Wikipedia:Update/2/General style guidelines, July 2008 to December 2008


 * WP:Accessibility
 * Added link to MOS:SCROLL
 * Added link to Alternative text for images, and "Images should include alt text that acts as a substitute for the image for blind readers, search-spiders and other non-visual users." [Note that this contradicts WP:MOS, which only "encourages" alt text.]  "This guideline includes alt text for LaTeX-formatted equations in  mode."
 * Changed "The caption should concisely describe any information contained in the image." to "The caption should concisely describe the meaning of the image, the essential information it is trying to convey."


 * WP:Avoid peacock terms
 * Added "impactful", "renowned"


 * WP:Citing sources
 * In WP:CITE, changed "" to " ) characters between the quotation marks should not be used; Wikipedia presents quotations, character for character, exactly as in the original."
 * Added:
 * Allowable changes
 * Though the requirement for minimal change is strict, a few merely typographical elements of the quoted text should normally be altered without comment, to conform to English Wikipedia conventions. Such a practice is universal, in all publishing. Such alterations include these:
 * Styling of dashes (use the style chosen for the article: unspaced em dash or spaced en dash; see Dashes, below).
 * Styling of apostrophes and quotes (they should all be straight, not curly; see Quotation marks, below); such typographical elements as guillemets (« », in quoted French, Portuguese, and other foreign-language material) should be altered to their English-language equivalents (guillemets become standard straight quote marks, for example).
 * Spaces before periods, colons, semicolons, and the like should be removed, since they are merely typographical and are alien to the conventions in use throughout English Wikipedia, and English-language publishing in general.
 * Some text styling (of course the typeface will be automatically made the same as the article's default typeface; but preserve bold, underlining, and italics; see Italics, above).
 * Ellipses should be used whenever parts of a quotation are skipped. Legitimate reasons for omitting parts of quotation include removing extraneous, irrelevant, or parenthetical words or skipping over unintelligible or guttural speech (umm, ahhs, and hmms, for example). Care should be made to not use ellipses to remove context or to selectively quote so as to change the meaning of the quote (as is sometimes seen in advertisements for movies and plays that selectively quote critical reviews to make them appear more favorable).


 * Changed "The ellipsis is represented by ellipsis points, a series of three dots (or sometimes four at the end of a sentence)." to "The ellipsis is represented by ellipsis points: a set of three dots."
 * Changed "Ellipses" to "Ellipsis points (loosely called ellipses)"
 * Added "... no space between an ellipsis and: ...
 * a parenthesis or a bracket, where the ellipsis is on the inside
 * sentence-final punctuation, or a colon, semicolon, or comma (all rare), following the ellipsis"


 * Expanded the WP:MOS subsection
 * Examples added to the WP:MOS subsection
 * Added "A colon should normally have a complete grammatical sentence before it, except sometimes when it introduces items set off in new lines like the very next colon here. Examples:"
 * Added:
 * In very rare cases, a comma may be used where a semicolon would seem to be called for:
 * Accepted: "Life is short, art is long." (citing a brief aphorism; see Ars longa, vita brevis)
 * Accepted: "I have studied it, you have not." (reporting brisk conversation, like this reply of Newton's)


 * Added to WP:MOS: "Some words ending in -ly function as both adverbs and adjectives (a friendly-looking driver, the natives used us friendly and with kindness). Some such dual-purpose words (like early, only, northerly) are not standard -ly adverbs, since they are not formed by addition of -ly to an independent current-English adjective. These need careful treatment: Early flowering plants evolved along with sexual reproduction, but Early-flowering plants risk damage from winter frosts; northerly-situated islands."
 * Added: "Avoid two "sharp break" em dashes in a sentence, since they are readily mistaken for a parenthetic pair."
 * Added, after "A spaced slash may be used": "or rarely when quoting prose, where careful marking of a paragraph break is textually important"
 * Added to WP:MOS: "Within a sentence, other punctuation (such as comma of colon) is used after a formula just as it would be if the text were not a formula."
 * Added to WP:MOS: "or simply use at instead:The population was over 21,000,000 (at December 2008)"
 * Added to WP:MOS: "A hard space (see above) is advisable: ."
 * Added to WP:MOS: "Further, a space—preferably a non-breaking space —always separates the value and temperature symbol (e.g. 35 °C, 62 °F, and 5,000 K."
 * Expanded the WP:MOS subsection
 * Added to WP:MOS: recommendation and discussion of "alt text"
 * Added new section, WP:MOS
 * In WP:MOS, added The MLA Style Manual


