Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Layout

Periods at ends of links in see-also sections

Maxeto0910 (talk · contribs) has been adding periods to the end of see-also links when the short description provided in the link happens to resemble a grammatically complete sentence. Example: the link to Immerman–Szelepcsényi theorem in Savitch's theorem, provided using {{annotated link}} to incorporate the short description of the linked article, currently "Nondeterministic space complexity classes are closed under complementation" (but significantly too long and in need of shortening). My position is that see-also entries in general, and the ones generated by annotated links in particular, are more often than not only sentence fragments, and that for consistency we should use a format for see-also sections in which the period is omitted from all entries. I don't see any guidance on this issue in MOS:SEEALSO, but this is consistent with all examples provided there, including the "Joe Shmoe" example which happens to resemble a grammatically complete sentence. Should this be addressed more explicitly there? —David Eppstein (talk) 22:39, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

In your edit summary, you wrote "As a general rule see-also links do not use periods and I see no exception for this case."

I'm just asking for that general rule because I couldn't find any guideline which states that. That's why I requested a link to a corresponding guideline in my edit summary.

The Joe Shmoe example in MOS:SEEALSO is merely a sentence fragment, as the description lacks the subject because it's obvious from the context to which it refers — "[He] made a similar achievement on April 4, 2005".

If there's no guideline regulating this Wikipedia-specific issue (yet), which it seems like, I'd argue that the general rules of the English grammar should apply, after which every complete sentence should end with a period. Maxeto0910 (talk) 23:26, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

Guidance at MOS:LISTFORMAT: basically, don't mix sentences and sentence fragments in a list, but if every item is a full sentence, should end with a period / full stop. —Joeyconnick (talk) 17:50, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

Acceptable sorting orders of "Further reading" sections

I've recently sorted a couple unsorted "Further reading" sections by publication date, earliest first, but have had this sort order opposed by Skyerise over at User talk:Tollens/Archive 4#You call that sorted?. It seems to me from a reading of both MOS:FURTHER and Wikipedia:Further reading that while such sections are frequently alphabetized, sorting chronologically is also appropriate. I would think that a chronological sort order makes more sense in further reading sections.

Alphabetization is of course so that it is easier to locate a given entry in a list, which is important for a general reference section because it will be referenced by inline citations – readers will therefore be searching a general reference section for a particular entry. In the case of further reading sections, however, there is no possible way for a reader to know in advance what entries are contained in the list, because they weren't referenced in the text of the article at any point – otherwise they would belong in a general reference section. Readers are then never searching a further reading section, but instead browsing the section. As described at Wikipedia:Further reading, this allows readers to do multiple things: skip to the newest writings recommended in the section, or see how opinions expressed on the topic have changed over time. An alphabetized list allows neither, allowing only for works to be grouped by author, which is not helpful unless the authors are especially well-known (in which case yes, alphabetization is likely of more use).

Clarifying MOS:FURTHER to either explicitly allow chronological ordering, explicitly disallow it, or alternatively specify what cases the "usually" currently in the guideline does not cover, would be appreciated. Tollens (talk) 23:13, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

I of course don't mean to suggest that in either case the list should be changed from one to the other, because as a purely stylistic change doing so would violate MOS:STYLERET. I am wondering only about lists that are already unsorted and new further reading sections. Tollens (talk) 23:17, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

@Tollens: I apologize for my tone yesterday, but there must be a good reason to sort a bibliography chronologically. Normally further reading should only contain material that could be used as a reference, but simply hasn't been cited in a footnote yet. The MoS also says that further reading should be presented in the same way that the reference bibliography is presented. Alphabetic order helps facilitate the integration of a newly cited further reading item into the list of cited works.

There are sometimes good reasons to sort chronologically, particularly in showing the development of an idea say in philosophy or some other historical development: but when doing so, the date should be presented first on the line, which means all the citation should be manually reformatted to present the date first.

I suggest that the writers of WP:FURTHER did not anticipate that the reader may not have ever written a research paper in college and WP:FURTHER should be clarified that the standard alphabetic order used in nearly every academic publication is strongly preferred and then give examples of when and how different orders might be used where they are actually useful. WP:MOSLOW should also be revised to include instructions on how to order bibliographies containing works of multiple authors. Skyerise (talk) 11:28, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

Word count per paragraph guidance

Is there any guidance anywhere for how long is "too long" for a paragraph in the new Vector skin or mobile view? This isn't a question about how to write better paragraphs and I'm not looking for answers about writing style. It's a question more about web accessibility. eg, now that the default skin maintains a narrower paragraph, do we hit "wall of text" problems in shorter paragraphs than before, or is that concern less relevant now? -- asilvering (talk) 18:45, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

No. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:28, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

@Graham87: Thinker78 (talk) 03:41, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

It doesn't affect screen readers. Graham87 (talk) 04:36, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

Help Formating

Hello

On the list List of universities in Ecuador I can't get the image to stay to the right and the table to the left in order to mimic the page in spanish --HarveyPrototype (talk) 05:30, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

@HarveyPrototype: This is the page as it stood at the time that you posted here. I don't see what the problem is. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 13:48, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

Hello @Redrose64 thank you for your time. I just saw the page and it has been formated. HarveyPrototype (talk) 17:21, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

Oh, I see; it's a page width issue. If your screen is narrow, or you use a skin that constrains the width (such as Vector 2022), or if you zoom in, the table may then be too wide to fit between the image stack and the left sidebar. The problem does affect the current version of the page, but only appears at narrower widths or greater zoom levels. If you go to the spanish page and zoom in a few times, you will see the problem appear there too. Really this should have been a matter for WP:HD, since this is the page for discussing improvements to Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Layout. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:01, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for your input HarveyPrototype (talk) 15:12, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

External links

I was told this section must follow the references section but for the vast majority of articles the references section is so huge and long, no sane human being will ever be able to scroll beyond it to find External Links, so they are basically lost for the reader.

And secondly in actual books References is the normally the very last section of the book.

I don't understand the rationale for actually burying/hiding/making inaccessible the external links. Artem S. Tashkinov (talk) 10:57, 24 May 2024 (UTC)

First claim would need some stronger foundation other than just your opinions about the inconvenience of scrolling. I assume you're talking about mobile users, who can collapse sections.

Second point is irrelevant, since books don't have an external links section. (It's also not true? Most books with an index place it after the bibliography.) Remsense诉 11:06, 24 May 2024 (UTC)