Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 65

Dashes used as quotes
I've recently come accross dashes being used as a kind of quotation marks: And even tildes: I think dashes were not meant for this, and I would like to change them: Or something similar, but first I thought I'd see if people here agreed. What to do with the tildes? Shinobu 22:17, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
 * -MTV Asia Awards- Best Female Artist Award
 * A Best 2 -Black-
 * Love ~Destiny~
 * MTV Asia Awards: Best Female Artist Award


 * I think I agree with you, but would you be able to provide which pages those are on? Just make sure that the dashes aren't there for a reason.  Neonumbers 23:38, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree with you too. I think what is going on is ASCII artists getting carried away with creative writing.  Either that or some kids have been reading too many mid-20th century authors who preferred to use a leading dash instead of quotation marks.  That's very cool in a novel but inappropriate for an encyclopedia.  --Coolcaesar 05:25, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Wording
Why does Wikipedia use sentence-style? PatPeter 01:20, 29 December 2006 (UTC)


 * What is sentence-style wording? Are you actually talking about sentence case versus title case (see Capitalization). For further discussion, please see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (headings). --Rob Kennedy 03:16, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Screen area?
Are there any recommendations as to which screen area we should lay things out for? I tend to arrange diagrams etc with my screen set at 1024 by 768 pixels, but is this the "Standard" we should try to optimise things for? TimVickers 02:45, 29 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I don't think so, but generally:
 * never assume any user has a certain screen area
 * try to arrange pages so that they're accessible regardless of the width of the screen (within reason). This includes resized windows.
 * generally, don't float two (or more) things next to each other.
 * That's how I see it &mdash; I'm not aware of a formal guideline (and judging by the response, no-one else is either). Neonumbers 10:36, 7 January 2007 (UTC)


 * We definitely need to particularly avoid putting left-aligned images alongside right-aligned ones, squeezing the text. Also, a particular annoyance for me is when people force thumbnails to be huge. Both these mistakes mess things up for people with small screens. I think if we stick to letting the user's preferences decide thumbnail size, then the style sheet associated with the default skin does a pretty decent job on the whole.
 * If we do ever start looking into screen sizes though, we'll need to remember that whilst many of us now have lovely big screens, there are plenty of schools, people on low incomes, people in developing countries, and increasingly, people on mobile devices, whose screens are much smaller.
 * Another reason to be careful is that conversely some pages look terrible if the screen is too big! My laptop is very wide-screen, and I often take my browser out of "maximised" mode to see how a page will look at other sizes, including Wikipedia pages. Firefox users can benefit from various downloadable extensions which resize the window to common desktop sizes for you. – Kieran T  (' talk ') 13:37, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

So does anyone think that this is a matter that merits a guideline in the manual? Neonumbers 00:57, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Information that's only in the Infobox?
I asked this question a while back, perhaps in the wrong place, and didn't get any responses. I still need MoS guidance on a basic question regarding infoboxes. Is the infobox supposed to be a redundant summary of the information already present in the main article, or is it ok to have information that is only available in the infobox? My original example was an airplane crash article. I wanted to remove the airplane's registration number from the intro paragraph since it is a detail that is presented more clearly in the infobox. Thanks in advance. --GregU 02:32, 3 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I'd say that infoboxes are allowed to display information that is not present in the remainder of the article. For example, geographical infoboxes display information such as area and other statistics that would look disjointed if placed within the body text. - 52 Pickup 13:34, 3 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I haven't checked whether the MoS says anything about this, but, please believe me, duplication of information is evil. Note: not "harmless" but "dangerous", as copies are practically guaranteed to get out of sync some day (and even if they were always kept in sync the work would just be a waste of energies on the maintainers part). &mdash; Gennaro Prota &#8226;Talk 00:34, 4 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Duplication of information is perfectly normal; that's the whole point of a summary, both within an article (WP:LEAD) and between articles (WP:SUMMARY). Kirill Lokshin 01:25, 4 January 2007 (UTC)


