Talk:List of U.S. state and territory mottos

Untitled
It would be interesting to know why these mottos are so often in foreign languages. Aaker 15:45, 30 January 2007 (UTC)


 * The US are a country of immigrants! --Soetermans (talk) 13:02, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

LIST OF MOTTOS OF THE 50 US STATES
the state motto of new jersy Bonjour,

Pour la devise de la LOUISIANE il est écrit que "UNION JUSTICE & CONFIDENCE" serait du Français alors que c'est de l'Anglais.

Si c'était du Français ce serait "UNION JUSTICE & CONFIANCE".

Donc la mention "French" est erronnée car "CONFIDENCE" n'est pas du French mais du English qui signifie "confiance".

Au revoir. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.49.114.113 (talk) 17:20, 16 January 2008 (UTC)


 * ¿Que? --Soetermans (talk) 13:02, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

I think someone hacked the quote for CO :)  Not me.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.15.211.226 (talk) 03:36, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Mottoes from Merriam-Webster
I have a 1964 copy of THE NEW MERRIAM-WEBSTER DICTIONARY, which has a nine-page appendix, "FOREIGN WORDS AND PHRASES INCLUDING STATE AND NATIONAL MOTTOES" [capitalization theirs]. It has the following mottos which are missing from List of U.S. state and territory mottos. (I do not know the difference, if there is any, between a state motto and the motto of the Great Seal of a state.) —Wavelength (talk) 19:41, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
 * cedant arma togae, motto of Wyoming
 * tuebor, motto on Great Seal of Michigan
 * scuto bonae voluntatis tuae coronasti nos, motto on Great Seal of Maryland
 * Thanks for the question. Some states have designated an official state motto, which is listed. If they have no designated motto, then one on the seal is used. Michigan and Maryland both have two mottos on their seals, but only the ones listed in the article are considered the state mottos, according to their websites. Cedant arma togae was on the Flag of the Wyoming Territory, but there's absolutely no mention of it after statehood in 1890, and Equal Rights appeared on both its flag and seal around 1893. I don't know where your dictionary got their information, but they didn't do all their research. Reywas92 Talk 23:30, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your reply.—Wavelength (talk) 02:11, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

Texas ... really?
I'm not sure Texas's motto is correct. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.234.246.206 (talk) 19:12, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Obvious vandalism. The correct motto is Friendship. Qwy47 (talk) 19:19, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

the state was found by the calvert family — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.255.163.68 (talk) 03:24, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

Not a state.
Puerto Rico is not a state. Railfan2012 (talk) 23:56, 1 April 2013 (UTC)
 * That's right. It's a territory. Did you have a point to make? -173.15.229.22 (talk) 12:23, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

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slogans and tag lines
Which Wikipedia article is appropriate for listing "slogans" and "taglines" for states and territories?

For example, in no particular order:


 * New York tag line: "State of Opportunity"
 * Nebraska slogan: "Nebraska. Honestly, it’s not for everyone"
 * New Mexico slogan: "Everybody is somebody in New Mexico"
 * Oklahoma slogan: "Imagine That"

--DavidCary (talk) 23:06, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

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The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion: Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 20:42, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
 * 2007 ID Proof Rev.png

Table formatting
The table in § State, federal district and territory mottos contains three entries (Kentucky, North Dakota, and Vermont) with two mottos each. These are implemented by stuffing both mottos into the same table row, separated by  tags. This strikes me as silly, but more than that it defeats the entire purpose of formatting the data as a table.

What I'd like to do, instead, is split each of the dual-motto entries into two rows, with the state's name spanning both, and the rest of the data split up between the two rows accordingly. This more clearly associates each piece of related data, and avoids conflating unrelated information (like the citations for each motto). It doesn't interfere with table sorting at all. (The spanned row is simply duplicated before being sorted, so those three states end up with two rows apiece.)

You can see what that would look like at User:FeRDNYC/mottos. If nobody objects, I'll be bold and swap that version in for the table in this article. (My version also removes the explicit column widths, as MediaWiki almost always does a better job auto-sizing the table based on the contents and the available page area.) FeRDNYC (talk) 23:34, 2 September 2022 (UTC)


 * Sounds good to me! Reywas92Talk 02:21, 3 September 2022 (UTC)
 * I'd missed a fourth dual-wielder: What I thought was just a long, word-wrapped phrase for South Carolina's motto turned out to be two separate Latin mottos. (Seems a bit excessive, but it's not my state so who am I to say?)
 * I've now split them in the User:FeRDNYC/mottos sandbox table. I've spanned the single adoption date and one, lone citation to both rows even though I suspect that's not correct, because it's all the information we currently have. FeRDNYC (talk) 11:42, 3 September 2022 (UTC)
 * That is correct because South Carolina's mottos haven't been separately adopted but just as part of the seal. Reywas92Talk 16:10, 3 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Having heard no objections, I made the table edits as indicated above, and the changes are now live. Feel free to ping me with any concerns. FeRDNYC (talk) 01:30, 9 October 2022 (UTC)