Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 134

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Archive 130

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Archive 132

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FYI: RM from dash

Talk:79360_Sila–Nunam#Requested_move

— kwami (talk) 15:31, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Formula One

Disregard

– Wrong venue.

Further input is welcome at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Formula One#Flagicons.

Although this is specifically about flagicons, it also goes to the more general issue of some WikiProjects just opting to completely ignore aspects of the Manual of Style, or in some cases even core content policies, sometimes (as in this case) without even attempting to present a rationale that would outweight the considerations behind the respective part of the MOS. --213.196.218.39 (talk) 13:48, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

It might be a pain to look through, but there have been extensive discussions on this in the past. Bretonbanquet (talk) 13:52, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

A rationale has to be included at the WikiProject page, maybe in a dedicated section or at a guideline subpage for the project. Failing that, the WikiProject's style recommendations have to be brought in line with the Manual of Style. --213.196.218.39 (talk) 14:00, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

Really? Where does it say that? Bretonbanquet (talk) 14:03, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

In the upcoming RfC. Seriously, please don't play dumb. I'm not going to waste my time with you if you're playing dumb like that. --213.196.218.39 (talk) 14:05, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

Right now, you're the only one wasting time. Either explain things clearly, rather than talk about RfCs which don't even exist yet, or go and do something else. Calling people dumb is only going to afford the contempt which it deserves. What other IPs have you edited under recently? Bretonbanquet (talk) 14:09, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

Not only am I not calling you dumb, I'm explictly calling you an intelligent person feigning a lack of intelligence. Maybe I'm wrong. Let's continue serious discussion at the WikiProject talk page. --213.196.218.39 (talk) 14:13, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

I strongly suggest you refrain from doing either or making any further snide comments. I'll probably leave others to go into detail with you at the WP page because the dozen times I've discussed it before are probably enough for me. Bretonbanquet (talk) 14:18, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

Let's ignore the incomprehensible row above, the terms of which have been, apparently deliberately, kept cryptic. I've replied in the discussion, but basically MOSFLAG requires that flags either reflect a representational entity, or that nationality is pertinent to the purpose of a table. What is pertinent can be judged by what reliable secondary sources generally do. Kevin McE (talk) 20:08, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

Just do what MOS:ICON says; sports are covered in particular detail there. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ Contrib. 02:19, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

Historic

Is it preferable to say "a historic fort" or "an historic fort"? The style of the article is American usage. Thanks for any information. --MelanieN (talk) 06:34, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

My personal take, without researching it: either, and it seems not to matter whether US/UK variety. The "n" was originally found in certain varieties within England in which the initial "h" was dropped. Tony (talk) 11:14, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

To these English/British ears/eyes, "an historic", while technically a correct alternative, is rarer and sounds a little dated and even pretentious. I'd be surprised if US English was more in favour of it. I'd certainly say you can't go wrong – and would surprise fewer people overall, whether US or UK – with "a historic". N-HH talk/edits 12:07, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

N-HH sounds right to me. Tony (talk) 12:14, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

We should stop agreeing .. anyway, here's some evidence in graphs to back up what we've both suggested. N-HH talk/edits 12:27, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

Wow! (re: the graphs) I will fix it. Thanks for your help. --MelanieN (talk) 15:06, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

There have been several discussions of this over at the reference desk, this one being the most recent. I also agree that "a historic" is the better way to go. --BDD (talk) 17:57, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

It's definitely not an Americanism. If any population uses the n on this side of the pond, it would probably be somewhere in New England, but I can't recall ever hearing New Englanders use it. It's always sounded like an archaic or regional Briticism. PS: As a linguist and anthropologist by training (not vocation), I have to agree with Tony1 that it obviously derives from dialects that have a silent initial h. As far as I can tell, all English varieties use an honorable person, except those urban dialects that would also say "a egg" or "a eagle". — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ Contrib. 02:15, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

Scope

If we look back to the early MOS[1] the first sentence is "A Manual of Style has the simple purpose of making things look alike." I would amend that to say that the MOS has the purpose of making articles look sort of alike, but I am not sure the best way to word that. The current MOS uses "The Manual of Style (often abbreviated MoS or MOS) is a style guide for all Wikipedia articles." I am going to ignore the fact that the current MOS is clearly not what anyone could call brilliantly written, and not point out the obvious problems with that sentence (two points though for anyone who can point out the errors - on my talk page). What I do want to call attention to is the focus of the MOS - to make articles look sort of like every other article. Obviously a list does not look like a non-list article, and obviously an article about pokemon does not look like an article about a cricket match. But all of them if they have one have a summary lead paragraph at the beginning followed by the first section which is normally history or overview, and references come before external links and after see also. Where we stray, though, is in trying to teach spelling, grammar, punctuation, and good writing, and I would recommend stripping all of that out of the MOS and putting all of that into essays instead. The result will be a manageable 32kb MOS with no subpages and no arguments. Apteva (talk) 07:16, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

"no arguments"... — Crisco 1492 (talk) 07:22, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

Apteva, please stop. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 07:38, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

I suggest that you try that in you own userspace, perhaps write your own essay to let off some steam, and spare us this tedium here. Thanks for listening! -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 07:44, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

I was thinking of doing that, but brilliant writing is not my forte. It is better to get agreement that that would help, before wasting any time doing a mock up. Apteva (talk) 07:46, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

I have more than an inkling that that is not going to happen here at MOS... ;-) -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 07:49, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

If it did though, it would be a huge improvement. Apteva (talk) 07:59, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

Sez you. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 02:21, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

Given that the MOS is written by people from all over the world, I do consider it brilliantly written. It's an amazing example of people with strong opinions compromising for the greater good of the encyclopedia. There are probably two dozen things in MOS I disagree with, and do not adhere to anywhere else, but I adhere to them here because it's the house style. If this were a paid job, and I refused to do so, I would expect to have my ass fired right quick. PS: The original first sentence is farcical; it's not only incorrect, it reads like it was written for simple.wikipedia.org. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ Contrib. 02:10, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

RfC: Should lines be used between a template and text above it?

This is an RfC to establish wider community input on whether this formatting should apply to all articles. This issue was discussed in the past: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 129#Spacing and Using the hidden comment function to create space between a template and text above it.

The Manual of Style states: "Check that your invisible comment does not change the formatting, for example by introducing white space in read mode." (WP:COMMENT)

Does this mean that the above formatting should be used? That is, Should white space be introduced between the last line of text and the top of a footer-(navigational) template?Curb Chain (talk) 07:57, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

Discussion

I don't think that Hidden Comments should be used to introduce white space because the simple enter-key will suffice. Secondly, using the enter-key to make lines to make white space is arbitrary and is not used.

Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Layout#Headings and sections says "Between sections (and paragraphs), there should be a single blank line; multiple blank lines in the edit window create too much white space in the article." which is saying that hidden comments are not to be used to create white space, and not to create white space.

Specifically, the vast majority of pages do not have the formatting as I presented.Curb Chain (talk) 07:57, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

Curb Chain has been on about this for quite a while now, to the extent of following me around and reverting my edits. He really needs to chill out and realize that the Manual of Style is not policy, it is not something that has to be followed slavishly, and it is certainly not a straightjacket preventing any of us from improving the encyclopedia. Indeed, it cannot be that, because that would, in itself, emasculate the entire purpose of WP:IAR.
I've explained to Curb Chain many, many times, the purpose of the edits he objects to, and I'll do so once again for the benefit of othere. Please bear in mind that Curb Chain has brought this to AN/I on several occasions, and has been told by numerous editors there that his complaint is among the lamest thinsg anyone has ever come across. Also, please consider that his compaign of harrassment and annoyance is all about a single blank line.
OK, here's the explanatuon. If you take a look at any decent-sized article, you'll note that the system, when it renders the page, provides a bit of spacing before every section header. This is to help the header stand out and be separated from the section above it. Unfortunately, the system does not do this at the bottom of the page, where any navboxes follow the External links section. Because of this, it's visually unpleasant that the new section (the navboxes) is so close to the text of the external links section, so I've been inserting a blank line to seperate them, to make it easier on the eye tosee the end of the external links and the beginning of the navboxes.
That's it, that the sum total of what Curb Chain objects to, that he's started two RfCs to try to eliminate, that's he's brought to AN/I on at least two occasions, and that he's followed me around with no other purpose than to delete ,y edits. (Bear in mind, I don't travel around Wikipedia inserting this single blank line of space, it's part of my normal editing of articles, which is often quite extensive.) That he's fixated on this is, to say the least, rather bizarre. That his campaign is getting rather disruptive is a matter of opinion - but I think he's gone off the rails a bit. In any event, my purpose in making this edits is solely and entirely to make our articles just a little bit easier to use for our readers. Thanks. Beyond My Ken (talk) 08:23, 21 December 2012 (UTC)
While I can't say that I find this a compelling disagreement or one to get worked up over, I am kind of inclined to agree with the person in the other discussion who said it'd make more sense to figure out if the extra space is something the whole site needs rather than to go around making impromptu additions of blank space to single articles on a haphazard and case-by-case basis. AgnosticAphid talk 08:47, 21 December 2012 (UTC)
I would be more than happy if the system could be adjusted to provide the necessary spacing, but no one has ever indicated that this was possible to do. Since that's the case, this is the next best thing. Beyond My Ken (talk) 08:51, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

This is a technical issue and you can ask the developers to do this. You will probably need to get consensus for it.Curb Chain (talk) 01:49, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

I would recommend against making additional space before a template at the end of the article, but it is not something that should be added to the MOS. The correct way to fix that sort of thing is to edit the template. Apteva (talk) 10:23, 21 December 2012 (UTC)
I'm puzzled. I think I know what the question is asking, but I'm wondering about an exact offending edit. What is the problem, precisely? Where is a diff that I could use to judge? Is this one? If so, I would oppose the mass addition of spacing. The spacing (or lack of it) between template and text currently is, from what I can remember, deliberate, and if this is the kind of edit that that is offensive, I would oppose both the edit itself and the addition of text describing it to the MOS. --Izno (talk) 15:50, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

Yes, it adds an extra space. We are talking about whitespace, so lines without a hidden comment would be included in the RfC question. And I see that the editor who added the line has just reverted you.Curb Chain (talk) 01:44, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

This isn't really something MOS needs to address. There may be particular reasons in a particular article to do this (with HTML comments, with <br />, etc.), e.g. to work around misbehaving templates, or because of image spacing or whatever. We generally let editorial discretion reign when it comes to things like that. See also WP:CREEP. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ Contrib. 02:04, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

Space between consecutive headings

Under "Section Headings", the MOS says: "...Include one blank line above the heading...." This is a good idea, as it makes the headings easier to find on the edit screen. However, I think there should be an exception where there are two headings in a row, as above. There is no difficulty seeing that there is a level 3 heading immediately after the level 2 heading. Separating them by a blank line looks the same as no blank line in the article itself, but is less convenient to work with on the edit screen, because it fills up the edit screen with unneeded empty spaces. Can we add this exception, please, to make it at least optional? Thanks! -- Ssilvers (talk) 00:22, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

i agree with Ssilvers here; such a move makes total sense. Jack1956 (talk) 06:01, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

I'd rather go the other way, and recommend also a blank line AFTER each heading. Headings are often hard to spot when scrolling through long articles, and this makes it a lot easier. And it's simpler than adding an exception. Dicklyon (talk) 06:06, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

Yes, we'd still need to keep the one before the heading, too. I also think we want both (and this appears to be the norm, anyway):

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

==Heading== Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.While the following is not optimal, it's not exactly unbearable (and is very common):

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.
==Heading== Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.

What we really, really do not want to see is this:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.
==Heading== Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.

or this:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.
==Heading== Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.

NB: It's also common for people to use the space between the heading and the text for hatnote templates; I do this myself, and don't see it as problematic.
— SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ Contrib. 22:54, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

Modifying quotes

It is not standard practice to make any modifications to a quote without noting that the quote has been modified. I would recommend removing the following

However, trivial spelling and typographic errors should simply be corrected without comment (for example, correct supercede to supersede and harasssment to harassment), unless the slip is textually important.

If a quote is modified, it is not a quote. Trivial misspellings etc., though, do not need to be marked with [sic]. --Apteva (talk) 22:27, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

Not according to the RS's we based that statement on. What you've described is a grammar-school simplification (one which I believed myself before getting into this). You need to base an argument on something more than just your own understanding. — kwami (talk) 22:57, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

I agree. Sometimes the mistake is on the source that reproduced the quote. For instance a politician makes a statement to the press and the a news agency reproduces it with a typo. In that case no "[sic]" is needed.

I also think that punctuation in quotes should follow the generic Manual of Style unless the quote is strongly related with its punctuation. Same holds for non-breaking spaces. -- Magioladitis (talk) 23:33, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

Some examples given in New Hart's Rules include changing endashes to emdashes and archaic f to s, or vv (two v's) to w, and close unclosed quotation marks, but in an encyclopedia it does not seem warranted to make any changes without noting them, at least in the reference. The question is is the intent to convey the meaning of the quote or to convey the quote. Those are two different things. Without the sentence anyone is free to treat any changes as an exception, with the sentence it seems as though people should be making typographic and spelling corrections. Frankly if the source misspells a word I would rather know that instead of it being corrected. For example, if someone spells supercede with a c I would rather see it left that way, but only because this is an encyclopedia. Apteva (talk) 04:27, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

JFTR what you call “archaic f” is actually a variant form of s, called the long s: look closely at an authentic example (as opposed to a jocular faux-archaism) and you’ll see it has no crossbar.—Odysseus1479 (talk) 06:34, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

One of various problems with that is that people will see the typo and correct it anyway; this is a wiki. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ Contrib. 01:47, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Large-scale bug?

Resolved

– Fixed.

Moved to Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Bugs

In recent times, two bots and one AWB user have, in the article Richard Wagner, changed "1862–1902" to "1862 – 1902" (example). Wikipedia:Manual of Style#En dashes: other uses seems clear enough to me, so what is going on? Toccata quarta (talk) 10:19, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

Take it up with AWB on their bug page. It didn't used to do that. The spaced dash is used when there are full dates. Perhaps someone screwed up when revising the replacement rules. — kwami (talk) 20:26, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

I filed it as a bug report over there (to the extent possible – Toccata, you need to go there and add more info to the bug report, such as AWB version number, etc.) — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 23:32, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Done Bug reported and fixed. Check Wikipedia_talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Bugs/Archive_21#Large-scale_bug.3F -- Magioladitis (talk) 23:52, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Italic titles with parentheses?

Resolved

– Fixed.

Hello. I recently created the article Così è (se vi pare). When I added the template to italicize the title, it did not italicize the part of the original title in parentheses. I assume this is built in to assist with disambiguation, but is there an override for when the work's title has parentheses in the title itself? Feel free to fix the linked article if you know the workaround, or leave a message on my talk page. Thanks. Jokestress (talk) 11:15, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

Done by using displaytitle: manually. — Edokter (talk) — 13:02, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

Another solution is to use the HTML character entity codes for the parentheses (round brackets, whatever): Così è (se vi pare), which renders as: Così è (se vi pare). I bet you could get way with just escaping the ( as ( and leave the ) alone. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 02:29, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Plural titles with 'the'

Our naming guidelines advise against plurals and 'the' in article titles, but sometimes they're appropriate, IMO. Because of the guideline, however, people have repeatedly tried to move the Dakotas, the Maritimes, the Carolinas, etc., and they have moved Americas. If you have any wisdom to impart, see Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (definite or indefinite article at beginning of name)/Archives/ 1#Plural names. — kwami (talk) 20:10, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, these are all conventional exceptions, like The Hague and Cue sports. Some things need a "the" (or "The", very rarely except in the common case of titles of published works), and some need to be plural for logical reasons. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 21:49, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

"See also" section and navigation boxes

Editors may wish to comment at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Layout#See also section (version of 00:50, 29 December 2012). See also Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 130#Position of navigation boxes (September 2012).
—Wavelength (talk) 03:52, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. I actually like the Alternative proposal there for several reasons. There's a related, but less well-thought-out, RfC happening at Wikipedia talk:Categories, lists, and navigation templates#RfC: Section headings for horizontal navigation templates (to add a new heading like ==Related information== above navboxes). The two ideas are mutually exclusive, yet the "Alternative" proposal at the first link (move "See also" to bottom of page) would effectively give proponents of the second what they want by merging navboxes and "See also", which serve the same basic function, and fix the problem that "See also" items, like navboxes, are the least relevant things on the page, even counting external links usually. (The non-"Alternative" proposal at the first page is just more "doesn't really understand style issues" noise from Apteva, in this case a call to put redundant links in both "See also" and navboxes.) — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 01:29, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

I have recently been re-ordering sections according to WP:ORDER—see my contributions—and these changes to the guidelines could complicate my work. (When will there be stable versions of WP:MOS and its subsidiary pages?)

—Wavelength (talk) 17:58, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Yes, it would change the order of the sections. It's something a bot can fix, trivially, for sections that have standard names. "It will take a long time for the change to propagate through articles" has never been a reason to not make a change in MOS or any other guideline that is for the better; WP adapts rapidly. There will probably never be entirely stable versions of MOS and subpages, judging by MOS's ongoing history. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 01:25, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

What's wrong with linking from within quotations?

