Talk:Tincture (heraldry)

Rule of Tincture
Concerning this paragraph:


 * The rule of tincture has had an influence reaching far beyond heraldry. It has been imposed on flags, or perhaps it should be put, applied to the design of flags, so that the flag of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach was modified to conform to the rule.[26] The rule of tincture has also influenced World Wide Web design with respect to what colour font should be placed on what colour background. Almost all license plates and traffic signs, intentionally or unintentionally, follow it.

Is it really fair to say that the choice of font color on Web pages and the color of license plates and traffic signs all stem directly from the rule of tincture, or would it be more correct to say that these things all stem independently from the same kind of universal design sense about maximizing contrast? -- Skaraoke 01:42, 4 January 2007 (UTC)


 * The "universal design sense about maximizing contrast" is the rule of tincture. --EncycloPetey 01:07, 5 January 2007 (UTC)


 * This is absolutely false. The rule of tincture is a technical rule, not a practical rule.  Sable a lion rampant pean is a perfectly acceptable coat as far as the rule is concerned (furs being amphibious), though it is essentially invisible.  --Daniel C. Boyer 18:49, 6 January 2007 (UTC)


 * If furs are amphibious I will eat toadfeathers.2604:2000:C682:B600:FC9C:4C2:2514:9A8F (talk) 17:06, 19 July 2016 (UTC)Christopher L. Simpson


 * What about rewriting the paragraph so it acknowledges some kind of indirect relationship between the Rule of Tincture and modern signs and license plates without asserting that they are direct descendants of the RoT (which seems to be untrue)? --Skaraoke 21:45, 14 February 2007 (UTC)


 * But it's not untrue. Modern highway signs, at least, were developed with a conscious knowledge of the rule of tincture.  --Daniel C. Boyer 14:46, 16 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Perhaps, but only with regard to the general rules of contrast as discussed above. I doubt that everyone who designed road signs had a working knowledge of heraldry in general and the rule of tincture in particular. -- B.D.Mills  (T, C) 01:07, 15 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Speaking as a web designer, and computer scientist here, this is clearly a case of independently evolved rules. The web design rules of contrast were developed from a distinctly modernist perspective, influenced by a long history of computing before the web, which I might point out, was for a very long time dominated by green text on black (vert on sable), a violation of tincture.  Current web design is entirely modernist in its approach, with very little regard to design traditions like Heraldry.  (Although the more I learn about it, the more I want to apply it, for instance in regards to logos and even icons). -- Deadwisdom (talk) 10:18, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

By the way, it's customary to add to the bottom of Talk pages, to make archiving easier. &mdash;Tamfang 06:18, 28 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Daniel, modern signs were developed specifically with conscious knowledge of reflective white light, which is not bound by any metal nor color rule by any name, you could even say it while spitting tobacco tinctured saliva and it'd still be true as the only thing Luminescent White does not contrast with is another luminescent white. Perhaps you are thinking not of tinctured rules but mistaking the ways everything exists? There are no "rules" as things exist because they are either real or they are not, there is no rule of the greatest having less worth than the least in an lower to hierarchy, it is just the way everything exists. Matters of grave import are not left to depend on whether or not anyone and everyone will follow rules. Language does not serve it's purpose except when it labors so that others can share thoughts that there might be understanding, for instance "Or"  being written as any word other than "Ur" or "Ore" goes against the very nature of The Word itself when spelled the same as a conjunction. Dirtclustit (talk) 00:29, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

Questions from 2003-2004
Should there even be a category "later tinctures"? Some of these are quite old. --Daniel C. Boyer 15:35, 19 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I wonder about the illustration for ermine spots. It gives the impression that there are but two forms (or close to this) when really there is an unbelievable variety of forms of representation. --Daniel C. Boyer 20:16, 19 Dec 2003 (UTC)