 * WP:Manual of Style (capital letters)
 * WP:MOSCAPS changed similarly to WP:MOS
 * Various changes with punctuation and grammar problems (now reverted)


 * WP:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)
 * [No changes; the page has been protected since Nov 20.]


 * WP:Manual of Style (links)
 * Removed from WP:MOSLINK:
 * Links to a subheading on a page are denoted by a # symbol between the page title and the subheading . For example, to link to the "Culture" subsection of the Oman article, type . When naming a piped link, think about what the reader will believe the link is about; in this example, the piped section-link should not be named "Oman", because the reader will think that link goes to the general article on Oman.


 * Added to WP:MOSLINK:
 * Links to a subheading on a page are denoted by a # symbol between the page title and the subheading (see HTML anchor).
 * Section links can also be "piped", e.g.:
 *  Geography of Baden-Württemberg 
 * (Geography of Baden-Württemberg).
 * However this often becomes unwieldy in the main prose, so it may be preferable to create and link to a redirect, e.g.:
 *  Geography of Baden-Württemberg 
 * (Geography of Baden-Württemberg).
 * As of 2008 this points to a section within the main Baden-Württemberg article, but it is quite likely to become a separate article in the future (see also WP:REDIRECT). Also as of 2008 Special:Whatlinkshere provides no way to determine which pages link to which section(s) of a given article, so this also offers a better way to filter incoming links and identify related articles.


 * Many changes to WP:MOSLINK
 * Added to WP:MOSLINK: "(But capitalization does matter for all characters after the first.)"


 * WP:Manual of Style (spelling)
 * Added "routeing", "routing"


 * WP:Manual of Style (writing about fiction)
 * Examples added to WP:WAF; Lord of the Rings removed.


 * WP:Only make links that are relevant to the context
 * Added to WP:CONTEXT: "Similarly, articles generally should not link to disambiguation pages when a page describing the topic in context of the original article is available."
 * Reworded footnote: "It is not necessary to link to geographic features that are familiar worldwide, such as continents and prominent countries."
 * Added to WP:CONTEXT: "Use main and seealso immediately after the header instead [of certain bold links]"


 * WP:Self-references to avoid
 * Minor rewording and link fixes


 * WP:The perfect article
 * Added WP:PERFECT link: Wikipedia:Perfection is not required
 * Added:
 * is accessible (ideally following Web Content Accessibility Guidelines recommendations).
 * is technically sound (with lists marked up as such, foreign-language text labelled with lang or equivalent, etc.)


 * WP:Words to avoid
 * After "WP:AVOID redirects here", changed "You may also be looking for ... Avoid statements that will date quickly" to "You may also be looking for ... Manual of Style (dates and numbers)"
 * Changed several sentences to their own subsections; for instance, the sentence "In particular, words such as fundamentally, essentially, basically, simply, or at heart often imply a preferred viewpoint: the "fundamental nature" of a topic is inherently subjective." was changed to a subsection named: Fundamentally, essentially, basically, simply, at heart, inherently.
 * Added after "Dubious use": "The Huron-Manistee National Forests are actually two national forests combined in 1945 for administration purposes."
 * Previous discussion of naturally reworded as a new subsection, WP:WORDS: "The word "naturally" could be used in either of the above cases as well, and its use should be avoided. However, it is also used when referring to the natural world, and it has a precise technical and qualitative meaning in mathematics. Assertions of naturality in the latter sense may be uncontroversial statements of mathematical consensus, or they may promote a point of view; some judgment is needed to determine which."
 * Changed the name of the WP:WORDS section to WP:WORDS, and moved the "terrorist" subsection to WP:Controversial articles. [See discussion at WT:Controversial articles.]
 * Added to WP:WORDS: "Note however, that the verb to theorize may be appropriate for learned speculation."
 * Added to WP:WORDS: The word controversy is used "often by editors with a strong disposition against the article subject."
 * Fixed link to WP:MOSNUM (WP:Avoid statements that will date quickly is now a redirect.)


