Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 190

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Scope of application

The introduction of Wikipedia:Manual of Style, in its version of 21:30, 1 January 2017, begins with this sentence: "The Manual of Style (abbreviated as MoS or MOS) is the style manual for all Wikipedia articles." It is unexplicit about talk pages and other namespaces and non-talk pages which function as talk pages—for example, Wikipedia:Reference desk/Language and Wikipedia:Village pump (policy).

Valenciano asked at User talk:Jimbo Wales (permanent link) about whether the Manual of Style applies outside article space, and specifically to watchlist notices. I propose that just a few words be added to the introduction, to make the scope of application clearer. Some pages have a more official nature, and editors can be influenced (rightly or wrongly) to imitate the style of writing found there.
—Wavelength (talk) 01:58, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

Now and then I have to explain to people that MOS applies to articles only -- even MOS itself is not subject to MOS -- so I suppose it wouldn't hurt to add a word or two (literally). E Eng 02:52, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

I agree; otherwise I'd fix your double hyphens to dashes. Dicklyon (talk) 02:56, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

I assume you realize that was deliberate. E Eng 01:38, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

My sense of humor is obviously not as well developed as yours. But nice one. Dicklyon (talk) 01:59, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

Well you accepted the offer beautifully. I'll be here all week. E Eng 03:36, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

Dicklyon, User:EEng, I don't know if I speak for ArbCom when I say I don't give a fuck about turning hyphens into dashes or vice versa--I'm an old type-writer person. But YOU PUT SPACES AROUND DOUBLE HYPHENS ONE MORE TIME AND I'LL SLAP YOU WITH DISCRETIONARY SANCTIONS SO FAST YOU WON'T KNOW WHAT HIT YOU. Hold on while I find the templated warning and log my use of the f-word. Carry on, Drmies (talk) 17:53, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

Yes, Your Arbship. Whatever you say, Your Arbship. E Eng 18:23, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

What reason is there for MOS applying to articles only? —Wavelength (talk) 04:05, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

You'll understand after you read a post I made in another conversation several years ago:

In the last 48 hr I've become aware of a simmering dispute over whether the text of MOS itself should be in American or British English. With any luck the participants will put that debate (let's call it Debate D1) on hold in order to begin Debate D2: consideration of the variety of English in which D1 should be conducted. Then, if there really is a God in Heaven, D1 and D2 will be the kernel around which will form an infinite regress of metadebates D3, D4, and so on -- a superdense accretion of pure abstraction eventually collapsing on itself to form a black hole of impenetrable disputation, wholly aloof from the mundane cares of practical application and from which no light, logic or reason can emerge.

That some editors will find themselves inexorably and irreversibly drawn into this abyss, mesmerized on their unending trip to nowhere by a kaleidoscope of linguistic scintillation reminiscent of the closing shots of 2001, is of course to be regretted. But they will know in their hearts that their sacrifice is for the greater good of Wikipedia. That won't be true, of course, but it would be cruel to disabuse them of that comforting fiction as we bid them farewell and send them on their way.

E Eng 04:35, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

Hopefully those who wanted to go that way have long since gone. Wavelength, what are you thinking? By the way, sometimes editors try to make templates and category names correspond to the styles in the articles (I did a few such things myself a while back). That doesn't bother me, but strikes me as mostly a waste of time compared to working on articles. Dicklyon (talk) 04:43, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

Indeed, the focus should be on articles only. The concentration required there is exhausting enough. Discussions about improvements, articles, processes - in whatever casual form - cannot themselves be a focus in such like. (Please don't make me fix all the misspellings in talk pages! Nooooo ...) Shenme (talk) 05:07, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

Watchlist notices should absolutely be covered by WP:MOS. Otherwise there's the chance that people will subconsciously copy any MOS errors into article space. Valenciano (talk) 12:55, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

The beauty of that assertion is that it's unfalsifiable: we can't prove that unencyclopedic language in watchlist notices isn't leaking into articles all over the place, so we better guard against that chance. While we're at it let's extend the straitjacket to template documentation, help pages, and policies and guidelines too. Essays, even. E Eng 06:34, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

Dicklyon, I am thinking of harmony and consistency. If WP:MOS does not apply to other namespaces (except user pages, talk pages, and project pages functioning as talk pages, mentioned in my opening post), then where is a style guide that does apply to them? Incidentally, I am in favor of replacing WP:ENGVAR with a unified English style, incorporating principles from User:Angr/Unified English Spelling.

—Wavelength (talk) 21:56, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

Not going to happen. Dicklyon (talk) 22:08, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

Consider also that Angr last contributed to that essay way back in 2009. I respect his opinions and would take direction from him. Note he also mentions the word 'fantasy' at end of essay. I am an EngVar nut, because I wish to respect the diversity of English-using populations. That does not say I 'celebrate' the diversity of English. It is an imperfect tool, but today it makes possible the work here, as editors can make themselves understood without "perfection required". Please don't throw up walls of knits (sick) to get in the way of the work. Shenme (talk) 23:39, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

This entire question seems to assume that the MOS is a policy that would be mindlessly implemented. Even if the MOS "applies" to non-articles, if it is only a guideline that is not mandatory (as some have argued above), the fact that it "applies" doesn't really mean anything. Until the question of "how mandatory" the MOS rules should be is resolved, this question is hard to answer in any meaningful way. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:10, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

Don't be silly; that's not what this is about. And I wish people with stop throwing around things like "mindless" and "policy" when discussing guidelines they don't care for. And nobody has proposed that anything be "mandatory"; feel free to ignore the MOS if you don't care about it. Dicklyon (talk) 22:08, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

"Feel free to ignore the MOS if you don't care about it"? Would that also apply to whether to include commas in the names of articles - can we just ignore the MOS if we don't care about it in that situation? But, back to the subject, when someone asks "does the MOS apply to ZZZ", it usually means "I want to edit ZZZ to match the MOS". But the idea that something should be edited solely because it does not match the MOS is very much about whether the MOS is just a page of advice or a policy that can overrule the established style of each page. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:31, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

There is a second part Dicklyon's comment that he leaves out. Yes, editors can "Feel free to ignore the MOS if you don't care about it", but that is because "Someone who does care about it will follow along after you, and conform the article to MOS guidance." Normally this is a good thing. Unfortunately, there are occasions when that second part gets parlayed into "Feel free to insist on MOS compliance if you care about it... even when others are saying that an exception should be made." It's the insistence on MOS compliance that sometimes causes conflicts, not the specific provisions of MOS. Blueboar (talk) 14:05, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

I think that many (not all) of these situations are not editors insisting on MOS compliance, but rather insisting on a reason for exception beyond ILIKE/DONTLIKEIT. That, to me, looks like appropriate guideline enforcement. Primergrey (talk) 04:58, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

I agree, but those remaining few proceed rapidly and stubbornly. E Eng 06:34, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

Hear, hear! I've got two favorite quotations on that:

The flip side of "ownership" is the problem of editors who come to an article with a particular agenda, make the changes they want to the page according to their preconceived notions of what should be, and then flit off to their next victim, without ever considering whether the page really needed the change they made, or whether the change improved the article at all ... Their editing is an off-the-rack, one-size-fits-all proposition, premised on the idea that what improves one article, or one type of article, will automatically improve every other article or type of article ... -- Beyond My Ken

One area the hit and run editor gets involved in is the formatting ... The quality of work has increased in some areas, which makes it harder to contribute without good knowledge in the subject matter and sources. Fiddling with the formatting seems to be a suitable alternative passtime. -- Ritchie333

Those who clean articles up with intelligence and discretion are a boon to the project, but there's a species of blind self-appointed roving enforcer (described in the quotes above) who wastes others' time in exchange for at best very marginal benefit. (I got blocked -- twice, in fact -- by one of these self-appointed roving enforces for using the phrase self-appointed roving enforcer, and if someone wants to do that again I welcome the martyrdom.) E Eng 02:35, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

I actually agree... however, what you describe is a behavioral issue, not limited to style editors. All of our policies can be overzealously enforced. What is disruptive is the zealotry. Blueboar (talk) 03:11, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

Yes, but MOS peculiarly lends itself to being reduced to scripts, which allows people with little or no idea what they're doing to pretend to themselves that they're "improving" thousands of articles per day, and to fend off 90% of those who question them with a vague wave toward "MOS compliance". There's no script that can even pretend to enforce V, NPOV, UNDUE, and so on. E Eng 03:41, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

I can't believe this discussion is still going. EEng seems compelled to answer every comment. Let's see if he can resist this one. Dicklyon (talk) 06:38, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

I feel compelled to respond. Though we had a friendly wander off point, the original question was whether something should be added to MOS making it clear that it's meant to apply to articles only (and, I guess, templates that contribute to articles via transclusion). Do you think we should? E Eng 07:09, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

To clarify my original post, here is a comparison of four types of situation.

What is the scope of application of Wikipedia:Manual of Style? The example set in more official namespaces can have a catalytic effect on articles.
What is the scope of application of a school dress code? The example set by teachers can have a catalytic effect on the behavior of students.
What is the scope of application of regulations prohibiting impaired driving (by alcohol or cannabis or texting)? The example set by police officers can have a catalytic effect on the behavior of civilians.
What is the scope of application of bylaws requiring that property owners clear snow from public sidewalks? The example set by the employees of City Hall can have a catalytic effect on the behavior of business owners and homeowners.

In each of those types of situation, the time and effort spent to set a positive example in the first area can offset some of the time and effort needed to be spent in the second area.
—Wavelength (talk) 20:44, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

What do you mean by "application"? Do you mean that someone should make a change to a non-article solely because it does not match the MOS? There is not even broad consensus that this is always true for articles... see above on this talk page. Until that issue is settled -- until there is clear guidance on what it means for the MOS to apply to articles - it's unlikely that anyone can work out how the MOS would apply to non-articles. — Carl (CBM · talk) 20:56, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

The MOS encourages the use of "common sense" and allows for "occasional exceptions". By "application" I mean that, in general, articles should ideally be written in conformity with MOS in the first place but should otherwise be corrected to conform to MOS, and that, unless there is a separate style guide for other namespaces (except user space and talk pages), they also should ideally be written in conformity with MOS in the first place but should otherwise be corrected to conform to MOS.

—Wavelength (talk) 00:34, 5 January 2017 (UTC) and 00:36, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

Sure, ideally. But it's just not that important that our underware pages be as style-consistent as our articles. Correcting WP-space pages to conform to MOS is not a thing we need to care about. Dicklyon (talk) 03:52, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

Dicklyon, see [1]‍—‌maybe WP:UNDIE would be an appropriate place to outline our underware style guide? E Eng 04:32, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

Sure it would be, if I get to write it. Dicklyon (talk) 05:14, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

No, no, no, no, no, no, and no. Did I mention no? Non-article pages serve different purposes than do articles, and have different audiences. You seem to think our editors are morons who can't understand that. (You'll notice the previous sentence uses the contraction can't, which would never appear in an article.) I just addressed the reader in the second person, which we would never do in an article. The first person is used in the prior sentence‍—‌verboten! This post uses humor to get a point across, but articles are strictly serious.Well, almost strictly. Articles don't use sentence fragments! Or exclamations! E Eng 03:38, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

Bold edit

This is going nowhere. I've boldly added

Policies and guidelines, talk pages, help pages, user pages, and so on are not articles, so MOS doesn't apply to them. In particular, MOS does not apply to MOS.

– subject of course to the approval of my esteemed fellow editors. E Eng 23:47, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

There are two main reasons for manuals of style. From the perspective of readers, greater consistency reduces their effort as they learn the expected patterns in the text. From the perspective of editors, it reduces time spent discussing how to style text, by making definitive (even if arbitrary) decisions ahead of time.

For non-articles, while both of these can still be useful, the magnitude of their importance is lessened. For discussion pages, although technically one could go around correcting everyone's spelling, generally it doesn't help people get along and so social convention dictates that mistakes that do not significantly affect understanding get ignored. In a similar manner, it would be overly pedantic to enforce style in discussions. For policies and guidelines, it would be more useful to have pre-determined style guidance, but I think social convention would still allow for some flexibility, given the target audience is not the general readership. For help pages, tone would play a big role: if the page is laying down formal guidance, greater consistency helps reinforce this message. For help pages with an informal tone, strictly following the style guide may be too rigid. So personally I don't see a hard dividing line between articles and non-articles. I would say there is a clear line around discussion pages (and by extension the primary user page and user pages intended to communicate with others, rather than being draft articles or policies): rewriting these to follow a fixed style would be seen as uncollegial.

As for whether or not the manual of style should follow its own guidance: I think it's a prime place to practise what is being preached. (But if trying to align the text accordingly leads to uncollaborative interactions, then it might be best to just let it go as long as the conveyed meaning is accurate.) isaacl (talk) 04:38, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

I've reverted this edit. I think there are enough other editors here who don't want any text (of any similar sort) inserted. I'm personally of a similar mind to isaacl, though SMC makes some points above with which I also agree. Basically, "there are better things to do than amend project-space to match the MOS, but that doesn't require an explicit prohibition (especially in the MOS itself)". If someone is edit warring over making a project-space page conformant (perhaps besides WP:Accessibility), that's got arbitration remedies if not a basic WP:3RRN report. --Izno (talk) 13:21, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

there are enough other editors here who don't want any text (of any similar sort) inserted – What are you talking about? I said it wouldn't hurt to add a word or two, Dicklyon said I agree, and everything else has been digressions on other stuff. Since my bold edit the only comments have been isaacl offering a philosophy of stylistic approaches to various namespaces, and you saying SMC makes some points above, when in fact he hasn't commented on this at all. In response to your concern that there is at least one page that basically applies everywhere (except sandboxing) at WP:Accessibility I amended [2] the note to read

Policy and guideline pages, talk pages, help pages, user pages, and so on are not articles, so MOS (with the possible exception of its Accessibility subpage) does not apply to them.

yet you've reverted again. What's the harm in reminding people that talk and guideline pages aren't articles?

