Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 218

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MOS:DONTHIDE is outdated

It totally makes sense to collapse part of an infobox by default. Doing so totally does not have to break format on a mobile phone. You could even set the format on a phone so that the infobox appeared as a tab to the side of the screen. Swipe in, infobox, swipe out, article. Infoboxes such as those on cities are important and useful. But they break the article frequently, especially the image placement. It's long overdue a refinement isn't it. ~ R.T.G 06:19, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

To clarify, I support changing DONTHIDE only with respect to infoboxes. Ergo Sum 17:51, 2 December 2019 (UTC)
  • Leaning toward oppose. Please build some sandboxed test-cases. I'm not entirely opposed to changing DONTHIDE, in theory, as long as any new permissiveness is constrained to infoboxes, and has some very clear and limited rationales. But we need to be certain this is not going to present usability and accessibility problems. We already make an exception for navboxes, which collapse by default if two or more are present, but they are not really article content, just a trivial navigation feature. Infoboxes are definitely part of the article content, so how usable and accessible they are matters more. However, as I said at the referenced other discussion, too often collapsing part of an infobox is just an excuse to dump more trivia into it. The fact that a parameter exists in an infobox template does not require that it be filled at every article using the template. Editors need to be more selective, and sometimes reduce an infobox to a reasonable size for the article in which it is found. We do this by trimming trivia from infoboxes, not by hiding it inside collapsing widgets that require various JS and CSS to operate. The whole point of an infobox is to provide key details in an at-a-glance manner. If the material can no longer be read at a glance then it probably shouldn't be in an infobox at all.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:58, 30 November 2019 (UTC)
    • Note that navboxes don't appear on mobile, while infoboxes do. If the objective here to make infoboxes not appear on mobile, I'm pretty sure there won't be any consensus for that. --Gonnym (talk) 16:01, 30 November 2019 (UTC)
      Indeed. I would think that the primary impetus for infoboxes is their convenience for mobile users.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:07, 30 November 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose triggers also other technical issues, e.g. often makes section linking jump too low. Also the "image placement" is not a good reason: is it OK to mess up image layout when opening the infobox? – bad image layout is something that needs to be addressed as well for the open as for the closed infobox. A collapsed infobox would make editors mind less to sort out such layout issues (while the problem doesn't appear when saving the page without afterwards uncollapsing). --Francis Schonken (talk) 16:15, 30 November 2019 (UTC)
  • Solution: The solution here, instead of fixing programming language either on WP or on smartphones, which is a grand request, we change the code, so that it automatically never sends the collapse commands which cause content to collapse, to a smartphone, but still send it to a full size browser. There's less to worry about.  Done ~ R.T.G 23:38, 2 December 2019 (UTC)
    • Wouldn't call this a solution. The text/image/table/whatever was hidden for some reason. Why would hiding it on desktop, where you have a large screen and mouse be valid, but then showing it for mobile users? As I said somewhere else, if you find yourself wanting to hide something, then it probably does not need to be there in the first place. --Gonnym (talk) 18:40, 11 December 2019 (UTC)
    • And again, the technical problem is deep links not jumping right with whatever collapses above where the link should jump to. No, not a solution, and still opposing a change to guidance. --Francis Schonken (talk) 18:58, 11 December 2019 (UTC)
      • I'm talking about the placement of images only. The size of the most important infoboxes interferes with image placement a great deal, everybody knows this. You shouldn't delete the infoboxes, you should have working image placement. Everything else is irrelevant. Solution provided. The nature of mobile computing should not be relevant to how we output to other computers. Half the viewing of the site is still done on larger computers. Go you to an article with 600 sources on your mobile and read it. Yeah right. When you were a kid did you step up and say, "Thank God my ancestors didn't do this because I've been looking for a hobby..." No you didn't. You cursed them out of it like everybody did. Please don't be a stuck in the mud and voice support for this solution. I can't imagine it being extremely difficult to implement. ~ R.T.G 14:01, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

Proposal on pull-quotes in articles

Please see Template talk:Cquote#Proposed changes, a proposal to act on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 188#Proposal to stop supporting pull quotes DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 21:12, 16 December 2019 (UTC)

RFC on MEDLEAD

RfC about TV and radio station style variances

Editors may be interested in an RfC at Talk:WNGH-TV#RfC about TV and radio station style variances. – Reidgreg (talk) 18:41, 27 December 2019 (UTC)

Wikilinked city, state in lead paragraph?

Self-explanatory, see here. Mvcg66b3r (talk) 05:42, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

A single link in the style Fresno, California is sufficient. The second article also contains links to further articles as needed, if someone wanted to learn more about the state, and furthermore, the state article contains links to the country if that is needed. We don't have to link everything everywhere, and excessively linking also decreases the utility of all links. --Jayron32 15:25, 12 December 2019 (UTC)
I agree, a single link is sufficient for anybody who needs to look for further information about the geographic location. Excessive overlinking to county, state, province, country, planet, galaxy, etc just makes it hard to see useful links in an article. Reify-tech (talk) 17:43, 21 December 2019 (UTC)

Template styles

Not sure if this is the right place, but I have some questions regarding style. I encountered an editor who spends a lot of time capitalizing the first letter of various templates, like this: {{convert|}} --> {{Convert|}}. To me it seems like completely pointless work. They also spend hours changing {{ubl|}} to {{unbulleted list|}}, which IMHO adds clutter and takes up space needlessly. The only discussion I can find is here. The editor in question responded very rudely/not at all, so I am not sure what the favored style is. Template:Convert uses lowercaps throughout. I do not really care one way or another, and am happy to do whatever the consensus is. Best,  Mr.choppers | ✎  16:42, 24 December 2019 (UTC)

Capitalizing template invocations is a complete waste of time very much in parallel with the behavior deprecated in WP:NOTBROKE. There may or may not be good reason to change the type of a list, but running around doing it on a blind mass basis cannot be helpful. Same goes for churning synonym names for templates. Feel free to point him/her to this discussion, where I'm sure others will similarly opine. If the behavior keeps up let us know. EEng 17:47, 24 December 2019 (UTC)
Agreed. I wouldn't object to such changes in principle as part of some other edit, but doing them on their own is pointless at best. Andy Dingley (talk) 18:41, 24 December 2019 (UTC)
Nothing wrong with using the full names of templates to make them more clear for others, who may not know what they are by their short name. I personally would not go hunting for them, but as this does not break any policy or guideline, I find starting this discussion be much more of a waste of time. --Gonnym (talk) 18:51, 24 December 2019 (UTC)
Right... on the merits, changing {{ubl|}} to {{unbulleted list|}} does help any future editors to quickly suss what the template does without looking it up or being a Fifth Level Wikijargon Master. Why is that so pointless. There are downsides -- increases the size of the article (but so?), pollutes the article history, bothers editors inclined to be bothered by such things -- so it's not pointless, although it may be a net negative, which is different (and worse). I wonder if it is, tho.
Changing the capitalization, tho, could be seen as different. It's just undoing how another editor did it, which is slightly annoying and with no upside, and pointless roiling of the article history. I sometimes do and sometimes don't let this go if it's article text. But if an editor went on a crusade to change (let's say) "graduated from" to "was graduated from" (either is correct), no... that'd be too annoying to allow. Dunno if metatext should be treated differently. Herostratus (talk) 18:57, 24 December 2019 (UTC)
If blindly expanding template names was desirable we'd have a bot to do it. As the wise Ritchie333 put it (see User:EEng#Museum_of_Wise_Words):
One area the hit and run editor gets involved in is the formatting ... The quality of work has increased in some areas, which makes it harder to contribute without good knowledge in the subject matter and sources. Fiddling with the formatting seems to be a suitable alternative passtime.
This kind of mindless gnoming is not helpful, period. EEng 19:10, 24 December 2019 (UTC)
Disagree. Or should I end it with "period" to make it seem like the argument had any substance? --Gonnym (talk) 19:14, 24 December 2019 (UTC)
If you argument was pointedly and obviously valid, that could be appropriate. If you think the shortened form of a template shouldn't be used, take it to RfD. EEng 19:20, 24 December 2019 (UTC)
There is no need to take anything to RfD. Any user can replace any piece of text in an article, including a template name. Until you can show any guideline that prohibits it, you can continue this pissing contest with yourself. But just to give you a little bit more of information on this subject, which seems you are lacking by your edit to your original comment. Redirects, that differ in more than capitalization make it much more harder to code templates and modules. Take for example Module:Is infobox in lead (which I've never edited). It checks for an infobox template in the lead. How can it know if an infobox template is in the lead? Well it "reads" the text and checks if a template which is using the same name as the one passed to the function is found. However, this fails when the article uses a redirect instead of the standard version. So looking at Template:Infobox album which uses it, it looks for "[Ii]nfobox [Aa]lbum". An article like The Choice (EP) which uses {{Infobox EP}} fails here. You'll notice that it does not produce a short description. Try adding another Infobox Album below it and see that it too won't add a short description as it does recognize the "Infobox" in it's name. Now replace "Infobox EP" with {{DVD infobox}}, another redirect to it. You will now have both templates producing a short description. This is one easy to understand example of why redirects to templates are indeed harmful. But from experience, nothing will be changed in guidelines in support of either argument, which takes me back to my original position, any editor can change any text and there is no reason to go to RfD. --Gonnym (talk) 19:45, 24 December 2019 (UTC)
What you are describing is design incompetence. Obviously the check for existence should resolve any redirects and then check. As for the original issue, the community has consistently rejected systematic tinkering with source text that doesn't change what the reader sees; see WP:COSMETICBOT, and bot policies apply to bot-like editing even if not automated, so yeah, this behavior is contrary to PAGs. EEng 20:15, 24 December 2019 (UTC)
  • If I have a comment, it's that this is not the right page for this discussion. Template invocations are more-or-less entirely outside the MOS's remit. If this behavior is concerning, I'd try WT:Redirect or WP:VPPOL. --Izno (talk) 20:16, 24 December 2019 (UTC)
    True, MOS is about user-visible style, while the issue here is under-the-hood style. Anyway, this capitalizing template names needs to stop, at the very least. EEng 20:21, 24 December 2019 (UTC)
@Izno: - okay, should I paste the entire conversation at WP:VPPOL or start over from scratch?  Mr.choppers | ✎  00:38, 25 December 2019 (UTC)
Give some time for experienced editors to review the contributions history and, if COSMETIC indeed applies, drop some friendly advice on the editor’s talk page. This is far from needing a community discussion at this point. EEng 01:02, 25 December 2019 (UTC)
Much of what he does is useful, but it's really true, much of it is fiddling with capitalization, bypassing redirects, and -- haven't seen this one in a while -- tinkering with ==SECTIONNAME== vs. == SECTIONNAME == . I've left him a reasonably gentle (for me, anyway) message [1]. EEng 09:02, 25 December 2019 (UTC)
Yes, I am not in any way looking for a sanction, I was mostly wondering what was the correct style and whether I should change my own habits. Best and merry christmas or festivus to all!  Mr.choppers | ✎  16:28, 25 December 2019 (UTC)

Do words on a header all need to be capitalised on the first letter?

As an example, is 'Early Life' or 'Early life' correct? I have seen both in articles, and it is not mentioned in MOS:HEAD. Thanks, Thatoneweirdwikier Say hi 12:04, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

See MOS:SECTIONCAPS: "Use sentence case, not title case, capitalization in all section headings." Doremo (talk) 12:08, 28 December 2019 (UTC)
Doremo, what about proper nouns? Thanks, Thatoneweirdwikier Say hi 13:15, 28 December 2019 (UTC)
Sentence case capitalizes proper nouns. Also at MOS:SECTIONCAPS: "... leave the rest lower case except for proper names and other items that would ordinarily be capitalized in running text." Doremo (talk) 13:19, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

Gaol vs. jail

This RFC is asking if "jail" should be used in articles written in British English, Australian English, etc. as an accepted variant of "gaol" in those dialects, per MOS:COMMONALITY (only "jail" is used in American English); if proper nouns with Gaol in the name make a difference; and how to handle links and direct quotes. (MOS:COMMONALITY is part of WP:ENGVAR; this is not proposing changing the variety of English used, only what vocabulary from a given variety to use.)

UPDATE: Proposed change to MOS:COMMONALITY distinguishing spelling differences from terminology differences. -- Beland (talk) 19:08, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

Apparently there is some controversy or confusion about these words and how Wikipedia policy applies to them, which I need some clarity on to help guide cleanup efforts. (Long discussion on Talk:Winston Churchill#Gaol, revert on Adelaide, revert on Norfolk, revert on Adventures of Tintin, complaint on my talk page.) @Find bruce: @Bahudhara: and everyone else...

1.) According to Wiktionary:

  • wikt:gaol is used in Commonwealth English, but is otherwise obsolete (i.e. not present in American English), and most newspapers in Australia and most writers in Canada use jail. (Wordnik says that gaol is preferred in Australia and Ireland.[2])
  • wikt:jail is used in all varieties of English, including the UK and Australia.

Are these claims correct?

2.) If the answer to 1 is "yes", then does MOS:COMMONALITY, part of MOS:ENGVAR, mean that even in articles written in British and Austrian English, the spelling "jail" should be used in normal article text?

3.) If the answer to 2 is "yes", I assume that means per WP:NOTBROKEN, we'd write [[jail]] in regular article text where a link is appropriate? (Not [[prison|jail]] as I was changing to on Adelaide.)

4.) Does the answer to 2 and 3 change at all if there is a proper noun in the article that uses the spelling "Gaol" or the title of the article includes "Gaol", like Old Melbourne Gaol, which I changed to say "The Old Melbourne Gaol is a former jail..."

5.) If the answer to 2 is "yes", how should MOS:COMMONALITY be applied to direct quotations of written text where we need to retain the original spelling of "gaol", should we write:

  • "gaol [jail]" - following the examples at MOS:SIC where minimal clarifications are allowed, clarifying for both web and print readers without jumping to a different article or dictionary, and avoiding linking in a direct quote following MOS:LINKQUOTE
  • "[[jail|gaol]]" - minimizing visual disruption, not following normal practice at WP:NOTBROKEN, but clarifying for web readers with a hover (not having to jump to a different article) and not clarifying for print readers
  • "[[prison|gaol]]" - minimizing visual disruption, seen in several articles, similar to gaol but without hinting to the reader that "jail" and "gaol" are pronounced the same
  • "[[gaol]]" - requiring readers that need clarification to jump to a different article or use a dictionary, but minimizing visual disruption and following WP:NOTBROKEN strictly

Thanks! -- Beland (talk) 00:25, 19 December 2019 (UTC)

