Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 67

Accents
As the use of accent marks is an issue that has taken up many hours of editors time on talk pages, I would be interested to read what people think of the suggestions in the Economist Style Guide: Accents:
 * On words now accepted as English, use accents only when they make a crucial difference to pronunciation: cliché, soupçon, façade, café, communiqué, exposé (but chateau, decor, elite, feted, naive).


 * If you use one accent (except the tilde—strictly, a diacritical sign), use all: émigré, mêlée, protégé, résumé.


 * Put the accents and cedillas on French names and words, umlauts on German ones, accents and tildes on Spanish ones, and accents, cedillas and tildes on Portuguese ones: Françoise de Panafieu, Wolfgang Schäuble, Federico Peña. Leave the accents off other foreign names.


 * Any foreign word in italics should, however, be given its proper accents.

--Philip Baird Shearer 15:53, 18 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I don't think we should exclude "other foreign names". It seems a bit selective to only include French, German, Spanish and Portuguese and ignore all other alphabets derived from the Latin.  Andrwsc 20:49, 18 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Since Wikipedia is all about learning and has a global aspect, I think it's a good idea to include accents on all foreign names and words deriving from the Roman alphabet. As for commonly used anglicizations of foreign words (chateau, decor, elite, naive, etc.), I think the American/British spelling rule should be adopted — either is fine as long as the usage is consistent throughout a given article. The main reason these markings were dropped in English usage has more to do with ignorance of the proper punctuation and the absence of appropriate typewriter keys, matters which are not so much of an issue here. An open issue, though, is the use of the German esset (ß) vs. 'ss'; the consensus is still evolving here, but appears to be moving toward deprecating use of the former in favor of the latter. Askari Mark (Talk) 20:24, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't get Philip Baird Shearer's categorisation of accents as either making or not making a difference to pronunciation. "Decor" (without accent) would be "duh-cor". "Naive" would rhyme with "knave". I'd accept "elite" (because few English speakers pronounce it "ay-leet" these days) - and many wouldn't even know it's French. However, château is such a clearly French word that it strikes me as bizarre to remove the accent, despite the fact it makes no difference to pronunciation. Stevage 01:11, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
 * It is not my categorisation, the sentences are taken from the Economist Style Guide. Presumably the Economist editors think that an educated English speaker is expected to recognise German, French and Spanish ascents, but that they should not be expected to recognise other less familiar accents in less familiar -- to the average English reader -- languages. This is of course a POV but I expect one which many English speakers would agree with. --Philip Baird Shearer 18:48, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Most educated English speakers speak English as a second language. These people require the accents on names. Native English speakers like me are in the minority of educated English speakers. Of the native English speakers like me, most (like me) were forced to study other languages at school. And most (like me) have friends or know people with accents in their name.
 * I disagree with the Economist on this, because most accents (with the exception of ^ in French) are vital in determining how to pronounce a word. This is not a problem for words that have become so well known that they have become part of the English language, or for some very famous people like Ho Chi Minh, but most of the people or places referred to on Wikipedia will be ones you haven't heard of before. So people need to know how to pronounce them. Also some names can be offensive without accents. Dũng is a common Vietnamese boy's name (pronounced yoong) that should not be written as Dung. Bích is a common Vietnamese girl's name (pronounced bic) that should not be written as Bich. Also sometimes the accent is required to determine who someone is. Thúy, Thùy, Thủy and Thụy are different people. Another important point that people overlook is that not only do the accents mean something, but also the lack of accents means something. The "D" in Dũng is only pronounced like a "y" because it doesn't have a dash through it. If it did have a dash through it it would be a regular english "d" sound. Writing words without the accents gives people not a lack of pronounciation information but rather a false pronounciation.
 * I recommend diacritics on all names, places, and things of non-English language origin. Only the most commonly used names like Ho Chi Minh, and places like Hanoi and Saigon can get away without accents.
 * On the other hand, words like naive are now English words. You could find the word "naive" in both sides of an English-French dictionary. If you say these words to an English person, they won't say "sorry, I don't speak French". The diacritic does change the pronounciation, but as it is an English word that English speakers know, and English already has irregular pronounciation, there is no need for it. Carl Kenner 10:38, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Is there ever a reason to enlarge an image beyond its actual size?
See. --NE2 16:09, 20 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Not through web browsers, imo. That one wasn't even enlarged a great deal, nor does it have captions to warrant the need. Personally, I would either leave it as it is, or if it has to be done, enlarge it in an image editing program and run filters through it to clean it up. The best option is to find the same picture with a better resolution. --Wirbelwind ヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 19:12, 20 January 2007 (UTC)