I should add that I think MOS is important and articles should adhere to it by default (subject to common sense). This has nothing to do with the arguments raging elsewhere over changes to article styles and so on; this is about distinguishing articles from everything else. I thought that would be uncontroversial. E Eng

Eep, I was looking a bit further up the talk page than I should have been when I referenced SMC (though I'm sure he has an opinion as he so-often does). I'll get to the rest of your comment later today or more-likely tomorrow. --Izno (talk) 15:22, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

^[FBDB]Only my friends address me as Eep. With people to whom I haven't been introduced (by a mutual friend or person in a position of trust and prominence in the community) I prefer the more formal EEng. E Eng 15:31, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

You must get really confused at the movie theatre (I couldn't decide if I should display my Americanism in the spelling aforementioned word) watching a scary movie. --Izno (talk) 15:34, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

Sorry, in what movie do characters emit Eep when frightened? Chicken Run? E Eng 15:51, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

This seems somewhat terrifying. --Izno (talk) 16:08, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

^[FBDB]The Dutch are totally weird. E Eng 16:11, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

Sorry, I'm confused. Iep? That's a tree. Little birds say "piep". BTW, Iep! lijkt me een erg leuke film--ga ik met de kinderen zien. Also, as an Arb I'm not used to writing small, but I'm willing to slum it so I don't appear to be as special as I think I am. Don't want y'all to think me arrogant. (Can I use Southern American English here? does the MOS allow that?) Drmies (talk) 17:59, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

I think the footnote didn't hurt, especially after I edited it a bit, but I also agree it's not necessary or important, since the lead already says the MOS is "the style manual for all Wikipedia articles." Other opinions, now that we have an actual dispute to settle? Dicklyon (talk) 15:58, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

Wavelength expressed disagreement with limiting the scope of the manual of style to articles. I believe your edit is too expansive in limiting the scope of the manual of style, as I discussed in my comment. isaacl (talk) 18:21, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

The scope is already limited, whether or not you and Wavelength think that's the way it should be. What do you think, Dicklyon, should we open a new thread to discuss how to clarify, in a footnote or whatever, what MOS' scope of application actually is, leaving this thread for people who want to argue that the scope should be changed? E Eng 04:04, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

From the initial post I was under the impression this was a discussion regarding the scope of the manual of style. Not sure why the discussion should be split; it seems unduly bureaucratic. There isn't any particular urgency to adding a clarification. isaacl (talk) 03:19, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

This thread was opened by the OP as a question: whether the Manual of Style applies outside article space, and specifically to watchlist notices. The answer to the first question is indisputably No; however, it appears some of our esteemed fellow editors are left wondering about that by MOS' current text on the subject, and thus the suggestion – I propose that just a few words be added to the introduction, to make the scope of application clearer (also by the OP) – seems very appropriate. Somehow, however, the thread veered into a discussion of what MOS' scope should be (instead of how best to express what it is) so I'm opening a new thread (below) on just that latter question. Urgency has nothing to do with it. E Eng 05:29, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

I appreciate you feel the question has been answered indisputably, but I don't feel a consensus has been reached. Thus it feels premature to discuss adding further text. isaacl (talk) 21:51, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

Conspicuously at the top of the main page is this message: "Welcome to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit." The reader is invited to become an editor. The word sequence "anyone can edit" is a link to Wikipedia:Introduction. Conspicuously at the top of that page is a link to Help:Contents. At the bottom of Wikipedia:Introduction are links to Category:Wikipedia basic information and Category:Wikipedia quick introductions. Conspicuously at the top of that last page is a link to Category:Wikipedia quick introduction templates, which has a list of links to five templates, including Template:Intro to. Wikipedia:Introduction has a tab with a link to Wikipedia:Introduction 3, where the reader is invited to "create your own username". That word sequence is a link to "Create account" at Special:CreateAccount. Obviously, readers are exposed to several different namespaces. Finding harmony and consistency of style among the various namespaces is encouraging and helpful to a reader and especially to a new editor.

—Wavelength (talk) 21:40, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

WTF? E Eng 04:03, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

Wide scope of application made explicit

In my posts made at 20:44, 4 January 2017 (UTC) and 21:40, 5 January 2017 (UTC), I provided valid reasons in support of a wide scope of application. I propose that the wide scope be made explicit, by a change in the present wording to a wording supporting a wide scope of application.
Present wording: The Manual of Style (abbreviated as MoS or MOS) is the style manual for all Wikipedia articles.
New wording: The Manual of Style (abbreviated as MoS or MOS) is the style manual for all Wikipedia non-user non-talk pages, except pages functioning as talk pages.
—Wavelength (talk) 02:53, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

Absolutely not It's absurd, like someone at the New York Times wanting their style manual to apply to the menu in the lunchroom. E Eng 04:08, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

A better analogy would be with directives from the boardroom.

—Wavelength (talk) 01:36, 11 January 2017 (UTC)

OK, fine... a directive from the boardroom that the lunchroom menu conform to the style manual. Even more absurd. E Eng 05:19, 11 January 2017 (UTC)

Sometimes the viewpoint of one person appears to be bizarre and topsy-turvy to a person with a different viewpoint.

—Wavelength (talk) 04:53, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

And sometimes a clever-sounding reference to philosophies of software engineering is just a non sequitur. E Eng 06:53, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

No. Non-article pages can be less formal than article pages. Jc3s5h (talk) 15:22, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

Directive pages should be at least as formal as the pages that they govern.

—Wavelength (talk) 01:36, 11 January 2017 (UTC)

Why? Everything you say has an empty superficial symmetry. I could say, "Talk pages for discussing encyclopedia articles should be written like encyclopedia articles", with a few words wikilinked as if they explained something, and some people might nod their head and say that makes sense, but it makes no sense at all. E Eng 05:19, 11 January 2017 (UTC)

I provided valid reasons at 20:44, 4 January 2017 (UTC) and 21:40, 5 January 2017 (UTC).

—Wavelength (talk) 04:53, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

Apparently not, since the responses to your proposal have been three Nos and two Absolutely nots. E Eng 06:53, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

I agree with you that our good examples in WP pages can influence editors positively. On the other hand, the effect is probably small compared to the effect of our good examples in articles, so I think keeping the MOS focused on articles is still the right move. Dicklyon (talk) 05:27, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

...not to mention that the cost of arguing about MOS compliance outside of articles would be astronomical. E Eng 06:53, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

No, per Jc3s5h. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 15:34, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

What about per me? E Eng 17:01, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

No per EEng and the lunchroom menu. Dicklyon (talk) 18:01, 10 January 2017 (UTC)
Absolutely not per Jc3s5h, EEng, Dicklyon, the lunchroom menu, and WP:CREEP! oknazevad (talk) 05:08, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

Downcasing "[w]hen integrating the quotation into the grammar of a larger sentence" – silence is golden?

Right now we have [3]:

When quoting a complete sentence, it is recommended to keep the first word capitalized unless the quoted passage has been integrated into the surrounding sentence.

Right: Gandhi said: "Be the change you want to see in the world."
Permissible: Gandhi said one should "[b]e the change you want to see in the world."

The implication is that the downcased b should be bracketed as an editorial change. But Wikipedia:Styletips/23 says

When integrating the quotation into the grammar of a larger sentence, downcase the first letter of a quotation that is in upper case purely because it starts a sentence in the source (It turned out to be true that "a penny saved is a penny earned").

– implying that the downcasing can be silent (though this isn't a great example since it's not a formal quote whose integrity we're trying to respect).

So which is it? I don't see anything at MOS:CAPS, and tried searching the archives for downcase but Google returned its special error message, "To reduce excessive load on Google's servers, we no longer process queries that would return results involving Wikipedia station/Station wars." E Eng 21:55, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

Styletips isn't a guideline. Like many essays by various editors about guidelines and such, it has not been maintained in synch with what it purports to supplement. And yes, an aphorism/cliché isn't a quotation, just something else that can be marked up in quotation marks by convention, very optionally. Many would consider quotation marks around it to be superfluous in a case of recycling a stock phrase like that. The "integrity" of it is not something we care about the way we do with a literal quotation. MoS doesn't indicate that the bracketing of the editorial change is mandatory from a WP:POLICY perspective, it's just an example of a definitely permissible approach. But many editors in many fields would consider it mandatory, and this style is specified in multiple academic style guides, even if it's eschewed in journalistic style, which is all about expediency.

Bracketing any changes is certainly preferable any time accuracy is an issue, especially when whether something started a sentence or was in the middle of it is important to the meaning (either its parseability or its implications). The Gandhi quote isn't ideal to illustrate that, actually. And I'm not certain it's complete, since it's often rendered "You must be ..."; if it's been truncated and we didn't know that, that would ironically prove the point that it's important to indicate editorial removals.

But why would we want to illustrate such points at length in MoS, given how much it comes down to common sense and general encyclopedic writing principles? If we cared to list out every kind of "don't be a dunderhead" case in MoS, then MoS would dectuple in size. No one seems to have an issue with this section, and there is no evidence of widespread confusion or conflict about it. Adding unnecessary variant examples to illustrate every way to do something is well into WP:CREEP and often WP:BEANS territory, and tends to produce much more dispute than it prevents. (I had to learn this the hard way.) The added 'Gandhi said one should be "the change you want to see in the world."' version was well reveted, since it's not helpful; the stress on the Gandhi quote is on the verb, so moving it out of the quotation would make it awkward and defeat the purpose of quoting. There are several other ways to construct sentences that quote Gandhi's statement in whole or in part, before and after, punctuated this way or that way (e.g., some editors prefer a comma instead of a colon in the first, yadda yadda). We need not illustrate them all when the point in this section is just the "When quoting ..." sentence, not a tutorial on every way to use a quotation.

The two examples are good because they represent the norms of precise, accuracy-conscious academic writing style versus, say, blogging or public relations material. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 16:47, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

TLDR. Do we want downcasing to be called out as "[b]e", or do we do it silently as "be"? That's all I'm asking. MOS should say which, because the question comes up now and then and editors wonder. E Eng 16:59, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

The example uses an accident of English grammar that allows a full quoted sentence (a subjectless injunction) to be grammatically integrated as a phrase into larger sentence (a statement). When quoting a full sentence as such (i.e. when it is clear from the construction that it is a sentence being quoted), it should remain capitalized. In the example, there is a dissonance for the reader between interpreting the quote as a fragment (which is implied by the construction used) and as a stand-alone sentence being quoted (which is behind the "[b]"). I would suggest that since the reader is being forced by the construction to understand this as a fragment, it should be treated as such, with lowercasing being silent (even to the point of being made a guideline, though I would generally discourage this kind of "accidental" construction). —Quondum 15:41, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

Surname use at Katherine Johnson article

Opinions are needed on the following: Talk:Katherine Johnson#WP:SURNAME (permalink here). The issue is whether or not we should use Johnson's maiden name for some parts of the article and her surname for other parts of the article. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 00:52, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

Italicizing the title of the "My Little Pony" article

It appears the My Little Pony article is about the franchise, not a specific work, and as such, I think it should not be italicized. Currently, it's italicized in some parts of the article and unitalicized in other parts. Which is correct? nyuszika7h (talk) 11:36, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

Try looking at similar articles. If "My Little Pony" is not italicized, then should we remove the italics from "Star Wars"? The latter article has more than ten times as many editors watching it. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 22:34, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

Can I get some opinions?

Would some MOS-knowledgeable editors not participating in the recent revisions to WP:MOSTV's plot section be available to comment at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Television#TVPLOT reverted? Thanks, Jclemens (talk) 05:59, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

RFC on hyphen in "narrow-gauge railway" titles

At Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#RfC: Hyphen in titles of articles on railways of a narrow gauge I have started an RFC. The question reads: Should articles with "Narrow gauge railways" and such in their titles include a hyphen as "Narrow-gauge railways"? And is there any tweak needed to the guidelines at WP:HYPHEN to be more helpful in deciding such things? Participation is welcome. Dicklyon (talk) 06:01, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

Arbitration motion regarding Article titles and capitalization

The Arbitration Committee has resolved by motion that:

In remedy 4.2 of the 2012 Article titles and capitalisation case, standard discretionary sanctions were authorized for all pages related to the English Wikipedia Manual of Style and article titles policy, broadly construed. By way of clarification, the scope of this remedy refers to discussions about the policies and guidelines mentioned, and does not extend to individual move requests, move reviews, article talk pages, or other venues at which individual article names may be discussed. Disruption in those areas should be handled by normal administrative means.

For the Arbitration Committee, Kevin (aka L235 · t · c) 03:26, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

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Application of MOS:TENSE to literary criticism in articles on historical figures

Li He#Poetry

I'm not sure which tense this should be written in. Right now I've got his poems make frequent use of inauspicious words but he wrote evocatively of the worlds of gods and Buddhas and He frequently combined colour and feeling imagery, and I don't know which it should be. One clarification that might be necessary is that probably only a small portion of his poetry survives, so when scholars talk about themes and the like, they aren't technically talking about what the historical Li He wrote, but what is evident in the works that happen to have come down to us.

Thoughts? Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 04:36, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

I think that sounds right. Assuming he is dead, then he is past tense. The poems still exist, and so are present tense. Actually, I suspect that is true even if he is alive, as the writing is a past event. Seems to me that if scholars give misleading interpretations, then that is their problem. If you have a source, you could note that the problem exists. Some scholars could make the distinction in the comparisons. Gah4 (talk) 10:37, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

If the writer is alive, use the present perfect tense for his writing, as it's still possible he could write more. If he has definitively left off writing, or if the text refers to a particular period of his writing that does not continue into the present, then you can use the simple past. --Trovatore (talk) 20:02, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

Agreed with both of the above. We wouldn't use "his poems made frequent use" unless they are lost works and we only know of them from later writers (as is the case with various works from classical antiquity). The work otherwise still exists and is described in the present tense as to its content (but in past tense as to it's history, e.g. "It was written in 322 BCE"). — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 07:48, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

Query about article tense

Hi all, I was engaged in a discussion with a user about proper tense for an article lead. The context is: whether or not we would refer to a concert tour in the past or present tense, specifically related to this change where "was" changes to "is":

"The Formation World Tour is the seventh concert tour by American singer Beyoncé in support of her sixth studio album, Lemonade."

The editor made some widely unrelated arguments, like that concert tours should be considered fiction and so the rules of writing about fiction should apply; that "the music industry has a lot less to do about music than it did [during Woodstock]" (the Woodstock article uses past tense); that a tour is not an event, it's a production; and so forth. Anyway, the editor has cited Romeo and Juliet (2013 Broadway play) as an example of using present tense to describe an ~~event~~ production in the past. I asked the creator of that article why they chose present tense, but the response didn't resolve my issue. Soooo, I'm hoping someone here can explain which tense is appropriate for The Formation World Tour, is or was? I know that we use present tense for TV articles and typically for film articles, because they are presumed to exist in some form, but it's not as intuitive for me in the context of a Broadway play or a concert tour. Is a Broadway play considered a past event? Is a film tour considered a past event? I clearly need edification. Thanks for any help you might provide. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 20:07, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

It is simple: events are past tense if they happened in the past. As you found out, it isn't that simple. The tour itself, and any events on the tour, should be past. The music from the tour, if recorded, would be present, especially if albums are for sale (or resale). Ideas can live on, even if no physical representation of them exists. The music should be present tense, even if no recordings are known to be made. (Someone likely snuck their iPhone in and recorded it, right?) For one specific question: The Formation World Tour is the seventh concert tour ...: this one bothered me for a while. (More usually first, but seventh, too.) It still is the seventh, so present, but it is an event, so past. I finally decided for past on ones like that, but probably wouldn't change it unless someone asked. I think I agree with much of the current tense. Note: Throughout the concert, a large, rotating LED screen is featured centre stage is present, as it is not one specific performance, but a concert program that was, and could still be repeated, or videos of it reshown. Specific single events, tend to be past tense. I hope this helps. Gah4 (talk) 21:02, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

Oh, the actual description of this is at: MOS:TENSE. Gah4 (talk) 21:04, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

@Gah4: I appreciate the reply, and yeah, I know about MOS:TENSE, but part of the issue was the assertion that the Broadway play and the tour are not events, they are "productions". I don't know what criteria the other editor uses to make that distinction, or what difference it makes. The one argument the editor made that I understand is that the tour will always be Beyonce's 7th, although saying "is" suggests strongly that the tour is still ongoing. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 21:16, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

As I noted, the seventh is always confusing. But I agree that a Broadway play should be present, at least as long as any written or recorded copies exist, as are Shakespeare's plays. I mostly got into MOS:TENSE regarding computers, reading the article on the PDP10 while sitting next to one that was (and still is) running. The PDP10 is a type of computer, not a specific one. As long as descriptions on how to build one still exist, it is described in the present tense. Events, such as the sale of a specific machine, are past tense. A broadway play can be recast in a different theater, and is still the same play. If a video of the tour was made, descriptions of that video would be present tense, at least as long as any copies existed. Someone watching the video would mention the tour in present tense. A video of only one concert on the tour might be past tense, though. (Analogy to a type of computer, vs. a specific instance of one.) Things that happened more than once on the tour, are not specific events. On the tour, Beyoncé sings her favorite song. But During the first concert on the tour, Beyoncé sung her favorite song. One is a specific event, and one is not. This, or course, is all my opinion, but I have been thinking about it for some time now, and used it to edit many articles. As far as I can tell, the current version of the article is fine, though that some might find changes that could be made. Gah4 (talk) 21:58, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

Just for full disclosure - I am the other editor that started the conversation.