This mature aged Australian still pedantically writes "gaol", and I wouldn't be alone, but I acknowledge that the battle is largely lost, and most of my fellows and probably all the media write "jail". So the answer to 1.) is Yes for Australia. However, as you've observed, there are old buildings in Australia with "Gaol" in their proper names (e.g. Adelaide Gaol), so they must stay as is. This unfortunately leaves us with the inconsistency that in one paragraph, your proposal would have two different spellings in use. Maybe this is all educational for those unfamiliar with older spellings, but it just doesn't feel right to me. HiLo48 (talk) 02:39, 19 December 2019 (UTC)
Yeah Plimouth Plantation in Plymouth, Massachusetts causes similar proper noun problems. Maybe with languages that won't stop changing it's just inevitable that old things will have funky names. -- Beland (talk) 03:14, 19 December 2019 (UTC)
I think I am with HiLo48. When I was (first) learning to spell, over half a century ago, it was most definitely "gaol". Now days it is a bit of a free for all, and "jail" is taking over. Regardless, proper names must stay as they are. I have no problem with "Proper Name Gaol" is a prison/correctional centre/facility in Metroplis Town . I do think "Proper Name Gaol" is a jail in Metroplis Town looks out right ugly. I would suggest as long as the proper names are kept as they should be, then things should be left as they were written, because that in itself is informative. Aoziwe (talk) 03:53, 19 December 2019 (UTC)
PS I think I could confidently say though, that no Australian Government, state or federal, would ever officially name a new correctional facility using "jail". IF they named it using a word pronounced, /dʒeɪl/, it would always be spelt "gaol"? Aoziwe (talk) 04:00, 19 December 2019 (UTC)
I believe they're all Correctional Centres etc now.--Jack Upland (talk) 04:10, 19 December 2019 (UTC)
FWIW or perhaps some general interest have a look at the Australian Writers’ Centre and the ABC. Aoziwe (talk) 04:20, 19 December 2019 (UTC)
The example of "Parramatta Gaol" is a bit strange. It's still used in the current Macquarie Dictionary. However, Parramatta Gaol hasn't been called that since 1991, when it became Parramatta Correctional Centre, and it's now closed. How is that really relevant to Australian usage? However, I agree that with Aoziwe's comment in favour of using proper names and avoiding a gaol/jail clash. However, I think in Australia there would be very few cases where this is an issue.--Jack Upland (talk) 04:56, 19 December 2019 (UTC)
  • Unrelated question: is there any difference in pronunciation between "gaol" and "jail"? Bus stop (talk) 16:19, 19 December 2019 (UTC)
No, even though it looks like "gaol" sounds kinda like Goa'uld, all the dictionaries I've consulted say they are pronounced the same in any given dialect. -- Beland (talk) 16:46, 19 December 2019 (UTC)
Why do you think "it looks like "gaol" sounds kinda like Goa'uld? I'm guessing you may be in a minority of one there. 86.187.233.7 (talk) 17:24, 19 December 2019 (UTC)
Why? Because in english, a "g" generally can only sound like a "j" when followed by an "e", "i", or "y" (and even when followed by those letters, there are plenty of words like "get" or "give" where it's still a hard "g"). In fact, according to Hard and soft G, "gaol" was changed to "jail" precisely because of this confusion. In addition, "ao" is not a standard english dipthong. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 18:19, 20 December 2019 (UTC)
And to think there are people who say English spelling and pronunciation are confusing. EEng 21:01, 20 December 2019 (UTC)
That was a joke; Goa'uld was a notoriously hard word to pronounce in the Stargate universe, partly because it's from an extraterrestrial language. But what Ahecht said does explain why when I first encountered this spelling who knows how many years ago, I could not sound it out. -- Beland (talk) 01:42, 21 December 2019 (UTC)
  • While acknowledging that the "gaol" spelling (which autocorrect keeps wanting to make into "goal") still has some currency in Britain and Australia, it's essentially unknown elsewhere, and the other spelling, "jail", is known everywhere, so WP:COMMONALITY leads me to think we should use "jail" pretty much universally outside of proper names. oknazevad (talk) 17:02, 19 December 2019 (UTC)
Comment: looking at the "long discussion" at Talk:Winston Churchill#Gaol, which seems to have triggered the questions here, it's a special case, as it relates to the use of that word in a direct quote from a speech by Churchill, in 1910, in the UK House of Commons. So I assume it's also in Hansard. We have to remember that was 110 years ago, so historical usage? 86.187.233.7 (talk) 17:11, 19 December 2019 (UTC)
If it was in a speech, how do we know how he was spelling it? :-) --Trovatore (talk) 20:00, 19 December 2019 (UTC)
If it was only spoken out loud, it would actually be OK to just change it to "jail". But if there was a prepared written version, maybe not. To find out would require going to the library, and I've already done that once this month for the above discussion, so I gave up on that line of thinking. -- Beland (talk) 01:45, 21 December 2019 (UTC)
Hmm, I was wondering how that was going to work. I added one; thanks for the explanation. -- Beland (talk) 19:27, 19 December 2019 (UTC)
  • I'm not entirely certain I can follow the serpentine set of conditions laid out by the OP, but near as I can figure out, they're trying to sort out how to handle things like "gaol/jail" terminology in various articles. I would say that this is no different than other WP:ENGVAR variations such as "aluminum/aluminium" and "petrol/gasoline" and I would say that we should default to WP:ENGVAR guidance: for topics with a strong national connection, use that standard English variety from that nation. For those that don't, default to the existing variety already in the article. --Jayron32 19:23, 19 December 2019 (UTC)
@Jayron32: That doesn't really answer the question. It appears that both "gaol" and "jail" are part of UK and Australian English, so saying "use Australian English for articles about Australia" doesn't decide whether one or both of these spellings should be used. MOS:COMMONALITY is part of WP:ENGVAR, so I'm asking, if we're following that, isn't "jail" preferred in Australian articles, too? -- Beland (talk) 18:32, 22 December 2019 (UTC)
  • If they're both in use in those varieties then there's no need to change from one to the other at all. Problem solved.--Jayron32 20:20, 22 December 2019 (UTC)
  • Comment on point 5 While I reserve judgment on the extent to which the gaol spelling is useful outside direct quotes and proper names, my preference among the choices given for direct quotes in a context where the audience is likely to be confused by the spelling is the one that glosses it as gaol [jail]. The NOTBROKEN considerations go away if we simply don't wikilink the word, and I'm really not sure why you would wikilink it; in most cases that would be WP:OVERLINKING. --Trovatore (talk) 19:45, 19 December 2019 (UTC)
  • I am reminded somewhat of the discussions (mostly involving Iridescent) concerning the article Daniel Lambert, which was a DYK in July 2010 (discussion) and TFA a few months later (blurb). These discussions may be found not just at Talk:Daniel Lambert, but also at User talk:Iridescent/Archive 13 and User talk:Rlevse/Archive 19#Daniel Lambert for Did you know?. The point was that gaol and prison are not synonyms. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:19, 19 December 2019 (UTC)
  • Use jail rather than gaol, because the former is common to all, unless there's a particular reason to use the latter (e.g. quotes, names). The MoS already recommends "If a style or similar debate becomes intractable, see if a rewrite can make the issue moot" and "Use universally accepted terms rather than those less widely distributed." SarahSV (talk) 04:06, 20 December 2019 (UTC)
  • Use jail except in proper nouns and direct quotes. The term gaol would be completely indecypherable to the vast majority of North Americans, while jail is universally understood. I personally don't see any problem with a sentence like "Proper Name Gaol" is a jail in Metroplis Town. --Ahecht (TALK
    PAGE    ) 18:22, 20 December 2019 (UTC)
    I would have thought the jail would be for improper names. EEng 21:04, 20 December 2019 (UTC)
  • Use jail except for (im)proper names. "Gaol" is charming but olde-worlde, and "prison" is not a full synonym in some dialects. --The Huhsz (talk) 16:30, 21 December 2019 (UTC)
  • I agree with using "jail" in modern topics (although it should rarely arise; there are no gaols/jails left in the UK which is the primary place where the "gaol" spelling survives). The problem is that in the context of historical English topics (such as the Daniel Lambert article mentioned above), a pre-1839 gaol isn't synonymous with what people usually understand by "jail". A pre-1839 gaol was a (usually privately-run) facility that took the place of what in modern British usage would be called "police custody" or "detention", a place where people who haven't been convicted of anything are held between arrest and trial. "Jail", on the other hand, is synonymous in modern BrEng use with "prison", a place where people are sent for punishment after conviction. As I said to Rlevse a decade ago in the thread referenced above, the situation is complicated because we don't have a decent article on the distinction to which we can direct readers to explain the difference other than the highly unsatisfactory explanation at Lock up. "Daniel Lambert was a jail keeper" makes it appear to readers like he was some kind of prison warder, as opposed to the owner of what was effectively a very specialist hotel. On these historic topics the archaic spelling isn't an affectation, but an intentional indication that we're talking about the archaic meaning of the term. ‑ Iridescent 18:28, 21 December 2019 (UTC)
  • Not to mention the calaboose, of course. Or are you just telling us that the writers of Hansard spelled it wrong (and that Winnie was using an old-fashioned word anyway, even in 1910)? Martinevans123 (talk) 10:39, 22 December 2019 (UTC)
  • I think that the meaning of "jail" is clear in most variants of English, and that "gaol" should be reserved for proper names and specialized historical contexts. I also should point out that at least some English speakers make a clear distinction between "jail" and "prison" ([3]). Essentially a "jail" is used for temporary detention of those who may yet be or have been accused of a crime, or are serving short sentences, while a "prison" is used to detain those who have been tried for a serious crime and sentenced to a longer period of imprisonment. Reify-tech (talk) 18:45, 21 December 2019 (UTC)
  • Those are US definitions and as such not relevant here as the US doesn't use the "gaol" spelling in any context. As I've said above, gaol (or jail) doesn't have that meaning in the UK where "jail" and "prison" (but not "gaol") are synonymous. ‑ Iridescent 18:53, 21 December 2019 (UTC)
  • Agreed, us Australians will talk about a prison sentence that leads to jail time. We recognise gaol as ye olde time spelling but will almost always write it as jail (I'm 50+ years old). We've inherited a lot from both UK and American usage and made our own mix. I'm happy if UK editors write gaol, as per WP:ENGAVR.  Stepho  talk  09:58, 22 December 2019 (UTC)
  • EngVar, per Jayron32. ——SN54129 12:03, 22 December 2019 (UTC)
    • @Serial Number 54129: What does that mean? The dispute is over how WP:ENGVAR applies to this word, since both "jail" and "gaol" are present in UK and Australian English, and MOS:COMMONALITY is part of WP:ENGVAR. -- Beland (talk) 18:41, 22 December 2019 (UTC)
  • EngVar: GAOL is fine for the countries that need it. We don't need to micromanage every word we use on WP, and we don't need to only use words current in the US (which is how commonality always 'seems' to work). This is an encyclopaedia: users can learn more than the topic, they can learn that other places use different words too. - SchroCat (talk) 13:36, 22 December 2019 (UTC)
  • WP:ENGVAR clearly applies, and should continue to apply. Peter coxhead (talk) 13:51, 22 December 2019 (UTC)
    • @Peter coxhead: What does that mean? The dispute is over how WP:ENGVAR applies to this word, since both "jail" and "gaol" are present in UK and Australian English, and MOS:COMMONALITY is part of WP:ENGVAR. -- Beland (talk) 18:41, 22 December 2019 (UTC)
  • EngVar: I concur with the two writers immediately above. I write "jail" myself, but have no problem with "gaol". (Point taken about the assumption that commonality = AmE. The rest of the English-speaking world doesn't insist that Americans should drop the antiquated "-ize" endings in "criticize" etc that we all dropped decades ago – except for the OUP, which hasn't caught up with the 20th century yet). I'd be happy for "gaol" to be permissible, and I'm quite sure it won't perplex anyone. – Tim riley talk 13:56, 22 December 2019 (UTC)
Well I was certainly perplexed by it the first time I encountered it; I had to look it up in a dictionary. -- Beland (talk) 18:41, 22 December 2019 (UTC)
So the encyclopaedia has taught you something you didn't know before. That's a good thing, yes? - SchroCat (talk) 19:07, 22 December 2019 (UTC)
No, it wasn't the encyclopaedia that taught him/her the spelling, and I imagine whole point of MOS:ENGVAR and MOS:COMMONALITY is that articles are understood by everyone without them having to look words (or even spellings) up. Adam9007 (talk) 19:30, 22 December 2019 (UTC)
Obviously it did. It wasn't a term s/he knew before; it is now. There are several US words I see that don't immediately know, and I've often thought 'oh, if only there were some online encyclopaedia or something I could look that up in...'. As I've said above, it's funny how COMMONALITY seems to be a small number of US readers demanding other language variants change to fit some mid-Atlantic sludge. Let things be and try not to strait-jacket the language people in. - SchroCat (talk) 21:21, 22 December 2019 (UTC)
Commonality goes both ways; Wikipedia uses the metric system in some places (like scientific articles) without translation into American units because they're universally understood, and avoids "transportation" where "transport" would do. -- Beland (talk) 23:57, 22 December 2019 (UTC)
In terms of most prose, no: it all seems to be one-way traffic. - SchroCat (talk) 09:55, 23 December 2019 (UTC)
@SchroCat: Could you explain how you would distinguish cases where MOS:COMMONALITY should vs. should not be applied? Would you rather see it deleted from WP:ENGVAR? -- Beland (talk) 23:00, 22 December 2019 (UTC)
Thise are entirely different questions that go quite far from the point of deciding if people should change the spelling of one word they commonly use. Please don't ping me back to deal with things that are not relevant to the use of gaol. - SchroCat (talk) 09:55, 23 December 2019 (UTC)
@SchroCat: Well, if the consensus coming out of this discussion is that use of "gaol" should continue, then it would be helpful to amend the MOS to explain why, so that we don't end up in the same discussion in lots of similar cases. If you want to keep to the specifics of my original question, it would be helpful if you could explain why MOS:COMMONALITY doesn't apply to this particular case, or if you think MOS:COMMONALITY shouldn't apply in any case. For example, I'm wondering if anyone thinks MOS:COMMONALITY shouldn't apply in this case because it's a spelling difference and not a completely different word, even if the spelling difference is unusually confusing compared to say, "honor" vs. "honour"? Or does it have more to do with say, the relative dominance of "goal" vs. "jail" in UK English? -- Beland (talk) 12:52, 23 December 2019 (UTC)
I am sure that in my last comment I asked that you didn't ping me back to deal with things that are not relevant to the use of gaol. I'm now going to widen that to: don't ping me at all. I have given my reason and my explanation, and you continuing to bludgeon me and others is not going to get me to change my mind (This is your 17th comment in this thread and it's becoming very noticeable, particularly as your opening statement is neither brief nor neutral). This ain't broke, so don't try to fix it. - SchroCat (talk) 13:02, 23 December 2019 (UTC)
  • A) WP:ENGVAR per Jayron and B) WP:NOTBROKEN. I also agree with SchroCat that "We don't need to micromanage every word we use on WP" - I've never had a problem with the two words and no evidence has been presented that readers have a difficulty distinguishing between the different terms. We certainly don't need to be changing articles like the The Ballad of Reading Hoosegow. MarnetteD|Talk 18:49, 22 December 2019 (UTC)
  • We don't need to micromanage every word we use on WP Lol, tell that to the people who insisted on micromanaging the word 'mediaeval'. Adam9007 (talk) 19:15, 22 December 2019 (UTC)
  • I wasn't party to the discussion of medieval-v-mediaeval, but it is getting on for 100 years since Fowler recommended the shorter form. I have a sneaking fondness for the longer form, but in truth I think it's had its day, which "gaol" hasn't yet, I think. Tim riley talk 21:05, 22 December 2019 (UTC)
  • Well, if using 'mediaeval' goes against MOS:COMMONALITY, then using 'gaol' certainly does. If either of these words word need micromanagement, it's 'jail/gaol'. (by the way, I personally have no problem with 'gaol'). Adam9007 (talk) 21:37, 22 December 2019 (UTC)
  • @MarnetteD: Well, I had a problem figuring out that "gaol" was the same word as "jail", since it looks like it's pronounced completely differently. Not sure if readers were being confused what further evidence would be created? MOS:COMMONALITY specifically addresses article titles, and it just says there should be a redirect from the alternate spelling. So I made a redirect from The Ballad of Reading Jail, which is what I would have typed into a search engine had I heard about it on the radio. -- Beland (talk) 23:15, 22 December 2019 (UTC)
  • "I had a problem figuring out that "gaol" was the same word as "jail"" I have frequent trouble (generally minor) having to translate American English language usage into my version in my head when I read it here, but I make the effort and generally cope. HiLo48 (talk) 00:23, 23 December 2019 (UTC)
  • I would assume that going from "jail" to "gaol" would be relatively easy because you can sound out "jail"? Did you have to look up "jail" in a dictionary? -- Beland (talk) 03:39, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

*Jail unless it is a quote (like on the Churchill example you gave) or it is part of the name itself like Old Melbourne Gaol since Jail is common across all varieties of English.  Spy-cicle💥  Talk? 21:28, 22 December 2019 (UTC) Striked my comment becuase I realise it does not really answer the question in regards to linking.  Spy-cicle💥  Talk? 15:53, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

I made the revert because this edit seemed pretty crass - given the context (dealing with South Australia's 19th century colonial history), the word "jail", as a cultural anachronism, stuck out like the proverbial dog's balls.
(Beside Boland's edit, this particular paragraph contained three other instances of "gaol", as well as a link to Adelaide Gaol, there being nothing to explain the spelling variance, and the reader still left to deduce the connection.)
Are U.S. readers really so naive or culturally illiterate as to need being spoon-fed in this manner?
The "gaol" spelling is not going to disappear from the Australian lexicon, far from it, long gone are the days of Australians feeling a cultural cringe (due to feeling that Australian history is boring or uninteresting) or fear of a convict stain (which didn't apply in South Australia, as this was a free and progressive colony!).
On the contrary, the annual South Australian History Festival has grown from a week-long to a month-long event staged across hundreds of venues, including the Adelaide Gaol (which closed in 1988, and is now a popular state government-owned heritage-listed tourism site); and Ashton's Hotel: The journal of William Baker Ashton, first governor of the Adelaide Gaol (published in 2017), as well as numerous other recent works of historical non-fiction which refer to this period, all continue to use the "gaol" spelling.
Ah, if I had noticed the other instances, I would have changed them all to "jail" for consistency. I'm not proposing to change "Gaol" to "Jail" in proper nouns, nor am I saying "gaol" isn't understandable to Australians. Whether or not a word is going to disappear from a given dialect is not something we can predict, nor do I find it particularly relevant to the current question, and I certainly don't want to have an emotionally charged argument about it where people from different countries stomp the ground and defend their national dialect. I'm much more interested in clarity for readers and having orderly style rules I can clearly interpret. Sticking to the present facts, I don't think it's a particularly likely that say, an American high school student, would have read any books or web sites with the "gaol" spelling. If you want to stigmatize that as naive or culturally illiterate, then that's an opinion. I wouldn't say the same about Australian readers for whom MOS:COMMONALITY says we should translate "trunk" as "boot", even though they could theoretically look it up in a dictionary. -- Beland (talk) 03:39, 23 December 2019 (UTC)
  • Depends on context. If we take the Adelaide example, which seems to have been one of the triggers for this discussion, then I believe it should be all "gaol" in that article. The proper name uses "gaol", the historical period in question used "gaol", and the relevent modern day references use "gaol". To change any of these to "jail" does not make any sense. If it ain't broke, do not fix it. Feel free to pipe the first appropriate occurance of "gaol" to "prison". If it is some modern day period under discussion then use "jail" if contextually appropriate. But mostly now days it will be either "correctional facility/centre", or "prison", the latter to which "jail" redirects to anyway! So (in Australian articles?) we should be using either "gaol" or "prison" but not "jail" at all (unless it is part of a formal or informal proper name or quoted or referenced text)? Aoziwe (talk) 13:02, 23 December 2019 (UTC)
  • [[prison|gaol]] doesn't work, because in American English, "prison" and "jail" are not synonyms. --The Huhsz (talk) 13:30, 23 December 2019 (UTC)
Yep. I did write if appropriate. "gaol" redirects to "prison" too. So perhaps this whole discussion is moot. IE If the context directs one towards "gaol", as per Adelaide, then stick with that. If it directs one towards "jail", then use that. WP (ie the consensus of the editor community) by redirecting all to "prison" means that the "universal" term (for WP) is actually (currently) "prison", so where the subject does not direct to either "gaol" or "jail" then just use "prison". Aoziwe (talk) 13:53, 23 December 2019 (UTC)
  • (Bangs head on desk.) A prison and a jail/gaol are not the same thing and if a redirect is pointing to the wrong place then that's a sign the redirect needs fixing, not a sign that we can redefine the English language. ‑ Iridescent 15:34, 23 December 2019 (UTC)
Well that is my point isn't it. If we are to properly determine when to use "gaol", "jail", "prison", "lockup", etc. then the MoS needs to be consistent with what the editing community currently accepts as encyclopedic definitions, and thence, yes, the redirects would need to become separate article in their own rights, or probably better, redirects to clear distinct definitional sections in the current "prison" article. But we cannot say one thing in the "encyclopedia" and then something different in the "rules/guidelines for editing the encyclopedia"? Aoziwe (talk) 05:34, 24 December 2019 (UTC)

Summary so far and request for clarification

By my reading (please correct me if I'm wrong)...

