User talk:Lighthumormonger

Quotation punctuation

I saw your post at Randy Kryn's talk page. What exactly is the nature of the confusion? I've re-read the pertinent MoS material, which has been stable for a very, very long time, and there's nothing I can see that's unclear in it, but that might be because of my familiarity with it; if there's some wording in there that's confusing for you, what is it?

MOS:LQ is really quite simple: Include terminal punctuation within the quotation marks only if it was present in the original material, and otherwise place it after the closing quotation mark. All the other material there is just examples, and some quibbles about not "doubling up" terminal punctuation, and not applying to the full sentence any special terminal punctuation (question mark or exclamation point), that belongs to the quote, or vice versa. (There's also the principle that we don't change a terminal period (full stop) into a comma inside the quotation. This was illustrated with an example but not stated as clearly as it could have been; fixed [1].

You wrote "In one instance it says that the quote can be before the last punctuation mark, but within the same section it says it can be after the punctuation mark." But that isn't the case. Nothing in there suggests that the terminal punctuation can be placed inside or outside the quotation randomly or by whim, and there are not faulty examples there.

As for MOS:ENGVAR, it says National varieties of English ... differ in vocabulary..., spelling..., and occasionally grammar..... Nothing about punctuatation. Even if it did address some kind of punctuation thing some day, MOS:LQ is obviously and necessarily an exception to any ENGVAR notions, otherwise it could not exist as part of MoS in the first place. LQ even specifically states Use the "logical quotation" style in all articles, regardless of the variety of English in which they are written. So, there is no conflict here. If there's some actually unclear wording, that should be fixable.

As for why Wikipedia uses logical quotation, see the second point at MOS:FAQ for the short version. It's not the most familiar system for a lot of writers, but you get used to it quickly.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:00, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

OK, for some reason I cannot find the edits that I was concerned about. What I recall was that an editor was indiscriminately going through every single quote that occurred at the end of a sentence and placing the period mark after the quote mark. That is generally how people in places that use British English are taught to punctuate things. Doing an online search for the terms ("American English" "quote marks") there is no real uniformity in the rules I have found. Of course the APA MOS is considered the definitive rule, but the rules shown in the APA MOS are much more complex than those shown in our MOS.

To make a long story short, this little exercise in punctuation regulation, has caused me to learn more, and I thank you for that. Being an American, perhaps I have an instinctive dislike of the sense that I am being forced to use British grammar and punctuation in what are basically articles about American things. It seems to me that there is a subtle drift in Wikipedia, ever since Jimmy Wales moved to London, British English, and British'isms have begun to have a slight favorability over American English and American'isms. America is no longer a colony of England, and the UK is certainly not a colony of America! But just look at the dates in the Intuitive Machines Nova-C article. They're all being done in British English in an article about an American space vehicle!

As far as I'm concerned, that article should ideally be written fully in American English and not in British English, but that is not what is happening. Of course the British dating usage in the article is not a serious problem, and I have not complained about it to anyone over there. In my opinion, our MOS needs to be rewritten so that editors here might be able to more easily comprehend this one thing. Shouldn't articles about American topics be written using American punctuation, grammar, spelling, and vocabulary, and shouldn't articles written about British topics be written using British punctuation grammar, spelling, and vocabulary? Thanks for listening to my little rant. Now I will get off of my little soapbox and have some lunch. Not enough time to fix everything in the world (at least I hope not).

So until, if, or when ever our MOS might be able to make this clear and easy for most regular editors of WP to understand, I will not question the relative placement of periods and quote marks again in any of our articles, so long as any given editor is honestly trying to follow our own MOS (which I happen to think could be written a bit more intelligibly.)

Lighthumormonger (talk) 20:59, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

Moon Barnstar

		The Moon Barnstar
		For your tireless work on Intuitive Machines Nova-C. (— 𝐬𝐝𝐒𝐝𝐬 — - talk) 02:37, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

Thank you kindly,

You know you deserve a few dozen of those Moon-stars yourself too!

Lighthumormonger (talk) 16:45, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

"Mos:english idioms" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect Mos:english idioms has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Anyone, including you, is welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 April 10 § Mos:english idioms until a consensus is reached. Utopes _{(talk / cont)} 00:14, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the notification. Lighthumormonger (talk) 18:23, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

D-Day article, capture of Cherbourg as aftermath

Hi @Diannaa:,

Thank you for pointing out the fact that there was no cite for the capture of Cherbourg in the D-Day article. If I reinsert the text in the "Aftermath section" along with a suitable cite this next time, would that then be OK with you?

Cheers,

Lighthumormonger (talk) 16:21, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

According to Ford & Zaloga 2009, pp. 185–193, Cherbourg was captured on June 26 (not June 22 like you indicated in your edit), but the port facilites were badly damaged, and not brought back into service until September. I will add something to the Aftermath section. — Diannaa (talk) 19:02, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

Thanks Diannaa,

I'm pretty sure that the deepwater port of Cherbourg was one of the early major objectives for the Normandy invasion. Putting something in the "Aftermath section" about how Cherbourg relates to the rest of the Normandy landings should be good. I apologize if I was a bit sloppy with that and I thank you for offering to do it. After a closer reading of our article on the Battle of Cherbourg, I realized that while the defenses of Cherbourg began to fall on June 22nd, still the official surrender did not take place until June 29th. Will try to do better next time.

Thanks kindly,

Lighthumormonger (talk) 19:17, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

Is a "UTC launch times only" rule written down somewhere?

Hi @Mfb:,

Is there really a Wikipedia rule about "UTC launch times only?" I don't think NASA follows such a rule. If there is such a rule in Wikipedia then I will gladly follow it, but if not then why not use the same conventions regarding flight times that NASA uses when it posts its flight times? I've never heard of such a rule in Wikipedia before, but admittedly there are lots of Wikipedia rules that I've never heard of before. Please let me know about this. As they say, "Knowledge is power." But they also say, "Slow and steady still wins the race." For some reason I seem to lean more towards being "slow and steady" than towards that "knowledge and power" stuff.

Cheers my friend,

Lighthumormonger (talk) 16:16, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

You can find it in the spaceflight project style guide: "Since space is not within any Earth-bound time zone, and to avoid regional bias, the WP:WikiProject Spaceflight community has established a consensus (discussed here) to use UTC." NASA is not the only entity doing spaceflight. It's not even the most active one. --mfb (talk) 18:44, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

Thanks @Mfb:,

That is quite helpful. From now on I will place the UTC time first, but then as one of the posters suggested, I do think that there is no harm done (and probably some benefit derived by) placing the local launch time in parentheses after the UTC time. In the case of the Starliner launch, I see that you already started that. NASA has announced that its launch will take place on May 6. UTC time places the Starliner launch on May 7. In my not so humble opinion, it seems to me that announcing both time-zone times at once as described above is probably the most likely method to eliminate the greatest amount of potential confusion here. Thoughts? Again, thank you for that very helpful information.

Lighthumormonger (talk) 19:57, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

I added the local day in brackets because the source says May 6 and the difference could confuse readers, but long-term I think we only need the UTC date there - it's the general Starliner article, no one cares about the exact launch time in this place. --mfb (talk) 11:10, 28 April 2024 (UTC)