User talk:Dweller/Professional prose

On dialect related MOS issues
I think that, for articles at the featured level, the standard should demand adherence to the MOS. Or at least, demand the consistent use of another style system e.g. APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.

Wikipedia is an interesting case in that we are dealing with not only a worldwide audience, but also a worldwide set of editors. I don't know the statistics (or if they've even been calculated), but I would guess that the English WP is about 50% American and %50 of the other Commonwealth/former dependencies. I see a lot of British style and use around (It drives me freakin' crazy, because in the US secondary and collegiate education system, you get rapped with a steel ruler if you say "towards" instead of "toward." And that brings up punctuation within quotations...) I haven't checked the MOS on this recently; the last time I checked it said that the usage should be consistent within the article (which I completely agree with). I think we should go even beyond that and say that the language must conform to the MOS. That brings up a whole other can of worms, viz. the detail and accuracy of the MOS. I do think that it is very important to eventually hash this out on a global or wikiwide level, because once we can agree on a common style, we can then have a consistent product. Lwnf360 (talk) 09:22, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Requirements vs. recommendations
As I said on FACR talk, the company I work for uses "shall" and "should" as precise terms to express "requirements" (which are mandatory) and "recommendations" (which are guidelines, i.e. preferred, but not mandatory). It was a little odd at first, but I've grown to like it--it makes the meaning very clear. I propose we adopt that strategy for this requirements/guide page. Hell, we could even use that concept to keep "brilliant," have it be: "the prose shall be engaging and professional" and "the prose should aspire to brilliance." Lwnf360 (talk) 09:32, 15 June 2008 (UTC)