User:Wavelength/About Wikipedia/Manual of Style/Register

 Unfortunately, the second deletion discussion occurred during my increased preoccupation by several things outside Wikipedia, and I did not examine the text of the Register as thoroughly as I should have. While I am grateful to Darkfrog24 for (his or her) help in adding discussion links to the Register, I am disappointed that questionable material has possibly been added ( perhaps in good faith ). The more that I examine the Register, the more that I find that the possibly bad content is entangled with the good content. The situation is similar, in some aspects, to the one described at Matthew 13 24–30. I wish that I had acted more effectively to save the Register in its original namespace, perhaps by removing some good material along with possibly bad material. Perhaps I will undertake the task of removing the questionable material at some time in the future. I do not endorse the present version. —Wavelength (talk) 23:21, 7 February 2016 (UTC) and 23:32, 7 February 2016 (UTC) and 01:24, 13 February 2016 (UTC) This page is a work in progress, a working draft of a supplement to the Manual of Style. Its purpose is to record decisions made in discussions at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style. For more details, please see the January 2010 discussion archived at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 113.

This document is meant as a reference of consensus decisions on the Wikipedia Manual of Style and, when available, the reasoning behind each consensus. It is not itself a collection of guidelines, rules, or laws. Just the fact that a consensus has been recorded on this page does not mean that that consensus is a permanent and unchangeable part of Wikipedia. This register is meant only to give editors better understanding of the current state of things, which is useful both to those considering proposing changes and to those seeking to better implement the MoS as it exists.

Article titles

 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 102 (August 2008)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 101 (May 2008)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 108 (May 2009)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 110 (October 2009)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 31 (search for: "ß in article titles") (August and September 2005)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 93 (October 2007)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 53 (July 2006)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 4 (September 2004)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 109 (August 2009)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 23 (August and September 2005)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 82 (search for: "article titles") (June 2007)

Section headings

 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 119 (January 2011)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 146 (September 2013)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 12 (version of 14:10, 22 September 2010) (April and May 2005)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 55 (version of 14:32, 22 September 2010) (August and October 2006)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 108 (version of 17:12, 13 October 2010) (May 2009)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 121 (version of 07:31, 13 May 2011) (April 2011)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Headings (version of 07:39, 13 August 2011) (November 2006)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters (version of 16:18, 3 November 2012) (July 2012)

National varieties of English

 * (subsections re-ordered)

Do not use capitals for emphasis

 * (new subsection)

Capitalization of "The"

 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 108 (September 2009)

Titles of works

 * (new subsection)

Animals, plants, and other organisms

 * User:SMcCandlish/Capitalization of organism names

Ligatures

 * (new section)

Write out both the full version and the abbreviation at first occurrence

 * (new subsection)

Plural and possessive forms

 * (new subsection)

Full stops and spaces

 * (new subsection)

US and U.S.

 * (new subsection)

Circa

 * (new subsection)

Do not use unwarranted abbreviations

 * (new subsection)

Do not invent abbreviations or acronyms

 * (new subsection)

HTML elements

 * (new subsection)

Bold

 * Wikipedia talk:Highlighting conventions (Highlighting conventions was created in 2002 and lasted until it was redirected to Manual of Style/Text formatting in 2006)

Emphasis

 * (new subsection)

Titles

 * (new subsection)

Words as words

 * (new subsection)

Foreign words

 * (new subsection)

Scientific names

 * (new subsection)

Quotations in italics

 * (new subjection)

Italics within quotations

 * (new subsection)

Effect on nearby punctuation

 * (new subsection)

Italicized links

 * (new subsection)

Technical information

 * (subsection removed)

Use

 * (subsection removed)

Quotations

 * See Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/quotation and punctuation

Point of view

 * (new subsection)

Reasons to prefer straight quotation marks and apostrophes
Currently there is no consensus regarding which quotation glyphs to use. Originally the rule was introduced on 10 April 2003 in without any discussion on the Talk page (see [1]). The rule stated “For uniformity and to avoid complications use straight quotation marks and apostrophes”. The debate regarding the appropriateness of this rule started in [18], [19] with the conclusion that the MoS have to be changed, yet all such changes have been reverted. Since then, the issue has been revisited many times.

The reasons currently provided for using straight quotation marks are as follows:

They are easier to type in reliably, and to edit. Mostly true, excepting that users would have to turn off the “smart quotes” function when pasting text from word processors. Mixed use interferes with some searches, such as those using the browser’s search facility (a search for Alzheimer's disease could fail to find Alzheimer’s disease and vice versa). Apostrophes figure in this part of the debate, though it is argued that they are not relevant to the discussion of quotation glyphs. Modern browsers (such as Google Chrome) are capable of understanding that ' and ’ probably mean the same thing, so they will find both the “Alzheimer's” and “Alzheimer’s” regardless of how it is typed. I has also been argued that most people already know that the safe way of searching for “Alzheimer’s disease” is to type “ ”. The lack of complaints regarding other special characters such as those in “Rao–Cramér inequality”, which are even harder to search for in an older browser, has also been noted.