  • On 1, do both "jail" and gaol" exist in UK and Australian English? It seems the answer is "yes" for Australia, and some sources say "jail" is preferred, including the Macquarie Dictionary (which is considered authoritative) [4] and the ABC.[5] Some Wikipedia editors still prefer "gaol".
  • On 3 and 5, [[prison|jail]] does seem to be disfavored since "prison" and "jail" sometimes have different meanings. Other than that no strong opinions on linking? For direct quotes, Trovatore and I prefer "gaol [jail]" and in the Talk:Winston Churchill discussion DuncanHill preferred linking.
  • On 4, sounds like Aoziwe and HiLo48 are uneasy mixing "Gaol" in proper nouns with "jail", and there are the folks who prefer "goal" generally based on their answers to 2. Ahecht and I explicitly said it's OK to mix "Gaol" and "jail", and everyone else who supported "jail" in general didn't say one way or the other.
  • The strongest split seems to be on the fundamental question 2, which is whether to use "jail" or "gaol" in general article text in UK and Australian articles:
    • "jail" - oknazevad, SarahSV, Ahecht, The Huhsz, Reify-tech, Beland
    • "gaol" - SchroCat, Aoziwe, possibly others
No, I do not believe this is what I am meaning. I am saying it depends. Aoziwe (talk) 05:34, 24 December 2019 (UTC)
Also not me. This is why it's a terrible idea for the person who opens an RfC to try and summarise it: it ends up too biased to be of any use and is only ever designed to push a closing admin down an incorrect path. - SchroCat (talk) 06:42, 24 December 2019 (UTC)
Ah, thanks to both of you for the clarifications. -- Beland (talk) 22:26, 28 December 2019 (UTC)
    • Retain either: Jayron32, Tim riley, SN54129?, Peter coxhead?, MarnetteD? (some of these comments may have in fact just been supporting "gaol")

It seems like there's not a particularly strong consensus to interpret MOS:COMMONALITY to require "jail", though there's also not a strong consensus that this is an incorrect interpretation.

If we're going to land on "no consensus" for converting "gaol" to "jail", it would be helpful to more clearly define what MOS:COMMONALITY does express consensus for. I've asked about this in the section above, but either gotten angry non-answers or no reply so far. Since the obvious difference between the glasses/spectacles and trunk/boot examples given in the existing guideline and the gaol/jail case, is that this is a spelling difference and not a completely different term. If that's what people are reacting to and it's not just angry nationalism, then would something like the below be an accurate clarification?

  • There is no need to gloss or use a common variant for small spelling differences where it's obvious the pronunciation is the same, for example harbor/harbour, license/licence, or sterilise/sterilize.
  • For large spelling differences that do not follow a pattern and where it is not obvious the pronunciation is the same, for example jail/gaol, there is no consensus on whether using the most widely understood term should take precedence over consistency with proper nouns, and whether the most widely understood variant should be used to the exclusion of other variants in the national variety.

-- Beland (talk) 19:08, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

  • It's always a bad idea for an OP to try and summarise people's positions and the summary of where the discussion is going. You're not seeing it from a neutral point of view, particularly given your "neutral" opening statement. - SchroCat (talk) 22:31, 23 December 2019 (UTC)
    • Well, I'm not neutral on the question, I'm in favor of it. I am, however, trying to work toward agreement with folks with different views, by establishing what we do and don't agree on. In that vein, did you find my conclusion that there is probably not consensus in favor of the proposal to be incorrect? -- Beland (talk) 22:26, 28 December 2019 (UTC)
  • Use jail consistently (except in a proper name with Gaol in it), per MOS:COMMONALITY and WP:CONSISTENT. Do not confuse jails/gaols with prisons (duh!). Do not make a "magical exception" for Australia, since the leading Australian dictionary (Macquarie) prefers jail. This isn't difficult. See also WP:SSF; any time someone is demanding some kind of topical exception to MoS, they are probably making a mistake, of exactly the same kind we've been over a thousand times before.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:21, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

Tense in chronologies (timelines)

Just now Special:Random took me to Timeline of women's legal rights (other than voting) in the 20th century, where I saw on the first screenful:

1901
  • Bulgaria: Universities open to women.
  • China: Girls are included in the education system.
  • Cuba: Universities open to women.
  • Denmark: Maternity leave for all women.
  • Sweden: Women are given four weeks maternity leave.

Similarly, in Timeline of events leading to the American Civil War, the first few entries are:

1619
1640
  • The General Court of Virginia orders John Punch, a runaway black servant, to "serve his master or his assigns for the time of his natural Life here or elsewhere." Thus, "John Punch, a black man, was sentenced to lifetime slavery."
1652

And in Timeline of the London Underground, the first few entries are:

1825
Using his patented tunnelling shield, Marc Brunel begins construction of the Thames Tunnel under the River Thames between Wapping and Rotherhithe. Progress is slow and will be halted a number of times before the tunnel is completed.
1843
The Thames Tunnel opens as a pedestrian tunnel.
1845
Charles Pearson, Solicitor to the City of London, begins promoting the idea of an underground railway to bring passenger and goods services into the centre of the City.


Note that all of these are written in the present tense. This seems to me to be an absolutely standard way to write this: perhaps some of you who have access to style guides can check whether they agree.

The reason I raise the point is that a while ago I added several dozen entries to one of Wikipedia's longer chronological lists, and a later contributor went to the trouble of transposing all my verbs into the past tense. In fact the list contains a mixture of past and present tenses throughout.

The relevant MOS provision is MOS:TENSE, which states

By default, write articles in the present tense, including those covering works of fiction (see Wikipedia:Writing better articles § Tense in fiction) and products or works that have been discontinued. Generally, do not use past tense except for past events and subjects that are dead or no longer meaningfully exist.

Okay, a chronology is about past events, but I believe it is standard English usage to write its entries in the present tense; and I suggest that this paragraph be extended to require the present tense in this situation: something like "In timelines (chronologies), generally use the present tense, which refers to events at the indicated date or time."

--142.112.159.101 (talk) 08:18, 15 December 2019 (UTC)

This was discussed at the Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Trains/Archive: 2018#Accident lists where there was clear consensus to talk about past events in the past tense. @Primergrey and Batternut: MB 17:04, 15 December 2019 (UTC)
I submit that three opinions does not make a "clear consensus"; it may also indicate that not many people are reading the thread. I know I wasn't. --142.112.159.101 (talk) 01:11, 16 December 2019 (UTC)
I don't myself see why historical timelines should be a special case. Eg, the American Civil War article is written in the past tense, why should associated timelines be in the present tense? Two of the timelines mentioned by the OP have introductory paragraphs in the past tense while the lists are in the present tense, which seems inconsistent to me. Batternut (talk) 18:44, 15 December 2019 (UTC)
Okay, can anyone with access to style guides see if they take a view on this? --142.112.159.101 (talk) 21:14, 15 December 2019 (UTC)
  • There is, what is essentially, a timeline on the MP every day, in the form of OTD (which is always in past tense). Primergrey (talk) 01:42, 16 December 2019 (UTC)
  • I believe they could be written in either tense, but just be consistent within the article. There is no sense in adding another rule. BeenAroundAWhile (talk) 02:57, 16 December 2019 (UTC)
  • They absolutely can be written in either tense, but when someone comes along and changes it to past tense, it should stay that way. No new rules needed. Primergrey (talk) 03:34, 16 December 2019 (UTC)
  • Then a rule is needed, saying that either tense is acceptable in this type of use so long as things are consistent. (And thanks for the example of OTD, BeenAround.) Otherwise sometime someone will notice articles like the three I cited at the top and waste time changing them to past tense. --142.112.159.101 (talk)
  • We are talking about the use of the historical present here. It is commonly used in timelines, but doesn't have to be. Some authors use it, some don't. Some professors like it, some hate it. Since we don't prescribe a particular variety of English here we shouldn't be telling editors they can't use it, or that they must use it. StarryGrandma (talk) 19:07, 17 December 2019 (UTC)
  • Do we have a problem with editors edit-warring back and forth between tenses? If not, then there is no need for the MOS to mention it. Blueboar (talk) 19:20, 17 December 2019 (UTC)
  • I submit that if the MOS recommends a particular practice, but another practice is widely used elsewhere and accepted on Wikipedia (as per my examples at the top), then the MOS should change to conform. I propose wording like:
In a timeline or other chronological list, consistently use either the present or the past tense to describe events at the indicated past date. Either of the following is acceptable, but not both in the same timeline.
  • 1776: The United States declared its independence.
  • 1783: The United Kingdom accepts the independence of the U.S.
--142.112.159.101 (talk) 19:30, 18 December 2019 (UTC)

Decision?

I request opinions so a decision can be made on my compromise proposal. --142.112.159.101 (talk) 18:20, 19 December 2019 (UTC)

  • Neutral On the one hand, I'm sympathetic to the argument that the MoS shouldn't contradict a (relatively) widespread and accepted practice, but Blueboar's point about WP:CREEP also resonates with me. I'd be more inclined toward the change if it could be pared down to one short sentence, or perhaps even an explanatory footnote, since timelines represent a relatively small fraction of Wikipedia's content. Colin M (talk) 16:31, 26 December 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose any "magically special" exception, but address it in a short footnote only. For instruction-creep and consistency reasons we should not declare any kind of exception for this; there's nothing unique about timeline format, and any editor at any time can easily convert a prose section in chron. order into a timeline, or convert a timeline into a prose section (and the latter is actually encouraged per MOS:USEPROSE). If the verb tense is not consistent between the two formats, then inconsistency will only get worse over time within each format, both across articles and even within the same article. Also, if we make an exception for this, a week later someone's going to demand an exception for X, and the next day someone will want one for Y. Next, "some people don't write exactly the way WP does" is never a rationale for anything, and would invalidate us having a style guide at all if we accepted it as a rationale. Same goes for "some on-site editors don't follow our rule" (there is no rule that 100% of editors follow, and no one has to read MoS or any other WP:P&G pages before editing here; other editors just clean up after them and inform them what the rule is).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:18, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

Default against bracketed ellipsis for quote omissions

Ellipses added by increasingly eccentric editor (EEng)

Why does the MOS recommend square brackets for text changed in a quotation, but not for text removed from a quotation?

  • MOS:PMC states: Quotations must be verifiably attributed, and the wording of the quoted text should be faithfully reproduced. and Where there is good reason to change the wording, enclose changes within square brackets and to Use ellipses to indicate omissions from quoted text.
  • MOS:ELLIPSIS indicates that brackets may be used for clarity: Occasionally, square brackets are placed around an ellipsis to make clear that it isn't original to the material being quoted, for example if the quoted passage itself contains an ellipsis (She retorted: "How do I feel? How do you think I ... This is too much! [...] Take me home!").
  • MOS:BRACKET indicates a default no-brackets around ellipses: When an ellipsis (...) is used to indicate that material is removed from a direct quotation, it should not normally be bracketed (see § Ellipses).

So, aside from cases like the example where there is both a quoted ellipsis and a bracketed editorial ellipsis, there would be no way to tell whether or not the ellipsis was in the original (aside from checking the source). The way it's worded, it seems to suggest that brackets make the omission clear but should only be used if it's important for the reader to be able to make this distinction, and that in most cases this is not important. Does this seem weird to anyone else? – Reidgreg (talk) 18:23, 17 December 2019 (UTC)

This is the English Wikipedia, not the Simple English Wikipedia. Readers who don't understand that, unless otherwise stated, ellipses were added by the author (or editor) of the work currently being read, not by the author of the work being quoted, should seek further instruction in the English language. Jc3s5h (talk) 18:47, 17 December 2019 (UTC)
I don't see how that follows. Are you suggesting that if text is quoted which originally contains an ellipsis, this should be explicitly mentioned? Colin M (talk) 19:16, 17 December 2019 (UTC)
I suppose one could add [ellipsis in original] the way that the MOS:ELLIPSIS example (above) should have [emphasis in original]. – Reidgreg (talk) 19:55, 17 December 2019 (UTC)
I think if the ellipsis is in the original we should say so. For one thing, it indicates the author of the source is the one who decided the omitted material wasn't important for the purpose at hand, not a Wikipedia editor. It also lets the reader know the missing material can't be found in the source, so the reader will have to look elsewhere for it, if the reader thinks it might be important. Jc3s5h (talk) 20:24, 17 December 2019 (UTC)
  • Yes, this was always unsatisfactory. I agree with Jc3s5h: default is no square brackets (which are ugly and disruptive to the eyes); and where the ellipsis points are in the original text, it needs to be explained breifly before or after the quote. Tony (talk) 05:24, 18 December 2019 (UTC)
    I agree with your agreement but am unsure what you mean was unsatisfactory. Is it that you want the guidelines to recommend explicitly that we call out ellipses present in the source? EEng 06:57, 18 December 2019 (UTC)
    Tony1? If you'll confirm that I'm right I'll try to integrate and clarify the guidelines linked in the OP. EEng 01:50, 20 December 2019 (UTC)
    @EEng: By "unsatisfactory" I meant that square brackets around ellipsis points are ungainly and disruptive, where the whole point of ellipsis points is to make a direct quotation smoother and more digestible through the omission. There was a thought some time back that square brackets might be used to indicate ellipsis points in the original source, but this has never worked because people don't recognise the distinction. So I propose that square brackets not be used at all, and that the default be ellipsis points without meta-comment where WP itself has added the ellipses points; and with comment to the effect that the ellipsis points are in the source, where that is the case. What do you think? Tony (talk) 04:28, 20 December 2019 (UTC)
    The meaning of the quote shouldn't be altered so long as it is faithfully reproduced. So if this is primarily a matter of sourcing and verifiability, perhaps that would be better handled through a footnote or using the |quote= parameter of the citation template for the inline citation required at the quote? – Reidgreg (talk) 18:57, 30 December 2019 (UTC)
  • I disagree with any solution involving [ellipsis in original] or similar. I frequently add quotes from primary sources quoted in secondary sources, often translated and/or with ellipses. Although I can see the justification, for the vast majority of readers it's an ugly and annoying intrusion into the text. The bracketing solution in MOS:ELLIPSIS seems fine. buidhe 21:29, 18 December 2019 (UTC)
  • I'm not sure what's being proposed here, but I oppose requiring that ellipses be bracketed routinely to signal words removed by us. In case it helps, the Chicago Manual of Style (13.58) recommends against it. It says that in some languages (French is offered as an example, 11.32), ellipses are regularly used to signify broken thoughts, and therefore bracketed ellipses are needed to signal missing words in quoted text. That isn't the case in English. When ellipses are part of the quoted text, the CMOS suggests adding "ellipses in the original". It recommends using bracketed ellipses when shortening long titles in citations. New Hart's Rules also prefers ellipses without brackets (4.7 and 9.3.3), unless there are ellipses in the original, in which case place the new ones within square brackets (9.3.3), as MOS:ELLIPSIS recommends. SarahSV (talk) 03:33, 19 December 2019 (UTC)
  • I would keep, or make, brackets the default, with unbracketed ellipsis marks allowed. Using brackets for all editorial summaries or interpolations is logical and makes unambiguous what text is part of the quotation and can best be searched on (although I suspect most search engines can handle ellipses gracefully), a consideration print publications don't have to as readily take into account. Dhtwiki (talk) 08:23, 21 December 2019 (UTC)
  • Omit the brackets as often as possible. The use of three dots is proof that the removal of text has taken place, so there is no need to use a second piece of formatting; the addition of the word needs the square brackets as the only piece of formatting to signify it. In both cases the change is alerted to the reader by the use of one piece of formatting - they don't need to be confused with too much in the way of dots and dashes. - SchroCat (talk) 01:38, 28 December 2019 (UTC)
    If we require that editors omit any ellipses in the original and replace each with an ellipsis to show that omission, then we can safely say that all ellipses were added by Wikipedia editors. – Reidgreg (talk) 18:57, 30 December 2019 (UTC)
    I'm not entirely sure if that's helpful or moves the conversation along, but whatever. - SchroCat (talk) 09:56, 31 December 2019 (UTC)
    It was humor, SC. Humor. EEng 16:11, 31 December 2019 (UTC)
  • To answer the OP's "why" question: it's because doing [...] is redundant when ... will suffice. Secondarily, it's because most off-site publishers also use the simpler style (that is, the non-WP style guides that have informed our own lean away from the longer formula). There are some academic style guides that demand the [...] syntax, but they are few and far between. The only need on WP for [...] is when the quoted passage contains its own ... and ours has to be distinguished from it. In such a case, it might actually be better to divide it into two quotes to avoid having to use the potentially confusing inconsistent ellipses. PS: I strongly concur with Tony1's point: "square brackets around ellipsis points are ungainly and disruptive, where the whole point of ellipsis points is to make a direct quotation smoother and more digestible through the omission".  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:23, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

Mixing italics and roman

Copied from WT:MOSTEXT#Mixing italics and roman, no responses as of this writing.

