Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 83

Curly quotation marks
Some quotation marks in the article were recently changed from straight (") to curly (“ and ”). The Manual of Style was given as justification for the change. However, I reviewed this page, Manual of Style (text formatting) and even the rejected Quotations, but was unable to find anything for or against the use of curly quotation marks. I suggest that the matter be cleared up. The only reasonable options that I can come up with are to favor the use of straight quotation marks, to favor the use of curly quotation marks or to let editors use whichever kind they wish and not have them changed by later editors.

I think that straight quotation marks should be used. They are easily made with the most popular browsers. I do not know if there is any way at all to make curly quotation marks with any of the major browsers or not. If there is a way, I think that most people will not know how. Straight quotation marks are also easily made in word processors, which some editors use for writing. Some word processors will not make curly quotes at all. I do not think that allowing editors to decide which type of quotation mark they want to use is a good solution because it does not look good to have quotes changing styles throughout an article, depending on who wrote what part. I suppose that the style to use could be set by the first editor to use quotation marks in the article, but that can make editing tedious because people will have to check what style is being used. This may not be easy in a long article with only one or two quotes. You can try searching, but if you do not know how to make curly quotes for the search, you cannot find them that way. Also, there are many articles with both types and it would be a pain to have to check the history to find out which kind was used first so that you can add new quotation marks or make the existing ones the same style. Finally, if people do not know how to make curly quotes, or if there is no way to make them in a browser, they will have to copy and paste them from other examples on Wikipedia or from a word processor that can make them. This seems like a waste of time. -- Kjkolb 00:19, 21 June 2007 (UTC)


 * The curly quotes are not standard ASCII characters, but are extended Unicode characters, correct? If that's the case, curly quotes should not be used, as Accessibility notes that "Unicode characters are very difficult to read." —C.Fred (talk) 00:46, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
 * {} are stamdard ASCII characters { is 0x7b (123) and { is 0x7d (125) --Philip Baird Shearer 11:32, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Just how up-to-date is that information? I find it hard to believe that this is a significant—or even a minor—problem. Can you provide specific information about which major browsers have problems with curly quotes (which are easy to enter with keystrokes on Mac and Windows)? Unless there's a significant problem, I think editors should have the choice, but of course, within the confines that usage is consistent within each article. Tony 01:12, 21 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm not that up on screen-reading software, though the article implies that even in the most up-to-date versions, it's an issue. —C.Fred (talk) 02:21, 21 June 2007 (UTC)


 * If they're not a recommended character, they ( ‘ ’ “ ” ) should be taken out of the MediaWiki:Edittools toolbox.


 * I've had problems with them in the past (usually associated with copy/pasting into another program from the browser, or trying to search for something that has quotes in the title) but I can't think of any repeatable instances offhand.


 * In the interests of simplicity and consistency, I'd personally prefer that they get removed, and cautioned against. --Quiddity 03:11, 21 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I’m strongly in favour of directed quotes. Most of the time I’m on a Linux box that has no keystrokes to generate them (the way Windows and Macintosh do) and I’m willing to copy and paste them from a text editor if I have to. (This is to comply with the requests of other editors to not use &#38;&#35;146; or &#38;rsquo; because they’re harder to read than ’.) Felicity4711 03:37, 21 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I don't see much good reason to use the curly quotes. The straight quotes serve the purpose quite well, they are what every article uses, and they are what every person uses and is going to continue to use because it is easier. Quotation marks are extremely common, and it does not make sense to have a constantly running bot convert to curly quotations when straight ones work just fine. —Centrx→talk &bull; 04:59, 21 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I prefer that straight quotes be used. Curly quotes are in the Windows code page so they can be detected by Windows screen readers. JAWS has an entry in its dictionary manager for curly quotes which has been there since at least 1999. However they are only pronounced as "quote" and by default cannot be distinguished from straight quotes. I therefore doubt that the average blind person would even be aware of their existence let alone know how to type them on their browser. The same concept is also true for (‘ and ’), which are pronounced as "apostrophe" by JAWS. Neither of those special characters could be distinguished by Linux or Mac screen readers without unicode support.


