User:Charles Gaudette/Wikipedia Notes

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This user sub-page is intended to hold Charles Gaudette's notes associated with editing Wikipedia. These notes will include: spelling, grammar, style, language differences, and code fragments. Charles wants to get at them no matter where he is: work, home, traveling, and so-on. If you are going to edit this page, please do him a favor &mdash; first comment on his Talk page. It is entirely possible that an "error" on this page is especially deliberate.

It would be a mistake to consider this page: Charles' Wikipedia editing philosophy, but there is some of that discipline in here. More likely these notes are up for consideration in his philosophy.

Rights

 * Can I use this work?
 * http://www.copyright.cornell.edu/training/Hirtle_Public_Domain.htm

Numbers

 * 1) accuracy is key
 * 2) base 10 unless there is a reason
 * 3) use commas to separate every third digit ahead of the decimal point
 * 4) SI number notation where SI number notation is the standard
 * 5) watch for rounding errors, try to inspect the value used by the credible source

Units

 * 1) SI units when in doubt
 * 2) units used by the credible source
 * 3) expected units (this might mean a preference for archaic units)
 * 4) commonly understood units
 * 5) SI units

Is It "Its" or "It's"?
A seemingly simple pair of words that many people have trouble keeping straight is its and it's. Editorial types keep telling us not to use apostrophe "S" as a plural; it is always a possessive. So if we refer to Gary's pen, then the logical possessive of "it" is "it's," right? Actually not. "It's" isn't a possessive like Gary's, it's a contraction &mdash; like isn't.


 * "It's" is a contraction for "it is" or "it has."
 * "Its" is a possessive pronoun meaning, more or less, "of it" or "belonging to it."

Simple test: If you can replace "its" in your sentence with "it is" or "it has," then your word is "it's"; otherwise, your word is "its."

And there is absolutely no such word as "its'."

Another technique: "Its" is the neuter version of "his" or "her." Try plugging "his" or "her" into your sentence where you think "its" belongs. If it still works as a sentence grammatically (if not logically), then your word is "its."

Grammar

 * No double punctuation marks
 * except abbreviations, for example: "U.S.." at the end of a sentence, which probably should be avoided
 * except ellipsis, for example: "&hellip;." at the end of a sentence, which is fine

Language

 * The universally accepted word: "aircraft" is preferred over "airplane" or "aeroplane".
 * It is better to replace the word "theory" (system of ideas) with the word "supposition" (an uncertain belief) when refering to a explaination that is not citable to a on-topic PhD.

One-offs

 * One space, one space only after punctuation marks.
 * Roman numerals are deprecated, please do not use them, copyedit them on sight unless: (1) critical to clarity, or (2) part of a quote or established title.
 * When abbreviating "United States", as when referring to the United States of America, use "U.S." with periods. When additional abbreviations are suffixed &mdash; USA, USMC, USAF, and so forth &mdash; do not use periods.
 * Quote or italics? See, Quote, Italics, and Use-mention distinction.

Accessible character?
Is the character accessible as or - ?

Yes

 * Use "&", not.

No

 * non-breaking space, →   (non-breaking space holds the text either side together)
 * Em dash, → &mdash; (normal spaces on either side, this allows for line-breaks to happen as they will)
 * Ellipsis, →  &hellip;  (non-breaking spaces on either side, this holds text together)
 * Multiply sign, → &times; (preferred over "x", and usually preferred over mid-dot; remember spaces, maybe &amp;nbsp;)
 * Mid-dot, → &middot; (remember spaces, maybe &amp;nbsp;)
 * Apple command key, → &#x2318; (Unicode: "Place Of Interest" symbol)
 * Meta key, → &#x25C6;

Italics in tricky locations
&hellip;David Bernath, "We're thrilled to have ' Scrubs ' join the network&hellip;"
 * CODE


 * DISPLAYS
 * &hellip;David Bernath, "We're thrilled to have ' Scrubs ' join the network&hellip;"

The dreaded of
The possessive form (apostrophe s) is vastly preferred over syntactic constructions using the preposition of.

of |əv| |ə| preposition
 * 1) expressing the relationship between a part and a whole : the sleeve of his coat | in the back of the car | the days of the week | a series of programs | a piece of cake | a lot of money.
 * 2) expressing the relationship between a scale or measure and a value : an increase of 5 percent | a height of 10 feet.
 * 3) expressing an age : a boy of fifteen.
 * 4) indicating an association between two entities, typically one of belonging : the son of a friend | the government of India | a photograph of the bride | [with a possessive ] a former colleague of John's.
 * 5) expressing the relationship between an author, artist, or composer and their works collectively : the plays of Shakespeare | the paintings of Rembrandt.
 * 6) expressing the relationship between a direction and a point of reference : north of Chicago | on the left of the picture.
 * 7) expressing the relationship between a general category and the thing being specified which belongs to such a category : the city of Prague | the idea of a just society | the set of all genes.
 * 8) governed by a noun expressing the fact that a category is vague : this type of book | the general kind of answer that would satisfy me.
 * 9) indicating the relationship between a verb and an indirect object
 * 10) with a verb expressing a mental state : they must be persuaded of the severity of the problem | I don't know of anything that would be suitable.
 * 11) expressing a cause : he died of cancer.
 * 12) indicating the material or substance constituting something : the house was built of bricks | walls of stone.
 * 13) expressing time in relation to the following hour : it would be just a quarter of three in New York.