For me, I am looking at two things. The first one is the fact that we are numbering the tour. It is her 7th tour, and it always will be. To say that it "was her 7th tour" means that it became something else - as if I was a Governor and became President. I will always be President, never Governor. Or how Bruce Jenner became Caitlyn Jenner. He was Bruce, now he IS Caitlyn. What did the 7th tour become? We could say that it "was a tour", but the minute we add the number it is that number in the present tense.

Now, the other thing I was looking at -- And I admit that maybe it is because I am too closely related to the entertainment industry and I see things that outsiders do not.

But, the modern concert tour, particular in the various pop genres, and very specifically a Beyonce tour - they are scripted and choreopgraphed just like a Broadway play. Beyonce has more non-musical performers on stage than she has in her road crew. It is not like the old rock concerts where there are 4 guys on stage playing music. The video displays. The lighting. Changing stage sets. Props. Costumes. They are no different than huge Broadway productions, not music concerts. They take months to plan, script, and rehearse. (And I should know, I own a 50,000 sq ft venue that artists rent out for this very purpose).

So, when I saw that Romeo and Juilet is spoken in the present tense, I can only assume that Formation is also a present tense.

Kellymoat (talk) 22:59, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

One single concert is an event. But a tour is not an event.Kellymoat (talk) 23:10, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

My choice for the (Nth) of something is usually to leave it in whatever tense it is in already. I try to get the rest of them right. I run into cases such as XXX was the first minicomputer. (As there is uncertainty in the definition, there is more than one computer with this claim.) If it was the first, then it still is. But often enough, I leave it past, if it was already past, to avoid causing someone to revert the rest of the changes and make the whole thing past. I believe present is right, but not quite enough to convince everyone else. Those that are definitely not events, I have an easier time with. I always put [[MOS:TENSE]] in my edit summary, as a hint to those who might want to revert, when I change tense in an article. Gah4 (talk) 02:21, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

I cannot agree with To say that it "was her 7th tour" means that it became something else. It should have been left as past tense. It was a tour, it was her seventh, and it still is, but past tense makes more sense. Dicklyon (talk) 02:29, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

[4] is previous discussion on this question. If Beyoncé goes home for a few days between concerts, is that the end of one tour, and then the beginning of the next? The problem is that a tour isn't an event. It has a fuzzy beginning and ending. It could be continued, after what was supposed to be an end. As noted above, the tour can be considered not just the physical movement of people and props, but the documentation on how to produce it. A Broadway play is still a Broadway play, even when it isn't playing on Broadway. As with a Shakespeare play, it is the document that makes the play, not the people. Gah4 (talk) 02:55, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

I disagree with this point. I believe it is very clear when concert tours are ongoing or have ended, given how dates are added generally months in advance and "going home for a few days" would never be the sole indication of an end of the tour, and dates being listed under an official itinerary of a tour of a same name and of a same production would obviously indicate it is the same tour and not the beginning of another. Tours have a very clear beginning, and generally a clear end. Venues (in this case stadiums) have to be booked and sold to the public. Tours don't just have random dates confusingly added to the end blurring or confusing anything, so to say "a fuzzy beginning and ending" is a bit of a stretch. Whilst dates could unexpectedly be added, the ending of a tour is always eventually clear. If it was to suddenly have more dates added, these would be added to the official itinerary website as well as other, multiple sources reporting the new dates months in advance. If this was to happen, then the opening of the article would easily revert back to present tense and refer to the tour as " is the ongoing 7th concert tour" which would be consistent with all other ongoing tour articles, and then once the final performance of those announced dates were complete, it would change back to past, no? ThirdWard (talk) 23:40, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

Part of the confusion is the name tour itself. Tour emphasizes the movement of buses and trucks from one place to another, but the important part of the tour is the actual shows. The analogy to a Broadway show, which is a series of individual shows, even while not traveling. If you think of a tour as the movement of buses and trucks, then yes it begins when the first truck leaves, and ends when the last one returns home. (Not the beginning of the first concert, and the end of the last one.) But as with Broadway plays, and Shakespeare plays, the play exists in written form, in present tense, even when it isn't on stage. Similarly, a concert tour is the choreography that defines it, the stage props that were built based on written drawings, the T-shirts that were printed, and the CDs and DVDs that were sold. Beyoncé might be less famous than Shakespeare, and will be forgotten after not so many years. Then it will be past tense. Gah4 (talk) 03:26, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

I don't see the confusion. You don't need to pin down the exact start and end times of the tour to know that it's in the past after it's over. Dicklyon (talk) 04:54, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

Agreed. While this is the wrong place to define what a tour is, once it has been defined it should be pretty clear when one is over. Primergrey (talk) 05:23, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

From Cats (musical): As of 2016, Cats is the fourth-longest-running show in Broadway history. Present tense, even though it is not currently running on Broadway. Romeo and Juliet is a Shakespeare play. The Formation World Tour is the seventh Beyoncé concert tour. Gah4 (talk) 07:24, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

Actually, Cats is currently playing at the Neil Simon Theatre. It's a revival.oknazevad (talk) 20:18, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

Cats is a musical, composed (past tense, the process of composition has concluded) by Andrew Lloyd Weber; but the first season of Cats was a production that started on date-x, ended on date-y, and featured so-and-so as Grisabella. [Apologies for using placeholders and not looking up the facts.]

George W. is a former president (or "President"? let's not go there) – he's still alive – who served particular terms of office which are now concluded. George Washington was a president, it's okay to use past tense because he is dead.

So is it just about whether Cats or The Formation Tour are "alive" or "dead" in a factual rather than linguistic sense? Does it matter whether the stage directions or score for Cats have been published as distinct entities or just written down somewhere? Does it matter that Cats is likely to be performed again in future but Formation is not?

Like other editors above, part of my uneasiness is that the word "tour" implies a beginning and end, more like a season of a play than the "instructions on how to produce it" (good description, btw). There is also the question of what is the main referrent of the article? Industry insiders might see more emphasis on the preparation (time-bound) and the instructions (possibly recorded for posterity), but the average reader probably expects the article to be about the event as it happened.

Pelagic (talk) 18:18, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

Seems to me that tour in the name doesn't necessarily make it past. There is a DVD set called The Madrigal History Tour. The description of it says In this six-part Madrigal History Tour the King's Singers vocal ensemble travels through Germany, Spain, France, England and Italy. Note the present tense, even though I presume they have stopped traveling. But something can be named tour even if no-one actually does any touring. Gah4 (talk) 19:21, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

In the first example, Broadway history is the context, and the subject of Broadway history is ongoing. The second is also clearly correct (but should it be, "Shakespeare is the writer of..." or "Shakespeare was the writer of.."? And the third reads well only while the tour is ongoing. Not sure if it's wrong after that, but it would read terribly. Primergrey (talk) 07:46, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

I would argue that the reason why the Cats example should be present-tense, is because the "As of" implies a statement that was present when it was written. "As of January 21, 2017, the film has grossed $215 million." This was something that I brought up in a few Wikipedia venues including the Reference Desk a while back, because it irked me that a statement about the past was written in the present, but most of the responding editors seemed to think "as of" warranted present tense. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 02:08, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

As I previously stated above, I do believe that "Formation IS the 7th tour". But I disagree with the comparison to "Cats is the longest running" because longest running is a title/award/record. It is currently the record holder. If Hamilton runs longer than Cats, "Cats was the longest running until Hamilton overtook that spot in 2050". However, that wouldn't be the first line of the article. The first line would be, "Cats IS a musical." Kellymoat (talk) 13:30, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

The Phantom of the Opera is actually the longest running. Has been for about 8 years, actually.

There's a difference that causes the Broadway show analogy to break down, though. A musical or play has a written script (and score, for musicals) that itself is a literary work that is as readable as a novel or other book. And the title applies to that just as much as to any individual production. For that matter, the title applies equally to all productions, whether it's a multi-million dollar mounting for Broadway or a zero dollar budget community theatre production in the middle of nowhere. That's the difference between tours and plays. Tours, once they end, are over, done, past. They no longer exist. Plays, on the other hand, are persistent works. A given production (or national tour) may end, but the play still exists, even if just as a script. That's why past tense is appropriate for tours, but not for plays. The two are not the same. oknazevad (talk) 20:18, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

How about if people with better things to do go write articles, leaving people with nothing better to do fuss about the tense of Beyonce's tour? E Eng 13:41, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

I wonder how you can imagine that anyone would benefit from a comment like yours. Maybe you need to take your own advice to heart and go find something to edit instead of jumping into conversations that don't matter to you. Or perhaps this is another of your humor pieces and I just don't get the joke? Dicklyon (talk) 13:53, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

I'm 100% serious. None of our readers cares a whit whether Beyonce's 7th tour (or is it a Tour?) is is or was was; maybe 1% will notice that there's an inconsistency among articles on this point, and 0.001% will think, fleetingly, "I guess someone might make those consistent someday." That's it. Readers don't care, just like they don't care whether Grand Central is a station or a Station. But there's a class of editor who cares, apparently, and if those editors want to waste their time on such meaninglessness, I guess I can't stop them. But I may be able to help other editors resist the siren call and not get drawn in, so they can edit usefully elsewhere. If I'm successful in that in even one case, then that's a net gain to Wikipedia. E Eng 14:19, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

Grand Central Terminal, dammit! And yes, it's a proper noun that's carved in stone in the building! I kid. Slightly. oknazevad (talk) 20:18, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

I prefer your comedy to your dramatics. Primergrey (talk) 18:28, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

I'm trying to expand my range. E Eng 22:06, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

I think this agrees with what I tried to say above. I try to get the obvious ones right. For the not so obvious ones, I leave them, whichever way they are. If they are unobvious enough to question here, then I just leave them. There are enough obvious ones to fix. That doesn't mean that it isn't worth discussing here, though. Gah4 (talk) 19:39, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

It was worth raising, up to the point it showed signs of becoming another fight to the death for the heart and soul of Wikipedia, all over a single word. At that point I felt I should throw a lifeline to any souls wanting to save themselves. E Eng 22:06, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

Suggest allowing adults to self-rescue. Or not. ―Mandruss ☎ 21:21, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

"Fight to the death"? I see no entrenched positions here. This will almost certainly yield a consensus on the matter and with complete civility all around. If that's the case, I personally don't give two shits how long a discussion it is. You should consider illuminating AN/I with your sage offerings. You know what readers really don't care about? That User:MarioRulez posted on User:LuigiRockz's talk page after being told by Admin:ILuvDrahma that he shouldn't.Primergrey (talk) 07:13, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

I just threw the line -- it was up to them to take it. E Eng 01:35, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

You miss the point, so I'll be more direct. Adults are not in need of your rescuing, and your recurring off-topic comments about what should be discussed and for how long are annoying to many of those who do not share your view. If editors feel that a discussion is trivial or pointless, they are capable of leaving it without your "lifelines". Including you. ―Mandruss ☎ 04:46, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Yes, and they're capable of taking or ignoring my advice without you telling me that they're capable of taking your advice on whether my advice is needed for your advice to be not taken by people who... huh? E Eng 06:49, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Again you miss the point. Your recurring comments of this type are off topic and contrary to talk page guidelines. If you want to discuss triviality in Wikipedia editing, go to WP:VPM and start a discussion about that. Ask the community how it feels about the need for your "lifelines". But you are being disruptive by interjecting your comments into discussions that you object to. Once or twice would not be an issue, but this is like the 3rd time I've seen you doing this in my very occasional stops at MOS pages over a number of months. So it looks like a chronic problem to me.
We are all unpaid volunteers, and we are all free to waste our time here as we wish, provided there is some connection to improvement of the encyclopedia, however feeble you perceive that connection to be. Drop the stick, please. ―Mandruss ☎ 15:27, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

I agree with Mandruss on this, EEng. You frequently inject useless noise into discussions, acting like you just need attention for your brand of humor and sarcasm. This old trope of "How about if people with better things to do go write articles" gets old; let people care about what they care about, and find something to care about yourself, other than meddling in discussions where you have nothing constructive to add. Dicklyon (talk) 16:12, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

I am letting people care about what they care about. I'm just reminding them that they can step back and ask themselves, each individually, whether participating on a given issue is the best use of his or her time. As for "useless noise", that's just a measure of your blinkered outlook. Many people consider your endless fussing about consistency of hyphens and capitalization project-wide to be cacophonous noise on a massive scale, which has consumed vast amounts of editor time to marginal (at best) benefit. I made my comment, whether you see its worth or not, and instead of just letting it lie you've made half of this thread about it; talk about STICK! E Eng 16:40, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Again, adults do not need your reminders. Again, your comments are off topic, and you have offered no defense because no defense for off-topic comments exists. Let's add WP:IDHT to the list. ―Mandruss ☎ 16:47, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Of course adults need reminders; that's why they have an inspirational saying or two on the desk or wall. Are you really going to keep wasting time fussing about this? E Eng 18:57, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

I'm prepared to continue as long as you do. And I will continue to oppose this kind of chronic disruption whenever I happen to run across it. That is, until you have shown some community consensus for an exemption to talk page guidelines. If you feel a topic is too trivial to be discussed, don't discuss it. It's that simple. Thank you. ―Mandruss ☎ 19:02, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Wow. I guess the answer to "Are you're really going to keep wasting time fussing about this?" is Yes. But I'll tell you what, why don't you have the last word now, so you can feel you've won. E Eng 19:56, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

...he says, ensuring that either he gets last word or I appear to confirm his accusation that I have to have last word, thereby setting up a win-win situation for himself. Completely transparent high school crap. ―Mandruss ☎ 20:16, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Fine, I'll take the last word just to end this silliness and to remind people that there's actually a topic of discussion. I note that no one has commented on my last comment regarding the difference between plays and concert tours that actually addresses the substance of the question. oknazevad (talk) 23:42, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

FWIW, I agree with you. A specific performance of a play should be spoken of in the past tense, while the play itself should be spoken of in the present tense. A tour is a performance. It has an unambiguous start and end, so should be spoken of in the past tense. Pburka (talk) 02:46, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

