User:Hlj/CWediting

This is a page that I use for common editing style for American Civil War articles. I have written or edited well over 300 articles and try to use consistent punctuation, capitalization, styles of references, etc. Although my choices are not definitive, they are usually based on The Chicago Manual of Style (16th Ed.), which is the gold standard for editors of academic history books and journal articles in the United States, and on Manual of Style. In any event, if I need to discuss stylistic matters with new readers, I can always point them at this page and not reinvent the wheel. Comments are welcome. Hal Jespersen (talk) 23:19, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

Names
Wikipedia attempts to use the most popular version of a person's name as the title of his/her article. For instance, Ulysses S. Grant or Stonewall Jackson. I usually do not attempt to fool around with these choices. However, there is the issue of what to call the person within another article. I try to be consistent about this and match the usage patterns of modern Civil War historians: Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson Jubal Early Edward "Allegheny" Johnson William T. Sherman W.H.F. "Rooney" Lee William F. "Baldy" Smith Benjamin Butler Edward "Allegheny" Johnson William "Bull" Nelson William E. "Grumble" Jones John Pope
 * 1) The first use of the name in an article is usually with the person's first name and middle initial, such as George G. Meade. I almost never refer to a general without the middle initial, such as George Meade, Ulysses Grant, or William Rosecrans. Subsequent uses in the article are usually only his last name and, as discussed in the next section, I do not use ranks repeatedly, such as General This and General That.
 * 2) It was common in the 19th century to write people's names with only initials. Perhaps this was because printing was expensive and you saved some ink that way. I use this convention only for those men whose names are almost universally portrayed that way today, such as J.E.B. Stuart, A.P. Hill, D.H. Hill, and  G.W. Smith. I do not use spaces between the initials.
 * 3) It was also somewhat common in the 19th century to spell out people's middle names, such as George Gordon Meade and George Henry Thomas, but that has become rather antiquated. In modern usage, universal use of a middle name is generally related to assassins, such as John Wilkes Booth or Lee Harvey Oswald. There are some common exceptions that I tolerate when others use them, but I generally do not originate them myself: George Armstrong Custer and William Tecumseh Sherman.
 * 4) However, there is a big exception to the previous item. Some men were known primarily by their middle name, not their first, such as  W. Dorsey Pender and  H. Judson Kilpatrick, and I use that format.
 * 5) When a man is known universally by a nickname, I try to include both his real name and his nickname in the first instance within an article. Here are some useful name links that use my style:

Military ranks

 * Although this style is widely abused, I am sticking with the Chicago Manual of Style (8.23) and the Wikipedia style manual: MOS:CL. Ranks are lowercase unless used as a title. Examples:
 * Ulysses S. Grant was promoted to lieutenant general (and note that he was general in chief, not commander in chief, a title reserved for Lincoln).
 * Robert E. Lee fought against Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant.

Gen. Lt. Gen. Maj. Gen. Brig. Gen.
 * Use first lieutenant and  second lieutenant, not 1st or 2nd (unless abbreviated).
 * Abbreviations should have Wiki links if they are used for the first time in an article. I use standard English-language abbreviations, which are: Gen., Lt. Gen., Maj. Gen., Brig. Gen., Col., Lt. Col., Maj., Capt., 1st Lt., 2nd Lt., Sgt. These are in accordance with the Chicago Manual of Style (15.15), which suggests that the modern DOD abbreviations (GEN, LTG, MG, etc.) "should be used with discretion ... since they may be unfamiliar to readers." The U.S. Army Center for Military History has also published a style guide that agrees with this practice (see section 1.50, although it deviates from my guidelines by disallowing any abbreviation for a four- or five-star general or admiral). (As an exception, I established a format in Order of Battle pages, where space is at a premium, that uses the modern DOD abbreviations, but each of those pages has a legend that explains them.) Here are codings for the links I use:

Gen. Lt. Gen. Maj. Gen. Brig. Gen.