 * If Fox-Davies The Art of Heraldry is out of copyright, I could scan a pageful of ermine spots (and another page of fleurs-de-lis). &mdash; Tamfang 03:03, 17 January 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure that it's out of copyright yet, but there isn't a need to sacn them. I'm currently creating a set of images for the ermine (heraldry) page including the four basic named ermine variants, as well as a non-standard one (gules ermined argent) for illustrative purposes. --EncycloPetey 05:11, 18 January 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm not talking about ermines, erminois, pean and erminites (as far as I'm concerned they can all be swept under the rug) – I'm talking about fig.60, p.49, showing forty-odd versions of the ermine-tail. &mdash; Tamfang 06:49, 18 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Ah, gotcha! Something like that would certainly be worth having around, though I think an image like that might be better placed in the ermine article, with a smaller selection available as a picture in the tincture article section on furs. I'll dig around to see if someone I know is certain what the copyright restrictions on images are from Fox-Davies, or else see if one of my heraldic artist friends is willing to do an original drawing based on the Fox-Davies plate. Let me know if you come up with something before I do. --EncycloPetey 07:47, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Regarding "Malcolm of Applecross" (SCA) is that really a violation of the tincture rule as it is usually understood? &mdash;Ashley Y 00:01, Dec 21, 2003 (UTC)


 * Well, if it were blazoned as one chevron on another, ("on a chevron vert, another of the field") this clearly would not violate the tincture rule. But I think the fimbriation blazon does.  I am open to proof that this is wrong, however.  --Daniel C. Boyer 16:21, 3 Jan 2004 (UTC)


 * Firstly, I think the blazon is poorly worded, I would have preferred "argent, on a chevron voided vert...", which clearly does not violate the rule. But I also think, for instance, "argent, a chevron or fimbriated vert" does not violate the rule whereas "argent, a chevron vert fimbriated or" does. &mdash;Ashley Y 01:55, Jan 4, 2004 (UTC)


 * An entirely unrelated issue but I would have picked "pomes" (i.e. roundels vert) rather than actual apples if I'd been designing this coat. &mdash;Ashley Y 01:55, Jan 4, 2004 (UTC)

Methods of hatching have been invented for other tinctures than the ones shown. Should this be gotten into? --Daniel C. Boyer 19:47, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

In the case of the Borough of Richmond upon Thames supporters the light blue and dark blue oars are not that significant to this article as they are blazoned as proper. But perhaps this should be kept to show the historical development. --Daniel C. Boyer 16:27, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)


 * The only copy of the blazon I can find has "On either side a Griffin Gules armed and beaked Azure each supporting an Oar proper the blade of the dexter Dark Blue and that of the sinister Light Blue." So the oars themselves are unexceptional but it's the blades that are tinctured unusually. Marnanel 00:13, Apr 4, 2004 (UTC)


 * O.k. You're right.  Mea culpa.  --Daniel C. Boyer 15:38, 4 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Split furs out
According to the article, furs are distinct from tinctures. The article should therefore be split and the sections about furs be moved to fur (heraldry). --Phil | Talk 11:37, Apr 13, 2005 (UTC)


 * Actually, they aren't distinct from other tinctures, though you're right that articles should probably exist for ermine and vair, with variants. --EncycloPetey 06:17, 30 December 2005 (UTC)


 * This is absolutely wrong. Furs are tinctures, as are metals, colours (including staynard colours), and proper is a tincture as well.  --Daniel C. Boyer 19:52, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Resurrecting this: While I agree that furs are a type of tincture, they are complex enough that it makes sense to split out the elaboration on details and variations of furs to Fur (heraldry). A short section with depictions of the three most-standard furs and a link to the Fur page with the details seems correct. --157.131.199.198 (talk) 23:39, 7 March 2019 (UTC)

Improvement drive
Heraldry has been nominated to be improved by This week's improvement drive. Vote for this article there if you want to contribute. --Fenice 19:56, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Heraldric name of orange

 * 1) Red = Gules
 * 2) Orange = ?
 * 3) Yellow = Or
 * 4) Green = Vert
 * 5) Blue = Azure
 * 6) Purple = Purpure

