User talk:Espoo

September 2021 Guild of Copy Editors newsletter
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:44, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

Emic unit
I noticed your update to Linguistics, which suggests that you may know more about the topic than I do (not difficult). Would you have a glance at the changes I made today to Emic unit, which just contained three sources and no citations. I did some monkey see monkey do edits. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 10:56, 3 October 2021 (UTC)


 * They look good to this layperson. And i'm sure any possible necessary improvement will soon be noticed by the experts who regularly edit that key linguistics article. --Espoo (talk) 12:07, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for noticing ...
"the poor's " on Gandhi. Apparently, it is not as rare as I'd thought. You may see it used in scholarly books published after 1980 here. Best, Fowler&amp;fowler  «Talk»  23:54, 25 October 2021 (UTC)
 * PS That link is not for only post-1980 publications, but there are plenty in there; besides, you can easily change the time window.  Fowler&amp;fowler  «Talk»  23:56, 25 October 2021 (UTC)


 * Yes, it's quite amazing what language nonsense the brain of even a professional copyeditor can produce in the middle of the night, especially when angered by the revert of a valuable, essential, difficult, and time consuming edit. Apparently the proximity of "the whites" produced the brain fart that "the poor's" should be plural too, although I'm well aware of the expression "the poor" and its plural meaning. --Espoo (talk) 06:42, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for November 19
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Classical Greece
"moved page Talk:Women in Classical Athens to Talk:Women in classical Athens ‎(avoid unnecessary caps according to MOS:CAPS and other WP articles on this and similar topics and many academic articles)" - this was probably unwise. As you may or may not know, "Classical Greece was a period of around 200 years (the 5th and 4th centuries BC) in Ancient Greece", and is usually capitalized when that specific period is meant. It is an area where drive-by page moves should be avoided, as any move is pretty likely to be controversial, and rightly so (see WP:MOVE). Johnbod (talk) 17:24, 30 November 2021 (UTC)


 * As you may or may not know, every instance of "classical" is lowercase in the article classical Athens, so it's simply wrong to use uppercase in an article referring to that one. At the very least, you should have tried to impose your preference for uppercase on that article first before reverting my edit. In addition, as I explained in the edit summary, our MOS says to avoid unnecessary capitalization, and many academic sources and major university publishers use lowercase "classical Greece / Athens / period", "archaic period", etc., e.g. https://books.google.fi/books?id=JOjpWrRrx4EC.
 * In addition, every single instance of "ancient Greece / Greek / Greeks" is lowercase in the article on ancient Greece, except for references to the language Ancient Greek, as it should be. There is no country called Ancient Greece; it's not a proper noun. The word Classical is often capitalized especially in art history, but it's unnecessary and therefore violates our MOS. --Espoo (talk) 17:44, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
 * That "every instance of "classical" is lowercase in the article classical Athens" proves absolutely nothing, as some know-nothing drive-by editor may well have changed them all in the past - I can't be bothered to look. Or they may all have been wrong from the start, and should all say "ancient Greece". I can't tell you how unimpressed I am by your opinion that "it's unnecessary".  There is a broader sense, as in "classical Greeece and Rome", and so plenty of scope for confusion, so it is necesssary, and does NOT violate the MOS. I never said "Ancient Greece" should be capitalized.  Johnbod (talk) 23:39, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

December 2021 GOCE Newsletter
Distributed via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:02, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

"Easily confused words" listed at Redirects for discussion
An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect Easily confused words and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 February 1 until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. Thryduulf (talk) 14:09, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for February 24
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GOCE April 2022 newsletter
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Disambiguation link notification for June 10
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June GOCE newsletter
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:38, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

See also section
Hi Espoo, I removed a link in the See also section that had already been linked above in the body of the article. If you think it should be include against MOS, could you make a case for that on the talk page? Thank you, Malerooster (talk) 22:15, 29 August 2022 (UTC)

Guild of Copy Editors' October 2022 newsletter
 Baffle☿gab  03:07, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

Disambiguated link
Just to let you know, editor Espoo, trema is now a disambiguation page. So when you link to the diacritic mark, the way you did at Umlaut (diacritic), please use:
 * trema

Thank you for your edits and for your support in this!  P.I. Ellsworth &thinsp;, ed.  put'r there 09:12, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

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Guild of Copy Editors December 2022 Newsletter
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Guild of Copy Editors December 2022 Newsletter error
The GOCE December 2022 newsletter, as sent on 9 December, contains an erroneous start date for our December Blitz. The Blitz will start on 11 December rather than on 17 December, as stated in the newsletter. I'm sorry for the mistake and for disrupting your talk page; thanks for your understanding. Sent by Baffle gab1978 via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:30, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

Happy New Year, Espoo!


Happy New Year! Espoo, Have a prosperous, productive and enjoyable New Year, and thanks for your contributions to Wikipedia.