 * No, it looks bad and unprofessional to have pixelated images. Strad 22:56, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

One exception is things like screenshots of old, low-res video games and the like, that would only be a few hundred pixels if left at their native size. — Omegatron 02:01, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Definite article in geographical names
Pgan002 06:25, 22 January 2007 (UTC) wrote: When should one use the definite article "the" before a geographical name? For example, river names often have "the" prepended, such as "the Nile" and "the Mississippi", but can also be used without, such as "Mississippi River". Is there a rule or guideline about rivers? That are "He saw Nile" or "He saw the Nile River" acceptable and preferable? Are there other geographical names that may require a definite article, such as "the Sun" vs. "Sun"?


 * “He saw Nile” is not idiomatic English. Neither is “Our planet revolves around Sun.” Both sentences require a definite article. I can’t think of any rivers that don’t take a definite article. Even when “River” comes before the name, we say, for example, “the Rio Grande” and “the River Thames.” We say “Lake Victoria” and “Lake Michigan,” but “the Great Salt Lake.” All the oceans take the definite article. So do all the mountain ranges I can think of, such as “the Alps” and “the Sierra Madre.” Individual mountains tend not to: “Mount Everest” and “Mount Hood,” but “the Matterhorn.” I don’t know of any rule to help you. Use what sounds right. If you can’t decide what sounds right, then ask for help, or look at what others have chosen. --Rob Kennedy 21:35, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Don't always boldface the title
It says Use boldface for the first (and only the first) appearance of the article title and any synonyms of the article title (including acronyms), but I thought we had agreed elsewhere that it should only be bolded if the title is an actual term.

For example:
 * The article Colors of noise is just about the various color names given to noise. The term "colors of noise" doesn't have any special value by itself; it's just a descriptive title for a nameless topic.  So it shouldn't be bolded anywhere in the article, and the wording shouldn't be twisted around to try to make the term appear in the intro if it wouldn't appear there naturally.
 * "Brown noise", on the other hand, is a defined term and should be bolded and included in the intro.

Article titles that are unique names for the topic, or terminology that is defined by the article, should be bolded and appear in the first section. Article titles that merely describe what the article is about, though, don't have to appear verbatim anywhere else in the article, and if they do, they should not be bolded. Other examples:

People have this silly notion that it's mandatory to fit a bolded verbatim copy of the article title in the first sentence of the article, which often results in awkward wording and a misleading implication that the title of the article is somehow the topic's official name.

I'm not sure how to word this in the MoS, though, since "proper noun" isn't really the correct terminology. — Omegatron 22:54, 22 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Distinguish between title and name. If the title is the name of something (concept, person, event, object), then bold it up front. If the title is describing the content of the article, eg. 'List of...' or 'Colors of noise', and is not a name per se, then don't bold it. Trouble is, the 'bolding' is ingrained into the psyche of many Wikipedia editors. You'll have a difficult job retraining them. Carcharoth 23:00, 22 January 2007 (UTC)