 * I wrote the section in accessibility about unicode characters being difficult to read. I am only familiar with JAWS but I know it only supports unicode in versions 6.1 and later (released in mid 2005) under Windows 2000/XP. In JAWS, if there is no entry for a particular unicode character in either the dictionary manager or the INI file for the currently running language *and* synthesizer, it will be spoken as a question mark (though it is possible to find the unicode value by pressing numpad 5 three times quickly). There is a dictionary manager entry for the curly quotes for their values in the Windows code page (\147 and \148) and their unicode values (\8220 and \8221). However as mentioned above they are only spoken as "quote". Graham 87 08:10, 21 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I favor strongly recomending the use of straight quotes only. Yes, curly quotes may look nice, but I don't see that their very minor decorative value outweighs the extra problems that can be caused by using these non-ascii characters. Yes, they can now be entered in most browsers, but the required keystroke combinations are neither consistant nor widely known, and if some editors use them the likely result is that there will be an inconsistant hodgepodge of quote styles. If we try to mandate or strongly favor their use in all cases, the result will be simply one more barrier to editing by thsoe with limited computer experence, and that is IMO undesireable. The issues for users and editors who use screen-readera are another reason to avoid curly (or angled) quotes, as discussed above, but I think that there are enough reasons even if we had no such users. DES (talk) 19:02, 23 June 2007 (UTC)


 * That’s it, I’ve had it; I’m taking an extended break from (English) Wikipedia. There are just too many authors who only think about authors, lay and lazy. Most also overestimate their knowledge and wisdom. We don’t write for the writers! Christoph Päper 20:02, 23 June 2007 (UTC)


 * The article is misleading at the moment, and potentially grants a license to ride roughshod over consensus. It currently suggests (by example) that only curly quotes are acceptable. This is manifestly incorrect. There's certainly no policy outlawing straight quotes, which are clearly the de facto Wikipedia standard. On the contrary, curly quotes are deprecated for reasons outlined above. The article should reflect this rather than censoring the fact that straight quotes are both acceptable and, indeed, the norm.


 * Also, as far as I can tell, the curlification of the article was performed by a single editor despite the article's explicit injunction (citing the Arbitration Committee) against making such changes.


 * chocolateboy 12:42, 24 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I did notice the curliness, with some surprise, when we started the current copy-editing binge. Didn't change it because we were unaware of the issues. Tony 13:16, 24 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I've requested that they be taken out of the MediaWiki:Edittools toolbox. I'll leave editing this MoS page to someone else ;) --Quiddity 19:28, 24 June 2007 (UTC)


 * So, the arguments against curly quotes seem to be that it is hard to type them (so don't, a copyeditor will, they are in the edit box), screen readers can't handle them (which is apparently not true), and nearly every article doesn't use them (perhaps because whenever someone tries to use them, someone else changes them saying nearly every article doesn't use them). Obviously I don't find these reasons compelling.


 * There is something I wonder: why don't we use the HTML standard Q element? If the problem is that it is unsupported by older browsers, the MediaWiki software could be altered to convert it to text-based quotation marks.  And if we did that, we could set a user preference on how these marks appear.  — The Storm Surfer 20:12, 24 June 2007 (UTC)


 * This is like the arguments for retaining the pre-existing ban on dashes in article titles. I'm not yet convinced by the arguments for banning/changing curly quotes. Tony 23:39, 24 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Whether either one of you is "convinced" is irrelevant. The unilateral change from the original, "stable" style (straight quotes) of this article is in flagrant violation of this article and the accompanying ArbCom ruling.


 * chocolateboy 00:04, 25 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I believe the use of curly quotes distracts from the appearance of articles and, more importantly, lends undue importance to quotations that should not treated as, or seem to be treated as, more important than the non-quoted text of the article. Hmains 00:13, 25 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Personally I hate curly quote marks - or directed or slanted (whatever the hell they're called) - and prefer the default straight quotes typed by my browser which if Firefox. For some reason the other quotes look retarded on my PC screen and I've tried everything short of reinstalling Windows to fix the problem. I heard I'm part of a rare group who cannot see them properly, but all I know is that you have to take the time to go to the toolbox and select them specifically and that takes too much time if you have a lot of quotes to work with. Call me lazy, but whatever - I refuse the extra step involved because I think it's unnecessary as straight quotes do the job perfectly fine in my opinion. I'm on the opposite crusade here and change curlies back to straights when I find them - unless I run into the few die hard curly quote users who foam at the mouth and flames shoot from their eyes and cry to admins because they want me banned for "vandalizing" their pages. When that happens I'll revert myself and let the babies have their way and move onto something else until I meet another whiner and hand them their rattle back. Cyberia23 22:12, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

We should be using the correct "curly" quotes everywhere. This should be an automatic feature of the Mediawiki software's rendering, though, not something added in by hand. — Omegatron 00:24, 3 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Cyberia, I'll pursue you with a water-pistol if you change curlies to straights. Leave them as they are. Tony 07:53, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Requesting some advice...
I've been working on the List of popes article and I have been adding images of all of the popes to their respective spots on the list. Doing this makes the page much more interesting and enjoyable to look at, however I am confronted with the problem of the size of the article itself. With all of the images that I plan to add to the article, It will surely be a burden for those with 56k processors to read. I wanted to ask if anyone had any advice on splitting the article up into smaller segments so that it could be easily loaded and read by everyone. Thanks.  Wikidudeman  (talk) 04:08, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

How about something like this?
Is something like this against the manual of style for wikipedia?