Furthermore, wiki markup tags (such as ) will not work if curly quotation marks are used. Tags are a part of computer language. They are meant for the computer, not for the people. It is an error to use curly quotation marks to delimit strings in wiki markup, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, or most other computer languages.

The arguments in favor of recommending the curly quotation glyphs are as follows:

They are typographically correct. Meaning that it is the standard of English language to use glyphs “” to denote quotations. This rule can be found in most serious manuals of styles, both for paper and electronic documents. Most Wikipedia Manuals of Styles in other languages explicitly forbid the use of straight quotation marks. See for example German, French, Russian, Italian versions.


 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 100
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 103
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 104
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 108
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 108
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 163 (February 2015)

Reasons to prefer double quotation marks to single quotation marks
The Wikipedia MoS prefers double quotation marks to single ones because they are more discernible visually, and there is no risk of mistaking a quotation mark for an apostrophe. This rule may have been put in place as part of a split-the-difference attempt to balance British and American English punctuation practices, in which the early MoS favored British style punctuation for periods and commas with quotation marks in exchange for preferring double quotes. This deal was made under the mistaken belief that British always requires single quotation marks.

Names and titles

 * (new sub-subsection)

Punctuation inside or outside

 * For a collection of posts on this issue on the MoS talk page over the years, see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/quotation and punctuation
 * For a list of external sources that support this rule, see Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Supports/Punctuation inside or outside.

This is a partial list of major MoS discussions,, about quotation marks and closing punctuation (does not include passing mentions):
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/quotation and punctuation (much of the page, 2002–2010)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 1
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 1 (December 2003)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Alpha Archive 3 (September 2004)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive (quotes and quote marks 2) (with 3 subsections, August 2006)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 3 (September 2004)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 4 (September 2004)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 12 (March 2005)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 32 (October–November 2005)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 47 (March 2006)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 50 (April 2006)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 67 (January and February 2007)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 68 (February 2007)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 86 (July 2007)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 90 (July and August 2007)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 92 (with 2 subsections, September–October 2007)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 93 (October and November 2007)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 94 (with 1 subsection and 1 sub-subsection, December 2007 – January 2008)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 101 (May 2008)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 103 (September 2008)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 108 (May 2009)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 108 (September 2009)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 108 (May–June 2009)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 111 (December 2009)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 113 (with 16 subsections and 1 sub-subsection, January–February 2010)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 117 (September 2010)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 125 (June–August 2011)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 126 (October 2011)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 140 (with 3 subsections, May 2013)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 141 (June 2013)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 143 (with many subsections and an RFC, June–August 2013
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 151 (February 2014)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 152 (February 2014)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 152 (followup to the immediately previous discussion, February–March 2014)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 153 (March 2014)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 158 (with multiple subsections, May–June 2014)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 160 (on ENGVAR and quotation marks generally, July 2014)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 161 (September–October 2014)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 161 (mostly about footnote formatting, November 2014)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 167 (May–June 2015)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 170 (shifted to discussion of the rule itself, how to present it, and how to explain it, August 2015)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 169 (September 2015)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 177 (December 2015)



Ellipses

 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 7 (January and February 2005)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 65 (January 2007)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 92 (August and October 2007)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 93 (October 2007)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 94 (November and December 2007)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 95 (January 2008)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 100 (June 2008)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 104 (October 2009)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 105 (November 2008)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 106 (December 2008)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 108 (June 2009)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 110 (October 2009)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 111 (December 2009)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 111 (January 2010)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 113 (January 2010)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 114 (March 2010)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 122 (June 2011)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 126 (November 2011)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 127 (February 2012)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 128 (June 2012)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 129 (June 2012)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 131 (October 2012)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 137 (February 2013)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 135 (January 2013)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 153 (March 2014)

Commas

 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 139 (May 2013)

Hyphens

 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 6 (November and December 2004)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 12 (March to July 2005)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 23 (August 2005)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 30 (October 2005)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 82 (with subsections) (June and July 2007)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 88 (July 2007)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 94 (December 2007 to February 2008)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 95 (January 2008)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 96 (February 2008)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 96 (March 2008)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 97 (March 2008)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 100 (April 2008)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 100 (May 2008)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 101 (July 2008)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 104 (October 2008)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 104 (November 2008)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 106 (with subsections) (November and December 2008)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 108 (with subsections) (March to June 2009)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 109 (July 2009)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 109 (July and August 2009)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 109 (with one subsection) (August 2009)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 109 (September 2009)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 110 (December 2009)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 111 (December 2009)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 113 (February 2010)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 114 (February and March 2010)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 114 (March 2010)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 116 (July 2010)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 116 (July 2010)

