviations for degrees

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.
The discussion has long died out and there is No Consensus. If the weights of individual arguments and their rebuttals are assigned to in the strictest possible way, a skew towards No dots may be observed.Winged Blades of GodricOn leave 15:33, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

In a recent discussion at the Teahouse there was disagreement as to whether the Bachelor of Arts degree should be listed as "B.A." or "BA" when it follows a name in the lead section of an article, in an infobox, or elsewhere in an article. Relevant MOS sections cited seemed to differ on this point. These were:

There was also disagreement as to whether BA is an acronym for purposes of applying the MOS rule about acronyms. The same rule might or might not apply to PhD vs Ph.D.

The arguments made in the Teahouse discussion can be seen at greater length there, and I rather expect will be more or less repeated here. I am asking that we develop a clear and specific consensus on which form should apply, and whether it depends on strong national ties in a particular article. While I expressed an opinion in the Teahouse discussion, I am not strongly attached to that view. DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 20:54, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

Pinging editors involved in the Teahouse discussion: (@John from Idegon, JocularJellyfish, Safiel, and Emir of Wikipedia: @2422889236x: DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 21:21, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

Safiel, your objections started the discussion that led to this RFC. I think your views would be welcome here. So would those of John from Idegon, JocularJellyfish, Emir of Wikipedia, I think. DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 00:16, 8 August 2017 (UTC)
  • @DESiegel: Acknowledging ping. I will reply to the discussion in a few minutes. Safiel (talk) 00:22, 8 August 2017 (UTC)
  • Thank you. I wasn't sure that my previous ping had been correctly formed, and therefore effective. DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 00:26, 8 August 2017 (UTC)
You're not reading all of Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Full stops and spaces: "There are some exceptions: PhD (see above) for "Philosophiae Doctor"; BVetMed for "Bachelor of Veterinary Medicine". I.e., it is not necessary to use the stops/periods/dots with degrees, and yes, this is in keeping with the MOS:POINTS observation about acronyms.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  04:19, 13 August 2017 (UTC)

Threaded discussion (BA vs B.A.)

