Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 122

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Archive 115

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Archive 120

Avoiding redirects

OK, a couple of us were discussing technical and aesthetic reasons to avoid redirects above, but that discussion is kind of mixed up with other topics so I wanted to create a section specifically for it here.

Additionally, User:Newyorkbrad just reminded me of a technical reason to, if not avoid redirects, at least to prefer that a redirect is not needed. Attempting to link to a section on a page requires that you link to the non-redirect page itself. If you link to the redirect with a link that's trying to point at a section heading what actually loads is just the page itself, through the redirect. The sections don't exist on the redirect page, after all. So, it is actually true that there is some loss of functionality if it's more difficult to directly type the article title (or section title, actually) directly.

In light of the above, along with the fact that using non-keyboard keys for article titles simply creates additional complexity, my opinion is that we should avoid anything that most users can't type directly for article titles. I'd formalize the statement by saying something like: "Article titles should only contain characters which most users can directly input." Obviously redirects from the "typographically correct" article title should also exist, if for not other reason then that links from other article can be written without piping. Because of that though, I think that we should explicitly state that article content should use the best typography that we can agree with, which would continue to make everything in MOS:DASH applicable to article content.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 22:25, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

This is no longer true. Try Mexican–American War#Results. –CWenger (^ • @) 22:28, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

OK, so what's everyone getting all excited about, then? (I'm gonna point NYB to this now, by the way)
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 22:32, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

He already pointed this out to me, after I asked him to clarify. See his talk page. –CWenger (^ • @) 22:33, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

I was going to say the same. The Wikimedia developers apparently fixed that issue a while back. Linking to sections via redirects works properly, you don't get stuck on the redirect page, and after landing on the destination (of the redirect) page, you still get taken to the right section, assuming a section title matches the string following the shebang (#), otherwise you stay at top of the page. Tijfo098 (talk) 23:32, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

IIRC at some point that worked with some browsers but not others. Right now it works on my browser, but I wouldn't take this alone as definitive evidence that it works everywhere. ― A. di M._plé^dréachtaí 01:05, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Presumably this is an issue if the section title has dashes (and there are hyphens or spaces variants of that string), but that can be fixed with {{anchor}} to provide multiple targets so all variations work on the right hand side of the shebang. Tijfo098 (talk) 23:36, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Any discussion of article titles invites the straw-man argument: "Let's do it my way; your form can be a redirect!" This is worthless; it cuts both ways equally.

This may be a reason to treat all title disputes lightly; but they still matter. In this case, they matter as much as they ever did; MOS governs article text, not titles. But in all cases, using a title which is eccentric in English misleads foreigners who will tend to think Wikipedia's form is correct, and imposes an unnecessary burden of redirects. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 00:07, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

The MOS, at least, thinks it governs titles. It even has a section about them. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 00:32, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

That is - and says it is - a summary of WP:TITLE, no more; a convenient bridge to section headers, which have no governing policy AFAIK. That it's two years out of date, and the list of special characters is wrong, is merely characteristic of the uncontroversial parts of MOS: unmaintained, unconsulted verbiage. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 00:48, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

And the words "straw-man" and "worthless" seem inconsistent with your own follow-up "This may be a reason to treat all title disputes lightly". Art LaPella (talk) 00:45, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Treating a subject lightly is not an invitation to sophistry, at least in a good faith discussion. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 00:48, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

I think it's a form of diplomacy, not sophistry, to point out that one's opponent has little to lose by yielding, even though you are correct to say that argument cuts both ways. Art LaPella (talk) 01:25, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Sir Henry Wotton would agree. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:48, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, but that's a completely separate issue. More importantly, it is an issue which should be (and largely is) addressed at WP:TITLE. There's no reason for the MOS to address what page is a redirect and what page contains content, in light of the updates to MediaWiki's functionality. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought that the only reason that this dispute is occurring here at WT:MOS is because we were limited on titles. Since it turns out that the whole issue actually revolves around WP:TITLE why are we trying to do anything with the MOS? This discussion should be about changing (or not changing) WP:TITLE, not the Manual of Style.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 01:37, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, it is largely the wrong forum. Part of this discussion is an effort by the dash fans to insist that MOS governs titles as well. Septentrionalis PMAnderson

OK, look. There's an item on WP:TITLE already that says: Do not enclose titles in quotes. So, the idea that we could say something such as Do not use dashes within article titles already exists (or the opposite, but by my reading saying "use dashes where they would occur normally in running text" seems redundant, if only because of how WP:TITLE is already written). That's not to say that we should add anything, but it appears to me that the crux of this whole dispute is actually about whether or not to add such a stipulation to WP:TITLE (or here, but I think it would be out of place here). With that in mind I think that we should drop everything here (when it comes to DASH, at least) and start an RfC at WT:TITLE asking the question of whether or not to add another bullet that talks about the use of dashes and hyphens within article titles.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 03:06, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Does anybody else want this? (B2C probably does.) I'm perfectly content with WP:COMMONNAME; I wish MOS said the same thing about text. I'm not opposed to dashes in titles; I oppose dashes that are added to titles when usage is overwhelmingly otherwise.

Thanks for typing all that out. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:11, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Your welcome. it's slightly off topic, but WRT: "I wish MOS said the same thing about text." I'd reply that titles should be handled differently. Titles are supposed to be as succinct as possible, for what I think we all agree are good reasons (cumbersome titles are rather annoying to everyone). Given that a title is often just a word or two long, COMMONNAME makes perfect sense. There's also the fact that COMMONNAME can assist readers in locating what they're trying to find. I know that you're well aware of all of this reasoning PMA, but I wanted to state it in order to point out that the reasoning behind COMMONNAME doesn't translate well to article content, you know? not that I begrudge you your opinion here. I think that if it were framed as it's own discussion, that you might have some success in changing a couple of things in the MoS based on that idea. Maybe (you know how it is).
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 03:23, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Fair enough; thank you for conducting a rational discussion of your point of view. ~~It's such a relief not to hear about "subversion".~~ Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:30, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

I deeply regret having to strike this statement, and so soon. This page is not a law, which can be "enforced", "breached", or "subverted"l that's clear and fundamental policy. Please stop this. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:14, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

English: learning and improving

For all Wikipedians who are interested in correct English, I wish to publicize ESL Links - Learning English. Notwithstanding the title of that page, some of the information provided on the websites listed can be helpful even for people for whom English is the first language learned. I wish to encourage Wikipedians to make good use of that link (1) by consulting it frequently, (2) by publicizing it in their userspace, (3) by mentioning it to e-mail contacts, (4) by mentioning it to mass media organizations, (5) by mentioning it to webmasters, and (6) by mentioning it to teachers of English (as a first or subsequent language).
—Wavelength (talk) 19:00, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

But not in a Mexican-American dash war, unless you want to be burned to the stake for heresy. It uses double hyphens! Art LaPella (talk) 19:07, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Indeed, as good source on English is not necessarily a good source on typographic style. Dicklyon (talk) 23:08, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Far better double hyphens than single hyphens . . . JeffConrad (talk) 09:51, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

I'll check it out, even though in my experience (above a certain level) hanging out with native speakers is often way more effective than anything you can do sitting alone in your room. ― A. di M._plé^dréachtaí 22:20, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

For learning to write clear English, I really like Lyn Dupré's Bugs in Writing. It's organized around good, bad, and ugly examples, designed to teach you to have an ear for fluent versus disfluent English writing. Sadly, no online free version. Dicklyon (talk) 05:52, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Wavelength, helpful on "the, a, an", which I've bookmarked for my plan to finally conquer deixis in a show/tell tutorial page for non-native WPians. (Two attempts have ended in a heap: it's impossibly difficult to reverse-engineer.) Generally, though, the site needs revision. Tony (talk) 14:49, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Any problem with using hyphens and never dashes in titles?

Is there any problem with requiring the exclusive use of hyphens - never using ndashes or mdashes - in article titles? This is a rule that applies to images already. What's the downside? The upside of using hyphens exclusively are, at least:

Easy to type (everyone has a dash on their keyboard).
Don't have to go through a redirect to get to your article when entering a search using a hyphen, thus avoiding the ugly "redirected" message.
No trying to figure out if it's hyphen or dash when linking to it - know that it's a dash.

So, what would be the downside? --Born2cycle (talk) 21:33, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

The downside is that it doesn't conform to various style guides. I'm not saying this is compelling, but the current MOS rules were largely based on those sources. Tijfo098 (talk) 21:42, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

You're right about it not being compelling. If nothing else because, as far as I can tell, none of those styles guides is very strict about use of dashes, except maybe for ranges, and even then that's not that clear. --Born2cycle (talk) 22:01, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

It just seems to me that we should use Occam's razor, which in this case would be to always use hyphens consistently and never use dashes of any kind, in article content or titles (for consistency and credibility), unless there is a very good reason to use a more complicate approach. I see no very good reason here. --Born2cycle (talk) 22:28, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

It's OK to have that opinion, but then as a person who doesn't understand en dashes and disrespects our MOS guidelines about them, advocating a policy to never use dashes, you shouldn't be the one closing a debate on that topic. And Occam is not a very respected source on punctuation (defined by Merriam-Webster's collegiate dictionary as the act or practice of inserting standardized marks or signs in written matter to clarify the meaning and separate structural units); most style guides recognize the value of standardized marks to clarify the meaning. Dicklyon (talk) 00:25, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

If it's spelt with a dash in the body text, then it should be spelt with a dash in the title. Having the spelling in the title differ from the spelling in the body text looks sloppy. --JN 466 22:59, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes. That's a good reason to spell it with a hyphen in the body as well. An alternative would be to get a tweak to the MediaWiki software. It should be no problem to tell DISPLAYTITLE that a hyphen and a dash are equivalent, so that we can make hyphens display as dashes. Hans Adler 23:11, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

And also make en dashes appear as hyphens, so that we can make as many articles wrong as possible? I don't get your point. Nobody thinks hyphen should appear as dashes; nobody want to disallow hyphens in titles; nobody is arguing to change hyphens to en dashes, just to allow dashes where they are the right answer per the MOS. Dicklyon (talk) 04:17, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Not commenting on the specifics at this point, but I think everyone would have to agree that in hindsight, this decision does not appear to have consensus in a lot of discussions and that it appears to cause more acrimony between editors then necessary. Vegaswikian (talk) 23:22, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Which decision? I'm just trying to understand what argument, if any, someone might have against the consistent use of hyphens, not dashes, throughout all text and titles in Wikipedia. --Born2cycle (talk) 23:50, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

The decision to replace hyphens with en and em dashes. Vegaswikian (talk) 23:59, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Oh, yeah. When did that happen? Is there any record of the decision? I can kind of see it being slightly preferable in a publication where someone has total editing control, but no way in Wikipedia. --Born2cycle (talk) 00:10, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