Col. Lt. Col. Maj. Capt. 1st Lt. 2nd Lt. Bvt. regular army


 * (I keep these in a text file on my desktop for easy cut-and-paste.) Note that there are versions of general ranks for the Confederates, too. My own personal style is to select the correct link for the first usage of a rank, Union or Confederate, and not link again for the next occurrence, avoiding over-linking such as " Lt. Gen. James Longstreet was friends with Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant."


 * I have established a standard of using the abbreviated ranks consistently, rather than referring over and over again to General Jones, Major General Smith, etc., spelled out, and I also try to always specify the actual rank when an officer is first mentioned in the article. This rank should be the one at the time of the battle, not his highest eventual rank. A problem to watch out for is that it is easy to find the date of rank of an officer, which often corresponds to battle in which he did well. However, you need to understand when he was nominated for the rank and then appointed, dates that often follows the battle&mdash;they were almost never promoted on the spot, in the field. So, for instance, a colonel at the Battle of Antietam may be promoted to brigadier general weeks later with a date of rank of September 17, 1862, but he should be referred to as a colonel in the context of the battle itself. Although it is possible to do research on these various dates, usually the most reliable way is to consult the order of battle listing from a secondary source written about the battle.
 * In keeping with the usage of ranks in most modern ACW histories, and in the spirit of making the articles more readable for the average reader, we do not emphasize the difference between regular army ranks ("permanent" ranks) and volunteer ranks, except in two cases: (1) when the officer has achieved a very high rank in the regular army, or; (2) when the officer has returned to his permanent rank at the end of the war. Therefore, we do not say "he was promoted to brigadier general of volunteers," preferring simply brigadier general. However, we would say he was promoted "to brigadier general in the  regular army" if he received a promotion of this type. This sort of promotion was actually pretty rare and is the exception worth noting in these articles.
 * List the rank outside of the link to the officer's name, such as General Robert E. Lee instead of  General Robert E. Lee.

Unit names

 * Units are capitalized only when they are preceded by a name or number:
 * 2nd Division
 * Hoke's Brigade
 * Note that this is a specific usage with the Confederate last name; variants that would not be capitalized would be "Robert Hoke's brigade," or "the brigades of Hoke and Smith," or for a Union officer, "Gibbon's brigade"
 * He chased a Union regiment through the woods and was promoted to corps commander.


 * Do not use superscripts for ordinal numbers: 20th Maine, not 20th Maine.


 * Regiments are identified with a number and state, also using the branch of service (infantry, cavalry, etc.) when necessary for clarity. Do not abbreviate the state name using the USPS two-letter abbreviations (like 1st MA). (Exception: In battle maps I draw that go down to the regimental level, I do in fact use the two-letter abbreviations.) It is unnecessary to append the word "regiment" to each entry. Examples:
 * 20th Maine Infantry
 * 2nd U.S. Cavalry
 * Despite my predictions in previous versions of this file, quite a large number of regimental articles have been created. Unfortunately many of the authors have chosen alternative naming conventions for these articles, such as 77th Regiment of New York Volunteers or Second Idaho Volunteer Regiment. These names may be historically correct, but I believe it is more useful to have a common naming convention across the articles, so I recode them, such as:

77th New York Infantry 1st U.S. Cavalry


 * Brigades are named differently for the two armies:
 * 1st Brigade, 1st Division, I Corps (Union usage)
 * Hood's Brigade or Hood's Texas Brigade (Confederate usage)
 * They ran into a Confederate brigade.


 * Divisions are listed numerically and always need a reference to the corps to which they are assigned:
 * 1st Division, II Corps
 * 1st Division, A.P. Hill's Corps
 * Henry Heth was a division commander in A.P. Hill's Corps


 * Corps:
 * III Corps (Union usage, coded as  III Corps ). Note: During the war, this would have been called the "Third Army Corps," but modern Civil War historians usually use the Roman numeral designations that began in the 20th century.
 * First Corps, or Longstreet's Corps (Confederate usage)
 * He assumed command of a corps.
 * They were attacked by two Union corps.