Abishe (talk) 12:27, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

Send New Year cheer by adding {{subst:Happy New Year fireworks}} to user talk pages.

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Guild of Copy Editors 2022 Annual Report
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Nomination of Splaining for deletion
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Guild of Copy Editors June 2023 Newsletter
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Septermber GOCE newsletter
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:55, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

Party caucuses and conferences in the United States Congress moved to draftspace
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Guild of Copy Editors December 2023 Newsletter
Message sent by Baffle gab1978 using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:53, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

Userspace template
Please never, ever use a template in the User namespace in an article, as you did at Bialy (bread). Nardog (talk) 01:18, 15 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry. I had no idea that a template could be anything except an official template despite the unconventional form. Is there an official template for this same purpose? --Espoo (talk) 17:33, 17 December 2023 (UTC)
 * No, I don't think the Google dictionary should ever be cited. The ODE, which the Google dictionary is based on, can be. Nardog (talk) 23:46, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

Schrödinger's cat
Hi. I don't doubt your translation is an improvement, but it is not what the source says. So the article presenting what you have adapted as a direct quote is incorrect. Your original German text is also unsourced, so even German readers had no source to verify what the article said. Do you know of a better translation? I'm sure it must be difficult to translate what is both a specialised subject, but also what is a essentially a metaphor. Losing the intended meaning must be very easy. Escape Orbit (Talk) 14:52, 22 March 2024 (UTC)


 * The original German text is a direct quote from our reference #1, Schrödinger, Erwin (November 1935). "Die gegenwärtige Situation in der Quantenmechanik (The present situation in quantum mechanics)". Naturwissenschaften. 23 (48): 807–812.
 * And that English title translation is sloppily written without capitalization.
 * We do not need a citation for an improved translation. There are very many Wikipedia articles with citations of only the original that the WP editors themselves translate. The currently sourced bad translation with bad English is enough to show that the content of my improved translation is not saying anything different and just saying it much better. We simply have to change the current comment "Reproduced with some inaccuracies here" to, for example, "The English translation here is based on the German original, not on the inaccurate version in this source's translation of the article." Espoo (talk) 16:48, 22 March 2024 (UTC)
 * If it does go back in the article, there is one rather important change of meaning I was going to bring to your attention. Schrödinger's wording has 'one' versus 'none' of the atoms decaying (eines/keines), rather than an atom which either decays or doesn't. These are very different scenarios: if a single atom has a 50% probability of decaying within an hour, then half the atoms in the sample will decay in that time—that is, many millions per second, triggering the mechanism essentially instantaneously. The translation needs to preserve the literal an atom–no atom meaning, even if it results in an awkward sentence. Otherwise there's no thought experiment, just an instantly killed cat. Musiconeologist (talk) 18:50, 22 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I was so distracted by the bad translation's illogical and unnecessary "perhaps" next to "with equal probability", which is in the original, that I used the weak opposition "one of the atoms will" vs. "one of them will not" instead of clearly saying "one" vs. "none".
 * So now i changed this:
 * there is a tiny amount of radioactive substance, so tiny that in the course of an hour one of the atoms will perhaps decay, but also, with equal probability, will not
 * to:
 * so tiny that in the course of an hour one of the atoms will perhaps decay, but also, with equal probability, that none of them will
 * Original:
 * in einem Geigerschen Zählrohr befindet sich eine winzige Menge radioaktiver Substanz, so wenig, daß im Laufe einer Stunde vielleicht eines von den Atomen zerfällt, ebenso wahrscheinlich aber auch keines; geschieht es, so spricht das Zählrohr an und betätigt über ein Relais ein Hämmerchen, das ein Kölbchen mit Blausäure zertrümmert. Espoo (talk) 20:50, 22 March 2024 (UTC)
 * I reckon that fixes it. The English sentence is a little awkward, but that's the price of staying close to the German, I think. I'm struggling to come up with anything better that doesn't start to seem like a paraphrase. "One of the atoms might decay, but it is equally probable that none of them will"? (Might to express the same uncertainty as will perhaps.)
 * By the way, thanks for adding the German original. It's really helpful having it there, even if my German is very rusty. Musiconeologist (talk) 21:32, 22 March 2024 (UTC)
 * I'll look at this tomorrow to see if it still sounds less awkward:
 * there is a tiny amount of a radioactive substance, so tiny that one of its atoms may perhaps decay in the course of an hour, but just as likely that none of them will. Espoo (talk) 00:51, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

Cannoli
Hi, how about clarifying the use of singular and plural forms on the cannoli page as well ? One day I would like to understand why the British (who I like for so many things) decided to complicate things so much... JacktheBrown (talk) 23:26, 15 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Hi, I'm confused by your comment because I'm sure you realize that the addition of -s to make plurals is in fact a clear simplification for most English speakers, for whom different plural endings for different words is extremely difficult, so this is usually abandoned as soon as foreign words become widely used in English. --Espoo (talk) 10:58, 16 April 2024 (UTC)