The Mexican–American War article family were stable with the en dash for about three years. The MOS:DASH recommendations have been stable for at least four years. Is that what you meant, or is there more behind the question about "decision to replace hyphens with en and em dashes"? I don't know of any such decision; hyphens that are correctly used should be left as hyphens. Dicklyon (talk) 00:28, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

And with all due respect, a large number of cancer-related articles were stable with no dashes for years as well, which is consistent with the vast majority of the scientific literature. That is, until someone decided to (more or less unilaterally) insert several thousand dashes here and there without consensus. So the "stability" issue - if it indeed is an issue - should (in fairness) cut both ways. Regards:Cliff L. Knickerbocker, MS (talk) 00:43, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

The alternative wouldn't work, because sometimes a hyphen in a title should be a hyphen. I don't see this as a big deal – editors who can't be bothered to type Alt-0150 on a PC, or Alt-hyphen on a Mac, can just use a hyphen. Another editor who cares about the typography can fix it later with a redirect. --JN 466 00:20, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Alt-0150 does not work on this PC (running Chrome under XP with Gigaware keyboard). Anyway, what is the standard by which we decide whether a given dash "should" be a hyphen in any particular case? Is it reasonable to expect all editors to know this and care about it? You say it doesn't matter, because someone who does care will fix it, but the reality is then you end up with a hodge-podge of both. Even if Dicklyon is right about the en dash usage being stable in the Mexican-American War family of articles for years, that's undoubtedly because someone chose to address that particular issue in those articles, and policed it consistently. Can we depend on that occurring in every instance where hyphens "should" be dashes? If not (and I say the answer is clearly no way since we don't have the kind of editorial control and stability that would be required to pull that off), we end up with an unprofessional hodge podge, which is the exact opposite of the only justification with going with dashes in the first place (a professional consistent look).

On the other hand, if we decided to use hyphens consistently, except in those truly rare exceptional cases (like in an article about dashes), then a bot could easily enforce it, keeping our usage looking professional and consistent throughout WP. --Born2cycle (talk) 00:40, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

No, not all editors need to know how to punctuate properly. Just like not all editors need to know all the rules of grammar or have perfect spelling. If we required such high standards of all editors we'd become like Citizendium, a ghetto where few contribute. But they are the rules of grammar, spelling and punctuation, so it's reasonable to hope they are used by all who can use them, for consistency and correctness, including correcting errors within reason. The encyclopaedia looks and reads better for it.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 00:51, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

And as to the policing issue that Born2 asks about, no, we can't count on getting to consistency. Just as we don't have consistency of spelling, grammar, style, verifiability, notability, and lots of other things that we specify in policy and guidelines. But we don't tear down the guidelines just because achieving perfection will take infinite effort, nor because disputes arise from time to time. But when disputes arise about the guidelines themselves, we should discuss them in that context, and not keep generating skirmishes to undo the work of editors who are trying to move toward satisfying the guidelines. Yes, it takes effort to keep changing 'color' to 'colour' and vice versa to enforce WP:ENGVAR, but we don't abandon it and say all spellings have to use the fewest number of letters, so we can enforce it by a bot. Dicklyon (talk) 01:19, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Do you guys really think "spelling, grammar, verifiability, and notability" are comparable to hyphen/dash usage in terms of how consistently we are about enforcing these things? I suggest that hyphen/dash usage is a special case because the only reason to use a (fancy) dash instead of a hyphen in certain cases (where appropriate) is precisely to look more professional and credible, and (2) it's not nearly as clear-cut as the other issues in terms of what the "right" answer is, and to how many it's clear-cut. Look at the Mexican-American example below. It's a mess. There is nothing consistent, professional or credible about how we use dashes or hyphens; it's counter-productive with respect to the main reason to even use dashes. And unlike the other cases, there is a clear better alternative: just consistently uses hyphens ever where (except maybe in a few very isolated special case situations). It's apples and oranges, really. --Born2cycle (talk) 01:34, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Born2cycle, you say, "Alt-0150 does not work on this PC (running Chrome under XP with Gigaware keyboard)." Could you try the following? You need to have Num-Lock switched on (so that if you type a number key in the numeric keypad, you get a number rather than a cursor movement). Then press and hold down the Alt key, enter 0150 in the numeric keypad (not the number row at the top of your keyboard), and then let go of the Alt key. If you do that, you should have typed an n-dash. (Alternatively, you can click on – below your edit window.) Does that work? --JN 466 20:33, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) JohnBlackburne, but grammar, spelling and punctuation is something that is consistent and well-known, most editors know it, so they get it right the first time, or, if they don't, the next editor to see it is likely to fix it.

Knowledge of proper dash/hyphen usage thing is way more obscure than that, and, yet, they're widely used. Even with Mexican-American War, there are tons of examples of links to both Mexican–American War (ndash) [1] and Mexican-American War (hyphen) [2], and that's supposed to be a well-managed example. Yet it's horribly inconsistent. The truth is that it is practically unmanageable in WP to consistently maintain hyphen vs. dash usage according to any standard that calls for hyphen in some cases and dashes in others, so if we try, we are doomed to fail. That does not help WP in terms of being credible and professional. --Born2cycle (talk) 01:26, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

I prefer to aim high, not low. Therefore I support dashes. Ozob (talk) 01:43, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

So we should use an ongoing edit war as a guide how to handle MOS issues for the whole of WP? Er, no.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 01:50, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

No, we should not use an ongoing edit war as a guide. I haven't verified, but it is my understanding that it was a mess when this war started, and that the inconsistency in usage is what is ultimately behind this. That's the guide. That is, it's not like all references to the M/W war were all consistently using dashes, and then someone started changing them to hyphens. It was that it was a mix of hyphens and dashes, and when someone tried to change the usage to be consistently hyphens, that's when the war began. Is that not right? --Born2cycle (talk) 03:45, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Where did you get the impression that inconsistency of usage was behind this? All of the relevant article titles, and most of their text, were consistent for years until Pmanderson attacked. This is not the first place he has attacked for en dashes, but is the one where he raised the most stink because he managed to get an improper move done to convert from a consistent set to an inconsistent set. Dicklyon (talk) 04:12, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

One could just as well say it is practically unmanageable in WP to consistently maintain comma vs. semicolon usage according to any standard that calls for comma in some cases and semicolon in others. Dashes are a just a bit more "obscure" than other grammar rules, mostly because most writers have not traditionally needed to use them. The en dash had no representation on the typewriter, so decisions of typography were usually made by the typographer and the editor, working from the author's typed manuscript. As computers came to be widely used, people largely took over being responsible for their own typography, and bifurcated into two main types: those who learned how to do dashes and those who didn't. The ones who did include most of the technical writers, who largely use TeX and LaTeX to produce their manuscripts (en dash and em dash have been entered as -- and --- in TeX since the 1970s) and those who adopted the Mac when it came out in 1984 and read a bit about how it worked and weren't afraid to use the Option keep when needed. Those who did not learn to use en dash include most Windows and Word users, since Microsoft made it hard, and provided a standard shortcut for em dash for not for en dash. So, yes, there are large numbers of people who don't do en dash. But it's not unmanageable, and if you look around Wikipedia you'll see that in very many cases, the right dashes are used, because there are enough editors who know and care about the rules of grammar and typography who want to make it right; and it gets better every day, except in rare cases. It's unfortunate that those who are less familiar with en dashes are so determined that they should not be used. What's up with that? Dicklyon (talk) 01:41, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

The problem is the editors who drag out long-failed experiments in typography, and insist that everybody use them when no-one outside Wikipedia does. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:08, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

We don't need to be micromanaging aspects of style on otherwise good pages. We need to be macromanaging the waves of crap coming through the gate at New Pages. That is all. Carrite (talk) 02:19, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Then we need a revision here. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:08, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Oppose - "Mexican-American" and "Mexican–American" clearly convey different meanings, so it makes little sense to use a blanket hyphen as a 'one size fits all' solution for the ambiguity (or having to read into the context to parse) that is likely to cause. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 03:15, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
In fact, both mean something that is both Mexican and American; which is why the distinction is vanishingly rare ourside Wikipedia. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:25, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
This editor has now twice taken it upon himself to edit my reply without permission. Is it the author's opinion, then, that his remarks will not survive criticism? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:37, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
That comment of yours was a racist jibe, and I would be surprised that as educated a person as Anderson wasn't aware of it. Then he has the nerve to complain that I removed it, saying it was fair comment because he was paraphrasing me. I never had him for a bigot before, but the above is making me revise my opinion of him rapidly (although I'm sure he doesn't care). --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 04:04, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
Actually, he has been fairly consistently xenophobic, dissing sources and ideas that are not sufficiently American. He doesn't like the Oxford dictionary of American usage and style, for example, because of its publisher. Dicklyon (talk) 04:06, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
For the record, what I have said is that Mexican-American War has strong ties to the United States, and should therefore, where it matters, be written in American on the basis of American sources. That's WP:ENGVAR, one of the few bits of this guideline to have actual consensus. If this is not retracted, I will consider what other methods of dispute resolution are suitable to those who make ungrounded personal attacks instead of discussing an issue. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:29, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Actually, Septentrionalis has repeatedly argued that "English" should be our standard, and "anglophones" is just a variation on that theme. I don't think it's significant that this time he happened to address it to someone whose native language isn't English. I would rather assume good faith unless he says "I am a racist" or "I hate Chinese", etc. Art LaPella (talk) 04:37, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

I can't see any way in which the idea that English is by definition what English speakers speak—whose negation I would expect to be pretty much logically impossible—would be racist. (FWIW, I've meet highly educated native English speakers from East Asian, Black, and Semitic backgrounds as well as Caucasian people unable to understand such sentences as “Seven one-way tickets to Ventimiglia, please.”) ― A. di M._plé^dréachtaí 14:54, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
Dashes are customary usage as punctuation; they are fairly frequent, and useful, in relatively limited circumstances, in making compounds; much less often than their enthusiasts say. Ideally that would be enough. But this proposal is compatible with that; useful dashes would be exceptions, coming under IAR. Therefore, while not ideal, I must support this. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:25, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

See, here's the problem. Pmanderson wants to set policy about how to use en dashes, while demonstrating his ignorance of the distinctions that they signify by stating "both mean something that is both Mexican and American". Mexican-American is the adjective form of Mexican American, about Americans who have Mexican heritage. Mexican–Amercan is about some something between the countries, as in a "to" or "versus" or "and" relationship; a border, a war, a highway or a cruise ship perhaps. Editors who aren't able to understand the distinction in meaning have no business arguing against the en dash where it conveys the intended meaning, as the MOS says we should do. It's a good MOS, consistent with best practice of English publishers, for example as represented in the style guides of the American Chemical Society and the The Oxford dictionary of American usage and style. These are typical best practices. Dicklyon (talk) 04:00, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

See, here's the problem: I don't want to set policy; I would rather like this guideline to follow what English actually does - or in this case what American actually does. Dicklyon and a few others would prefer this guideline to enforce a failed experiment of a century ago, which is not now followed consistently by anybody outside Wikipedia - or on Wikipedia. In order to do this, he is willing - as above - to engage in groundless personal attacks. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:29, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

I didn't mean to actually propose anything (yet); I was just wondering what the objections might be if something like that was proposed. So far I've seen nothing significant. --Born2cycle (talk) 03:54, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Are you being obnoxious on purpose, or do you not actually understand how you insult good-faith serious editors by dissing their concerns as "nothing significant"? Dicklyon (talk) 04:02, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

I don't mean to diss anyone's concerns much less insult anyone. I'm just calling them as I see them. I mean, let's list the concerns stated so far.