Discussion
Certainly one thing to consider is the printable version of the page, or the page when printed without using the special printable version. If it is not going to be shown when the page is printed, it should not be included in articles.

Also, this will not affect download times. The dial-up user's browser will still download the entire contents of the collapsible box when the page is loaded, without clicking on the Show link. —Centrx→talk &bull; 01:59, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Proposed revision of "Which style to use"
At the top, it's currently:

If this page does not specify which usage is preferred:
 * use other reliable resources, such as the style guides listed below;
 * discuss your problems or propose style guidance on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style;
 * simply look around—research the edit-history pages of worthy articles to see how editors have put them together.

Examples of authoritative style guides are: The Chicago Manual of Style and Fowler’s Modern English Usage. Chicago provides an online guide, the Chicago Manual of Style Online. Style guides available at no cost are the Mayfield Electronic Handbook of Technical & Scientific Writing and the CMS Crib Sheet.

The third bullet sticks out, to my mind, and could be removed to improve the section (the links are bold because here they refer to this very page):

If this page does not specify which usage is preferred, use other reliable guides, such as those listed below, or discuss your issues or propose style guidance on the talk page of this manual.

The Chicago Manual of Style and Fowler’s Modern English Usage are examples of well-known style guides. Chicago provides an online guide, The Chicago Manual of Style Online. The Mayfield Electronic Handbook of Technical & Scientific Writing and the CMS Crib Sheet are among online style guides that are accessible gratis.

Tony 10:44, 22 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I've always assumed Chicago is the best manual of style out there. Then again, I've only been a wordnerd for a year or two. I like it. &mdash; Deckiller 19:43, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Unicode
The unicode in the section "Avoid second-person pronouns" does not work in my browser (IE). I can't be the only one (or am I?). Any chance of changing it to something we can all see? -Joelmills 02:18, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I've replaced these (but there are others). For full editing pleasure, you're going to the editor will need to install a unicode font.  Please see Help:Multilingual support. -- Rick Block (talk) 03:29, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Second-person perspective
Quick question: Are there any specific tags to mark an article that is in second-person, as opposed to just using the standard tone? --Dreaded Walrus t c 19:33, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Never mind, I found one. inappropriate person --Dreaded Walrus t c 00:54, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Transliteration of Greek characters
Is there any section of this style guide concerning the proper transliteration of the Greek alphabet? BassoProfundo 21:21, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

This seems context-dependent
The manual says:


 * Generic words for institutions (university, college, hospital, high school) require no capitalization:
 * Incorrect: (generic): The University offers programs in arts and sciences.
 * Correct: (generic): The university offers …
 * Correct: (title): The University of Ottawa offers …

When the word university is used as a common noun, it should not be capitalized. E.g. "Another university is also located in that city." But sometimes it's used as an abbreviation of the name of a particular university. Michael Hardy 21:59, 26 June 2007 (UTC)


 * In every grammar and style guide I've seen, when a generic term is used, it's lowercased, even when its used in reference to something specific, i.e., "the university". The rule of thumb is whether or not the term can be used to describe other institutions, etc., like it.  In the case of "university," it can be used to describe any university out there, so it gets lowercased even when it refers to "the" university and not just "a" university.  On the contrary, however, there's only one, for example, Stanford University, and thus "Stanford" is always capitalized whether the word "university" appears with it or not.  The same logic applies to any noun used in a generic fashion - "the airport" (in place of "Los Angeles International Airport"), "the park" (instead of "Yosemite National Park"), etc. Nolefan32 00:36, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
 * You're right; why don't you substitute your "Another university" example? Tony 02:40, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry, I'm not sure I understand your query, or even who it's directed to. Nolefan32 03:26, 27 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Another reason that just dawned on me as to why the rule is as it is, is for consistency. Many universities don't have "university" as part of their name, but they can be just as readily described as "the university".  Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for example.  We wouldn't use "university" lowercased for MIT just because it's not part of the name, but then "University" uppercased for Harvard, just down the street.  For the sake of consistency, we lowercase both. Nolefan32 03:32, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
 * But the first example appears to be not generic (i.e., refers to a particular university in the context); isn't it confusing? Tony 05:23, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm still not understanding your query. "University" is a generic term anytime it appears by itself.  Doesn't matter the context; unless it's part of the formal name of a specific university (i.e., Harvard University), it's lowercased.  Just as you would lowercase "airport" or "park" or "building" except when they appear as part of the name of a specific airport, park or building. Like I said, you wouldn't uppercase "university" if you were talking about MIT; it's not part of the school's name.  Harvard doesn't rate different treatment than MIT, do they? Nolefan32 05:51, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Not sure about MIT, but at Caltech we called it "the Institute". I'm sure that would be capitalized. I imagine MIT does the same. (Of course, whether there's really any good reason to use this construction in an article is a separate question, and if such a reason did come up, I'd be inclined to treat it as an exceptional case and IAR.) --Trovatore 09:03, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