 * Commas: When a multi-name unit is used, commas separate the names and there is always a trailing comma if it's not at the end of the sentence:
 * He joined the 1st Brigade, 2nd Division, at the start of the war.

Battles

 * In the first sentence, include:
 * Name of battle in bold. If the article name includes a roman numeral, such as Battle of Chattanooga II, describe it as the First, Second, or Third Battle of. (The use of roman numerals in battle names has now become pretty rare in Wikipedia.)
 * Alternative names, also bold
 * Date(s)
 * Location
 * Name of campaign, if it is a well-known campaign and has (or will have) a campaign overview link
 * during the American Civil War
 * In the remainder of the first paragraph, optionally include the names of the major commanders and describe its context and significance.
 * Example:
 * The Battle of Big Black River Bridge, or Big Black, fought May 17, 1863, was part of the Vicksburg Campaign of the American Civil War. Union commander  Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and the Army of the Tennessee pursued the retreating  Confederate  Lt. Gen. John C. Pemberton following the Battle of Champion Hill, in the final battle before the Siege of Vicksburg.
 * For all but the most trivial battles, the section headers I try to use are:
 * Background
 * Opposing forces (This is a highly abbreviated look at the Order of Battle, usually down to corps or division commanders only. For a recent example of this section with an image gallery of commanders, see Battle of Franklin (1864).)
 * Battle
 * Aftermath (This is where the casualties are explained, as well as actions after the battle and any ramifications)
 * Notes, References, Further reading, External links
 * I try to include coordinates for all battles, using a   template at the bottom of the article.

Biographies
For the first sentence of a biography:
 * The full name is in bold and does not include titles, ranks, or degrees.
 * The name is followed by dates of birth and death, separated by an en-dash (&amp;ndash;) and surrounded by parentheses. Those dates are not repeated in the text of the article. The locations of birth and death are not included in the first sentence.
 * Finish the sentence with a description of his/her role, occupations, etc. Reserve accomplishments and superlatives for the second sentence. Example:
 * Turner Ashby, Junior (October 23, 1828 – June 6, 1862) was a Confederate cavalry general in the American Civil War. He achieved prominence as  Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson's cavalry commander in the Shenandoah Valley and might have been one of the most famous cavalry commanders of the war had he not been killed in battle in 1862.

The biography should be in rough chronological sequence after that brief first paragraph. Avoid tabular listings of dates, ranks, assignments, etc. Although reference works and websites often list dozens of dates about a person, don't bore the reader by using them all; pick the significant ones. Try to sprinkle in anecdotes and quotes about the person in the appropriate places; don't put them all at the end. However, one quote "summing up the man" at the end is a nice touch.

The statement about death names the place of death (not the date unless it's something interesting or ironic) and the place of burial.

Virtually all biographies now use subheadings. I believe that subheads that introduce only two or three sentences are a waste of time. Some of the headings I do try to use are:
 * Early life and career
 * Civil War
 * Postbellum activities
 * In memoriam

And ones I avoid:
 * Biography
 * Trivia

Infoboxes (battle and biography)
I never create these myself because I think they are mostly busy work and an opportunity for the article text and the box to get out of sync, but I find that other industrious people do add them. Stylistically, the question is what information should be repeated in the normal text of the article. I assume that the article text takes precedence and create links and name dates, units, locations, and commanders in the main article text as if the box were not there. (For instance, I always ensure that the full name of an individual is listed with a link, not assuming that the reader will go to the box to find the link.)

For the biography infobox, there is a field used for battles. The stylistic trick here is to select the important battles and campaigns and not provide an exhaustive list. (Some soldiers fought in dozens of battles.) I lean toward using the campaign names instead of individual battles unless the soldier made a particular contribution to (or was killed in) one specific battle. It is possible to use regular Wiki formatting in this field as follows:


 * battles=Mexican-American War American Civil War
 * Seven Days Battles
 * Battle of Gaines' Mill
 * Battle of Gettysburg
 * Overland Campaign

There is a problem in some articles because of the combination of the Infobox Military Conflict and Campaignbox templates, such as displaced [Edit] links and left-aligned images. I have started using the following formulation to correct this:

An alternative method is described in WP:BUNCH.