"doesn't conform to various style guides. I'm not saying this is compelling, ..." (editor himself admits it's not compelling... not significant, IOW)
"most style guides recognize the value of standardized marks to clarify the meaning." (no dispute there is some value, the debate is about how much value, especially in the context of the apparent inability to standardize on dashes/hyphens in particular in WP, so this does not seem significant to me)
"if it's spelt with a dash in the body text, then it should be spelt with a dash in the title" (not significant because if text is consistently using hyphens as well titles, this is a non-issue)
"... sometimes a hyphen in a title should be a hyphen. I don't see this as a big deal ..." (again, editor himself doesn't see it as a big deal)
"I prefer to aim high, not low. Therefore I support dashes. " (a preference many of us share - to aim high - that's not a distinctive reason to support dashes.)
"Mexican-American" and "Mexican–American" clearly convey different meanings (not to 95+% (guessing) of English readers)

Did I miss anything significant? None of these seem significant to me, honestly, for the reasons given. Anyway, that's all I meant by, "so far I've seen nothing significant." --Born2cycle (talk) 04:25, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

I'm with B2C here. All I can see is a bunch of hot air. There's no compelling argument for... well, anything.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 04:35, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

You are very wrong if you think only 5% of readers of English understand that a dash and a hyphen mean different things. I would put it at more than half. But it's also worth noting that the easiest way to learn how these things are used is to read English written using them. Given WP's popularity I would not be surprised if it has done more than the majority of sites to promote a good understanding of English. So by using dashes correctly we help promote their use and understanding both on WP and more generally, and so increase WP's value as an English reference.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 04:38, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

I don't speak for B2C, but is the issue here really impacted by one figure that he used in what appears to me to be a facetious manner? Say it is 50%... so what? How does that change his point, above?
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 04:47, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Anyway, I think 5% is much too high. I read Wikipedia for years before I ever noticed any consistent difference between how hyphens and dashes are used. I'd run a survey, but this discussion would leave me behind before I talked to anybody. Remember, readers, not MoS regulars. Art LaPella (talk) 04:49, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

“[M]ore than half”? Seriously? Try asking a dozen random people. ― A. di M.^plé_dréachtaí 15:02, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

I don't think general illiteracy is a good argument for dumbing down our conventions. By that argument, we should purposefully misspell words which are difficult to spell. Hell, we could even create a bot to go through WP and misspell all the difficult words that were inadvertently input correctly. Instead we have a bot to correct misspellings. The same is true for commas, quote marks, and other bits of punctuation. I also don't think that the lazy editor argument has much value. By that argument we shouldn't capitalize anything, because that places an undue burden on editors by asking them to keep track of which words are capitalized. WP is supposed to be for the utility to the reader, not to the editor. As long as en dashes don't interfere with anything—and they don't—I don't see any purpose to dumbing down an encyclopedia because some editors are unfamiliar with them or don't want to bother entering them. (Not that anyone has demanded that they do.) Now, if we were to decide that we don't want to use en dashes for particular purposes, or even to use them at all, based on the merits of the dashes themselves, that would be a different matter. IMO that's where the discussion should be based. — kwami (talk) 04:50, 4 May 2011 (UTC)4

Be careful what you suggest, you just may get it. :)
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 04:54, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Let's try to retain the context in which statements are made when we respond to them. The issue here is about whether "Mexican-American" and "Mexican–American" clearly convey different meanings is a significant reason to use dashes as well as hyphens in our titles and articles. Why is that a significant reason if the different meanings are not clearly conveyed to the vast majority of English readers?
Whether we should be educating the ignorant masses about dash/hyphen usage is a separate issue... and was not a reason listed when I made the statement that no significant reasons for doing this were given (not that this one seems significant either). --Born2cycle (talk) 05:08, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

It's significant because there are literate people who care and for whom it makes a difference, and because we have adopted a manual of style that says we'll strive to do it that way. If it's not significant, why should we let the en dash haters tear it down? Does it harm anyone? Confuse anyone? I don't see how it could. Dicklyon (talk) 05:18, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

To address Kwami's out of context point above, ignorance about the nuances between dash and hyphen use is but one of the main reasons to not distinguish dashes and hyphens in WP because that ignorance is not only widespread among our readers, it is widespread among the editors, making it impossible to reliably implement a consistent distinction in WP. Despite being in MOS for years it has not happened, not even close. It's simply ignored for the most part, except for a few style wonks who make a valiant effort in a few isolated areas, but it's simply not catching on. The reasons for this, as far as I can tell, is 1) not only editor ignorance about the usage, but 2) a general lack of clarity in what the usage is supposed to be in all kinds of contexts, and 3) due to the freewheeling nature of WP a lack of an editorial "decider" who can quickly resolve what to do in unclear cases (the result is quagmire). Which to use often comes down to a matter of personal preference, about which editors will never agree. I see three choices:

Continue to try to refine MOS to be as specific as possible about when to use hyphen, mdash, ndash, and bring most of WP into compliance.
Leave things as they are - sometimes used dashes, sometimes hyphens, but don't really worry about the inconsistency.
Abandon dash use almost entirely, except for in very special cases (like the content (not any titles) of the article on dashes), and consistently/automatically change all dashes (except the exceptions) to hyphens, so usage in WP is consistent, reliable and professional, mirroring many other published works that use all hyphens.

I really don't see (1) as a practical possibility for reasons specified above. (2), which is essentially what Dicklyon seems to be advocating, is the current mess we're in and highly undesirable. It's harmful because it hinders WP's ability to appear consistent and professional, which makes us less credible. And credibility is one of our top priorities. (3) we haven't tried and I think is very promising with very little downside, and far preferable to (2), which is just a hopeless mess.

Also, both (1) and (2) suffer from the problem of creating articles which cannot be reached directly (without going through a redirect), unless one knows to enter dash instead of a hyphen, and how to do it, resulting in the ugly redirected from ... message, which is undesirable, IMHO. --Born2cycle (talk) 05:29, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

An example of how "lack of clarity" prevents an edit: See "Burmese-Siamese War" at Template:Did you know/Preparation area 1, which will become the Main Page Did You Know in a couple days. Although I often change hyphens to dashes, I didn't change that one because it resembles the hotly debated Mexican-American War. Art LaPella (talk) 05:45, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Art, do you agree WP, editors and readers would all be better off if we just used hyphens in all cases (except a few very specific rare exceptions)? --Born2cycle (talk) 06:00, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, if we changed the guideline to match. Whatever the rule is, it should be settled here, as long as this page is considered a guideline on that issue (I have often said I wouldn't object to making the entire Manual an essay.)

More on the 95%/5% statistic, to connect us to the real world on that issue: My kids started using Wikipedia for school at about age 9. But long ago, when I proofread a satellite report written by graduate students and beyond, I was considered a grammar expert long before I knew anything about dashes. So with few exceptions, much fewer than 5%, our readers don't know the difference. Art LaPella (talk) 14:11, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

And for the many editors here who tend to confuse expressing an opinion on this talk page (never mind the Manual) with magically changing Wikipedia's 3 million articles: I wish you would show more interest in making the Manual accessible. Art LaPella (talk) 14:31, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

For the record, generally I'm actually all for pursuing the (1) methodology, above. However... look, I think that I'm a fairly good writer, and have slightly above average knowledge regarding grammar. The fact is that I don't have a good feel for when to use each type of dash, even after reading about it. More damning for the dashes is the fact that, really, I just don't see it as a big deal. I see the differences between the styles of dashes, and I do understand the usage differences, but... when it comes right down to it, I just don't care that much. To this point, I really think that I represent the hypothetical "average editor" on this issue. On the other hand, B2C brings up a compelling (in my opinion) point about creating articles that are unreachable except through a redirect. It's not completely true, since the search box and links can get you there without hitting the redirect... sometimes; but still, I think that it's an important issue to address. I can state with certainty that "accessibility" is an issue that many editors "out there" are concerned with. Actually, I think that my position is something of a hybrid: Avoid anything other then hyphens in titles where possible (using a "for technical reasons..." rational), and then come up with good rules for the use of various dashes in article text.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 14:09, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Am I hearing you right? The en dash is damned why? Because you don't don't have a good feel for how to use it correctly, and even more so because you don't see it as a big deal? Interesting POV. Dicklyon (talk) 22:19, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

No, you aren't hearing him right; he said "average editor", not just "you". Art LaPella (talk) 00:19, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Oppose. The “easier to type” argument applies to pretty much any non-ASCII character (and yet we don't move e.g. déjà vu to deja vu), and I don't think the “redirected from” notice is ugly. And while I'm pretty sure that only a small minority of people knows the difference, the rest of the people won't give a damn about which one is used. ― A. di M._plé^dréachtaí 14:54, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
moving "déjà vu to deja vu" is another aspect of this. It's really the same issue that's simply wearing different clothing. Personally, I'm all for avoiding the diacritics, except for where absolutely needed. There's a discussion about that above, actually. So... Anyway, I don't really agree with the "is ugly" characterization, but there certainly is a desire among many editors to avoid redirects as much as possible. People try to "fix" redirects all the time.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 15:59, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
Anyway, if you start typing deja vu in the search box, Déjà vu will drop down, so you won't find a redirect that way either. Too bad that this doesn't also work with dashes (if I type michaelson it suggests Michaelson-Morley experiment with a hyphen). ― A. di M._plé^dréachtaí 16:43, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

I agree with A. di M. here. I don't see any problem with redirects, and if people really don't want redirects, it's easy enough to set up a bot to correct them. I don't think such minor implementation issues should be what determines our MOS. Rather, what style we want for WP should be what determines the MOS. I also don't care whether 'hyphenist' editors always use hyphens. So what? Some editors only use imperial units. Some capitalize nouns and verbs in section headings. Some use different date formats. Half the time I don't bother with correct diacritics, even when they're in the title. Do what you want, and if it doesn't correspond to the MOS, someone will come along to fix it up. But why should we fight to prevent them from fixing it up? — kwami (talk) 21:12, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Oppose - I don't see any reason to eschew good typography. Those who don't care can just press the button to the right of the "0" key and let Mr. Lyon et al fix it later. Problem solved. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 21:16, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
- What is "good typography"? Some of us are Aristotelian enough to believe that it is typography which serves the goals of the encyclopedia; but setting that aside, there is little evidence that most of WP:DASH is good typography. Much of it is almost unheard of outside OUP style manuals; and since Oxford University Press doesn't follow its own style manuals, why should we?
- There are places were a dash is sound typography; but dashes as punctuation – like this – should not appear in article titles, and we can deal with range dashes (1400–1800) by programming whatever enforces this to ignore dashes between figures. Any other valid exceptions will be extremely rare, and covered by WP:IAR. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 05:36, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

New user box

For anyone who agrees hyphens should be used (nearly) exclusively in WP, I've create a new hyphenist user box you can display on your user page: User:Born2cycle/Hyphenist. --Born2cycle (talk) 18:09, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

There is already Category:Wikipedian Hyphen Luddites. Maybe there should be Category:Wikipedian dash supporters.