A tour is (usually) a series of performances, as is (usually) a play. (A flop might only manage one performance.) Some author's plays are more enduring than others, and so are more likely to have future performances (events). As with plays, concerts usually have a written script, sometimes very detailed, sometimes not so much. It is the script that makes a play enduring, and separate from a specific performance of a play. I suppose if all copies of the script were destroyed, and all recordings which document the play or concert were destroyed, then it would have to be considered past. I suppose it is easier to find a copy of the script for Romeo and Juliet than for a Beyoncé concert tour, and also less likely for all copies to be destroyed, but it doesn't seem likely that all copies of either have been destroyed. Gah4 (talk) 05:32, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Treat a play like a book or a song (a composition), unless you're talking about its Broadway run in the past. Don't pretend a concert or concert tour is like a play; nobody does that. Dicklyon (talk) 06:45, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Exactly. A tour ends. It is a series of performances, and once all those performances are done, the tour is a thing of the past. Just like a particular production of a play, which (outside of a total flop) consists of more than one performance. The past tense is appropriate for a finished tour for the same reason it's appropriate for a deceased person: they no longer exist. oknazevad (talk) 12:59, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Right. Romeo and Juliet is a play. The 1947 Royal Shakespeare Company production of Romeo and Juliet was controversial for its grittiness. Pburka (talk) 20:40, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Seems perfectly clear. Primergrey (talk) 21:53, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

I got into the tense question for articles about computers. One that actually got into MoS went something like The PDP-10 was a computer ..., while I was sitting next to a PDP-10, which at the time was (sitting is an event) still a computer. But the PDP-10 isn't a specific computer, but written documentation on how to build a type of computer. It should be present tense as long as the documentation, or the memory of it, live on. As for controversiality, that changes with time. I suspect that even if the production from 1947 was still running today, it would not be so controversial today. The miniskirt was controversial in the 1960's, but isn't today. Gah4 (talk) 23:38, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Even if it were a specific computer, it would still be present tense if any could be assumed to exist. I find this problem in a lot of car articles. Some editors seem to have a cut-off date for using "was" and "is" (I suspect it's often around the year they were born). Primergrey (talk) 07:00, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

Unlike abstract concepts like computer architectures or car designs, concert tours have clear begin and end dates. Beyoncé's Dangerously in Love Tour consisted of 10 concerts in November 2003. It's finished, there's no chance it will resume, and it should be referred to in the past tense. Pburka (talk) 17:28, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

I promise not to edit the tense of any articles on concert tours. I never thought about being before someone was born, but that does make some sense. It seems that I_Am..._World_Tour_(album) is present tense, as you might expect. Gah4 (talk) 17:51, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

Agreed with the general consensus emerging here. In particular, I agree with this distinction: "Romeo and Juliet is a play. The 1947 Royal Shakespeare Company production of Romeo and Juliet was controversial for its grittiness." And agree with "... concert tours have clear begin and end dates. Beyoncé's Dangerously in Love Tour consisted of 10 concerts in November 2003. It's finished ...". Concert tours are finite events, not still-extant works (except temporarily, while they are still ongoing). They become past tense, like any other performance or event, when they are over. A recording of a concert is treated like any other published work, however, even if it coincides with the name of the concert or concert tour from which it was made. So, yes, do treat a concert or tour like a play or other stage production or series thereof (like a run on Broadway in 2002–2005 or whatever), since it is a stage production or a series thereof. It's also directly analogous to a pro tour or league season in sports; these also become past tense when they're over. PS: I also agree that "To say that it 'was her 7th tour' means that it became something else" is nonsensical; this proposal defies actual English usage norms. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 07:58, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

Question about the use of en dashes in the Manual of Style

I am not allowed to change these instances of en dashes, so I have to ask these questions here:

Why are en dashes (–), rather than hyphens (-), used in “north–west,” “east–west,” etc. in this article?
Why is an en dash used to connect two independent clauses (not recommended for Wikipedia – see below)? En dashes aren’t used for this; semicolons or em dashes are. Parentheses can also be used.
Why is an en dash, rather than a hyphen, used in “month–day–year”?

En dashes are used to connect ranges of numbers. Hyphens are used to connect compounds. Em dashes are used to connect two independent clauses, although other punctuation marks, such as the semicolon and the parentheses, can also be used. I don’t understand why en dashes are used for all three in the Manual of Style.

―PapíDimmi (talk | contribs) 19:48, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

You are not disallowed from editing the MOS; see WP:BRD. But you are disallowed from repeating the edits that have been repeatedly objected to, under threat of block.

North-west is a direction, and should use hyphen, but east–west is an opposition between directions; like an up–down or left–right or hot–cold distinction, these oppositions between parallel items get the en dash.
The dash (rendered either as unspaced em dash or spaced en dash) makes a more emphatic break, or interruption, than the semicolon. The writer apparently wanted it to read that way.
The en dash connects parallel items as in month–day–year; not clear what usage of hyphen would make one want to use it there.

Dicklyon (talk) 19:58, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

I understand. Thank you for this explanation. If someone would tell me this right away rather than continuously reverting my revision because I’m wrong, without telling me why after I asked a million times, that’d save me a lot of trouble.

As for the second one, I have never seen an en dash being used as an em dash before. Every single grammar guide, along with every person I have talked to, have not said anything about en dashes being used like this. It is pretty strange for me, but I guess it has to stay like this.

And yes, I know that I am not banned from editing the Manual of Style, which is why I removed that statement before you replied.
―PapíDimmi (talk | contribs) 20:01, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

The reason everyone's so pissed off at you is that the stuff Dicklyon just explained to you is explained right in the MOS sections you've been changing. You've made 24 edits to this page in the last week (some of them making scores of changes throughout the page) and not a single one has survived. Even now you continue to make wrongheaded "corrections". When will you learn? E Eng 20:19, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

The link which Dick provided, which apparently shows how common a Google search is, doesn’t prove anything.

You wouldn’t say “Wikipedia uses several dash,” would you?
―PapíDimmi (talk | contribs) 21:26, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

Firstly, I still find the use of unspaced em-dashes rather than spaced en-dashes odd (and indeed ugly). The point you are not appreciating is that this is an international project, and punctuation practices vary both between and within countries. Unspaced em-dashes are much less common in the UK. The MoS rightly allows both to be used.

Secondly, grammatically a singular noun can certainly follow expressions like "forms of". "Different forms of politeness are appropriate in different circumstances" is perfectly grammatical. "Two forms of water coexist at 0 °C" can't be replaced by "Two forms of waters ..." Peter coxhead (talk) 21:58, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

Firstly, I changed the spaced en dash to a semicolon, not an em dash. Semicolons are accepted no matter where in the world you’re.

Secondly, “water” is an uncountable noun, which means that the plural form is the same as its singular form. “Dash” is a countable noun, which means that the plural is “dashes.” “Two forms of dash” sounds awkward. Like I said, one would not say “Wikipedia uses two different dash.”
―PapíDimmi (talk | contribs) 22:01, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

Unfortunately, Peter's examples using politeness and water aren't apposite. Nonetheless it's merely your opinion that "two forms of dash are" is wrong or awkward. E Eng 23:59, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

I was going to write more, but then thought of the usual tl;dr problem. Ok, so it's established that a mass noun can be used after "forms of". The issue then is whether English makes a sharp distinction between count and mass nouns, and the clear answer is that it doesn't. (Even "water" can be used as a count noun when it means something like "glasses of water": "Three waters and a beer" is fine as a description of what a group are going to have to drink.) If "dash" refers not to one particular mark but to a kind of punctuation in general, then "two forms of dash" is as acceptable as "two kinds of sentence" ("two kinds of sentences" seems utterly wrong to me and I would immediately want to correct it). There may be an ENGVAR issue here, with British English more willing to use a mass noun sense; a willingness perhaps connected to the well-known difference in the usage of words like "committee", where British English uses the singular "committe is" more than US English.

We've had what I think is a parallel discussion concerning "species of" or "genus of" in relation to organism articles. Some editors, including me, naturally write "... is a species of spider"; others naturally write "... is a species of spiders". Those who naturally use each variant find the other odd. The answer, as always, is not to edit-war over legitimate variations in English usage. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:54, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

It would be helpful if people who display such a poor understanding of basic grammar and punctuation (and legitimate variations in the latter, as in unspaced emdashes being equivalent in usage to spaced endashes) were a little less insistent on edit-warring changes based on that ignorance. If you haven't seen something and therefore assume it cannot exist (a common problem/fallacy encountered among WP contributors), or don't understand how something works, fine, but it's always an idea to take a step back if you find people repeatedly telling you that you are wrong, and having a think about whether you might be. N-HH talk/edits 10:22, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

Wise words; too little heeded. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:56, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

The problem with PapiDimmi is that he's hardly caught on that he's wrong about Grammar or Usage Hobbyhorse GUH1 before he moves on to Grammar or Usage Hobbyhorse GUH2, and the cycle of misbegotten insistence begins again. E Eng 12:26, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

@EEng: it would be good to have an essay at WP:GUH which we could link to when reverting edits based on Grammar or Usage Hobbyhorses. Peter coxhead (talk) 13:40, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

@N-HH: I continued my edit warring because nobody actually explained why my revisions were wrong. If the people who constantly reverted my revisions explained why my revisions were incorrect, this would never have happened. I was told that I’m wrong countless times, but after asking multiple times why, I never got an answer until I asked here. Wikipedia seems to use very strange grammar rules. It goes against everything I’ve ever seen. I do not understand why Wikipedia chooses to have grammar rules that are completely separate from English grammar rules; however, I now know that my corrections were wrong, and I also know why for a change.
―PapíDimmi (talk | contribs) 13:52, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

@PapiDimmi:. You weren't clear yourself about why you were making changes, so you can't really complain that people didn't do enough to explain why there were wrong, or at least unnecessary. "But how was I to know *why* I shouldn't do this?!" often isn't a very good excuse for persisting in something when everyone else has asked you to stop, even if they haven't gone through every one of your underlying justifications to your satisfaction. And you could of course have always asked earlier on. I'm also unclear as to what MOS-approved grammar rules are "completely separate from English grammar rules". As it happens, the MOS works by being quite liberal in its broad acceptance of existing but sometimes varying grammar/style rules. That's the point: it doesn't invent its own. N-HH talk/edits 14:17, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

There are more things in heaven and earth, Papidimmi, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. And please don't insert your comments in the middle of a thread in such a way as to confuse the flow of the conversation. E Eng 14:47, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

Per Peter coxhead's suggestion, I've created Wikipedia:Lies Miss Snodgrass Told You (aka WP:GUH aka WP:MISSSNODGRASS etc.). I'm not inspired to take it past a stub just now, but I hope others will pitch in. I envision it primarily as a plea for editors to think twice before assuming everyone else is wrong and that Miss Snodgrass' way is the only way, leavened by amusing examples. Maybe at the end there can be an inventory of perennial hobbyhorses. E Eng 14:28, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

G1d. You're welcome. L3X1 My Complaint Desk 22:57, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

If you're referring to your going off half-cocked not once but twice and thereby wasting a huge amount of other editors' time, the community has reason to thank you abundantly. E Eng 02:36, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

@PapiDimmi (and others): This is a lot of unrelated stuff to cover.

On appropriateness of actions: Concur with Dicklyon and EEng. This "If someone would tell me this right away rather than continuously reverting my revision because I’m wrong, without telling me why after I asked a million times, that’d save me a lot of trouble" act is disruptive WP:ICANTHEARYOU behavior. The passages in question tell you exactly why you're wrong, and if you are continuing to re-revert in attempts to "win" by attrition you are editwarring. Anyone who would write "Semicolons are accepted no matter where in the world you're.", which isn't idiomatic in any English dialect except maybe as a colloquialism (I've never encountered "your're" used that way), isn't in a position to be trying to rewrite the WP Manual of Style to suit their personal whims, much less to do so against consensus and multiple objections.
On use of en dashes: The claim you make there is irrelevant and a partial truth, and the related claim you made in your original post, "En dashes aren't used for this; semicolons or em dashes are", doesn't even make sense (en dashes are dashes, obviously, and en dashes are used for that, obviously, even though semicolons also are). The fact of the matter is that there are many ways to do this, including commas, semicolon, parentheses (round brackets), spaced en dashes, and unspaced em dashes, and starting a new sentence, depending on the particular context, and every single one of them is familiar to all fluent readers of English. While there may be a bit of an unspaced-em preference in the US and a spaced-en preference in the UK, you'll find unspaced-em in British journalism and spaced-en in American academic writing aplenty, because the usage split is more about publication type and register than nationalism, as is the case with many other style matters people want to fight about here, like use of the serial comma and when to capitalize a preposition in the title).
On grammar and "forms of foo" constructions: "'Two forms of dash' sounds awkward" is only true for non-native English speakers, and is the correct form. I'll prove that below. The base construction is "form of whatever": "It is a form of football." (Or use another classifier than "form".) You cannot idiomatically use "It is a form of footballs", either in reference to balls or games. (You can only use that terminally pluralized construction with nouns that take a plural-looking form naturally even when singular: "Billiards is a fun game, and three-cushion is the most challenging form of billiards.")
When a plural is introduced into this construction, it affects the base noun and only the base noun: "Salmon and trout are closely related types of fish". English is not a language in which pluralization of a construction leads to parallel agreement pluralization of all elements within it (Spanish and many other languages are: Tu casa es grande -> Sus casas son grandes). In English, only the element that has modifiers and dependents is changed (if it's the subject, its verb is also changed if necessary), not its modifiers or dependents, including the objects of dependent prepositional phrases:
- She owns a cat, My neighbors own a cat, not *They own a cats. [A similar principle is at work in They each own a cat even though more than one cat is involved; see also more than one cat, not *more than one cats, for that matter. Conversely, They all own a cat is wrong, unless all parties have joint custody of a single feline. Errors in this area are frequent, especially when words intervene: *I want to ensure everyone – all my friends, family, co-workers, and acquaintances – understand my decision. The proper construction is everyone ... understands, but even professional writers get this wrong frequently. The fix for the example is to not mix singular everyone and plural all my friends ... usage.)
- And: I was a accosted by a passer-by, I was accosted by two passers-by, not *I was accosted by two passers-bys. [*I was accosted by two passer-bys is also wrong, for a different reason, but is also a common error, especially for titles like attorneys general. These cases are unusual reversal of adjective–noun order in English, an archaism found mostly in poetic expressions like love everlasting.]
- And: I ate a bowl of soup, I ate two bowls of soup, not *I ate two bowls of soups (If you wanted to make it clear you had two different kinds of soup, you would express that explicitly, e.g I ate two bowls of soup, of different sorts.]
- And: Pinochle is a type of game, Pinochle and chess are two types of game, not *Pinochle and chess are two types of games.
- Thus: The en and em are two sizes of dash not *The en and em are two sizes of dashes.

The two sizes of dashes construction is an error. While it it a fairly common error with regard to type of, kind of, example of, species of, and other classification phrases, it is precisely the same error as *I ate two bowls of soups: It's mistaking the noun that is the object of the preposition for the noun (here, the classifier like kind or type) that the prepositional phrase is modifying, and then applying the pluralization to the wrong (or both) nouns. This error is especially common in the learner English of native speakers of Spanish, French, and other Romance languages, and some Indian languages that do agreement pluralization of modifiers like Romance languages do.

The obvious proof this is an error (aside from the striking *I ate two bowls of soups example proving that this mistaken over-pluralization cannot be used widely without the erroneousness of it rapidly becoming more obvious) and that the pluralization pertains to the noun before the preposition not the object of the preposition, is that the object of the preposition can be cut out entirely, yet a) the sentence is still grammatically and semantically correct (though may need clarification in the context by moving the object), and b) the pluralization still takes place, on the noun to which it actually pertains: Pinochle is a pastime kind of game, while football and triathlon are two sport types of game (not *... of games) -> A game may be a pastime or a sport; pinochle is a pastime kind, while football and triathlon are two sport types. Note that there is no "of foo" construction anywhere in the second example.