 * WP:USSH is a case where the actual title should never be bolded in some states (see Virginia State Route 16 for example). --NE2 02:21, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
 * My preference is to include a bolded term that matches the article title where possible. The "colors of noise" may not work well as an actual phrase to use - in that case leave it out. But "Electrical characteristics of a dynamic loudspeaker" would seem to me to be workable into a sentence. When 95% of articles have a bolded term, those that don't start to look a bit weird. Stevage 02:32, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
 * My preference is to include a bolded term that matches the article title where possible.
 * For what reason? — Omegatron 02:43, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Aesthetics. Consistency. If it's good for some articles to have bolded key terms, it's good for as many articles as possible to have them, within reason. I think you and I just define "within reason" differently - you prefer to avoid stretching a key term at all if it's not natural, I set the bar a bit higher. Stevage 14:23, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm saying that we shouldn't bold things unless they actually are "key terms". — Omegatron 14:35, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Just realised something else. The desciptive sort of titles are the ones where I've longed to link to stuff from the 'bold' bits, but been restrained by the dictum that linking from the bold bit is not our style. This is silly when you realise that a link is automatically bolded only if it is the same as the title. Compare this (unbolded descriptive title with links) with this (bolded descriptive title without links) and this (name title bolded) with this (name bit in text is linked, but appears bolded as it is the title). Does that make any sense? If this change goes through, the "no linking from bold bits" actually begins to make sense again. Carcharoth 02:35, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

I would even hazard a guess that the "bold bit" at the start historically happened when people used to over-link, and they would link the article itself, and it automatically appeared bold, as it should, and people thought "ooh, that looks nice". And so the "use bold to highlight the subject of the article in the first sentence" 'rule' was born... Carcharoth 02:38, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

The bolding of self-links was a feature that was added long after article titles were bolded in intro paragraphs. Prior to that, self-links appeared as ordinary links. Nohat 08:56, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Related terms
Should topics closely related to the article's subject be bolded as well? Take selection for example. Many words are bolded like selective pressure etc. I see this done a bit and I assume it's frowned upon, but the policy doesn't explicitly say anything about it. Richard001 08:43, 20 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Alternative terms for the title should definitely be bolded. — Omegatron 16:26, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Quotation mark caveat added
Fairly recently the quotation mark section gained the caveat "However, insisting on changing to this usage, especially in articles written in American English, is deprecated; there are better and less divisive uses of time." The rationale for this is (apparently) to avoid revert wars, but it basically reads like an "opt out" of have clear style guidance on this matter at all. And since it's fairly common to see people "correcting" 'logical' to 'aesthetic' quotations -- whether on U.S. topics, UK ones, or anything else -- I doubt it'll work as claimed, anyway. Surely having a clear style preference is in the long run the better recipe for avoiding unnecessary to-and-fro: otherwise we end up with people doing so anyway, with whatever rationale they happen to find handy. (National 'ownership' of topic; style of original author;  various other flavours of "I've changed this, no-one else dare change it back!")  "Don't revert war" is good advice in general, but I question the wisdom of the particularisation of the principle to this instance over all others. Alai 09:27, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I've removed the language. I can't find any indication that this was ever discussed, and it sounds, just as you suggest, like an "opt out" clause. Bad idea, in my opinion. — Brian ( talk ) 03:43, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Hear! Hear! Jimp 01:10, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

List of works
Right now there is an edit war going on at Manual of Style (lists of works). Which format (viewable from the edit history) should be used? Pugno di dollari 21:33, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

To clarify: Please give feedback at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (lists of works).

We're trying to decide on a recommended style for listing created works (bibliographies, filmographies, discographies); whether to order year first or title first, and whether years/ISBNs/notes etc should be separated with brackets or dashes. Thanks. --Quiddity 21:38, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Italicizing words-as-words
"Use italics when writing about words as words or letters as letters (to indicate the use-mention distinction). For example: Deuce means two."

In the above line, should two really be italicized? It is quite clear that deuce is being used as a word here, but it seems to me that two is not&mdash;rather, it is being used as a meaning. It seems to me that the sentence should be "Deuce means "two".", in order to distinguish this "two" from cases where it actually refers to a word, as in "The word deuce is synonymous with the word two.". Compare, for example, the following:


 * The word sad refers to the emotion of unhappiness.
 * The word sad means "unhappy".
 * The word sad means the same thing as the word unhappy.