I've always been puzzled by the following provision:

As much as possible, avoid linking from within quotes, which may clutter the quotation, violate the principle of leaving quotations unchanged, and mislead or confuse the reader.

How do the links in the (hypothetical) quotation given here clutter it, change it, or mislead or confuse?

According to the prosecutor, "The defendant, armed with a MAC-10, robbed a liquor store in Cooperstown. Though no shots were fired the felony murder rule makes the defendant responsible for the security guard's death from cerebrovascular accident brought on by stress-induced hypertensive crisis. We disagree with the amicus brief filed in this case by the NRA."

Why should (as MOS currently seems to demand) these handy links be replaced with a lot of awkward footnotes and surrounding verbiage? I propose that all that need be said is that links must not inappropriately color the meaning of the quoted material. Thoughts? EEng (talk) 14:03, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

That may not be bad, but suppose the prosecutor has misused hypertensive crisis (not in the sense of being incorrect, but of meaning something else, entirely). Then it shouldn't be linked. And how are we to know?

For that matter, he could have misused felony murder rule, although I'm almost sure he didn't. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 14:34, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

Edit conflict with Arthur Rubin's additional comment below, but I don't want the end-with-preposition joke waste go to. How are the points you raise dependent upon the fact that the article directly quotes the prosecutor instead of paraphrasing him (or her)? The MOS provision I've brought up for discussion implies it matters somehow, and that's the question I'm concerned with (not to reignite the terminal debate [2], I hope). EEng (talk) 16:06, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

It is a crazy rule. If Alex Ferguson says that he is "considering using Valencia as left back in this weeks match", we can be absolutely confident that he means the only footballer of that name employed by his club, not the city, community, historic kingdom, football club, motor racing circuit, song, ship, book, lingerie model, citrus fruit, toothcarp, film, fictional island, university or video game character of the same name. Suggest rephrasing as Links should only be used within quotes where the intended meaning of the linked term is beyond reasonable dispute. Kevin McE (talk) 15:13, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

I hadn't realized the rule was so strict; the last time I looked at it in detail, I thought I saw an exception if the intended meaning was clear in context, and would not be clear standing alone, without the context of the article. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 15:40, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

Surely it is up to the editor who is doing the linking to en sure that the links are appropriate, is is the case for any other Wikilinking - as regards Alex Ferguson - he woudl almost certainly be talking about Valencia, not Valencia - it makes no difference whether the link is inside a quote or not. Martinvl (talk) 16:17, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

Nope(@Arthur Rubin after ec): full text of the linking section within MoS#Quotations is:

As much as possible, avoid linking from within quotes, which may clutter the quotation, violate the principle of leaving quotations unchanged, and mislead or confuse the reader.

Two alternatives are available:

You may add a sentence in a ref element, that is not in a quotation and mentioning the subject to be linked to, and link there. For example, you may add <ref>Wikipedia has an article on [[Nebraska]].</ref> or <ref>''History'', p. 79. (Wikipedia has an article on [[Nebraska]].)</ref>
You may bracket within the quotation and put the link text within the brackets. The bracketing may not include internal quotation marks. The link text may not be identical to the adjacent wording. For example, you may write "The City of New York <nowiki>[</nowiki>New York City<nowiki>]</nowiki> has boundaries set by law."

The second of these alternatives makes an absolute nonsense of the proposed goal of leaving the quotation unchanged and uncluttered: the first still changes and clutters the quote, although not as much, but makes the relevant information less easily accessible to the reader.

I can foresee no instance where it is impossible to avoid linking, so this amounts to an absolute ban on giving the reader simple and unobtrusive clarification. For an encyclopaedia to prohibit itself from this is a ridiculous position to take. Kevin McE (talk) 16:24, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

Agreed. Misinterpreting a direct quotation is not much different from misparaphrasing it. In fact, it may be better to have a bad link in a direct quote, because it will be obvious to knowledgeable readers that a mistake has been made. A bad job in paraphrasing, on the other hand, may go unnoticed for much longer. As for Arthur's objection that jargon may be misused, if that is the case we certainly need to point it out! A mistake is a mistake whether we link to the article or the reader has to type it into the search box.

I do think, however, that we should discourage links within quotations. It is quite annoying to read a quotation with links for every word beyond a sixth-grade reading level. That's a general problem we have with over-linking, but somehow it seems more obnoxious in quotations. Perhaps we could have milder restrictions, such as only linking ambiguous items like Valencia above? — kwami (talk) 20:23, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

Overlinking is a separate issue that has its own guideline. There is no need to duplicate it in MoS#Quotations#Linking. Are you seconding my proposed alternative text above? Kevin McE (talk) 20:32, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

Yes, that seems reasonable. — kwami (talk) 22:44, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

In that case, let's formalise it. I add a warning based on most apposite part of previous ban, but remove the two suggested workarounds as redundant, unused (in my experience), and contray to their stated purpose. Kevin McE (talk) 23:02, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

Linking within quotations: Proposal 1

Replace existing text at MoS#Quotations#Linking with this text:

Links should only be used within quotes where the intended meaning or referent of the linked item is beyond reasonable dispute. Particular care should be taken that the principle of leaving quotations unchanged, in meaning or content, is not violated.

Kevin McE (talk) 23:02, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

Support, pending further discussion. I think your warnings should be enough to cover the problems mentioned above. I'd still like to see a word on avoiding frivolous links, but not enough to quibble over it. (I'm adding 'referent' above, and changing 'term' to 'item', since in general we wouldn't be linking to dictionary definitions, but to people, places, historical eras, etc.) — kwami (talk) 23:37, 29 December 2012 (UTC)
Procedural comment. Having seen some discussion at Kwami's talkpage between him and Kevin, I endorse Kwami's addition of "referent"; but I have removed the square brackets that made it seem like a gloss on "meaning" rather than a genuine addition. I have also boldly reformatted, and removed some striking-out.
Editors: please do not now make alterations to the proposal. I did so only because no one uninvolved had yet expressed an opinion, or voted. If there is disagreement here, an advertised RFC would be needed. This is no trivial change. Noetica^Tea? 03:03, 30 December 2012 (UTC)
Oppose as an incompetently drafted proposal. I tried to disambiguate the intent for the proposer (and sought clarification at his talkpage), before anyone else commented while the meaning was uncertain. I got no answer from the proposer, who instead substituted new wording, restoring the ambiguity. Sorry! Not good enough, for a discussion of major change to the core of Wikipedia's manual of style. ♥ Noetica^Tea? 10:57, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

You changed my input on a talk page in a blatant breach of the guideline: I restored the original meaning (yes: I used "new" wording in as much as I used existing rather than the original current: that, unlike your change, is not substantive, and I have the right to change my contributions anyway, you do not.) You did so after reading my message on Kwami's talk page which had the main purpose of asking him not to change my signed comment. At least he had the dignity to specify what change he had made to the proposal, which you did not. Whether my word was current or existing (the change came about through editing from memory of my intention, without bothering to look at past diffs), it is unequivocal and unqualified, and can only be read as meaning the whole subsection, which is linked. I had already made my opinion on, and intention to excise, the workarounds clear. Your change introduced uncertainty, and speculation as to what the extent of the "relevant" text. Your edit note states, "otherwise it could seem that the entire text of the linked location is to be replaced, but it is not clear that this is intended"; if I say replace current/existing text, without qualification, it is evident that I mean the whole of current/existing text. How can an unspecified value judgement as to what is to be deemed relevant be a clarification upon that? And yet it is on that basis that you dismiss the proposal as "incompetently drafted." This strikes me as a very bad faith comment. Kevin McE (talk) 11:39, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Inaccurate throughout, Kevin. But please do not continue the side discussion here. This page is for improving WP:MOS, by means of orderly and clear dialogue. See your talkpage for continued treatment of the lesser issue. Noetica^Tea? 11:47, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

If you are going to publicly denounce my statements as inaccurate, you need to be willing to publicly justify that. Either retract, or present your justification (at my talk page if you prefer). Kevin McE (talk) 12:02, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Don't worry about it, Kevin. Everyone sees what's going on here. EEng (talk) 21:10, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

What do you mean, EEng? (If your answer to this question is not relevant to improvement of WP:MOS, please answer me at my talkpage.) ♥ Noetica^Tea? 00:20, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

I meant that, to the extent Kevin was concerned about other editors' views of your recent interactions with him, it was my belief that further interaction between you two was unlikely to enhance the fidelity of such views to the ultimate truth of the situation (if you will forgive my Platonism). EEng (talk) 02:34, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Orright Bruce, save it for round the sheep-dip. Just let's have unambiguous proposals (unlike the present one), and discuss them in a way that everyone can follow. Noetica^Tea? 02:49, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

What do you think of SMcC's multipoint analysis (under Proposal 2 below)? EEng (talk) 14:11, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

I think it's acute and useful, as expected from SMcCandlish. I agree with his oppose vote. (No more here, please. Stay on topic.) Noetica^Tea? 22:09, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Oppose per Noetica. This is perennial rehash, and a not very well informed approach to it. You need to do a lot more homework on this issue if you want to re-raise it. For the record, I'm generally in support of the idea that we can link from inside quotations, when doing so helps prevent gross redundancy, but that it should otherwise be avoided because it is very easy to stumble over WP:NPOV and WP:NOR problems by making WP:POINTy or just accidentally inappropriate links. I have to concur with others that this is a content editing matter, not a style matter, so it's off-topic here anyway. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 21:55, 30 December 2012 (UTC)
PS: My second "Oppose", to Proposal 2 below, and in particular the commentary following that !vote, has considerably more detail about what I think is wrong with the current wording. Though I don't support either of these particular proposals, the current section is quite problematic. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 06:10, 31 December 2012 (UTC)
Oppose deleting the entire exiting text. I don't see why the existing suggestions deserve to be deleted and the proposal doesn't address that issue at all. Perhaps it would have been a better proposal if it said "relevant" rather than "existing." ><

Substantively, I am sympathetic with the clutter argument; I don't really like wikilinks and if a topic is that important to an article, what are the chances that it was first mentioned within a quote? But I don't see how adding the link is confusing. Obviously the person being quoted did not include a wikilink in his or her actual statement. I kind of doubt that readers would assume otherwise. Similarly, is it really OR or NPOV to wikilink the actual term used in the quote? Suppose, for example, that the person above really did misuse "hypertensive crisis" and he actually meant some other heart-related problem. Wikilinking does not make the statement any more or less accurate; it would simply make it easier for readers to figure out what hypertensive crisis is. Readers can draw their own conclusions on whether it's accurate, or maybe we could find a secondary source that says he used it incorrectly and probably meant something else. It would, of course, be OR for us to just wikilink some topic other than "hypertensive crisis" that we assume he or she intended, and I wholly support a prohibition on such linking.

Finally, I can't say that I think this should be addressed somewhere other than the MOS. The MOS seems like the first place you would look for a rule like this if it existed. While it's true that the line between style advice and substantive advice is a little blurry here, that is the case for many aspects of the MOS and I feel that except for cases where advice is clearly related to substance only that the MOS and its talk page are not an inappropriate place for discussion. AgnosticAphid talk 23:39, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Linking within quotations: Proposal 2

As the editor who initiated this discussion by supplying the subtly beautiful and breathtakingly comprehensive example seen at the start of this thread -- an example which (I have no choice but to reveal) has brought me laudatory letters and telegrams of congratulation from heads of state on four continents, noted philosphers and, yes, even His Holiness Pope Benedict, for its almost magical power of stimulating intelligent and civil debate on this critical topic -- I'd like to jump in for a second. (deep breath)

I too strongly dislike overlinking, hate "easter egg" links, and despise misleading or inappropriate links -- whether inside or outside direct quotations. But why do we need a new, hard-to-interpret level of scrutiny ("beyond reasonable dispute") especially for links within quotations? As someone pointed out, you can overlink or mis-link in a paraphase just as easily, so what does this achieve? So here's my proposal (if it's inappropriate for me to offer an alternative this way someone please tell me what to do instead):

Replace current text at MoS#Quotations#Linking with...

nothing. Eliminate it.

I realize there's no instance on record of a MOS issue being resolved by reducing complexity and eliminating text, rather than larding more text and rules and exceptions on top of what's already there, and it's only fair to remind everyone that some physicists believe that doing so could, under some theories, act like the collision of Universe with Anti-Universe, bringing to an end all Time and Existence as we know it, but I for one am willing to take the risk. EEng (talk) 03:29, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Yes, actually. An inappropriate link would be bad anywhere in the article. We do need to be especially careful with quotes, but WP:QUOTE is probably the place to cover this, since it's not a stylistic issue. Currently we just say, The quotation should be representative of the whole source document; editors should be very careful to avoid misrepresentation of the argument in the source. Perhaps we might want to clarify that an improper link can cause that misrepresentation. — kwami (talk) 04:00, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Kwami, I think you've hit on an important point. Once we decide links are OK from within quotes, it ceases to be a MOS issue. I think it's fine to mention at WP:QUOTE that linking can mislead readers just like improper context and other things can, without necessarily trying to create magic litmus paper that bursts into flames when you've done it wrong -- anyway, that can be taken up at QUOTE. I'm not sure what you mean by "Yes, actually" -- what are you supporting? EEng (talk) 04:31, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Support. I'd support either proposal as an improvement. I'm not sure complete silence is the way to go, but I don't think the MOS is really the place for whatever needs to be said. — kwami (talk) 05:43, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Support. Personally I would not use links inside a quote - ever, but if there are those who disagree, there is obviously no consensus that this should be in the MOS. Apteva (talk) 04:03, December 29, 2012‎ (UTC)

Oppose a messily presented proposal, followed so far by ill-structured commentary. The issue is important, and the matter has been discussed here at length before – with far better structure and consideration for editors who want meaningful dialogue. Do better, please. Note that the page is subject to unusually close scrutiny, for a reason. ☺ Noetica^Tea? 11:03, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Perfectly happy with this (can't quite bring myself to fully support a counter-proposal to my own, but that is as much due to hubris as to commitment) and fully aware that my own proposal is essentially true of any link anywhere, and not specific to links within quotes, as would be any note warning about overlinking. I note that WP:QUOTE (an essay, not an adopted guideline) is already totally silent on the matter. Maybe I thought that total elimination was a step further than I was brave enough to propose: maybe it is worth retaining a non-restrictive warning. Kevin McE (talk) 11:13, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Oppose: Deleting material from MOS and other major guidelines generally does not work well, because it was added for specific anti-editwarring, dispute-resolving reasons. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 21:57, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Can you give an example of the kind of problem the existing text (proposed for deletion) might prevent -- and why that problem is more likely to arise with links inside quotes any more than with links outside quotes? EEng (talk) 23:11, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

That's already been adequately covered by previous discussion in this thread, and isn't even particularly responsive to what I wrote anyway. I have a lot on my wikiplate today, and don't feel like reiteration is a good use of my time, honestly. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 23:21, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Now that I'm caught up on pressing things, I can address this. I'm not sure what to say other than to ask what objections you have to what parts of "As much as possible, avoid linking from within quotes, which may clutter the quotation, violate the principle of leaving quotations unchanged, and mislead or confuse the reader." It seems mostly clear cut to me. I don't like the "As much as possible" wording, because it's silly hyperbole – it is of course possible to never, ever link inside a quotation. So it does not get its point across properly. The rest of it makes perfect sense to me. It just needs to be flexible enough that people can link in quotations when this is the best option for the article. To that end, I might favor removal of the "violate the principle of leaving quotations unchanged" part (an argument can be made that adding a link does not qualify – the link is metadata, not data). To me, "mislead or confuse the reader" is the most important factor to watch out for, since inappropriate or "leading" links can be a serious WP:NPOV issue (attempting to link the quoted statement to something positive or negative that the editor wishes readers to associate with the quoted party, where there is actually no such association) and WP:NOR (novel synthesis, by the same mechanism) problem. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 05:55, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

To directly address your original question, "How do the links in the (hypothetical) quotation given here clutter it, change it, or mislead or confuse?" They cluttered it, in the view of some, by festooning it with bluelinks. I don't feel that this is true if and when our general principles about what to link and not link are applied (i.e., avoid overlinking); your legal case example was fine, to me. They changed it, in the view of some, by adding links that were not present in the original. I see this argument as childish and silly, honestly; it will almost never, ever be the case that we'll quote something in an article and preserve links in the quote (due to WP:EL concerns for starters), and everyone who's been on WP more than 2 minutes immediately figures out that links are metadata, not data. They can mislead or confuse in ways I've already discussed, immediately above (your example, again, did not exhibit this problem). Hope that helps. To me, only the last issue (NPOV and NOR "mislead or confuse" problems) are a legit concern. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 06:08, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