—Wavelength (talk) 20:00, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

For crying out loud, we need a compromise not further divisive proselytizing. Tijfo098 (talk) 23:48, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Besides, it's full of errors. Dicklyon (talk) 00:01, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

References in image captions?

I was just wondering if there is any MOS guidance on the use of references inside of image captions. An example can be seen in the lead image at List of Watford F.C. players. Due to the nature of the list, it would be inappropriate to include the information anywhere else. My options are either to have captions like Mariappa's, with additional references where necessary, or to have a dozen or more unspeakably dull captions along the lines of "Defender Adrian Mariappa". Thanks in advance. —W F C— 22:49, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

Ideally, images illustrate things that are stated in the main text, and so the information would be cited in the main text. However, there is no "ban" on including a citation in an image caption. Indeed if the caption includes information that is not included (and cited) elsewhere in the text, it must be cited in the caption. Blueboar (talk) 23:28, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

I suspected as much. The practise was queried by an editor I respect, so I thought it best to check here. In the list I mention above, many of the players with images aren't statistically remarkable, hence the need for information to go in the caption. Thanks for the help. —W F C— 23:54, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

Use existing MoS guidance for dash?

I just realized that we have guidance for what seems to be an extremely similar situation to the current DASH debate. The MoS has said for years, as far as I can tell, that we should use "typewriter" style quotation marks (or glyphs, if you prefer). See: Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Quotation marks

what I find interesting is the reasoning that is given there. It seems to me that if you substitute "hyphen" for for "straight quotation marks" then we have perfectly acceptable, and internally consistent, guidance for the use of dashes.

I don't know that I agree with doing that, personally. however, I wanted to at least mention it and see what others have to say.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 22:18, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Y'know, that makes sense. I'd Support this, since it follows a useful standard & would be transparent (no ALT codes or HTML). If a compelling argument was made for use of en-dash on an article and consensus was reached on the Talk page, it could be used. I'd like to see it be the HTML code, though (–, so it's clear to editors that a special character is being used. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 22:44, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
- FWIW, I always use the html tags whenever I use one of en/em dashes because it's more obvious in the (monospaced font of the) edit box what's going on. I won't hold others to this standard though. Tijfo098 (talk) 23:16, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
- Except on Macs, they are both hard to type directly unless you customize your keyboard layout. Tijfo098 (talk) 23:22, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
  - I find the Alt-0150 method easiest, and not unduly cumbersome. I believe it works on all PCs (provided you have Num Lock switched on, and use the numbers in the numeric keypad). On laptops without numeric keypad it can be a bit tricky though to figure out which keys double as the numeric keypad, and which function key to press to make them do so; but in that case there is an n-dash just below the edit window. --JN 466 23:45, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
    - Speaking from a technical point of view (methods to input dashes, curly quotes, or whatever else), it's certainly possible to input pretty much any unicode character (meaning just about any character in existence) with a bit of knowledge or the desire to dig through the stuff below the edit window. So, really, the arguments about accessibility and technical restrictions are basically without merit... except, it does actually take some effort to input those characters that don't appear somewhere on a standard 101-key (or 104-key) keyboard. That, and there are some problems with the search function. So... it seems that article titles are more problematic then article content, which I think is what drives proposals for treating titles slightly differently then article content.
      — V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 00:01, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
      - Wikipedia:How to make dashes Art LaPella (talk) 00:20, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
I appreciate the logic, but would not be in favour of applying the same rationale to dashes and hyphens, as this would eliminate dash usage from Wikipedia altogether. Dashes are well established in Wikipedia, especially between date of birth – date of death in lead sentences, and to set off parenthetical appositions, subclauses etc. No editor is criticised for using a hyphen instead of a dash; but neither should editors be criticised (or reverted) for changing hyphens into dashes to conform with MOS. --JN 466 23:19, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
That's the one issue that I'm hung up on, myself. What about using the "for technical and usability" reasoning used with curly/straight quote marks specifically in relation to article Titles, and then using the existing WP:DASH guidance for the article content itself. It's hardly a perfect solution, but...
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 23:42, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
The technical issues were fixed years ago. In terms of usability, redirects could be used in the case of such quotes in titles, as they are with dashes redirecting through hyphens, but the potential combinations of such things could get unruly with the various quote variants especially if combined with dashes and such. I think there a multiple variants of fancy quotes (not sure) that would create a nuisance, too. I'd say that if we want to, we can amend the MOS to allow fancy quotes, with the proviso that if they're used in titles then all the appropriate redirects needs to be provided manually. The potential semantic advantage is a slight increase in clarity of opening versus closing quotes, but people would then need "smart quote" help to get that right, and they'd still get it wrong as they often do in Word. Probably it would be more hassle than it's worth, unlike dashes, which as Kwamikagami points out, have an important role in conveying clear meaning from writer to reader. Even readers who have never heard of an en dash will often "feel" the difference between a tightly connected hyphenated compound and the more loosely joined relations signified an the en dash, as in the one versus two in names or places. Use of hyphens where en dashes belong is often tolerated, but never recommended. Our attempt to take the high road is working pretty well so far, recent skirmishes notwithstanding. Dicklyon (talk) 00:33, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
There's no semantic difference between straight and curly quotes. It's merely aesthetic. En dashes carry a different semantic load than hyphens. A closer parallel would be em dashes vs. colons, or commas vs. semicolons. — kwami (talk) 23:20, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
Within a quotation, ‘cause would be the beginning of a nested quotation starting with the word cause and ’cause would be a contraction of because, whereas 'cause could be either, so the difference is not always only aesthetic. ― A. di M._plé^dréachtaí 00:32, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Oppose. Also, I wouldn't mind allowing curly quotation marks if used consistently in an article. ― A. di M._plé^dréachtaí 00:30, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Actually... I hate to open up another can of worms here, but I tend to agree with "I wouldn't mind allowing curly quotation marks if used consistently in an article.". Maybe. Allowing typographic quotation marks in article titles would be problematic, though.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 00:34, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

As I discussed above. But maybe "would be problematic" is not that big a deal, if we decide it's worth it? Just as a test, I made User:Dicklyon/"Fancy quotes" which redirects to User:Dicklyon/“Fancy quotes”. At least technically it seems possible, but I take no position on it at this time (since it's not what we're here for). Dicklyon (talk) 00:40, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

You can place curly quotes, any style of hyphen or dash, or pretty much any other character into an article title. Getting them in the title isn't the issue, though. Navigating to the article, especially through search, can be a real issue though. Even with redirects... adding that extra layer of complexity for the sake of style... there's a tradeoff there. What's more important: typographical correctness, or ease of navigation? My point is that it's not actually as simple as "dashes are more correct, and we should strive to be as correct as possible". According to the Quotation mark glyphs article, curly quotes are "more correct" as well (although I agree that there's probably not as meaningful of a difference between the types of quotes and the types of dashes, as Kwami stated above).
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 00:58, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

What's so difficult? I just typed ‹spanish-american war› in the search window and was sent to Spanish–American War. This isn't any different really than variation on caps. We could argue that articles shouldn't have capital letters, or that dab tags shouldn't have parentheses if we're so worried about getting a redirect notice. All these effects are trivial, much more trivial IMO than a professional typographic style. — kwami (talk) 01:08, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Decades ago, text creators were forced to use typewriter conventions because of its mechanical limitations. We're not restricted by those limitations now, so reverting to them would be a step backward. I would hate for us to encourage/direct Wikipedia editors to create articles that appear unprofessional and amateurish. Consider what we collectively want Wikipedia to be in five or ten years. I, for one, hope that it's a generally reliable source for people to use on the whole, but I also hope it adheres to professional typographic conventions and internationally recognized best practices. Let's not move in the opposite direction now. --Airborne84 (talk) 01:32, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

I agree that if there was any navigation difficulty associated with en dashes then we would avoid them; that's why I support the statements that make it essentially mandatory that if you title something with an en dash you need to make sure that users can navigate there by a hyphen. As it says at MOS:DASH: "When naming an article, do not use a hyphen as a substitute for an en dash that properly belongs in the title, for example in Eye–hand span. To aid searching and linking, provide a redirect from the corresponding article title with hyphens in place of en dashes, as in Eye-hand span." This has been working well for many years already. Dicklyon (talk) 01:46, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

I tend to agree, which makes it difficult for me to come up with a good counter argument here. Hopefully someone will come along and help me out, here. But... well, someone has to create the redirect. Someone probably has to move the page, actually (which creates one redirect, at least). The point though is that we're getting into an area here where we'll be intentionally adding a layer of complexity to the structure of the Encyclopedia "merely" for style reasons. We're making navigation (even if just slightly) more complicated "merely" because of typography. We're forcing the use of process (through move requests) "merely" for style issues. As was brought up at AN/I, we're causing conflict for what are "merely" style issues. Even for those who ostensibly don't care about dashes, there will be instances where people say "why the heck did that article get moved? And why did it get moved to a title that I can't type directly, now?" Face it, that's just the nature of things. The perception is that the addition of dashes, curly quotes, and other non-keyboard character in article titles makes navigation more difficult, and is therefore something that will always be problematic in my opinion. I think that there's a real difference between article titles and article content though, and I don't think that we should be afraid to recognize those differences within the MoS.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 01:48, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Usually the process is trivial; when an article has a hyphen and should have an en dash, I click move, type the en dash, and click the "move page" button. The rest is automatic. For people who don't know about en dashes, it probably won't get noticed; and I never heard of anyone with an issue of wanting to type an en dash title directly and not knowing how. (why would anyone want to do that?) Dicklyon (talk) 02:10, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Humm... you ought to take a look though Wikipedia:Requested moves some time (not just the process page, but the actual debates taking place in article space). :)
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 04:39, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