  • No points like other degrees (BSc, MA, MSc, PhD, MD, etc.) --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:33, 6 August 2017 (UTC)
  • No full stops: they are acronyms, and the points are becoming obsolete in general usage and style guides. –Sb2001 talk page 22:37, 6 August 2017 (UTC)
  • Why would we need to abreviate a Bachelor of Arts degree in the first place?... a Doctorate (PhD), sure... a Master's (MA) maybe... but a Bachelor's degree (BA or BS) ... nah... dime a dozen... just omit it. Blueboar (talk) 22:49, 6 August 2017 (UTC)
    When we have an article about a notable person, particularly one whose notability is not as an academic, we often have a paragraph detailing that person's education, which in many cases ends at a BA (or B.A.) In such a case we routinely mention the BA. For the matter of that in articles about a person who achieved a PhD, we often list that persons BA (or BS) and MA, particularly when these were taken at different institutions than the PhD. For example, in Richard Feynman#Education his undergrad degree is mentioned, but spelled out rather than abbreviated. The same is true in Luis Walter Alvarez#Early life and Kenneth Arrow#Education and early career, juist to check three Nobel prize winners. DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 23:27, 6 August 2017 (UTC)
    In fact i believe this isuse was raised in connection with updates to the info boxes of various members of US state legislatures and other political figures. DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 23:29, 6 August 2017 (UTC)
    I would definitely argue that a BA is too trivial for an info box. Blueboar (talk) 00:44, 7 August 2017 (UTC)
    Not, i think when it is the highest level of education the subject has completed. I'll find some examples. DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 14:08, 7 August 2017 (UTC)
    Richard Curtis, BA (Oxon). --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 14:40, 7 August 2017 (UTC)
    Examples with BA or B.A. in infoboxes: Allen Ginsberg, Bruce Sterling, Isaac Asimov, Frank Gaffney, Dianne Feinstein, Brian Lehrer, George Noory
    Examples with BA or B.A. in article prose: Douglas Adams, George R. R. Martin, Ken Kesey, Poul Anderson, Renée Zellweger
    These are just a few of many many such uses. Blueboar does this affect your view? DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 23:46, 7 August 2017 (UTC)
    Nope... I'm not disputing whether some (or even many) articles do put BA or BS in the infobox... but I still don't think they should do so. In the modern world, the fact that someone has a BA or BS is trivial information, and I think it should be omitted. Blueboar (talk) 00:40, 8 August 2017 (UTC)
  • No dots (points, stops): I've always followed MOS:ABBR which pretty clearly says no dots.  SchreiberBike | ⌨  23:55, 6 August 2017 (UTC)
  • Full Stops They are abbreviations. Agreed that the trend outside Wikipedia is to omit stops in these cases. However, I will point out that this is a trend and only a trend, and that generally speaking, the "trend" is not always the best thing to follow. There are many trends in society that we point to as going in a negative direction. The advantages of omitting full stops are apparent. Easier to write, takes up less bandwidth, simpler. However, "B.A." stands for something. The abbreviation for "bachelor of Arts." It's an abbreviation. MOS:POINTS states "Modern style is to use a full point (period) after a shortening (although there are many exceptions) but no full point with an acronym. " Abbreviations of degrees are not acronyms. They fail the qualification of an acronym, which requires that the abbreviation be pronounceable and ordinarily pronounced as a word. Which would mean that the term for "B.A." would otherwise have to be pronounced by mainstream speakers as a word, which would be "bah." You graduated Berkley with a "bah in physics." However, I concede that it's common to refer to many abbreviations, which again, fail this qualification, as acronyms. In fact, the lack of standardization is prevalent to the point which perhaps half, or more than half of dictionary definitions fail to be stringent on this point. This is specified, in the current introduction to WP:MOSABBR as an exception as well: ... an acronym is considered to be an initialism which is pronounced as a word (e.g. NATO), as distinct from the case where the initialism is said as a string of individual letters (e.g. "UN" for the United Nations). Herein, the term acronym applies collectively to initialisms, without distinction that an acronym is said as a word. ...So, what we are debating is to eliminate the foregoing exception, which adheres to the looser definition of an acronym, and to be stringent in the discrimination between "acronyms" and "initialisms." I'm saying this: that if we're being encyclopedic, and if Wikipedia is to be an encyclopedia, that obligates the more conservative, more stringent perspective in this, and in any other situation. Excuse my verbosity. B'H.
    MichaelAngelo7777 (talk) 01:42, 7 August 2017 (UTC)
    • By that logic, such initialisms as UN, FBI, RFC, FHA, PoV, and ROI (none of which are ever pronounced as words to the best of my understanding) would need to be styled as U.N., F.B.I., R.F.C., F.H.A. P.o.V., and R.O.I. I don't think you will ever get consensus for this within Wikipedia, nor is it normal practice outside of Wikipedia. If you aren't advocating the use of periods in those cases, why are academic degrees different? DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 02:32, 7 August 2017 (UTC)
      • Yes. With all due respect. That's what I'm actually advocating. I see your point. I take it that in usage outside Wikipedia, we're referring to usage outside of an encyclopedic realm. Although it may seem cumbersome, and although consensus may not seem feasible, I'm standing my ground. I am simply shedding light on the reality that this is grammatically correct, and really just because most people in informal situations (and these days, let's face it, formality is often relaxed to the point of informality as well) aren't stringent, doesn't mean that stringency should be abandoned. There are places in which stringency is appropriate, and it seems blatant to me that one of those places is Wikipedia. B'H.
        MichaelAngelo7777 (talk) 03:52, 7 August 2017 (UTC)
        • I am referring to formal and official governmental usage, as well as usage at various levels of formality. Way back in the 1930s, US Government agencies stopped using periods in their official abbreviations. The WPA and NRA (the National Recovery Administration, not the gun lobby) never used them, nor did newer agencies such as NASA, NTSB, NLRB, and DHS, and such agencies as the FBI, FAA, ICC and IRS haven't used them in decades. Similarly, corporate initialisms such as IBM, GE, RCA, and many others have either never used periods, or dropped them decades ago, and no one at any level of formality that I know of uses periods in such initialisms. For the matter of that U.S.A has become USA at any and all levels of formality some decades ago. I don't think i have seen anyone use "U.S.A." except in historical fiction or historic documents since about 1990. These examples are all from the US, because the original suggestion was that using periods was the US or North American standard. As for ...the reality that this is grammatically correct... although i prefer to make usage changes slowly, ultimately correct grammar depends on usage. When even educated, formal usage abandons a form, it can no longer be said to be "grammatically correct". DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 00:11, 8 August 2017 (UTC)
          • I cannot argue with that. Yes, language is malleable, and along with it, grammar and modes of expression. I concede that simplification is the trend, and that even in linguistics (anthropological), it is roundly recognized that trends are given more weight than what are recognized as "rules." Your points about initialisms during the 20th century are excellent examples of that. However, civilization is also a sort of a "trend." In that light, literacy is also a concordant sort of trend. I wager that literacy is a necessary component of the longevity and the success of civilization. So, given that, can we say that the preservation of consistency is a part of being civilized, and reliance on that consistency is a product of being civilized. Simplification has its merits. Punctuation has its merits. The lack of punctuation in initialisms, as you've established, is, both in grammar and common usages, continuing along a path of "abandonment." My advocation of stringency, in the face of the trend towards abandonment, seems more avant guard than the status quo. So, do we want to convey advocation of the trend towards less punctuation? Maybe. I do not. I think that more punctuation, although it may seem less convenient, less "grammatically correct," less conventional, will have its benefits. At this point, it is a seemingly arbitrary standard, which suffers from ambiguity, where to punctuate an initialism and where not to. Of course, that is at the root of this entire issue. Ambiguity. We ought to remove ambiguity from the issue, by simply punctuating every initialism. This will remove conflict from more situations than it will create. By removing ambiguity. We will advocate standardization, and bring order to the situation. This will have positive effects. B'H.
            MichaelAngelo7777 (talk) 12:07, 9 August 2017 (UTC)
        • Now the usage for "BA" vs "B.A." is by no means as clear-cut as for "FBI" and "IBM". A case can be made for retaining the periods there, I think, But not by declaring that we should use "U.N." and "F.B.I." -- that change is past arguing, in my view. And no one has really made that case here yet. DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 00:11, 8 August 2017 (UTC)
  • Full stops I will preface by indicating that I am referring to American English and American subjects only and to academic degrees only. I am well aware the customary usage is different in other English variants. I was taught in school, college and graduate school, (circa late 1980's/early 1990's) to use stops with abbreviations in degree. I work in the corporate world and have never seen any trend that would inform me to the contrary. Wikipedia's MoS guidelines are frankly contradictory on the subject, but at least one section says stops are fine and I have used stops from my earliest days on Wikipedia back in 2009/2010. Obviously, in the outside world (non-Wikipedia) there are different preferences, but my own general observations have informed me to use stops. Wikipedia, being an encyclopedia, should be informed by the general customs of outside usage, rather than trying to set the trends of usage. By my outside experience, I use B.A., A.B., M.A., Ph.D., etc. If people are bound and determined to get rid of stops, so be it, but until and unless Wikipedia enacts an ironclad policy to that effect, it is my intention to continue using stops. Safiel (talk) 00:35, 8 August 2017 (UTC)
    • The Chicago Manual of Style Section 10.20 Academic Degrees (part of section 10, Abbreviations) says: Chicago recommends omitting periods in abbreviations of academic degrees (BA, DDS, etc.) unless they are required for reasons of tradition or consistency with, for example, a journal’s established style. DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 03:32, 8 August 2017 (UTC
    • The AMA Manual of Style (section 14.1 Academic degrees, also 10.3.10 Titles and Degrees of Persons) recommends "BS", "PhD", "RN", and "MA". DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 03:49, 8 August 2017 (UTC)
    • The MLA Style Guide says Do not use periods or spaces in abbreviations composed solely of capital letters, except in the case of proper names: ... US, MA, CD, HTML and goes on to say: Use a period if the abbreviation ends in a lower case letter, unless referring to an Internet suffix, where the period should come before the abbreviation ... Note: Degree names are a notable exception to the lowercase abbreviation rule. PhD, EdD, PsyD DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 04:00, 8 August 2017 (UTC)
    • The Millersville University Style Guide says: Increasingly, in the interest of speed and space, abbreviations are omitting periods. Acronyms and initialisms always leave them out (CIA, not C.I.A.). DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 04:13, 8 August 2017 (UTC)
    • The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage recommends B.A. (p. 35) and Ph.D. (p. 111) DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 04:19, 8 August 2017 (UTC)
    • The Associated Press Stylebook uses "B.A.", "M.A.", "LL.D", and "Ph.D" (p.5) but advises against abbreviating degrees at all in most cases. DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 04:33, 8 August 2017 (UTC)
    Note About to knock off for the evening, but before I do, I should note that I have been converting degree abbreviations in the body of articles (most particularly United States Judge) articles to the full spelled out and linked degree. I fully agree that they should be spelled out in the body, reserving abbreviations for the infobox. Safiel (talk) 05:14, 8 August 2017 (UTC)
    Safiel, it seems to me that that is the sort of cosmetic edit that usually should not be done except when there is a more substantive change to be made to the article at the same time. DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 17:55, 8 August 2017 (UTC)
    Comment I have actually been on an edit spree of United States Article III Judges this year, since late January. I have been cleaning up existing District Judge, Circuit Judge and Trade Court Judge articles. My edits have run the gamut from relatively minor fixes to 100% rewrites. The whole academic degree thing is just one component of that. I just want to emphasize that I am not JUST doing academic degrees, they are merely a component of what I am doing. In many cases, I have essentially nuked entire articles and started over, because they were in just that bad of a shape. I just wanted to clarify. Safiel (talk) 20:13, 8 August 2017 (UTC)
    The cosmetic edit policy (WP:COSMETICBOT) forbids edits made by bots that exclusively adjust the wikitext without adjusting the rendered page. So: spelling out MDs and PhDs is not a cosmetic edit in the first place, and as a human being you're free to make cosmetic edits as long as you aren't doing it on a disruptive scale. -165.234.252.11 (talk) 15:52, 9 August 2017 (UTC)
  • No stops As the user that initially brought up the question, I'm going to say no periods. No one calls "UNESCO" "U.N.E.S.C.O." or the Department of Agriculture the U.S.D.A. They seem excessive and unnecessary, but that's just my opinion. – JocularJellyfish TalkContribs 00:40, 8 August 2017 (UTC)
    That is all very well, JocularJellyfish, but only one editor in this discussion seems to be arguing for "U.N.E.S.C.O.". Should "B.A." have a different rule? If so, why? If not, why not? DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 02:54, 8 August 2017 (UTC)
  • Neutral In the discussion at the teahouse I said that universities and colleges differ in recommended styling, but if the university doesn't specify one then I think the simpler no stops version is the best choice. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 18:50, 8 August 2017 (UTC)
    Just as we don't follow a corporation's styling on the name of their firm or of one of their products, nor a band's on its name, I don't think we should follow each individual school's styling on the abbreviation for a degree. If we did, we would need to change potentially many articles when a school changes its style (as some have and no doubt others will) or even worse need to research what the school's style was when the degree was awarded. I don't think so. We need a single style for Wikipedia, perhaps depending on STRONGNAT, but otherwise consistent, in my view. DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 22:01, 8 August 2017 (UTC)
  • Full stops To me I think full stops are necessary, it just looks cleaner. From a practical standpoint there are some examples I can think of in where full stops would make a difference.
    • MD vs. M.D.: Maryland vs. Doctor of Medicine (of which is an earned higher degree)
    • JD vs. J.D.: A nickname perhaps vs. a law degree
    • BS vs. B.S.: A profanity vs. a Bachelor’s Degree
    To me it’s equivalent to the “there, their, they’re” argument. Yes, the words sound the same but have different meanings; I think that’s the same in this case. Snickers2686 (talk) 19:51, 8 August 2017 (UTC)
    I don't really think that argument holds much weight. Context should always make it clear. John Smith, MD is clearly not talking about Maryland; Joan Jones earned a BS is not a profanity; Fred Marks said: "I don't put up with much BS" does not refer to a degree. Letters in the "Education" field of an infobox, (or the "Education" section of an article) particularly if linked (as they normally are) represent a degree, with periods or without. And since everyone seems to agree that it would be "BA" in an article about someone from the UK, if that was ambiguous we would have a problem. DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 21:50, 8 August 2017 (UTC)
    In fact i can't think of any plausible wording that would appear in a valid Wikipedia article where any of these letter combinations would be ambiguous to an reasonable reader. Can you suggest one, Snickers2686? If so, why wouldn't it be a problem for a biography subject from the UK or Europe or elsewhere? DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 21:54, 8 August 2017 (UTC)
    Furthermore, the arguments it makes don't even make sense. Anyone (probably North American) who habitually uses "B.S." and "J.D." for degrees also uses the dots for initials and abbreviations, and would write "J. D." or "J.D." for personal initials and "b.s." for "bullshit". The fact that the US Postal Service uses "MD" for Maryland today is irrelevant; lots of their state postal codes coincide with other acronyms and abbreviations that also are not degrees. E.g. MA is also the two-letter ISO country code for Morocco, and means many, many other things many of which can also be written "M.A.", so the "writing it as 'M.A.' disambiguates" reasoning is demonstrably faulty.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  00:30, 17 August 2017 (UTC)
    @DESiegel: Are we talking about abbreviations in the article or the infobox? It seems like the discussion keeps going back and forth between the two or are they one and the same? If you type MD or MA or BA into the search bar it leads to a disambiguation page. Versus if it's M.D., M.A. or B.A. then it redirects to the corresponding educational degree. In practice, I always give the full name of the degree in an article. For example, John Smith earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from Harvard University and then in the infobox I style it as: |education= Harvard University, B.A.
    So which are we talking about, the infobox or the article? What's wrong with either example I gave on how they're styled for either scenario?
    Snickers2686 (talk) 23:25, 8 August 2017 (UTC)
    either and both, Snickers2686. It is my view that the rule should be the same for article prose and for mentions in infoboxes. Others may disagree. The problem with your examples, as I see it, is that they don't have the context that any use in an actual article would. Nowhere in an article would "MD" be used in such a way that it was at all unclear whether it was an abbreviation for a US state, or for a medical degree. Can you think of a sentence which might plausibly appear in a reasonable article where that would be unclear? Or can you describe the use in a particular field of an infobox were it would be unclear? No one just writes "MD" or "BA" without other words nearby that give it context. Whether any abbreviation for the degree should be used in running prose (as opposed to in an info box) might be argued, but many Wikipedia articles do so use it. DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 23:34, 8 August 2017 (UTC)
    @DESiegel: I'm not saying that context clues within the article wouldn't give a reader clear insight as to what the abbreviation means. What I'm asking is, is there any weight to the difference in how the hyperlink is styled? MD (no stops) will lead to a different target than M.D. (with stops) or does that carry no weight whatsoever in how an abbreviation is styled? Snickers2686 (talk) 00:35, 9 August 2017 (UTC)
    The link should in any case be a piped wiki-link, so what redirects are currently in place is, to my mind, totally irrelevant. In a properly configured article the reader won't pass through either redirect, as we will have either [[Doctor of Medicine|MD]] or [[Doctor of Medicine|M.D.]] (or perhaps the same thing done via a template). By the way I note that Doctor of Medicine uses "MD" 69 times, and uses "M.D." 13 times, 10 of them in a single paragraph. It really should be internally consistent, one way or the other. DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 03:35, 9 August 2017 (UTC)
  • No change. Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Full stops and spaces currently says "Abbreviations may or may not be closed with a period; a consistent style should be maintained within an article", which seems like a perfectly good compromise to me. I interpreted the bit about American English usage as informational rather than a prescription that periods must be used in articles written in American English, so as far as I can tell there's no contradiction in the guidelines. If this isn't the case maybe that could be clarified. – Joe (talk) 07:12, 9 August 2017 (UTC)
  • Status quo: Most of the arguments in favor of adding full stops are pretty unconvincing; in practice leaving them out does not introduce any ambiguity. (It also doesn't put an end to literacy or extinguish the shining beacon of civilization). -165.234.252.11 (talk) 16:23, 9 August 2017 (UTC)
    • The simplest solutions are not always the most elegant solutions. Simplest is most often the most unsophisticated. Civilizations dwell on sophistication. It's great to simplify things, to reduce them to their most common denominator. However, is it not better to excel by doing so in the most sophisticated, most elegant fashion? To increase in sophistication is to bolster the foundations upon which civilizations stand. Yes. One little period at the end of an initial letter will not tumble, nor support the Statue of Liberty. So, will it make one iota of difference? Yes. One iota. Hope this helped. B'H.
      MichaelAngelo7777 (talk) 13:46, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
  • No dots is preferable. It's more concise, easier to read, most consistent with MOS:POINTS, and is preferred by more other publications today.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  04:19, 13 August 2017 (UTC)
  • Keep. B.S., B.A., and so on are all acronyms. The degree I'm working on is a M.Arch., and should be styled as such to prevent it from appearing like a capitalization error for the month of March. Don't help me, help the bear. 21:45, 14 August 2017 (UTC)
    • But "are all acronyms" is a reason, at WP, to not use the dots, per MOS:ACRONYM. The dots are only used with acronyms that are lowercase, e.g. "e.g." [A sometimes controversial exception, at least for now, is that "U.S." is permitted in American English articles, despite the decline of that usage in the real world, even in American style guides like The Chicago Manual of Style, in favor of "US".] We write "AIDS" not "A.I.D.S." For mixed-case degree abbreviations, the MoS rule is already to drop the dots: "PhD ... for "Philosophiae Doctor"; BVetMed for "Bachelor of Veterinary Medicine", at WP:Manual of Style#Full stops and spaces.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  00:30, 17 August 2017 (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.

