Talk:Autograph (manuscript)

Contradiction
This article:

"An autograph is a manuscript written by its author or composer."

Holograph:

"In music, a holograph is a manuscript entirely in the composer's hand, while an autograph is merely in a known hand, not necessarily the composer's."

This contradiction should be resolved; and the two articles merged. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:19, 28 November 2019 (UTC)
 * The one in the Holograph article is nonsense. Look it up in any dictionary, including autograph (second of the two meanings listed on that page). Don't think dictionary definitions need referencing to a dictionary in an intro. --Francis Schonken (talk) 19:43, 28 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Its sourced; are you suggesting that Grove is not a reliable source? It's certainly more reliable than an unsourced entry on a wiki. Nonetheless, that's why I wrote "this contradiction should be resolved". Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:45, 28 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Whatever, it is wrong: did you check in Grove? As said elsewhere, I can't believe that is a correct summary of what is in Grove. If it is: WP:NPOV is a policy, then both opinions, those of Grove and those of all English-language dictionaries in the world need to be rendered proportionally, which would still make Grove's a marginal opinion which we probably shouldn't even mention. --Francis Schonken (talk) 20:01, 28 November 2019 (UTC)
 * "whatever"? Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:17, 28 November 2019 (UTC)


 * Unfortunately, the Contradicts other tag has been removed, by Francis Schonken, from both articles, despite the contradiction remaining unresolved, It should, of course, be restored. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:17, 28 November 2019 (UTC)


 * I've replaced the tags.Tags should not be removed until there is discussion and some agreement.
 * The confusion between autograph and holograph should be cleared up before we move on. Littleolive oil (talk) 21:09, 28 November 2019 (UTC)

Merge suggestion
The suggestion to merge the Holograph article seems acceptable, so I performed it. --Francis Schonken (talk) 21:22, 28 November 2019 (UTC)


 * Both User:Littleolive oil and I said the contradiction on the two articles should be resolved before they are merged. You have ignored this and - after edit-warring here and on Wikidata - simply omitted the cited statement that contradicts your preferred, uncited definition. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:34, 28 November 2019 (UTC)

Grove
Francis asked, above "did you check in Grove?" I hadn't becasue it is he, not I, who dispute what it says. Nonetheless, since he has removed the statement cited to it I have now checked the source, and it says:

"Holograph: A document written in the hand of the author or composer. This distinguishes it from the more commonly used word, Autograph, for the latter, strictly, means merely that the document is written by someone who can be named. Thus, an accounting of the manuscripts written by C.P.E. Bach would include not only his holographs, copies of his own compositions, but also his autograph copies of the works of his father, J.S. Bach. Similarly, the father's holographs of his own works need to be distinguished from his autograph copies of music by such composers"

(published in print: 20 January 2001; published online: 2001). Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:43, 28 November 2019 (UTC)

Dispute tag
Francis has undone my addition of a dispute tag to the page (I make that his fourth revert of me, at least, on this page in the last couple of hours). This was just after User:Littleolive oil said on this page "Tags should not be removed until there is discussion and some agreement".

He has instead added a section-dispute tag, falsely claiming "comments on the talk page only involve the content of this section (not the rest of the article)". Please will someone restore the tag at the top of the article? Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:59, 28 November 2019 (UTC)


 * Applied the WP:NPOV-conforming method, as mentioned above, to deal with contradicting reputable sources.
 * Applied some further rearrangements for internal consistency of the article (including update and expansion of the intro).
 * Are there any further over-all disputes regarding this version? If not (take your time to assess!), I'd remove the boilerplate dispute tag. --Francis Schonken (talk) 11:06, 29 November 2019 (UTC)
 * You've added ~180 words of copyright material in a single section. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:35, 29 November 2019 (UTC)
 * I rephrased 55 words of the Grove quote in new wording (hopefully avoiding close paraphrasing). I wouldn't oppose more rephrasing if someone has the time and can retain meaning. Another possibility would still be, as I suggested above, to dunk the Grove definition as "extremely small minority" (see WP:UNDUE, part of WP:NPOV policy), unless we can find another author who holds the same views as Grove. Looking at the Grove quote, it is in fact problematic on several levels. E.g. "Autograph, ..., strictly, means merely that the document is written by someone who can be named", which is kind of nonsensical: that's not what the word "autograph" means (if one looks at the etymology of the word as explained in reference works – it is like rendering the meaning of autobiography as "strictly, means merely that the biography is written by someone who can be named"); The Grove author does not describe how words are actually used in common and scholarly environments but how they "should" be used in their own flawed opinion. Particularly the J.S./C.P.E. Bach example is as wrong as could be: that's not how relevant literature uses these terms, not now, 9 years after the Bach Digital website started its operations, and RISM has descriptions of nearly all Bach-related manuscripts, and not in 2001, a year after an explosion of Bach-related literature (scientific and other) due to the 250th anniversary of the composer's death. In the case we'd drop Grove as a meaningful source, it would imho also make it easier to work without quotes from other dictionaries: a looser rephrasing is easier if no incompatibility needs to be demonstrated. --Francis Schonken (talk) 14:55, 29 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Or, looking at the same from the perspective of the WP:V policy: Grove's approach is a WP:REDFLAG, which requires more than one source to be retained in this article. This has become even more clear after adding the Tomita material which, again, completely contradicts Grove on this matter. --Francis Schonken (talk) 04:14, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

Multitag
Unless further comments to the contrary, I'd remove the over-all multiple issues tag, as the issues indicated by that tag seem sufficiently addressed: --Francis Schonken (talk) 10:49, 2 December 2019 (UTC)
 * apart from a handful of sentences (and the intro who is now almost entirely referenced in the body of the article) the entire article is fully referenced: this makes an overall "factual accuracy" tag seem ridiculous, or at least contentious. Problems remaining in sections or w.r.t. individual statements can be indicated with less conspicuous tags, such as cn or section tags.
 * After more rephrasing, and expansion, there is comparatively even less directly quoted text than what was mentioned in the section above, so imho the "non-free" tag seems unnecessary at this point.

rephrased examples
Thought I should explain my recent edit, since I see there's been some disagreement in the past about this part of the article.

Rephrased the section on the definition in New Grove to be closer to what Boorman specifically says, because the paragraph said Boorman's example states that Bach's autographs include his manuscripts that are holographs and also his copies of other composers' works, but the source says Bach's manuscripts include his holographs and also his autographs. this seems nitpicky, but Boorman doesn't specifically say that he considers a composer's autographs to include their holographs, and while his stated definition of autograph does, that definition is unusual and really broad, and his examples don't specifically do so, which is what this paragraph originally implied.

I think if this definition is going to be in this article, it's useful to note that even he says only some people use the specific definitions he gives, and also that he does explain why those who do use it might find a narrower definition of holograph useful. there are probably better ways to phrase these points than I did.

I also edited the section about the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica definition, since the last sentence about holographs relied on a definition of autograph that was in the source but not in this article (since a document entirely "written by the hand of the person from whom it emanates" is not necessarily also "a document signed by the person from whom it emanates"), and the "supported by various examples from antiquity to the Middle Ages" part didn't really match what is in the Encyclopædia Britannica article.

(Also, the lead section needs work, since the second sentence seems to just be a slightly confusing restatement of the first, but given all the slightly different definitions of the two words in this article and elsewhere I am not the person to try to fix that.) AKiwiDeerPin (talk) 00:05, 11 April 2022 (UTC)