 * The infobox is intended to be a summary of the article (or the topic of the article), similarly to the lead section; but I don't think there's any problem with having some (reasonable amount of) information that appears only in the infobox, particularly when dealing with numerical statistics that don't really fit well in an article otherwise. Just keep in mind that said information will therefore need associated citations, etc., in its own right. Kirill Lokshin 01:25, 4 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Thank you! --GregU 08:29, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Formatting for currency
Amounts of money in various currencies are written very inconsistently. For example, some articles would use something like "US$150 million," some "USD $150,000,000" and others just "$150 mil." Is there any sort of a consensus on how should monetary amounts be formatted? Matveims 08:59, 3 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Yes. The correct format is US$150 million (or US$150,000,000), or if the context deems it appropriate, USD 150,000,000.
 * You can find the guideline for currency at Manual of Style (dates and numbers). Hope that helps.  Neonumbers 10:31, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Pronunciation style guidelines
Many readers/editors have expressed that the use of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) to indicate pronunciations is undesirable. I have proposed an alternate pronunciation scheme based on symbols commonly used in American dictionaries that could be used in addition to the IPA. Currently, the Manual of Style allows for alternate pronunciation guides, but has no standardized alternative scheme in place. Go to Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (pronunciation) to comment. – ishwar  (speak)  21:55, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Third person singular usage and gender-neutrality
The Extraversion and Introversion article was just edited with a construction along the lines of "An extravert can recognize their introverted partner's need..." (emphasis added). Previously there were two examples, one using his and the other using her; the anonymous editor changed both to the nonstandard singular-use their to avoid pronouns with a gender. What's preferred style for a generic third-person singular situation? Personally, I dislike #4 severely, and if the context will allow it, use #5 to avoid the issue altogether. When the context requires a singular, though, is when it gets ugly. —C.Fred (talk) 14:23, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
 * 1) Use either his or her consistently throughout a single article, consensus choice;
 * 2) Use his and her alternately throughout the article;
 * 3) Use one to maintain true singular nouns but avoid the gender issue ("one's partner");
 * 4) Use their in the singular number, as above; or
 * 5) Recast into plural when possible ("Extraverts can recognize their introverted partners' needs...")?

his is both the male, and the neutral gender in the English language, her is feminine. Correct usage for someone of unknown gender would be his as it is neutral. "Their" would be correct for plural. To try and not be sexist, some people have taken to alternating his and her, or defaulting to using her in the unknown(neutral) case. Also, a trend towards using hir for the neutral gender has been seen, but I think should be discouraged in Wikipedia. Atomaton 14:45, 6 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I don't think there is one. At least, there's not one that I'm aware of.  Unless I've missed something (correct me if I'm wrong), previous attempts to write a guideline on this have failed, due largely to a general lack of agreement.
 * If you asked me, I would say use "his" throughout, or otherwise "his" and "her" alternately, but of course don't take this sentence to mean anything. Neonumbers 10:28, 7 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I find the use of her as a neutral gender pronoun to be very distracting. I would thus oppose both #1 (using either his or her) & #2 (alternating between his and her).  Rather than (ever) using her I would prefer to stick with tradition and use his.  However, we might want to avoid seeming sexist.  #5 (recasting into plural where possible) seems to be the best approach.  #3 (using one) is all right but runs the risk of seeming pretentious.  #4 (using their) is okay by me but may seem too informal & many dissapprove.  Of course, we should avoid using neologisms like hir until they become standard English words if the day ever comes. Jimp 01:05, 9 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Perhaps we should all read the rather interesting article on "singular they". I had formed the impression that the use of "they" as a singular pronoun was a novelty brought on by the drive to non-gender specific language, but it turns out to be a much older thing indeed. Sam Blacketer 23:42, 10 January 2007 (UTC)