The definite article
Please can someone explain why I cannot write a subheading such as The Prayer Books of Edward VI. There were two of them; they were not any old prayer books. I can understand why articles do not need to be cluttered up with definite or indefinite articles, to the confusion of indexers, and I realise that that correction of this breach of the style code can give endless amusement to some editors, but it seems to have no rationale. The book of 1662 is known as 'The 1662 Prayer Book', why call it '1662 Prayer Book'. In English English it sounds very strange, even bad grammar. Roger Arguile 13:46, 27 June 2007 (UTC)


 * No one says you can't, and the examples you give are instances where, at least in my opinion, you should. The guideline was meant to avoid flabby headings like The history, An example, or A critical analysis. The related guideline to avoid pronouns has the same purpose: In a biography, the headings Her early life and Her family each have one pronoun too many. On the other hand, it would be incorrect to drop the pronoun from the heading Her Majesty's Secret Service. Finell (Talk) 05:21, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Question
Is there any guideline on forcing a font display in the article namespace? I found an article where they are trying to describe an illustration with a serif I, but it is being done with a ponderous footnote stating that the letter may appear in an ambigious font like Arial and thus be incorrect. Is there any MOS prohibition against using in the article to force a sarif enabled font?--Isotope23 18:29, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Specific manuals of style
Separate style guidelines have been developed for particular topics, and some are listed in the "Special Article Style" box in this article. I wondered whether this article could clarify how these relate to this main manual and to Wikipedia principles.

For example, while they seem very useful, it seems that they could potentially go against WP:NPOV. I'm not thinking so much of the country/language ones (don't know about them) but of when a style manual outlines the approach and terminology of a particular scientific/professional field. It might then be applied to any articles related to it, shaping their headings and terminology (and coverage) in accordance with that manual of style. In some areas this might be fine but of course for many topics there are differing scientific/professional fields and views. Normally each article would develop on its own merits, balancing different points of view and terminologies - but specific style guidelines potentially distort this, especially if some fields have them but others don't. I can be more specific if necessary.

In other words, while this main manual is about encyclopedic style, other manuals might be about the style of a particular point of view. Can potential issues with this be addressed here? EverSince 11:58, 30 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I wonder whether you can provide two or three examples of how things can go wrong—even hypothetical examples if actual ones are not at hand. Tony 13:06, 30 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Well the example that prompted me (I'm wary of getting caught up in it too much here) is the medical Manual of Style for articles related to medicine, because such articles may also be related to other fields - for example in the area I'm most familiar with of mental disorder. Similar issues could hypothetically occur, I guess, whenever natural sciences, social sciences and humanities (and their applied/clinical offshoots) overlap. I don't think this needs to be a problem as long as it's clear that the existence of a specific MOS doesn't mean an article must be formatted only in its terms, or that it should be formatted like a textbook (Wikipedia is clear it's more than just a textbook, of course, let alone one from a particular field). Could this main MOS say something about how specific manuals should and shouldn't be used? EverSince 11:00, 1 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I think that it is already self-evident that specific manuals should consulted for the topics that they cover. All of them are bound by the foundational policy of WP:NPOV, and any violations of that policy should be edited out. Finell (Talk) 05:30, 4 July 2007 (UTC)


 * People tend to just shape articles in line with the specific manual that exists, though, especially if they share its assumptions. Yes things could be re-edited for neutrality but other approaches may not have a similar style manual supporting them, so people might not be confident enough - unless something explicitly clarifies the context in the way you mention. I agree that this should be self-evident but I don't feel it always is for everyone - would it hurt for it to be clarified? I'd like to unless anyone feels strongly against. EverSince 14:43, 5 July 2007 (UTC)