User:Mrg3105/sandbox for style issues

Stylistic hates (aka "Wikipedia shoot-on-sight")


 * The proliferation of flag icons on pages where they add nothing, like biographies or band articles; see this MoS page for the arguments about good and bad use of flags.
 * 'Botswanan': in two years living there, I never heard this variant. The preferred adjective is 'Botswana'. See this discussion.
 * Chemical elements wrongly capitalised; it's "iron", "oxygen" and "boron", not "Iron", "Oxygen" and "Boron". Simple. Also Over-Capitalisation Of Section And Article Titles.
 * "It should be noted that" and even the word "notable". If it isn't notable, it doesn't belong here. 'Ironically'; who found it ironic? 'Actually'; 'in fact'; these are the equivalent of saying 'honestly' and may make a statement less believable, not more. 'Used' is usually better than 'utilised' or 'utilized'.
 * Humourous. Honourary. Hypercorrection at its most extreme. See here for details.
 * Seminal. Legendary. Iconic. Epochal. Unless it's sourced, no. See weasel words.
 * 'Would' wrongly used instead of the past tense, as in "1995 would be a difficult year for Yeltsin". 'Was' is fine.
 * 'However' and other linking words deployed without thought as to their meaning.
 * Overlinking in general. Incomplete dates wrongly linked (there's hardly ever any point in linking years, months or days of the week). Manual of Style (dates and numbers) has changed to allow some ambiguity here, but I still generally go with Only make links that are relevant to the context. See also the date linking debate. 'Easter-egg' links like 1996 . Disambig pages with extra and/or piped links.