PHRASES

be of possess intrinsically; give rise to : this work is of great interest and value.

of all denoting the least likely or expected example : Jordan, of all people, committed a flagrant foul.

of all the nerve (or Brit. cheek) an expression of indignation.

of an evening (or morning, etc.) informal 1 on most evenings (or mornings, etc.). 2 at some time in the evenings (or mornings, etc.).

ORIGIN Old English, of Germanic origin; related to Dutch af and German ab, from an Indo-European root shared by Latin ab and Greek apo.

USAGE It is a mistake to use of instead of have in constructions such as: you should have asked (not | you should of asked). For more information, see usage at HAVE.

New Oxford American Dictionary, 2nd Edition

Standard appendices
Some heading titles have standard wording, and for these, the wording or capitalization must not be changed. or, equally good:
 * 1) See also
 * 2) Notes
 * 3) References
 * 4) Further reading
 * 5) External links
 * 1) See also
 * 2) References
 * 3) Notes
 * 4) Further reading
 * 5) External links

Two equally acceptable sequences exist, as shown above, and the choice of one over the other depends on the system of references and notes being used in the article. Notes and references may also be combined into one Notes and references.

Pronunciation

 * IPA pronunciation
 * IPA chart for English
 * prəˈnənsiˌeɪʃən
 * prəˈnənsiˌeɪʃən

Eliminate Latin phrases

 * List of Latin phrases (A–E)
 * List of Latin phrases (F–O)
 * List of Latin phrases (P–Z)

Why do articles (for years) 1700 to 2099 have Roman dates?
Every article regarding years 1700 through 2099 in Wikipedia (English language) has the Arabic numerals immediately followed by the same as Roman numerals. Why? Is there a template that drops this into the article? If so, why? Is this some The Da Vinci Code crap reference? --Charles Gaudette 09:07, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Asian glyphs
Keep Chinese characters together? Well, the old tag does not work because it is not an HTML 4.0 standard and not part of Wiki. Then, what does work? Nothing so far. Let's try:

Sample without tag
Another very simple Chinese logograph is the character 〇 (líng), which simply refers to the number zero. For instance, the year 2000 would be 二〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇年. The logograph 〇 is a native Chinese character, and its earliest documented use is in 1247 AD during the Southern Song dynasty period, found in a mathematical text called 數術九章 (Shǔ Shù Jiǔ Zhāng "Mathematical Treatise in Nine Sections"). It is not directly derived from the Hindi-Arabic numeral "0". Interestingly, being round, the character does not contain any traditional strokes.

Sample with tag
Another very simple Chinese logograph is the character 〇 (líng), which simply refers to the number zero. For instance, the year 2000 would be 二〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇年. The logograph 〇 is a native Chinese character, and its earliest documented use is in 1247 AD during the Southern Song dynasty period, found in a mathematical text called 數術九章 (Shǔ Shù Jiǔ Zhāng "Mathematical Treatise in Nine Sections"). It is not directly derived from the Hindi-Arabic numeral "0".

Code
Sucessful:

Not so much:

Tables



 * For more, see Help:Table

Links

 * Images
 * Catagory:Wikipedia images
 * Catagory:Free images
 * Wikimedia Commons
 * Picture tutorial

Usage
At times it is nessessary to also force a clear line break. 

Media linking
Link to the picture without displaying it. [[Media:Wikipedesketch.png]] [[Media:Wikipedesketch.png]]

or [[Media:Wikipedesketch.png|This is the wikipede]] [[Media:Wikipedesketch.png|This is the wikipede]]

This can be awkward if the image is high-resolution and larger than any reasonable display monitor. The following method avoids this problem. Image:Wikipedesketch.png Image:Wikipedesketch.png

or This links directly to the Wikipede's image page This links directly to the wikipede's image page

Font files
Modern computers and UTF-8 web browsers provide for many alphabets, languages, and symbols. So far Charles has only had to install the following fonts:
 * Languages of Ethiopia &mdash; GF Zemen Unicode, ftp://ftp.ethiopic.org/pub/fonts/TrueType/gfzemenu.ttf
 * Ruby characters
 * Georgian language fonts

Diplomatic debate tools

 * Logical fallacy

Code fagments

 * User_talk:
 * → This article is about this. For other, see here.
 * → This article is about this. For other, see here.

About Wiki pipes
Help:Piped link

Lead section edit trick

 * Normally, to edit the lead section of an article, you have to click the "edit this page" link at the top, and edit the whole page. This can lead to edit conflicts. However, despite the lack of an "edit" link for the lead, it is still possible to edit it as a section. Simply click on any section's "edit" link, and then change section=x to section=0 in the URL in your browser window. Reload the URL and you will now be editing the lead section.

Don't fix links to redirects that aren't broken
Some editors are tempted, upon finding links using a legitimate redirect target, to edit the page to "fix" the link so that it points "straight" at the "correct" page. Unless the link displays incorrectly — for instance, if the link is to a misspelling, or other unprintworthy redirects, or if the hint that appears when you hover over the link is misleading — there is no need to edit the link. The link may be deliberate, may consolidate related information in one place, or may indicate possible future articles.

Most especially, there should never be a need to replace redirect with redirect .

Some editors are under the mistaken impression that fixing such links improves the capacity of the Wikipedia servers. Because editing a page is seemingly thousands of times more expensive for the servers than following a redirect, the opposite is true if anything. It's inadvisable to worry about performance.


 * }