Georgia guy 18:51, 28 December 2005 (UTC)


 * The heraldic name for orange is orange, but it is not regarded by heraldic writers as one of the basic tinctures. There are only seven tinctures recognized by English heralds, and the list has been quite stable since the oldest known heraldic treatises in English. Orange appears as an extremely rare oddity, and the term tenné is more commonly used for an orangey colour, though it is not the same as Crayola orange. Orange as a noble colour is a relatively modern concept, and I can't think of any uses off the top of my head earlier than the period of the Dutch Revolt (late sixteenth century). In that case, the choice was made to pun off the name of William of Orange, who was a leader of the movement. --EncycloPetey 06:15, 30 December 2005 (UTC)


 * But does orange appear in arms in this context? I know there are some extremely unusual usages in South Africa and the Netherlands.  --Daniel C. Boyer 19:53, 13 October 2006 (UTC)
 * In the English language, orange was not considered a separate colour to yellow until about the 1700's. Before then, orange and yellow were not distinguished, in much the same way that light blue and dark blue are both considered shades of blue. In Russian, light blue and dark blue have separate names in much the same way that we give separate names to red and pink (which themselves were not distinguished in Shakespeare's time). -- B.D.Mills  (T, C) 01:21, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Renaissance gemstone/planet blazoning, and problems with individual tincture pages
There was a Renaissance practice of sporadically blazoning colors with symbolic names of gemstones or planets. It's not of extreme significance in itself (and a number of late 19th century / early 20th century authors of heraldic reference works deprecated it), but it's a facet of heraldic history, and should probably be included in this article. Here are tables boiled down from a table posted by User:David H. Flint on Talk:Gules --

What's currently a problem is that the individual tincture articles (such as Gules, Vert, etc.) now include problematic listings of claimed associations of colors with jewels, planets, zodiac signs, Greek classical elements, days of the week, months, metals, trees, flowers, birds, and virtues with each of the tinctures.

Unfortunately, the associations of planets with colors given in these articles often contradict the well-documented historical heraldic associations given in the table above (for example, Vert is listed as associated with Mercury, not Venus), and the associations of metals with colors given in the article contradict the well-known old "alchemical" assignments of different metals to the seven classical planets (which a broadly-educated Renaissance scribe who was interested in this kind of symbolism would have been well-aware of) -- for example, Gules is listed as associated with Mars (as is traditional), but then is given a non-traditional association with the metal copper.

And all the rest of it (zodiac signs, Greek classical elements, months, trees, flowers, birds, and virtues) seems to be undocumented, and not likely to be documentable with a reliable heraldic source.

I propose changing all the individual tincture pages so as to include the historical gemstone / planet associations listed in the tables above (as documented in the sources given on Talk:Gules), and possibly also the corresponding metal associations according to article Classical planets in western alchemy (I am not sure this association was ever made by heraldic writers, but such an association between colors and metals was made by historical alchemists / occultists), and junking everything else. AnonMoos 03:51, 21 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I should note that what AnonMoos says makes sense. I support the proposal. David H. Flint 11:24, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Done
I added the tables to this article page, and trimmed and revised the seven individual tincture article pages accordingly (hopefully completely consistently!). AnonMoos 23:14, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Pronunciation?
I noticed there's no pronunciation guide for the tincture terms - for example, when talking in English, does 'Vert' have a silent 't', like the French 'vert', or not? Ditto for 'Argent', ...? 82.46.233.129 13:48, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
 * You can find this information on the corresponding Wiktionary entries, if you're curious. --EncycloPetey 17:36, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

de interwiki
If is it correct link, why links to en:Rule of tincture ? If is it correct, please replace links in the de: article. Else will my bot remove it in the next time too.JAn Dudík 19:34, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Please ask the editors on de WP to correct this. Their links are not our responsibility.  Please do not assume that de in right and en is wrong. --EncycloPetey 19:46, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