I know, when RM is needed it can be a mess. But the only one I see open there is Carbon-carbon bond, which would have been uncontested if Pmanderson hadn't decided to "strongly oppose" it on a whim. Dicklyon (talk) 04:50, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

And you might count the related Iberian Nautical Sciences from 1400-1600, which is uncontested. I have often made my own page moves to change a hyphen to a dash, with no objections. Art LaPella (talk) 05:02, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Now, when I said that above about looking at RM, I wasn't actually thinking of anything running right now. I wasn't actually thinking of anything specific at all. It was a reply to your earlier comment saying "and I never heard of anyone with an issue of wanting to type an en dash title directly and not knowing how. (why would anyone want to do that?)". Not that I can remember anyone specifically complaining about that, but accessibility is something that is brought up all of the time in article title discussions. This is just something that I know about from two years of on again off again experience with that process. In my experience, people have issues with any article title that they can't exactly type out. That's simply a realty that we should be aware of and deal with. Any sort of guidance that ignores that fact about user behavior is bound to be ignored at best, and outright challenged quite often. If the reaction to that is to start locking down articles, that's hardly a good thing.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 05:08, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

So what is the nature of the complaint? Is there some reason that the redirects with hyphens are not doing the job for them? Or are they making up non-problems? Dicklyon (talk) 05:25, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Oh, I don't know... accessibility, I guess. Maybe User:BilCat, or someone else, will come here and actually make a case fo rtheir point of view on this. All I know is that there is a fairly widespread point of view, reasonable or not, that feels article titles are not helped by typography changes (I'm including more than just the hyphen/dash issue, here). I don't necessarily agree with that... but, sometimes I think that I do, so... I think that it's just the added level of complexity is seen to be cumbersome. Additionally, how does adhering to DASH within article titles deal with WP:NOTBROKEN, after the move is accomplished? Shouldn't a move from a hyphenated article title to a dashed one be followed by editing many of the links to that article? Should that step intentionally be avoided, in some sort of compliance with WP:NOTBROKEN?
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 14:33, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Support. As I have said above, not ideal; but infinitely preferable to the dash enthusiasm that comes over some editors. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:32, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
Oppose if this means getting rid of all dashes completely. There are places where not using them makes things look really really crappy. I shudder at the thought of having to resort to that old typewriter cludge of using double hyphens for parentheticals. I'm open to the idea of deprecating dashes in titles for technical reasons (where parentheticals don't occur), but certainly not in article text. Fut.Perf. ☼ 09:31, 7 May 2011 (UTC)
comment I would like to allow changes to be made if the article is going for GA or FA status. Certainly there should be no revert wars on this, and a 1RR rule could apply before a discussion. For the name of a whole article this proposal could have some merit. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 08:47, 10 May 2011 (UTC)
I don't know of any RS that resort to using two hyphens instead of a dash. I have seen some old Atlantic Monthly articles that used two hyphens, but they looked like transcriptions from a typewriter. All the modern articles simply used either hyphen or dahs. --Enric Naval (talk) 09:36, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Should section headings be noun phrases?

Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Article titles says article titles should be nouns or noun phrases. Directly underneath, in Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Section headings, it says: "All of the guidance in Article titles immediately above applies to section headings as well, except for the use of {{italic title}}". However, there seems to be an unspoken consensus against always using nouns or noun phrases in section headings. For example, many articles have an "In popular culture" section. It seems reasonable to me. Should another exception be added to the section heading guidelines? –CWenger (^ • @) 21:01, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Would the alternative be simply "Popular culture"? Have there been discussions trying to decide which is preferable? I'm inclined to avoid endorsing exceptions. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 21:11, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

I think the alternative would be "Popular culture". I'm for that. However, I don't know that we need to explicitly say that. Nouns and noun phrases should be preferred (heavily, even) for all titles, be they page or section titles. I don't think that we need to mandate that though, do we? The current text (located at WP:MOS#Article title states: "Titles should be nouns or noun phrases (nominal groups)", which seems adequate to me. The "should" within that sentence provides a bit of a safety valve so that we can use article titles (and, by extension, section titles) that do not use noun phrases.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 21:32, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

So you both would advise changing section headings from "In popular culture" to "Popular culture"? –CWenger (^ • @) 22:04, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

I don't know about changing them, but I'd use just "Popular culture" in a new(er) article. I'd advocate for dropping the "In", where such advocacy would be taken constructively (maybe as part of the FA process?). I might even support changing existing "In popular culture" to "Popular culture", as long as your willing to accept that some people will revert it (stick to a voluntary 1RR rule with it, and you're not likely to create any drama).
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 22:29, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

The trouble is that Popular culture is a subject unto itself. This dilemma arises because Wikipedia generally advises against using the full noun phrase if it would repeat the article's title or the title of a superior-level heading, e.g. "The Bronx in popular culture" as a section of The Bronx. While omitting the article's title in section and subsection headings is not the only choice, it's a perfectly good one, and argued for in Wikipedia's case by the way the search function works. But having made that choice, I'd want to keep "[The Bronx unstated but understood] In popular culture" to clarify that you're (in this hypothetical example) discussing the Bronx in popular culture, rather than popular culture in the Bronx, or popular culture in general. —— Shakescene (talk) 00:52, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

What Shakescene said. (Can you provide a pointer about that search function issue? I had always wondered about the point that rule.) ― A. di M._plé^dréachtaí 15:57, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Yea, good point. You know what though, it might be nice to say something about being succinct (which I'd guess is what partially motivated this thread in the first place). I'm sure that I'm not the only one who's seen section headers that are almost entire sentences.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 17:13, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Hyphen vs. en dash moratorium proposal

Due to the constant edit-warring and contentious argument over hypen vs. en-dash use, I am proposing the following:

Per the precedent at MOS:CONSISTENCY & MOS:RETAIN*, hyphens and en-dashes should not be changed in an article. When an article has not yet evolved to that point, the variety chosen by the first major contributor should be adopted. Where an article that is not a stub shows no signs of which variety it is written in, the first person to make an edit that disambiguates the variety is equivalent to the first major contributor.

(* I reference MOS:RETAIN because it is a similar situation: RETAIN is about differing English spellings of words, while this is a simple style difference between hyphens and en-dashes. We solved the English problem with RETAIN, and I believe that will be sufficient here as well. People who fight against this would be treated as tendentious editing or disruption, same as with the English language arguments.) — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 18:15, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

While I agree that edit warring over something like that is silly, every other encyclopedia I've seen aims to have consistent formatting. I see no reason why Wikipedia shouldn't as well, so I'm in with a weak oppose. Zakhalesh (talk) 18:32, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