I appreciate your thoughtful comments and agree on every point, including that the single valid issue with linking from within quotations is the danger that an inappropriate link will mislead or distort. So what I need to understand is: since this precise problem arises, in precisely the same way, outside of quotations (in, say, a paraphrase of a quote), why aren't these issues dealt in a discussion of link selection in general (not a MOS issue) instead of the current guideline's implication that particular formatting of links (shifting them into footnotes or bracketed asides) magically makes them all OK? EEng (talk) 13:58, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Probably because some editors object to links in quotations for other reasons and, not realizing as you have that the misleading-links problem is not limited to quotations, they have shoehorned it into the section on links in quotations. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 22:12, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

support the concept of linking withing quotes, oppose the idea of just blanking Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Linking. I think linking withing quotes is fine, as long as overlinking is avoided. Greengreengreen red 22:29, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Oppose all proposed changes (although the wording could be cleaned up a bit). If the original quotation doesn't have a link or some footnote, why should WP add one? If the material is that ambiguous, the link should be placed in the supporting text, not the quotation itself. Neotarf (talk) 05:04, 31 December 2012 (UTC)
It's often about redundancy, not ambiguity. In a complex quote with a lot of jargon or terms-of-art, one will essentially have to reiterate most of the quotation in order to link to the articles on the concepts in the quote, and this is often almost painfully redundant and repetitive. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 05:44, 31 December 2012 (UTC)
PS: To be clear, when a case like this arises, I will definitely link in the quotation, citing WP:IAR if it comes to that. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 22:14, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Support I had little trouble getting to grips with the proposal (although I was shocked by some of the phrasing of those involved here in these discussions e.g. in the first proposal, a response including "an incompetently drafted proposal", probably why the majority of editors swerve discussions here, to avoid being cut down, belittled and trampled over by so-called "experts". Such self-declared "experts" need to think again, this Wikipedia relies on volunteers, not "experts"). I think removing any quote-specific format regulation and relying on the rest of MOS (and of course, common sense) is an obvious step forwards. Many quotes will contain the odd word or phrase which needs to be explained. Making those phrases the odd ones out, in our normal prose rules, by enforcing a regime where footnotes (or other methods) should be used to help the reader understand the meaning and context of certain phrases is absurd. On the odd occasion that these links are deemed incorrect, or potentially ambiguous, let's talk about it. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:43, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

I can understand that, because I was shocked also. Shocked that a fundamental ambiguity has been allowed to remain in that first proposal. I took the issue to the proposer's talkpage, which is appropriate. I suggest you do similarly. The present subsection (which I have refactored, so yes: you can follow it with "little trouble") is for the second proposal. Please stay on topic. ☺ Noetica^Tea? 21:59, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Please try not to be so condescending. It's little wonder so few real content editors bother here. The Rambling Man (talk) 11:14, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Please try to stay on topic. It's little wonder these proposals get nowhere if people don't care about clarity and removal of ambiguity. A reminder: this talkpage is for discussion toward improving Wikipedia's manual of style. ☺ Noetica^Tea? 11:36, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

So it's not for being condescending to other editors then as you seem appear magically able to do with alarming regularity? Okay, thanks for your clarification. The Rambling Man (talk) 11:43, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Oppose if I correctly understand that the proposal is to delete the section Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Linking. I could understand wanting to shorten or simplify that section, but not why we would want to remove it. I also agree with Noetica that a clear proposal would have a better chance, and after looking at the talk page where he discussed the ambiguity, I am flummoxed about why it was allowed to stand that way, and then made worse in proposal 2. Dicklyon (talk) 22:15, 31 December 2012 (UTC)
Oppose I oppose deletion of the entire section for the reasons I discuss above. It does not seem to me that the justifications that originally prompted this advice have been either debunked or shown to be wholly unpersuasive. I think that deleting the text is the same as allowing wikilinks in quotes, but there is inadequate justification and consensus for such a major change. So, I think the text should stay, even though I have some problems with it. AgnosticAphid talk 23:42, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

The trunk (boot) of a car

At present the MOS gives the following example: "the trunk (UK: boot) of the car was ...". [3]

The term "boot" for the luggage compartment of a motor car is also used in Australia, so it's not an exclusively British term. In addition, I would think that the confusion about usage would be more likely to go the other way. I therefore propose to change the example this way:

the boot (trunk) of the car was ...

How do other editors feel about this proposal? Michael Glass (talk) 03:16, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

I would just drop the "UK: " part. There's no compelling reason to invert the order. (I would say that if the original order had been what you propose and someone wanted to flip it; it really doesn't matter what order these ENGVAR things go in). — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 03:48, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Based on ENGVAR, surely the version in main prose should be the version as determined by WP:TIES or WP:RETAIN, and the alternative is bracketed. In the interests of retaining natural uninterrupted prose, I would rather see the referent linked so that users of another version can check the meaning if they are uncertain. While I acknowledge the principle behind WP:overlink, it is far less intrusive to the readers' experience to come across blue text than bracketed insertions, and if the linked term is familiar (ie, the reader is conversant with the ENGVAR in which the article is written) it is an easy choice not to follow the link. Kevin McE (talk) 12:04, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

It's a toss-up between WP:EGG and WP:ENGVAR. I remember this being a problem at Concorde; seemingly some American editors could not stand seeing tyre unless it was linked as tyre. --John (talk) 12:16, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, "UK" is distracting. Better just trunk (boot) or boot (trunk). As for linking tyre, it's overlinking per WP:NOTADICT. — kwami (talk) 03:18, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

OK. I'll drop the 'UK' Michael Glass (talk) 13:29, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Edit warring over passive voice

Could someone review this edit? I've hit 3RR in an edit war there over an ungrammatical avoidance of the passive voice. (IMO the topic should be the subject, per the normal rules of English discourse.) — kwami (talk) 23:54, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

Classic example of trying to sneak something in to MoS to retrospectively legitimise bad behaviour. I oppose any such additions; especially in this case, where the aim is to perpetuate a paragraph with six consecutive instances of the passive voice. --John (talk) 17:14, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

Actually, we have often discussed discouraging the passive voice, and decided not to. Art LaPella (talk) 23:52, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

Since [User:John] has deleted the link I placed on his talk page, I will place it here, for the benefit of anyone following the active/passive discussion. Linguist Geoffrey K. Pullum's passive tutorial. Also worth looking at is the WP link that Kwami added to the page, also deleted: English_passive_voice#Reasons_for_using_the_passive_voice. Neotarf (talk) 01:16, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Passive voice is often actually useful in an encyclopedia, because active voice can very often lead to WP:NOR and WP:V problems (namely, asserting positive agency in the cause of something, without sufficient evidence of the alleged causality). — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ Contrib. 01:55, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Passive voice can be useful in an encyclopedia if carefully used. In general, there is far too much passive voice on Wikipedia, and it results from too many writers who think it sounds more "educated" to use it. I often (as in the case in point) encounter articles which are essentially written in passive voice from start to finish. This looks stupid and works against clarity and ease of understanding. Any change to the MoS which encourages this sort of pretentious, unclear, constipated writing is to be deplored. --John (talk) 13:24, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

No one's made any such proposition. The one I made (new section) specifically talks about the V and NOR issues, nothing more. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 04:16, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Similar prescriptionist disputes

Should we add a section for silly shibboleths such as final prepositions, split infinitives, which/that, etc? We occasionally have editors "fixing" hundreds of articles in an attempt to follow such fallacies, often creating awkward or even ungrammatical prose in the process. — kwami (talk) 00:45, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

Maybe something like,

Common grammatical disputes

Style guides sometimes advise against common grammatical constructions such as passive voice, split infinitives, restrictive which, and ending clauses in a preposition. However, such advice goes against centuries of literary practice, and even proponents seldom follow it. For Wikipedia, decisions on such points should be based on tone, style, and clarity, rather than on an absolute rule.

Those are the main examples I can think of; singular "they" might be added (per Shakespeare etc), but I'm not sure how relevant it would be for WP, so we might not want to mention it specifically. — kwami (talk) 01:44, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

The "even proponents seldom follow it" bit is an unsupportable assertion, and appears to be a mild ad hominem attack on critics o passive voice, split infinitives, etc. It's probably actually true, but that's beside the point. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ Contrib. 02:20, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Um, yeah, totally supportable, those who object to the passive often cannot even identify it. Much has been written about this on Language Log. I'll see if I can find something more specific. Neotarf (talk) 02:29, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Okay, here's "50 Years of Stupid Grammar Advice", Pullum's takedown of Strunk and White's Elements of Style. The premise: "What's wrong is that the grammatical advice proffered in Elements is so misplaced and inaccurate that counterexamples often show up in the authors' own prose on the very same page." Neotarf (talk) 02:40, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Does not support your claim. That Strunk and White themselves were bad writers, 100-odd years ago, does not mean that current WP editors who care about this distinction cannot identify it or regularly violate or (or even that offline modern writers who care about the distinction do so either). This isn't a huge issue, it's just that your wording is effectively making an attack, for no reason, that it can't support anyway. The solution is not to bend over backward to trying find some tenuous support for the attack, it's to stop attacking. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ Contrib. 03:06, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Actually, if you read it, Pullum regards E. B. White as quite a good writer. He did write Charlotte's Web, after all. But Pullum points out that 3 out of 4 of the "passive" examples in the book are not really passives. They are:

There were a great number of dead leaves lying on the ground" (no sign of any passive); "It was not long before she was very sorry that she had said what she had" (again, no sign of the passive); "The reason that he left college was that his health became impaired" (here became impaired is an example of the adjectival, not passive, use of the past participle). Source.

Here's more from Pullum [4] about the general inability to distinguish passive, along with several dozen links to other pieces. Apparently it's an epidemic. But of course I agree that any WP advice for editors should be couched in positive terms that builds on knowledge they already have, while making the reasoning self-evident. Neotarf (talk) 03:49, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Sounds good to me, as long as we can outlaw the singular they in article space. Happy holiday be had they with. Dicklyon (talk) 02:36, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

Won't mention it then. It's not common in academic writing even if it is in literary English. — kwami (talk) 03:00, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

Yes, please do add such a section; we've had problems for years with users trying to remove the passive voice whether or not it was appropriate. But I hope you do include the singular they. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 19:18, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

A lot of people support singular they, though. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ Contrib. 02:20, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

That's why I suggest it be included. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 02:23, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Ah, I see what you mean; I mistook you for supporting someone's notion above to "forbid" it. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ Contrib. 02:33, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

I have reverted Kwami's addition of the following subsection. Apart from having an edit summary that is practically useless for documentation of changes to this core MOS page, it followed minimal discussion between just two editors:

Common grammatical disputes
{shortcut|MOS:PASSIVE|MOS:WHICH|MOS:SPLITINFINITIVE|MOS:PREPOSITIONS}
Style guides sometimes advise against common grammatical constructions such as passive voice, split infinitives, restrictive which, and ending clauses in a preposition. However, such advice goes against centuries of literary practice, and even proponents seldom follow it. For Wikipedia, decisions on such points should be based on tone, style, and clarity, rather than on an absolute rule.

Myself, I agree with the basic idea. But that's not the point. There is no rush, and we definitely do not want to encourage ill-documented changes to this core MOS page. Let any such substantive changes be prefigured here on the talkpage – preferably with a draft, and long enough for editors in all time zones to comment. (Meanwhile I have reworked the lead of the article Kwami mentioned above.)

Noetica^Tea? 04:32, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

An excellent suggestion, Kwami(kagami). Editors shouldn't force compliance with "rules" fantasized by Strunk, White, and similar language ignoramuses. -- Hoary (talk) 15:00, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

Or in Latin, of course, lingua ignorami. :P EEng (talk) 16:19, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

This page routinely features strong passion over arcane minutia, so I couldn't decide if that was intended as an attack on Strunk and White, or sarcasm against Kwami. Art LaPella (talk) 20:56, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

(That's minutiae, Art. ☺!)

Be assured: Hoary is a knowledgeable linguistic type, and no doubt approves of Kwami's addition.

Noetica^Tea? 22:07, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

I agree with the spirit of this proposal, but I think the best way to ensure that people don't spend time arguing over it is to not have a policy on it.Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 21:09, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

It does not take a position on whether we should or should not use the passive voice, etc. When we do get grammar warriors (not terribly common, but sometimes quite prolific when they do appear), it would be nice to be able to quickly point out that they do not have consensus. Not that consensus is against them in any particular case, only that the MOS does not support blanket "correction" of such things. The MOS does not support them anyway, of course, but currently there's no one place to direct them to prove it. I think this will prevent more arguments than it will cause: When the grammar warrior has their style guide, and the MOS is silent, it's easy to argue that a published source should trump what doesn't exist. — kwami (talk) 21:24, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

I should have checked better, Kwami. Your edit was hasty, but I did not examine how well you did prefigure it here.

No objection from me, if people really want such an inclusion. I tend to agree with Grandiose, though: silence on this issue is eloquent. If we do want it, I'd like consistency mentioned as a desideratum. And I would like to see less polemic content. There is no justification here for railing against more nuanced advice that does not make the clumsy mistakes of Strunk, White, and their ilk. Sufficient that MOS does not give style advice of that sort, and that it is not a matter of grammar, as many have thought. For example, linguist supremo Geoff Pullum is a polemicist on a crusade against distinguishing relatives that and which; but he is plain wrong in claiming that all who favour the distinction do so on grammatical grounds. We don't need to buy into those wars. So I suggest this:

Perennial style disputes
{shortcut|MOS:PASSIVE|MOS:WHICH|MOS:SPLITINFINITIVE|MOS:PREPOSITIONS}
Some style guides have advised against common grammatical constructions such as passive voice, split infinitives, restrictive which, and ending clauses in a preposition. But advice on those points has no place in Wikipedia style guidelines. Style decisions should be based on tone, clarity, and consistency, not on ill-founded prejudice.

Noetica^Tea? 22:07, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

I'd have two objections to that. First, as far as I know, no one advises against the passive voice in the same blanket way some people advise against split infinitives, restrictive "which"es, and stranded prepositions; everyone agrees the passive voice has its place. Second, some people consider that restrictive "which", in particular, is less clear than restrictive "that" and always inappropriate to an encyclopedic tone just as "ain't" is, though not as jarringly. The proposal offers no reason that restrictive "which" is allowed here but "ain't" isn't. I assume it's because restrictive "which" is common in edited formal English, but if the MOS is going to be explicit about allowing this construction and calling opposition to it "ill-founded prejudice", the MOS should be explicit about the reason. —JerryFriedman (Talk) 22:36, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

I have never seen anyone go on a crusade to convert "isn't" to "ain't". I have seen people removing passives just because they're passive. — kwami (talk) 22:45, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

I think you mean converting "ain't" to "isn't". :-) —JerryFriedman (Talk) 23:11, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

The style guides are probably unanimous in stating "ain't" shouldn't be used except colloquially. Not so with that/which. — kwami (talk) 01:59, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

So the criterion is unanimity? I didn't use that in my example a minute ago, but it could probably work. I'm just saying the MOS should say what the criterion is. —JerryFriedman (Talk) 14:39, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

I think the criterion should be things people have been crusading for when there's no consensus for the change. Eliminating passives even when appropriate is one of the major ones; there aren't too many others, I don't think. "Ain't" isn't an issue because hardly anyone uses it on WP, and if someone did, I doubt anyone would object to it being replaced. — kwami (talk) 02:57, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

I think the semi-obsolete "whom" is a better example. Art LaPella (talk) 05:11, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict) How about "grammatical style"? Also, I don't think the MOS should be overtly spelling out what should be in the MOS; that's more at home on the talk page.

I completely agree with the second sentence there (whoever wrote it – you didn't sign). It'd be really weird for MOS to say what should be in MOS. The "ill-founded prejudice" wording wouldn't be guideline material either. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ Contrib. 02:13, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Perennial grammatical style disputes
{shortcut|MOS:PASSIVE|MOS:WHICH|MOS:SPLITINFINITIVE|MOS:PREPOSITIONS}
Some style guides advise against common grammatical constructions such as passive voice, split infinitives, restrictive which, and ending clauses in a preposition. However, this advice [is prejudicial and?] goes against centuries of literary practice. Such decisions should be based on tone, clarity, and consistency.

— kwami (talk) 22:43, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

It depends on what you mean by "centuries". Split infinitives were very rare 200 years ago, especially in literary prose.

Maybe the point to address is the "perenniality".

Some editors automatically change certain grammatical constructions such as passive verbs, split infinitives, restrictive uses of which, and clauses that end in prepositions. However, those constructions are all common in edited formal English. Changes to them, and to other constructions that meet that criterion, should be considered case by case according to tone, clarity, and consistency.