vair
Any objection to moving most of #Vair and its variants to Vair? —Tamfang (talk) 23:03, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Absolutely not, please do it someone, also Tincture (heraldry) . → User: Perhelion 14:24, 14 August 2018 (UTC)
 * You're bumping a 9-year-old discussion about something that was done ages ago. Nobody here is still participating in that discussion.  There's already a stand-alone article on Vair, and you deleted the link to it in this article.  There's also an article on Ermine, and you deleted the link to that as well.  P Aculeius (talk) 17:26, 14 August 2018 (UTC)
 * The split didn't actually remove the excessive detail from this page when it moved, so no, I don't think it was "done ages ago"; it was half-done ages ago, perhaps, but never finished. Also, it would make much more sense to have a Fur (heraldry) page with both of them and the more minor furs included. 157.131.199.198 (talk) 23:45, 7 March 2019 (UTC)

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nouns
I'm intrigued to learn that the English College capitalizes tinctures because they are nouns. In French blazon they definitely are nouns (as shown by the de before each), but what's an example of an English blazon in which it's clear from the syntax that they're not adjectives? — The only difference between English and French in the names of the (principal) tinctures is English vert vs French sinople; in French vert is an adjective, so you can't say de vert. —Tamfang (talk) 09:01, 26 March 2016 (UTC)


 * I don't believe they're nouns in English. If anyone claims that they are, they're committing a serious grammatical error.  Most of the authoritative treatises in English don't capitalize tinctures, although there are two conventions that are often excepted: or is often capitalized in order to distinguish it from the conjunction "or", although if carefully blazoned there should be no confusion; and some writers hold that the first tincture mentioned in a blazon should be capitalized, probably deriving this rule from the habit of capitalizing the first word in a blazon, which was usually a tincture.  However, many writers follow neither of these conventions, and capitalize only the first word in the blazon.  Note that capitalization was not standardized in English until the end of the 18th century, so older blazons often capitalized any word the writer considered "important".  To some extent people still do this to this day (hence the persistence of "title case").  In decorative calligraphy, such as that used in patents of arms by the College of Arms, it's normal to do this, both to make what might otherwise look like a wall of text look more interesting, and also to draw attention to important points.  However, the fact that the College of Arms currently uses one manner of capitalization or, for that matter, omits most punctuation, has no bearing on the actual arms or for that matter, how anybody else would blazon them.  Capitalization and punctuation are not part of a coat of arms, and like the shade of paint used to portray a particular tincture, are entirely up to the artist.  On a side note, it looks as though vert is used in some French heraldry instead of sinople, but it may be considered archaic.  P Aculeius (talk) 15:18, 26 March 2016 (UTC)


 * I'm not very well versed in French grammar, but I'm not sure you can infer that tinctures are nouns in French merely because de is used with them. It simply means "of", and at least in English you can certainly say, "of green" or "of gold" without the colours becoming nouns.  In a French blazon, "de sinople" literally translates as "of vert" or "of green", where we would certainly consider the tincture an adjective.  Of course, we wouldn't say "of" in an English blazon, but that's purely a matter of convention.  So unless French categorizes adjectives and prepositions differently than English, I'd say that tinctures are still adjectives in French blazons.  P Aculeius (talk) 03:48, 3 April 2016 (UTC)


 * Although boundaries between parts of speech are more fluid in English, we don't generally use "of" before adjectives. I'd be amazed to learn that anyone has ever described me as a man of bulky or of clever.  In my opinion "of gold" means made of the metal; "of green" (offhand I can't think of an example other than describing a garment) is elliptical for "of green cloth", I guess.  —Tamfang (talk) 04:31, 3 April 2016 (UTC)