 * WP:Accessibility
 * Added example code for user's monobook.js page to show footnotes in full sized text.
 * Added advice on "colspan", "rowspan", and "non-text comment" in tables.


 * WP:Avoid neologisms
 * Added WP:NPOV to the list of policies in the sentence "Articles that use neologisms should be edited to ensure they conform with the core Wikipedia policies: no original research and verifiability"


 * WP:Avoid peacock terms
 * Added the words "long", "mediocre", "primary" and "short" to the list of words to watch out for
 * Added mention of adding Peacock term to a peacock term in a sentence.


 * External links
 * Remove the repeated "it" from list at the beginning of the "What to link" section.
 * Rewording of instruction not to link to advertisement pages, clarifying that it refers to the page (not the site)
 * Clarification in the instruction not to link to "search result" pages


 * How to copy-edit
 * In Spelling section, added list of talk page banners to indicate that an article uses American, Australian, British or Canadian spelling
 * Added a link to WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors


 * Lead section
 * Added "Lead sections that reflect or expand on sections in other articles are discussed at Summary style. Journalistic conventions for lead sections are discussed at News style."
 * Removed reference to the Wikipedia DVD.
 * Added See also link to Wikipedia's Good definition policy; removed a recent See also link.


 * Manual of Style
 * "Edits correcting deviations from written style guidelines should not be reverted" was softened a bit to "revert-warring over optional styles is unacceptable"; other points in this section were rephrased, but not significantly.
 * Added subsections: WP:MOS, WP:MOS, and WP:MOS
 * Expanded subsection: WP:MOS
 * Additional information on question marks, exclamation points, and hyphens
 * The discussion on linking dates continues.
 * Names of currencies are usually lowercased.
 * "address readers directly" is now linked to Imperative mood.
 * Added link to Image use policy
 * Many changes to WP:MOS
 * WP:MOS gives more advice on punctuation.


 * WP:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)
 * Page is protected pending resolution of date-linking issues.
 * Added regarding YYYY-MM-DD style dates: "(If the only purpose why they are used in a particular table is ease of comparison, consider using .)"


 * Manual of Style (links)
 * Added: "Keeping possessive apostrophes inside the link, where possible, makes for more readable text and source".
 * Added this sentence, along with supporting reference: "Because academic research conducted in 2008 has shown that red links are what drives Wikipedia growth, it is important not to deal with type #1 red links [for articles not yet created] by simply removing their brackets."
 * Changed a link to Category:Language icon templates
 * The discussion on linking dates continues.


 * Manual of Style (spelling)
 * Added details on -ize vs. -ise in the UK


 * Manual of Style (text formatting)
 * Added link to Template:Lang/doc


 * Manual of Style (titles)
 * Use italics for multi-episode television serials and musicals.


 * Only make links that are relevant to the context
 * The discussion on linking dates continues.