—JerryFriedman (Talk) 14:36, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

Active/passive and similar disputes (continued)

There's an ENGVAR factor here: restrictive which is not a issue in British English, whereas the others (passives, split infinitives, preposition stranding) are argued over in many variants of English. Peter coxhead (talk) 16:35, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

I would support Jerry's suggestion (though please include starting sentences with "But"). Is there an ENGVAR factor, Peter? For example, I was taught never to use restrictive "which," though it seems others were taught that it's okay. The point is that these are all preference issues, so people shouldn't go around changing them automatically. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 19:24, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

Sure, 'but' is fine IMO – do we have an article that discusses this point so we can link to it? I didn't include it because I wasn't expecting it to be an issue. — kwami (talk)

Has someone been accused of changing them "automatically"? How would that work, exactly? --John (talk) 19:33, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

I've seen people going around replacing 'which' with 'that' on multiple articles, with a stock edit summary suggesting they are engaged in a general hunt for restrictive 'which'. (IMO, this is often an improvement, but not always, and some of these weren't.) And in the edit-war alert at the top of this section, the editor justified it as 'active over passive' in the edit summary, and at talk with 'We prefer the active over the passive voice', 'So you guys know better than me, know better than respected style guides, and know better than Wikipedia's own quality control processes' in response to comments that the passive is appropriate in that case, and 'it consists of keeping the article in a shit state through ignorance of basic English,' all suggesting that he's guided by advice to avoid the passive even if that means distorting the text.

For Jerry's wording, do we really want to address the editors making the changes, rather than the style guides that they learned from? How about:

Perennial grammatical style disputes
{shortcut|MOS:PASSIVE|MOS:WHICH|MOS:SPLITINFINITIVE|MOS:PREPOSITIONS}
Some style guides advise against common grammatical constructions such as passive voice, split infinitives, restrictive which, beginning a sentence with 'but'[link], and ending clauses in a preposition. However, these are all common in formal English publication. Changes to such constructions should be based on tone, clarity, and consistency.

— kwami (talk) 20:46, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

MOS doesn't always care what "some style guides" do; it is its own style guide. If it uses wording like this elsewhere, that should be removed. Re: "Changes to such constructions should be based on tone, clarity, and consistency." – that's just generally true of all edits that aren't simply correcting/adding facts, though. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ Contrib. 02:08, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Suggestions for that latest draft:

Drop style from the header. No longer needed.
Drop the first use of common; the second is better placed to do all the work.
A link to Conjunction (grammar) for the point about but (it's in the lead there).
Replace in formal English publication with in high-quality publications.
Fix the last sentence (as below).

The result:

Perennial grammatical disputes
{shortcut|MOS:PASSIVE|MOS:WHICH|MOS:SPLITINFINITIVE|MOS:PREPOSITIONS}
Some style guides advise against grammatical constructions such as passive voice, split infinitives, restrictive which, beginning a sentence with but, and ending clauses in a preposition. However, these are all common in high-quality publications. Attempts to improve the language of an article should be based on tone, clarity, and consistency.

It's a delicate matter. Preferences differ even among those who have joined this discussion. I am a strong advocate of distinguishing the relatives. It has been proposed as a stylistic principle since at least mid-19C (by such theorists as Alexander Bain). I would not want anyone to be able to cite MOS either for or against making the distinction, to improve an article; I am happy that the wording here is neutral and effective.

I am definitely against setting this up as an ENGVAR matter. Inaccurate at best, and unhelpfully divisive at worst.

Noetica^Tea? 22:38, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

I have no desire to be divisive, in this or other matters of style. Let me give an example. I greatly expanded Cactus, which by consensus is written in American English. I can happily use American spelling, but grammatically it's almost impossible for me not to write in my usual rather academic British English style. A number of people have since copy-edited my text; a significant proportion of these edits related to my use of that and which. I was grateful for these copy-edits, since they resulted in a style which is certainly less "British", whether or not it is authentically "American". However, if someone copy-edited in the same way an article which was agreed to be in British English, I would object. Am I wrong in making this distinction?

Using the same article as an example, several editors changed passives to actives, sometimes improving the text, but more often pointlessly in my view. So I strongly support the proposal to discourage purely opinionated copy-editing. Peter coxhead (talk) 00:35, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Hi Peter, that/which isn't an ENGVAR issue that I'm aware of. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 01:34, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, I can't see it that way either (and I learned to read and write in England, lived mostly in the US but also lived in Canada). Perhaps the extent to which the distinction is maintained in informal spoken and written communications varies geographically, but if so, I've never noticed. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ Contrib. 02:06, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Well, English relative clauses#That or which says it is a dialectal matter, with reliable sources. They say that American English has no truck with restrictive which, but that British English accepts it, even in formal writing. Well, whaddayaknow? — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ Contrib. 02:33, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

This corresponds to my experience: I use that or which indifferently in restrictive relative clauses (tending perhaps to which in formal writing). So I'm happy for my uses of which in this context to be changed to that if the article should be in American English. What is slightly more problematic sometimes is the zero relative pronoun, which can make sentences hard to parse. Peter coxhead (talk) 22:05, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Include the crap caused by FrankenStrunk (Passive voice, conjunctions, preposition endings). The others are not so settled upon. To boldly split infinitives can be done as naturally as writing in the passive. Or starting a sentence with a conjunction, for that matter. The "no split infinitives" rule can be elegantly broken by those who carefully consider the relationships between words. But 99% of the time it makes for clunky prose, and I worry that future copy-editing will be hurt by this addition. Same goes for that/which. PhnomPencil (✉) 00:32, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

OPPOSE adding anything about active/passive to MOS, more or less per WP:BEANS. There are plenty of editors who instinctively write clear prose without being at all aware of the existence of passive voice or other matters of grammar, and this would just be a confusing and useless tangent for them. Where would it stop? Instructions about there and their? Admonishments about i and ur? Many of us never heard of Strunk and White at all before coming into contact with the linguists who find it so irritating. MOS should be clear and positive, and a true help to editors, not merely a negative reaction in response to some linguists' peeve. Neotarf (talk) 01:33, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

I also oppose such an addition, for essentially the same reasons. And these are not issues which arise often enough or divisively enough to warrant MOS's attention anyway, as well as the fact that ENGVAR is bound up in some of them. In general, cleanup of this sort is not harmful. Where it is (e.g. tortured constructions like the classic "Ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.", or use of active voice that implies causal agency without a reliable source for it), just revert and discuss on the article's talk page if necessary. WP:BRD exists for a reason. Ultimately virtually all copyediting is "purely opinionated", because God[s] did not come down from heaven to hand us style commandments. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ Contrib. 01:55, 28 December 2012 (UTC) I've changed my mind on this (not on the issue I raise elsewhere that a whole section of stuff like active/passive, which/that, etc. will be a magnet for MOS disruption), and formally proposed adding passive voice back in, in a new section below. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 04:10, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

It would be helpful to have a section here to point to. We used to have one advising that the passive was fine, but it was removed. Without it, we have to argue the issue every time it comes up. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 02:14, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

The problem with a section like this [meaning the broader proposal to have a "catchall section" for passive/active, which/that, singular they, etc., etc., not a section limited specifically to passive voice – 04:12, 31 December 2012 (UTC)] is that everyone who disagrees with anything in MOS is going to try to shoehorn their pet bugbear into this section and remove MOS's long-consistent advice about it. Don't like logical quotation? Put it in this section as something we no longer have a rule about. Don't like dashes? Put them in that section. Don't like spacing between initials or between measure and unit? Put them in that section. Ad nauseam. MOS itself could be whittled down to nothing but a skeleton. There's nothing particularly different about, say, split infinitives and our captalization-of-titles rules – they're all just arbitrary rules we've selected out of various possibilities available, and asked people to follow them for consistency's sake. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ Contrib. 02:26, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

The difference is that we have established conventions for those other things, so any such additions would be reverted as against consensus. The point here is to clarify that we intentionally don't have conventions for everything. We should probably limit the list to things that people have actively pushed. My motivation was the same as SlimVirgin's: I don't want to have to relitigate every time someone wants to delete all passives. So much easier to respond with "See MOS:PASSIVE". — kwami (talk) 02:39, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Yes, what happened on the thread above was unfortunate. Harsh words were exchanged, and a user has backed off from the thread. But from what I can see, this user is far from unintelligent, having studied some languages, and is actively involved in copyediting. This is exactly the kind of editor these pages should be reaching out to. Active/passive is an advanced topic and many courses that cover grammar give only a cursory introduction to it. So even the average person who has taken university level composition courses has probably only done a few exercises in changing passive to active, without really going into the reasons. (A serious university-level composition handbook--Little Brown?--should have it, though.) Can you believe, I once heard someone declare that passive voice was to be preferred over active, as a higher and more educated sounding register of English -- not a native speaker, to be sure, but someone who had supervisory responsibility over nearly 80 English instructors. This is the sort of mentality that the exercises in changing passive to active is meant to counter. But it fails as instruction, as it starts from the standpoint of assuming something is broken, and ends up creating its own set of problems. Neotarf (talk) 03:07, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

[EC] Kwami, have you not noticed that everyone with a problem with something MOS says claims there is no real consensus for it, and many of them campaign incessantly to get what they want? A section like this will make it trivially easy for someone to post some rant at WP:VP/P about "OWNership of MOS" and rile up a bunch of yahoos who agree with whatever ungrammatical or questionably grammatical thing the activist wants to do, and overwhelm MOS with an "invasion" of people who want to change it (cf. earlier this year with capitalizing bird species common names, as just one of many examples). Such a section will create a "loop black hole" into which any style point can be sucked as long as someone can make enough noise about it to get some non-trivial percentage of editors to wonder about consensus on the issue. It would be safer for MOS's integrity to individually address each of these issues (passive voice, trailing prepositions, etc.) in their own sections, widely separated. We basically can't "limit the list to things that people have actively pushed" because there is virtually no point in MOS that someone hasn't done this with. The solution is to not have any such list. If you really, really, really need a MOS:PASSIVE, then make it, but separately from MOS:PREPOSITION, etc. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ Contrib. 03:18, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

I'd have no problem separating them. My main concern is with passives, as 'fixing' them can really screw up a text. (So can 'fixing' prepositions, but I haven't noticed that being a problem.) — kwami (talk) 08:01, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

We used to have a sentence about the passive being okay, but it was removed. See here. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 17:09, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

I've proposed re-adding it (and possibly clarifying it) in a new section below. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 04:08, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

There's also this editing guide. Does anyone ever look at these? Maybe a "things not to fix" is also in order. Neotarf (talk) 04:07, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Yes, maybe that's a better place for it.

But the word don't "must" be "fixed"? Really? — kwami (talk) 08:01, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

~~That contradicts WP:CONTRACTIONS. Art LaPella (talk) 17:44, 28 December 2012 (UTC)~~ Resolved since then. Art LaPella (talk) 22:23, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Added a "things not to be fixed" section to that guide. — kwami (talk) 02:53, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

Also contradicts Contraction (grammar) (which is not exactly sourced). I don't agree. I also see it's been taken out before (by SlimVirgin)(a Canadian?) and keeps getting put back in. Is this some EngVar thing? The last I heard, contractions are standard; the main reason for not using a contraction where one is available is for emphasis or to display anger. Neotarf (talk) 13:43, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

Yes, that's my impression as well. However, I have seen style guides which say that contractions are unprofessional, much as they advise against these other things. Certainly we shouldn't use "gonna" or "it'll" in an encyclopedia, but there's nothing wrong with "isn't". — kwami (talk) 20:01, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

If we have any pretence of maintaining a professional encyclopaedic tone, we need a degree of formality, and such contractions are incompatible with that goal. Outside of direct quotations, I find it difficult to imagine what the MoS means by "occasionally contractions provide the best solution anyway" if formal tone remains the way to write better articles. Kevin McE (talk) 20:23, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

Completely agreed, and "isn't" isn't some mystical exception; it's precisely as informal as "it'll". I expand these contractions, every single time I encounter them in non-quoted article prose, without fail, and (as far as I've noticed) in over 7 years I've never been reverted on that even once. I think about 95% of our editors understand that contractions are not in the encyclopedic register or tone, and avoid them. Those who do not, seem to understand why their contractions get expanded by other editors (whether or not it "educates" them to actually stop using contractions when they write articles here). — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 04:06, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

WP is meant to be written in Plain English, in order to avoid ambiguity, jargon, and vague or unnecessarily complex wording. I have heard people intentionally speak without contractions to non-native speakers, dumbing down the language in order to be understood. For example, what is the difference in pronunciation between "you are done" and "you aren't done"? In my idiolect at least, it is mostly a matter of emphasis, and very hard for a non-native speaker to pick up on. Better to say "you are not done" to a non-native speaker, and be understood, even if it sounds like pidgin English. But in written English there is less opportunity for contractions to cause confusion. Neotarf (talk) 04:56, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

No one involved has made such an argument that contractions are confusing; that's not why we avoid them. They're simply not part of the formal register. Even newspaper and serious magazine journalism avoid them, as does (usually) academic writing, to which encyclopedic writing is close kin. Even non-dialogue prose in fiction avoids contractions mostly. You have to get into personal editorials, which are intentionally only semi-formal, and what I call "dumbass journalism" like Maxim and People magazines, and hipster articles in city weeklies, which are all attempting to appeal to the lowest-common denominator and sound "cool" and "friendly", before you start seeing non-dialogue/non-quotation contractions in print. WP is nothing like that. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 05:26, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

I have never seen this documented, only the bit about emphasis, but I am more likely to see grammar stuff published in the U.S. or for the American market. Neotarf (talk) 05:44, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean by "documented". Publications are self-documenting – just pick up a mainstream daily newspaper and see how many contractions you can find that are not in quotations or in one-author editorials/reviews written in a less formal register. No one is likely to get a grant to do a linguistics journal research piece on the topic, since it's simply not interesting to much of anyone. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 01:16, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

The usual is to post some link to n-grams or some particular style manual, especially when there seems to be some difference in experience between several editors who speak different varieties of English. Anyone can make assertions here, and many do. Neotarf (talk) 02:13, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

As someone else pointed out here recently, n-grams are an overused tool that provide quantity data without any quality analysis. They're a hammer, and this is not a nail. (For one thing, there would be no way to distinguish in n-grams between different types or "qualities" of source material, but doing so would be required to test the hypothesis!) This is a bolt, and I've already handed you a ratchet wrench: Pick up a newspaper and read. Try some magazines of different sorts too, and some books. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 11:06, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Minor BLP issue in MOS

As a WP:BLP matter, we really should not use the names of living people, public figures or not, in examples like "The author thanked her father, President Obama, and her mother, Sinéad O'Connor." — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 23:05, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Change them to Robin Hood and Little Bo Peep then. Rich Farmbrough, 03:02, 3 January 2013 (UTC).

Clarifying one issue concerning the use of hyphens

This is emphatically not an attempt to change the current advice re hyphens and en-dashes, and I hope no-one will hijack the discussion to this end.

The MOS currently has a short section containing the following text (I've removed the parts which aren't relevant to the point I want to make):

A hyphen is used by default in compounded proper names of single entities.
Wilkes-Barre, a single city named after two people ...

John Lennard-Jones, an individual named after two families

McGraw-Hill, a publishing house named after two founders

I see what is being attempted here, but it doesn't really work. Theorems and comets are named after the people who discovered them, and follow the logic of the approach currently adopted in the MOS of using an en-dash, although they are clearly "compounded proper names of single entities". It may be that the cases where hyphens are used cannot be covered by a general rule. Double-barrelled surnames are one special case; long-established names of firms where the sense of distinct founders has been lost are another; and so on. The nature of natural languages is such that there are always oddities and exceptions. Either a more convincing explanation is needed or we should just say that there are special cases such as those below. What is clear is that the "rule" as given here isn't useful to editors seeking guidance. Peter coxhead (talk) 01:55, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

A fair question, Peter. When WP:ENDASH was ironed out last year, the consensual draft accepted by ArbCom had this wording:

By default, follow the dominant convention that a hyphen is used in compounded place names, not an en dash.

Guinea-Bissau; Bissau is the capital, and this distinguishes the country from neighboring Guinea
Austria-Hungary; the two are judged to be merged as one political and cultural entity

A few place names are exceptional, with components that refer to independent parts of a larger political or cultural whole.

Poland-Lithuania; an en dash is used: Poland–Lithuania (see Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth)

This all came after provisions that included examples of proper names with en dash: "the Roman–Syrian War"; "Comet Hale–Bopp or just Hale–Bopp". The provision was intended to give a default ruling for cases not otherwise covered, and in which the separateness of entities was not relevant.

Later A di M broadened the scope to include McGraw-Hill; and he therefore put "proper name" instead of "place name".

It is important to note what has remained constant: the provision "by default". Where any more focused provision applies, the default advice is overridden.

Does that help? I agree: that part of the guidelines is not optimally expressed; but it does seem necessary. 60 interested and active editors laboured for weeks to forestall time-wasting confusion, and to counter opportunistic attacks on MOS that capitalise on any point of omission or weakness. In any consensually developed set of guidelines, perfection is impossible. But if anyone knows of a more subtle and robust set of guidelines to deal with dashes (committee-designed or not, on the web or not), I want to see it. Please! ☺

Incidentally, there is another account to give of "John Lennard-Jones". I think Kwami added that example, and that explanation. Anyway, both abstracted explanations converge on the same almost universal ruling for compounded surnames.