The "types of foos" construction is sometimes argued not be an error in certain specialized contexts, when unrelated or dissimilar things are being compared and this is intended to be stressed: a biologist supposedly might write Hyenas and locusts are types of animals found in and adapted to the same environment in different ways, and consider to have this special import. (I find it dubious that this usage intent exists, but I've seen the claim made.) However, this construction is certainly not necessary, is awkward and even ungrammatical to many, will fail to make the point for most readers, and is redundant both semantically and logically. Using ... different types of animal ... is entirely adequate syntactically. It could be given as ... very different types of animal ... if their lack of similarity or relation need be stressed. In encyclopedic writing, we do not presume that readers already know anything about the topic, so we would not rely on a one-letter grammatical tweak, that only a few people believe in and use, if we were trying to indicate anything meaningful, like a lack of close evolutionary relationship.

On month–day–year: Lest anyone get confused on the month–day–year matter, that's a description of a relationship between elements, and properly uses en dashes when that's all it's doing (e.g. in describing "February 11, 2017" as month–day–year order). If you were illustrating a standardized format such as ISO dates that themselves include hyphens, one would retain the hyphens and use {{var}} (<var>...</var>) markup to indicate variables being used in the illustration, and wrap the entire thing in <code>...</code>. E.g., <code>{{nowrap|{{var|yyyy}}-{{var|mm}}-{{var|dd}}}}</code>, rendering as: yyyy-mm-dd. In such a manner one might describe "February 11, 2017", as a format in detail, as <code>{{nowrap|{{var|Monthname}} {{var|d[d]}}, {{var|yyyy}}}}</code>, rendering as: Monthname d[d], yyyy – or something to that effect (it could also be done as Monthname day, year, or whatever). We have little need to do anything like that except at MOS:NUM and in articles where the exact specifics of a date format have to be described.
On plural or singular verbs with terms like committee and team: Someone above said "British English uses the singular 'committee is' more than US English". The actual usage pattern is actually the opposite, more or less, though usage is not set in any dialect. North Americans have a strong but non-universal preference for the committee is, the team is, etc., except when the name of the entity is plural in form, in which case are very strongly tends to be used (The Dodgers won their game last night). British/Commonwealth English leans somewhat toward plural usage generally, but it's not that hard of a lean, and is a bit more likely to go the other direction when the name of the entity is singular in form. At lot of material has been published about this, and I think our article at Comparison of American and British English needs improvement where it covers this. Several of the things it says about BrEng are actually universal, such as the strong tendency of staff to take plural verbs (even American would almost never say something like "Trump's White House staff is not being forthcoming with the public", except when the construction stressed that it was addressing the staff as a team and the meaning would change if it were pluralized: "Trump's staff is in a state of internal conflict" is about teamwork, while "Trump's staff are in a state of internal conflict" is about individual conscience and ethics angst (and both are clearly true! >;-). The article has other deficiencies in this section.
— SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 07:47, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

SM, why do you spend so much time casting pearls before swine? E Eng 14:53, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

MOS:POSS Jesus' and Moses'

Are these done this way because of the people themselves, or is it for all namess that end in -ses. Does anyone know? L3X1 My Complaint Desk 22:34, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

These are special cases. See what CMOS says. Dicklyon (talk) 23:33, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks so much! L3X1 My Complaint Desk 23:59, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

According to some style guides it should be done with all "names from antiquity" that end in -s, thus "Zeus'", "Brutus'", "Sucellus'", "Confucius'", etc. Other style guides say not to do it at all. Others do it with all names that end in -s, and still others (with a regional bias) do it with only names that end in an "us" or "uz" sound on the theory (incorrect in many if not most dialects) that people will pronounce something like "Texas'" as "Tex-uss" or "Tex-uz" the same as if it was not possessive, but in reality you'll very often hear "Tex-uss-uz" or "Tex-uz-uz" for the possessive (even among Texans [I was born there!], despite their habit of just using the apostrophe alone when writing. It would be most consistent, and most useful for the largest number of readers, to use apostrophe-s across the board, thus "Jesus's". No one can be confused by this but many can be confused by just using an apostrophe, especially when it is done to names other than super-obvious ones like Jesus and Moses (which it frequently is, especially by Southern US editors). Consequently, I fix this to "Texas's", etc., every time I encounter something like "Texas'", with the sole exceptions (for now) of "Jesus'" and "Moses'". PS: The reason this dispute exists at all is because the KJV bible and versions based on it just use the apostrophe, reflecting a convention from Early Modern English (1600s). We don't write in EME, so we need not mimic this style, any more than we'd write "an hungred" for "hungry" or use "wherefore" instead of "why". — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 02:31, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

SMcCandlish Thanks for the clarification, your dead right on the EME part, and I will take care to use 's.L3X1 My Complaint Desk 21:50, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Question about camel case

Why do words like eBay and iPhone bypass English grammar rules, but other words, such as Amiibo and Reddit, don’t? All of these words proper nouns that are officially spelt with a lower-case first letter.
―PapíDimmi (talk | contribs) 15:02, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

It's not camelcase and it's not a grammar issue. We style things in a way that will seem natural and familiar to readers. See WP:Manual_of_Style/Capital_letters#Trademarks. E Eng 15:15, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Also see WP:Commonname... some names (like "iPhone") are routinely presented in sources with a lower case first letter, while others (like "Reddit") are not. We don't always follow the "official" capitalization... we follow the most recognizable capitalization (as determined by routine source usage). Blueboar (talk) 15:26, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Some further points:

Using all-lower-case "reddit" isn't camel case by either common definition ("CamelCase" or originally only mid-word-hump "camelCase" style), just zero-capitalization. This is pure logo and marketing stylization, a fad that arose in the mid-1990s and will go away eventually.

Lower-case "reddit" is not "officially" the "name" of Reddit, it's just a stylization they use in their logo and sometimes mimic in text. When they get actually official, i.e. in legalese, it's capitalized properly. [5] Amiibo is not an entity of any kind, it's just a trademarked name for a product/service, and again the lower-casing is just a marketing stylization, exactly the same as Sony spelling their name "SONY" in their logos. This is actually governed by MOS:TM, which is what's applicable here (WP:COMMONNAME tells us whether the name is "Amiibo", or "Imaabo" or "Jimbo's Chocolate Booty", without regard to style matters). This is also obviously a WP:COMMONSENSE matter. If we actually did mimic trademark an logo stylizations, then virtually every article on a modern album or single or novel or film would be given in SCREAMING ALL-CAPS or STILL-YELLING SMALL-CAPS, since the marketing materials for all these things almost uniformly use this style as a way to shout for attention. The "our company name here" style is a similar ploy attracting attention by looking markedly different next to typically over-capitalized competitors' names. Another obvious problem with this "do it the way the logo does" stuff is that it changes when ever someone in the marketing department decides to change things. For example, eBay (which really is "eBay" in their corporate documents, and is really written that way by almost all source except at the start of a sentence, where it becomes "EBay") presently has a logo that says "ebay", but it used to look like (approximately) "eb^aY". Note that this now points out the further problem: Once you start aping one aspect of a logo where do you stop? At superscripting? At character substitutions? (All-lower-case, BTW, is a case of char. substitution.) At font coloration and type face effects? None of that font crap has anything to do with presenting encyclopedic information; we just ignore it and write plain English. When virtually reliable sources consistently use an unusual stylization for something in particular (iPhone, Deadmau5, and supposedly k.d. lang, though I remain skeptical about that one) then and only then does WP use the weird style, and only for that case. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 23:13, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

MOS on unit symbol subscripted with context dependent information?

The definition of a physical unit is independent of the context in which the unit is used.

For example a meter is the same whether it is used to measure the length of a body part (e.g. 0.5 m) or the distance between to celestial objects (e.g. 4.5×10¹⁶ m).

This principle is useful to the point that it has been included in the SI-standard, in the current 8th edition it is section 5.3.2.^[1] The SI-standard goes on to state that a unit symbol should never be the sole source of information on the quantity, i.e. that one should not conflate a physical quantity and its unit symbol.

Nevertheless, this principle is not universally recognized. An example is the electric power industry, where the product of the symbols for mega and Watt (MW) may be subscripted with an 'e' (for electricity, MW_e) or 't' (for thermal heat, MW_t), see Watt#Conventions_in_the_Electric_Power_Industry. The SI recommendation is instead to subscript the symbol of the physical quantity, e.g. P_t for a transfer of heat, per the cited standard.

As far as I can read our Manual of Style, it is missing a recommendation in case of an apparent conflict of notation between SI and accepted domain specific usage, such as the above.

I think we should try to improve on that, with the goal of defining in which circumstances Wikipedia should allow or recommend the subscription of a unit symbol with context dependent information and when it should not.

One usage that I find Wikipedia should avoid is the redundant use of a unit subscript, e.g. "the process generates 1 MW_t of heat", as opposed to the unambiguous and SI-compliant "the process generates 1 MW of heat". Actual examples of such redundancy can be found in the field 'ps_thermal_capacity' of {{infobox power station}}, see for example Hinkley Point C nuclear power station in its current version.

Further, I believe we should align with SI with a recommendation against the use of a unit symbol as the sole source of information regarding a physical quantity, e.g. better something like "a 1000 V rated insulator" rather than "a 1000 V_max insulator".

A discussion would be much appreciated. Thanks. Lklundin (talk) 11:49, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

References

^ International Bureau of Weights and Measures (2006), The International System of Units (SI) (PDF) (8th ed.), p. 132, ISBN 92-822-2213-6, archived (PDF) from the original on 2021-06-04, retrieved 2021-12-16

Have you discussed this on the talk page of one or two articles where this issue arises? E Eng 15:11, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

No. The usage is limited, yet found in a number of articles, so I think a general discussion would be more constructive than taking it to one or two articles, which may not be deemed sufficient to form a general precedent. Lklundin (talk) 22:25, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Nonetheless the best way to approach something like this is to first try to work it out with editors on at least a few particular articles, ideally ones with a least a handful of interested editors. If MOS doesn't need to have a rule on this, then it needs to not have a rule on this. See User:EEng#mossy. E Eng 23:14, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia will default to what SI and similar organizations recommends when it doesn't conflict with reader's expectations or actual typical source usage. WP has no position on how "official" any organization is and will not take sides for or against their preference. (See the bird species common name capitalization debate resolved in 2014, after about a decade of squabbling, for a good example of why. WP was being used for promotion of a would-be standard that has aroused controversy on- and off-WP, for conflicting with national organizations' longer established standards, making up names no one uses instead of using existing ones, and not reflecting what mainstream publishers, even in biology, do. "Wikipedia must do everything the way an organization I like says to do it" is stance-taking that leads to nothing but strife on Wikipedia. Similar disputes have arisen over other stylistic trivia like capitalization and hyphens versus dashes in astronomy, etc. It's all a time-sink.)

WP uses whatever our readers expect; where a lot of them may expect conflicting things, we provide conversion from the most common (or most contextually appropriate) to the next most. We've repeatedly and consistently rejected the idea of using "gibibytes" "mebibytes", etc. (except perhaps as a secondary notation), despite them being a standard, because the real world does not use them except in specialist contexts.
— SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 23:21, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

I don't imagine anyone would expect "a 1000 Vmax insulator", which seems like an odd chimera meaning an insulator with Vmax = 1000 V. But do as EEng suggests and bring it up at offending articles, or just fix it and see if anyone objects. Dicklyon (talk) 23:31, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks to all who contributed opinions and guidance. I have started removing at least the clearly redundant usage of (M)We/t, with the edit summary pointing back here, in case someone else has something to add. In the interest of consistency across articles, I would hope that we can at one point come to some conclusion on this unit usage. Lklundin (talk) 14:16, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

MWe is not analogous to the Vmax I was commenting on. It really is a commonly-used notation for electrical power, even though it's not SI. Dicklyon (talk) 18:12, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

Lklundin, I suggest you make the changes in just a few articles first, and wait for reaction, just to test the waters. E Eng 18:29, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

@EEng: Following your advice I removed clearly redundant use of (M)We/t in for example Hinkley Point C nuclear power station, where I made an additional, separate but subsequent edit, an AGF-revert of an edit of another contributor. In hindsight that was probably not a good idea, because the user (Garzfoth) made a single revert of my sequence of contributions, without bothering to comment here, although my edit summary linked back to here. I am however convinced that our presentation of information should be uniform across related articles and especially so within the infobox they use, and as such that the chosen notation should be discussed here. Lklundin (talk) 15:31, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

Try to engage that editor on the question. That way you might learn arguments on the other side of the question; hopefully either you'll come to see that you're mistaken, or he/she will come to see that you're right. That's why discussion on actual articles is better than here in the sterile, context-free environment here at MOS. E Eng 15:46, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

I didn't comment here because I read this thread and thought that the responding users had made it clear enough that community reaction alone was sufficient to demonstrate opinion (as well as what the flaws were with your approach), and I also thought that my edit summary was a pretty clear explanation of why I reverted ("MWe/MWt are standard notations. You can remove MWe if desired as it's not strictly necessary in that use, but definitely not MWt"). I do want to note that another user (who was not involved in this discussion) thanked me for that edit, indicating that I am clearly not the only one who objected to those changes.

In practice, the usage of MWe, MW(e), MW_e, MW electric/electrical, etc to indicate a rating of electrical power is very much standard use. The same applies to MWt and its derivatives (MW(t), MW_t, MWth, MW(th), MW_th, MW th, MW thermal, etc). Alternatively, one can explicitly specify the fact that the rating is for "megawatts of electrical power" or "megawatts of thermal power" (these are just brief examples of how you can more explicitly specify the type of power rating, the crucial point is that it must be unambiguously clear what type of power rating is specified, and it is not at all good practice to omit units when listing different ratings next to each other, as you originally did on the Hinkley Point C article). This is all most important in contexts where "MW" could indicate MWt or MWe. As explained in my edit summary, the use of MWe is not strictly required as long as you are clearly denoting the thermal rating with MWt to allow easy differentiation between the thermal and electrical ratings, although it is still commonly used even in these contexts (and the reverse is true, although more rarely encountered). The most common use cases where only MW is used are those where the thermal rating is never specified at all so there is minimal potential for confusion (or where the type of rating is clearly specified via other methods).

You can nitpick over the fact that these are not "strictly proper terms" if you want, but that doesn't matter - as other users have already pointed out, there is substantial precedent for the use of these units, and arguing for a completely unnecessary change that will only increase reader confusion and worsen the quality of the information on Wikipedia is extremely counterproductive, as countless past examples have already proven. If you want to change MWe to MW when thermal ratings are already clearly defined as such, go ahead - I won't touch your edits if you do so. But if you want to change MWe to MW when thermal ratings are not clearly defined? Then you need to fix the thermal rating to make it clearer before touching the electrical rating. And no, the way thermal ratings were defined on the Hinkley article in the infobox after your edit were not at all clear enough (infobox entries vs. natural sentences are entirely different contexts for clarity). I do agree that we don't have the best track record of consistency across articles with the use of different ratings, but as long as we are being clear, that is not a big deal (and really, do minor inconsistencies even matter that much when it's already so frequent in practical use and you're still able to determine the type of rating easily?). Worsening clarity to improve consistency is not a solution. Garzfoth (talk) 18:03, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

Grade level ranges

This has been bothering me when it comes to Articles on schools and school districts (some of which have it right, but some of which have it wrong). Anyway, the correct way to abbreviate grade ranges starting with Kindergarten is just K followed by a number, with no hyphen in between them. For example, the entirety of regular schooling as opposed to college is called K12, not "K-12."