 * Whether it's elliptical or not, it occurs regularly with colours and patterns (cloth of plaid, sea of green, explosion of yellow). Gold isn't an exception, notwithstanding the fact that it can also be a noun.  A field of gold isn't the same as a ring of gold.  But if you think of these as words normally considered adjectives being used as though they were nouns, couldn't the same thing be happening in French?  I suppose, grammatically, we could say that "green" can be a noun used to describe the concept of greenness, even in English, but in the phrase, "a lion rampant vert", "vert" is clearly an adjective.  Does that change if we say "a lion of green" instead of "a lion green"?  Maybe.  But even if we suppose that tinctures are used as nouns in French blazon, they're clearly not in English.  Perhaps some heraldic authority has reasoned that "if they're nouns in French, and English heraldry uses the terminology of Norman French, then they must be nouns in English too."  But that's a rather pedantic analysis.  Normally I'm rather friendly to reasoning from etymology, but in the phrase "a lion green", the word "green" is indisputably an adjective in English grammar, and the fact that such a phrase has heraldic significance can't simply convert one part of speech into another.  I note that the grammatical distinction between nouns and adjectives isn't really relevant for capitalization purposes in French blazon, since common nouns aren't capitalized in French; in German all nouns are capitalized, but in English only proper nouns are, and tinctures aren't proper nouns.  So whatever's going on with capitalization in current grants of arms has nothing to do with English or French grammar.  It's purely a stylistic or decorative convention currently used by some heralds, but with no binding force, since "argent, a lion vert reaping wheat or" blazoned in 1780 or 1890 is exactly the same as "Argent, a Lion Vert reaping Wheat Or" blazoned in 2000.  P Aculeius (talk) 13:20, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

lede
March 6:
 * Undid revision 708505593 by P Aculeius (talk) - poor writing style; see WP:MOS

I don't see what about it is poorer than its replacement, and I'm not willing to read the whole MOS; couldn't you point to the relevant section? —Tamfang (talk) 02:00, 3 April 2016 (UTC)


 * This has already been threshed out between the editors involved. The only thing that the MOS arguably applied to was the placement of the word "tincture" in the first sentence.  EncycloPetey felt that the MOS demanded it come at the beginning of the sentence; but because the term is somewhat ambiguously used by different authorities, and the original meaning is not the one used in the article, I wrote the sentence beginning with the things included and ending with the word "tinctures", which I thought was a better way of introducing the term.  In other words, I wrote, "Heraldry uses a palette of A and B, usually known as tinctures", which he revised to read "tinctures provide a palette of A and B".   The other things described as "poor writing style" were my failure to link the word "palette" to the disambiguation page by that title, and my failure to describe the heraldry involving tinctures as "European heraldry", to distinguish it from all the other heraldries.  When I reverted his changes, he reverted me back and carried the discussion over to my talk page.  Rather than getting caught in an edit war, we threshed out the issue and I more or less left his changes alone and focused on other parts of the article until I ran out of steam.  I mean to get back to the unfinished parts soon.  But before restoring the paragraph the way I wrote it, I'd like to hear from EncycloPetey or any other editors who might want to comment on the matter.  P Aculeius (talk) 03:36, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

Assessment comment
Substituted at 08:52, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

Sinople
I read many years ago that in French heraldry, vert was green and sinople was yellow-green, used as a metal rather than a color. I don't know French; can anyone address this point? J S Ayer (talk) 00:59, 27 June 2016 (UTC)


 * I can't recall any sources describing sinople as merely one variety of green, and I'm certain I've never seen it used as a metal. Most sources that mention it simply say that it's used instead of vert; but I think I've seen vert used as well, so my feeling is that they're synonymous, but vert seems to be archaic.  I suspect that if you found a book that describes sinople as yellow-green rather than green in general, and calls it a metal, then the author was merely suggesting his own ideas for how sinople and vert could both be used and ought to be distinguished; or perhaps perpetuating an earlier author's ideas that don't ever seem to have caught on.