Noetica^Tea? 02:31, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

I think it's confusing, too. I was thinking about this the other day, but I gave up. What exactly is the difference between Wilkes-Barre and Hale–Bopp? Aren't they both compound names of a single entity that is named after two people? I suspect there is some difference that I'm overlooking, but maybe it could be made a little bit more clear to make it easier to figure out which mark to use when. AgnosticAphid talk 05:15, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

The town of Wilkes-Barre is not thought of as commemorating two people. Comets, however, are normally named after their discoverers, who sometimes have hyphenated names. There isn't always a clear line: punctuation is always going to be inadequate to convey all aspects of language. You see something of the distinction in Austria~Hungary, which is sometimes written with a dash as a dual monarchy, and sometimes with a hyphen as a unitary state. — kwami (talk) 07:24, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

I agree with Kwami. In addition, when you're not sure, sources can often be illuminating. You won't find McGraw-Hill or Hewlett-Packard or Wilkes-Barre with an en dash in reliable sources, I bet; certainly less than 1 in 1000. But Hale–Bopp with en dash is at least 20%, which is nearly as high as you'll find en-dash-based styles in books and scholarly papers. Any object commemorating two people will typical be found with en dash in at least a few percent of sources, indicating that it is the type of thing that our style would use an en dash for. Stadiums, airports, bridges, buildings, comets, theorems, diseases, algorithms, laws, etc. Looks for articles like List of eponymous X for lots of examples. The styling is mostly fairly consistent and uncontroversial in WP. The airport situation was a bit of a mess because lots of airport names were formed with city names attached to airport names with spaced hyphens, which DashBot changed to spaced en dashes, which were wrong as often as not. I've tried to work through those and figure out the various names and what they should really be, based on information in sources. It was made more difficult by a certain anti-en-dash attitude of one editor. Dicklyon (talk) 07:43, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

I like those responses well enough. I will contribute more on this tomorrow (Australian time), when I will be able to see better what more is called for. Noetica^Tea? 10:55, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

Agree with Kwami. Tony (talk) 13:00, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

Although I see where Kwami's logic is coming from, it seems a little subjective really. When does one thing pass from being named after its separate inspirations to gaining a status of its own? I would also, despite the encouragement to do otherwise, take this opportunity to again wonder why we don't simply revert to doing to what most publishers – print and online – do, what most keyboards make it easy to do and what we used to do here on WP for a long while AFAICT, and simply use hyphens for all joins of whatever sort, from prefixes and suffixes to compound names of all varieties and, even, dare I say it, date ranges. It won't kill anyone, it won't lessen clarity of content and will save hours of debate and hours of gnoming. And no, again, it is no less "correct" than the alternative of insisting on making a distinction and agonising over when and where exactly we need to do that. N-HH talk/edits 17:53, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

I think the reason is that most editors agree that it will lessen the clarity to give up on the distinctions of meaning that en dashes convey relative to hyphens. That's why they're used, when they are. The fact that there are grey areas where the best choice is not obvious doesn't make it any more of problem than choosing capitalization, or disambiguation, or other things that editors usually agree on but sometimes disagree on. These things only become annoying problems when someone refuses to acknowledge consensus. Dicklyon (talk) 21:04, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

Rather like hyphenation itself. — kwami (talk) 22:10, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

The choice of a hyphen, space (open), or closed is somewhat determined by Am/Brit - British English prefers "end point", American English prefers "endpoint". Consulting a dictionary reveals that double-breasted and good-looking are hyphenated. So basically, look it up in the dictionary, and if it not there, use what reliable sources use. Not really something that even needs to be in the MOS. Apteva (talk) 22:43, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

Consulting a dictionary will resolve few cases. Dictionaries list words, not phrases. As for RS's, that's what the MOS guidelines we based our MOS on are. — kwami (talk) 22:56, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

I asked people not to hijack this section. Please don't. Here I am asking those who understand the "60 editor consensus" to clarify a small part of the explanation of that policy. We can continue discussing elsewhere whether that policy is the right one. Peter coxhead (talk) 00:52, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

Fine, Peter. Do you think things have been dealt with adequately now? I am ready to discuss refinements to that catch-all provision. What remains uncertain (if anything), and how might it be fixed?

Noetica^Tea? 22:14, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

Despite having had a strong opinion about this before, I'm less certain now that for comets it shouldn't be a hyphen (except in cases where one of two or more parties a comet is named after has a "double-barreled" surname). The logic seems to be difficult to distinguish from that of "Wilkes-Barr" and "McGraw-Hill" other than the (weirdly archaic, reversed) adjectival form of the "Comet Hale-Bopp" (would we write "Wilkes–Barr City" with a dash if the place used this longer name?). I don't buy that no one thinks of Wilkes-Barr as commemorating two people; of course they do, and it was named that way specifically to do so! I do see a difference in that comets are named for their discoverers, but how would we codify such a distinction? But it's also at least reasonably likely that direct descendants of Hill and McGraw are still on the board of that company, and obviously would think of it as named after these founders (directly analogous to discoverers). [Aside: I still find ongoing fault with Apteva for being so damned disruptive over the question, and am liable to ARBCOM him myself if that behavior doesn't let up.] Airports named after two cities, however, are directly comparable to wars named after two countries. It's "Seattle–Tacoma Airport", not "Seattle-Tacoma Airport". The difference between this and Wilkes-Barr or potentially Hale-Bopp is that in these latter cases they're honorary, abstract references, while in the case of wars and airports, they are references to palpably involved entities. Mexico and the United States of America actually fought the Mexican–American war; Sea–Tac airport actually does serve the communities of Tacoma and Seattle. By contrast, Bopp and Hale are never going to set foot on that comet; Barr and Wilkes did not live in that city, just in the area where the city was eventually founded after they were gone. Is there a simple way to distinguish between the "Mexican–American War" and "Wilkes-Barr" cases? PS: I'm also a little skeptical about this reasoning: "Austria-Hungary; the two are judged to be merged as one political and cultural entity", since they're both clearly "components that refer to independent parts of a larger political or cultural whole" as in Poland–Lithuania. At very least I'm tempted to use a dash in "Austro–Hungarian Empire". — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 04:36, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

“Austro-Hungarian” is a very different animal from “Austria-Hungary”; because “Austro-” is a combining form that can’t stand alone, I would never use anything but a hyphen. Likewise for “Franco-Prussian War”, “Sino-Syrian relations”, &c.—Odysseus1479 (talk) 06:07, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Right! I momentarily "spaced" that. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 23:59, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

SMcCandlish, I respond to you with details that newcomers can follow also:

I agree with Odysseus. Guides and dictionaries are almost unanimous in realising ~ in forms like Austro~ with a hyphen (or with null, to make a closed-up word). I recall seeing one exception; and in about 2004 I briefly supported en dash myself, before I checked the sources and analysed the reasoning.
Again in the cases of comets, we look to the sources (for MOS, that means specialised and general guides and dictionaries in particular) and to best practice in publishing; and we analyse the reasoning. The sources differ; so the burden is shifted to our analysis. We compare what various sources suggest, for various contexts of use, and we evaluate how the alternative proposals fit with choices that have already been settled here on Wikipedia.
Comets are not exactly aligned with surnames or with geographical placenames (including names for streets, lakes, mountains, and the like), though there are resemblances. Placenames and surnames are common linguistic currency; we all use them everyday. By widespread convention in English publication, almost all placenames do without the apostrophe. By almost universal agreement, surnames are formed only with letters, apostrophes, and ordinary hyphens. There is no such universal agreement for comets, companies, airports, political borders, structures like bridges, historical events like wars, and other items beyond surnames and plain geographical placenames.
Surnames and plain geographical placenames are coordinates on our shared map, and we demand consistency in their styling so that society can function. So that we can find each other, even. Subject to those forces and that pressure, essential consistency of styling has been achieved. Not so with comets, wars, airports, and all those other miscellaneous features of the world.
Moving to particulars, Wilkes-Barre is an ordinary, everyday, gazetted placename; so regardless of its etymological origins, it has an ordinary hyphen. No dispute, anywhere. Similarly, Klimpschs Lane (note the nine-letter word with just one vowel, discovered in the wild in New South Wales) has no apostrophe. No dispute. Contrast Comet Hale–Bopp (disputed in sources) and Barnard's Star (not disputed?).
Where guides, dictionaries, and other sources disagree, we weigh their relative importance and their relative competence. We assess any arguments they present, and we see how the alternatives fit with Wikipedia's established style guidelines. For en dashes contrasting with ordinary hyphens, this was done with great elaboration in 2011. Consensus can change. But not through chaotic or capricious activism; not through partisan campaigning that refuses to appreciate others' contributions or that disregards new evidence no matter how powerful it may be.
I defend the current guidelines for en dashes, though I think the hyphen guidelines need some refinement (as many of us agreed, in 2011). I track this issue carefully, and I have seen no compelling argument for substantial change. One consideration, though it must be balanced against others, is stability. We are talking about guidelines for 6,908,116 articles, in the world's most consulted and most comprehensive encyclopedia.

I hope that answers some of your concerns. I would prefer to leave the topic alone for a while now, because the community grows intolerant of us all on account of disruption from a very small minority – currently under consideration at an RFC/U. Unfair? Sure! That's the nature of communities. Those who maintain style guidelines to promote excellence in the articles have a thankless task. It is a specialised, demanding, applied intellectual exercise; but unlike most others, this field is one in which everyone feels like an expert. We have to respect that, of course. In a certain way, there's truth in it. Myself, I always want as much community participation as possible in the development of Wikipedia's manual of style. That's what will keep it the best of its kind on the web – and among the best anywhere, for punctuation at least.

Noetica^Tea? 00:00, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Me too; I was just having a momentary brain-fart.
I agree this is the process, and not just for comets, but generally. The WP:SSF essay I'm the principal author of hinges on it, in fact.
Agreed, though I have raised before a point that seems really obvious to me: Comets, like "seas" (craters) on the moon, the moon itself, and other astronomical places are in fact places. I dislike inconsistently treating a place simply because it's on a different chunk of rock in space than where my bed is.
Okay. My take is that part of MOS's purpose is to impose a (sometimes rather arbitrary) similar consistency on these other features of reality, to make it easier on our editors and readers.
It is certainly not undisputed that placenames have no apostrophe. Most British/Commonwealth ones do not (because they are, or in the British diaspora areas derive from, placenames that predate standardized spelling and punctuation in English), but apostrophes are actually fairly common in North American placenames, and even a British example with one (done in archaic KJV style) was given by someone else above. Another Commonwealth example is Van Diemen's Land, now Tasmania, Australia. There are others. I think we can say that it is undisputed on Wikipedia that we do not change what the official or conventional "apostrophization" of a placename just to be consistent with how MOS would otherwise treat apostraphes. I have not (and likely will not, because most of my books are still in storage, post-move) done enough research to be certain that the claim that a placename like Wilkes-Barr is never done with a dash, but concede that if it is, it's probably rare. [That said, one the main arguments against Apteva's anti-dash war is that his assumption for why dashes in airport names, etc., are rare – that it's "wrong" – is nonsense, and the real reason is expedience – neither typewriters nor computer keyboards have dash keys, only hyphens. That logic also potentially applies here.] I've never in my life see "Barnards Star" and would never expect to. If a place was named after me, in awkward possessive form, I would expect it to be "McCandlish's Point" or whatever, not "McCandlishs", since it would not go back to the Elizabethan or earlier periods of English.
Agreed entirely, but this is not really addressing my question about how we distinguish a comet (or theorem or whatever) in which MOS wants us to use a dash to separate the names of parties for whom the topic was named, from cases where MOS does not want us to do that, e.g. Wilkes-Barr. "It's a placename" does not strike me as a strong argument, for more than one reason (the most obvious being that there's nothing magically special about placenames). I'm intelligent and am not going to have a psychotic break over intense confusion on the matter if we simply declare that placenames, of a single place, are conventional exceptions, but we need to just declare them as such, and not try to make really tortured pseudo-logical arguments to "explain" the exception.
Agreed as well, except on stability; I do what MOS says even when I disagree with it, unless it raises a problem that triggers WP:IAR in a particular case (as it sometimes does); if it's something that really bugs me, I raise the issue here and try to shift things a bit. I don't agree that stability is a compelling argument for much of anything on WP. If it were, many quite major changes, e.g. date unlinking, would never have happened. The WP community absorbs such changes with remarkable facility, rapidly and with a comparative minimum of fuss. Partly for WP:DGAF reasons and partly because bots and AWB runs can fix so many of these things en masse. I think the stability argument is akin to the "server load" argument that the developers tell us is almost always not one to bother making.

And I agree with your closing statements. This issue does need to be dropped for a while. There is clearly no consensus generated by the tendentious campaigning of Apteva and friends to change this section. But I'm still not sure there's a clear rationale to distinguish between "Wilkes-Barr" with a hyphen and "comet Hale–Bopp" with a dash (or "Comet Hale–Bopp" as I would prefer to write it, with a capital C, for the same reason I'd write "Mount Rushmore" not "mount Rushmore". — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 00:43, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Returning to Noetica's question to me (do I think things have been dealt with adequately now), the answer is that I'm clearer but perhaps not quite there yet. Is the following accurate for words to be joined by either a hyphen or an en-dash?

1 If all (or virtually all?) sources use a hyphen, as with Wilkes-Barre or McGraw-Hill or double-barrelled surnames, then we accept this, regardless of the etymological origin.

2 Otherwise we apply the analysis in the MOS.

2.1 If one of the specific cases in the MOS applies then we use a hyphen or an en-dash as per that case.

2.2 Otherwise the default of a hyphen applies.

Peter coxhead (talk) 02:15, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Peter! After all my labours to produce a manifesto for new year – stamped 00:00, 1 January 2013 (UTC), though I swear that was accidental – you ignore my impassioned rhetoric and return to the topic? Tsk!

Seriously now, I think your reading of the provision you earlier queried is about right. It was drafted in difficult circumstances: on one side editors wanted brevity, on another side editors wanted watertight and comprehensive guidelines; and some editors were calling for both, without suggesting how that could be achieved. All under the watchful eye of ArbCom. Interesting times; but the outcome has been peace. Yes, believe it or not: these are days of peace at WT:MOS. It's all relative.

We are now in a position to clarify the wording, without changing the substance. Since I am used to all this and know the topic intimately, I can draft a new version of the provision for editors to comment and vote on. Would you like me to do that?

Noetica^Tea? 04:10, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Yes, that would be an excellent idea. Peter coxhead (talk) 04:28, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Right, I will then. Give me a day or two (during which we might get more input anyway), and I'll start a new section with a clear proposal for comments and voting. Noetica^Tea? 04:46, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. I think Peter's outline is sufficient as a flowchart. However, I also think it is going to be extremely prone to "Aptevizing", with hell-bent editors claiming incessantly that something like "comet Hale–Bopp" must instead use a hyphen because virtually all the sources they know of do so (as noted above, A. this is mainly due to expediency, and B. IAU in particular has proposed typographical weirdness of even weirder proportions yet, like dropping the hyphen from double-barreled surnames, so they are essentially proof that WP:SSF is founded on very sound reasoning – specialist publications reliable for style-independent facts about their speciality cannot be relied upon for style advice.) — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 00:43, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Those who aren't prepared to abide by the current MOS aren't the target audience here. My concern is solely with those who want to go along with the MOS (whether they think it best practice or not), and who need clearer guidance. Peter coxhead (talk) 01:45, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Peter, I wrote above: "Give me a day or two (during which we might get more input anyway), and I'll start a new section with a clear proposal for comments and voting." I'm going to have to delay that. There's simply too much going on; and problems of conduct affecting the development of MOS are not yet dealt with (at an RFC/U). Mind if we leave it till things settle down? The background work is all done in the discussion above, of course.
Noetica^Tea? 02:18, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Proposal to restore and improve "Passive voice" section

I propose that the "Passive voice" section be restored, immediately below the WP:Manual of Style#Grammar heading, where it was originally. The deleted wording read:[5]

Passive voice
Whether to use the passive voice (this was done) or the active (he did this) depends entirely on the context, and is left to the discretion of editors.

It's been demonstrated above, and in previous discussions, that people changing passive to active willy-nilly is a genuine problem.

I further and severably propose that this be expanded and clarified as follows:

Passive voice
Whether to use the passive voice (this was done) or the active (he did this) depends entirely on the context, and is left to the discretion of editors. Incautiously changing passive to active voice can introduce verifiability, original research and neutrality problems, by implying causality or action where we do not have reliable sources for it. While encyclopedic writing ~~often~~ sometimes requires the use of passive voice, it should not be used to mask causation where it is reliably sourced, another neutrality issue. Passive voice may also safely be replaced when the facts are sourced and the construction is simply awkward: The Lord of the Rings was written by J. R. R. Tolkien is usually better as J. R. R. Tolkien wrote The Lord of the Rings.

— SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 00:21, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Note: I concede the criticism below that adding specific examples like the Tolkien one (which could be replaced with anything; The Hobbit film was just fresh in my mind) may not be helpful, so it could be removed. I've struck it.— SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 03:46, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

I also moderated "often" to "sometimes" to mollify a concern (about "encouraging" passive voice) raised in the original thread above. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 05:40, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Oppose Rather as I conceded higher up this page that my suggested rephrasing of the rules on linking within quotes, which amounted to "If you link within quotes, follow good practice for linking anywhere else" could easily be substituted by removal of the text altogether, so here the proposal seems to be replacing nothing with "You can choose A or B, but choose well." Bad writing is bad writing, and should be edited because it is bad writing, not because it is in the passive or active voice. This is a manual of style, not a grammar text book: this seems to be legislation for common sense in the absence of a house style, not identification of a house style
Apart from anything else, if the main subject of a passage is Tolkien, or authorship, then it could very easily be more appropriate to write your example in the active voice. Given that the choice between active and passive is generally dependent on the wider context, selecting any example will be fraught with complexities. Kevin McE (talk) 00:44, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

It's not the same kind of case, though. Here, there are specific reasons to use passive voice sometimes (e.g. lack of a reliable source for the alleged agency/action/cause). MOS, like all style guides, is also in part a grammar guide. That's why there's a section called WP:Manual of Style#Grammar. Characterizing this as "legislation" is non-responsive to anything relevant; every single point in MOS could be pejoratively labeled as such. Of course it would be more appropriate to write my Tolkien example in the active voice; that's precisely what I said. :-) You may be right, though, that giving specific examples isn't helpful. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 03:44, 31 December 2012 (UTC)
Support the short version (if we need anything at all) but oppose the long version, as an incorrect understanding of what the passive does. — kwami (talk) 02:43, 31 December 2012 (UTC)
"Incorrect" in what sense? I did not write anything at all about the function of the passive, only about the hazards of imposing the active without a source that supports the implications it brings with it. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 03:50, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

You said quite a bit, actually: that the passive is used to mask causality and that it is awkward, both myths. The active can just as easily be used to mask causality, and can be just as awkward. Such things have little to do with voice. By mentioning them, we'd give credence to them. It'd be like saying that, although ending a clause with a preposition is ungrammatical, sometimes it's necessary. — kwami (talk) 07:44, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Masking causality: Consider the sentence "Taxes were raised." In the U.S. at least, people will want to know WHO raised taxes. But whether this is a bug or a feature of the passive is a matter of value judgment. Neotarf (talk) 08:13, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

It's simply a fact about passive vs. active voice, not a "value judgment". Sometimes the causality-establishing active voice is appropriate (when we have reliable facts to support it) and sometimes it isn't (when we don't). — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 21:47, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

[EC] Kwami, I did not say either of those things. I said that editors can use active voice to imply causality without a source for it, with is true, and which is nothing like saying that masking causality is the function of passive voice. I also said that passive constructions can be awkward (I've already given the canonical "up with which I will not put" example), which is a true statement. Please stop throwing blatant straw man arguments at me. I know you know better. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 21:46, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Oppose as a matter outwith the remit of the MoS. Good writers tend to use the active voice more than the passive but this cannot be mandated and is best left to high school teachers, literacy coaches and peer reviewers. --John (talk) 07:58, 31 December 2012 (UTC)
Oppose. The correct use of passive depends neither on context nor on editorial whim. There are specific situations where the passive is the most correct usage, notably where the doer of the action is either not known or not important. [Example: "West Side Story was first produced in New York." No one cares who the producer was.] Your high school coach and your third grade teacher are unlikely to have given you any useful information about passive: such things are not being taught to those responsible for teaching grammar, and anyway, teachers the world over just follow whatever textbook is chosen by the school district or administration. Linguists have done enough bellyaching about ignorance of the passive, but until someone addresses the issue of education on a meaningful level, WP will be left trying to educate people willy-nilly, with spotty results. Neotarf (talk) 08:07, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

There are school districts and administrations the world over that dictate which textbook must be used??? You have evidence for this??? Kevin McE (talk) 15:17, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Wise words, Neotarf (such as many have come to expect from you). Still, I say that context can be relevant. Agency may be less important in scientific articles, and more important in historical or biographical articles. Contrast two sentences: "The synthesis is accelerated under pressure in the presence of certain metallic catalysts." "Napoleon struggled to quash the rebellion, and eventually succeeded." Passive is better in the first, but active is better in the second. And I think no one has suggested that "editorial whim" should be in play. Let's distinguish whim and discretion. Noetica^Tea? 08:28, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Let's not distinguish at all, this is a matter of grammar, not style. Anyone who wants to go further with the grammar can look it up in their university composition handbook....you know, the big thick expensive one that no one buys once they find out it's not covered in the syllabus.... Neotarf (talk) 08:45, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Not quite sure I follow. No one disputes, as far as I know, that both active voice and passive voice are correct grammar. As I understand it, SMcC would like to say more about which one might be better style, in what circumstances. I agree with you, if I've understood the positions expressed (which is not certain as I haven't spent much time trying to make sure), that it's probably not useful to do so. But I don't understand what you mean by it being a matter of grammar. --Trovatore (talk) 09:02, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Trovatore, see the above section on "Edit warring over passive voice". Neotarf (talk) 09:23, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Can't find anything relevant. Let me put my point this way: Someone could say, "some producer produced West Side Story, for the first time anyone produced it, in New York". That would be entirely in active voice, and it would be terrible style, but it would be correct grammar, in the sense that no linguist would be tempted to put an asterisk in front of it. --Trovatore (talk) 09:33, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

I would. There are levels of grammar beyond the clause. (I'd like to say, 'see discourse analysis' at this point, but that article is undeveloped.) There are seldom absolute 'rules' at this level, but there are strong grammatical tendencies, and ignoring these results in awkward or incoherent text. (Such things are called "style" by those who do not recognize that grammar operates here.) One of them, as Jerry notes below, is that the topic, which ties the text together, threads its way through the text as the subject of subsequent clauses. When the topic is the semantic agent, we use active voice; when the patient (object role), we use passive voice. This actually is the definition of "subject" among linguists who work on grammar at the discourse level. Thus the grammatical subject should reflect the topic of the text. Using active clauses where the passive would be natural is an ungrammatical use of the subject. (Such linguists are unlikely to put a star before your sentence mainly because once you start working with actual language, such artificial exercises seem silly.) It is true that in "active" texts like dime-store Westerns, which tend to be about people and other animate things, most clauses are active, because active things tend to be agents rather than patients. (This may well be the historical origin of subjects in languages which have them: People tend to talk about people doing things.) However, the opposite is true in many scientific publications, where one is studying inactive things, or reporting on what has been done to otherwise active things. In such cases the passive is often more appropriate. (There's also an entrenched stylistic preference for researchers to never refer to themselves in the first person, as if they were objective observers rather than active participants, and this ups the number of passive clauses considerably, but IMO that's just as silly as the highschool-English idea that passive clauses are 'weak' or 'unaccountable'. And indeed I've started seeing more academic text acknowledging the obvious by using the first person where a normal person would.) — kwami (talk) 17:30, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

The phraseology these days tends to be "One of us (Pierson) had earlier established...." which I find unexceptional. But I agree a lot of the tension is between people who learned from Micorsoft's grammar checker, and the fact that we are writing entirely the type of work which benefits from widespread passivation. Rich Farmbrough, 04:08, 3 January 2013 (UTC).

Comment: In addition to suppressing the agent (because it's unknown or unimportant or obvious or one wants to hide it), the other main use of the passive voice is to make the patient (grammar) the subject of the sentence because it's the topic in the linguistic sense, and in English the topic is typically the subject and typically goes early in the clause. —JerryFriedman (Talk) 16:16, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Exactly. There are solid reasons for using passive over active. The proposed language makes it sound like you can toss a coin. There is plenty of consensus that WP needs to educate editors about this subject, rather than dealing with the issue on an individual basis over and over. The only question remaining is whether it belongs in MOS. Has anyone written a useful essay about it? Neotarf (talk) 02:26, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Return to proposal The original proposal was in two parts: (1) return to having some comment on the use of the passive (2) expand the comment, e.g. based on SMcCandlish's text. There does not seem to be a consensus for (2). However, there does seem to be a consensus for (1). There is, in my experience, a genuine problem with some copy-editors changing passives unnecessarily. I strongly support putting back something like:

Passive voice
Whether to use the passive voice (The Adventures of Tom Sawyer was written by Mark Twain) or the active (Mark Twain wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer) depends ~~entirely~~ on the context, and is left to the discretion of editors. Changes should not be made merely because of a general preference for one over the other.

Could we agree on this? Peter coxhead (talk) 17:12, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Support. That addresses both the knee-jerk opposition to passives and the academic over-preference for passives. Though I'd remove the word 'entirely' as unhelpful. — kwami (talk) 17:44, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Agreed re "entirely". Peter coxhead (talk) 18:43, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Support, per Kwami and Peter. However, I would add something like "categoric" or "general" before "preference"; in any given instance, whether to use passive or active is going to be an in situ "preferences for one over the other", so the wording here isn't clear. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 21:40, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Yes, "general" clarifies. Peter coxhead (talk) 22:52, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

No, the main issue of educating editors has not been addressed. There are reasons other than "preference" for making active/passive choices. Given the perennial confusion on the subject, this language is not nearly explicit enough. Why gloss over it or dumb it down. Neotarf (talk) 02:35, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

It's not a question of dumbing down, it's a question of succinctness. The MoS is over long already. Rich Farmbrough, 04:08, 3 January 2013 (UTC).

I am sorry, I still think it is a terrible (if well-intentioned) idea. --John (talk) 19:53, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Consecutive punctuation marks

My question is prompted by this revision of Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2012-12-24/Technology report at 07:41, 26 December 2012. What guidelines or policies does Wikipedia make in regard to a full stop (period) followed by a comma in a sentence?

The company operated in Washington, D.C., New York City, and Los Angeles.
The company operated in Washington, D.C, New York City, and Los Angeles.

—Wavelength (talk) 20:57, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

We would never write *"Washington, D.C, New York", but we might write "Washington, DC, New York". (Either drop all full stops or none.) The edit in question looks like it might be analogous to the latter. — kwami (talk) 21:18, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

It's perfectly fine to drop the periods (stops) from "D.C." The US postal system has not used periods in state/territory abbreviations in two generations. Some (mostly older) people still use them out of habit, but MOS has no reason to care. It's "Washington, DC", and many even write it "Washington DC", especially in constructions that are otherwise using commas to separate placenames. If you don't drop the comma, the wording above would have to read "Washington, DC; New York City; and Los Angeles", with semicolons. Otherwise it implies Washington state as whole, the District of Columbia as a whole, New York City and Los Angeles (4, not 3, geographic entities)! — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ Contrib. 02:01, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

I think he's asking about replacing one stop with a comma, but keeping the other, which would be weird. — kwami (talk) 02:40, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

I understand that, and it would obviously be weird and nonstandard. I'm making points far beyond that. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ Contrib. 03:08, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

After consulting Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Abbreviations#Widely used abbreviations in Wikipedia (version of 10:34, 12 December 2012), I have composed a better example to illustrate the two consecutive punctuation marks (.,).

The project was developed by a consortium of representatives from Apple Inc., Microsoft, and Google.
The project was developed by a consortium of representatives from Apple Inc, Microsoft, and Google.

—Wavelength (talk) 03:52, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

The first is still correct, including even in the section you link to (which is not authoritative). I'm not sure where the idea came from that we can't have two consecutive punctuation marks; it's actually entirely routine. I would remove the serial comma, though (the one after Microsoft), since it isn't necessary. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ Contrib. 06:39, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Despite the section heading "Consecutive punctuation marks", my question was and is about this particular sequence of these two punctuation marks—a full stop (period) followed by a comma—and not about two consecutive punctuation marks in general. (Serial commas are discussed at MOS:SERIAL.)

—Wavelength (talk) 17:35, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

First of all, I support the serial comma by default, and for me the argument "it isn't necessary" is not at all compelling. Let's leave that aside.
Second, a full point functioning as a mark of abbreviation may be immediately followed by any sentence punctuation, with one exception: a period (full stop), which is also realised by a full point. In such a case one full point serves both functions, by well-settled convention. Now, the edit that prompted Wavelength's post was by Tony, who removed the full point from "DaB." (a German Wikipedia username). Some remarks:

The case is cross-linguistic, so there is potential for the interaction of differing punctuation protocols. But however things might work in the source language (German), I say that practice in the destination language (English) should dominate.
By normal English practice, this sort of thing would be fine: "other Toolserver supporters, DaB., and ..."; "Though DaB. later shared his ongoing doubts ..." (excerpts of text before Tony's edit).
I take abbreviation in usernames as subject to the same styling revision as in other contexts; so I support Tony's edit. I do the same with the username "A. di M.", which I render as "A di M". Just as the title "Mr." can be adjusted to the far more rational and typist-friendly "Mr", whatever the preferences of the gentleman in question, so can abbreviations of names – without regard for the style choices of their bearers. Yes, usernames are borderline; but they are often chosen and detailed without regard for the convenience of other users (Greek letters, mathematical symbols, and so on). Myself, I am not interested in meeting the expectations of users by strict compliance with such foibles.
Often enough, keeping a full point that marks abbreviation causes more serious disruption for the reader than we see in the text that Tony edited. Consider: "We met DaB. A. di M., if he had been there, would have wanted to meet him also." It takes some analysis to sort that out, and intractable cases could be constructed. It is all much easier if full points are kept to serve as periods only: "We met DaB. A di M, if he had been there, would have wanted to meet him also." But that is not the American way. Unfortunately.

Noetica^Tea? 22:55, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Thank you, Noetica, for your reply. For a while, I had some difficulty in reconciling your subpoint 2 ("… this sort of thing would be fine …") with your subpoint 3 (… "so I support Tony's edit."), until I decided that you evidently meant that you "take abbreviation in usernames" as being exceptions to "normal English practice".

—Wavelength (talk) 03:30, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

Comment: there would be no ambiguity in your final example if we used two spaces after full stops. But I doubt this narrow situation warrants making such a change. AgnosticAphid talk 07:44, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

A large number of editors – anyone used to typing manuscripts of any kind – do use two spaces after the end of a sentence. It greatly aids readability of the wikicode (i.e. the manuscript) of an article here. Aside: I really do wish British editors commenting on issues like this would learn the difference between a "stop" (the character Americans call "period" traditionally, and that geeks around the world call "dot"), and a "full stop" which is a period/stop/dot at the end of a sentence. It's a usage that derives from telegraphy, if you're wondering. It's absurd to say something like "Initials should be spelled with full stops and spaced, as in 'J. K. Rowling'." Those are not full stops. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 22:20, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Meh. Usage is variable. I have used "full point" (following NHR), and distinguished that mark from two of its functions: mark of abbreviation, and period (full stop). But many do not bother to make such distinctions, and those that do differ among themselves. As an aside, there is nothing more rational about either "period" or "full stop" for the mark itself. Each term is flawed in its own way. "Period" borrows its name from the stretch of text of which it marked the end (roughly, a sentence: anciently called a "period"). Compare "comma" and "colon", which originally meant certain kinds of smaller stretches of text. (SOED, at "comma n.": "1 In Class. Pros. & Rhet., a phrase or group of words shorter than a colon (COLON n.2 1); loosely (now rare or obs.) a short clause or phrase within a sentence. L16.") And "full stop", of course, conflates a function and a mark that serves that function.
Noetica^Tea? 01:03, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Yes. I'm asking that MOS regulars stop engaging in that particular conflation here because it confuses matters for too many (especially non-regulars). MOS itself needs to be checked for this conflation, and where "full stop" or "period" is used incorrectly (e.g. in reference to abbreviations) it should be replaced with, say, "full point (dot)" or "dot (full point)". — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 04:00, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

The period in an abbreviation is really called a dot? Not usually, in my experience. Wiktionary:period says "5. (now chiefly North America) The punctuation mark “.” (indicating the ending of a sentence or marking an abbreviation)." Other dictionaries say something similar. So what am I missing? Art LaPella (talk) 07:14, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

See #Full point below. NB: Wiktionary is not a reliable source, especially on minutiae of interpretation like the difference between the full stop (period), which ends a sentence and the full point glyph (commonly called a dot for at least the last two decades), which has many other functions. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 11:39, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Wavelength:

Your take on what I wrote is understandable. But in fact I meant that both practices are normal: using the full point to mark abbreviation, and not doing so. As WP:MOS explains, the difference is correlated with the US–British divide, though it does not follow it accurately. I strongly favour omitting that mark of abbreviation, finding it almost always redundant. Confusion is unlikely. There can hardly ever be a problem with Mr, Mrs, Dr, Prof, A J Cronin (or AJ Cronin for that matter), PhD, US (in most contexts), UK, UN, or USSR. But US English must have its way, even though it brings confusion of roles for the full point. Hence the rather balanced treatment we find in the current WP:MOS. I wish WP:ABBR were as balanced and as subject to careful scrutiny. Things are not looking good there.

AgnosticAphid:

Well, an extra space would have to be implemented using a hard space ( ) for one or other of the two spaces (or some equally grotesque expedient). Even this would be no use if the period were to fall at the end of a line, right? Unless both spaces were hard spaces, avoiding perfectly natural linebreaks. So the idea is a complete non-starter. Far better for US English to fall into line with international usage here (and with LQ, and with the metric system, and with avoidance of MDY date formatting, and so on). But life is not like that – a grim fact that MOS and Wikipedia simply have to live with. Some British preferences are silly too. Some comfort.