 * Self-references to avoid
 * Removed link to Template:Illustrated Wikipedia


 * Words to avoid
 * Added link to the NPOV Noticeboard: WP:NPOVN


 * Writing better articles
 * Added link to WP:Manual of Style


 * WP:Accessibility
 * Added "Images should be inside the section they belong to (after the header and after any links to other articles), and not just before the header."
 * WP:Avoid peacock terms
 * Added "Deciding whether a particular wording is suitable on any given occasion is a matter of common sense and good editorial judgment."
 * External links
 * Added that a "link to a social networking site may be included when it is the official website for a business, organization, or person."
 * Added as an example of what shouldn't be linked: "Links that are not reliably functional, or likely to continue being functional."
 * Lead section
 * Many changes; hard to summarize
 * Manual of Style
 * The First sentences section is now transcluded.
 * Added "Dashes should never be used in the filenames of images (use hyphens instead). If used in an article's title, there should be a redirect from the version with a hyphen."
 * Added at MOS:IMAGES: "The following general guidelines should be followed in the absence of a compelling reason to do otherwise."
 * Other resources renamed Further reading
 * WP:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)
 * Added a two-sentence summary of WP:As of (it was already linked).
 * the sixties is not recommended; use "the 1960s".
 * Strengthened: "YYYY-MM-DD style dates (1976-05-31) are uncommon in English prose, and should not be used within sentences."
 * Scientific notation should now use the e template.
 * "thin spaces" are now acceptable in place of commas for numbers greater than 10,000 in scientific contexts. See this guideline for details.
 * Added details on "geographical coordinates"
 * Manual of Style (links)
 * Many changes.
 * Manual of Style (text formatting)
 * Removed requirement to use &lt;var> formatting for variables in computer programs
 * Use italics for named locomotives
 * Only make links that are relevant to the context
 * Many changes.
 * Self-references to avoid
 * Added mention of the controversy over images of Mohammed in Wikipedia
 * Lists of Wikipedia articles should go in the portal namespace, "as discussing Wikipedia contents".
 * Technical terms and definitions
 * Added link to Federal Standard 1037C terms
 * Words to avoid
 * Removed "purportedly"
 * Added section: Only, just
 * "simply" added to words that "imply a preferred viewpoint"
 * some tweaks to the "terrorist" section
 * "-gate" added as a non-neutral suffix
 * Avoid parroting link added (but deleted in November)
 * Writing better articles
 * Deleted link and summary for proseline
 * Deleted link and summary for WP:Article series
 * First sentence section now transcluded
 * Deleted "Try to bridge each sentence with the sentence before it by using an idea or word that appears in both sentences."
 * added


 * Feel free to edit, but please keep discussions about changes to a page on that page's talk page. Use quotation marks to show which sentences and phrases people can search for to find the changes you list; quotation marks are also useful for giving verbatim changes whose consequences may not be clear, yet.  Notice of some changes may be deferred a month if there's evidence that the changes may not last.


 * WP:Explain jargon
 * The blanket prescription to explain all jargon was replaced with more nuanced advice: avoid jargon if other words are just as clear but will reach a wider audience, don't explain every term if that makes the text too cluttered, use wikilinks for jargon if there are relevant articles available, and consider linking to Wiktionary if not. Other sections deemed not relevant to the subject were deleted or moved.
 * WP:Lead section.
 * Removed "Footnotes, quote boxes, or separate sections can be used rather than parenthesis for long encyclopedic dictionary-like information. See the Ethics article for an example."
 * WP:Manual of Style
 * Removed the advice to use a non-linebreaking space (&amp;nbsp;) in front of spaced en dashes.
 * Now, "The use of diacritics (accent marks) on foreign words is neither encouraged nor discouraged", and "If the foreign phrase or word appears rarely in English, avoid using it", in place of the old advice to keep foreign words and their foreign diacritics.
 * Images typically needing more than the default size now include images with extreme aspect ratios, and images "in which a small region is relevant, but cropping to that region would reduce the coherence of the image".
 * WP:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)
 * Use figures rather than words for "Time of day".
 * No "leading zeros" in dates.
 * In "the night of 30/31 May 1942", the "30/31" format is now fine instead of appearing only "rarely".
 * The "YYYY-MM-DD" format looks like the ISO 8601 standard, which requires Gregorian dates; so when using this format, make sure the date is according to the modern, that is, the Gregorian calendar. (Some countries adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1583, some switched much later.)
 * "In certain subject areas the customary [date] format may differ from the usual national one: for example, articles on the modern U.S. military often use day before month".
 * Unicode symbols for fractions are no longer mentioned as an option.
 * Adopted stronger wording against using "IEC" byte prefixes.
 * There's a new section on the proper use of "geographical coordinates".
 * WP:Manual of Style (spelling)
 * Australian spellings added.
 * WP:Wikimedia sister projects
 * The entire "Guidelines" section is now disputed and under discussion.

See User talk:Tony1/Monthly updates of styleguide and policy changes/August 2008 for Dank55's rough draft, and User:Tony1/Monthly updates of styleguide and policy changes/August 2008 for Tony1's finished product.