Wikipedia:Update/1/General style changes during August 2009


 * Accessibility
 * Added to WP:ACCESS: [Create good link descriptions, especially for external links (avoid "click here!", "this"] "or (more...) as in "today's featured article" section of the home page)." Added footnotes: "G91: Providing link text that describes the purpose of a link, techniques for WCAG 2.0", "F84: Failure of Success Criterion 2.4.9 due to using a non-specific link such as "click here" or "more" without a mechanism to change the link text to specific text., Techniques for WCAG 2.0"  Added: "Do not use Unicode characters as icons, use an icon with alt text instead. For example, a character like "→" can not be reproduced into useful text by a screen reader, and will usually be read as a question mark."


 * Avoid peacock terms
 * Added to WP:PEACOCK: [ Show, don't tell ] "by asserting facts, not opinions and substantiating facts about opinions." Added example: "picturesque".


 * Avoid weasel words
 * In the introduction, changed "Weasel words are words or statements that ..." to "Weasel words are statements that are intentionally evasive, ambiguous or misleading. On Wikipedia, the term specifically refers to words or phrases that ..."
 * In WP:WEASEL, added example: "Alleged(ly)..."
 * In WP:WEASEL, changed "Weasel words are neither accurate nor informative." to "Weasel words are imprecise, often inaccurate, and usually uninformative."
 * In WP:WEASEL, added "In extreme cases," [the weasel tag can be added to the top of an article or section.] Added: "The weasel word tag  can also be used, although it may be less informative than Who?, Which?, and by whom? for readers and editors seeking to improve the text."


 * Citing sources, selected version
 * In WP:CITE, removed "All citation techniques require detailed full citations to be provided for each source used. Full citations must contain enough information for other editors to identify the specific published work you used." "in italics" and "within quotation marks" were added in several places.  For book citations, changed "The name of the publisher [... is] optional, although publisher is generally required for featured articles." to "name of the publisher".  For newspaper articles, changed "a comment with the date you retrieved it if it is online (invisible to the reader)." to "date you retrieved it if you read it on the Web, unless it is on a stable website that maintains its archive over the long term", and changed "page number(s)" to "page number(s) are optional".  For web articles, removed [the date you retrieved it] "(invisible to the reader if the article has a date of publication)", and removed "an optional short quote (used rarely, if the source is likely to be challenged)"
 * Moved WP:CITE down, with minor tweaks
 * Renamed WP:CITE to WP:CITE
 * Added to WP:CITE: "Short citations can be written manually, or by using the harv template."
 * Removed subsection: WP:CITE (July 31 version)
 * Added to WP:CITE: [If a dead link cannot be repaired or replaced,] "one option to" [consider] "is" reworking the article section so that it no longer relies on the dead link,] "though this is not required."


 * How to copy-edit
 * In WP:COPYEDIT, removed: [Words and phrases such as] "whereas" [... are unnecessary in an encyclopedia; instead, use] "while ..." Removed: "Example: In American English, "whilst" is considered archaic or formal, while, in the United Kingdom, "whilst" is used nearly as often, in written and spoken form, as "while"."


 * Layout
 * In WP:LAYOUT, removed "Still, if the subject fits to be integrated into somewhere in the article rather than into a list at the end of it, it is preferred." Added "Portal links are usually placed in this section."