Pluralizing or possessiv…izing an italicized word leads to mixed formatting, as In Othello's first act…. I've seen some style guides recommend rewriting to avoid this, but can't find anything in our own. Do we care? —96.8.24.95 (talk) 02:11, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

I'm happy to say we have arrived at the critical point at which there is no topic arising on Wikipedia for which there is not some germane section on my user page: User:EEng#Museum_of_Possessive_Rabbis. EEng 02:18, 26 December 2019 (UTC)
Ha! I’m not sure that’s a good thing. But thanks! —96.8.24.95 (talk) 02:35, 26 December 2019 (UTC)
Though that doesn’t address whether it would be preferable to rewrite to avoid the situation (e.g., In the first act of Othello…). So… I’m afraid at least one such topic remains. —96.8.24.95 (talk) 02:39, 26 December 2019 (UTC)
It does indirectly, in that it shows serious writers apparently use the construction. I wouldn't worry about it. EEng 10:41, 26 December 2019 (UTC)
Our style guide does not recommend doing that, so we'd use "Othello's". Some other style guides (I think The Chicago Manual of Style is one, but I would have to look it up again) that do recommend extending the formatting to include the entire string, are concerned only with typesetting appearance and do not take into account semantic markup, metadata, behavior of templates and other scripting, among other technical considerations that matter at Wikipedia. Nor are offline style guides generally in favor of doing this; only a few of them are. As with any MoS matter, apply WP:Common sense; as MoS's own lead says, if something is problematic, try to write around it. That may be the case when pluralizing something italic in a way that would result in such a mixed-format construction (and there is very rarely any good reason to do so). Judging from on- and off-site writing and style guides in the main, few seem to consider the possessive case (as in "Othello's") to be awkward, so it's simply not an issue. PS: Please do not open duplicate threads (WP:TALKFORK, WP:MULTI). I closed the other one and soft-redirected it to this one.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:50, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

Putting <blockquote> to pasture

At WP:BLOCKQUOTE, can we get rid of the rather archaic recommendation to use the HTML blockquote tags directly? Right now it says

Block quotations can be enclosed in {{quote}} or <blockquote>...</blockquote>.

Can we change this to just

Block quotations can be enclosed in {{quote}}, which indents the quoted text.

or something like that? Here we're not forbidding the use of the raw HTML tags if you really want, just not recommending them or mentioning it one way or the other.

Or it could be changed to "Block quotations can be enclosed in {{quote}} (which is a just a wrapper for the HTML <blockquote>...</blockquote> tags)" or something else.

(There are a couple-few reasons to prefer the {{quote}} template over the raw HTML; they're not deal-makers, but just better formatting hygiene IMO: 1) makes global change possible, 2) makes counting transclusions easier, 3) {{quote}} has a built-in mechanism for adding citations, 4) {{quote}} has some other fields too.)

Also, this would require appropriate tweaking of other text in the section, e.g.

Line breaks and indentation inside a {{quote}} or <blockquote> are generally ignored...

would become just

Line breaks and indentation inside a {{quote}} are generally ignored...

and so forth.

What say you? Herostratus (talk) 17:48, 20 December 2019 (UTC)

  • I think this a good idea. How to use quote templates instead of <blockquote> was added back in 2007. You can still mention that it is a wrapper for the HTML. Also replace the poetry example with {{poemquote}} now that we have that template. StarryGrandma (talk) 02:15, 21 December 2019 (UTC)
    Looks good, but don't mention both quote and blockquote or "wrapper" (anyone who understands that term can quickly work that out). As Herostratus says, the guideline would not be forbidding or even deprecating blockquote; instead, the guideline would guide editors towards use of quote which is consistent, cleaner and flexible. Poemquote should be mentioned as well. Johnuniq (talk) 02:39, 21 December 2019 (UTC)
  • I generally oppose removal. "Is a wrapper" or similar is reasonable, but ends up being longer than just saying "use X or Y" (which we use in multiple places in this MOS; this request seems targeted at other disputes rather than a sincere desire to take care of the supposed issue in general). --Izno (talk) 14:56, 21 December 2019 (UTC)
    @Izno: Could you be more specific about these "other disputes"? Colin M (talk) 16:35, 26 December 2019 (UTC)
    @Colin M: I was speculating, but it appears that it's coming from discussions like #RfC: Use of Large Quotes in article space, and the Cquote template and its preceding discussions. --Izno (talk) 16:30, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
  • Support. This seems like an easy win, in that it makes the MoS's advice just a little bit shorter and simpler to follow, and at seemingly no cost. Colin M (talk) 16:42, 26 December 2019 (UTC)
  • Much ado about nothing. Some people (um, looking in the mirror here) have been using good ol' blockquote terminology for a long time, and I suspect there are others who are not privy to this conversation. Yours, BeenAroundAWhile (talk) 23:04, 27 December 2019 (UTC)
    In other words, please don't change the instructions we have now. BeenAroundAWhile (talk) 23:09, 27 December 2019 (UTC)
  • I see no reason to change this. Personally, I generally use raw <Blockquote>...</Blockquote> tags, and see no reason not to continue doing so. I therefore oppose the suggested change. DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 02:48, 29 December 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose per the above. Doing this would also have major implications for other use of HTML. There is no policy or common-sense basis on which to forbid the plain-HTML version of something we can also produce with a template or wikimarkup; all it would do is impede varioius HTML-experienced but Mediawiki-new editors' ability to contribute. As advanced editors already know, there are various cases in which Mediawiki markup for complex lists (as just one example) will not work as intended, requiring HTML list formatting. The basic principle here is to output the proper HTML, at the browser end, for the semantics of the material. How (at the source-code level) that result is reached is primarily a factor of editorial habits. As another example, it matters more that "Mexican–American War" have an en dash (not a hyphen, em dash, or other horizontal line) in it than it matters whether you do this with a template, with a Unicode character, or with an HTML character entity code. They all resolve to the same thing upon display. So will <blockquote>...</blockquote> versus basic use of {{quote}}.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:30, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
    I think this is arguing against something stronger than what is being proposed. Herostratus wrote above Here we're not forbidding the use of the raw HTML tags if you really want, just not recommending them or mentioning it one way or the other.. Colin M (talk) 21:12, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

Proposal to fix a potential hole in the Manual of Style

Statement

This is a proposal to fix a potential hole in WP:MoS, which has allowed contributors to use the term 'English-Irish' being used in the article about the girl group Girls Aloud. It would be necessary to state that such usage may render the aforementioned term as usable alongside the term 'Anglo-Irish' (in which may be more preferable). Thus, this potential hole shall be called the 'English-Irish problem'.

A few more examples of the 'English-Irish problem' exist in the following articles:

A potentially good solution to the 'English-Irish problem' would be to add a Manual of Style rule forbidding the usage of terms following a similar pattern to the terms 'English-Irish', 'China-United States', and 'Burmese-Siamese', and requesting the usage of terms following a similar pattern to the terms 'Greco-Chinese', 'Russo-German', 'Anglo-Saxon', 'Burmo-Siamese', 'Saxo-Thai', and 'Franco-American'. For example, a team whose members are from both Spain and the People's Republic of China should be referred to as either 'Hispano-Chinese' or 'Sino-Spanish'. Similarly, a person whose parents are of Russian and Tibetan origin should be referred to as either 'Russo-Tibetan' or 'Tibeto-Russian'.

It's time the entire of Wikipedia deprecated terms such as 'English-Irish', in favor of terms such as 'Anglo-Irish'. What will the community think? Opinions can be shared in the 'Discussion' section.

--69.160.29.17 (talk) 14:00, 13 December 2019 (UTC)

Discussion

  • Oppose no need to swap between equally valid terms. No case has been made for the need to mandate one set of terms over the others. --Jayron32 14:29, 13 December 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose The acceptable form depends on context; article titles follow common name and prose follows consistency within the article.
    • BTW, for the Girls Aloud article, that's given with a primary source (interview) and Ireland is only mentioned once in the article body (for a music chart) so there doesn't seem to be a strong connection. I might be tempted to relegate that information to a footnote. – Reidgreg (talk) 18:39, 17 December 2019 (UTC)
  • Comment - the term “Anglo-Irish” has a historical connotation/context that is not the same as “English-Irish”. Blueboar (talk) 19:02, 17 December 2019 (UTC)
  • I concur with the objections, and will add that we should avoid using constructions that are not easily understood. Burmo-, Saxo-, etc., meaning nothing to the average reader. Sino- is borderline, but is used in some contexts regularly by reliable sources. Russo-, Franco-, Gr[a]eco-, and some others are both common enough and obvious enough in meaning to use them, but we shouldn't do so when the sources don't. A further issue, is that the hyphenated forms are more and more frequently being reserved for "is a combination or collaboration of" cases, and less and less for "is a conflict or a diplomatic issue between" cases. That is, Mexican–American War and China–US relations are more common in contemporary English than any hyphenated expressions with a demonym-derived prefix.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:12, 24 December 2019 (UTC)
  • I don't think "Russo-, Franco-, Gr[a]eco-" are common terms at all, at least not common to a secondary-school student trying to puzzle out a Wikipedia article. BeenAroundAWhile (talk) 22:54, 27 December 2019 (UTC)
    But they are quite obvious and self-explanatory, given that they're very similar to the countries they refer to, being Russia, France, and Greece, respectively. El Millo (talk) 23:03, 27 December 2019 (UTC)
    For sufficiently literate people, but WP has plenty of users who would be flummoxed. "Write simply" is always good advice, wouldn't you agree? Thanks. BeenAroundAWhile (talk) 01:55, 29 December 2019 (UTC)
    I do, but didn't want to go so far as to suggest MoS recommend against ever using them (except in proper names). It could go that way eventually, but this stuff is best shifted slowly and carefully, on an as-needed basis. MoS was a hotbed of turmoil for about a decade straight because everyone kept trying to impose sweeping changes, willy-nilly, to satisfy their pet peeves.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:10, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose as per SMcCandlish above, and particular oppose mandating less obvious forms with different roots such as "Sino-". Nor should we be micro-managing our articles in this way, particularly where sources may differ. DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 02:30, 29 December 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose per SMcCandlish�. Tony (talk) 00:42, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

RfC on abbreviation of judicial offices

The consensus is that per MOS:ABBR and MOS:JARGON, legal abbreviations for judicial offices, such as "Smith J" for "Justice Smith", should not be used in the text of articles.

Cunard (talk) 10:29, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Should legal abbreviations for judicial offices, such as "Smith J" for "Justice Smith", be used in the text of articles? Examples can be seen in Court of Disputed Returns (Australia) and Butler Machine Tool Co Ltd v Ex-Cell-O Corp (England) Ltd.--Jack Upland (talk) 01:19, 19 December 2019 (UTC)

Note: This was briefly discussed at MOS/Biography. Pinging those involved: @Find bruce, Errantius, Izno, and The Drover's Wife:.--Jack Upland (talk) 01:27, 19 December 2019 (UTC)
  • No: I accept this is standard legal practice, but we should avoid technical jargon — see MOS:JARGON. This is not a legal text, but an encyclopedia for everybody. These abbreviations are not normally used by the news media. I do not accept that anything is gained by shortening "Justice" to "J". "MR" for "Master of the Rolls" and "B" for "Baron" is simply arcane. The result is the ordinary reader is baffled and bemused.--Jack Upland (talk) 01:36, 19 December 2019 (UTC)
  • No: I agree with the Associated Press Stylebook 2019 ("judge" entry) which would put the full title before the name on the first mention of the person, and omit the title later in the article. Some examples: "U.S. District Judge John Bates", "Superior Court Judge Robert Harrison". I think this will be understandable regardless of which variety of English the reader is accustomed to. Jc3s5h (talk) 01:52, 19 December 2019 (UTC)
    I agree with that too.--Jack Upland (talk) 02:58, 19 December 2019 (UTC)
  • Comment: this is a misleading request for change as the proposer is not requesting that change - they are opposing it, such that it is hard to distinguish the proposal from a strawman argument. The proposer is not requesting any change to an existing policy that prohibits such use. What the proposer is in fact requesting is to introduce a prohibition on the use of an extremely common convention for referring to judges in Australia in articles discussing legal propositions and cases. See the Australian Guide to Legal Citation at 1.14.4, 2.9.1 and 9.2.8. As I said at the discussion linked to above, it is used in some WP articles discussing decisions of the High Court of Australia, while other articles refer to them as Justice, Chief Justice etc and there is nothing wrong with that. To me it is essentially the same as referring to a judgment reference by the extremely common convention of CLR rather than the full title of Commonwealth Law Reports. I cannot agree with the proposal as put as that would mandate the use of a particular style when there is more than one acceptable style. The choice of the appropriate style remains a matter for any particular article. --Find bruce (talk) 05:06, 19 December 2019 (UTC)
    Abbreviations and other short forms are more often used in citations than in running text. Jc3s5h (talk) 15:53, 19 December 2019 (UTC)
  • Use what the sources use. The Drover's Wife (talk) 08:13, 19 December 2019 (UTC)
    I agree. Most sources do not use this abbreviation.--Jack Upland (talk) 08:40, 19 December 2019 (UTC)
    Judging from The Drover's Wife's comments at the previous discussion on this, TDW means "Use 'J' because legal writers do it." But no. We write in plain English. We absolutely do not write WP articles about the law the way a law journal article would. That's the WP:Specialized style fallacy and is the root cause of about 90% of the style-related strife on Wikipedia.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:53, 27 December 2019 (UTC)
  • "Smith J" is easily confused with a person's name (first name starting with J). Tony (talk) 09:27, 19 December 2019 (UTC)
  • No, do not (as someone opined above) "use what the sources use". We've been through this ten thousand times: we don't adopt specialist jargon and formatting that will confuse our readers just so we can show we're part of the in-crowd. Writing that "Smith J found that plaintiff failed to etc etc etc" should, perhaps, be our marquee example of what not to do. (I see one of the linked articles uses bigquotes too, so there's a lot to answer for.) EEng 10:28, 19 December 2019 (UTC)
  • No The "Smith J" for "Justice Smith" is only understood by a particular group of people. I would have been puzzled by it, was it not explained above. To me it could have meant there was more than one Smith on the bench? It looks too much like "Smith J" for "Justin Smith" or "John Smith". Unless it is direct quote, then we in we at WP should spell it out I think. Aoziwe (talk) 10:58, 19 December 2019 (UTC)
  • No Wikipedia is is aimed at the general reader. I notice Carlill v Carbolic Smoke Ball Co refers to "Lindley LJ and Bowen LJ". I see no problem with giving such judges their full "Lord Justice" titles on first mention, and with "Lord Lindley" and "Lord Bowen" for later mentions. William Avery (talk) 11:26, 19 December 2019 (UTC)
    • Just a note: "Lord Justice Lindley" and "Lord Justice Bowen" cannot be shortened to "Lord Lindley" and "Lord Bowen". "Lord Justice X" and "Lord X" are distinct styles held by different groups of people. I'd say that the appropriate encyclopaedic style after first reference would simply be the relevant judge's surname. "Lord Justice Lindley and Lord Justice Bowen heard the case. Lindley said in his judgment..." Proteus (Talk) 10:21, 7 January 2020 (UTC)
  • No. I'm an English lawyer, so I use this shorthand all the time. In a legal document, I would write "Smith J". But in a document intended for a non-legal audience, I'd use "Mr Justice Smith". In my view, shorthand is only appropriate if it's universally understood by the intended audience. Proteus (Talk) 11:29, 19 December 2019 (UTC)
  • No. Although "Smith J" is used when judges write legal opinions, when writing about legal opinions for an encyclopedia, we should avoid jargon not understood to a wider audience, and possible confused as Smith, J(ohn). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:27, 19 December 2019 (UTC)
  • No, as its WP:JARGON. We have no need to save space or indulge in unusual abbreviation or word order not used in general English. oknazevad (talk) 17:05, 19 December 2019 (UTC)
  • No. Concurring with all the Nos above. (As Ko-Ko says in The Mikado, "Never knew such unanimity on a point of law in all my life".) Tim riley talk 14:10, 22 December 2019 (UTC)
  • No, per MOS:ABBR, MOS:JARGON guidelines, and for reasons explained in detail at WP:SSF. While MOS:ABBR covers this in a very general (not law-specific) way, if people are not understanding that, then we probably need to include this as a specific example of unhelpful abbreviation, just to prevent further rehash of the matter.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:53, 27 December 2019 (UTC)
  • No in a general context as per everyone else. This is a general encyclopedia, and we don't need to go over basically the same topic again. If it referring to the term rather than using it then it should be used of course. Happy Festivities! // J947 (c) 05:05, 27 December 2019 (UTC)
  • No for all the excellent reasons discussed above. There are only two contexts in which an American lawyer would write "[name], J." rather than "Justice [name]." Either they are an appellate justice signing an opinion, or they are citing an opinion in formal legal writing.
  • No, outside of formal first citations to U.S. Supreme Court opinions, and any other courts in the English-speaking world in which those abbreviated honorifics are commonly used in citations. Daniel Case (talk) 23:23, 5 January 2020 (UTC)
  • Depends - I'd say it depends. Ordinarily for a non-legal writing, no, but I wouldn't have any concerns with it in a infobox for a case, for example. Bookscale (talk) 11:10, 7 January 2020 (UTC)

Arb brk

So it/she meanders on, and jail/gaol is still simmering, but here there's perfect harmony. MOS:ABBR is too confusing for me to decide where in it this might be addressed, so I've added a bit to WP:Manual_of_Style#Do_not_use_unwarranted_abbreviations [6]. My esteemed fellow editors are invited to opine on my humble effort. EEng 21:09, 22 December 2019 (UTC)

That seems fine. It's not necessary for every abbreviation-related example in MoS to appears in MOS:ABBR; the purpose of the latter is to lay out abbreviation principles in more detail than we get into in the main MoS, not just to regurgitate the main MoS points about abbreviations. :-)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:53, 27 December 2019 (UTC)
Thanks everyone!--Jack Upland (talk) 08:51, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
  • While it hasn't been 30 days, consensus seems clear, and was implemented more than a week ago. Is there any reason not tto close this discussion? DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 23:55, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Using "British" vs "English" to describe a person/company/work

I've run into a fair question from a relatively new user and though I understand the core complaint, I thought we had guidance on this.