 * There is a precedent set for singular they by some of the most well known English-language writers including Shakespeare, Milton, Austen, and Wilde. It's really the only natural gender-neutral pronoun or pronoun construction that's used in spoken English (though I heard Alex Trebek say "his or her" once). In written English "his or her" might have a sizable minority, but it's mildly annoying. The others are just confusing or infelicitous. Strad 03:09, 11 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I prefer #5 when it's possible and unambiguous, but sometimes sentences become confusing when cast in the plural, especially sentences with genitives (contrast "their lives", where each has one life, "their hands", where each has more than one hand, and "their homes", where there might well be more than one of them per home). When plurals are awkward for whatever reason, I prefer singular they where it makes sense (a non-specific person of unknown gender), but prefer "he or she" when we have a specific person of unknown gender and "he" or "she" (as appropriate) when we have a person of known gender: "A mother's love for her child cannot be overstated." —RuakhTALK 22:57, 11 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm up for recognizable speech, so I'm leaning heavily toward #4 with #3 and #5 trailing. All of these are commonly used, and all are acceptable in both formal and informal speech; I find that #4 is the most common. I'm strongly opposed to #2, as recurring alternation is very distracting; however, it is common enough to switch once, halfway through a text, so #2 amended as such would be okay. &mdash; coe l acan t a lk  &mdash; 23:01, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Dead headers
Whats the rule on adding headers with no information under them, just a stub marker. A stub would be a few sentences. I see a proliferation of dead headers. It reminds me of the "under construction" signs on web pages. Should headers be added when there is info to add? I don't see dead headers at other authoritative reference websites --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) 10:50, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I would recommended commenting them out, but not deleting them. Not sure who would agree.  Neonumbers 00:55, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I would agree. In fact this is exactly what I have done (& will continue to do unless there appears good reason to do otherwise) to the dead headers I have come across.  Jimp 01:11, 9 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Yes, excellent idea, that way they are still there for the editor, but don't show up in the presentation form of the article. I think people add them thinking they will get back to it later in the day and then never do. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) 01:14, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Just as a warning, commented out headers break the section edit links (try it). Nohat 21:57, 16 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Okay, I'm trying it ... what I expect to find is that the headers will be subsumed into the above section. Jimp 03:20, 14 February 2007 (UTC) ... and sure enough that is what I found. There is no section edit link because it's not treated as a section.  Perhaps I'm missing something but this doesn't seem like much of a problem to me. Jimp 03:24, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Dates followed by commas
According to the guide, dates normally should be followed by commas: “In 2001, Bob got married”, “On April 10, I will be having a party.” What's the reason for this? Would you write "On Saturday, I will be having a party."? Would you write "Tomorrow, I'll be having a party."? So why the comma after a specific date? Scaramouche 09:03, 10 January 2007 (UTC)


 * For the purposes of this encyclopedia, phrases like "On Saturday" and "Tomorrow" should be avoided, and the actual specific date used in their place; for that reason, such phrases are irrelevant. The comma is there for stylistic and readability reasons.  "In 2001, Bob got married" is easier to read than "In 2001 Bob got married".
 * The exception is direct quotations, in which the convention is to copy the quote word for word, character for character, except for the insertion of "[sic]" or a phrase in square brackets where appropriate. Neonumbers 10:12, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
 * To make clearer what Neonumbers is getting at, it is clearer (and therefore the preferred usage in formal written English) because the comma indicates the termination of the clause "in 2001." So the reader then immediately knows that whatever follows in the subsequent clause is in the year 2001. In the latter example, a reader (especially one scanning or skimming individual sentences here and there, like most speed readers, rather than reading an entire article word by word from start to finish) would have to parse the entire clause to determine that 2001 is a date that specifies the precise time in the past for the past tense verb (marriage) and is not a mailing address or other physical location or descriptor.  Contrast "In 2001 Bob Road is a chapel where I got married."  --Coolcaesar 20:34, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
 * lol, well said :-) thanks, Coolcaesar. Neonumbers 23:06, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm happy with Neonumbers's explanation that it's just house style, though I don't buy Coolcaesar's clarification. In English (even formal written English) one doesn't automatically put a comma to end an adverbial clause. I suspect this is a transatlantic thing; here in the UK we're a lot more sparing of commas than Americans, even though (amusingly?) most English people would put a comma after the number in an address: "In 2001, Bob Road, is a chapel...".Scaramouche 09:07, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Maybe this is a trans-Atlantic thing (I'm American), but I actually make a point to use commas sparingly, leaving them out wherever you wouldn't pause in speech. I agree they're overused, although I never noticed a difference between American and British writing. (And even some of the most erudite British writers I've read overuse commas.) Point is that despite this, yes I would naturally put a comma in "In 2001, Bob got married"; "Tomorrow, I'll be having a party"; etc. I wouldn't even consider leaving the comma out. Is this just a trans-Atlantic thing, like how I would never write "transAtlantic"? Cain47 05:50, 13 February 2007 (UTC)Cain47

Serial comma
Okay, I have always preferred the serial comma before knowing it as the obnoxiously named "Harvard comma." And I might be missing something--I'm saying this honestly, not rhetorically--but I don't understand the style guide's example that "I would like to thank my parents, Sinead O'Connor, and George Bush." can "refer to either two or three people." I have racked my brain but can't think of a single example of where the use of the serial comma actually can lead to more ambiguity than leaving it out. Please advise. Cain47 06:10, 13 February 2007 (UTC)Cain47

ellipsis
The manual says:


 * "it looks a bit different in some fonts, so it may be better just to type the dots."

