Talk:Cinema of the United States/Archives/2013

Lead section needs definition first
Shouldn't the concept be defined in the first sentence? I've seen this on several "Cinema of (Country)" entries -- "Cinema of Australia" is one of the few that does seem to do it correctly, however:

"Cinema of Australia, more commonly referred to as the Australian film industry, refers to the system of production, distribution, and exhibition of films in Australia."

Compare to this entry:

"The cinema of the United States, often generally referred to as Hollywood, has had a profound effect on cinema across the world since the early 20th century."

Or to the lead section for Italian cinema:

"The history of Italian cinema began just a few months after the Lumière brothers had patented their Cinematographe, when Pope Leo XIII was filmed for a few seconds in the act of blessing the camera."


 * Good question. I remember starting out under the impression that all articles had to have their subjects defined and bolded in the first sentence, until another editor corrected that assumption and pointed me to WP:LEADSENTENCE, which says: "However, if the article title is merely descriptive—such as Electrical characteristics of dynamic loudspeakers—the title does not need to appear verbatim in the main text." So I learned that articles with "descriptive titles" like "Cinema of the United States" are exempt from some of the usual rules for first sentences: their topics don't need to be bolded in the lead (an often-ignored rule, but see MOS:BOLDTITLE), nor do they even need to be included verbatim in the lead sentence. But the question is, do "descriptive" topics like this need to be defined in the lead?


 * Common practice on Wikipedia currently suggests that if the subject is not a formal or widely-accepted name but instead is a phrase describing a concept or a phenomenon, and if its literal meaning is pretty self-evident, it's preferable to use the first sentence to immediately put the subject in context — usually by getting straight to what is most notable about the subject. The Manual of Style uses 2011 Mississippi River floods and Electrical characteristics of dynamic loudspeakers as its chief examples of descriptive, non-formal article titles, and both articles appear to follow that principle. Other examples for comparison to this particular article are Politics of the United States, Education in the United States, Demographics of the United States, and Fashion in the United States. None of them stop to define the concept in the first sentence — they get straight to describing what is most important about the subject. Which seems sensible. Readers probably don't arrive at an article like Education in the United States hoping to have "education" or "United States" defined; they already understand what the topic refers to, and they're there, one would hope, to learn facts about the concept.


 * Still, the Manual of Style could definitely stand to be clearer on this. AtticusX (talk) 02:31, 3 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Alright, thanks. I'd edited it before I saw your comment but undid the edits. Asisman (talk) 17:19, 6 January 2013 (UTC)