The case is in point is for several articles related to video game studios in London or the England part of the UK (as opposed to Scotland, Wales, or Northern Ireland). Generally, in such cases, I have seen these called "British", but this user believes it should be called an "English" studio as to designate that it sits in England rather that anywhere in the UK.

There is a clear inconsistency on WP spot checking around: bios tend to use "English" where things like films, TV shows, companies, may likely use "British".

My question is if this is spelled out somewhere in the MOS explicitly, and if not, should we be more explicit about it? --Masem (t) 03:40, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

Hmm. Well, the ethno-cultural sense of a nation and nationality makes sense in a biographical context, and may also in various other contexts, such as cultural output. That will often be a factor in a TV show or film and maybe even a video game, but is not likely to matter when it comes to, say, calculator software, or manufacture of car parts. If we're consistently describing all things in/from Scotland as Scottish and all things in/from Wales as Welsh, even if there's no culture-related reason for it, then we should do the same with things in/from England with the designation English. But only a) if we're sure we want to be doing this with Scotland and Wales, and b) only for article subjects essentially confined to that jurisdiction (if a company has offices in England and Scotland, then call it British; if it's a product used all the time all over the UK (e.g. HP Sauce), then call it British even if the manufacturer's HQ is in England). That's my initial take on the matter. It's always been left to editorial discretion (and I can recall sporadic edit-warring about it at various topics), but if it's leading to a confusing level of inconsistency, or to protracted, cyclical editorial conflicts, then we might need to address it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:07, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
Masem, you are probably thinking of this essay which I have saved somewhere. Its a handy guide for *people* but not really applicable to companies, except where you may have some strong national ties in a similar way to people. I'm thinking in the food and drink area, or anything else thats region specific. Describing scotch producers as 'British' companies, while technically correct, would be wrong. But otherwise, just being located somewhere specific doesnt merit an 'English/Scottish/Welsh' label, unless there is a reason for that label. Functionally, UK companies are registered at companies house as a British company. But biographies of people will have a much easier time of identifying a national preference. Only in death does duty end (talk) 07:34, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
This makes sense, in that at least for companies, we are talking their place of registration, which can only be the UK, and I can see how that can then distinguish from people where the nationality is a different factor (wholly separate matter, I see the new RFC on infoboxes and nationality that is tied to this for people). --Masem (t) 15:28, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
The United Kingdom is a single sovereign country, and the registration of all UK companies is handled by Companies House[7]. However, due to the complex history and relationship between the UK's four constituent countries, there are three separate company registers maintained: one for companies in England and Wales which operate under English law, one for companies in Scotland which operate under Scottish law, and one for companies in Northern Ireland which operate under Northern Irish law. Whichever register a company appears in though, they are all ultimately British Companies in the international context, as the UK is the only sovereign country that contains them. -- DeFacto (talk). 10:20, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
That we use English, Scottish, Welsh, Northern Irish, Irish instead of the proper British for UK-related articles, simply annoys me to no end. This special treatment isn't given for articles related to other sovereign states. GoodDay (talk) 15:43, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
Well, most other sovereign states don't consistent of "constituent countries" with varying degrees of sovereignty rights retained. Even the "states" of the United States (and various other countries with "states" or cognates, like the estados of Mexico) do not mean state in the classic sense. The US states retain some limited rights of self-governance on various things, but they're really unlike, say, Scotland within the UK. The UK is just unusual, and in more than one relevant way. E.g., Northern Ireland is part of the UK, but is not part of [Great] Britain, so it's not British except in strained, extenuated senses, in about the same way Puerto Rico "is" American (though at least PR has its own flag, and isn't being claimed by another nation-state). But N.Irl. also isn't like Wales and Scotland nor even politically extinct Cornwall, in being a former nation and in various (especially cultural) respects still treated as one; it's simply territory occupied from another nation-state, and culturally more attuned to that one in many ways. Anyway, we have WP:POV and WP:ABOUTSELF issue, in that various "British" people don't identify as such but as something more specific, and may have deep-seated, even defining, socio-political rationales for it. It's not WP's job to tell them they're wrong. (Same goes for, say, a Scot who firmly self-identifies as British rather than Scottish.) I don't think consistency is going to be possible, so the question is probably what the default should be (just British, or the more specific terms?).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:59, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
A little off-topic, but I actually think that's pretty much exactly incorrect as regards US states. US states don't have "some limited rights of self-governance"; they are the primary jurisdiction for most individual-on-individual issues. --Trovatore (talk) 20:11, 3 January 2020 (UTC)
I would have agreed with that in, say, 1940. The US federal government has turned into a behemoth in the interim, and overrules state law all over the place.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:17, 6 January 2020 (UTC)
Note: Essentially the same issues were recently raised at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Biography#Nationality of people from UK, and at Wikipedia talk:Nationality of people from the United Kingdom. I've directed both to this discussion in an effort to centralize, per WP:TALKFORK.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:59, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
As I've posted. I'm annoyed by the special treatment for the UK-related articles. GoodDay (talk) 16:24, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
I would say the idea that it constitutes special treatment is mistaken, although I can see how it would appear like that. The relationships between personal identity, sovereign states and constituent sub-national entities are just more complicated in Europe than in most of the Anglophone world outside of the UK. Because this is the English-language Wikipedia, with coverage (and contributors) naturally skewed towards Anglophone countries, the UK stands out like a special case in this regard when compared to countries with a more settled and perhaps less knotty set of identities. If instead you compare us with continental European contexts you will see the same issues arising all over the place -- Catalans, Basques, Serbs, Croats (who never accepted being Yugoslavs), people who were born in Poland but are now Ukrainian, Greeks whose families lived in Turkey, and so on. The policies we adopt should reflect this reality, as indeed do the sources which we base our work on. FrankP (talk) 17:12, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
This situation is a bit complicated. My question is: Does the use of "English" in terms of location come across the same way to all other english-speaking regions? There is such a thing as Italian (language) and Italian (originate from Italy) same with Spanish, and French. There is Irish, and Scottish as well. Or is there a way to avoid using the word "English" in terms of geographic origin and instead use another sentence structure. For example "From England".Blue Pumpkin Pie Chat Contribs 17:41, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
I would say that to describe an organisation as English would tend to emphasise its Englishness more than to say it is based in England. One of the game studio articles mentioned by the OP begins "Rockstar London Limited is a British video game developer and a studio of Rockstar Games based in London, England". That seems to me to get it about right. FrankP (talk) 14:31, 3 January 2020 (UTC)
Though we don’t usually tell our readers that London is in England. EEng 16:03, 3 January 2020 (UTC)
To be fair, London is in Canada (Ontario, to be precise.) SportingFlyer T·C 14:14, 6 January 2020 (UTC)
  • Yes, we will just have to add this to the long list of things that annoy GoodDay. Some here may not be aware that there is or a has been a small but dedicated band of editors who go round changing British to Scottish whenever there is the slighest excuse, no doubt muttering lines from Braveheart as they go. Johnbod (talk) 20:02, 3 January 2020 (UTC)
I don't think so; Mel Gibson is an Australian.--Jack Upland (talk) 21:39, 4 January 2020 (UTC)
I suppose (to be generous) you've never seen the film. His character William Wallace is Scottish; very much so. Johnbod (talk) 01:23, 5 January 2020 (UTC)
We really need to get rid of the nationalist "language territory staking" templates like "This article is written in Scottish English". I've said before that we probably only need Commonwealth English, US English, and Canadian English, since there are only three dialects with multiple reputably published style guides, and most of the Commonwealth uses the British ones. There's virtually no difference in an encyclopedic register between most variants of the Commonwealth English dialect continuum.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:21, 6 January 2020 (UTC)
This is a red herring - I don't believe any editors have ever attempted to tag for "Scottish English". But Scottish editors have been very agressive, at least in the past, in changing "British" to "Scottish" in first lines and infoboxes, and setting-up Scottish categories for people - Category:British scientists has 38 sub-cats, while its sub Category:Scottish scientists has 34 (the Welsh have 19, and N Ireland only 10; 35 for English). User:Mais oui! was one of the most energetic and combative, but now retired "as of February 2018 due to bullying by rogue admin over many years", his user page says. To see how much actual "Scottish English" WP contains, this search is useful. Johnbod (talk) 13:52, 6 January 2020 (UTC)
Agreed. British English and American English cover the major differences.. As an Australian I would support that, even if it means saying "lorry" when I want to say "truck". At least I get to spell "colour" with a "u". Fragmenting into dozens of specific countries is just asking for nationalistic arguments that really aren't helpful.  Stepho  talk  10:25, 6 January 2020 (UTC)
Honestly, this is something that is difficult to coherently codify in MoS. A company that soley operates in England can be English or British. In general, for companies we should default to British unless the company or highly reliable sources say explictly otherwise. In regards, to people that is an entirely different situation in which it should be determined from page-to-page consensus. One example I have found is that article related to politians usually favour British over English/Welsh (although Scotland seems to favour Scottish, Northern Ireland is a bit more complicated, related pages: England, Wales, Scotland Northern Ireland). However articles related to actors favour "English/Welsh/Scottish/Northern Irish" over "British" (Examples: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. This has also been noted at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Companies.  Spy-cicle💥  Talk? 21:32, 4 January 2020 (UTC)
  • There are almost no cases when it's problematic to describe someone as "British" when "English" would have been a possibility. It's not wrong, but nor is it a necessity. GoodDay will just have to resign themselves to this.
There are certainly problem areas on WP within the "British" scope. Ireland or Northern Ireland is an obvious one, and worse for some periods of history than others. Anglo-Irish is one which WP persists in getting wrong. Scottish much less so, rarely contentious on WP, as Scottish is accepted here as distinct. Cornish has been a problem in the past as WP doesn't recognise this as a distinct group. Wales is largely a problem of inaccuracy, and WP tends to keep describing subjects like Lloyd George or Julian Cope as "welsh" although neither are.
For companies, it's English, Scottish or Northern Irish. Wales comes under England. Andy Dingley (talk) 22:15, 4 January 2020 (UTC)
It is actually very simple. If something is good, positive and to be proud of it is British; if to the contrary, English. However in Scotland or Wales if it is good it is Scottish/Welsh, otherwise British. ;-) Martin of Sheffield (talk) 22:16, 4 January 2020 (UTC)
You're right it should be simple. I can offer a slight correction though: if it's bad, evil and imperialistic, it's English. If it's inventive, radical and original, it's Scottish Irish or Welsh, as appropriate. If it's undeniably good, but can't be sensibly assigned to any of the outlying nations, let's call it British. ;-) FrankP (talk) 00:35, 5 January 2020 (UTC)
If its tail is missing or it has four horns instead of two, then it's Manx. :-)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:26, 6 January 2020 (UTC)
  • Truly there's nothing which WP won't edit-war over. On SS Nomadic, trying to put 1911 Belfast into Ireland. Andy Dingley (talk) 22:25, 4 January 2020 (UTC)
  • I don't really care which term is used. The union is entering its final phase, anyway, after which we'll be using "English", "Welsh", and "Scottish". Tony (talk) 02:39, 5 January 2020 (UTC)
  • When there's more than one perfectly reasonable option, just leave whichever one has been chosen. Dicklyon (talk) 23:51, 5 January 2020 (UTC)
  • I'd have to agree with the above. The situation with terminology of nationality in the UK/British Isles in general is complex and not something that aligns to simple solutions that may work for other countries. The UK gets a unique treatment because its political and historical context is unique, and like what Dicklyon said, there's no reason to change between British and English in situations where both or either are correct. That's the guidance at WP:ENGVAR (don't arbitrarily change between two functionally equivalent terms) and I think that works well here. If someone could be described as both English or British, and the article uses only one of those terms already, default to just keeping that, excepting in rare cases where a person may demonstrated NOT self-identify as one or the other (for example, some English nationalists may not self-identify as British, and it would be inappropriate to use such terms to describe them). However, for the vast majority of cases where one could use both terms, use either and stick to the initial choice. --Jayron32 15:01, 6 January 2020 (UTC)
There does seem however to be some useful advice I could pick up from the above:
  • Unless the nationality is a defining factor for the entity (to not describe Monty Python as British would be omitting a key detail of the group), try to avoid the nationality and instead establish the nationality via location. "X is a British game studio..." can be written as "X is a game studio based in London."
  • There probably should be something akin to DATERET for this - switching between British and English/Welsh/Scottish should not be done without consensus discussion. (Obviously, completely inappropriate labels should be fixed. An Amercian actor that moves to Scotland suddenly should not be labeled a "Scottish actor".)
  • Follow RSes if there's a question of which term to use, with a bit more weight given to non-British/English/Welsh/Scottish sources.
I don't know if we need to codify these but they seem consistent with the above. --Masem (t) 15:10, 6 January 2020 (UTC)
I think those are really good guidelines, but still the "don't fight over it" is the best guidance. The whole "is it a defining characteristic" is good guidance, but there are far too many editors for whom national/ethnic/racial identity is the most important thing one can say about a person, and will fight tooth-and-nail over the issue. The other point about rephrasing to avoid controversy ("John Doe is a British/English footballer" would be written as "John Doe is a footballer from the United Kingdom" or "John Doe is a footballer born in London") is probably the best advice where there is likely to be controversy. --Jayron32 18:46, 6 January 2020 (UTC)
I like the first of Masem's trio, and it's something we've concluded before. I remember an RfC or something more than a decade ago that went something like "Labeling the Beatles English rather than British dwells inappropriately on location", i.e. it mis-stresses "were an English band", not "were a band who happen to have been British and got started in Liverpool, established firmly in Hamburg, and [... more context here]". The "English" bit implies an English nationalism that doesn't exist within their music, fandom, and critical reception. An even better example might be the Pogues, a culturally Irish band who were nevertheless founded and mostly based in England; calling them English or Irish as a "nationality" matter would be misleading and confusing; their complex relationship to both countries should be covered in the lead paragraph with sufficient context, not over-simplified in either an infobox or the lead sentence with a misleading lack of specifics. I disagree with the second of Masem's points; in practice, all the *VAR guidelines have been problematic in leading to WP:OWN / WP:VESTED problems that interfere with exercise of the WP:EDITING policy. It's actually not really permissible under policy for a guideline to effectively forbid editing without prior permission of a page's watchlisters. At most, some slight discouragement of making such changes without establishing a consensus for them first might be okay, but ... Nah. It's just too often misinterpreted as "whoever got here first has the final say", no matter how many times we rejigger the *VAR guidelines' wording to discourage that misinterpretation. And we already have MOS:STYLERET as a general point that covers this kind of case, too. I agree with Masem's third point, but it's just how WP works (follow the sources, and don't cherry-pick biased ones), so we don't need to re-state it for one tiny style peccadillo. MoS is over-long already, so we should resist adding redundant points to it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:27, 8 January 2020 (UTC)
Point #2 is meant to stop stupid edit wars, which, while normally WP:EW should imply, may help with nationality debates and point editors to look at past consensus before making such changes. Case in point is that Father Ted has been constantly edited to try make it a "British-Irish" program, where in fact the show was entirely made by British writers and production, but was "set" in Ireland and had Irish actors. A similar facet goes to many films where there are a combination of different production companies on it that some take to mean that suddenly the film is a multi-national film because of that (eg I've seen ppl try to call Hot Fuzz a British-French film, only because one French production company is involved). I agree we don't need to create a new RET shortcut here, but I would think adding some advice to not just mechanically change the nationality of a work without checking past consensus is sorta needed. --Masem (t) 23:39, 8 January 2020 (UTC)
I could buy this, but I think it should be integrated into MOS:TV and MOS:FILM, since it's primarily a works issue, not an every-topic issue. When it comes up for bios, it's rarely problematic for long, and gets settled rather firmly on a case-by-case basis (e.g. for Joyce, as previously mentioned). The general principle to be clear in the text while avoiding over-simplified infobox parameters is probably more valuable as a broad instruction (and is more of "do edit" than a "don't" instruction). An example worth mentioning might be Lynette Horsburgh, who was born in England and lives there and works her day job there, but is the child of two Scots, calls herself Scottish, and plays international snooker, pool, and billiards professionally and as an amateur (in different disciplines) for Scotland, only. The lead is clear enough to establish context (and she is Scottish-English for encyclopedic purpose, while a film with 5% French involvement shouldn't be described as Franco-British); meanwhile, the body goes into the details of her connections to Scotland and England, and the infobox only has |sport-country=Scotland without getting into any nationality/citizenship stuff that really has nothing to do with the subject's notability, only her private life.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:37, 14 January 2020 (UTC)
If anything, the advice at the top level could be something like "Please refer to the appropriate Wikiproject for advice of how to address nationality when discussing a person, work, entity, or other facet. Appropriate MOS include (list here). Editors should be aware that these guidance on reporting nationality have come from years of consensus-building, and editors are cautioned about changing the nationality against these guidance without achieving consensus first." or something to that degree. --Masem (t) 15:42, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