The point of my proposal is to provide consistent formatting, at least within the article. We're not going to see site-wide consistency without an ArbCom ruling, at this point, so I'd settle for the above proposal as a potential solution. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 19:43, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Well, no: that's way too broad and vague. For example, I did this yesterday, which would fall under the proposal as currently worded. 28bytes (talk) 18:34, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
Oppose. Because hyphens and en-dashes are virtually indistinguishable (particularly in the fixed-width font used in the edit window -–) it would be impossible for an editor coming to an article to know which style was in use, without fiddling about with ctrl-f-alt-0150. To make this work, we'd be in the ludicrous position of needing to set up a bot to enforce inconsistency. – iridescent 18:38, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
- Actually, this is not the case. – also works on Wikipedia, and I use — in my signature. And if hyphens and dashes were truly indistinguishable, this fight over them would be even more WP:LAME. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 18:54, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
  - Without ctrl-f'ing, can you tell at a glance which of these (displayed in default edit-window font) are hyphens, em-dashes and en-dashes? -—-—––-– If you're suggesting that we have a bot replace unicode with HTML markup, I can tell you now that you'll have no support for that. – iridescent 18:59, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
    - I'm saying, if we're not even differentiating these with HTML or Wiki-markup, the whole argument is absolutely ludicrous. If people are arguing over ALT-coded characters, this is just insane. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 19:07, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
      - Yes, this is exactly what people are arguing about, and yes it is insane. (I'd wager there are far more unicode than html endashes on Wikipedia, since the unicode en-dash is the first option on the "insert" toolbar below the edit window.) – iridescent 19:10, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
        Having learned to type & n d a s h ; I recommend it to others, the Unicode character is hard to detect visually. To reduce the conflict, I'd suggest that the developers modify the toolbar to insert the HTML coding rather than the unicode character. Unscintillating (talk) 23:33, 7 May 2011 (UTC)
        Using – instead of – is controversial even among those who know how to type it. See Wikipedia:How to make dashes#Long explanation. Art LaPella (talk) 03:09, 8 May 2011 (UTC)
Oppose, per User:Iridescent, and I would that the near indistinguishableness of hyphens and en-dashes is an argument for using hyphens exclusively. Join the hyphenists!. --Born2cycle (talk) 18:46, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
Oppose because the proposal implies the false claim that in English writing in general, including but not limited to the English Wikipedia, a self-consistent written work (such as an article) should have hyphens or n-dashes but not both. Jc3s5h (talk) 19:05, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
- If it leads to this much argument, no, an article should not have both. I've yet to see another proposal (short of an ArbCom ruling) that can fix this problem. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 19:22, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
  - If you don't want an article to have both, your only option is "only hyphens", since there are numerous circumstances where everyone would agree that only a hyphen is appropriate—compare "face–to–face" with "face-to-face". – iridescent 19:26, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
    - If that's how it works out, fine. I'd just like to find a solution that ends the argument, even if it's not ideal. We're never going to reach "perfect," but the constant bickering is a negative for the project in general. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 19:38, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
This proposal doesn't resolve anything. Just trying to get the involved parties here to stop talking about the issue doesn't mean that the issue doesn't still exist. I agree with the above users who seem to be rejecting this proposal.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 19:51, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
- (sigh) This isn't about "stop talking about it," any more than settling the US English/UK English was about shutting people up. It's a compromise made to reduce bickering so we can get back to editing an encyclopedia. Apparently, no one wants to take the sensible step of at least ending the edit wars while we discuss this, though. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 22:01, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
  - Edit wars are easy to deal with: WP:3RR. It seems to me that what you're proposing here is that we prevent the possibility of edit warring from occurring, which is much worse then edit warring itself, in my view.
    — V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 22:06, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
    - What I propose is an actual guideline, instead of people throwing dashes & en-dashes around, then fighting over them. It worked for US/UK English matters, and I think it would help here. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 22:36, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
      I'm not watching the Mex-Amer war page, or whatever the sub-page for it was that started the latest AN/I thread, so... is there an ongoing edit war or wars that we should be aware of? Is someone running aroudn with a bot, moving pages, or something? As far as I'm aware there's no actual edit warring occurring, but maybe I'm just out of the loop here?
      — V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 22:43, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
Not bots, but a certain amount of turmoil in Pmanderson's push to overturn 3 years of stability. He got away with a poorly attended and badly decided RM on Mexican-American War, but the ire raised by that brought in me and others to defend the status quo against the "hyphen Luddites". Since then, he has pushed every way he can, and lots of lengthy discussions have ensued in numerous places. Things went into an uproar again when non-admin Born2Cycle closed a contentious RM claiming a consensus that was nowhere in sight; and previously-declared-anti-en-dash admin Jonathunder speedily did the move; a brief edit war ensued in which the improper close and the improper execution were undone (and the move war was ended by me salting the redirect such that an actual admin would have to come in for it to continue; of course, I took flak for that tactic). Seems like it might settle down now. Dicklyon (talk) 04:01, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
Well, let's see; there was a discussion of dashes on this very examples before the RM, which largely supported hyphenation; then there was an 8-2 RM; that's actually larger than most. Dicklyon and another editor didn't get around to !voting; they now insist that it should have been 8-4 and that the only way out is to let the minority have its way. But of course this is all my fault, and has nothing to do with a few editors making a battleground for their own opinion. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 04:30, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
Guys, two reversions and two separate RM's do not make an "edit war" or a "battleground". Dial down the rhetoric a bit, and let's just keep talking this stuff out, OK? So, there were a couple of RM's that took place, and a couple of swapped around articles for redirects. No big deal, especially since now we're all here. How about we concentrate on figuring out what, if anything, should be changed in the MoS (and get the damn page unlocked!).
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 04:48, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
oppose A consistency backed by reliable sources confers legitimacy. Let's at least try to appear professional. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 21:23, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
You know, professional encyclopedists try to write in English, so that they will be understood. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 04:30, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
You use this "write in English" thing a lot, so it must be compelling to you; is there anywhere where you explain what it means and what it has to do with this debate? ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 14:22, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
Yes. Several places are in this very series of discussions: if reliable sources in English show an overwhelming preference for one style, follow them; if not, permit the styles in common usage unless there is consensus that one of them is more beneficial to the encyclopedia. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 14:56, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
RS' preference for one style does not mean the other isn't English. What does any of this have to do with this proposal, anyway? ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 17:37, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
At a certain point preference for one style does mean the other isn't English, or thorn would still be English, and Shaw's dont and wont would be English now; any plausible typography can be found once in the millions of books printed. But the assumption that eccentric typography makes us look "professional" was the root of the post; it merely makes us look eccentric. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:09, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
I talked about consistency, this proposal has nothing to do with which style is better or more eccentric. Your comments here seem to be about a different proposal on this page, perhaps? ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 18:32, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
You leapt from "Let's try to appear professional" to opposing the moratorium; if this is not based on a claim that Mexican-American War (the spelling used by almost all who use the phrase, including professional historians) is unprofessional, it seems utterly ungrounded. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:02, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
I'm opposing the first-major-contributor rule proposed here. You realize this section is about that, right? (I can't tell if you do or not.) My opposition has nothing to do with the war article. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 20:17, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
Oppose: Edit warring, for whatever reason, should be handled by dispute resolution, not contravention of the MOS. This issue is significantly different than American vs. British English, which is about correct grammar from different regions rather than a style disagreement. — Bility (talk) 22:07, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
Support. The difference between British and American is a style disagreement. The fact that we are willing to tolerate such obvious differences as honor/honour, got/gotten, as he has/as he has done makes the cries for consistency on this issue particularly uncalled-for. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:41, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
Oppose. There are legitimate reasons for our encyclopedia to be written in multiple varieties of English. Conversely, even if we assume that the styles in question are equally correct, mandating their coexistence is comparable to locking in "the typeface chosen by the first major contributor" or "the page color chosen by the first major contributor." (Their automatic nature is irrelevant, given the fact that the proposed rule actually would be more difficult to enforce than the status quo is.)
Site-wide consistency isn't always a realistic goal, but this is an instance in which it is. The use of either context-dependent characters or the same character across the board is vastly preferable to a setup in which we expend far greater effort to achieve far worse results, purely to ensure that no one "wins" (i.e. to ensure that everyone loses). —David Levy 19:32, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
Comment. I don't care either way on this moritorium, but I will say that FA, A-class, or GA reviewers do have the right to require that hyphens and dashes conform to the MOS before they consider promoting an article. Other than that, there should be no sanction imposed on any editor for an MOS violation in and of itself. To threaten to topic ban an editor for refusing to change hyphens to en-dashes is ridiculous. If I'm in a hurry when I edit an article, I just use the hyphen key on my keyboard instead of trying to find the en-dash link at the bottom of the page. Cla68 (talk) 00:10, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
In some cases an en dash is preferable to a hyphen, or vice versa, but in others (that may be within roles 2 and 3 in the MOS) it seems that either can be used and it is the choice of the editor. A guideline that recommends retaining the original choice for these may deter repeated disputes, or at least direct them to the MOS discussion page and away from the articles. Peter E. James (talk) 00:25, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
Oppose. This would endorse the first editor, regardless of whether he/she is right. Axl ¤ [Talk] 09:01, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
This could be fixed by adding “unless there is consensus to do so on the article's talk page”. ― A. di M._plé^dréachtaí 12:02, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
Oppose. Just like with the "variant of English" everlasting debate, using the first major contributor to determine anything regards the editors above the content, which is an unimaginative solution and far from what WP is about. – Kieran T ^(talk) 12:14, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

RfC: simple resolution to disagreements over dashes

Everyone wants a resolution to the tension surrounding how the MoS guidance on en dashes is applied. I've sought advice from a number of editors on how to proceed; I've also persuaded a few people on the dash side of things that a compromise is necessary if a community-led solution is to be achieved.

The bone of contention has involved only some uses of the en dash: those that are treated with relative inconsistency by hard-copy style guides and sources (e.g. Mexican–American War versus Mexican-American War). By contrast, en dashes appear to be part of the furniture for phrase breaks, music album lists, and ranges, and I believe that editors who don't want to key in these dashes are generally happy to allow others to come along later and fix their hyphens.

This is a good-faith attempt to gain support for a short paragraph to be added under the existing six numbered points, endorsing orderly and coordinated decisions for exempting an article from points 4, 5, or 6. All six points and the proposed additional paragraph ("Where consensus ...") appear below. I've reordered the points to make them more convenient for readers; nothing has been touched within the points, except for a fix of the section-link to "em dashes" in Point 1.

Please add your name to Support or Oppose, with only the briefest comment, and/or place an extended comment in the subsection below. Thanks for your interest. Tony (talk) 15:46, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

____________________

En dashes (–, –) have several distinct roles.

As a stylistic alternative to em dashes.
To separate items in a list—for example, in articles about music albums, en dashes are used between track titles and durations, and between musicians and their instruments. In this role, en dashes are always spaced.
To stand for to or through in ranges (pp. 211–19, 64–75%, the 1939–45 war). Ranges expressed using prepositions (from 450 to 500 people or between 450 and 500 people) should not use dashes (not from 450–500 people or between 450–500 people). Number ranges must be spelled out if they involve a negative value or might be misconstrued as a subtraction (−10 to 10, not −10–10).
To stand for to or versus (male–female ratio, 4–3 win, Lincoln–Douglas debate, France–Germany border).
To stand for and between independent elements (diode–transistor logic, Michelson–Morley experiment). An en dash is not used for a hyphenated personal name (Lennard-Jones potential, named after John Lennard-Jones), nor a hyphenated place name (Guinea-Bissau), nor with an element that lacks lexical independence (the prefix Sino- in Sino-Japanese trade).
In compounds whose elements themselves contain hyphens or spaces (the anti-conscription–pro-conscription debate) and when prefixing an element containing a space (pre–World War II technologies, ex–prime minister) – but usually not when prefixing an element containing a hyphen (non-government-owned corporations, semi-labor-intensive industries). However, recasting the phrase (the conscription debate, technologies prior to World War II) may be better style than compounding.

Where consensus based on a strong majority of reliable sources is arrived at on an article's talk page, an exception to points 4, 5, or 6 may be made for the article and any others that are closely related. The debate should be notified at the relevant talk pages and at WT:MOS. Tony (talk) 15:46, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

This now has limited prospect of consensus. For a proposal adapted to many of the opposes, see #Amended proposal below. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 05:51, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Support

Tony (talk) 15:46, 6 May 2011 (UTC) (as proposer)
~~V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 16:24, 6 May 2011 (UTC)~~
Zakhalesh (talk) 16:29, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
vote early, vote often ;-) Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 16:47, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
Imzadi 1979 → 16:58, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
Jenks24 (talk) 17:09, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
A definite improvement; wording more parallel to other such cases (some style guides recommend or may be determined by consensus, without all the qualifiers) may attract (and deserve) more support. Thank you for leaning over backward, Tony. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:50, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
I like the idea, even though the requirement to “notify” discussions about exceptions at WT:MOS is a bit weird. I'd just say “Hyphens can be used in lieu of en dashes in the situations described by points 4, 5, and 6, provided there is consensus to do so on an article's talk page.” ― A. di M._plé^dréachtaí 22:30, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
To the extent that this compromise will put an end to the hassles, I support it. Hopefully the ten or so people polarized against it for different reasons below won't force us to keep arguing forever, and I don't see that they have any better compromises to offer. I thank Tony for proposing it and Pmanderson for agreeing; looks hopeful. Dicklyon (talk) 23:15, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
Oh for heaven's sake, either this or more weeks of arguing. I choose this. /ƒETCH COMMS / 04:00, 7 May 2011 (UTC)
Adabow (talk · contribs) 04:10, 7 May 2011 (UTC)
Support, with extension to WikiProject consensus. Axl ¤ [Talk] 09:00, 7 May 2011 (UTC)
Support, seems a good compromise.--Kotniski (talk) 11:39, 7 May 2011 (UTC)
Support - not perfect, but at least its a reasonable standard that will help minimize disagreements. PAR (talk) 13:56, 7 May 2011 (UTC)
Support -- a step in the right direction. --JN 466 00:37, 8 May 2011 (UTC)
Support. I′m no fan of the spaced en dash as a stylistic alternative to the em dash (as nearly as I can tell, in the US it’s less common than the spaced em dash), but overall I think the proposal is reasonable, and infinitely preferable to interminable discussion. JeffConrad (talk) 04:14, 8 May 2011 (UTC)
moved from oppose: Unless the character of the debate changes quite a bit, it seems clear that my dream of consistency wrt mundane things like punctuation is not going to happen anytime soon. Until that day comes, and with that objection noted, I can support this proposal as a compromise. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 17:12, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