"Unhappy" in the second line seems dramatically different from unhappy in the third to me; the former is not a word referring to itself, but a word referring to a meaning or concept. And the first line illustrates that it's not always correct to italicize definitions&mdash;only words-as-words, right? So, is this an error in the text, or am I missing something? -Silence 23:00, 26 January 2007 (UTC)


 * That's a fair point. I agree with you.
 * It's probably neither an error nor your missing something, just that when it was written, everyone here decided (correctly or incorrectly) that that was the way then. Neonumbers 00:54, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Left-aligned images
This page says that when images are aligned left and would normally be placed directly under a section heading, they should instead be placed above the section heading. Accessibility says that images should not be placed above the section heading. I'd tend to take the accessibility argument over the prettiness argument, but they both have merit. Which ought to be followed? --Sopoforic 00:16, 28 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I recently got bit by this disagreement between the guidelines myself. I reworded the guideline here so that it doesn't conflict with the accessibility guideline, since accessibility trumps beauty. However, the rewording also suggests the older, prettier placement when the image relates to both sections (e.g., it acts as a bridge). Eubulides 21:29, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Punctuation of abbreviations and initialisms
Should there be full-stops (periods) after abbreviated words, other than the list of Manual of Style (abbreviations)? In particular, for proper names, when the first and middle name are abbreviated to a first and middle initial, should there be periods, and should they be separated by spaces? -Pgan002 01:46, 29 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Abbreviations (with some exceptions) generally don't have dots between letters, so e.g. GCSE not G.C.S.E.. For people's names... good question... I would think that there would be a dot/period/full-stop and separated by spaces (George W. Bush not George W Bush), or at least it seems to be what's generally happening, but couldn't really give a definite answer.  Neonumbers 09:38, 29 January 2007 (UTC)


 * One common style is to use periods in initialisms that are the same as another word English word to improve readability, e.g. U.S., not US; I.T., not IT;, and M.A.N., not MAN. All other initialisms do not take periods, e.g. LAN, not L.A.N., CD-ROM, not C.D.-R.O.M. For proper names, U.S. style is to generally use a period after a middle initial, George W. Bush. Rillian 14:14, 29 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Wasn’t there a US president – or a writer – whose registered middle name was but a letter? This case alone is reason enough to put the period in there if it’s an abbreviation, simple disambiguation.
 * In general, abbreviations should be identifiable as such, therefore they need to be in a marked case. The general case in the contemporary English usage of the roman alphabet is lowercase without punctuation.
 * The marked case for names (and the first word of a sentence) is an uppercase initial letter . (Sometimes they are also written in italics or with small caps, but those are extended text or rather font capabilities.) This convention is also commonly used for headlines and titles, where there are varying rules for certain words (e.g. articles) to remain lowercase.
 * The marked case for abbreviations traditionally is a period after each particle (“abbr.”) which is often just one letter (“i.e.”). This is collapsed sometimes into a period after the last letter only (“btw.” = “by the way”). The marked case for acronyms and initialisms, which are special kinds of abbreviations that are not expanded upon reading in general, is all-caps (“SCSI”) until they turn into real words, i.e. they are no longer recognised as being abbreviations in usual contexts (“laser”). There are also examples for acronyms with lowercase letters inside, e.g. when more than the first letter a source word is used (“HiFi” = “high fidelity”) or if the word is lowercase in title-case (“MoS” = “Manual of Style”), but such words are often left out of the abbreviation (“MP” = “Member of Parliament”). Sometimes the rule for abbreviations was also applied to acronyms (“F.B.I.”), but then they are unnecessarily marked twice; this convention (noted by User:Rillian) is only ever useful where only uppercase or only lowercase letters are available for some reason (teletypes or some news crawls for instance), because some acronyms would look like other words then (“US”), sometimes even on purpose (“PATRIOT Act”). On the other hand sometimes abbreviations are written like acronyms (“BTW”).
 * Then there is a (British) trend to avoid even more periods where this can’t create confusion (“Mr”, “Dr”). (Actually it is uncommon today to invent an abbreviation consisting of the initial and final letters of the abbreviated word. There is a new variant, though, as in “i18n” = “interantionalisation”.) I think this is too much, because the marked case here is just “unusual sequence of letters”. Christoph Päper 11:39, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