Full point

Why is this a piped link? The article is called full stop? Thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 20:25, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

What piped link?  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<  21:59, 16 October 2017 (UTC)
Oh yes, it's a redirect, isn't it. But if "A "full stop" is the grammatical function served by the dot at the end of a sentence; in an abbreviation, its non-grammatical, stylistic function is a "full point". Source: New Hart's Rules", how come we have an article for "Full stop" but not one for "Full point"? Martinevans123 (talk) 10:55, 17 October 2017 (UTC)
Full stop is about the punctuation mark, which has various functions. As with Hyphen, Question mark, all punctuation marks have a variety of uses, and breaking them all up into smaller articles would be much worse than the current ranges of punctuation articles. Batternut (talk) 14:01, 17 October 2017 (UTC)
Oh dear. I thought it was full point that had various functions, one of which was as the punctuation mark for the full stop grammatical feature, i.e. that "full point" was the more general concept. Martinevans123 (talk) 14:37, 17 October 2017 (UTC)
That's correct. The issue is that the article was apparently written in BrEng, and most material about this mark is written about sentence punctuation, so arguably the common name in that dialect continuum is "full stop". However, our article actually covers the entire scope of full point/period/dot/point usage, not just grammatical usage as the full stop at the end of a sentence. I think the article should be at Full point to agree with its scope, but an RM on that would likely meet with opposition from people "addicted" to WP:COMMONNAME. There's a frequent misconception that COMMONNAME is chief among the naming criteria, when if you actually read WP:AT, it is not one of the WP:CRITERIA at all; it's simply the default suggestion to first test against all the actual criteria, and in this case it fails the WP:PRECISION one by only identifying a sliver of the actual article topic.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<  22:02, 17 October 2017 (UTC)
You could suggest that, but Talk:Full stop is the place for such a query, not here. Batternut (talk) 17:14, 17 October 2017 (UTC)
I thought it might be useful to agree what it meant here. Martinevans123 (talk) 17:58, 17 October 2017 (UTC)
It probably should be a full point as an accuracy (WP:PRECISION) matter, but people will argue for full stop as a WP:COMMONNAME matter. This isn't an MoS issue, but a WP:RM / WP:AT one.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<  21:32, 17 October 2017 (UTC)
I can't disagree. But obviously it might influence how the subject is described here. Perhaps WP:COMMONNAME doesn't apply here. Martinevans123 (talk) 21:34, 17 October 2017 (UTC)
Addressed that above; was trying to consolidate my comments on this as a reply to your earlier comment, but kept getting edit-conflicted and gave up. :-)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<  22:04, 17 October 2017 (UTC)
To the extent this affects MoS at all, see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#RfC: Clarifying footnote on "." terminology.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<  22:02, 17 October 2017 (UTC)
Oh yes, I remember that. I nearly got sucked in. But unlike you to give up, Stanton. Ah, I see you haven't. Martinevans123 (talk) 22:08, 17 October 2017 (UTC)
I'm still running up that Solsbury Hill (if I may further commingle Gabriel and Bush). I'm not too concerned about the article title, as people get to the correct page via the Full point redirect.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<  23:12, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

MOS:POSTABBR issue

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#Postal abbreviations.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<  10:00, 2 December 2017 (UTC)

Conflict between WP:NCP and MOS:JR

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (people)#Conflict between WP:NCP and WP:MOS
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:56, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

Move discussion at C. C. H. Pounder

Resolved
 – Because a WP:ABOUTSELF matter, after Pounder publicly stated a preference for "CCH".

Please come participate in the move discussion at Talk:C. C. H. Pounder#Requested move 20 February 2018. It deals with interpretation and implementation of the WP:SPACEINITS section. Thank you. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 19:40, 20 February 2018 (UTC)

RfC on US/U.S. (again)

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see: Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#RfC: Revisiting the perennial US/U.S. debate
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:16, 6 July 2018 (UTC)

Should all instances of 'tbd' in this article be changed to 'TBD'?