 * A bit like erminites; it's mentioned everywhere, but found nowhere (unless someone's recently used it after finding it in heraldic textbooks), and probably never existed as a distinct fur except in the imagination of heraldic writers. That's not to say that nobody ever depicted ermine in the manner that erminites describes; but if they did, it probably wasn't meant to be a distinct fur, and the style never caught on.  I think that distinguishing between vert and sinople probably falls in the same category: a writer seeking an explanation for the use of sinople when vert must have been the original (and more natural) term, and concluding that they might have been distinguishable from one another, and only later did one displace the other.  A clear reason for what's probably a very muddled process in reality.  Sorry I can't definitively prove or disprove it, but I very seriously doubt that what you read was ever widely accepted in French heraldry.  P Aculeius (talk) 03:32, 27 June 2016 (UTC)

Thank you! J S Ayer (talk) 00:43, 30 June 2016 (UTC)

Was "Sable" ever a fur as its name implies?
The only color that is hard to see against sable is blue. I think heraldry uses a light purple but if it doesn't then okay that's hard to see too. But white/silver, yellow/gold, green, and red show up just fine. If sable had ever been a fur as its name implies the a few of the famous "violations" such as Albania would be legal.2604:2000:C682:B600:FC9C:4C2:2514:9A8F (talk) 17:06, 19 July 2016 (UTC)Christopher L. Simpson
 * Sable was never a heraldic fur; it's simply the name assigned to "black" in French and English heraldry. The concept of the furs as a distinct class of tinctures presumably dates to a much later period (bear in mind that the word tincture has an ambiguous meaning; it's not even clear that there was a rigidly-defined concept of tincture in the modern sense [meaning, the collection of metals, colours, and furs as equal things of the same basic kind] until long after the formative period of heraldry).  The rules respecting the use of tinctures developed over time, initially out of a desire for maximum visibility.  A prominent black charge on a red field has some visibility in bright light, but in dark or grimy battlefield conditions it may not have had, and smaller details would have been hard to work out.  Note that road signs adhere somewhat loosely to heraldic principles (at least in the U.S. and countries that follow U.S. sign conventions); red signs (STOP, YIELD, WRONG WAY, DO NOT ENTER, NO PARKING) all feature white lettering or backgrounds, never black; black lettering only appears on signs that are white or yellow.  Now, the rule against colour on colour is rather strictly adhered to in the west, but in Eastern Europe it's much less so, hence the Albanian arms.  Black or occasionally blue or green on a red field are found, but much less so than white or gold.  Legality doesn't really enter into it, though.  The "laws of heraldry" aren't laws in the sense we usually use that word, and aren't generally enforced against anyone who already bears arms, except in very limited circumstances.  And as Albania is a sovereign state, nobody can make it change its arms.  Albania can set its own rules for what tinctures can appear together, and when!  P Aculeius (talk) 17:31, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

split-section "Counterchanging"?
I suppose this may just as well go under division of the field or heraldic charge as under "tincture" (as it is a combination of the three concepts), and it's getting long enough to become a standalone page. --dab (𒁳) 08:05, 11 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Sorry, but your revisions and expansions to a section that's already perfectly clear and quite thorough aren't helping. It has no business being a stand-alone article; most mentions of it even in heraldic manuals are considerably shorter than the section is now.  It's a simple concept and doesn't need to become tedious in detail and examples.  Nobody cares what the date of the Fenwick arms is; it was cited as an example of arms that used an unusual term.  We don't need a date, which then requires a citation (according to you) that is unlikely ever to be produced.  There's no point in adding an unimportant fact that will forever have a "citation needed" tag attached to it.  Your insistence on discussing whether the various terms are precisely equivalent in each language or "correct" also veers into unnecessary detail, and varies from the established format of this article in mentioning terms as they occur in French and German heraldry.  The section already has more detail and more examples than many of the other, more important sections of this article; it doesn't need more examples or technical details.  As for moving it because it's related to partitioning, it's really not.  Counterchanged charges are only partitioned when they straddle partition lines; otherwise they merely exchange colours with the field.  The other sections of the article need to come before this one, which is really a minor detail and a very simple principle, although it risks being expanded out of all proportion for no particularly good reason.  P Aculeius (talk) 14:18, 11 July 2017 (UTC)
 * " It's a simple concept and doesn't need to become tedious in detail and examples. Nobody cares what the date of the Fenwick arms is" -- said no-one on Wikipedia, ever. It's almost as if you believed that "nobody cares" what the date of the counterchanged coa of Tänzl (Tyrol) would be, but of course serious works on heraldry will convey such information. Presumably because the field of heraldry has a history, and some people have been known to pursue the scholarly study of the history of individual fields of knowledge.
 * In seriousness, you are displaying signs of article ownership here. Material growing "out of all proportion" to the page topic is precisely why we do WP:SS splits. I guess I will just restore the content you blanked and create the WP:SS subpage, as I do not believe I need your permission for that, I was merely using the talkpage in the hope there could be bona fide collaboration. --dab (𒁳) 11:15, 17 July 2017 (UTC)