This 'unique' treatment for the UK bios, also effects the Year of X articles. In those articles, the terms English, Scottish, Welsh & Irish are used, instead of British. GoodDay (talk) 23:43, 8 January 2020 (UTC)

For the sake of having something comparable to compare to, let's look at the Kingdom of the Netherlands, which consists of four constituent countries: Netherlands, Aruba, Curaçao, and Sint Maarten. Every person but the one listed at Category:Sint Maarten sportspeople stubs is identified in their respective articles as a Sint Maartener—and the one exception is identified as Curaçaoan. In contrast, a variety of treatments are applied to the people listed at Category:Aruban musicians, including "Aruban", "Dutch", and "Aruban-Dutch". Might it be, though, that the "Dutch" ones were from European families recently resident in Aruba, rather than from generations of Arubans? Largoplazo (talk) 00:05, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

To convey the most information most concisely, I'd lean toward using the most specific term (English, Welsh, Northern Irish, Scottish, and maybe even Cornish) when doing so is uncomplicated. All five have a language and ethnic identity associated with them that corresponds to political boundaries and for the first four their own legal systems (Wales now has a parliament and Welsh law is diverging over time even though it's part of England and Wales). A lot of Americans don't realize that Wales and Scotland are separate from England, because in the U.S. "England" and "Britain" are treated somewhat carelessly as synonyms, so I think being specific would be educational for a lot of readers. "British" is a good term to use when more than one constituent country is involved (whether due to moving or widespread presence or diversity of ethnicity vs. residence or referring to multiple entities from different constituent countries, or whatever), or the specific constituent country is unclear. (And obviously it would be good to explain the complications.) I've had some experience doing automated processing of how people write international addresses. In general, I accept the four constituent countries of the UK as top-level country names (even though under the hood I would normalize everything to something like London, England, UK or San Juan, Puerto Rico, United States) plus anything that has an ISO 3166-1 country code. (That the UK has a single ISO code is probably a quirk of customs law, which may change in the near future if Northern Ireland is moved outside the main UK customs territory.) To be consistent with that rule, that would mean using specific terms when talking about Arbua, Greenland, and Puerto Rico, but not California or Quebec or Catalonia or Assam. (California doesn't have its own ethnolinguistic group and companies there are usually incorporated in Delaware; Quebec and Catalonia and Assam have ethnolingustic and jurisdictional alignment, but Canada and Spain and India can't be completely divided up into such units like the UK can. Though I'd be open to using specific terms in prose for those cases as long as the sovereign country is also identified, since readers are not necessarily familiar with the first-level country subdivisions in every country in the world.) I'd also like to point out that "European" is now also being used as a broader ethnolinguistic, cultural, and legal identity, and for the encyclopedia is useful for entities that span more than one EU country. -- Beland (talk) 18:04, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
Well-reasoned as far as it goes, but this doesn't address the way-old consensus that doing things like writing "The Beatles were an English band that ..." unduly stresses "Englishness" in a way that doesn't align with WP:ABOUTSELF presentation or indepdent RS analysis of them and their work and impact and cultural associations, which lean "British" more than "English". Even despite Yank confusion, the musical wave of the Beatles and their contemporaries from the same general region was termed the "British invasion", not the "English" one. My own personal preference is to be specific (including also for Cornish, where firmly identifiable as such), but my American-supporter-of-Celtic-separatist-movements position hasn't anything to do with how to write an encyclopedia (except possibly a negative relationship to it!).  :-)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:44, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

Charts, graphs, timelines collapsed by default?

Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Scrolling lists and collapsible content currently states, "Collapsible templates should not conceal article content by default upon page loading. This includes reference lists, tables and lists of article content, image galleries, and image captions." Does this apply to templates rendering charts, graphs, timelines, etc.? I would think it would if it applies to image galleries. --Bsherr (talk) 21:41, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

There are exceptions listed in the next paragraph. See also related discussions such as Template talk:Ahnentafel#Transforming into the standardised navbox look and Template talk:Chart top/Requested Comments 1. DrKay (talk) 22:05, 16 January 2020 (UTC)
The exceptions discuss, in this order, tables, navboxes, and infoboxes, and thus not charts, graphs, timelines (unless one should be contained within an infobox), right? --Bsherr (talk) 00:28, 17 January 2020 (UTC)
What is your proposed change to the Manual of Style? DrKay (talk) 17:02, 17 January 2020 (UTC)
At the moment I'm just confirming an absence of an explicit guideline. But I am leaning toward proposing that charts, graphs, timelines, etc. be treated the same as tables. --Bsherr (talk) 17:15, 17 January 2020 (UTC)
Or at least the absence of a specific guideline on this page. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Accessibility#Users with limited CSS or JavaScript support says all article content should be uncollapsed by default, which would seem to include these. --Bsherr (talk) 17:30, 17 January 2020 (UTC)
That section talks about technical issues and may be out-of-date. HiddenStructure for example wouldn't work on wikipedia for any user regardless of browser or operating system. I must confess how it relates to disability escapes me. DrKay (talk) 17:55, 17 January 2020 (UTC)
Indeed. Merits of the guideline and its purpose may warrant further discussion. Notwithstanding that, I'm more immediately concerned with whether there are any merits to distinguishing between content forms (tables vs. prose vs. files vs. charts). None are apparent to me, and it would allow for a clearer guideline if there were none. --Bsherr (talk) 20:01, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

Dates of birth and death in text

I have forgotten and can't find the relevant MOS section: could someone let me know if this is incorrect at Tourette syndrome (should dates be removed)?

The condition was named by Jean-Martin Charcot (1825–1893) on behalf of his resident, Georges Gilles de la Tourette (1857–1904), a French neurologist, who published an account of nine patients with Tourette's in 1885.

Thanks in advance, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:40, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

I am doubtful that such a thing appears in the MOS. I'd remove it because it's clutter in context. --Izno (talk) 14:58, 19 January 2020 (UTC)
Speaking more generally (not for the case at hand), I'd say it depends on the circumstances. If the subjects of the dates have their own articles and the dates are available there, then the information is probably usually superfluous and can be removed. On the other hand, providing such dates may offer useful contextualization in other cases. If the subjects of the dates do not have their own articles, then offering the dates in running text is more valuable because the information is not readily available at a link. The fact that the information is parenthetical makes it easy for readers to skip over the dates if they are not interested in the detail. I think judicious choices on a case-by-case basis are the best solution rather than a blanket rule. Doremo (talk) 15:12, 19 January 2020 (UTC)
Since the 1885 date when the account was published provides context, I decided to remove the clutter. Thanks! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:15, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

MOS:TENSE dispute needs outside input.

There's a dispute ongoing here regarding whether or not a non-time-limited event should take the past or present tense (specifically, to describe the process as was or is. If someone with a better knowledge of the proper tense per WP:MOS could look at the article and enact the correct changes, that would be helpful. Currently, there are a mix of tenses as well, which is probably adding to some of the issues. Thanks all! --Jayron32 14:31, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

Surely the mix in tenses is deliberate, thus to illustrate when each should be used? Anyway, the rule of thumb I added (which was reverted pending this discussion) shouldn't be remotely disputable - it's merely an easy way to remember the rule that already exists. The only time we use the past tense is for things that have actually expired - we use the present tense for processes like knapping for instance even though fashioning stone tools went out of fashion several thousand years ago. If something has actually died (a person, a species, a pop band) then past tense is used. We also use it, per WP:FICTENSE, to refer specifically to the production runs of some creative works, even while using the present tense to refer to the work itself (which continues to exist after its creation). This isn't even a dispute - it's a tendentious editor with a fondness for petty drama making a bad edit, and then warring over it. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 15:18, 16 January 2020 (UTC)
  • In cases like this (an article on an obsolete cloth making process), the question is: does anyone still use the process? Not just commercial manufacturers, but ANYONE. Even if it is limited to medieval enthusiasts, I doubt that fulling has completely disappeared as a craft. So I would lean towards using present tense in the lead (“Fulling is...”)... but follow up by noting that the process is now rare.
That said... context matters, even in grammar... when talking about the commercial fulling mills of the Middle Ages, it is appropriate to use past tense, since THEY are historical and no longer exist. Blueboar (talk) 15:44, 16 January 2020 (UTC)
There will always be someone doing it for YouTube or whatever. The point is that it is possible to do it. It is not possible to make the Beatles release another album or for Margaret Thatcher to dance a tango. And the simplest way I can find of telling the difference is, is there an end point after which things have ceased to be. With the caveat about e.g. TV shows, which is already covered in FICTENSE, I can't think of any circumstances where this produces the wrong result. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 17:26, 16 January 2020 (UTC)
I don't think there's one solid answer and it depends on context of how the rest of the article is presented, using the test Blueboar proposes, and which to some degree is nearly impossible to prove the negative that noone uses the method any more.
If the topic is strictly about the process, it is probably best to talk of the process and steps in the present tense, but address how it has become disused in history in the past tense. Taking Fulling "Fulling is the process uses for cleaning of wool clothes. Fulling had been used through the 18th century, where it was replaced by more traditional cleaning methods (I don't know if this is the case, but get the idea). In fulling, the cloth is rinsed in..." This accounts that somewhere, someone may still do this, and unless we can say 100% no one does it, is a safer statement.
If the topic is about a product with multiple ways of making it and one process has been aged out to a point no one practically uses it, while the others are still commonly used, that's where I would discuss the process in past tense.
But, again, hard rules don't feel appropriate here. there's a couple different ways this can be done, but I would simply keep in mind that claiming a process is never used today is difficult. --Masem (t) 17:41, 16 January 2020 (UTC)
That's the thing; people die. Companies go defunct. Bands break up. But a process is not something that has a place in time. It exists outside time; it may have been more prevalent in the past, but it certainly is not something which could conceivably ever have an end. Once something like this has been invented; it just is there. The process is not a specific execution of that process, it is a set of instructions to follow to complete the process. That set of instructions does not stop being a set of instructions. The process exists even if no one is doing it right this second. --Jayron32 18:53, 16 January 2020 (UTC)
Well, Ancient_Egyptian_funerary_practices#Mummification describes a process that in principle could still be carried out, yet speaks in the past tense. I'm just raising this to cause trouble; without question the process of fulling is such and such, though it was used extensively during this or that period. EEng 21:07, 16 January 2020 (UTC)
The problem with the article is that it only deals with historic processes. From the Encyclopaedia Britannia:

Fulling

Also called felting or milling, fulling is a process that increases the thickness and compactness of wool by subjecting it to moisture, heat, friction, and pressure until shrinkage of 10 to 25 percent is achieved. Shrinkage occurs in both the warp and weft, producing a smooth, tightly finished fabric that may be so compact that it resembles felt.

Fulling as a process is very much current, even if it no longer needs vats of urine. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 21:21, 16 January 2020 (UTC)
I don't see how your response is relevant to what I said. EEng 21:32, 16 January 2020 (UTC)
There is nothing stopping whatever apocalyptic death cult springs up when the bombs finally start falling from reading up on whatever hard copy of Wikipedia they find in an abandoned school ruin and mummifying corpses again. On the other hand, this is never going to be able to bring Tutenkamen back to life. So only the latter is past tense. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 21:30, 16 January 2020 (UTC)
But it's not. The section I linked describes those processes in the past tense. EEng 21:32, 16 January 2020 (UTC)
The nuance with mummification is our portrayal of it is tied to specific societies, events or persons, which as of AD 2020 have largely ceased to be. You can only embalm a particular person once, and the ancient Egyptians aren't coming back. We treat the entire subject as historical. We use the present tense for e.g. chariot even though chariots are pretty darned rare on the modern battlefield, but we can still use the past tense to describe how dead societies constructed them. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 21:44, 16 January 2020 (UTC)
OK then. So somewhere between fulling and putting people's brains in jars there's a dividing line, but it's not clear where that line is. EEng 21:54, 16 January 2020 (UTC)
The article on "mummification in Ancient Egypt" was written in the past tense for the same reason that "fulling in the Industrial Revolution" would be. The articles about these processes as processes should use present tense. It's not about if anyone is doing it, it's about if the processes still exist, which they must if we've got an article on them. Primergrey (talk) 20:39, 19 January 2020 (UTC)
Bring the article up to date. Hand knitters and weavers continue to full woolens. Since wool cloth is still being woven commercially, it is still being fulled. Modern machines are used to do it. See "MILLA is the ideal solution for washing and fulling any type of wool fabric." StarryGrandma (talk) 21:40, 16 January 2020 (UTC)
And another Wikipedia example of a topic well-known to women but not to men that is poorly covered here. Why would any of you think fulling, even the hand methods, is obsolete? Have none of you worn wool pants? StarryGrandma (talk) 23:08, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

Is there any objection to restoring the rule of thumb which was removed here? It was merely meant as an easy test for the existing guideline, and it seems to work well for any example I can come up with. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 08:07, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

Talkpages

This guideline reads: "The Manual of Style (MoS or MOS) is the style manual for all English Wikipedia articles."

It does not say that it is the style manual for all of the English Wikipedia. It specifically mentions articles. I might be missing something here and am hoping someone could edit the guideline to make it less vague.

Are talkpages considered Wikipedia articles?

89.200.15.69 (talk) 20:03, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

No, but I doubt the Manual of Style should apply to talkpages. Talkpages don't have a style that must be followed. No one can edit someone else's comments. El Millo (talk) 20:14, 17 January 2020 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:What is an article?. I've also added a link to this page on the word "articles" in the lede sentence. --Bsherr (talk) 20:32, 17 January 2020 (UTC)
This feels like a loaded question with some conflict behind it. WP:Accessibility, while a MOS page, does apply to talk pages (specifically WP:INDENTGAP and friends are the most common offenses). --Izno (talk) 20:35, 17 January 2020 (UTC)


Pls see WP:INTERSPERSE. For info on structure see WP:ADMINP--Moxy 🍁 20:37, 17 January 2020 (UTC)
FYI. In this case, IP is asking if the pronoues of the subject used per MOS:GENDERID apply to talk pages. Although the issue seems to be resolved now however. LakesideMinersCome Talk To Me! 13:34, 18 January 2020 (UTC)
No. The question is literally if talkpages are considered Wikipedia articles. It appears they are not articles, yet some parts of the MOS seem to apply to talkpages (e.g. WP:Accessibility). The intro might be kinda misleading because it clearly states that the MOS only applies to articles. Since there appear to be exceptions, it would not hurt to have a section that describes when the MOS applies to non-articles. I do not see how the question has been resolved. GibberFishing (talk) 19:26, 18 January 2020 (UTC)
GibberFishing, the BLP applies everywhere. I can assure you that as an admin I consider deadnaming to be a violation anywhere on the project. Drmies (talk) 22:32, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

Center-aligned image captions

Hello. There is a discussion over at Milhist concerning MOS:CAPTIONS which may be of interest to watchers of this page. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 22:47, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

MOS:COLON entry

MOS:SENTENCECAPS says, "When an independent clause ends with a dash or semicolon, the first letter of the following word should not be capitalized, even if it begins a new independent clause that could be a grammatically separate sentence: Cheese is a dairy product; bacon is not. The same usually applies after colons, although sometimes the word following a colon is capitalized, if that word effectively begins a new grammatical sentence, and especially if the colon serves to introduce more than one sentence. See WP:Manual of Style § Colons." Therefore, I propose to change:

In most cases a colon works best with a complete grammatical sentence before it.

to read

In most cases a colon works best with a complete grammatical sentence before it, starting with a capital letter. When the phrase following the colon is not a complete sentence, then the first letter is not capitalized unless that first word properly has the first letter capitalized, as used, e.g. "Ms. Jones" or "Jones".