Refs and Links
I find all the References and External links sections in Wiki are confusing and used inconsistently. I try to follow these guidelines: Here's a summary:
 * Any article or web site that I use to extract facts for the article goes into References (always plural, not Sources or External links). When referring to the National Park Service battle summaries, I point to the specific article, not the URL for the entire list of campaigns and battles. It may not be overall Wiki policy, but I include both books and websites in this list, sorted by author name, if applicable. I never use raw URLs without descriptive text in this list.
 * I do not use Bibliography sections because it is unclear which of the works were used to create the article and which are suggested only for Further reading.
 * I use External links only for web sites that have interesting additional information, or for maps and photographs I cannot guarantee are in the public domain. If the interesting information is not available on a web site, say for a novel or for a book I didn't use for citations, I use the section title Further reading.
 * I rarely use a See also section, but when I do, I do not re-list Wiki links used previously in the article.
 * The sequence for these trailing sections should be:
 * See also
 * Notes
 * References
 * Further reading
 * External links

Citations and Footnotes
Almost all of my articles written since 2008 use extensive footnotes, usually one or more per paragraph. (In the early days of Wikipedia there was little emphasis on citations and I relied solely on lists of References at the end of the article. Sadly, many of the articles are still in this state.) I dislike merely embedding a URL in the main text, which I call a "blind link" because you have to click it to find out what it points to, so I use a footnote.


 * 1) In the source, code &lt;ref&gt;text of footnote, which may be an explanation of something, a full Reference-style entry, or a page citation to a document already in the References section&lt;/ref&gt;. The full citation inside a footnote should be used for a source that has very few footnotes in the article; if it has more than one or two, put it into References and use the "summary style"&mdash;only author and page&mdash;in the footnote. Many Wikipedia editors mix long footnotes with short&mdash;full citations for some works (or the first instance of a work) and abbreviated (author/page) for others. In general, I rarely use the full footnote citations, preferring to a have all the Reference detail (title, publisher, ISBN, etc.) in the References section. The exception to this is for one-time cites from places like newspaper articles or websites.
 * 2) If the author has only one book in References, the footnote contains his last name and the page number(s). If multiple books, cite the last name, the italicized title (or a portion of it, enough to be recognizable), and the pages.
 * 3) For multiple footnotes from the exact same source, we don't use Ibid, as in a book. Use the name= parameter. For instance, the first usage is &lt;ref name=Eicher251&gt;Eicher, p. 251.&lt;/ref&gt; and then all subsequent footnotes are simply &lt;ref name=Eicher251/&gt;
 * 4) Before the References section, code
 * ==Notes==
 * or <tt>  </tt>

The Reflist macro does the complete job of formatting the notes. When the |colwidth=30em is included, it displays in multiple columns&mdash;usually two, but more in a really wide browser window. I generally use multiple columns only for articles with more than 10 footnotes.

Citation style
For the first six years of my Wikipedia work I used a style of Reference citation that looked pretty good, but sometimes was subjected to criticism for deviating from academic norms. In 2010 I converted over to the Notes/Bibliography style described in the Chicago Manual of Style, 16th edition, which is used extensively for history scholarship; see Chicago 14.2. A useful summary of this style is available at http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html, in which it refers to the "humanities style (notes and bibliography)". This is often called the Chicago/Turabian format. Here are a few representative examples (although they would normally be sorted by author surnames):

A complete list of my ACW library in this style is at User:Hlj/CWbibliography. A helpful tool for correctly formatting ISBNs is the website http://www.isbn.org/converterpub.asp.