In the article List of aircraft carriers in service, the abbreviation 'tbd' is always used with all lowercase letters, instead of 'TBD' in all caps. They can be seen in the Carriers ordered and Other planned carriers sections. I propose changing them all to 'TBD' as this form is much more commonly used and is widely considered the correct format. JACKINTHEBOX • TALK 12:22, 21 April 2019 (UTC)

Thanks. It has been resolved. JACKINTHEBOX • TALK 00:43, 22 April 2019 (UTC)


Full Stops and Military ranks

In the second section 'Full points (periods)', I thought 'Full points' was normally written 'Full Stops '. If so, large parts of the article, (not just the second section), are wrong.

IMO, the part concerning 'Military ranks' in the 'Abbreviations widely used in Wikipedia' also requires attention. The ranks shown, are, I believe, American; such as 'Master sergeant' and 'Technical sergeant'.
The solution is clear - 'Private - pvt or pvt. (Am Eng) or pte (Br Eng)', and so on.

What do other editors think?
RASAM (talk) 14:50, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

WP:ENGVAR. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:03, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

Citations

I tried to fix a recent addition about citations but was reverted. The addition was made in February (here) without discussion that I can see. We use abbreviations all the time in citations, and the addition about not needing to repeat location is a mistake.

This change led someone recently to alter the citations in an FA being prepared for TFA, so it should be clarified to avoid any repetition of that. Also, advice about citation styles should be added to WP:CITE, not here. SarahSV (talk) 03:04, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

Given the lack of response, I'm going to remove this again. The two problematic issues are (1) not to use abbreviations "when specifying places of publication in source citations" and (2) that specifying location "need not be done after the first occurrence of the publisher".
First, people use abbreviations all the time in citations, e.g. "Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press". Second, if you're going to add location (not everyone does and the most recent APA style guide omits it), it should be added each time, because it might change for international publishers. Finally, citation advice should be added to WP:CITE, not here. SarahSV (talk) 21:46, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

Inconsistent instructions regarding italicising latin abbreviations

In the Latin abbreviations section it says "In normal usage, abbreviations of Latin words and phrases should be italicised, except AD, c., e.g., etc. and i.e., which have become ordinary parts of the English language." However, in the Miscellaneous shortenings section, "et al." and "fl." are given without italics, while other Latin abbreviations such as "viz." and "cf." are in italics. Are "et al." and "fl." supposed to be in italics or not? In case it is useful, neither the APA[12] nor AMA italicize "et al." (at least when used in references). Kaldari (talk) 21:33, 23 April 2020 (UTC)

Proper nouns and acronym definitions

It is common elsewhere for acronym definitions to use capital letters. Per WP:EXPABBR, we don't do that here. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) example on this page misses an opportunity to make this clear as Millennium Development Goals uses title case because it is a proper noun. Can we improve the example to avoid confusion about how caps are used in acronym definitions? ~Kvng (talk) 13:35, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

I have changed the example to maximum transmission unit (MTU) to try and avoid this confusion. ~Kvng (talk) 15:03, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

RfC notice: Catholic post-nominal abbreviations

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Catholicism#Post-nominals RFC, which includes proposals to make potential exceptions to MOS:POSTNOM.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:56, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

AllAcronyms.com

Would it be beneficial to add allacronyms.com as an alternative to acronymfinder.com and abbreviations.com as a resource to determine the meaning of abbreviation or ways to abbreviate? It has a large number of unique terms, specifically in medical and scientific terminology 220.253.93.136 (talk) 07:13, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia Manual of Style contradicting itself

copy paste from Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Capital letters#Expanded forms of abbreviations:

If it seems necessary to do so (for example, to indicate a potentially unclear etymology) use italics: BX (from "base exchange").

copy paste from Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Abbreviations#Formation and usage:

Do not apply italics, boldfacing, underlining, or other highlighting to the letters in the expansion of an acronym that correspond to the letters in the acronym, as in BX (Base Exchange). It is not necessary to state that an acronym is an acronym. Our readers should not be browbeaten with the obvious.

copy paste from Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Words to watch#Editorializing

obviously, naturally, and of course all presume too much about the reader's knowledge and perspective

My preference would be to allow and even encourage, for example, BX (Base Exchange). (Do unto others as you would have done to you; i tend to link Wikipedia:Manual of Style instead of WP:MOS, and i always forget if RfD means Request for Discussion or Recommend for Deletion. Too often, people use abbreviations assuming they have been adequately explained, or assuming they are easy to figure out, and i can't figure them out even well enough to find the explanation. i don't like to ^be browbeaten with the obvious, but if i need an explanation, or even just a reminder, i prefer not to have to go elsewhere to find it, and a few italicized letters seems to me like a fairly unobtrusive way to do it.)

96.244.220.178 (talk) 03:52, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

What does the "editorializing" quote have to do with your question? On the italics, I'd suggest looking into the history of those provisions and see if one or the other was changed without discussion. That's where contradictions tend to come from. Dicklyon (talk) 00:49, 13 July 2020 (UTC)
What does the "editorializing" quote have to do with the question? That should be obvious. ;-) The second quote says the abbreviation is obvious, and the third quote says "don't say things are obvious."
i could dig into the history, boldly change/revert whichever to match my preference--i still might, thank you for the suggestion--but sometimes i think starting with discussion is wiser.
96.244.220.178 (talk) 07:01, 13 July 2020 (UTC)
The conflicting material in WP:Manual of Style/Capital letters should be removed, as that guideline is not authoritative as to acronyms or other abbreviations, but is just supposed to be summarizing capitalization-related points from the guideline that is, which is WP:Manual of Style/Abbreviations. Italics have nothing to do with capitalization anyway, so this material should not have been present in MOS:CAPS to begin with.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:21, 15 July 2020 (UTC)
I have repaired the MOS:CAPS section to stop contradicting MOS:ABBR, to explicitly cross-reference it with {{Main}}, and to no longer provide examples that don't pertain to capitalization at all. MOS:ABBR is quite clear why we do not do things like "BX (Base Exchange)": "Our readers should not be browbeaten with the obvious." Whether to use full-title links to internal Wikipedia pages has nothing at all to do with any of this. If you're curious, though: Shortcuts like WP:AT exist for editorial convenience on talk pages. If you encounter one inside instructional material in a guideline or similar page, either as a direct reference or piped link, it should be replaced with the real page name (e.g. {{Main|Wikipedia:Article titles}}, or [[Wikipedia:Article titles|the titles policy]]), so people can see where it goes, either directly or by hovering their cursor over it, and will not already have to be Wikipedia experts who have memorized all the shortcuts. Thank you for pointing out the contradiction, but when two guidelines are against doing what you want (one completely, one mostly), then the answer is not to reverse what they are saying, it's to remove the doubt from the confused/confusing one. I also don't think we're in a position to take encyclopedia-writing style advice from someone who habitually mis-capitalizes as if to say, "To Hell with stylistic norms."  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:37, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

Video & audio timestamps

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Captions#Video timestamps. Involves how to specify times in A/V material: "4:31", "4 min 31 sec", "4 m. 31 s.", etc., etc.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:20, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

Correct shortening for the word "including"

What is the correct shortening (in Wikipedia) for the word "including"? I think that it is "incl." but have seen "inc." used in Wikipedia, which is, I think, incorrect. See, for example, "Pacific inc. Philippines" at Pandemic by region. Thanks Misha Wolf (talk) 13:16, 12 August 2020 (UTC)

This seems like it should be a contraction best avoided. If space makes that difficult, a separate ref note might be preferable. --Izno (talk) 13:48, 12 August 2020 (UTC)
Thanks. I've replaced "inc." with "including" at Pandemic by region. Misha Wolf (talk) 13:55, 12 August 2020 (UTC)
If it badly needs to be abbreviated (e.g. in a tight table), use {{abbr|incl.|including}} at first occurrence. "Inc." is almost always an abbreviation of "incorporated".  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:19, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

MOS:EXPABBR Do not apply initial capitals – or any other form of emphasis – in a full term that is a common-noun phrase, just because capitals are used in its abbreviation ?

Do not apply initial capitals – or any other form of emphasis – in a full term that is a common-noun phrase, just because capitals are used in its abbreviation

This sentence is not enough accurate: for instance, the File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a standard network protocol used for the transfer of computer files between a client and server on a computer network.

Initial capitals are required to mark the difference between the specific File Transfer Protocol and any other file transfer protocol. The Simple File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) for instance, is a (kind of) file transfer protocol but not the File Transfer Protocol.

Might be the rule could be:

Do not apply initial capitals in a full term that is a common-noun phrase, just because capitals are used in its abbreviation

Only apply initial capitals for a specific concept.

Do not apply any other form of emphasis.