Oppose

This is Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style#The_revo-lite, and mitigates, but does not eliminate, some if that RfC's problems. I'll just quote myself with a small modification: "I think we should derive our MOS from the aggregation of RSs, then impose that on every article. My rationale is that a consistency derived from reliable sources confers legitimacy, and to determine style separately in [some articles] is just too much work." Rather than making an exception to 4/5/6, those items should be changed to reflect usage in reliable sources. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 17:11, 6 May 2011 (UTC) moved to support. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 17:12, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
This is too bureaucratic, as it will force people to go through yet more useless debates in order to justify "exceptions". Counter-proposal: points 4–6 should not be presented as a prescription-plus-possible-exceptions, but simply as an option on a par with the alternative, i.e.: "En-dashes can also be used, as a stylistic alternative to hyphens, in the following cases: …". This leaves it at the same level of optionality as the choice between em- and en-dashes in parentheticals. Fut.Perf. ☼ 17:16, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
I agree with this objection; indeed with most of the objections that this is too inflexible. But it should permit local consensus to decide these matters; if the reporting provision produces regular infusions of dash enthusiasts to oppose any move, Arbitration remains. If this fails, we can propose something more reasonable. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:12, 7 May 2011 (UTC)
This paragraph is worded to strengthen the position of the MOS people, when it should be going the other way. Projects should be able to choose their own policy regarding dashes that overrides the MOS. This puts all the power in the hands of MOS people and all the burden of proof on anyone who dares defy it. --JaGa^talk 17:25, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
Whenever possible we should have one source of style information, namely the MOS, not spread debates throughout the wiki. I think this would result in different articles using different styles, which defeats the purpose of having a manual of style. I think we should be concerned about Wikipedia's style, not our sources' styles and if a change is desired by the community we should come to consensus here to change it. — Bility (talk) 17:41, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
Since en dashes in those situations are always minority use, the 'option' would mean that we could never use them if someone goes on a crusade against them. He could simply use a bot to change all en dashes between letters to hyphens across WP, and then demand a majority of RSs to restore them. (That goes against BOLD, but BOLD isn't policy, while RS is.) I mean, look at the Mexican–American War case, when we've long had local consensus to en-dash wars, and publishers who use disjunctive en dashes universally use them here. It would be easier to simply concede the end result by deleting cases 4–6. — kwami (talk) 18:37, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
This proposal about dashes, although made in good faith, overlooks two issues: (1) its relationship to what WikiProjects current observe (as others have pointed out in this RfC), & (2) the fact that article titles is a special case because it needs to accommodate user keyboards, few if any support the difference between en- & em-dashes. Since (2) was the issue which set off the edit war over the title of Mexican-American War, any proposal must address this issue -- or this dispute will end up at ArbCom anyway. -- Llywrch (talk
In response to the above, that this proposal makes it difficult for users to find articles, I received this comment on my talk page. (Note carefully: further comments about this RfC which appear on my Talk page will be ignored & deleted.) The comment stated, in effect, that first-time users & anyone else who is not familiar with our practices & conventions yet wants to use Wikipedia to look up things, should first make themselves familiar with our practices & conventions. As Charles Babbage once said, "I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." -- llywrch (talk) 23:39, 7 May 2011 (UTC)
With respect to your point (2) in your original vote, you should note that this was discussed earlier and it turns out that the software has been updated so that your concern is no longer an issue. Redirects to articles that use dashes work perfectly now, even if your linking to a section on the content page. See #Avoiding redirects above, for a fuller explanation.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 00:30, 8 May 2011 (UTC)
So show me which key on my keyboard produces an "em" dash. (It's not a Mac.) Now consider just how easy it is for the average computer user to produce an "em" dash. Also, explain to me just how using the standard dash/hyphen in article titles harms the reliability of Wikipedia. For the record, some specialized academic periodicals as late as the 1990s were routinely published as mimeographs or photocopies produced with common typewriters, & AFAIK their reputation wasn't harmed by the resulting appearance. -- llywrch (talk) 20:41, 8 May 2011 (UTC)
We're trying to draw a distinction about which the vast majority of readers and editors is not even aware. There is no way this or any similar proposal will ever be implemented with reasonably high compliance. Even if you had a magic wand that would "fix" all usage overnight, it's would be only a matter of hours before it would start devolving again. The only practical consistent, reliable and professional solution is to eschew the uses of dashes, which can be easily and efficiently policed and enforced by automation. --Born2cycle (talk) 19:27, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
Basically agree with ErikHaugen. If a preponderance of reliable sources use a hyphen, then it is appropriate to use a hyphen in the Wikipedia article, particularly but not exclusively in the title. Rlendog (talk) 20:28, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
Oppose all "rules" which imply in any way that normal editing practice (that is, using standard keyboard characters) is in any way improper for any Wikipedia article. Collect (talk) 22:17, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
Oppose per Bility. The convention should be consistent across en.wikipedia, not contingent on whatever typographical conventions happened to be used in the sources for any given article. Mexican–American War and Texas–Indian Wars shouldn't have different typography just because one happens to use a bunch of sources from, say, U. Chicago Press and the other uses sources from Harvard U. Press. —Caesura ^(t) 23:41, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
That is not a problem; the real problem is that the actual phrase used for the latter is (excluding Wikipedia reprints) normally Texas Indian wars (i.e. those Indian wars which involved Texas). In both cases publishers generally agree with each other, with the occasional book being an anomaly. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 00:13, 7 May 2011 (UTC)
This proposal is trying to establish rules in a way that is over-academic and not in accord with the purposes of Wikipedia as a general reference source. The rules about hyphens and en dashes arise from printers, as a way of providing a standardized working format for their trade, but have no real intellectual significance, In the typewriter days, they provided a clear difference between informal composition on even the most sophisticate machines, and the formal composition a printer could achieve, and this continued into the early computer period. It has become progressively easier for any computer user to imitate formal printing, and given the tools for making simple things complex, it's the nature of some people to try to use them. This might make some sense for computer composition designed for out[put on high resolution printers, but it makes no sense at all for output designed primarily to be read on a web browser with screen resolution. The rendering of wikitext and other browser output is so crude and erratic that paying much respect to details is essentially invisible during ordinary reading--it can only be seen if one is looking for it. I agree with Collect, above--even though anyone can learn to produce the printers-style output, there is no reason why anyone ought to bother, and it makes us compatible with the less sophisticated users if we do not require it. Especially, the use of en dashes in titles creates confusion. We can correct redirects, but why should we even need to? Just as Google designs its search function so punctuation does not matter, so can we. The only reason I can see for even permitting en-dashes is to aid future developments in higher resolution and printed versions, but I'd support automatically converting all of them in wikitext to hyphens (and doing so with minus signs also). It's analogous to the way we insist on straight " ' quotes, even though it's easy enough to use the curved ones. We have real problems with accuracy and understandability and basic grammar, so why should we bother with niceties irrelevant to our medium? DGG ( talk ) 01:19, 7 May 2011 (UTC)
Recommendation 5 "To stand for and between independent elements" is uncommon even in style/grammar guides. Mostly absent in those listed at en dash. And the same goes for 4, i.e. to stand for "versus". Tijfo098 (talk) 03:46, 7 May 2011 (UTC)
It would be ridiculous if every page or WikiProject had its own style. We need a Wikipedia-wide style that should not be changed just because other sources have a different style. McLerristarr | Mclay1 03:52, 7 May 2011 (UTC)
MOS requirements that are in conflict with common English usage are troublesome, as both this discussion and the frequent debate over "logical" quotation shows. I'm actually in favor of the use of logical quotation which might make my positions inconsistent, but I can't support any wikipedia rule that tries to change the common names of things just to satisfy prescriptivist grammarians. WP:COMMONNAME is the stronger requirement in my view, and supporters of this proposal do not respect it. Quale (talk) 07:44, 7 May 2011 (UTC)
Isn't this proposal to endorse an orderly process for using common usage where appropriate? I don't get it. Tony (talk) 11:02, 7 May 2011 (UTC)
No, this is a proposal for doing so far less often than is appropriate, while making any effort for common usage jump through hoops. I support because it does, at last, acknowledge common usage and make following it possible. I urge others to do so because half a loaf is better than nothing. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:38, 7 May 2011 (UTC)
First, attempting to enforce style rules for linotypists on users whose keyboards don't include the en-dash character is futile. Second, the proposed rules lack transparency on essential points. Why should "Mexican-American War" be treated differently than "Lincoln-Douglas debates"? Third, there's never (per my ancient copy of Fowler's Modern English Usage) been real-world agreement on these matters, so we should adopt the simplest rules as practical (I like DGG's suggestion of simply abandoning the en-dash entirely). Fourth, any set of punctuation rules -- as highlighted by item 6 -- which calls on editors to revise text, even away from its clearest, most natural, most readable forms, to avoid arcane disputes over which punctuation mark to use is more trouble than it can possibly be worth. Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 23:23, 7 May 2011 (UTC)
(1) WT:MOS is not a database, i.e., WT:MOS is not a collection point to record hyphen discussions. (2) Article titles should be allowed to have different rules. Unscintillating (talk) 00:04, 8 May 2011 (UTC)
Moved to oppose. This was never a completely satisfactory compromise, but it's become apparent to me over the course of the discussion below, and some of the opinions above, that this is too imperfect a compromise. One way or another, I think we can do better.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 17:29, 8 May 2011 (UTC)
Oppose addition of exception paragraph. Wikipedia's style guidelines are not overruled by usage in reliable sources. Otherwise we would just replace the whole thing with the sentence "Use whatever the original sources use." Whether or not reliable sources use hyphens or en dashes has as much to do with the time period and printing technology as it has to do with actual stylistic decision-making. Kaldari (talk) 00:28, 9 May 2011 (UTC)
Then "Wikipedia's style guidelines" are a parlor game, irrelevant to the task of communicating in English. Please go play it somewhere else. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:07, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Can't believe anyone actually cares enough to debate it at all and don't even want to know what the result of this RFC is