Editing footnoted paragraphs
As more and more citations are added to Wikipedia articles, it is becoming increasingly difficult to make casual or random edits to those paragraphs that are documented with footnotes. When you make a change, it is unacceptable to add or modify information that is not documented by the cited references for that text unless you adjust the footnotes accordingly. Some Wikipedia articles use footnotes at the sentence or phrase level, but I reserve that practice only for direct quotations within a paragraph or for facts or opinions that could be considered controversial (and thus, the reader may wish to jump directly to the citation). Otherwise, I usually group all of the citations for a paragraph into a single compound footnote, which is a practice that is relatively common with modern Civil War authors. One consequence of paragraph level footnoting is that a paragraph cannot be broken in half easily, unless the paragraph breaker has access to the cited references and can adjust which page citations go with which of the new smaller paragraphs.

Let me use a few examples based on a simple article sentence. In the following list, the notation [FN=] shows what the text of the footnote would look like without going through the actual <tt> </tt> mechanism.

Here is current article sentence:
 * Smith was born in New York City.[FN=Eicher, p. 399.]

The following is an invalid modification, because Eicher did not indicate who the parents were:
 * Smith was born in New York City to John and Mary Smith.[FN=Eicher, p. 399.]

One of the following two formats is an appropriate way to make that change:
 * Smith was born in New York City[FN=Eicher, p. 399.] to John and Mary Smith.[FN=Warner, p. 77.]
 * Smith was born in New York City to John and Mary Smith.[FN=Eicher, p. 399; Warner, p. 77.]

Suppose you found another author who disagrees on the birthplace. The following is also an invalid modification:
 * Smith was born in Newark, New Jersey.[FN=Eicher, p. 399.]

Any of the following forms would be appropriate, based on the relative credibility of the various sources:
 * Smith was born in New York City.[FN=Eicher, p. 399. Warner, p. 77, claims that it was Newark, New Jersey.] (In this case, we are relegating the secondary opinion to mere "footnote status" because we do not think it is particularly credible.)
 * Smith was born in New York City[FN=Eicher, p. 399.] or Newark, New Jersey.[FN=Warner, p. 77.]
 * Smith is usually cited as being born in New York City,[FN=See, for instance, Eicher, p. 399, and Tagg, p. 88.] but recent scholarship by military historian Ezra Warner concludes that he was born in Newark, New Jersey.[FN=Warner, p. 77.]

That final format, in which the name of the author is listed in the body of the text, should be reserved for those cases in which a preponderance of the citations&mdash;the traditional or conventional view&mdash;are being balanced by a fresh interpretation by a well-known and respected author. This kind of usage is more likely when differing opinions are being expressed, rather than the hard facts in this example.

Dates
I code American-style dates, which was the format used at the time, as evidenced by the Official Records. For example, July 3, 1863, not 3 July 1863. At one time there was a date formatting standard that used forms looking like links to adjust to the reader's personal preferences. For example:
 * <tt> July 1, 1863 </tt>, which displays as July 1, 1863, or 1 July 1863 depending on the reader's preferences. (Note that if the sentence continues, I put a comma after the year. )

However, the MoS has now deprecated autoformatting, so almost all of these date formats are now gone.

Here are some date recommendations based on the MoS and general grammar:

There is a new effort underway to embed microformat dates into articles, by using the start-date and end-date templates into the infoboxes for battles and biographies. These are pretty straight-forward, but different editors are using different styles of displaying the ranges within a single month. My style is to use "September 19–20, 1863" rather than, say, "September 19 – September 20, 1863." (Of course, if the month boundary is crossed, it would be "September 30 – October 1, 1863." The way to achieve my style is:

September 19, 1863&amp;ndash;September 20, 1863

In both templates, the first parameter generates the microformat date (which is invisible in the normal browser depiction of the page) and the second is what is actually displayed by the browser.