Too long, and File Transfer Protocol is a proper name, so it takes capitalization anyway, whether the "FTP" abbreviation is present in the material or not. That is, the "just because" in this rule is never triggered, because "File Transfer Protocol" is capitalized because of a completely different rule. This is the very reason that the phrase "just because" is in this rule. (I would know, since I put it there.) I have yet to see a single case of someone trying to lower-case a proper name based on MOS:EXPABBR, so there is no problem to fix here (WP:MOSBLOAT).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:03, 25 January 2021 (UTC)

Request for further comments and clarification of usage in #Full_points_(periods)

(1) "Modern style is to use a full point (period) after a shortening ..." This rather conflicts with the guidance given in [[13]]. I suggest that the text in the former be amended to reflect the advice in the latter.

(2) There is no mention of the usage of full stops after and within lower-case abbreviations (for example, c. for circa, e.g. and i.e.). I suggest that, in accordance with North American, British and Australasian custom, full stops be used with lower-case abbreviations, with the exception of single-letter abbreviations (such as c for circa) when the full stop may be omitted.

(3) The different styles fall broadly within the categories North American (US and Canada) and British (UK, Australia and NZ). These categories have not been defined. I suggest that some definition of these categories be discussed at the top of this article. The term Australasian may be used for Australian-and-NZ. What should be done for the many other nations that use English?

Harry Audus (talk) 03:51, 28 January 2021 (UTC)

Using ~ for "approximately", like c. for "circa"

I think c. can be ambiguous in some situations. E.g. in a table, next to a date, it could stand for completed, contracted or several other words beginning with c. Where abbreviation is needed or suitable, I would have thought it sensible for the established mathematical symbol '~' for approximately could be used for numbers, dates, times etc with less scope for confusion. Tables may need abbreviation and a single character '~' is shorter than 3 'c. ' and much shorter than 8 'approx. '. In text for dates, c. is much more normal than ~ so I don't want to change that usage of c. However, is there a case for adding a note to miscellaneous shortenings table entry for c. that while c. is normally preferred for dates in text but for tables consider '~' symbol for approximately (or approx.?) instead and/or have an entry for '~' in that miscellaneous shortenings table? Example usage List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_Heavy_launches#Future_launches where using approx. could use extra table line(s). If inadequately known among non mathematicians, perhaps a '{{~}}' could be set up. crandles (talk) 14:07, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

No comments. Hmm. Should I just be bold and add my preferred version of this? crandles (talk) 15:01, 6 September 2020 (UTC)
@C-randles: Well, c. is traditionally used with dates, and other things like ~ or approximately or approx. or about or roughly with other things. It's rare to see ~ used for dates, and rare to see c. (or ca.) used for non-dates, and while things like about and approx. are sometimes also used for dates, it's not a convention and it's unnecessarily long-winded. The guidelines are as they are for a reason.  :-)

However, we are already routinely using ~ in cramped circumstances, though it is best done with {{abbr|~|approximately}} at first occurrence in case anyone's not familiar with it. I can't see any problem making that into a template. There already is a {{~}}, but it is barely used and seems to serve no real purpose, so it could probably be usurped. I can see keeping the {{3~}}, {{4~}}, and {{5~}} templates, as they are used for outputting ~~~, ~~~~, ~~~~ signature and timestamp codes without them getting parsed. But we appear to have no need for {{~}}, nor for {{~~}} AKA {{2~}}. To the extent there might be a need for it, the current {{~}} could be moved to {{1~}}, then {{~}} usurped as a wrapper for {{abbr|~|approximately}}. Whether we want to document the existence of this in MoS, I dunno. If we did, I'm not sure if it belongs here or in MOS:NUM (or mostly in one with a cross-reference from the other). I think I would put it in the latter, and say that it should only be used with numeric data (not including dates), and only in horizontally tight circumstances like an infobox or a crowded table, or in a circumstance in which it is conventional (e.g., if a particular scientific field always uses it to indicate approximations of a specific kind, then WP should also write them that way).
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:15, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

In actual mathematics, often does not usually mean "approximately", it means "proportional to". If you want "approximately", the more usual symbol is or in html ≈. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:55, 1 January 2021 (UTC)
Sorry no. Tilde#Approximation and List_of_mathematical_symbols#Equality,_equivalence_and_similarity cover this in more detail. Seems clear ≈ means 'is approximately equal to' ∝ is for 'proportional to'. ~ is more generally just 'approximately' though it is sometime used in mathematics for other things like order of magnitude, asymptotic equivalence, similarity of geometric shapes ... crandles (talk) 14:56, 3 January 2021 (UTC)
FWIW, my response/rationale is about use in English-language phrases, headings, etc., which is what the question is about. Within an equation, we should use whatever is used in mathematics (though I find it disturbing that two peeps who generally seem to know what they're talking about are disagreeing so sharply on what that is. >;-)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:58, 25 January 2021 (UTC)
Please be aware that there is a {{Circa}} template that formalizes some of this Template:Circa —Chris Murphy (talk) 10:32, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

“Can not” vs. “Cannot”

What happens if can not is used instead of cannot in formal writing? I know most full form contractions – such as do not, will not, would have, they would, and so on – are 2 words and cannot is the only one that is 1 word. Allan Bao (talk) 22:23, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

My experience is that cannot is one word, but I have heard the other opinion. The first question to answer, though, is: Even if we agree that cannot is preferred, is it necessary to say so on this page? --Trovatore (talk) 01:13, 14 March 2021 (UTC)
That's easy: no. Some people like to write "can not", some "cannot". It's not a problem that needs fixing. That MOS is best which governs least. Herostratus (talk) 01:40, 14 March 2021 (UTC)
Agreed that it’s obvious that cannot is usually one word, but it could be sometimes used in 2 words. I know that’s obvious because donot is incorrect, but do not and the contraction don’t are correct.
It can absolutely not be said that the "not" can indisputably not be separated from the "can". So it's always seemed weird to me that when they are adjacent, they're merged, and it seems weirder still to say that they have to be. Be that as it may, since this guideline page is about abbreviations, it wouldn't make sense for it to make a style pronouncement about the not-abbreviation, not-contraction "can not". Therefore, this discussion is technically off-topic. Largoplazo (talk) 10:07, 14 March 2021 (UTC)
"Cannot" and "can not" have different meanings. "I cannot go" means that I am unable to go, while "I can not go" means that I have the option to go or not go. --Khajidha (talk) 15:34, 14 March 2021 (UTC)
In principle, yes, but that latter reading is usually not available in practice without some sort of signal (e.g. vocal stress). --Trovatore (talk) 19:17, 14 March 2021 (UTC)
Huh. For me, the examples I gave are the normal readings. Vocal stress is needed when spoken precisely because you cannot see the difference. (Also, how would you have vocal stress in something you are reading?) --Khajidha (talk) 01:54, 15 March 2021 (UTC)
Outside of quotes, we're not going to be using "can not" in the second sense. We're not going to be writing "The Blurf Hadron can not be detected by a Pfizer Array, or it can". We don't write like that here, because it's confusing. So that's not a issue and there's no need to bring it up. Herostratus (talk) 11:07, 15 March 2021 (UTC)
I suspect that the subtle difference between "cannot" and "can not" isn't universally appreciated, and perhaps shouldn't be relied on.Chumpih. (talk) 11:32, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

Abbreviation and acronym discussions ongoing

  • Laundry symbol: Question as to if the association's name should be styled as GINETEX or Ginetex. (Has a carryover impact on the GINETEX page too. Carter (talk) 17:40, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

Add new items at top; remove when decided. Comment at them if interested.

Washington, D.C.

The Special Considerations section says, "An exception of sorts is Washington, DC (also often written "Washington DC"), which has conventionally been called that, for clarity reasons, since long before postal codes were invented." I would submit that the first is correct only on an address label and the second is never correct. The proper style is "Washington, D.C.," which is what the city's own page is called. The only reference to this on MoS/A Talk pages is a very short discussion in 2014, whose consensus was "Washington, D.C." Because of the page title and the (very limited, to be sure) consensus, I'm going to go ahead and make the change. PRRfan (talk) 03:52, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

My attention fell on the last sentence: '"Washington, DC" may be used in tables in which other state postal codes appear; never use "Washington DC".' If the format is intended to conform to US postal regulations, then there shouldn't be a comma: a postal delivery address is supposed to have no punctuation at all. "Richmond, VA" is also incorrect. Largoplazo (talk) 13:47, 9 January 2022 (UTC)
Thanks; that's an interesting point. You sent me scurrying to find the USPS specification for addresses, which turns out to prefer no comma, but also allows one. So what does Wikipedia prefer? PRRfan (talk) 22:51, 9 January 2022 (UTC)
The USPS no punctuation rule is a technical standard to facilitate addressing. In most instances outside of addressing envelopes, the common American English standard is to set the state abbreviation (be it postal, AP Style, or other) or full name off from the city name with commas. —Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 19:54, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

Attributions of Acronyms

I introduced an acronym to a well-established article. I didn't come up with it, it's the first letter of every word in a phrase. The acronym wasn't being used in the article until my addition. I followed the first-use policy. What I was worried about was an editor removing it because it was "new" and the 3-word phrase was used throughout the article 57 times. So I thought it would be a good idea to add a reference to the acronym to show that it is used in legitimate news websites. In my edit comment, I questioned whether the reference was needed or desired. The editor removed the reference and I'm fine with that, even relieved.