Sincerely, HopsonRoad (talk) 18:25, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

Not your fault, but this brings up a longstanding peeve of mine, to wit, that MOS's job is to explain WP's house style -- specific stylistic choices WP makes among multiple legitimate styles in English writing -- and not to teach rules universal to all competent English writing (except in a limited number of cases where experience has shown that reinforcement is truly necessary). I believe the passage under discussion falls in the all-competent-writing class, and I think it should simply be removed. EEng 19:10, 18 January 2020 (UTC)
The semicolon clause does I think need to go (I don't know that I've seen anyone ever capitalize the word after a semicolon simply for it being the word after), but I have observed variance regarding colons. --Izno (talk) 19:21, 18 January 2020 (UTC)
OK, but does it meet the WP:MOSBLOAT test? EEng 20:50, 18 January 2020 (UTC)
Peeve or not, it is clearly written as the latter and you have some editing and arguing to do if ever you hope to shift it toward the former. MapReader (talk) 21:01, 18 January 2020 (UTC)
Thank you, everyone, for responding here. Whatever the consensus arrived at here, I feel that it should be coordinated with a discussion of how MOS:SENTENCECAPS should be made consistent. Sincerely, HopsonRoad (talk) 21:43, 18 January 2020 (UTC)
If by the former you mean to explain WP's house style and by the latter you mean to teach rules universal to all competent English writing, you're completely wrong. 95% of the time MOS sticks the former; only in a few places does it wander off course into the latter. As is my wont in such cases, I will now summon Attila the Hun to wax eloquent on the subject. EEng 22:03, 18 January 2020 (UTC)
I see two issues: unhelpful division of useful colon-specific advice into two guidelines (MOS:COLON in WP:MOS, and MOS:SENTENCECAPS in MOS:CAPS); and presence of unhelpful semicolon-related rambling at SENTENCECAPS. The short version is "merge selectively from SENTENCECAPS to COLON", more or less. In detail: I agree that the current colon-specific wording at COLON is confusingly over-simplified, so, I'm inclined to support something somewhat like the clarification proposed, because editors who do not read MoS or remember what it says about colons, nor think through what it means in relation to other parts of MoS [and wouldn't have to if we arranged it better], have a tendency to just do whatever they randomly feel like in colon usage (hell, I still keep running into non-English spacing style, as in "There are three versions : Windows, Mac, and Linux."). Such messes require fairly frequent cleanup (of a uniform kind), so there should be an obvious MoS line-item that backs up such gnoming and helps forestall the need for more of it. However, the proposed exact wording above is confusing two things (capitalization of material before and material after), as well as interrupting a longer passage and would thus cause a non sequitur.

It should probably be something more like the following (which has some additional clarity worked in): "In most cases, a colon works best with a complete grammatical sentence before it." [Then keep the extant "There are exceptional cases ..." material and examples.] "When what follows the colon is also a complete sentence, start it with a capital letter, but otherwise do not capitalize after a colon except where doing so is needed for another reason, usually for a proper name."

EEng's point is also good, that some of the semicolon-specific material is "how to write English at all" MoS-bloat, and shouldn't be in MoS since it's neither WP choosing between styles, nor MoS correcting a common mistake or settling a common dispute. That is, we don't have a frequent problem of things like "Cheese is a dairy product; Bacon is not." appearing in our articles. A rule against it at SENTENCECAPS isn't why we don't have such a semicolon problem, because semicolons-and-capitals usage norms are universal, while lack of clarity and advice-centralization about colons obviously is why we have common colon problems [no proctology jokes, please!], because there are multiple approaches to much of it even in English. We could further reduce the colon-specific WP:CREEP/rambling by covering when to capitalize after a colon at MOS:COLON only, then at MOS:SENTENCECAPS just say "(For capitalization after a colon, see WP:Manual of Style § Colons.)". PS (some side points): Even some creep/bloat at COLON could be reduced, such as by nuking the "permissible but awkward" example, which does not illustrate encyclopedic writing but confused "newbie blogger" writing (or perhaps "write like an obtuse Victorian" pretentiousness). And MOS:SEMICOLON might be compressible as well, though I didn't look into that. But, there is no deadline, and we need not try to address every quibble all at once. Next, I don't think there's any real dispute that MoS's purpose is (and only is) to lay out advice about how to write this encyclopedia and to help prevent common problems of injecting non-encyclopedic style, with a primary goal of consistent and professional-looking output for readers, and a secondary one of short-circuiting tiresome, circular editorial disputes over style trivia. MoS is definitely not intended as a "cover every imaginable style error, best-practice, norm, or variance" book like The Chicago Manual of Style or New Hart's Rules, and does not serve anything like a "how to write English well" remedial textbook purpose (someone who needs one isn't competent to work on en.Wikipedia). So, some cleanup like this is probably needed in other places (I would suspect mostly in the choice of poor examples that do not relate to or help guide encyclopedia writing, e.g. all the fiction-dialogue examples at MOS:LQ).
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:25, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

SMcCandlish's proposal hits the nail on the head for me, both at MOS:COLON and at MOS:SENTENCECAPS. Thanks! Cheers, HopsonRoad (talk) 14:53, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

 Done As discussed, above. HopsonRoad (talk) 15:27, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

More input needed at RfC on infobox birthplace/nationality/citizenship

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Infoboxes#RfC on birthplace, nationality, and citizenship parameters with matching values.

This RfC has been running for a while but input has dropped off, and right now it's about an even split between the guidelines a) saying nothing at all about the matter, or b) saying to avoid putting the same country in two or three infobox parameters (the other options in the RfC have attracted nearly no support). It's not going to be a useful outcome (just another RfC again some time later) if this closes with "no consensus", so this tie needs to be broken – with good reasoning, not with WP:JUSTAVOTE of course.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:48, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

Possessives of linked items

Is it specified anywhere that possessives of linked items should be coded as [[x]]'s rather than [[x|x's]]?

I looked in various likely places and couldn't find anything. MOS:LINK#Style just says that a link "suffix" can't start with an apostrophe, while Help:Link#Wikilinks (internal links) gives an example possessive link, but it's really just incidental. MOS:POSS provides only unlinked examples. Maybe it's one of those things that seems to be common sense and it's how it's always done, so there's no need to specify it in the MOS, but when a newish user says they think it looks better with the apostrophe-s included in the link, it would be nice to be able to point to the MOS. MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM 08:37, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

  • No, definitely not, because x's both looks better and makes more sense than x's.--Srleffler (talk) 02:19, 21 January 2020 (UTC)
  • Please see WT:Manual_of_Style/Linking/Archive_18#Saxon_genitive_and_piping. I cannot think of anything we less need a rule on and less need to spend time on. EEng 07:54, 21 January 2020 (UTC)
  • Why don't those two have the same output? Seems like we've made the initial coding slightly simpler, but made actual use harder. Seems rather stupid to me. --Khajidha (talk) 15:42, 23 January 2020 (UTC)
  • I don't know the technical reason, but I'm sure it's about the apostrophe having other roles in wikitext markup. I agree the more complicated coding looks better, and I would be surprised if anyone objected to making changes to that. If we do run into such objections (more recent than the 2015 blip that EEng linked), we can consider whether MOS should say it's preferred. Otherwise, leave it alone. Dicklyon (talk) 15:57, 23 January 2020 (UTC)
  • I concur with EEng that we don't need a rule about it. Whether to do it with or without the apostrophe-s (or just apostrophe for typical plural possessives) inside the colorized link content is really a matter of context. In most cases it won't make any difference, so do whatever you prefer. The simpler markup is always going to outnumber the complex version by a wide margin, simply because it is is simpler. Going around changing it without doing something more substantive in the same edit is likely to be interpreted as a WP:MEATBOT and MOS:RETAIN problem.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:22, 28 January 2020 (UTC)

Examples

OK:

  • [[Christoph Graupner|Graupner]]'s [[cantata]]s are far more numerous than [[Johann Sebastian Bach|Bach]]'s

Not OK:

  • [[Christoph Graupner|Graupner's]] [[cantata]]s are far more numerous than [[Johann Sebastian Bach|Bach]]'s

OK:

  • [[List of cantatas by Christoph Graupner|Graupner's cantatas]] are far more numerous than [[Johann Sebastian Bach|Bach]]'s

Not OK:

  • [[List of cantatas by Christoph Graupner|Graupner's cantatas]] are far more numerous than [[Johann Sebastian Bach|Bach's]]

OK:

  • [[List of cantatas by Christoph Graupner|Graupner's cantatas]] are far more numerous than [[Bach cantata|Bach's]]

So, [[x|x's]] would generally be a no. Something that reads "x's" as a single link should only link to an article about "something that is associated with x" (and what that "something" is should be clear from the context) not to the article on "x". For clarity: I don't think a new rule is needed while it is no rocket science to see that for practical purposes this is covered by WP:EGG, and often also by WP:SEAOFBLUE. --Francis Schonken (talk) 13:39, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

More examples

OK:

Not OK:

OK:

Not OK:

As above, [[x|x's]] is generally a bad idea, and no new rule is needed to explain that. --Francis Schonken (talk) 13:59, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

Verb tense for defunct business unit / brand

Input requested: Should a defunct business unit/brand at a company that still exists be referred to in the present or past tense? In particular, a publisher discontinued one of its imprints (staff terminated/reassigned, no further publications): should the lede read "___ is a discontinued imprint..." or "___ was an imprint..."? See Talk:Vertigo Comics. -Jason A. Quest (talk) 17:22, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

I thought I'd find consistency with auto articles, but:
Oldsmobile stood alone as a company for a while, so you could argue that facts and circumstances say it should get was, but that's not the case with Plymouth. This does feel like the kind of thing we should get consistency with. Should it be across all brand articles, or should there be separate guidelines for, say, publishing vs. the auto industry? —C.Fred (talk) 20:42, 30 January 2020 (UTC)
I don't see why there should be different standards for different industries. IMHO, when a company or business unit closes, or when a trademark or brand is no longer being used in the marketplace, it no longer exists in any meaningful sense (i.e. "in the hearts and minds of its fans" doesn't count). The Olds 88 still exists, but the business unit that made it doesn't; that seems like an intuitive, common sense standard to me. It's also how defunct publishing imprints (e.g. Epic Comics, Belmont Books, Epic Soundtrax) seem to be typically handled, but... there is disagreement. -Jason A. Quest (talk) 21:08, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

I'm not really convinced we need a rule here, but if we did have one, I would lean towards using the present tense as long as any individual items of the brand remain. I think the case for present tense in brands that are still instantiated is at least as strong, and probably stronger, than for long-ended TV shows, and present tense seems to be established there. --Trovatore (talk) 21:12, 30 January 2020 (UTC)
I always to to do it based on events are past, and non-events are present. The creation of a brand and trademark are events. One that I never was quite sure about is first, as if someone or some company is first, they are always first, but often enough people seem to prefer past. Brand names are not events. I don't know about the rules regarding reuse of a trademark after the original holder closes. Gah4 (talk) 01:15, 31 January 2020 (UTC)
Also, in the four examples above, the parent company is still operating, and should still claim the trademark. Also, a trademark might be sold to another company when the owner shuts down. Gah4 (talk) 01:18, 31 January 2020 (UTC)
Especially with brands, that's most of the time trademark, and trademarks do not go away - you can lose them from lack of enforcement or you can wholly say you are abandoning it. (For example, it does appear GM dropped Oldsmobile [8] as a trademark). So for brands, I would normally presume that even if a company said they are done with that brand it should still be considered present tense unless it is clear from something like trademark abandonment that the brand is dead.
Companies that are default should always be past tense.
Tangible objects are a bit trickier. If the object is still out there, not necessarily available as first sale but can be obtained by a member of the public (like the Scion above), that should be present tense but acknowledging the discontinuation/etc. Only if it is known that realistically all produced versions of the object no longer exist outside of museums, etc., and thus not acquirable by the public, then it should be past tense. --Masem (t) 01:26, 31 January 2020 (UTC)
Just to clarify: trademark protection can just go away by lack of use with no intent to resume usage, without an explicit declaration. The most obvious case would be a company shutting down without selling its assets off, but active companies have abandoned trademarks too. However this doesn't really change any of the analysis regarding verb tense; even if there is no protection for it, the trademark as a brand continues to exist. isaacl (talk) 22:37, 1 February 2020 (UTC)
  • I would say all of these examples are actually correct. Consider what would happen if we reversed them:
  • Accuracy is the first and overriding concern, consistency between articles is just gravy. Reyk YO! 01:35, 31 January 2020 (UTC)
    • The issue is "was a defunct" is an awkward construction with an improper sense of time. It implies that it was defunct but no longer is so. And Plymouth is no longer around, which is the problem with using the present tense, as it gives an incorrect status.
    • It seems the difficulty here is that we're conflating two related but distinct things, brands and business units (whether divisions or subsidiaries). In the Oldsmobile example, Oldsmobile wasn't just a brand of GM, but a distinct operating division, a structure GM still has for its four remaining divisions (albeit the divisions are less independent in operations as they were in decades past). So to use the past tense for Oldsmobile is legitimate because it was more than just the brand used on the car but the division of GM that produced it, a division that was shut down and disbanded. Indeed, not using the past tense could give a false impression that the division still exists. The fact that objects (cars) branded with the division's name still exist doesn't change the fact that the division itself does not. Same with Plymouth, which is seen with the misunderstanding here. oknazevad (talk) 02:06, 31 January 2020 (UTC)
      Well, there's Oldsmobile the division (and former independent company, I guess, though I hadn't known that before), and there's Oldsmobile the brand. I haven't checked which one the Oldsmobile article is primarily about. If it's primarily about the division, then I'd say past tense is fine. If it's primarily about the brand, then I think it should be present tense, as long as there are still Olds cars out there somewhere. --Trovatore (talk) 02:38, 31 January 2020 (UTC)
I first got into this regarding computers, which got: The PDP-10 is a mainframe computer family manufactured by Digital Equipment Corporation from 1966 into the 1980s. added to MOS:TENSE which was done while I was sitting next to a running PDP-10. In the case of computers, the name usually names a set of computers, defined by a written document. Even if no instances of hardware exist, the documentation that actually defines them exists, and is usually publicly available. In the case of cars, the master plans might not be available, but service manuals are, and likely define the name well enough. For the ones above, I would choose:
WP:NPOV (is there a negative connotation to defunct?)
(mixed tense)
(mixed tense)
(mixed tense)
By separating the name from the production, appropriate tense applies to each. Gah4 (talk) 02:55, 31 January 2020 (UTC)
Gah4, I think that's pretty good. My only quibble is that the Scion example is not "mixed tense"; "discontinued" is a participle; that is, an adjective; strictly speaking it has no "tense". But that's a side point and doesn't affect the recommendation itself, which I agree with. --Trovatore (talk) 18:36, 31 January 2020 (UTC)
Just because something that's gone could hypothetically be brought back, doesn't mean we need to accommodate that possibility. I mean, Kirk Douglas' corpse is in fairly good condition, and could be frozen and revived maybe someday, right? But for now, he's dead, which is why his article was immediately changed to past tense. If something that's gone somehow comes back... well, it's a wiki: we can change it then. :) -Jason A. Quest (talk) 03:58, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

While agreeing that there is no particular need for a rule here, I'd like to suggest the following points in favor of using the simple past tense wherever possible:

  • Brevity: The problem of how to communicate that something is no longer current is one that language-users solved countless millennia ago. "Is a discontinued brand," like "is a defunct newspaper" or "is a former settlement," is pleonastic when "was" does the job just fine. Our readers' attention is a limited resource and we shouldn't squander it with needless words.
  • Clarity: By the same token, "is a [former] X" is frequently bewildering. I had to re-read the first sentence of Ford Model T several times: "The Ford Model T . . . is an automobile produced by Ford Motor Company from October 1, 1908, to May 26, 1927." Perhaps no reader would come away with the impression that the Model T is still in production. But it's still an awfully disorienting way to start an article about a car that's been obsolete for nearly a century.
  • Maintainability: As in the case of the Model T, the "is a [discontinued]" language sounds weirder as time goes by. A rule like the one suggested above, to switch from "is a discontinued" to "was" only when the last known exemplar has been destroyed, would only heighten this problem and create extra work for future editors. We can be reasonably confident that there are going to be Model Ts around for some time to come, and if the last one is destroyed it will be probably get some attention in the press. But with more obscure products it may be difficult or impossible to be sure. (Or to take the example of a newspaper or publisher's imprint, it shouldn't matter whether a single exemplar is buried in an archive somewhere.)
  • Weight: The past is immeasurably vaster than the present and growing all the time. Using the present tense when the context doesn't strictly require it gives undue weight to current events, contrary to our encyclopedic mission.