Locations

 * Always spell out state names; foreign readers should not be expected to know U.S. state abbreviations, particularly the 2-letter USPS abbreviations. (I employ two exceptions to this rule: some of my maps that show action down at the regimental level use notations such as "71 PA"; in citations, when the publisher city has a state name, I use the abbreviation.)
 * In city/state names, commas always come in pairs. Example:
 * Waukegan, Illinois, is not far from the Wisconsin border.
 * I prefer (although not strongly) the style of links that points to a city/state in one link:
 * Preferred: <tt> Baltimore, Maryland </tt>
 * Tolerated: <tt> Baltimore, Maryland </tt>

Quotations
Quotations should not be rendered in italic text, per the manual of style. If the quotation is only a sentence or two, I generally put it inline with simple quotation marks. For longer quotations, the use of the <tt> </tt> mechanism is appropriate, but I have just recently found the Quotation template and am starting to use it to good effect. Coding:

There is also the simpler Quote template, as follows: "I, Philip Kearny, an old soldier, ... cowardice or treason."

"I, Philip Kearny, an old soldier, enter my solemn protest against this order for retreat. We ought instead of retreating should follow up the enemy and take Richmond. And in full view of all responsible for such declaration, I say to you all, such an order can only be prompted by cowardice or treason."

Another option is the Quote box side-box style. It's a good way for adding a bit of color to a description.

Abbreviations
I think abbreviations without periods are sloppy writing, so use:
 * Washington, D.C.
 * 7th U.S. Cavalry, U.S. Army, U.S. Military Academy (Note that WP:MOSABBR says U.S. is "more common [than US] in American English", the language used in ACW articles)
 * 8 a.m., 9:30 p.m.

An exception to this rule applies to USA and CSA. These aren't used frequently outside of infoboxes because they are ambiguous, meaning the names of the countries as well as the Armies. Furthermore, USA meaning U.S. Army also carries a connotation of the regular army, vs. the volunteer ranks (USV), and that's a distinction that's too subtle for most civilian readers.

As mentioned elsewhere, I do not abbreviate state names in the main body of the articles, using either the modern USPS two-letter style (MN) or the longer style (Minn.) used during the war. This is a courtesy to readers outside the U.S.

Possessives
I attempt to use a common style for the possessive form of singular nouns, including formal names. In WP:MOS, the Wikipedia manual of style graciously offers three alternative styles and tells you to choose one, but use it consistently within an article. I use the first option, which conforms to the Chicago Manual of Style, 16th ed., sections 7.16–18. (In previous editions of Chicago, they were marginally supportive of the third Wikipedia style, but in the latest edition they explicitly recommend against using it. See 7.21.) The recommended style is to add apostrophe-S to all singular possessives, even those that end in S, whether the S sound is pronounced or not. Examples given by Chicago are Kansas's legislature, Marx's theories, Jesus's adherents, Descartes's three dreams, Albert Camus's novels, Euripides's tragedies, Xerxes's armies.

Colloquialisms
I avoid the colloquialisms Yankees and Rebels (and certainly things like the "horsemen in blue" or the "graybacks") in articles I write from scratch. I normally use Union (coded as <tt> Union </tt>) more frequently than Federal, but sometimes mix them up to avoid boring repetition.

Colorful colloquialisms should be avoided for a few reasons:
 * 1) This is an encyclopedia, which uses "formal writing", not a series of stories or magazine articles.
 * 2) Non-native English speakers should not be unnecessarily disadvantaged.
 * 3) I have received complaints about the colorful language in some articles that supposedly "glorifies war". I don't see it that way, but like to avoid arguments.

Dashes
There are two kinds of dashes, neither of which can be a hyphen instead. In both cases, I use the HTML coding shown here instead of using the Unicode characters (because some text editors don't handle those characters well). Note that MOS:DASH is comfortable enough with this HTML coding style that lists it as the first method for entering these dashes. May 23, 1824 &amp;ndash; September 13, 1881
 * EN-Dash (<tt>&amp;ndash;</tt>): Used in numeric or date ranges. I use no surrounding spaces for ranges in which both ends are in the same format, such as 1861–65 or May–June 1864. However, I do use surrounding spaces when the dash would connect ends of different formats or expressions including spaces, such as this case: "May 23, 1824 – September 13, 1881":
 * EM-Dash (<tt>&amp;mdash;</tt>): Used to separate clauses&mdash;like this&mdash;with no surrounding spaces. Do not use the old typewriter substitution of two hyphens ("<tt>--</tt>").