I decided to write this in case Wikipedia manual of style editors found this worthy of mentioning. Asherkobin (talk) 03:00, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

"aka" (all lower case) is standard usage

I've removed "Never use aka" from this page. It's included in all the major dictionaries ( [14], [15], [16], [17], [18], etc.) and is the most common variant according to the Google Ngram Viewer. Dan Bloch (talk) 01:20, 5 February 2022 (UTC)

Currency symbols

User:TheCurrencyGuy has in been adding {{Reichsmark}} to articles. For example, {{Reichsmark|10,000|link=yes}}, which produces 10,000 ℛ︁ℳ︁, to replace RM10,000. Is this an example of using a ligature which the MOS recommends against? I find it very difficult to read the RM symbol, and prefer the previous version. Thanks. BilCat (talk) 01:18, 13 July 2022 (UTC)

I agree with you that it's very hard to read it. Why was the change necessary? (BTW, does "RM" need to be in italics?) Tony (talk) 11:38, 13 July 2022 (UTC)
I don't know on the italics, as that was what was there previously. Currencies aren't something I usually deal with. BilCat (talk) 18:13, 13 July 2022 (UTC)
All I wanted to do was add the official currency sign for the Reichsmark. Its a symbol, not letters as such, in the same vein as "£" (a stylised "L") and "₴" (a stylised "Г") so you don't need to read it per se. TheCurrencyGuy (talk) 03:51, 16 July 2022 (UTC)

Win-Loss

This is meant to be something of a blind experiment to test an hypothesis. If the full term is "win-loss record" would we consider "Win-Loss" to be an abbreviation of same and capitalised as such IAW the guidance herein? Cinderella157 (talk) 11:33, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

It should be "win–loss" (or "Win–loss" if it starts a table header).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:45, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

MOS:LATINABBR question

It is unclear from MOS:LATINABBR whether a phrase like "de facto" should be italicized – So should it, or should it not be italicized? Thanks. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 03:34, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

It's not an abbreviation, so of course it wouldn't be covered here. :-) And yes it should be italicized; all Latinisms should except when they have been entirely subsumed into the language as English words, e.g. "versus" and "ego" and "agenda" and "abdomen". If you don't even think of it as a Latinism, then maybe it shouldn't be italicized. Same goes for Frenchisms in English like "en banc" and "de rigeur" and "bœuf bourguignon" versus "rendezvous", "detour", "elite", "homage", etc. There are judgement-call cases; some people would italicize "façade", "naïve" (and "naïveté", but not the fully Anglicized "naive" and "naitvety"), "fiancée", etc., because they have French diacritics. It's not an error to italicize them or to not italicize them, and not worth edit-warring over.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:21, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

PhD vs Ph.D.

A long-ignored clause of MOS:ABBR says that we should use "PhD", not "Ph.D.". This strikes me as very much a Briticism, and many American-English articles use Ph.D. The clause was added in Special:Diff/530108801 on December 27, 2012 by User:SMcCandlish with the misleading edit summary "more cleanup (incl. removal of an example that not even valid under British rules, addition of a few obvious missing ones, removal of stuff deprecated by MOS to begin with, etc.". Scanning the talk page for that date reveals no discussion on this point. Does this prescription actually have consensus, or does it stand in contradiction to WP:ENGVAR? I ask because as of a few days ago User:Lol1VNIO has gone on a crusade to change all instances of "Ph.D." to PhD, citing the MOS as justification. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:53, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

@David Eppstein: A 2017 RFC discussing degree titles in general resulted in no conensus, skewing towards no dot. In the discussion, DESiegel (RFC opener) cited a handful of American style guides (CMOS, AMA, MLA) that omit dots, as well as ones that don't (NYTM, AP). Back to Doctor of Philosophy, I looked up the abbreviation in some dictionaries and found that they are also divided: "Ph.D. is American"[19][20][21] vs. "No regional difference/Both can be used in American"[22][23]. The top 10 US universities are also equally divided.
Other countries are quite consistent with their abbreviation of the degree: UK, Australia, India, New Zealand, the Philippines, etc.
In my opinion, this is an ENGVAR issue in all variants except US English, seeing how conflicting the American sites are with themselves. I'll stop my crusade for now. Best ~~ lol1VNIO (I made a mistake? talk to me) 21:31, 20 October 2022 (UTC)
Especially given that US sources don't agree on this, we should use the short form for concision and for consistency with the treatment of other initialisms and acronyms. We don't use "A.T.M." or "F.B.I." so we shouldn't use "M.D.", "D.D.S." or "Ph.D."  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:43, 20 October 2022 (UTC)
Would you agree that since UK sources don't agree on "organization" vs "organisation", but US sources always use "organization", we should always use "organization" for greater consistency? What makes this case any different? Also, why would your individual opinion here take priority over a 2017 RFC that came to the conclusion that there was no consensus? —David Eppstein (talk) 00:31, 21 October 2022 (UTC)
There's no concision difference between American/Oxford -iz* and everyone-but-Oxford British/Commonwealth -is* spellings, and there is no clear ENGVAR split on PhD vs. Ph.D., so they're not comparable cases. I think you're confusing my "given that US sources don't agree on this" with some kind of generalizable argument. It's not; it's a narrow response to the OP's "many American-English articles use Ph.D." and untenable claim that PhD is a Briticism.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:38, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
Would you say the same of "B.A." for Bachelor of Arts? Graham (talk) 01:37, 2 November 2022 (UTC)
Yes, that should go without saying since BA matches MD, DDS, PhD, etc.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:38, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

This doesn't matter. Why not source pages rather than worry about dots? Why? I Ask (talk) 05:55, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

You could also ignore discussions you're not interested in. Discussions discussing issues on the guide that applies to tens of thousands of biography articles. ~~ lol1VNIO (I made a mistake? talk to me) 06:28, 2 November 2022 (UTC)
No, because I am opposed to making a rule out of this. There's literally no need. It's up to the discretion of the editor that gets there first. No reader is going to complain about how there were dots in degree abbreviations. It only worries the editor too worried about the most trivial of trivialities. Some abbreviations use dots. Some don't. Doesn't matter in the slightest. Why? I Ask (talk) 14:20, 2 November 2022 (UTC)
If Wikipedians at large agreed with you, then we would not have a style guide at all, and we'd have a whole lot of "whoever got there first" rules about a whole lot of things, instead. But that is not reality. So, please don't waste other editors' time with "I wish guidelines I don't like didn't exist" fantasizing. Just quietly follow them and get back to the sourcing you observe to be more important. In other words, if it doesn't matter then don't quixotically make it matter by railing on about it. It's a self-defeating practice.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:38, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

"Special considerations" section

I think this section should have a more-descriptive title. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 01:37, 16 August 2022 (UTC)

Like what? It's a grab-bag of misc. special considerations that aren't related to each other and which are too short to demand sections of their own.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:40, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

RAS syndrome question: discouraged or not?

I came to MOS:ACRO to find out about the manual of style's policy on the RAS syndrome (redundant acronym syndrome syndrome [sic!]). It turns out this is neither part of the manual nor has it ever been discussed on the talk page. However there is a Wikipedia article on the concept stating "Many style guides advise against usage of these redundant acronyms in formal contexts, but they are widely used in colloquial speech."

AncientWalrus (talk) 16:51, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

That's just a matter of sensible writing. See WP:MOSBLOAT: If there has not been a series of protracted "style fights" about an issue, then MoS should not cover it, because MoS is too long already. Where are their cases of people editwarring to retain an instance of RAS syndrome in our article content? I don't see this happening with "ATM machine" vs. "ATM", "PIN number" vs. "PIN", etc.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:36, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

"Acronyms in page titles" is mis-placed in an MoS page

The section Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Abbreviations#Acronyms in page titles (also known as MOS:ACROTITLE, WP:NCA, WP:NCACRO) needs to move, and its MOS:ACROTITLE shortcut to no longer be "advertised". This section of narrow interpretation/application of WP:RECOGNIZABLE is entirely and only about article titles and not about article content in any way, so it is not properly part of MoS and has no business being in here. We may apply MoS frequently to WP:RM discussions, because principles that apply to the in-body text generally apply also to titles, but MoS is not the place for title-only rulemaking. We have separate naming-conventions guidelines for a reason. If you showed up today and proposed adding a new section of titles-only rules ("hyphenation in article titles" or whatever) to MoS, you'd be shouted out of the room. I'm not sure why this particular section has survived for so long in the wrong place.