Dashes

 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/dash drafting (June and July 2011)

Terminal punctuation

 * (subsection removed)

Punctuation and inline citations
Citations are always placed after punctuation when they occur together. This occurs regardless of whether the citation pertains to the entire preceding paragraph, or only the preceding sentence or clause. In placing inline citations and footnote marks after periods and commas, Wikipedia follows the overwhelming majority of reputable publications. Only one publication, Nature magazine, was found to place citations before punctuation. In addition, most of the Wikipedians involved in the discussion, even the ones supporting an allow-both policy, voiced preferences for the consistency and look of post-punctuation citations.

This issue most recently came under discussion in February 2010, when one editor found a discrepancy between WP:MoS and WP:FN. WP:MoS allowed only post-punctuation citations while WP:FN allowed both post- and pre-punctuation citations. After much discussion, WP:FN was altered to allow only post-punctuation citations.

Spaces between said punctuation and the inline citations were deemed neither sightly nor necessary, by consensus on WP:MoS.

Months and seasons

 * (separated into "Months" and "Seasons"; see below)

Months

 * (new subsection)

Seasons

 * (new subsection)

Possessives

 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 108 (April 2009)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 108 (August 2009)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 108 (August–September 2009)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 110 (November 2009)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 113 (January 2010)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 125, with subsections (August 2011)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 147 (October and November 2013)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 150 (December 2013 and January 2014)

Singular nouns

 * (new sub-subsection)

Plural nouns

 * (new sub-subsection)

Official names

 * (new sub-subsection)

Pronouns

 * (new sub-subsection)

Verb tense

 * (new subsection)

Gender-neutral language

 * For a list of external sources that support this rule, see Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Supports/Gender-neutral language.

As of January 2010, there is no consensus either for or against the use of the singular "they" in Wikipedia. Arguments for its acceptability include its long history in English, the fact that it is common in informal speech and writing and grammatical rules that permit a plural pronoun with words such as "everyone" that do not refer to a specific subject. Arguments against its use include its informality and the grammatical impropriety of using a plural pronoun for a singular subject. Please see the articles on WP: Gender-neutral language and the singular they for more information.

The most recent discussion of the singular "they" can be found here.
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 140 (May 2013)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 158 (July 2014) concerns the generic "he"
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 163 (January 2015)
 * Village pump (policy)/Archive 118 (February 2015)
 * Village pump (policy)/Archive 118 (February 2015) concerns the generic "he"

Use of "Arab" and "Arabic"

 * (new sub-section)

Gender identity

 * (new sub-section)

The practice of using the most recent publicly preferred pronoun and/or first name of any individual whose gender might be questioned, such as trans men and trans women, has been challenged and revisited more than once. There are many levels of opinion on this issue. Some believe in using the most recent preferred pronoun to refer to the subject throughout his or her life (current policy). Some believe in using the pronoun corresponding to the subject's gender of rearing when writing about periods before the subject's gender transition and then the preferred pronoun only when writing about periods after the subject's gender transition. Some believe that only the pronoun corresponding to the gender of rearing should be used. Still others believe that the context, such as whether the person is more notable as a man or a woman, should decide the matter. Below is a partial list of discussions of this issue as it pertains to the Wikipedia Manual of Style. Be advised that conversations from a few years ago may use now-outdated terminology.

The MoS's instructions regarding transgender individuals who are mentioned in passing in other articles (as opposed to in articles of which they are the principal subject) date to a single RfC in late 2015. The RfC was inspired by a conflict in the article space: whether to name "Bruce Jenner" or "Caitlyn Jenner" on a list of Olympic athletes. Not all of the RfC's results were clear, but the majority of participants agreed that context should play the largest role in determining whether to use one name or both and which one. The idea of requiring that the previous name be used alone in all cases was specifically rejected.


 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 108 (February 2009)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 108 (August 2009)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 122 (September 2011)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 149 (November 2013)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 149 (November 2013)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 163 (January 2015)
 * Village pump (policy)/Archive 121 (June 2015)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 170 (August 2015)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 170 (August 2015)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 170 (August 2015; cites sources)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 173 (September 2015)
 * Village pump (policy)/Archive 123
 * Village pump (policy)/Archive 124

Below is a partial list of discussions pertaining to other parts of MOS:IDENTITY.
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 149 (September 2013)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 149
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 149 (December 2013)

Images

 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Icons/Nobel icon

Captions

 * (previously a section)

Formatting of captions

 * (previously a subsection of "Captions")


 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Captions/Archive 1