This convention has ingrained itself into Internet Top-Level Domains. The Domain for a regular school is .K12 (as opposed to .EDU for a University). It isn't ".K-12"! (The reason you usually see those in lowercase is because past versions of the HTML Address Syntax were case-sensitive, but that's no longer the case in current HTML. Anyway, capitalization isn't the point of this Section. The hyphen is.)

As with K12, so is the correct unhyphenated form for K2, K6, or any other such range. The same would be true of P for Preschool (P1, P2, etc.), although in recent years, more and more school systems have a 2-year Kindergarten that effectively merges what was Preschool when I was a little boy (this concept is known as Prekindergarten and Regular Kindergarten in the USA, also known as Junior Kindergarten and Senior Kindergarten in Canada).

Thank you in advance for all your attention to this matter. Hopefully, this can be added to the Manual of Style at some point in the near future. The Mysterious El Willstro (talk) 06:36, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

I would use an en dash for a range, as K–12, in text. Are you suggesting we style text instead by how Internet domain names are done? Dicklyon (talk) 06:41, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

Even outside wikipedia, it's not hard to find multiple organisations in education using "k-12" (ie hyphenated; a google search for k-12 schools yields 151 million hits). Descriptively speaking, neither can be considered wrong. If you are aware of a manual of style which could be used to prescribe a specific form in one or more contexts, please feel free to share it. Rhialto (talk) 12:53, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

RfC on first sentence of bilateral relations articles

There is an RfC on the formatting of the first sentence of bilateral relations articles at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#RfC: First sentence of bilateral relations articles. As previously raised, the "X–Y relations refers to bilateral relations between X and Y..." construct is not in compliance with the Manual of Style. Please consider voicing your opinions there. Thank you. --Paul_012 (talk) 19:02, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia:List of English contractions

Wikipedia:List of English contractions, whose hatnote states "This list is part of the Wikipedia Manual of Style.", has been nominated for deletion at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:List of English contractions. Those who are interested are welcome to participate in the discussion there. Thanks, — Godsy^(TALK_CONT) 04:15, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

Weasel words to avoid: What if sources don't have specific attribution?

One of the MoS'es, WP:WEASEL, discourages using words such as "some people say", "many scholars state". When reviewing a GA nominee, I noticed some such words in Demolition_of_al-Baqi#Reactions, and tagged them accordingly. But Mhhossein (the main contributor of the page) removed the tags, because the source does not elaborate who the scholars are: [6], [7], [8]. I wonder, what is the right thing to do for such cases? Is it fine to keep the weasel wording? Or do we have to reword so that the weasel word is attributed to someone, e.g. "According to John Doe, prominent Sunni theologians and intellectuals have condemned the "unfit" situation" instead of just "Prominent Sunni theologians ..."? HaEr48 (talk) 07:02, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

I would say, yes, although this can be done indirectly via an immediate inline reference "Prominent Sunni theologian and intellectuals ...^[1]". Peter coxhead (talk) 10:52, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

I'd think the reword you suggest would be better. The point of the rule, as I understand it, is to turn statements of opinion into ones of fact. "Prominent theologians said" seems to leave Wikipedia judging on its own authority who is a prominent theologian. Ideally we'd turn this into "Theologians Jane Doe and John Roe said"; but if we can't say that, saying "The Daily News reported that prominent theologians had said..." turns this into a reporting of fact rather than opinion (it is a fact that the Daily News said that they are prominent, whether or not it is a fact that they are prominent). TSP (talk) 15:36, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

Per TSP, that seems the best way to handle it. Attribute the source itself directly. If we have the words of the theologians, name the theologians. If we have the name of the work we are citing, name the work we are citing. If we have neither to cite, it shouldn't be mentioned anyways. --Jayron 32 16:10, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

I feel that the last of your points is one that needs to be made more often. Primergrey (talk) 23:48, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

Thanks everyone. I agree with TSP and Jayron32. Should the MOS page be updated to clarify this? The current MOS does say that sentences like this should be "properly attributed to a reliable source", but it's not clear if "attributed" means just a ref footnote or if the source should be named in the text. HaEr48 (talk) 01:22, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

I think if the meaning was simply a ref it would say "referenced" instead of "attributed". Including the source in the text is certainly in keeping with the spirit of this guideline.Primergrey (talk) 02:07, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

HaEr48, Peter coxhead, Jayron32 and Primergrey, the problem with in-text attribution in cases where it's a "many scholars" thing, for example, is that the in-text attribution can make it seem like only that one scholar or group of scholars hold that view. This is misleading for reasons explained at WP:In-text attribution. If it's a matter that is widely or generally accepted in the literature, we should not make it seem like it's a view accepted by some scholars. With this link, you can see one discussion/RfC that addressed this issue. WP:WEASEL even states, "The examples given above are not automatically weasel words." Also, the "Usage" section of Template:Who offers good advice about so-called weasel words. As for whether or not "attributed" at WP:WEASEL means just a ref footnote or that the source should be named in the text, I asked about this at some point, although I currently don't see where in my history at the guideline, and WhatamIdoing stated that it is referring to a ref footnote. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 16:38, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

Is there a source where the opinions of these scholars are summarized and given context? If so, attribute THAT source, for example, "A review in the journal Nature concluded that a preponderance of scholars conclude..." is a fine way to do that. --Jayron 32 16:44, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, that's a good alternative. We sometimes do that with medical articles. But when it's a matter of "some scholars state this, while other scholars state that," it can be misleading to use in-text attribution since it can make it seem like it's just those groups of scholars stating the matter. Or it can create the laundry list that Template:Who notes. In this type of "some" case, one can use wording such as "Some scholars, like [so and so], say [...]." That type of wording makes it clearer that the named scholars are mentioned as examples. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 16:50, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

Again, what is your source to say "Some scholars say..." If the source is another source that explicitly ALSO states that you are fine. If your source is "I went out and found a bunch of scholars who said it" that's bordering on WP:SYNTH and probably needn't be mentioned in the article in question. --Jayron 32 16:52, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

I'm not involved with the article that HaEr48 mentioned above. I'm simply addressing HaEr48's question. I'm stating that in-text attribution can be problematic and that there are cases where the literature is evenly (or close to evenly) divided on matters. If the literature is evenly divided on a matter, that is a "some" issue, and we should not make that "some" issue appear to be an issue that is more accepted or less accepted than it is. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 16:58, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

Wait, what?

Do you really think that sentences such as "The scientific consensus on climate change is "that climate is changing and that these changes are in large part caused by human activities" needs to be prefaced with "According to this one book, the scientific consensus is..."? Or that "Scientists generally define the five components of earth's climate system to include (five named things)" needs to be prefaced with "According to NASA, people that NASA has decided are scientists generally define..."? And what would you do when it's not just "this one book" or "according to NASA", but actually the widely accepted scientific view?

That's the logical end of the approach you're using above. Widespread POVs should not be made to seem like minority ones by saying "Scientists such as Alice and Bob believe this". It should instead give "vague" but accurate statements such as "Most scientists agree".

In the instant case, if the cited source says "Prominent Sunni theologians and intellectuals" (and assuming that no reliable source contradicts this claim, etc.), then we should accept that the reliable source – not the Wikipedia editor – can be relied upon for figuring out who counts as a "prominent Sunni theologian and/or intellectual", and report it with as much (or as little) detail as the source believes is appropriate for the claim. (And if the source doesn't say something similar to "Prominent Sunni theologians and intellectuals", or whatever phrase is chosen to represent the contents of this source, then this is a case for WP:RSN, not for WTW.)

This is not one of those tiny-minority POVs, in which the inability to name a prominent supporter makes you wonder whether anyone but a crackpot actually holds that view. In this case, it would be surprising only if Sunni intellectuals had not complained about Wahabbist destruction of historical monuments.

Short answer for HaEr48: Yes, if (and only if) the cited source says this and the 'weasel wording' will not mislead the reader, then it's fine to keep it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:28, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

No, because that's not controversial or under dispute. If something isn't controversial, obscure, or under dispute, we don't need to explicitly attribute, a footnote citation is fine. If something IS under dispute (I by that I mean "really under dispute in the real world" and not "some loud nutjobs can't get with the program") then attribution of the sides of the dispute is useful. --Jayron 32 17:33, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

OK, I agree, but now we need to know how to tell which ones are in dispute. Do we need to attribute the non-disputeness? If many sources indicate that human caused climate change is real, and we reference one source, does that make it look like only one source says it? How about Many sources indicate that most climate scientists agree that .... That moves the weasel words out one level of indirection. Gah4 (talk) 17:50, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

"but now we need to know how to tell which ones are in dispute" >> Isn't it the same way we tell whether statements such as "X is born in 1810" are in dispute. If we have one RS that says it without mentioning dispute, then we can say so. If however someone else find another RS that says a different thing, then they can challenge the non-disputeness. In my case above, I don't think there's any reason doubt that many prominent scholars condemn the graves' destruction, but if we want to know how widespread or how actively Sunni scholars are condemning it, then it's a different matter. HaEr48 (talk) 01:39, 11 March 2017 (UTC)

Toward a MOS:NICKNAME

FYI

– Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

I've written an essay (after getting tired of explaining the same things over and over again) at Wikipedia:Using nicknames (WP:NICKUSE). I think it can and should be adapted into a section at MOS:BIO instead of being an essay, though it may need some additional input before such a proposal. Please use its own talk page for suggestions. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 03:12, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Quotes and [sic]

User:Sneftel has made a number of edits, referring to "MOS:QUOTE" as justification, involving the removal of direct quotations with "sic" indicating something nonstandard in the quote. The issue seems to be that MOS:QUOTE says "However, trivial spelling and typographic errors should simply be corrected without comment...", which does not seem to me to apply to this edit for example. (Changing "That [sic] some kind of..." to "That's some kind of..." in a Texas context). But I would be grateful fo other opinions. Imaginatorium (talk) 09:37, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

Doesn't appear to be "eye dialect" but overly-faithful reporting of a typo. The material being quoted was written (well, typed), and is not taken from an audio recording. The assumption that it's "Texas talk" is WP:OR, and Ockham's razor says it's a typo. It's fine to correct it without " [sic]", per MOS:QUOTE. If it was dialogue transcription of something that demonstrably reflected a local dialect (e.g. by using "ain't" or regional-only words, spellings, and grammatical structures, like "I done seed a painter in my yard, over under-yonder, and hollered 'you better git!' and throwed a stick at it", that would be a different matter. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 05:10, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Discussion of nicknames in the lede of biographies

There is currently a discussion Talk:Terry Pratchett#Nickname obvious from title of article, in which a user argues that the MoS requires the removal of nicknames from the lede of articles when the article title equals the nickname. Since this potentially affects a huge number of articles, it would be good to have input from more users. Regards So Why 07:22, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

See also #Toward a MOS:NICKNAME, below. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 05:11, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Since when can project pages overrule languages and the WP:MOS?

WP:DEADHORSE. --Jayron 32 12:22, 14 March 2017 (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.

According to user:‎Kintetsubuffalo when referring to a military, tribe, or any other group that might have a scout the word scout should be lower case, as the English language and WP:MOS#Institutions agree; however since some project page says that when the word scout is used for a boy or girl scout the word scout is somehow magically transformed into a proper noun and therefore must always be capitalized, directly defying both the English language and WP:MOS. Since when can random project pages overrule languages and the WP:MOS?Abel (talk) 16:22, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Surely you agree that Boy Scout and Girl Scout are both proper nouns? The Scouting project appears to assert that, when used more generically to refer to a Boy Scout or a Girl Scout (or, presumably, a Cub or Eagle Scout), the word Scout on its own is still a proper noun. This seems reasonable to me, and doesn't "defy" the MOS. There's probably room for a discussion here, but it's not outrageous. Pburka (talk) 17:29, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

That is not their argument. They insist that every use of the word scout must be capitalized when in any way connected to scouting, but not when used for any other type of scout. That blatantly contradicts both English and the WP:MOS. This means that a project with no leaders can overrule any Wikipedia policy they like by adding something to their project page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Id4abel (talk • contribs) 18:23, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Look it up in Collins or AHD. A boy scout is a boy who scouts, or someone who is upright or straitlaced. A Boy Scout is a member of the Boy Scouts. - Dank (push to talk) 18:21, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Either the WP:MOS, on which good and feature articles rely, is in fact what controls article content or projects are free to invent and enforce whatever rules they please and the WP:MOS is just a bunch of suggestions that editors are free to ignore at any time. Abel (talk) 19:37, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

How does this contradict the MOS? They're providing guidance on what constitutes a proper noun. I don't see where the conflict arises. Pburka (talk) 19:49, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Not quite. They are saying that scout when referring to scouting is always a proper noun and when not referring to scouting is not always a proper noun, “used in the context of the Scouting Movement are considered to be proper nouns and are always capitalized. In other contexts normal rules will apply. Example: In the context of military reconnaissance, scout will be lower case.” So either projects can continue to make up and enforce rules whenever they like or the WP:MOS is not just a bunch of suggestions and actually means something. Abel (talk) 20:06, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Please clarify which part of this you disagree with. Is it the assertion that "scout", in relation to the Scouting Movement, is a proper noun? Or the assertion that, in other contexts, it may not be a proper noun? Or maybe the implication that this isn't the "normal rule"? Pburka (talk) 20:12, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

The project page very clearly states that “normal rules will apply,” meaning the actual WP:MOS and English, when the word scout is used for any scout that is not a boy or girl scout, yet those “normal rules” are to be ignored when the word scout is used for anything connected to scouting, which project members are enforcing. Meaning that the actual WP:MOS is deferring to whatever nonsense someone put on a project page. How many more wikiprojects have their own rules that contradict the actual WP:MOS, invented rules enforced by project members? Abel (talk) 20:38, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

The project does not say that the normal rules will be ignored. It says that "scout" is a proper noun in the context of Scouting, and the normal rule is to capitalize proper nouns. I think you're reading too much into some awkwardly worded guidance on the project page. Pburka (talk) 20:57, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Project members are using the “awkwardly worded guidance on the project page” to capitalize any word that they consider a scouting word at all times, which is an obvious direct conflict with the actual WP:MOS. Is that kind of enforcement of fictional rules is perfectly okay, as long as someone posts something incoherent to a project page, or not? Abel (talk) 21:06, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

The capitalization in the link you provided looks correct to me. Consider Blueboar's mason vs. Mason example below. If that article were about Freemasons, all uses of Mason or Masonic would be capitalized. I believe that your interpretion of the MOS is incorrect, and that the word Scout should be capitalized in these contexts. Pburka (talk) 21:11, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

The project page very clearly says all contexts with is obviously wrong on the face of it, and the word troop is not the word scout. Either the project page "guidance" needs correcting or WP:MOS#Institutions needs a note saying that project pages can overrule the MOS and so editors need to somehow find any possibly related project pages before they defer to the rules in the actual MOS. Abel (talk) 21:21, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Are you conceding that "scout" should be capitalized? I didn't realize we'd switched to discussing the word "troop." That wasn't mentioned in your original question at all. Pburka (talk) 21:36, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

The project page "guidance" says that the word scout is forever and always capitalized, which is clearly wrong. In the example diff the word troop was also forever and always capitalized which is equally wrong. Abel (talk) 22:23, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