♥

Noetica^Tea? 10:03, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

North Americans do not find anything "confusing" about the roles played by the period/dot/stop. It's simply a matter of familiarity and expectations. Many things in our language (and others, of course) are operator overloaded, serving multiple functions, and heads do not seem to explode about it. I certainly haven't proposed forcing British English articles to use "Dr.", etc., and I haven't seen anyone else do it in a long time. NB: I have attempted to revise MOS:ABBR to better represent Commonwealth as well as North American style. Not really done there yet, either. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 22:52, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

I'm Usonian, but I find the period in abbreviations to be annoying. IMO it shouldn't be used unless necessary – too easy to mistake it for the end of a sentence. I didn't realize it was an ENGVAR thing; I thought it was simply modern typography. — kwami (talk) 20:05, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

I've never in my semi-long life ever heard anyone claim that they could not tell the difference between an abbreviation and the end of a sentence. I think this would have to be classified as an extreme minority viewpoint. I don't know what "Usonian" means, but it probably doesn't matter. If it were simply "modern typography" you wouldn't see periods after abbreviations much any more, even in North American English (Canadian still uses them, too), just like (in reality) we don't see them in acronyms much any longer. I use a PIN at the ATM, not a P.I.N. at the A.T.M. But also if I want to abbreviate a shopping list, I'm looking for chk. soup, t. paper and apl. juice at the groc. store, not chk soup, t paper and apl juice at the groc store. It's especially important in WP articles that we are clear on the difference between conventional abbreviations (the few that are appropriate in articles; cf. MOS:ABBR), which take periods/stops/dots, and regular words (which aren't abbreviated), and units of measure (which are abbreviated but do not take dots). Wikipedia is not a text message. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 22:20, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

SMcCandlish, even if most Vespuccians do not ever have trouble because of the default use of full points to mark abbreviation (an empirical question, and a matter of degree because reading and comprehension can be slowed or impaired rather than simply disabled, and this would need measurement), the story doesn't end there. Compare US pronunciations of "can't", which many non-USards have great difficulty distinguishing from "can", though it never seems to trouble Americans. This is an international encyclopedia, and the needs of all readers count. But again, no point discussing the points! No change will result.
Noetica^Tea? 01:03, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

I can guarantee you that deleting the dots from abbreviations has a slowing and impairing effect on reading comprehension, and ability to focus on the content, for readers who are used to them. They mark something as an abbreviation, just as all-caps marks acronyms as such, and if you are used to them you parse them instantaneously and automatically; their absence means we have to examine the unfamiliar string to try to figure out if it is an abbreviation missing its dot, an English word we don't know, a foreign word that should have been italicized, some kind of code that should have been marked up as such, a unit of measurement, a typo, or what (we'll usually conclude the first and the last simultaneously). I would bet good money that the amount of reading impairment to people used to them when they are absent exceeds that to people not used to them when they are present, because even people who don't use such dots know what they mean in this context, and they do not have to wonder any of that long list of stuff I just gave, only "is this an abbreviation or the end of the sentence?", and context will tell them the former in the vast majority of cases. I've never heard anyone say that American "can't" is hard to distinguish from "can" (if it is, it would probably also be true of any dialect that did not pronounce them as differently as UK "received pronunciation" does, which is something like Cannes vs. "cawn't"). But it's not relevant on WP, since it's a written medium, and blind people who use them control their own screen readers. So I'm not sure what you're getting at with that. It doesn't affect the needs of any readers at all. On a more constructive note, I think the eventual solution to this and several other ENGVAR issues is going to be templates and a new Preferences widget that interacts with particular templates to show a particular variant of material marked up with such a template. Something like {{engvar|us=tire|uk=tyre|ca=tire}} with Commonwealth countries defaulting to UK if not overridden, as Canada is in the example here, and places with a strong US influence on their English (Puerto Rico, Liberia, US Virgin Is., etc.) defaulting to US. There could be shorthand syntax for abbreviations, like {{engvar|abbr=Dr}} that would be equivalent to {{engvar|uk=Dr|us=Dr.}} And that's only one way to approach this technically; MediaWiki could be modified to add some kind of feature for this, but that might take 5 years. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 03:49, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Thank you, Noetica, for your clarification.

—Wavelength (talk) 20:11, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

It's better to look a little awkward than to punctuate incorrectly. The period is part of the abbreviation and should not be omitted solely because it looks funny. I always leave them in when a comma follows. However, it shouldn't matter what I or anyone happens to prefer. What do the sources say? Darkfrog24 (talk) 03:56, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

I did a brief Google search. While I did not find many style guides that discuss the issue of periods followed immediately by commas, I did find several that use that construction: (L.L.C.) [6] (Mo.) [7] (p.m.) [8] Darkfrog24 (talk) 04:08, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

MOS doesn't necessarily care "what the sources say", since paper style guides frequently conflict about almost everything. Our in-house style guide is not tied to New Harts's Rules, Chicago Manual of Style, etc., though we try to agree with them when this is both a) possible (i.e., they agree with each other), and b) it is actually helpful to the encyclopedia and its editors and readers to do so, without serious negative side effects. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 23:00, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

We have two choices, SMC, either hold the MoS to a standard at least as high as the requirements for ordinary articles and base its contents on reliable sources or base it on the whims and pet peeves of the few Wikipedians who contribute to this talk page. There's far too much of the second in the MoS already. Of course you prefer your own conclusions to those made by others; most people do, but that does not mean that other people should have to follow rules based on what you, I or anyone else does or doesn't happen to like. Darkfrog24 (talk) 15:53, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

We absolutely do not hold MOS to the sourcing standards of an article. You and several other people who come by now and again here make this assumption, but it's patently false, and by design. It's not based on "whims and pet peeves" of a "few Wikipedians". It's based on consensus of innumerable editors on what makes the best sense for this project and its readers (and editors). I repeat that we try to agee with CMoS and Hart's when this is practical on two different levels, but sometimes it is not and sometimes there are better options. An everchanging pool of editors who really care a lot become regular editors for a time on this page, and that is precisely how all other editing on WP works, whether it be at Siamese (cat) or Albinism or Firefly (TV series). Your WP:CABAL conspiracy theory about WT:MOS is basically just a bunch of "I didn't get my way on one of my pet peeves, so I'm going to lash out at those who are in my way" whining. It's childish and beneath your dignity. PS: Your "we have two choices" is a false dichotomy. MOS is actually a mixture of doing what other major style guides do, doing what various standards bodies recommend, doing what we have figured out by trial and error works best in our unique medium, compromising on something enough editors can live with that fighting dies down, and, yes, sometimes someone works in a pet peeve that few others agree with and which bugs people until it eventually gets removed. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 03:52, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Oh I agree that we don't. We should. You see an "ever-changing pool of editors." It's more accurately called a clique.

You may call my preference for American punctuation a peeve if you like. Technically, a fondness for correct spelling, consistent capitalization, and lowercase common names for animal species are all peeves. However, the sources all agree with me. Forcing other editors do use incorrect English just because British punctuation has gotten fashionable is, to put it kindly, extremely inconsiderate. Darkfrog24 (talk) 15:28, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Darkfrog, what do you mean by "punctuate incorrectly"? The punctuation we are talking about is a matter of style, and therefore it is variable. There is no "correct" alternative among those that are under consideration.

NHR (10.2.1 "Full points", pp. 169–170) treats this topic. For discussion right here, see this in Archive 127. I have edited for publications that prefer no full points in any kind of shortening. I like it. The points against such a simplification are few; but tradition dies hard, especially in the US.

Much of NHR can be seen on Google books, including the passage I mention above.

Noetica^Tea? 05:04, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

In American English, "Dr." with a period is correct and "Dr" without a period is incorrect. That's what I mean by correct and incorrect. Leaving something out because you don't like it is one thing when writing for yourself, but we're talking about making rules that other people must follow.

In New Hart's Rules, page 169, last lines: "If an abbreviation ends with a full point but does not end the sentence, then other punctuation follows naturally: Gill & Co., Oxford."

So, according to British English source NHR, yes we should keep the period even though the comma comes right after it. Thank you for providing a source that spells this issue out for us so clearly. Darkfrog24 (talk) 18:13, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

(Fine Darkfrog. Thanks. I wasn't sure what you meant. Noetica^Tea? 00:39, 31 December 2012 (UTC))

I can't believe we're still talking about this. There is no grammar/style guide anywhere, ever, that would recommend something like "Washington, D.C, Boston...". Anyone who can competently read English at all already intuitively knows that such a construction is non-standard. Let's just drop this and move on. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 22:20, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

[EC, outdent] In response to Noetica, further above with the bullet points, I generally have to concur with much of that, especially that "the destination language (English) should dominate" here. However, there is nothing "irrational" about "Dr." vs. "Dr". Also, when there's a profusion of dots, the solution, as with most editing problems on WP, is to rewrite slightly: "We met DaB. A. di M., if he had been there, would have wanted to meet him also." ⇒ "We met DaB; A. di M., if he had been there, would have wanted to meet him also." Aside: Note that I wrote that "I would" not use the serial comma there; I didn't tell anyone else not to, and MOS largely dodges this issue because there's so much disagreement about it. There are even competing userboxes about this. :-) — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 22:20, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Well, we do disagree then. You and I agree that LQ is more rational than the alternative, which dominates in American usage. I argue from generally similar premises that a profusion of semantically redundant full points (to use a British term) is irrational. Similarly, I judge that the US preference for fewer hyphens and more closed-up forms is more rational than the British preference. But let's leave it, since nothing in WP:MOS will change as result of any deliberations on such matters.

As for rewriting, I do not agree that we should promote that as a first recourse, or even as an early one. Many competing pressures join to produce elegant solutions in writing; but it not healthy when sentence punctuation is hostage to oddities in the styling of abbreviations (a kind of word punctuation, as some call it).

As for the serial comma, sure: we disagree about that. I would argue at length for its default use, but not here. Again, nothing on the topic is relevant to improvement of WP:MOS. Unlike Darkfrog (in earlier discussions), I do think that treatment of the serial comma in MOS ought to be shortened.

Noetica^Tea? 00:39, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Unless someone has published a solid study showing that the presence or absence of a dot in an abbreviation aids or impedes reading comprehension, then it's just taste and personal preferences in various wrappers. The same goes for British vs. American punctuation. Darkfrog24 (talk) 01:07, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Darkfrog24: True enough. Noetica: Cases like the "Dab. A. di M." example are so infrequent that it's a non-issue in my view, and certainly doesn't rise to the hyperbolic heights of "hostage"-taking. It's comparable to "don't begin a sentence with 'iPhone' or '4chan'", really; just an occasional inconvenience to work around. Not everone, including me, agrees that dots at the end of abbreviations are "semantically redundant" at all, and that's not an irrational position (unlike the position that LQ is "stupid" or "wrong", which is irrational). No real opinion on US vs. UK hyphenation, or at least not one easily expressed here; I've touched on it, in a non-ENGVAR-tinged way, at WP:MODENG. I don't follow you on your opposition to rewriting. We do this for just about everything that is problematic when we write. A large percentage of MOS is specific instruction on what to rewrite and how. Agreed that serial comma treatment can probably be shortened here. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 05:18, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Clarification to "Scrolling lists and collapsible content"

This section currently reads:

Scrolling lists, and boxes that toggle text display between hide and show, should not conceal article content, including reference lists, image galleries, and image captions. They especially should not be used to conceal "spoiler" information (see Wikipedia:Spoiler). Collapsible sections or cells may be used in tables that consolidate information covered in the main text, navboxes, or chess puzzles. When scrolling lists or collapsible content are used, take care that the content will still be accessible on devices that do not support JavaScript or CSS.

This is genuinely problematic, as people have been using one particular omission as an excuse to add collapsed lists of content to articles, as at http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Detroit_Zoo&oldid=522128534#Animals and a number of similar articles. I fixed the Oaklawn Farm Zoo#Animals piece by converting it to a normal list (and de-capitalizing the animal common namees), while at Detroit Zoo#Animals I converted the list to a paragraph, as a different demo of how to fix this (and de-capitalized again). Whether or not such a list is useful in such an article at all – note that Bronx Zoo, etc., do not have such a section – is irrelevant to the wider issue; lists of content are appropriate in some articles, and this is about people forcing them to be collapsed by default. I propose the following re-wording:

Scrolling lists, and boxes that toggle text display between hide and show, should not conceal any article content by default, including embedded lists of content, reference lists, image galleries, image captions, etc. They especially should not be used to conceal "spoiler" information ~~(with the exception of chess puzzles)~~. Collapsible sections or cells may be used in tables that consolidate information already covered in the main text, both in the article body (uncollapsed by default), and in navboxes and infoboxes (may be collapsed by default). When scrolling lists or collapsible content are used, take care that the content will still be accessible on devices that do not support JavaScript or CSS.

I separately and severably propose removal of the chess puzzle exception, because a) in looking over all the chess puzzle and chess problem articles, I can't find a single case(!) that still uses a collapse box to hide the solution, and b) it's simply a variant of spoiler-hiding to begin with – if a magical exception is made for WikiProject Chess, everyone's going to want one (cf. rampant animal common name capitalization all over Wikipedia, stemming directly from the WP:BIRDS project insisting on doing it in ornithology articles; some "slippery slope" arguments are demonstrably valid). — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 21:45, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Any objections? — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 22:19, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Pending discussion of the main proposal, I'm at least going to remove the chess exception because it is no longer relevant; zero articles use it any longer (i.e. it's a clear case of WP:CREEP and arguably now WP:BEANS, in an invert way, because we already have a general prohibition against spoiler-hiding). — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 01:29, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Going twice. Any objections or concerns? — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 09:59, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Bolding of major roles

Well, here it goes. In the Anime and Manga WikiProject, it is established practice to bold major roles (for examples, see Rie Kugimiya, Tomokazu Sugita, Aya Hirano and Yui Horie). However, this is not one of the uses of bold listed at MOS:BOLD (for examples of articles not using bold, see Aki Toyosaki [a Good Article], Mamoru Miyano [also a Good Article], Haruka Tomatsu and Maaya Uchida [except for one role]). I'm requesting comment because this could potentially affect hundreds, even thousands, of articles about voice actors. So this RfC is about if there is consensus to continue bolding major roles in articles, and thus proposing that the practice be added to MOS:BOLD, or if we shouldn't bold major roles. In a nutshell: should bolding major roles be included in MOS:BOLD or not? Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 23:50, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Wrong venue: That comment applied to the original posting at the Wikiproject talk page. Comment:This obviously should be taken up at WT:MOS, since it really has nothing at all to do with anime in particular, but all voice acting, possibly even all acting across the board! Stuffing it into a page no one but project members pays any attention to is only going to result in a WP:LOCALCONSENSUS that won't override WP:MOS, as a matter of policy. This should be either voluntarily moved by the proposer, or procedurally closed by an admin and re-opened. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 23:18, 30 December 2012 (UTC), updated 00:04, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Ok, I'm moving this to WT:MOS (I was going to bring it there anyway.) Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 23:46, 30 December 2012 (UTC), updated 00:04, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Comments after the move

Per the comments made by SMcCandlish, I've moved the discussion to here. Further comments can be made below this line. Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 23:50, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Question: What is the supposed point/justification in all this boldfacing, which at some of the examples you provide is both excessive (to me) and inconsistent even within the same article. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 00:04, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Before I answer your question, I'll give a little background on this. I decided to start this discussion because of this discussion on my talk-page. You see, I had been de-bolding roles from a number of articles because it was not listed in MOS:BOLD. However, as pointed out by Leofighter (talk · contribs) on my talk-page, bolding roles is useful because it allows users to see which roles are major ones. However, Lucia Black (talk · contribs) states that, bolding of roles without giving a reliable source counts as original research.