 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:59, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

Use of apparently concocted acronym in template for video games

More input would be useful at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Video games#Use of "XSXS" as an acronym for "Xbox Series X/S" regarding the use of a seemingly made-up acronym that even after 3 years of use on Wikipedia has very little use anywhere else. Given that this page says not to use made-up initialisms perhaps some watchers of this page would be able to provide input in the discussion. For reference, "XSXS" xbox gets me about 22,000 google hits and "PS5" playstation gets about 142,000,000. There is also a discussion regarding a redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion#XSXS. Thank you for any advice and input you may have. —DIYeditor (talk) 13:57, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

RfC about military rank abbreviations

See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history#RfC: Abbreviations of rank Jc3s5h (talk) 00:39, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

RFC on the use of acronym "XSXS" to stand for "Xbox Series X/S" across a wide range of articles in tables and templates

Consensus to remove. Removers argue that the term is at least unpopular, raising the potential for citogenesis. Keepers did not cite RS, mentioning RS don't use the acronym. Since Wikipedia is based on reliable sources, the keepers' arguments are weak, and cannot overcome the tide of removers. starship.paint (exalt) 15:18, 10 August 2023 (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.

Should "XSXS" be used as an acronym for "Xbox Series X/S" (Xbox Series X and Series S) on any public-facing portion of Wikipedia? For example it appears in Template:Video game reviews which is included in a vast number of articles. —DIYeditor (talk) 22:04, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

Survey

  • No "XSXS" seems to be made up by Wikipedia and even after years of use here has very little use in the wild other than blog posts and tweets and such. I could find essentially no RS publishers using this term, least of all relevant sites like Metacritic. For reference, "XSXS" xbox gets me about 22,000 google hits and "PS5" playstation gets about 142,000,000, and I would say most of those google hits for XSXS could be chalked up to WP:CITOGENESIS. For further reference "Xbox Series X/S" gets about 34,000,000 hits.
    Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Abbreviations clearly says:
    Avoid making up new abbreviations, especially acronyms. For example, "International Feline Federation" is good as a translation of Fédération Internationale Féline, but neither the anglicisation nor the reduction IFF is used by the organisation; use the original name and its official abbreviation, FIFe.
    If it is necessary to abbreviate in small spaces (infoboxes, navboxes and tables), use widely recognised abbreviations. As an example, for New Zealand gross national product, use NZ and GNP, with a link if the term has not already been written out: NZ GNP; do not use the made-up initialism NZGNP).
    —DIYeditor (talk) 22:03, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
  • No: This acronym doesn't convey much, if any, information on its own. I don't know if outlawing it across the entire project is necessary, however it shouldn't be included as in the article. Use Xbox Series X/S instead. - AquilaFasciata (talk | contribs) 13:58, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
  • @DIYeditor: Why are you holding this RfC here, when an ongoing discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Video games#Use of "XSXS" as an acronym for "Xbox Series X/S" already exists (linked from section above)? This talk page is for discussing improvements to Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Abbreviations, and that is not what is being requested - you're asking for advice on an article. Also, why is this RfC under |lang|media|style|policy|tech when it should be none of those - see WP:RFCCAT, this is a matter for WP:RFC/SCI, hence should use |sci. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 06:52, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
    1. The discussion at that Wikiproject has already been archived once and is going nowhere, it should just be closed or archived again. It's stale. It's wasting my time and testing my patience. Projects especially "fluff" projects tend to like to make up their own policies or just not care about policies.
    2. This seemed like neutral ground to hold it on. I don't see anything on this talk page that says it is only for discussing changes to the MOS and not questions about the MOS.
    3. The RFC relates to language (acronyms), media (video games), wikipedia style (acronyms), wikipedia policy and guidelines (MOS), technical issues (templates). Science and technology could apply as well if you like, can that just be added and the bot will update it?
    —DIYeditor (talk) 16:33, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
    It's wasting my time and testing my patience. You could try dropping the stick. -- ferret (talk) 17:38, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
    Multiple people agreed the acronym was a problem in the discussion actually. Your stubbornness to accept that necessitated an RfC. —DIYeditor (talk) 01:36, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
  • It's fine. This is improper forumshopping. This user has held a lengthy discussion at WT:VG which didn't get what they wanted. They already pinged this MOS page to gather more opinions then. They also took the acronyms redirect to RFD, where it was also kept. That original discussion archived for inactivity with no consensus, so they unarchived and pushed again. There was no traction, so now they've made an RFC and tried to change venues. Bottom line: The acronym/initialism has sourcing, however minor. It is used only for tables and infoboxes for brevity, which is allowed under this guideline. It has a redirect, and the template also pipes it when used as a column. -- ferret (talk) 17:43, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
WikiProjects are for coordinating activities and communicating needs on individual articles: they are not meant to be used to form their own idiosyncratic rules which their members then apply as if they are policy or style guidance to any article that those users perceive to be within the purview of their project--see WP:Advice pages. This is impractical and often disruptive for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that different WikiProjects with overlapping interests would create their own pet rules that would come into conflict. The appropriate place to propose changes to policies, guidelines, or style pages is at the talk page for those PAG/MoS rules, or through a WP:PROPOSAL in a central community discussion space. This is longstanding community consensus and has even been the subject of ArbCom cases that unambiguously concluded that groups of editors at Wikiprojects creating and trying to enforce their own cottage rules across numerous articles is not proper process. I appreciate that this is one of those rules that is not always understood by newer (and even sometimes quite experienced) editors, and so these kinds of rules very often do get discussed, and often don't lead to problems if those editors are the only ones working in a niche area, but that's clearly not the case here.
So, long story short, even if DIYEditor were trying to game the situation (which I see no evidence of), this still would not be WP:FORUMSHOPPING, because WT:VG was never the proper forum to reach a firm rule constituting community consensus in the first place, even had it reached a firm consensus, which is unclear in this instance. RfD is another matter, but any conclusion there would not not preclude a style guidance discussion here in any event. This RfC looks to be entirely proper and above board. Please feel free to ping all participants from the previous discussions here: they can reiterate their !votes and their reasoning on the matter. SnowRise let's rap 21:14, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
TL;DR -- Isaidnoway (talk) 15:31, 13 July 2023 (UTC)
I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume this comment is meant to be paired with your acroym-laden !vote below, for (theoretically) humourous effect, and not that you are genuinely saying your brain boggles at the prospect of parsing two paragraphs worth of longstanding community consensus. SnowRise let's rap 22:53, 13 July 2023 (UTC)
Ferret, about the only person at the WikiProject I saw defending the abbreviation was you. Lee Vilenski, after their initial description of the abbreviation as "a weird acronym" might have been somewhat in favor, I couldn't really tell, but I don't think so. And that was it. For you to say that DIYeditor "didn't get what they wanted" seems to mean that since they couldn't get you to budge, that's the end of the story, because you're the gatekeeper for that sort of thing. Which you aren't. Anyway, RFCs are supposed to be preceded by less formal discussion to get the lay of the land: see WP:RFCBEFORE. So following that path isn't the sort of "forum shopping" that's looked down on. Largoplazo (talk) 02:15, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
  • No per DIYeditor. Some1 (talk) 23:03, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
  • It's fine 2 — OMG WTF ICYMI & AFAIK — this is how people talk IRL. XSXS is the shorthand for next gen Xbox consoles IKR, it's Cray. TBH YSK LOL— Isaidnoway (talk) 15:26, 13 July 2023 (UTC)
    You seem to have ignored the evidence of very sparse use of the acronym in the wild (vs. the ones you cited which are established, yet unprofessional and unencyclopedic) and the guidance on this very page not to concoct acronyms for Wikipedia, and gone ahead with "acronyms are cool bro, plus txt msg!" I don't see what that tweet even demonstrates except that its contributors also weren't sure what an appropriate acronym would be. We need a publisher with editorial oversight like a game magazine, or a category on Metacritic (they seem to use "Xbox X/S" for brevity) or such. —DIYeditor (talk) 22:55, 13 July 2023 (UTC)
    And you seem to have missed my point. Acronyms are part of our everyday vernacular, especially when writing or as you point out, texting. We navigate WP everyday with them, RfC NPOV, BLP, MOS, RS, DUE, UNDUE, UGC, SPS, etc. etc. etc. And this claim it is not used "in the wild" doesn't hold water. There are plenty of gaming forums and boards (not RS) that use the acronym. [24], [25], [26], [27], [28], [29], [30], [31], and that's just a handful. Just because RS don't use the acronym, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. I got over 250 hits for it on WP gaming articles alone, Google gave me an autosuggest for it, and hell, there is even a re-direct for it — XSXS. It's a well-known acronym and this idea we shouldn't be able to use it on WP, in my view, seems pedantic and reeks of CREEP. But, having said that, I'm certainly not going to lose any sleep over it, if you fucking nuke every use of it on WP.— Isaidnoway (talk) 04:51, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
    XSXS might be the shorthand for Xbox Series X/S, but is XSXS the official abbreviation though? PlayStation is "officially abbreviated as PS"; does Xbox have an official abbreviation? It's a well-known acronym If the acronym is indeed "well-known" or widely used, surely reliable sources reporting on the Xbox Series X/S would use the acronym to refer to it, but googling "xsxs" xbox, I'm not seeing much, if any. Just because RS don't use the acronym Wikipedia articles should follow what RS, not gaming forums and boards, use. Some1 (talk) 16:42, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
    The re-direct I referenced goes to Xbox Series X and Series S. And I didn't say WP articles should follow gaming forums and boards, I was merely pointing it is a widely used acronym. Like I said, if you want to remove the acronym from over 250 WP gaming articles and delete the re-direct, go for it, I won't lose any sleep over it.--- Isaidnoway (talk) 10:11, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
    The redirect won't be deleted regardless. It was already kept at RfD. -- ferret (talk) 13:58, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
    Ah, I see, so now the mission is to nuke it from everywhere else on WP. Got it. Now I understand what's going on here. Isaidnoway (talk) 20:46, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
  • Use Xbox Series X/S instead per AquilaFasciata.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:52, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
  • No per DIYEditor - The acronym isn't informative and isn't used at Xbox Series X and Series S either. Google brings up 1.7k results[32] which are all spam. I have no objections to in-house terminologies providing they convey the information or at least make some sense. XSERX and XSERS both make slightly more snese than XSXS imho. –Davey2010Talk 19:56, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
  • No Wikipedia made up an acronym for this, in violation of MOS:ACRONYM. This acronym should not be used. QuicoleJR (talk) 18:32, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
  • No. My Google search turns up rather limited usage, most of those hits appear to be abysmal quality. Using XSXS is more likely to confuse a reader than to aid them. Alsee (talk) 23:35, 20 July 2023 (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.