When referring to members of a specific organistion using a word derived from the organisation's name it's normal to use upper case - e.g. we say "Foobar was a Rotarian", not "Foobar was a rotarian". DexDor^(talk) 19:55, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Not quite. They are saying that scout when referring to scouting is always a proper noun and when not referring to scouting is not always a proper noun, “used in the context of the Scouting Movement are considered to be proper nouns and are always capitalized. In other contexts normal rules will apply. Example: In the context of military reconnaissance, scout will be lower case.” So either projects can continue to make up and enforce rules whenever they like or the WP:MOS is not just a bunch of suggestions and actually means something. Abel (talk) 20:06, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

See MASEM's reply below (20:20). DexDor^(talk) 20:29, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

I see no conflict: the relevant advice: "Scout, Scouting, Boy Scout, Girl Scout, Guide and similar words and phrases used in the context of the Scouting Movement are considered to be proper nouns and are always capitalized. In other contexts normal rules will apply. Example: In the context of military reconnaissance, scout will be lower case." clearly says to capitalize only when talking about the role of a scout that is connected to the proper Scouting Movement. --MASEM (t) 20:01, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Not quite. They are saying that scout when referring to scouting is always a proper noun and when not referring to scouting is not always a proper noun, “used in the context of the Scouting Movement are considered to be proper nouns and are always capitalized. In other contexts normal rules will apply. Example: In the context of military reconnaissance, scout will be lower case.” So either projects can continue to make up and enforce rules whenever they like or the WP:MOS is not just a bunch of suggestions and actually means something. Abel (talk) 20:06, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

No, they're referring to the international organization of the Scouting Movement, a very specific definition. A scout in any other context is to be kept lower case. This is completely fair and within the bounds of what a Wikiproject can define without overstepping the MOS. There's no conflict that I can tell, unless you can point to diffs where this is being misued. --MASEM (t) 20:20, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Already did. Abel (talk) 20:42, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

That seems a completely valid use of the capitalized form to refer to the Scouting organization, rather than the generic act of scouting. So that's not conflict. --MASEM (t) 20:45, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Meaning that you think the word troop not a proper noun like Troop 154 can also be capitalized any time someone feels like it. Abel (talk) 20:52, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Again going back to the language from the Scouting guidance: "In other contexts normal rules will apply." (emphasis mine) If the context has nothing to do with the Scouting organization, editors are to defer to the MOS. The boundaries where the Scouting GLs apply is pretty well defined and not as arbitrary as you seem to think they are. --MASEM (t) 21:30, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Similar to mason and masonry (i.e. Those who build walls etc) and Mason and Masonry (Freemasons) Blueboar (talk) 20:33, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Not quite. They are saying that scout when referring to scouting is always a proper noun and when not referring to scouting is not always a proper noun, “used in the context of the Scouting Movement are considered to be proper nouns and are always capitalized. In other contexts normal rules will apply. Example: In the context of military reconnaissance, scout will be lower case.” So either projects can continue to make up and enforce rules whenever they like or the WP:MOS is not just a bunch of suggestions and actually means something.Abel (talk) 20:42, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Id4abel When everyone is disagreeing with you, and clearly indicating that you are incorrectly interpreting the wording of the project MOS, perhaps it's best to just accept that you are the one not understanding things, not that everyone else is doing so. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 22:30, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Also, I have clarified the wording at the Scouting Project. Hopefully, that will make things more clear. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 22:36, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

You are well aware, just like everyone else here, that forever and always capitalizing the word scout is wrong. Five million people can repeat that doing so is right, it would still be just as wrong. We are also all aware that forever and always capitalizing any word that you happen to envision is somehow “a scouting word” is equally wrong. We are all aware that the actual WP:MOS supersedes any nonsense found on a project page. Which is why you editing the project page. Why this obvious problem is such a sticking point for others, I do not know and do not care. Abel (talk) 23:05, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Being deliberately obtuse is not helping matters. That MOS specifically states that the word "Scout" (and the others it lists) are—and this is the important part, so please pay attention—always capitalized when used in the context of the Scouting Movement. Did you catch that? Nowhere does it say that everyone must "forever and always" capitalize the word. Nowhere. The new wording makes that even more clear. So no, "we" are not "all aware" of your misperception in this case. The specific MOS at the project only applies to a very narrow subset of the total articles here. Only in those cases should you apply it. If you are trying to apply it anywhere outside of that very narrow subset, you are doing it wrong. That's how specific MOSs work: they provide clarification and guidance for the small article subset to which they apply. The only person to whom this is a sticking point is you, because you are deliberately trying to imply that the Scouting MOS applies to everything instead of only to Scouting-related articles. Please go take a cold shower, a long walk, and get some sleep so you can apply a little rationality here. Right now, you are not making any sense at all. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 00:10, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

"are considered to be proper nouns and are always capitalized. In other contexts normal rules will apply."Abel (talk) 00:19, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

Again, please notice that I changed the wording. Of course, you already know that, since you made a change, too. The current wording is as follows:

When Scout, Scouting, Boy Scout, Girl Scout, Guide are used in articles in the context of the Scouting Movement, they are considered proper nouns and are always capitalized. Example: "a group of 50 Scouts", not "a group of 50 scouts". For usage in other contexts not related to the Scouting Movement, refer to the Manual of Style for guidance on capitalization.

Now, please stop beating a dead horse when you know very well your complaint has already lost what little substance it originally had. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 00:26, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

Again, the problem lies in not properly apprehending what a proper noun is. If "Boy Scout" is always to be capitalised, that is not because it's a proper noun. It's a separate convention – one concerning official, entrenched, formalised but still generic designations – that gets it capped. The same confusion is at the root of WP:MOSCAPS. Tony (talk) 23:57, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Agreed. MOS:INSTITUTIONS and MOS:MILTERMS both directly contradict the "forever and always capitalize" idea with "Incorrect (generic): The University offers programs in arts and sciences. Correct (generic): The university offers programs in arts and sciences." and "follow the same capitalization guidelines as given under titles of people above. For example, Brigadier General John Smith, but John Smith was a brigadier general." I can happily treat a specific set of words as proper nouns, even when they are not used as proper nouns, but to do so I need a definitive list of the words to forever and always capitalize when and only when those words are connected to scouting or some rule that would tell me what words to forever and always capitalize when and only when those words are connected to scouting . Abel (talk) 00:15, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

Rather than an ill-considered attack on the Scouting project and their prerogative to clarify how MOS should be interpreted with regards to Scouting terms, perhaps you'd do better to focus on MOS:CAPS, which says "Wikipedia relies on sources to determine what is a proper name; words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in sources are treated as proper names and capitalized in Wikipedia." Dank pointed out that Collins and AHD both show it as a capitalized, proper noun. If you can show that reliable sources don't consistently capitalize the terms, you'd have a stronger argument. Pburka (talk) 00:47, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

Attack is just plain silly. While following the WP:MOS I was told that I was wrong. Was told to follow the project page, the same project page that needed multiple revisions to even come close to something coherent. I now know that when an article mentions scouting the words Scout, Scouting, Boy Scout, Girl Scout, and Guide are all to be capitalized no matter what. While that violates several portions of the WP:MOS, I do not care, “always capitalize the words Scout, Scouting, Boy Scout, Girl Scout, and Guide when they have something to do with scouting” is a rule that I can follow. Abel (talk) 01:08, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

Immediately after saying "is a rule that I can follow" the rules at the newly revised project page were broken by Cub Scout and Scoutcraft by the same editor who had just revised that rule. So the rule "Scout, Scouting, Boy Scout, Girl Scout, Guide and award names (i.e. Eagle Scout)" is still nonsense and the actual rule is "any word that members of the scouting wikiproject consider 'scouting' words" which I have no earthly idea what that list of words is supposed to be. Scoutcraft is apparently supposed to be on the list. How about pioneering, high adventure, and is it Scout essentials or Scout Essentials? Abel (talk) 02:09, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

Apparently all forms of venture also need to be added to the currently woefully inadequate rule. Abel (talk) 02:20, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

All three articles you are linking appear to be intimately associated with the official Scouting organization, so they clearly fall under the rules given. It is not like they are camps that part-time serve the Scouting organization where there would need to be a evaluation of each use of "scout". --MASEM (t) 02:39, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

No one said anything about “falls under” or articles. The repeatedly revised rule clearly states “Scout, Scouting, Boy Scout, Girl Scout, Guide and award names (i.e. Eagle Scout)” and nothing else. The edits I linked to involve other words that are not in the rule. I can think of plenty more words and phrases that are not in the rule but maybe should be, or maybe should not be, hence my asking above. Abel (talk) 02:47, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

The terms that were capitalized are terms that seem wholly related to the Scouting organization and would be appropriately capitalized. Here's a bit of advice: remember that policy and guidelines including the MOS are not hard-fast rules (see WP:NOT#BURO) so just because a specific word is not mentioned in the MOS doesn't mean it's not covered: common sense prevails over explicit wording. --MASEM (t) 03:06, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

Common sense is a phrase that can mean one thing to one person and a completely different thing to someone else, which is why telling another person to follow common sense is useless nonsense.The current rule needs more needs fixing. Abel (talk) 03:58, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

The rule has been edited once again to now include cub scouts and venturing but not the word scoutcraft. The latest version is also incapable of addressing the simple question I asked off the top of my head, “How about pioneering, high adventure, and is it Scout essentials or Scout Essentials?” This new version is vastly superior to “... are considered to be proper nouns and are always capitalized . In other contexts normal rules will apply.” So while a grand improvement, the current rule is still not yet a well thought piece of policy. I should not be able to ask a simple question off the top of my head that no one can answer, and “common sense” is still a nonsense answer. MOS:CAPS has lots of very well crafted rules, the project page that supersedes those well crafted rules needs to be at least in the same ballpark. Abel (talk) 06:35, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

Is the issue that you don't understand what a proper noun is? This stuff does not need to be spellt out in the MoS. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 06:51, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

In addition to what the others said, this was mis-defined starting with the title. It starts with a presumed (and IMHO false) answer to a main question of the discussion which whether or not there is a conflict. And then based on that, mis-represented what was said as a claim of a project overruling the MOS. North8000 (talk) 11:24, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

Since Id4abel has the time to waste the time of others on this triviality, perhaps he would be so kind as to explain the notability of Ricardo “Danny” Nieves and Ryan Patrick McCormack in this edit? Or he can just stop wasting everyone's time. That would be better.--Kintetsubuffalo (talk) 12:03, 14 March 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.

Serial comma

US judge agrees on its importance. Tony (talk) 13:26, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

Gender

Why is gender an exception to the general policy of following reliable sources? The MOS says to use a person's self-designated gender even if it goes against reliable sources, while all other matters of designation are to follow reliable sources. I'm sure this has been discussed many times but if there are good reasons for the exception could they perhaps be summarised in the MOS? Otherwise it comes across looking blatantly ideological and non-neutral, as if wikipedia is taking a side in debates about gender.

Also, saying "Jane Doe became a parent" instead of "Jane Doe fathered a child" seems to obscure potentially useful information: whether the person was the biological father or mother of their child. This seems particularly important information for someone whose gender is unclear or debateable. Colonial Overlord (talk) 08:19, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

This is mostly a PC thing when you first look at it. But, as you get deeper into it, it has substance. Gender unlike "sex" is a cultural construct defined based on "gender roles", meaning it is a behavioral characteristic and language-based identity. Identity is something that can only really be accurately identified by the self so far, we don't normally consider self-"authored" items to be "reliable". However, when it comes to identity and cultural labels self-authored items are arguably the most reliable source even if some policies don't yet reflect that. I hope that using gender-neutral terms in cases where the gender is unknown is something that most editors understand. What does everyone else think? Endercase (talk) 14:28, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

But the view that pronouns and words like "man" and "woman" should be used to describe subjective self-pereception rather than objective biological reality is a controversial view. And to be honest it's not a view I understand the reasoning for at all. What's the point of having these words if all they describe is a person's subjective perception rather than biological facts about a person that determine their procreative role? What's the point of dividing people into two categories if they are based on nothing more than a person's choice of which category they want to be in, that they can change at any time? It seems utterly absurd.

I always thought this use of gendered pronouns was just a matter of people who are upset which sex they were born as asking other people to basically indulge their fantasy that they were born as the other sex instead of just accepting their biological sex but that that need not constrain their lifestyle or other choices in any way. It's bizarre that this push for self-designated pronouns is coming from the left since it seems to be based on a conservative idea of gender roles: that everyone has one of two sets of personality attributes that determine their lifestyle and role in society, with the caveat that which one they have has nothing to do with their biology.

Tl;dr: what reason is there for making pronouns refer to subjective gender rather than objective sex? If a person's biological sex is unclear that's a different matter, but if someone has all the biological aspects of a male but "identifies" as female, what basis is there for calling them anything other than male? Colonial Overlord (talk) 02:20, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

I missed this part in my longer response, below, to the thread as a whole: Regarding "seems to obscure potentially useful information: whether the person was the biological father or mother of their child" and "biological facts about a person that determine their procreative role" – That will be obvious from the early part of the article where their biological sex at birth is mentioned. Ain't broke, don't "fix" it. Regarding "I always thought this use of gendered pronouns was just a matter of people who are upset which sex they were born" and "it's not a view I understand the reasoning for at all" – A lot of people would tell you that you thought wrong, and others that you ought not be staking out a position while simultaneously professing to be confused or lacking information about the nature of the issue, and not all of these people would overlap. Some are agnostic on the first matter and awaiting more science, while others just DGaF, in between the squabbling camps in this debate, and there are actually more than two of them. Two are obviously socio-political activism viewpoints (mostly of confused people who think there is only one political axis, of "left versus right" or "liberal versus conservative", when there are actually three major socio-political axes plus numerous minor ones). On this issue, there are also socio-linguistic, neurological, genetic, anthropological, sociological, and other viewpoints that commingle in various ways and have little to do with politics. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 08:48, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

You haven't addressed any of my arguments. I gave several reasons why it seems absurd to use pronouns to refer to subjective "gender" rather than objective sex and I asked what argument is there for doing so. You've just declared that I "thought wrong" (or that "a lot of people" would say that, but it seems to be what you think as well) and given no argument whatsoever. Also, I didn't say I lacked information, I said I don't understand the reasoning for using self-designated pronouns, which is a polite and open-minded way of saying that as far I can see there IS no good argument for it.

So I'll ask again: what argument is there for even having these words if they don't refer in any way to objective reality?

If we're going to have this policy there had better be a rational argument for it beyond "some people don't like the alternative", or as they would probably phrase it "the alternative erases their lived experiences". Because there sure as hell is a rational argument for referring only to biological sex: this is the way the words have been used throughout history, why the words were developed in the first place, and it gives them (in most cases, the exceptions as I noted above being a different matter) a clear biological definition. Colonial Overlord (talk) 06:49, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

The reason why we make an exception is that we had a huge debate on the issue (in the wake of the Bradley -> Chelsea Manning and Bruce -> Caitlin Jenner name changes), and this was the only compromise that could gain consensus. Perhaps it is time to revisit the question and see if consensus has changed. Blueboar (talk) 14:50, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

Forgive me, but how is this a compromise? It seems like a complete concession to the left-wing position that gender is purely a matter self-perception. Colonial Overlord (talk) 02:33, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

The MOS discusses gender in more detail because the issue has been contentious in the past, but I don't think there is really an exception in practice compared to other matters of self-identification. If someone comes out as gay, or announces they are of a different religion than they had previously professed, we would naturally use the most recent reliable sources, even if most sources (now out-of-date) indicate otherwise. The wording doesn't suggest not following reliable sources, just giving precedence to current ones.

