Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2016 January 10

= January 10 =

Chicago Manual of Style
I know the citation is like this (Contributors’ Surnames year of publication, page or section number when available). However, my question is what if it has no author. What would the citation look like? Does title of the article take place of the author's surname? Or it would be just year of publication, page? Thank you! 97.127.127.45 (talk) 06:19, 10 January 2016 (UTC)
 * I don't have access to my copy at the moment, so I'll just remind you that you don't have to supply everything if you're giving part of the reference in the text. For example, In the first quarto edition of Edward III, such-and-such happens (14).  Since you already said what work you're talking about, you don't need to specify the author or title; just give the page number, although as a footnote instead of the inline citation that I used.  Things are different, of course, if you don't specify what you're talking about.  Nyttend (talk) 07:38, 10 January 2016 (UTC)
 * If there is no author, there would still be someone responsible for the text, an editor or translator, and their name would be used instead.--Shantavira|feed me 10:08, 10 January 2016 (UTC)
 * A simple search gives us an answer: "The Chicago style guide does not offer examples for creating parenthetical references when there is no given author. Standard practice has been to include the title of the work in place of the author. The title should be formatted in the same manner as the formatting in the References list entry.". These recommendations are quite reasonable. The proper formatting of the in-text citations is needed not for petty rules' sake but just for convenience of the reader, so s/he could quickly find the cited reference in the reference list by its short label. So when you write, the reader goes to the reference list and finds the work by its title, since, as no author is known, you just leave the author field empty and list your reference from the title and you place it by the alphabetical order according to the first letter of the title (note, there is a practice to ignore the articles a and the while sorting). If the title is very long, it is obviously acceptable to shorten it in the in-text citation, of course, bearing in mind that the shortened title must be such that the reader then could be able to find it in the reference list.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 14:07, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

Asking for IPA pronounciation of French biography article
Greetings, I'm a complete newbie for how to add the pronounciation to any article. For example Ode de Pougy a newer biography article that I found today. Only recently found a couple of articles with this added and am completely lost & confused. It would be great if an expert contributor could add this to the article. Seriously doubt I would ever be able to do this myself. Searched & was unable to find any kind of a conversion tool to type in the text & have it provide the correct characters. Thanks. Regards, JoeHebda   talk  16:20, 10 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Done. If you like, you may follow my example, read Help:IPA for French, Help:IPA for detailed instructions. At the bottom of the former page there is a link to an online converter, though it may make some minute mistakes, as many proper names do not follow the general rules, so some insight into French is required.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 16:52, 10 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks! more to learn. Cheers!  JoeHebda   talk  17:37, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

Title of Kipling story
In the title of Kipling's short story "The Phantom 'Rickshaw" and in the text, why does rickshaw have an apostrophe? 212.105.160.248 (talk) 20:21, 10 January 2016 (UTC)
 * According to etymonline, rickshaw was introduced into English as a "shortened form of jinrikisha, popularized by Kipling, from Japanese jin 'a man' + riki 'power' + sha 'carriage'". Fut.Perf. ☼ 20:29, 10 January 2016 (UTC)


 * This bloggist says:
 * Following on from the six Deodars stories, we have four stories from The Phantom ‘Rickshaw (yes, Kipling is that guy, the guy who both knows that "’rickshaw" should always begin with apostrophe (because the Japanese was originally jinrikisha) and is pedantic enough to insist upon it; it’s not even as though anybody might have complained, since it was Kipling himself who popularised the word in English – yes, Kipling uses proper apostrophes even with words that only he knew).  --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  20:35, 10 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Kipling would have written ‘Blog then. Contact Basemetal   here  20:47, 10 January 2016 (UTC)
 * I heard some celebrity tonight referring to a "selfie" as a "fie", pronounced "fee". I don't know if its written form is prefixed with an apostrophe, though. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 06:03, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Some online users can't be bothered to spell "ok" in full, but shorten it by a full 50% to just "k". I've never seen anyone do the right thing and spell it 'k.  I suppose that they've thought about it but come to the view that it would defeat the purpose of the reduction.  Well, they should have a chat to users who spell "till" as 'til.  --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  16:34, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Those guys think it's "until" they spell "'til". Contact Basemetal   here  16:54, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Texting has developed its own shorthand, to keep from wearing out their thumb tendons so soon. The "till" vs. "until" thing is funny. As EO points out, the "un" and the "til" parts are synonyms. The "til" part comes from "till", which predates "until". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 18:04, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
 * In my young day it was "okies", a full 150% increase on the original, but things may be different now. "K" meaning "end of message" goes back over 150 years - see Prosigns for Morse code. Tevildo (talk) 22:06, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
 * We do have an article The Phantom 'Rickshaw and Other Tales (with apostrophe), incidentally. See also Rickshaw.  Apparently, the vehicle had only been around for 20 years when Kipling took the word up in English.   Tevildo (talk) 21:17, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for your answers. Does any other author spell "rickshaw" with an apostrophe? 212.105.160.248 (talk) 19:46, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
 * My search of OED cites and Google Books suggests that the answer is no, but it's possible that someone somewhere and sometime imitated Kipling.   D b f i r s   21:30, 11 January 2016 (UTC)