 * Linking
 * Made substantial changes throughout from the July 31 version


 * Manual of Style (capital letters)
 * Renamed WP:MOSCAP to WP:MOSCAP and made substantial changes from the July 31 version
 * In WP:MOSCAP, changed "Names of religions, whether as a noun or an adjective, and their followers start with a capital letter." to "Names of organized religions (as well as officially recognized sects), whether as a noun or an adjective, and their adherents start with a capital letter. Unofficial movements and ideologies within religions are generally not capitalized unless derived from a proper name. For example, Islam, Pentecostalism, and Catholic are capitalized, while evangelicalism and fundamentalist are not."
 * Renamed WP:MOSCAP to WP:MOSCAP, and changed one example to "Asimov is widely considered a master of the science-fiction genre."
 * Renamed WP:MOSCAP to WP:MOSCAP, and added:
 * Capitalize the first letter in the first and last words in the titles of English compositions (books and other print works, songs and other audio works, films and other visual media works, paintings and other artworks, etc.). The first letter in the other words is also capitalized, except for coordinating conjunctions, prepositions, and articles that are less than five letters long, as well as the word to in infinitives. More specifically:
 * Capitalize the first and last word.
 * Capitalize every noun, verb and adverb. This includes all forms of the verb to be (e.g., be, been, am, is, was, were).
 * Capitalize only those prepositions that are the first or last word of the title, are part of a phrasal verb (e.g., "Walk On" or "Give Up the Ghost"), or are the first word in a compound preposition (e.g., "Time Out of Mind", "Get Off of My Cloud").
 * With compound hyphenated terms, capitalize each word-part separately, according to the applicable rule.
 * Titles that include parentheses should be capitalized as though both the part inside and outside the parentheses are separate titles (e.g., "(Don't Fear) The Reaper")


 * Manual of Style (dates and numbers)
 * In WP:MOSNUM, changed "Wikipedia recommends the use of a non-breaking space ... when necessary ..." to "Use a non-breaking space ..." Added: [In some older browsers, quotation marks separated by a hard space are broken at the end of a line: ...] "Use   ("She said 'Yes!) instead."
 * In WP:MOSNUM, removed [19th-century painting ...] "when the adjective is hyphenated, consider nineteenth-century painting, but not when contrasted with painting in the 20th century"
 * New section: WP:MOSNUM
 * Made substantial changes to WP:MOSNUM from the July 31 version
 * Made substantial changes to WP:MOSNUM from the July 31 version


 * Self-references to avoid
 * In WP:SELF, changed "Articles in the main namespace may discuss topics passing Wikipedia's notability guidelines, exclusively. Lists of Wikipedia articles belong in the Portal namespace, as discussing Wikipedia contents." to "(even if an article itself becomes famous, it should not report this about itself)."


 * Technical terms and definitions
 * Added: [technical] "(scientific, medical, legal, etc.)"
 * Added: [Italic ... is used for: ...]
 * [Words as words:], "or  , whichever will be clearer in context (consider an article with many quotations, or an article full of italicized foreign terms).
 * Legal case names are always italicized: Plessy v Ferguson.


 * Changed "list" to "glossary"
 * Removed: "Some other markups are available but risky. Examples are teletype (edited as &lt;tt&gt;teletype&lt;/tt&gt;), underline (edited as &lt;u&gt;underline&lt;/u&gt;), and italic (edited as &lt;i&gt;italic&lt;/i&gt; or &lt;cite&gt;italic&lt;/cite&gt;). But the teletype (monospace) tag does not usually produce text sufficiently different from the standard Wikipedia font to be useful; the underline tag can create confusion with links; and the HTML tags &lt;i&gt; and &lt;cite&gt; are not differentiated by most common browsers. The Wikipedia italic, described above and edited as   italic  , is preferable to the HTML tags &lt;i&gt; and &lt;cite&gt;."
 * Changed "The markup "double-quoted" (edited as "double-quoted") is not risky ..." to "Wikipedia uses "double quotation marks" (and for quotations within quotations, 'single quotation marks'), regardless of English-language variant. “Curly quotes” are not used in articles."


 * When to use tables
 * In WP:WTUT, removed "Some articles include very long lists which might be difficult to edit if they were in table form."
 * Renamed WP:WTUT to WP:WTUT, and renamed several subsections
 * In WP:WTUT, removed [If a list is] "quite long". Removed "Long lists can be hard to maintain if they are inside a table".
 * In WP:WTUT, added: [Where a table is genuinely necessary and desired, use the preformatted  class="wikitable"  format,] "or one of the related formats, ..."


 * Words to avoid
 * In WP:AVOID, added "... happy, sad, ..." Added: "Human-interest writing often uses adverbs such as happily and sadly when the reader is expected to empathize with the subject's successes or failures. These are better avoided in encyclopedic writing, where the purpose is to neutrally describe events rather than to entertain the reader's sympathies."