The wording about "becoming a parent" has been discussed before. I support some sort of revision to it, because I don't think the examples are particularly helpful. Phrasing such as "fathered a child" is pretty rare to begin with, not because it would be confusing in the case of trans people, but because we aren't usually inclined put an undue emphasis on the biological aspects of procreation. We just say that so-and-so had a child.--Trystan (talk) 17:24, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

Yes, because in normal cases it's obvious based on a person's sex and gender what their biological role in procreation was. But this policy almost seems to be trying to obscure a person's actual biological sex so that you can't deduce it from the article. Colonial Overlord (talk) 02:25, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

I agree it's not a "compromise", but in some areas there can't be one. Either you accept that pronouns are based on gender not biological sex, or you don't. These are stark alternatives. The consensus here, following changes in scientific understanding and social trends in most Western countries, and from a desire to be respectful, is to accept this proposition.

Where there is room for compromise is in writing about historical events, when someone's gender role was different – issues like how to write about Caitlin Jenner's sporting achievements as Bruce Jenner. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:29, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

I'd like to point out that the current MoS rule actually is a compromise between the various positions. There was a serious proposal put forward to remove all references to a trans-person's at-birth gender assignment, with the sole exception of cases where that person would have been sufficiently notable to have had an article written about them in their pre-transition gender presentation. Rhialto (talk) 15:43, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

To respond in more detail: It's definitely a compromise on what to do and how, between at least three and perhaps as many as a dozen competing positions on the matter (depending on how you want to factor it), and it's a hard-fought compromise at that (with multiple Village Pump RfCs that sometimes ran for months, and with copious amounts of heated invective). Even on the underlying question, the polarization is not as sharp as it looks; plenty of us see multiple sides of it, are able to distinguish easily between "this is how party A wants to be addressed", "this is what activists at both extremes wish usage was" and "this is how mainstream publications are actually writing"; we are concerned primarily about effects on reader comprehension, secondarily about editorial strife reduction, and not at all about satisfying unreasonable expectations from either extremist camp.

"Why is gender an exception to the general policy of following reliable sources?" Loaded and misleading question (it seems to actually mean "sources that agree with my view that oversimplified and binary views of male or female biological sex are the only usable determinant of what pronoun to apply"), but to answer it anyway: The reason is simple. It's because every time the issue is raised in any earnest, WP gets invaded by a WP:MEATPUPPET horde of trans-activists (almost entirely cis-gendered, busybody "allies") bent on language-change advocacy, then our right-wing editors lose their shit at this flood of far-left sabre-rattling, and the centrists among us find something better to do while the battle rages. What we have now is about as good a compromise as we're going to get any time soon.

"[W]hat reason is there for making pronouns refer to subjective gender rather than objective sex?" It's now a common practice to refer to transwomen as "she" and transmen as "he", including in other frequently updated style guides like the AP Stylebook (you won't find it in old, infrequently updated ones), and in current mainstream news publications when they write about TG people. We're just going along with where the language usage patterns are going in reliable sources, as long as the encyclopedic result is not confusing.

There's nothing confusing about an article on, say, a transwoman that makes it clear the person was born bio-male and now identifies as a woman, with our article thereafter using "she" and avoiding using "he" before that point, and being clear about what happened before versus after. For subjects who had long notable careers as a different gender, like Jenner, it can get complicated, but we're handling it. We've been browbeaten with, but not acquiesced to, unreasonable, history-distorting demands that people be allowed to write nonsense like "Caitlyn Jenner's notable athletic career preceded the Olympics. She won the Men's [Championship Name Here] in [year]."

Our article at Caitlyn Jenner appears to handle all of this adequately, and due to its prominence is probably the model article for this, if the one on Manning isn't. The only "cost" to editors of compliance with this "be polite about people's pronoun preferences, within reason" nascent norm is to not pepper the article with "he", yet also to not use "she" for before the public coming-out, and just rely on using the surname. The only impact on readers is that the article uses "Jenner" a lot and it gets a little monotonous, especially since encyclopedic writing avoids euphemistic name replacement techniques used in journalism for variety, as in "In 1978, the Olympian appeared on a show called ...". Dry prose comes with our territory.

PS: One thing we're not doing is accepting made-up pronoun replacements like "s/he", "zir", "hirs", etc., even if the subject in question uses them (e.g. Genesis P-Orridge), though we may note that they use them. This encyclopedia's article on a subject is written for the public not for the article's subject shimself. WP doesn't exist to stroke people's self-identity feathers, any more than it exists as a platform for introducing proposed changes to English usage. We're going along with some attested shifts because and only because they are in fact RS-attested. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 08:27, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

SMcCandlish brings up some excellent and important points. I think that the impact this issue has on actual copy-writing is far less than it may seem at first glance. One must not take the pervasive use of pronouns in discourse to mean they're a fundamental requirement of an article on Wikipedia.

The sacrifices made by repetition of a last name instead of a pronoun are purely aesthetic. I also think that it is essential that somewhere it is unequivocally codified that we do not adopt the vernacular in lieu of the dictionary as SMcCandlish alludes to on the subject of faux-pronouns like "zir" "s/he."

In my opinion GOCE should more visibly encourage a philosophy of putting intelligibility, cohesion, spelling, and grammar far above politics and elegant phrasing. We're not editing op-eds for The Economist, we're wrangling edits made by many people so they can cohesively present information. We shouldn't be worried about anything beyond that.

Jasphetamine (talk) 11:48, 18 March 2017 (UTC)

This is just ridiculous! (gender-neutral language)

Recently, User:Double sharp reverted a few edits of mine that were intended to make the articles follow WP:GNL. DS could have chosen to re-word them, but he reverted them altogether. I changed this project's page to reflect this, but them User:Bkonrad reverted me. We really need clear discussion on the exact rule on when to use GNL and when not to. Georgia guy (talk) 14:04, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

I'm fine with some consensus-based improvements, but honestly, this is not an improvement and doesn't clarify anything. older ≠ wiser 14:14, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

Why, it is very simple: precision is the key, especially when dealing with game rules and terminology like this. If you can't rewrite it to make it gender-neutral without sacrificing precision, then sacrifice GNL over precision. Never mind that I strongly suspect that there are still many people alive who don't think of generic "he" or even generic "she" as automatically calling to mind a male or female image respectively, including myself.

Let's take a look at each of the three reverts. (Note that the only reason that I'm doing this is because three is a small enough number that I can be bothered to go through it in detail.) The first one: here. First Georgia guy perpetuates a confusion with "...the player must call a ball and the pocket in which to make the ball, usually by pointing to a pocket with a [was: his] finger or cue...", which makes it vaguely unclear just whose cue this is done with: this ambiguity is at least not that bad, because the correct interpretation is obvious, but there is no need to create it. Then he perpetuates an illiteracy with "If the 10 ball is pocketed on the break, it will be spotted and the player will continue inning [was: continue his inning]", apparently unaware that inning is not a verb, and that his edit not only makes things less precise than they could be (for game rules, which need precision to avoid entertaining loopholes like the ones listed here for chess), but also makes them ungrammatical.

The second one: here. Georgia guy changes "A set of matching cards, typically three or more, that earn a player points and/or allow him to deplete his hand" to "A set of matching cards, typically three or more, that earn a player points and/or allow a hand to be depleted." Never mind that the former makes it clear that the player is depleting his own hand, whereas for someone like me who is unfamiliar with this particular game, it is conceivable in the latter that the player could be depleting somebody else's hand. After all, it is not as if the rules are covered in this article.

The third one: here. Now this is one of the most important problems with using singular they to make text gender-neutral: first of all, as a relative newcomer to the standard language (I am well aware that authors have used it for centuries for effect, but unless we want to write articles in the style of Finnegans Wake I think we can all agree that that is irrelevant), it is certainly not suitable for an encyclopaedia, but more importantly, he introduces an ambiguity: it is not clear if the inning allotment is something that belongs to one player or multiple players if singular they is used, and both are conceivable.

It is not as if I do not try to make things gender-neutral when it can be done without losing precision of writing. I have done so: here is a particularly felicitous example where it could be done gracefully. But it often cannot be done, in which case the answer to Georgia guy's question should clearly be: if making text gender-neutral necessarily gives it vaguely plausible but incorrect alternate meanings, don't do it. I would have thought that the words clarity and precision that we use should not need clarification, because if you don't know what clarity means you can't exactly ask for clarification: I hope against hope, given Georgia guy's history at chess-related articles (e.g. Antichess), that this will help somehow. Double sharp (talk) 14:17, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

Well, the WP:MOS section on GNL needs to give more emphasis to the statement that GNL isn't always best. Georgia guy (talk) 14:20, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

This is quite a reasonable point. The initial sentences are currently "Use gender-neutral language where this can be done with clarity and precision. For example, avoid the generic he." If it were up to me, I would have something like "When it does not worsen clarity and precision, gender-neutral language is preferred to gender-specific language. The latter is nevertheless always acceptable, and in some cases may be the only way to express an idea without awkward circumlocutions." Then making a text gender-neutral with clarity and precision would simply be considered just like any other change that improves the text, and making it gender-neutral while removing clarity and precision would be considered just like any other change that worsens it. Of course, we would still need a consensus to be expressed for such alterations to take place. Double sharp (talk) 14:26, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

I think the current guideline is well-written. (Manuals of style tend not to have exact rules.) One instance of a reverted edit between users does not justify unilaterally changing the MOS.

For text written originally with the generic he, it can sometimes be difficult to figure out how to reword it so that the result flows naturally. I can see why Double Sharp reverted you at Ten-ball, though I agree it would have been more constructive to make a further edit (the article now mixes "his" and "he/she" to refer to the same player in the same sentence), or at least to revert without the "illiteracy" jab. We all make mistakes now and then.--Trystan (talk) 14:33, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for spotting that; I didn't notice it earlier, and have made it consistent now. And yes, I was rather tetchy there, although given that Georgia guy has a habit of putting opinions into the mouths of people who oppose him (example one, example two), and making and suggesting these sorts of unilateral changes, I hope that my frustration was understandable if still not excusable. Double sharp (talk) 15:09, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

& type railroad names

It appears that WP:& might need clarification when it comes to railroad article titles. At present, those titles use "and" in place of the ampersand, as in Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad, which has a redirect, Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad that targets it. According to a recent discussion at Template talk:R from railroad name with ampersand#Printability, it seems that the railroad names with the ampersand are the superior search terms, and that making those ampersand redirects "unprintworthy" adversely affects them as search terms. So I raise the issue here to get input from editors. One question would be, "Why does Wikipedia prefer 'and' to '&' in all article titles with few exceptions (and railroad names are not exceptions)?" Paine Ellsworth ^put'r there 14:04, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

Honestly, why do we worry about such things? Google finds everything anyway. Can't brainpower be spent on writing articles instead of fussing about which is the superior search term? E Eng 14:12, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

Apparently I need to note that this is a style question of perhaps small importance to some editors, and yet we have in place an article naming procedure that just might need a certain amount of clarification for editors who do deal with such things. I should also note that one exception in this style guideline is to "retain an ampersand when it is a legitimate part of a proper noun, such as in Up & Down or AT&T." Since these railroad names are better known with the ampersand, then shouldn't the article titles use "&" instead of "and"? Paine Ellsworth ^put'r there 14:21, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

PS. I'd like to ping @Redrose64:, who has done work in this area. Paine Ellsworth ^put'r there 14:24, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

The topic of railway article names is causing too much heat as it is, over such matters as whether we should use "Line" or "line", and whether "A to B Railway" is better than "A–B Railway", with a few people trying to wear down the rest of us with repeated attempts until everyone else is saying "OK, right, we submit, you win, now leave us alone". This will only make things worse. However, I have dropped a note at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Trains#Railroad names - and or ampersand? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 16:28, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

I think that all settled out fine; there was some heat when in the fall I hadn't involved the project enough, but more recently it has been smoother getting to clear consensus. Only a few guys wanted to ignore WP:NCCAPS and capitalize Line when sources don't. And most didn't seem to have much opinion on "to" vs dash, but there was a general preference for the dash on most. As for the ampersand, I don't have a strong opinion, and am willing to discuss if someone thinks the area needs attention for one reason or another. By default, I'd use "and", but if there's a good reason to prefer the ampersand, let's air it.

EEng, as to your "why do we worry about such things?", why do you involve yourself in discussions of issues that you don't care about? You do that a lot, and it doesn't contribute anything useful, does it? Does it help smooth the waters? Help people form an opinion? Help people decide to stay out of it if they don't care? Seems unlikely any of those. Dicklyon (talk) 19:04, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

So suddenly you think that only people who care about particular issues should have any say over them? Yet for railway names, you are relentlessly adamant that your view carries as much weight as anyone else's, how familiar they are with the subject or not.

"I think that all settled out fine" That's perhaps what you think. Other opinions are available. Andy Dingley (talk) 23:20, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

Yes, I've heard that everyone has one; perhaps even those who don't care. Dicklyon (talk) 23:31, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

Let me second what Redrose64 said. There's also considerable variation in the use of ampersands in publicity materials as compared to a railroad's legal name. I see no reason to carve out an exception to WP:&; particularly not on the strength of the linked discussion. There's really no evidence provided about the superior search terms; it seems to be one editor's personal view. Mackensen (talk) 16:54, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

So far I agree on not seeing a reason to carve out an exception. But willing to listen. Seems like the issue is maybe more about the meaning of "print worthy" than of the ampersand per se. Dicklyon (talk) 19:04, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

I'm not quite sure what "legitimate part of a proper noun" is supposed to mean in this context. As far as I know, official charters of railroad corporations generally spell out "and" in full; it's common to see "&" when the name of the railroad is abbreviated or initialized, but I don't see any compelling evidence to make the version with the ampersand the title of the article. I'm still not sure I understand the original debate over printworthy redirects that started this, and how it affects (or how people think it affects) searching. Choess (talk) 20:11, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

If the ampersand is more common, we should use an ampersand. That is in line with policy. oknazevad (talk) 02:05, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

Nope. "&" versus "and" is a matter of style; WP:COMMONNAME doesn't apply to style as has been established over and over again, whether you agree with this view or not. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:25, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

Thank you all for your opinions and considerations! On the issue of "and" vs. "&", it appears that the long-standing consensus is to spell out the "and" in article titles, and to make redirects that use the ampersand when that is also used in sources. That way, readers who type in the name with the ampersand will quickly come across the redirect and will go precisely where they want to go – to the article with "and" in its title.

On the issue of printability (or printworthiness), I am unable to produce any difference in the efficiency as a search term of a redirect whether it is categorized as "printworthy", "unprintworthy" or not tagged as either. It seems that even "unprintworthy" redirects do their job as good search terms by getting readers where they they want to go. This has been tested many times over the years by myself and by editors who've worked on the Version 1.0 Editorial Team, so the more this categorization is used, the better. Again thank you for adding your notable thoughts to these issues! Paine Ellsworth ^put'r there 02:08, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

[1] International Bureau of Weights and Measures (2006), The International System of Units (SI) (PDF) (8th ed.), p. 132, ISBN 92-822-2213-6, archived (PDF) from the original on 2021-06-04, retrieved 2021-12-16

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