Follow-up discussion

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

There is a related follow-up discussion at Template talk:Video game series reviews#XSXS RFC, involving "XSX", "XBSX", "XSX|S", "XSX/S", etc.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:25, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

British English, contractions and punctuation

Regarding your revert, it remains my view that the current wording is incorrect, and doesn’t reflect British usage as reflected by both print and online reputable media, and standards for publishing. I checked with the Oxford guide to which you refer, and whilst you are correct that the general rule is tempered with some examples that may take punctuation, like Ph.D or PhD, Dr for doctor is specifically given as an example that doesn’t carry punctuation, along with other common ones like Mr and Mrs. Thus the example cited in the MoS currently is incorrect and therefore misleading for editors, since you won’t in British English find usage such as Mr. or Dr. Kind regards, MapReader (talk) 06:28, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

@MapReader: The three sources you cited simply are not relevant. A news style guide is off the table because "Wikipedia is not written in news style" as a matter of policy. News style has many conventions (most of them dictated by expediency) that are at odds with encyclopedic writing. News style guides (from either side of the Atlantic) have had very close to zero influence on our MoS (it is based almost entirely on five academic style guides: Chicago, New Hart's/Oxford, Fowler's, Garner's, and Scientific Style and Format). Your other two are just the internal (self-published) house-style sheets of two university communications i.e. public relations departments, intended as employee manuals, not as global style advice for the public, much less style advice for an academic register. They're pretty explicit: "It is part of the University’s branding toolkit", "It sets out our house style". Their house style is not our house style, and WP is not part of anyone's "branding toolkit". These are also rather obviously based on news style, as are virtually all p.r. style sheets. The reliable sources for how to write formal, academic English (i.e. encyclopedic English) in the narrowly British and more broadly Commonwealth dialect spectrum are New Hart's Rules, a.k.a. New Oxford Style Manual (which contains New Hart's and a usage dictionary), and Fowler's Dictionary of Modern English Usage. They are clear that BrEng drops the dots from contractions that end in the same letter as the full expression but retain the dot otherwise: Dr, Mr, Mrs (which is a kind of a bastardised abbreviation of missus - still ends in s), and St, but Prof. with a dot. Meanwhile, NAmEng uses dots for all: Dr., Mr., Mrs., St., Prof. MoS didn't just make this up out of nowhere, and there's no way that it would have survived in MoS for years on end if it conflicted with actual practice (other than "drop everything I possibly can out of expediency" news journalism practice).
There are other classes of abbreviations that have their own conventions, some of which are in flux. Things like PhD, MA, LLD, DDS (a type of acronym) are increasingly being written without any dots, across all dialects. They don't have anything to do with the British contraction-handling convention.
I don't know what you mean by "Thus the example cited in the MoS currently is incorrect". The example given is "Doctor can be abbreviated Dr. in American and Canadian English, but is Dr in British English", which agrees entirely with both of us. But I don't know why you've brought this to my personal talk page instead of the guideline talk page anyway. [As it makes more sense as an open discussion, I've moved it to WT:MOSABBR.]  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:05, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
PS: For those not interested in digging in page history: MapReader did this, and I partially reverted and partially clarifed with this.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:08, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

Add "LGBT" to Exceptions

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.
There is consensus to implement the proposal. There is consensus that "LGBT" is intelligible on its own, separated from explanation, with numerous uses in various sources. However, editors may add a link at their own discretion the first time the term appears in the article, to easily and non-obtrusively clarify any potential confusion. Cheers, Edward-Woodrow • talk 14:03, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

The term "LGBT" (which stands for "lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender") is quite ubiquitous, and it may be safe to think that everybody knows what does it stand for with no need to explicitly clarify it. Cambalachero (talk) 13:59, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

  • Agree - It is very rare for someone to refer to the community as "lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender", using the abbreviation is much more common and should be well understood by most people.
Timceharris (talk) 14:14, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
  • (Summoned by bot) I agree, but only as far as LGBT goes ~ i.e., not the longer abbreviations which start with "LGBT", as they are neither as clear nor as well known. Happy days, ~ LindsayHello 14:44, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
  • Query What is your evidence? Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 16:33, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
  • Support adding to exception list. (Summoned by bot) Robert McClenon (talk) 18:22, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
  • Support: A quick internet query indicates that numerous, if not most reliable sources use the abbreviation "LGBT" by itself. ThatIPEditor Talk · Contribs 12:36, 30 September 2023 (UTC)
  • Support using the abbreviation 23impartial (talk) 15:03, 1 October 2023 (UTC)
    @23impartial: This isn't about "using the abbreviation", it's about whether to explain what it means (one way or another) at first occurrence.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:51, 1 October 2023 (UTC)
  • Quasi-oppose on this, because I cannot see any gain to the readership to be had from us not explaining (even with a template) what it means at first occurrence, in some fashion. We probably do not need to spell it out parenthetically, but rather do "LGBT" or "LGBT". This guideline really needs to be revised to more clearly permit the templated-explanation method (or, I suppose, bare <abbr>...</abbr> markup), or linking to an article on the subject, instead of seeming to require "lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT)" or "LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender)" styles only – when it comes to any abbreviations, not just this one. In particular, the wording in this section that goes "the full name does not need to be written out in full on first use, nor provided on first use in parentheses after the full name if written out" is misleading in this regard and out-of-step with actual practice, which includes both the template technique and the link style. Anyway, I don't think "LGBT" rises to the level of ubiquity of "EU" and "UK" (which we usually don't link, like we don't link "France" or "Asia" in most contexts); nor is it like "AIDS" or "HDMI", which we would almost always link on first occurrence. It's fairly likely that many non-native English speakers (especially from more repressive parts of the world) don't know what this string of letters means, so a first occurence in an article should probably be "LGBT", or if a link seems appropriate in the context then "LGBT".  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:51, 1 October 2023 (UTC)
  • Support as this seems to be the standard practice anyway, but on the other hand, if it is spelled out in an article(s), etc. we shouldn't go around removing it either. Isaidnoway (talk) 16:47, 3 October 2023 (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.

Moving what is presently MOS:ACROTITLE into a naming-conventions guideline

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#"Acronyms in page titles" is mis-placed in an MoS page. In short, the material needs to move to a naming-conventions guideline, but which page?  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:19, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

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