&lt;noinclude&gt; (is WP:MOS transcluded anywhere?)
Hello, I am enclosing the policy page in &lt;noinclude&gt; tags due to recent server-thrashing vandalism, and I need to know if the page is transcluded anywhere. The vandalism is done by appending either or  thirty or so times to the same page, resulting in something that takes forever to load. Regards, Tuxide 03:44, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Wouldn't the vandal just choose another long page to transclude? Jimp 01:16, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes. Since I've made my post, he's chosen to transclude pages like Village pump (all), which is a discussion page.  &lt;noinclude&gt; tags do not work well on those types of pages.  Tuxide 01:24, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Foreign terms
I've added the following text, which one would have thought was unnecessary (but see a current conflict at Louis XIV of France, which illustrates how guidelines are often interpreted at Wikipedia):


 * "Foreign-language inscriptions or legends on coins, etc. are not normally italicized, except in order to reproduce the style of the inscription more accurately."

I can't imagin there'd be objections to this, but you never know: read any well-published article or book that discusses inscriptions. (Wetman 21:32, 30 January 2007 (UTC))


 * Actually, there is an objection. The project page states, "The consensus of many editors formed the conventions described here, and Wikipedia articles should heed these guidelines. Before making any major changes to these guidelines, please use the discussion page to ensure that your changes reflect consensus."  Certainly we should all keep an open mind, but I am not aware of "any well-published article or book that discusses inscriptions" which also states that "Foreign-language inscriptions or legends on coins, etc. are not normally italicized."  In fact, The project page also states, "If this page does not specify which usage is preferred: Use other reliable resources, such as ... The Chicago Manual of Style and Fowler's Modern English Usage [and] Mayfield Electronic Handbook of Technical & Scientific Writing and the CMS Crib Sheet by Dr. Abel Scribe."  I have discussed this issue with some other WP editors, and the consensus seems to be quite the reverse -- there is no exception for foreign language inscriptions or legends on coins.  Can you provide an authoritative citation for your position? (I'll retract this if you will do that.) None of the three resources cited support your position.  [], [], []
 * Typesetter 19:58, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
 * FWIW, I agree with these three references. If the word has been incorporated into the English language, then no italics. If the word hasn't, and then there should be italics. Thus, foreign words on coins would be italicized. Akradecki 20:06, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Anybody else want to weigh in on this discussion? Are foreign words and phrases not italicized if they appear as inscriptions on coins?  If so, what resources support this position? Typesetter 14:51, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Beginning a sentence with a numeral or symbol?
I don't see anything in the Wikipedia manual of style about this, but it seems to me that it is common practice in RL that if a sentence begins with a number, then the number is written out in letters. A sentence might look like this: "Twenty-four percent of the people agreed completely, while only 21% strongly disagreed." This makes it easier to read by allowing a capital letter to appear at the beginning of the sentence, so the eye can more easily find the beginning of the sentence. An alternative is to reword the sentence so a numeral doesn't come at the beginning: "Complete agreement was indicated by 24% of the people, while only 21% strongly disagreed."

See for example section 9. "Number Beginning a Sentence, Title, or Heading" at. I particularly like this approach: While we would generally rather avoid beginning a sentence with a mathematical expression, we would tolerate it if avoiding it created awkwardness or ambiguity. at. A Google search for "beginning sentence numeral" brings up many pages with instructions to spell out numerals at the beginnings of sentences.

I'm wondering whether it's good practice to try to have Wikipedia conform to this style, whether this is already addressed in a Wikipedia style manual, if not whether it should be added, and whether it should apply to symbols such as "ω-3" in the second paragraph of Eicosanoid. --Coppertwig 12:54, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
 * This is already mentioned in the fifth item of Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) in the section " Numbers in words". It says "It is considered awkward for a numeral to be the first word of a sentence: recast the sentence or spell the number out." Graham 87 03:52, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

In American legal practice, it is considered bad form to start a sentence with a symbol or a number, unless the number is too large that it would be clumsy to write it out (a judgment call, but usually fairly obvious.) For example: "Section 24 of the Code...", while the section symbol is used within the sentence; "Twenty-three people have joined the suit..."; but "6,002,540 people live in Chicago...". To give my two bits, I do think that this is the more attractive use. Cain47 06:10, 13 February 2007 (UTC)Cain47