In sum, I don't think it's a great idea to reinvent the wheel when it comes to expressing the fact that something is no longer current, when the past tense exists for exactly this purpose. To the extent there's tension between an article covering (present) exemplars versus (past) production, a positive-sum solution might be to avoid the copula entirely, and start such articles with something like "The Model T automobile . . . was produced by Ford Motor Company from [date] to [date]." Portions of the article dealing with surviving exemplars as such could still use the present tense, without any appearance of conflict. -- Visviva (talk) 21:48, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

As above, I got into this discussion regarding computers. A computer architecture is defined in its documentation, which might exist even if no hardware is ever built. It also normally survives, even if all hardware is gone. As for newspapers, even if all the paper copies are destroyed, there are usually microfilm copies around. As to the Model T example, the general rule is that past events are past tense, where the beginning and ending of production are events. And no complaints if anyone wants to rewrite the Scion sentence above. Gah4 (talk) 00:24, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

Finessing the issue by dropping the copula is not always without merit. I think something like that was used once at Whitechapel murders, where a respected editor was, I thought rather bizarrely, insisting on the present tense, as though the women were being eternally slain.
But in this case I'm not sure it's a good tradeoff to avoid mentioning the Model T being a car in the first sentence. --Trovatore (talk) 20:06, 1 February 2020 (UTC)
I generally concur with Visviva. As others suggest, though, there's a bit of "it depends" in there. "Former" is especially often misused by people do not think through their sentences: "is a former American newspaper editor ..." – hmmm, so, she renounced her citizenship?  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:00, 5 February 2020 (UTC)
While she may not have renounced her citizenship, maker her a "former American", where "former" is an adjective modifying the noun "American", in the construct "former American newspaper editor" the word "American" is an adjective indicating origin, while "former" is an adjective indicating (relative) age, and in English age comes before origin in a construct with multiple adjectives. See here. So even though it seems illlgical, it is standard English. oknazevad (talk) 03:14, 7 February 2020 (UTC)
Thoughts on the above:
  • I don't think we're going to change the rule for persons. Present tense for living persons, past tense for the ones who are not so much living as the other thing, is established, and it would be really disruptive to change it. Stanton's example is easily fixed with "is an American former newspaper editor" though my real preference would be to quit using nationality routinely in the first sentence of bios, except maybe bios for which it's extra relevant.
  • I was concerned that Visviva's style didn't inform us that the Model T was a car, but actually I missed it — the suggested sentence was the Model T automobile was produced, which does address that concern. It still doesn't tell us whether it was a car make or brand or company, though.
  • If we adopt this no-copula finesse for defunct cars and comic-book imprints, are we going to do the same thing for I Love Lucy? I do find it a little weird that TV shows are defined in the present tense, no matter how long they've been out of production. There's nothing really logically wrong with it, but it's just not how I find it natural to speak. I don't insist on inter-subject consistency that much, so a possible answer is "that's just how the conventions have evolved in different subject areas of Wikipedia", but I guess I'd like the past-tense supporters to address that point explicitly. --Trovatore (talk) 21:16, 6 February 2020 (UTC)
  • I think it's common for fictional universes and the things in them to be referred to in the present tense, or at least in the same tense they would be referred to if the book/movie/play/TV show/whatever was brand-new. We say "The two main characters in I Love Lucy are married to each other." We also say "The television show I Love Lucy was a first-run program in the 1950s." On the other hand, we also say "The television show I Love Lucy is available on DVD through major retailers." Confused? Me too. As for businesses, a defunct brand is still defunct, a defunct car company used to produce things but doesn't any more. I don't think we need to force people to choose one or the other across Wikipedia, as long as what is written is accurate and it's not awkward in context. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 22:07, 6 February 2020 (UTC)
  • So first, I agree that we don't need to enforce full 'pedia-wide consistency. However, this discussion arose at the behest of an editor who would like to use past tense consistently for defunct comic-book imprints, and the comparison arose with cars. If we're going that way, I'd like to explore TV shows, where there is a clear convention that is different from what you may think it is.
    Our article on I Love Lucy begins
I'm not sure whether there's a rule for "lost" TV shows, but in general TV shows are defined in present tense in the first sentence of the article. This seems to be a strongly established convention, to the point that changing it would be disruptive.
So I guess I'd like to know, if we were to agree with the original editor on comic-book imprints, what would it imply about TV shows? I don't really like the TV-show convention; I think it comes across as a bit weird. But I also don't think it's worth trying to overrule the editors who work on TV-show articles.
I don't really mind if different subject areas have different conventions, as long as they're defensible and not hugely jarring. But I would like the past-tense proponents in this discussion to say what they think about how, if at all, their reasoning would apply to TV shows. --Trovatore (talk) 22:26, 6 February 2020 (UTC)
I'm not sure about anybody else, but I see a clear distinction between a creative work that continues to exist even after the active production ends and a defunct company or division of one. I Love Lucy is still around, but Desilu, the studio that made it, is not. So I Love Lucy is a TV series, but Desilu was a television studio. Brands are a bit of a fuzzy case, because in many ways a brand is a trading name for a company, even if the company is differently named, . oknazevad (talk) 03:14, 7 February 2020 (UTC)
It seems to me that Oldsmobile-the-kind-of-car is "still around" at least to the same extent Lucy is, even if Oldsmobile-the-division-of-GM is not. --Trovatore (talk) 03:26, 7 February 2020 (UTC)
[Apologies for saying almost the exact same thing, but I'm too lazy to rewrite after an edit conflict.] I see a fairly clear distinction between a piece of media (e.g. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer) which still exists (and in most cases will continue to exist), and a defunct entity (e.g. Rankin/Bass Productions) which clearly does not exist in any corporeal, legal, or organizational sense. I can show you an old TV program; I can't show you any manifestation (e.g. office, staff, business activity) of the dissolved entity that made it. Likewise with a physical product and the no-longer-extant entity that made it. One is, the other was. It's dead, Jim. -Jason A. Quest (talk) 03:36, 7 February 2020 (UTC)
I agree for business entities. I think brands/marques/imprints are not like entities. Oldsmobile-the-company is no more; Oldsmobile-the-brand is still around. Not sure you were saying anything different; just clarifying my position. --Trovatore (talk) 06:38, 7 February 2020 (UTC)
For the record, after the fact: I was saying nothing at all close to what you just wrote here, whcih I find borderline delusional. "It's dead, Jim." -Jason A. Quest (talk) 02:58, 23 February 2020 (UTC)
And I guess that's where I differ. I don't consider the brand still around, even if objects built under the brand still exist. A brand tells me who made something, and if the maker no longer exists, then the past tense is proper. There may be a car that is an Oldsmobile sitting in your driveway, but the present tense there is a property of the car, not the brand. Oldsmobile no longer exists, and the past tense is appropriate for them. oknazevad (talk) 10:28, 7 February 2020 (UTC)
Hmm, no, I don't agree. The brand is the kind of car/whatever. If there's even one car of that kind, then the kind still exists. --Trovatore (talk) 17:25, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

It occurs to me that I may not have fully explained myself, given that Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer was brought up. I see that as very different from I Love Lucy. That's because Lucy was a series, not an individual work. You can show me an episode of Lucy. If I have the patience for it, you can even show me all the episodes. But that's not the same thing as Lucy the show. The show is, so to speak, a kind of episode, much as Oldsmobile is a kind of car.
My natural inclination is to describe Lucy in the past tense, but I think present tense is defensible. However the same considerations that would yield present tense for Lucy apply with at least the same force to Oldsmobile-the-brand. --Trovatore (talk) 21:04, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

Type of dash for ranges of hyphenated page numbers

When citng a range of hyphenated page numbers, as in {{cite book|title = IBM System/360 and System/370 I/O Interface Channel to Control Unit Original Equipment Manufacturers' Information|section = Data-Streaming Feature|pages = 3-4–3-7|edition = Tenth|date = February 1988|publisher = IBM|url = http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/ibm/370/channel/GA22-6974-9_360_370_IO_Interface_Channel_to_Control_Unit_OEM_Information_Feb88.pdf%7Cmode = cs2}}, what is the correct form of dash to use within a page number and what is the correct form of dash to separate the first and last page? Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 19:26, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

Don't do that. Do this: "pages 3-4 to 3-7".--Srleffler (talk) 19:59, 23 January 2020 (UTC)
Only IBM could create such a crazy dilemma. EEng 21:39, 23 January 2020 (UTC)
@Chatul: |pages=3-4&nbsp;– 3-7 (or |pages=3-4{{snd}} 3-7) is probably what you want (the output will be "pp. 3-4 – 3-7"), since it'll be consistent with what is expected in most citation styles, which do not use words like "to" in page ranges. This was already covered in more general terms at MOS:DASH: use a spaced en dash between complex terms that have hyphens in them.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:35, 28 January 2020 (UTC)
I agree, some form of spaced en-dash looks like the right solution for this to me. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:48, 28 January 2020 (UTC)
Thanks; I've updated MOS:DASH to reflect this. Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 17:21, 31 January 2020 (UTC)
I think an unspaced en dash would be just as good, as in "pp. 3-4–3-7". Dicklyon (talk) 06:10, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

How to denote a signatory to a treaty who subsequently withdrew from it?

The United Kingdom has left the European Union however it is a signatory to several important treaties of the European Union from which it has subsequently withdrawn. So the question arises: how do we show in articles a country that has signed and ratified a major international treaty but later has withdrawn from the treaty that it helped to not only ratify but draft. The United Kingdom helped draft and ratify the Single European Act of 1986, The Maastricht treaty of 1991, the Amsterdam Treaty of 1997, the Nice Treaty of 2001 and finally the 2007 treaty of Lisbon. These articles need editing to reflect this appropriately. (MOTORAL1987 (talk) 17:56, 2 February 2020 (UTC))

MOTORAL1987's original idea (which I hoped they would describe here) is to strike out the country that has disavowed the treaty, like this:
The idea seems in some respects quite a good one. Simply to delete the disavowing state would be very Nineteen Eighty Four, it would meddle unacceptably with the historical record. Striking out the state shows that something is not quite right but it means that explanatory text is needed: my own concern is that it could mislead readers into thinking that the state signed but did not ratify, as per the USA and the Kyoto Protocol. Brexit is not the only example: Canada and the United States walked away from the Kyoto treaty. I believe that this is a site-wide issue and shouldn't be left to ad-hoc solutions. Discussion is needed. --Red King (talk) 17:51, 4 February 2020 (UTC)
I don't understand the issue. A list that follows "The treaty was originally signed by:" never changes. A list that follows "The following countries are currently signatories to the treaty:" does change as signatories come aboard or depart. When Steve Jobs died, we didn't put a line through his name in every article discussing his accomplishments and titles. Largoplazo (talk) 17:58, 4 February 2020 (UTC)
Agreed with Largoplazo. And misusing strike-through this way looks like vandalism, an error, or a draft article one has stumbled upon.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 
I didn't like it either and reverted it with the advice that it would need consensus at the MOS level rather than the particular article where it arose. I decided not to prejudice the discussion by getting my objection in first.
I wonder if Largoplazo has hit on the solution by accident: while we most definitely should not censor the historical reality and thus the list of signatories/ratifiers must stand as it happened, there could also be a list of current participants (collapsible!). --Red King (talk) 20:49, 5 February 2020 (UTC)
There should be some clear distinction. Strikethrough doesn't seem like a great idea, especially by itself -- it's unclear and likely to create various issues with accessibility (see MOS:ACCESS#Text). Making two separate lists sounds like a recipe for Headache Supreme. But in a detailed list with a tabular layout, e.g. the Featured List at List of parties to the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, it should be fairly straightforward to add a note of some kind. It looks like many of the EU treaties have such a list already. The first possibility that pops into mind is to add a note under the ratification date. If that won't create a clear enough visual distinction, perhaps one of the templates at Template:Table cell templates/doc could additionally be used or adapted. If it makes sense in a particular case, perhaps there could even be a separate column for "current status" or the like. But those seem like decisions that could reasonably be made at the article/topic level based on the characteristics of each list. -- Visviva (talk) 21:29, 5 February 2020 (UTC)
I agree. It was the proposal to use strike-through as an indicator of disavowal that I felt needed to be escalated to an MOS discussion. I think MOTORAL1987 has their answer: there is a strong consensus against the method proposed and the issue should be handled in the body text. I think that closes the topic. --Red King (talk) 22:29, 5 February 2020 (UTC)
I think the <s> element is the correct element (now--it was deprecated until a couple years ago) to indicate this case. I'm not sure I'm a fan of that, and even if I were, I think I would prefer to see something other than strikeout (perhaps using WP:TemplateStyles in a template). --Izno (talk) 22:48, 5 February 2020 (UTC)
  • This is an absolutely terrible idea, as many have said. Something like:

-is needed. Johnbod (talk) 02:40, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

I support Johnbod's proposed solution. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 02:43, 6 February 2020 (UTC)
Agree with Johnbod, (withdrew 2020) or (withdrawn) are appropriate, striking is definitely not. —DIYeditor (talk) 02:44, 6 February 2020 (UTC)
Yes, good idea, infinitely preferable to yet another list. --Red King (talk) 10:43, 6 February 2020 (UTC)
Absolutely. All the best: Rich Farmbrough (the apparently calm and reasonable) 14:11, 9 February 2020 (UTC).

Problematic new syntax for em dash

Is it new? I'm starting to see this syntax cropping up, especially in infoboxes:

August{{--}}November

This renders as August—November, which is wrong. What should intuitively render as an EN dash for ranges (August–November) is showing as an EM dash.

I'm delighted to see, finally, a simpler way for people using Windows keyboards to insert a dash; it approximates the simple system on LaTeX. editors are using this syntax for ranges, with egregious results.

Can anyone shed light on this? Tony (talk) 09:04, 28 January 2020 (UTC)

Template {{--}} was created in 2006 (and moved to template {{Em dash}} in 2015, turning the old name into a redirect). isaacl (talk) 11:49, 28 January 2020 (UTC)
The confusing part, to LaTeX users, is that in LaTeX two hyphens (--) creates an en dash, but here it creates an em dash. (In LaTeX, three hyphens create an em dash.) But with such an old template I doubt that trying to change it to be more consistent would be a good idea. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:51, 28 January 2020 (UTC)
It's nice that the template redir exists, but it's just being used incorrectly here, output the wrong dash character for the use illustrated above. It's using "--" to make an em dash because that's been a typewritten-manuscript convention for over a century; the LaTeX alteration of the convention is kind of an aberration and isn't going to be familiar to people who are not regular users of LaTeX. Anyway, date ranges (like other ranges) call for an en dash, while {{--}} produces an em dash. The en dash character is available in the "Insert" and "Wiki markup" tool sets in the toolbar below the editing window, and can also be entered with &ndash;, and can be entered with {{en dash}}. You can also use any of a number of character-picker tools for Windows, including the built-in Character Map (I've long used PopChar for MacOS, and am told it also exists for Windows). Or just memorize the Windows-specific code (or put a note with the code above your monitor).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:17, 28 January 2020 (UTC)
If you're using MacOS, why do you need PopChar? Just type option-hyphen or option-shift-hyphen. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:04, 29 January 2020 (UTC)
I do, but PopChar is great for all sorts of other things like æ, ¡, å, etc., and not everyone would remember opt-hyphen, so they may like to know PopChar exists. It's not freeware, but as shareware goes it's something definitely worth paying for. I've been using that thang for so long it seems like part of the OS itself to me.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:54, 30 January 2020 (UTC)
Personally, I think it's crazy that we didn't make Template:-- go to en dash and Template:--- to em dash, like in TeX. But that's where we are. I blame Bill Gates, who unlike Don Knuth and Steve Jobs didn't know anything about typography. Dicklyon (talk) 06:12, 9 February 2020 (UTC)
For what it's worth, only 168 pages link to {{--}}, including a mere 85 in article space, 1 categories, 6 modules, 3 talk, 2 template talk, 39 user (of which 34 are subpages of Grover cleveland, 5 user talk, 14 Wikipedia, and 5 Wikipedia talk. So, should it be desirable to make the change, that's the level of effort that would be involved in fixing up the existing pages referencing it (either checking to see whether an en dash is really what's called for, in which case there would be nothing to do, or an em dash, in which case it could be replaced with {{emdash}}). Largoplazo (talk) 14:17, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

WP:ALBUM wants to add a topic-specific guideline

Sorry if I'm just too ignorant here but I don't see any formal process for adding a topic-specific section and searching the archives didn't help. What is the formal process to turn Wikipedia:WikiProject Albums/Album article style advice into a part of the MoS? ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 23:09, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

WP:PROPOSAL. {{Proposal}}, and an {{RfC}} when the time comes, probably at WP:VPPRO, "advertised" to WP:VPPOL (or vice versa), and to here, WP:CENT, and where ever else seems relevant. I would strongly suggest some editing passes prior to that. WP:Policy writing is hard, and it's rare for wikiprojects to get the guideline tone correct, the focus narrowed to things that actually need to be explicit rules, without various WP:CREEP chaff, and the actual rule material 100% compatible with existing WP:P&G pages, plus the wording tightened against WP:GAMING by wiki-lawyers. It's been years since the community elevated a WP:PROJPAGE essay to a guideline, so getting it as right as possible before-hand is important.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:15, 5 February 2020 (UTC)
SMcCandlish, Very helpful, thanks. Did you take a look at this page? If not, would you be willing to give it a first pass to see if it has any outstanding problems from your perspective? Thanks. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 10:41, 13 February 2020 (UTC)
Yes, but already have one of these overhauls in progress at the rugby union wikiproject. Spread a little thin. :-)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:10, 13 February 2020 (UTC)
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