 * You might want to check your policies again. Accusing other people of bad faith is definitely not collaborative.  But more to the point, going into tedious detail on points of minute and tangential relevance is not what this article is for.  If there were special rules for counterchanging or it were the subject of considerable detail in heraldic manuals, then a lengthy section or even an independent article might be warranted.  But that's not the case here.  The sections of this article correspond roughly with major chapters or subchapters in heraldic manuals.  Counterchanging is usually more of a footnote.  For instance, in A Complete Guide to Heraldry discussion of counterchanging occupies one third of a paragraph in the chapter on blazoning (sharing with the distribution of multiple charges and marks of cadency), and is only mentioned in passing in the chapter on partitioning (with respect to distinguishing a field barry with one containing a large number of bars).  Counterchanging requires a single sentence in the glossary of the Oxford Guide to Heraldry.  Slater's discussion in The Complete Book of Heraldry has four paragraphs, although only one of them is devoted to the theory, and the other three discuss the application of the concept by a group of three families with similar arms.  Franklyn's Heraldry has one paragraph on counterchanging, and mentions it again briefly in the two following sentences for examples of counterchanging along different partition lines.


 * In each of these works, the dates of various arms is only given when directly relevant to the text in which they are mentioned; if arms are mentioned only for an example of a particular figure, rather than a particularly early or precedent-setting example, then no date is given. As it happens, none of the aforementioned discussions on counterchanging provide any dates for any of the arms used as examples.  Why we would insist that a date be added for every example as a parenthetical to break up an otherwise straightforward expression, and only to tag such examples with "date needed" followed by "citation for date needed" when there's very little chance that either will be forthcoming, is a complete puzzlement.  So when I characterize adding such details as unnecessary and not particularly helpful to the reader, particularly when you don't even have those details and will likely never have them, it's not a personal attack.  It's simply explaining why they weren't kept.  P Aculeius (talk) 13:19, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

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 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20030910033209/http://www.heraldry-scotland.co.uk/Forum/ShowMessage.asp?ID=2700 to http://www.heraldry-scotland.co.uk/Forum/ShowMessage.asp?ID=2700
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20120314015244/http://pages.ripco.net/~clevin/gemarms.html to http://pages.ripco.net/~clevin/gemarms.html

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Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 10:11, 10 December 2017 (UTC)


 * Checked sources; second one seems okay; first one does not appear relevant, and search for similar information on the current web site failed for multiple reasons (common search terms, forums not browsable by non-registered users, registration not available to certain users, further information about registration locked to non-registered users), but forums not likely to be an authority anyway. Deleting reference, but not statement (seems to be a logical inference; another reliable source can probably be found).  P Aculeius (talk) 12:23, 10 December 2017 (UTC)

Astronomical Symbols
The symbols for ascending node and ascending node appear to be incorrect. They are both showing the symbol for Leo. Should they be: ascending node ☊ U+260A, and decending node ☋ U+260B, not ♌ U+264C? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 118.211.114.71 (talk) 08:34, 24 October 2021 (UTC)