Personally, I have no problems with bolding roles in articles, but I want to see if there is consensus to include this in MOS:BOLD or not. While I'm not proposing that it should be done, I can sort of see Leofighter's point. It would be convenient for those interested in learning the person's major roles. The problem with this is, without a reliable source confirming that the role is "major," then this counts as original research. And the reason why it's rather inconsistent is that only major roles are bolded. Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 00:28, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanations. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 00:36, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Oppose: It's too inconsistent and convoluted for anyone (like, um, our readers) to intuitively understand without being members of some such WikiProject and following their discussions in detail. Most readers, like I did, are going to simply think "WTF? Why on earth is this so sloppy, with some stuff boldfaced for no apparent reason?" And Leofighter is correct that Wikipedians deciding, willy-nilly, what is and isn't a "major" role is blatant original research. This might (arguably not) be appropriate on some fandom wiki, like Battlestar Wiki or whatever, but it's not an encyclopedic practice in WP terms. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 00:36, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Oppose per SMcC, and on the general principle that the use of typographic effects to convey information should be kept to a minimum—and should follow only well-established conventions. If a role is really important it should probably have its own subsection heading.—Odysseus1479 (talk) 02:03, 31 December 2012 (UTC)
Oppose per SMcCandlish. I've said the same thing while maintaining Aki Toyosaki. It isn't immediately obvious why a role is bolded (though many like to add "Lead roles in bold," which I think is silly.) And I see potential for arguments over whether a role is major or not, and oftentimes it's OR. ~Cheers, Ten Ton Parasol 02:07, 31 December 2012 (UTC)
Oppose per SMcC. Bolding in running text is too disruptive and vies with the titles for our attention, too. Tony (talk) 02:11, 31 December 2012 (UTC)
Oppose I can totally see this as WP:OR, having major roles being handpicked by people based on what they think and feel is not a good thing. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 03:05, 31 December 2012 (UTC)
Oppose per SMcCandlish. Tdslk (talk) 19:37, 31 December 2012 (UTC)
Oppose, as (1.) bolding major roles does not make them recognizable as major roles easier (you need to know the code), (2.) I remember a guideline on german WP that says to only put the lemma of an article in bold and not to use bold font for emphasis. Jesus Presley (talk) 11:18, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
Oppose project specific standards for non-project specific items are bad for the coherence of both encyclopaedia and community. Rich Farmbrough, 02:24, 3 January 2013 (UTC).
Oppose There is no need to modify MOS:BOLD which is sufficiently clear, and aligned with consensus and best practice. The unorthodox manner of emphasizing with boldface, in contravention of mos:bold, is problematic and should be corrected to accord with policy. If it is desired to emphasis these "major roles" with boldface, place them under an appropriate sub-header where boldface is standard. --My76Strat (talk) 19:33, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

A new suggestion (bolding of major roles)

Per the comments above, I have a new suggestion. Should the bolding of major roles be listed in MOS:BOLD as an example of what should not be bolded? As in, should it be stated at MOS:BOLD that "major roles of actors in media should not be bolded, since..." or not? Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 01:33, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

I don't think the WP:LOCALCONSENSUS weirdness of one project needs to be addressed in MOS; just clean up the articles and people will shortly forget anyone was ever doing weird boldfacing in them. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 10:01, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Possible issues in "Possessives" section

The WP:Manual of Style#Possessives section includes the following, which looks to me like WP:BOLLOCKS: "Some possessives have two possible pronunciations: James's house or James' house..." I'm skeptical that anyone who is a native English speaker, in any dialect/variety, would sound that out as if it read "Jaim's house". I suspect this is a disingenuous ploy by haters of the "James's" construction to make it seem like there are more people in support of "James'" than there really are. I've lived in England, Ireland, both US coasts and the US Southwest, and Canada, and I've never heard anyone do that, with the sole exception of TV preachers who tend to say "Jeeeeezuz", possessive or not, but they theatrically mispronounce all kinds of things, e.g. "God" as "GO-wə-də" in three syllables). — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 00:00, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

PS: I think it's also a curious that the logic in Chicago Manual of Style is nowhere to be found here: Use the contruction "James's", except for names from antiquity – "Jesus'", "Zeus'". CMS arrived at that clearly because of the widespread influence on both sides of the Atlantic of the King James version of the Bible, which uses that now-archaic construction. I'm not sure I support this distinction, but it's a widely known and followed one (at least in North America, but I would be surprised if no UK style guides mention it). — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 00:00, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Here's a James' with the Jaim's pronunciation, at least locally: St James' Park. That maybe also gives an indication where it occurs: when the possessive usage becomes not just common but the only one. When talking about the football stadium or the nearby Metro station, St James Metro station, no-one is thinking of the saint who is the implied possessor of both properties. In such cases the possessive is grammatically correct but largely redundant, so the apostrophe and the pronounced 's' can be dropped without ambiguity.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 00:15, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

I suspected someone might bring up an example like this. It's a poor one, because place names, especially those named after saints and other biblical figures, are handled with a ridiculous level of inconsistency and outright ungrammaticality by modern standards (witness "St James Gate, Dublin", which doesn't even bother with an apostrophe anywhere). They've also been named the way they've been named for centuries in many cases, going back to before there were any standardized grammar and punctuation rules in English. Furthermore, St[.] cases like this in the UK and US derive directly from the KJV biblical writing style (already addressed separately) which always does this, but which dates to 1611 and does not reflect the patterns of Modern English (remember, this is the same Bible that says in Late Middle English that Jesus was an hungred (in Early Modern English that would be "a-hungered", like "Froggy Went a-Courtin'", and today it's "hungry"). — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 03:14, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

SMcCandlish:

Pronunciation of those possessives without the added /s/ or /z/ are very well attested, especially in more formal registers – the ones that might be considered in determining encyclopedic usage. I say James's, as you do. But do you say Bill Gates's? Steve Jobs's? John Cassevetes's? See, by the way, our article John Cassavetes, and note the wavering over possessive forms. Note also the absence of discussion to resolve this issue at the talkpage. Question for everyone: How would the issue there be resolved using the current WP:MOS guideline? (My answer? With huge difficulty, or not at all.)
The "ecclesiastical" pronunciation suggested by Jesus' is established far beyond and before TV evangelists' usage. It's like heav'n and a few other exceptional cases, which are well settled in liturgical use, religious vocal settings, and many more contexts.
CMOS16's treatment of possessive forms is even worse than their earlier treatments. (Quite an achievement.) They have changed particular decisions without any apparent justification, and they advocate a principle only to rule contrary to that principle a little further on.
The fundamental question: do we want spelling to follow dominant pronunciations, or not? Those who disregard pronunciation and who like the shorter singular possessive forms for nouns ending in "s" (or "z", or "ce", etc.) must favour boss' over boss's. Butt ugly? I think so. And this must be a rational possessive form for them: anyone else'. (Rules for pronouns and the like that take an apostrophe in their possessive forms are the same as the rules for nouns.) Those who disregard pronunciation and who like the longer forms must favour Davies's over Davies', along with the singular possessive forms congeries's, Piscies's, molasses's, species's, and series's. If we aim for natural use of language, acceptable and understandable to all readers, disregarding pronunciation doesn't cut it.
I think the possessives section is seriously flawed, in the ways I hint at above. I did my best for it a few years back. The stupid three-practice approach is almost useless, and can resolve almost nothing.
Good luck!

Noetica^Tea? 02:26, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

The -'s possessive tends to be used with animate nouns, which may be why molasses's, species's, and series's sound so odd. — kwami (talk) 02:48, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Agreed, but they don't look odd, except perhaps to someone who cannot read but by sounding things out, syllable by syllable, in their heads. I honestly don't think that MOS needs to care about that condition. Anyone who is like that is already entirely used to possessives not looking the way they'd prefer them to look. It's not something we rationally can, or should attempt to, compensate for. It's not a legit accessibility issue at all. This is a written medium, and "molasses's" is the normal, globally-recognized way to form the plural of "molasses" in written English, even if some people would quirkily write it as "molasses'". There is not a single competent reader of the English language who will not instantly understand the proper, unambiguous, standard spelling "molasses's". This is emphatically not an ENGVAR issue, it's just convenient for fans of the truncated, sub-standard style to pretend that it is. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 03:06, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Noetica: Yes, I do say "Bill Gates's", etc., with a pronunciation like "bil GAYTsəz" (3 syllables total); enunciating the possessive clearly is often important to conveying meaning correctly. I remain highly skeptical that this "drop pronunciation of the possessive" thing, to the extent it exists in the real world, is anything but a fey affectation. I've lived in too many places and I watch/listen to too much media from too many places around the world to believe that a non-trivial percentage of people would consider it especially "encyclopedic" rather than a dialectal quirk, like pronouncing "Texas" as "Texez" or "Manchester" as "Manjezdah". WP does not need to account for vagaries of spoken accents like this, especially not with grossly ambiguous written punctuation changes. People who would actually say "Bill Gates'" are not morons and know full well what "Bill Gates's" means and when they read it aloud they'll pronounce it as "Bill Gates'" the way they always do. They don't somehow rate their own version of English with different punctuation rules! I agree that people who would write "Jones'" for "Jones's" would logically have to write "boss'" for "boss's" and "else'" for "else's", but they don't, generally (and most editors would correct them if they did), which points out that it's not really a rational position to take. That said, I do not agree that this is "the fundamental question". It really has nothing to do with sounding out, except maybe on the Simple English Wikipedia. This is a written medium and needs to reflect that in our prose. "Jones'" is not semantically equivalent to "Jones's"; the former is a plural possessive referring to two or more parties called "Jone". That is the real issue. And it's not trivial. It can seem silly with most names that native English speakers recognize, but both "William" and "Williams" are valid British surnames, and the issue gets thick fast with foreign names (e.g. Macia and Macias are both valid surnames in Spanish, among many similar examples). The truncated usage is substandard and confusing. There are only limited conventional exceptions, like "men's", "oxen's", "bacteria's" and "children's", and they're all based on irregular plurals from Anglo-Saxon, Latin, etc. I agree that the current 3-prong approach is pointless. We need to standardize on "Jones's", for basic logic and unambiguous parseability reasons, and maybe allow for the "names from antiquity" exception, to keep KJV fans from blowing a gasket about their favored "Jesus'" construction. I'd actually rather see it limited to biblical names, and in the context of Anglican/CoE and related Protestantism specifically, not antiquity or even Christianity generally (this would permit "Moses'", in Protestantism but not Catholicism or Judaism articles, and not "Zeus'" anywhere). PS: I agree that CMoS 16th ed. badly needs to be replaced immediately with a corrected 17th ed., and I rely on the 15th because it doesn't contradict itself as much. I'm kind of pissed off that I can't get a refund for ed. 16 or a coupon to get ed. 17 for free or a steep discount. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 03:00, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

I made some related comments in previous discussions.

Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 125#Possessive apostrophes (section 28; August 2011)
Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 108#Recent changes to the "Possessives" section (section 112; August 2009)
- especially Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 108#Let's start anew and solve this? (section 112, subsection 1; August 2009)

—Wavelength (talk) 17:49, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Go with Chicago pending something better coming up. --John (talk) 08:19, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

I hear a one-syllable "James'", and I don't think it's an affectation. I would hesitate to say what the dominant pronunciation is. So many rules are in use, and so many people are sure their favorite rule is the only correct one, that I'd say we should allow either form for all singular words ending in the letter S, with standardization in individual articles depending on the first use or the majority use at the time the question is addressed. The only rule I'd favor for singular nouns is that those that don't end in "s" get an apostrophe-s. ("He borrowed Max's tie for appearance's sake.") —JerryFriedman (Talk) 17:12, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

I think this is the most practical suggestion and the one least likely to lead to edit wars. Peter coxhead (talk) 17:15, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Again, it does not matter what someone's favored pronunciation is. Written English is not tied strongly to spoken English or thousands of words would have different spellings. It's important in encyclopedic prose to be very clear about possessives and plurality, and the only way to do that is to recognize that "Macias'" and "Williams'" are not equivalent to or substitutable for "Macias's" and "Williams's", respectively. It would be better for a few edit wars to break out and the issue turn into another RfC or whatever until people got the point, like the do about everything MOSish, from date linking to logical quotation, than for us to continue using a substandard and ambiguous written style that randomly apes people's conversational speech for no encyclopedic reason. Writing it in a way that prevents confusion is not tantamount to telling people how to pronounce it, any more than spelling a word as "heroic" is telling people from a silent-initial-h dialect that they have to pronounce the "h". In other words, I'm strongly arguing that where MOS says that basing the spelling on your favored pronunciation is okay, it needs to stop saying that and favor the clearest standard. This is the same logic we bring to most issues here. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 21:22, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

I tend to agree. I've always done it according to CMOS (use the 's except for special cases like Jesus'); some guides allow more flexibility, especially for the multisyllabic names like Williams', but that always seemed painfully wrong to me. We had a big argument at the Steve Jobs article, where the monosyllabic Jobs's should have been a no-brainer, but several editors who misremembered what they had been taught in school couldn't believe one could ever use 's after an s. To leave the article styling up to such illiterates seems like a bad idea. The point is, though variations are allowed by some styles and guides, it makes sense in encyclopedic writing to use the more rigorously clear and precise style. Dicklyon (talk) 21:44, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Exactly. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 01:52, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Calling people who use a different style "illiterates" is not helpful, although respectful debates seem all too rare here. Peter coxhead (talk) 21:53, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

My illiterates was not in reference to people who use a different style, but rather to people who misremember the basics of English grammar that they were taught in school. Comments like this one and this one exhibit the degree of illiteracy based on faulty memory of teachings that I'm talking about. They claim they were taught something about possessives that there is no evidence of anyone ever teaching. I've encountered a lot of this particular illiteracy; or maybe something like agrammaracy would be a better term for it. Dicklyon (talk) 23:27, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

A quick Google search found several pages which advise against "s's", so it's quite conceivable that some people are taught this "rule". But even if people have misremembered and are mistaken, calling them "illiterates" is unnecessary. Peter coxhead (talk) 23:55, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

So? MOS regularly picks one of several options that various style guides recommend and doesn't offer all of them. This case is not special, and there's a real reason I've iterated several times already that it's important to do so here. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 01:52, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

@SMcCandlish: I never mentioned pronunciation, which is a red herring. We had this discussion at Linnaeus. In that case the Google n-gram shows that "Linnaeus' " and "Linnaeus's" are about equally common, with a tendency since 1900 to favour the former. Wikipedia can decide to use one form rather than another, but since both are common in written English, I predict it will just cause unnecessary edit wars. Both styles are clear; specifying anything other than consistency within an article is just another form of instruction creep. Peter coxhead (talk) 21:53, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

If you think it's just instruction creep, you have not been following my actual reasoning. You definitely did mention pronounciation, at #pcpron. But I did not say you personally had brought up pronunciation, anyway; it has simply been a consistent theme throughout the debate every time the possessives issue comes up, and I'm specifically addressing the wishy-washy "do whatever you feel like" #3 option presently in MOS's text for no real reason. MOS quite regularly takes one of multiple options, often not even the majority one, and insists on it when there's a consistency, clarity, logic, parseability, disambiguation or factuality reason to do so, as there is in this case. This is actually important: "Williams'" and "Williams's" have a different meaning, and this will always be the case for any name (or whatever) with a viable form without the plural (or sometimes just plural-looking) -s. Since the average reader is not a human Wikipedia, they cannot be expected to know for certain whether any form "Xs" is a also valid without the s, WP obviously should not ever use "Xs'" to mean "Xs's", even if some editors would prefer to because of they way they would pronounce it when read aloud. This seems like crystal clear reasoning to me. What fault are you finding with it? — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 01:52, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

The last time we discussed this, in Oct. 2011 at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 126#MOS:POSS broken, the discussion devolved to disagreement on what pronunciations sound better. Apparently this carries more weight than the best grammar and usage guides do. Dicklyon (talk) 00:22, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

As I've labored to illustrate here, this pronunciation thing is the real red herring, and is ultimately completely irrelevant to what MOS should recommend we do with possessives in writing. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 01:52, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Both forms are acceptable, except with names such as Jesus and Moses, where the apostrophe alone should be used. The question of whether we should select one style, and if so which is not one I would swish to express a preference on. Rich Farmbrough, 03:09, 3 January 2013 (UTC).

SMcCandlish: You wrote, 'I'm skeptical that anyone who is a native English speaker, in any dialect/variety, would sound that out as if it read "Jaim's house"' and 'I remain highly skeptical that this "drop pronunciation of the possessive" thing, to the extent it exists in the real world, is anything but a fey affectation.' I responded, 'I hear a one-syllable "James'", and I don't think it's an affectation.' You responded, 'Again, it does not matter what someone's favored pronunciation is.' Apparently you realized after you brought it up (and before I responded) that it didn't matter, but I think there were more gracious ways to reply to a comment on a factual point you brought up.

I see your point about "Williams'" and "Williams's", but you also mentioned "the Williams's". When would someone write that in an encyclopedia? When referring to a Scottish or Irish gentleman known as "the Williams"? —JerryFriedman (Talk) 05:49, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Graciousness: Good point; sorry, it was a stressful week. "The Williams's": Just a typo! I fixed it in situ since the passage made no sense as you picked up on. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 10:07, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your gracious :-) response. —JerryFriedman (Talk)

DIcklyon: I too remember being told by one of my English teachers that formations such as "Jobs's" were wrong. He started by saying something like, "There are only two kinds of words in English: those that end in 's' and those that don't." (I can supply a few more details if you want.) And yet I'm fairly literate and "grammarate" (and I didn't take too many years to stop believing him). —JerryFriedman (Talk) 05:49, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Yes, sorry, I should have kept an open mind and realized that these might be correct memories of bad teaching, not bad memories of correct teaching. Still, not something I'd expect to hear from a literate person (so I have to conclude that grammar teachers are not all literate, too). Dicklyon (talk) 06:17, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your gracious response too. He wasn't even a bad teacher in other ways. —JerryFriedman (Talk) 16:51, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Grammar teachers with general education backgrounds and no linguistics training are rarely correct about linguistic matters. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 10:07, 6 January 2013 (UTC)