This doesn't make sense to me. We shouldn't define our style around broken fonts. If some fonts don't render ellipses correctly, they will later be dropped or fixed. An ellipsis character is specified in Unicode for a reason: It is not a run of three periods, it is an indication that something is left out. It should not look like three periods in a row.

This being said, I haven't changed the manual, as I don't normally work on this project, so I'm not going to "be bold" to that extent. --Slashme 09:15, 10 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Hmm - does that not beg the question of whether we should assume people reading Wikipedia are using a font that is compatible with Unicode? In my experience, not everyone does. Of course it would be a lot easier if they did. Sam Blacketer 23:39, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I've argued in the context of the mathematics project that we should avoid mathematical symbols that are not rendered by IE6. Is it IE's fault, and they should fix it? Maybe, but that doesn't help the large proportion of readers using it. One reason to use three dots is that it's easier to edit for people who don't get HTML entities and Unicode. I think a better solution would be for the software to automatically encode three successive periods as an ellipsis, where supported by the browser. But that's a software change. Deco 23:11, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Italics and long articles
When a long article is on a foreign topic which should be italicized, should/can the italics on the name of the subject be dropped at some point? For example, it's been brought up on the talk page for Tengu that that article should do this, according to the precedent set by Kitsune. Kotengu 小天狗 10:47, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
 * No, it should not, unless the word has been adopted into English, and the first italic merely discuss it as a word rather than a thing. Switching from tengu to tengu will provoke edits to correct this "obvious flaw", and will leave the mere reader wondering whether he has missed some distinction. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:08, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

CMS quote
This paragraph was removed on the grounds that it is ugly, and because it is American:

"Rules and regulations such as these, in the nature of the case, cannot be endowed with the fixity of rock-ribbed law. They are meant for the average case, and must be applied with a certain degree of elasticity."


 * I disagree with the first; it ssems to have inspired guideline.
 * The second seems oddly defensive: we accept the Chicago Manual of Style as an authority; why not quote it here? If political correctness requires the Commonwealth have equal time, Fowler makes the same point in many places; feel free to add one of them. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:08, 11 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I agree that the quote should remain there.
 * For the record, I'm not American, and I don't care what country published that quote, where it came from, who wrote it, or how it was written.
 * The quote is very necessary. It sums up very clearly the character of the manual of style &mdash; most importantly, how to apply it.  Without it, it seems as if we should always apply these rules, when really the manual is a guide to good writing and sometimes in rare cases, for the sake of good writing, it should be broken.  That quote states that very well.  I would not even re-write it any other way.  Neonumbers 03:59, 12 January 2007 (UTC)


 * In fact, I actually prefer the lead section before it was changed in early August 2006:

This Manual of Style has the simple purpose of making the encyclopedia easy to read by following a consistent format &mdash; it is a style guide. The following rules do not claim to be the last word on Wikipedia style. One way is often as good as any other, but if everyone does it the same way, Wikipedia will be easier to read and use, not to mention easier to write and edit. In this regard, the following quotation from The Chicago Manual of Style deserves notice:
 * "Rules and regulations such as these, in the nature of the case, cannot be endowed with the fixity of rock-ribbed law. They are meant for the average case, and must be applied with a certain degree of elasticity."

In this vein, editors of new and existing articles should strive to have their articles follow these guidelines. Clear, informative, and unbiased writing is always more important than presentation and formatting. Wikipedia does not require writers to follow all or any of these rules, but their efforts will be more appreciated when they do so: the joy of wiki editing is that Wikipedia does not require perfection.
 * which I thought summarised the nature and intent of this manual very well. Neonumbers 04:08, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
 * That is very nice, and in the spirit of WP:PRO. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 05:31, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I agree. I would add that the italics and quotation marks make it clear that it is a quotation. This is not true of the current formatting. Walter Siegmund (talk) 17:42, 28 January 2007 (UTC)