Beeblebrox (talk) 04:22, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

comment about caring Gerardw (talk) 11:07, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Surprised to see this comment from this particular long time editor. Honestly, I don't really care about what goes between Mexican and American either, but I care about Wikipedia. And I can't see disparaging folks who care and are willing to put their time in to try to make it better. Yeah, some of the behavior has gotten over the top but that happens sometimes when passionate people are working hard to achieve something. Those who don't care don't have to be here, right? Gerardw (talk) 11:07, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Carrite (talk) 15:51, 8 May 2011 (UTC). I can sign on to this, actually. Much ado about nothing — style is not standardized across Wikipedia, nor can it ever be, nor should it ever be. People write in their own style for their own reasons, others come along and tweak things in their own particular idiom, and life goes on. Micromanaging style like this does nothing but cause the proliferation of huge bureaucratic documents that nobody reads anyway. Stop scaring away new content-creators with pointless micromanagement. By the way, did you see what I did with the m-dash there? Strictly non-standard... Carrite (talk) 15:51, 8 May 2011 (UTC)
You obviously care, then. Add your vote to the "oppose" section, where your position that the MoS shouldn't "micromanage style" can actually affect the outcome here.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 16:37, 8 May 2011 (UTC)
Strictly non-standard? Though apparently deprecated by most style guides (including this MOS), the spaced em dash is fairly common in actual use, and we have a template ({{emdash}}) that produces a spaced—em dash (the first space is nonbreaking, so the template does save some effort and clutter). I personally prefer hair spaces on both sides of either dash, but it’s not currently an option in HTML, because most browsers inexplicably don’t support it. JeffConrad (talk) 20:17, 10 May 2011 (UTC)
On my user page I used this—which should be reasonably well supported, but maybe a tad too fancy for an article (unless made into a template). ― A. di M._plé^dréachtaí 20:36, 10 May 2011 (UTC)
Not something I′d want to enter without a template . . . FF 4 doesn’t handle line breaks properly with this (of course, it doesn’t handle them properly with an unspaced dash, either). This approach (em — dash) is similar in appearance, and seems to break properly, though it also is more than I’d care to enter without a template. It’s hard to say whether this would fall within the spirit of unspaced; I think a 1⁄12 em space (em—dash) would certainly do so, but unfortunately, I don’t know how to do it without getting the same line break problem just mentioned. Anyway, we’re getting a bit off the main topic. JeffConrad (talk) 21:47, 10 May 2011 (UTC)
We are still supposed to be the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit. Whether it's dashes and hyphens, or elaborate citation templates, ease of editing and legibility to the untutored in the source text of Wikipedia articles trumps any consideration of prettiness. Anything that litters the source text with Unicode entities for the sake of prettiness is a Bad Thing. Let's all just use the hyphen that's on standard English language computer keyboards. - Smerdis of Tlön - killing the human spirit since 2003! 15:13, 10 May 2011 (UTC)
- Please view the source for this sentence – is it hard to read on your browser? It has a dash. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 16:31, 10 May 2011 (UTC)
  With the default setup, it’s tough to distinguish from a hyphen—in this respect, Wikimedia software is somewhat of a bizarre combination of WISYWIG and markup. wikEd puts identifying marks over dashes and minus signs, making them easier to identify. JeffConrad (talk) 18:13, 10 May 2011 (UTC)
  The question here is does my ndash make the sentence harder to edit – imagine a typical editor editing the text I am writing right now – do these dashes inconvenience the editor at all? Whether you can distinguish dashes and hyphens is a totally separate issue and probably depends on your font. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 18:28, 10 May 2011 (UTC)
  I think several issues were raised, including “legibility”, which I took to mean difficulty distinguishing in the source among several horizontal marks that look essentially the same with the default editing environment. Legibility definitely depends on the font; the dashes are easy to distinguish if an editor has selected a proportional font (or installed something like wikEd). But there’s no free lunch; at least with my browser (FF 4), using a proportional font makes it almost impossible to distinguish two consecutive ASCII apostrophes from an ASCII double quote (perhaps another reason to use the proper quotes for text . . .). Arguably, it’s more difficult to edit when you can’t tell what you’re editing. It should be obvious from my other comments that I don′t support treating Wikipedia as a typewriter (wasn’t getting away from that limitation one of the benefits of laser printers and graphical displays?), but that doesn’t mean there aren’t a few issues, even if they’re comparatively minor. JeffConrad (talk) 19:02, 10 May 2011 (UTC)
I somewhat agree on citation templates, which to me involve far more extra work than all special characters combined. I suppose templates do help ensure uniformity once the user has determined how to use them, and they do provide metadata of sorts. But if the latter benefit is the objective, we might as well just use XML for all markup. JeffConrad (talk) 18:13, 10 May 2011 (UTC)
The only way I can reliably produce any dash character other than '-' is by entering "–" or "—". I don't want to type all that newfangled computer language junk when I can just use '-'. If I retyped your sentence, it would end up with a '-' rather than a '–', and I can't tell them apart here either. I've never used anything other than the default editor. I'd just as soon it not became Real Important to anyone as to which one is used anywhere. The only possible rule I could endorse for using dashes is that no dash other than keyboard hyphen be used in an article title. If it becomes Real Important that one dash or another besides keyboard hyphen be used in certain places, it seems to me that this is a job for a bot. But for editing I think the only rule should be to use the one you can make easily. - Smerdis of Tlön - killing the human spirit since 2003! 19:33, 10 May 2011 (UTC)
There are quite a few ways to enter dashes and other special characters—see WP:How to make dashes and Help:Entering special characters. JeffConrad (talk) 20:09, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Smerdis – that is fine. Anyone can keep entering hyphens; nobody here is even suggesting that anyone is going to have to use dashes. Nobody will make fun of you if you use a hyphen. The only question here is this – If someone edits article with text like "The Haugen-Smerdis Theory" to instead read "The Haugen–Smerdis Theory", is that ok? Is it something that one should revert? If possible, is it ok to have a bot do it? What happens if two editors disagree about the proper form – should they have a big debate about it at the article's talk page or should the MOS just pick one and the disputants defer to the MOS and get on with their lives? Obviously at least 99% of folks don't care which form is used. But what about those two that do care? ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 20:20, 10 May 2011 (UTC)
It is not OK to have a bot do it. Even if consensus supported the best conceivable advice, some of that advice would involve the meaning of the phrase in question. The only things bots can do are third-rate solutions like never having en dashes at all. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 00:32, 11 May 2011 (UTC)
Perhaps. Just remember that whenever a bot can't do it, it won't get done, excluding an insignificant fraction of 6,817,504 articles. Art LaPella (talk) 01:41, 11 May 2011 (UTC)
Unless it's something that readers are likely to do, even <gasp> readers who haven't consulted this Sacred Page. That is, after all, the wiki method; it works reasonably well to edit our grammar and spelling. Another reason to set up advice which expresses consensus of l'homme moyen grammatique. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:48, 11 May 2011 (UTC)
I agree readers seldom consult this Sacred Page, and therefore anything readers are likely to do has already been done. That doesn't include dashes at all; bots ordinarily do those. And you seem unaware of how much grammar and spelling is corrected by WP:AutoWikiBrowser/General fixes and WP:AutoWikiBrowser/Typos. Art LaPella (talk) 04:02, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

“[W]henever a bot can't do it, it won't get done” is a quite bleak view of the future of Wikipedia, considering that WP:NPOV, WP:V and WP:NOR – all of which are arguably way more important that WP:NDASH – cannot possibly be enforced by bots. ― A. di M._plé^dréachtaí 15:06, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
But NPOV, V and NOR are debated throughout Wikipedia. They don't compare at all to the maybe 20 editors who understand most of WP:DASH, and hardly anyone understands the more obscure rules from the Manual's subpages.

Oops, statistics don't back me up. Only 4 out of 10 randomly chosen en dashes were created by automation (AWB, Citation bot, SmackBot, and DOIbot). Art LaPella (talk) 23:56, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

Sure, nobody is suggesting a bot will be able to do them all. But really not the point at hand. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 16:44, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

Comments

Coordination with WP:TITLE

As I noted at the end of the discussion above (in a round-about manner), I think that we need to address coordination between the MoS and the policy at Wikipedia:Article titles. This RfC is the first step, and I think that it's good that it's here. Step two is to add something to WP:TITLE which addresses how the MoS guidance affects article titles specifically.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 16:29, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

I don't disagree... but at the same time, we should examine how the provisions of WP:TITLE effect what we say in the MOS. Blueboar (talk) 16:49, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

True.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 17:22, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

Applicability

Despite the usage of the recent war example, a large part of the pro-hyphen side's argument was that MOS:NDASH didn't even address this usage one way or another. This RfC would not have solved the problem as cleanly as one might think. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 17:17, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
@Fut.Perf. – wouldn't you still get debates and disagreements at articles if it was an "option"? I can't see the advantage over the current proposal. Tony (talk) 17:24, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
- Of course, an "optionality" rule, here as everywhere else, comes with the implicit expectation of a concomitant "don't fix it if it ain't broken" rule, just as it works for other areas of optionality (ENGVAR etc.): just leave stuff the way it is. At least if people were reasonable, this could be left implicit. Since people maybe aren't so reasonable, it might be necessary to spell this out explicitly, but I'd prefer it without. Fut.Perf. ☼ 17:34, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
  I understand, and am sympathetic with, this idea. However, the primary goal of the Manual of Style is to dictate a consistent style throughout Wikipedia. Just as policy dictates expected behavior and expectations, the MoS governs style issues. Again, just like policy, the MoS is not intended to be absolutely rigid (I don't forsee anyone being blocked for not following the MoS, for example), but it should inform all of us what the community has settled on in terms of stylistic choices. Everything is basically "optional" here on Wikipedia until and unless someone objects to it. At that point a discussion should take place, and I for one think that it's better to have an informative MoS (or policy and guidelines) to reference when such discussions do take place. Just because this is here, that doesn't preclude the possibility of exceptions being made ("I understand that the MoS says <this>, but I think we should allow <that> in this case because...").
  — V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 18:29, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
  I see your point, but as far as I'm concerned, I've made my position clear in the above section under what conditions the MOS should or shouldn't mandate a single option where practice out in the real world has variance. The dash issue is not among them. Having varying use of hyphens and dashes in these very few cases is no worse than having varying use of en- and em-dashes elsewhere. However, if it is felt that uniformity is a higher priority than I would consider it to be, then the only legitimate choice the MOS can make is the one in favour of the simpler and the more widely used option. The MOS doesn't have the right to impose on our editors a style choice that to most of us is alien. Fut.Perf. ☼ 19:07, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
  OK, understood. Just to be clear though, in your view this proposal seeks to "impose on our editors a style choice that to most of us is alien.", correct?
  — V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 19:35, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
As long as we're making it explicitly optional, we should change France–Germany border to RS-cited French–German border to head off repeats of the silly "not adjectives" argument. — kwami (talk) 18:48, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
- Neither should be included. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:44, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Scope

JaGa, your point largely remains, but there are no special "MOS People" with lots of power. Anyone can start a discussion like this one and present reasons to fix the MOS. The question here is should the project be consistent with itself or with publishers who work in the specific subject area when it comes to typography? I would say that for specialist things like chemical formulas (H–Cl vs. H-Cl) we should follow the subject-area publishers (and have MOS subpages for the consensus distillation), but for really general things like what is covered at WP:ENDASH, I don't think there's any reason to sacrifice consistency for the whims of the specialist publishers. [[User:Er