Manual of Style

This page falls within the scope of the Wikipedia:Manual of Style, a collaborative effort focused on enhancing clarity, consistency, and cohesiveness across the Manual of Style (MoS) guidelines by addressing inconsistencies, refining language, and integrating guidance effectively.Manual of StyleWikipedia:WikiProject Manual of StyleTemplate:WikiProject Manual of StyleManual of Style articles This page falls under the contentious topics procedure and is given additional attention, as it closely associated to the English Wikipedia Manual of Style, and the article titles policy. Both areas are subjects of debate. Contributors are urged to review the awareness criteria carefully and exercise caution when editing. For information on Wikipedia's approach to the establishment of new policies and guidelines, refer to WP:PROPOSAL. Additionally, guidance on how to contribute to the development and revision of Wikipedia policies of Wikipedia's policy and guideline documents is available, offering valuable insights and recommendations.

Template:MOS/R

From the discussion at Talk:Epstein–Barr virus#Requested move, it came to my attention that, as currently written, the line "A hyphen is used by default in compounded proper names of single entities." (line A) contradicts the line just before it, "An en dash is used for the names of two or more people in an attributive compound." (line B). Line A is easily read to imply that entities such as Comet Hale–Bopp (one of our examples here) should be hyphenated, not dashed, contrary to what line B says. They are properly dashed, though. In a few cases, such as the examples accompanying line A (McGraw-Hill, Guinea-Bissau, etc.), there is properly a hyphen, not an endash. What seems to distinguish line A's category is that these are no longer simply seen as named after two entities, but as entities with a single name. --JorisvS (talk) 10:23, 19 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I can attest to the confusion caused by line A in the Talk:Epstein–Barr virus#Requested move. Lines A and B, to me, seemed to suggest contradictory ways of writing "Epstein Barr virus": hyphenated as a single entity, or en dashed as an attributive compound named after Epstein and Barr. Walternmoss (talk) 13:54, 19 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

In an earlier discussion about en-dashes vs. hyphens, there was some agreement that the wording of this section of the MoS needed to be clarified, but nothing happened – partly, I think, because Noetica said he would look at it, but he left Wikipedia. JorisvS is right that the key difference is whether the separate entities are seen as distinct. Since the Epstein–Barr virus article explains the origin of the name from two people, an en-dash is clearly appropriate. "McGraw-Hill" still seems to me a problematic case. I don't see "McGraw" and "Hill" as the origin of "McGraw-Hill", so a hyphen appears appropriate to me. However, it might be that someone more familiar with the publishing industry would be aware of the two entities, and would use naturally use an en-dash. Can this subjectivity be avoided? Peter coxhead (talk) 17:31, 19 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not familiar with previous discussions about this, but ... is there any reason why WP:COMMONNAME wouldn't apply to questions like this? --Stfg (talk) 18:43, 19 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Well, that has been the fiercely (sometimes viciously) debated issue on more than one occasion. In one corner are those who would answer that WP:COMMONNAME should apply, and that the relative usage of en-dash vs. hyphen in reliable sources should determine usage here. In the other corner are those who would answer that COMMONNAME does not apply to style issues, and that in the interests of consistency Wikipedia should apply its own style rules regardless of sources. Let's not start this debate all over again. (It applies to en-dashes vs. hyphens, capitalization of the English names of species, logical quotation style vs. traditional US quotation style, and doubtless a number of other issues. In every case the second position has been upheld.) Peter coxhead (talk) 18:55, 19 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

There was a pretty heated discussion on the Epstein–Barr virus (EBV) talk page about the en dash (primarily me ranting). What the argument arose from, was the fact that I had never recalled seing an en dash used in any of the scientific literature...until pointed out by several other wikipedians in a minority of papers. From my count, a hyphen is used in EBV ~98% of the time in article titles archived on PubMed. I was fighting very hard for the hyphen w/o knowing about this WP:COMMONNAME rule, as it intuitively made sense to use the "consensus" or most-common form of the name to me. Eventually I changed my mind. What really turned me around was the recognition of the utility of the en dash, it's grammatical appropriateness, and (most importantly) the discovery of its use in several "key" or "landmark" papers. Ultimately, I think the source material (particularly for technical matters) should guide naming conventions on Wikipedia. In the EBV field there is a diversity of naming, so my attempted compromise solution has been to look for precedents in the lit. that jibe with the Wikipedia guidelines, good grammar (to the best of my knowledge), and that allow for some sort of consistency in the naming of pages. It's tough. Walternmoss (talk) 23:40, 19 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

So, what about adding "... if these are no longer seen as named after two entities." to the sentence about the hyphens? Any problems with saying that? --JorisvS (talk) 08:28, 22 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Only that I've no idea what it means. But I've no idea what the present wording is supposed to mean either, so the addition won't make it any worse. In fact I think I know what it's supposed to mean. If the compound is "attributive", then it's dashed. That means if it qualifies another noun, as in the Hale-Bopp case, where it qualifies "Comet". (Presumably in the example with "just" Hale-Bopp, without the "Comet", the compound is still regarded as attributive because the noun is still understood.) But if the compound is the whole name, then it's hyphenated. The union of two cities seems to be an example of a different sort, that perhaps ought to have a separate bullet point. W. P. Uzer (talk) 09:57, 22 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

So, how do you think we could rephrase it? --JorisvS (talk) 10:17, 22 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Somewhat like this, perhaps? W. P. Uzer (talk) 11:45, 22 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, can you actually suggest that directly on the talk page rather than actually editing the MOS and posting a link to that edit? The MOS needs to be stable and changes need to be discussed first. N-HH talk/edits 12:00, 22 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

No they don't. Pages on which anti-Wikipedians try to enforce an ad hoc "no change without discussion" policy are the ones that have the most problems, because the normal channel by which problems are fixed is closed off. If you object to my changes, say why, and then we can have a discussion. Otherwise you're just making things worse with your groundless reverts. W. P. Uzer (talk) 14:17, 23 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

@W. P. Uzer: this MOS guideline is a bit different from the average article. It has been struggled over for years, and hyphens and dashes are one area where development has been especially challenging. Please note the banner at the top of the project page itself, where it says "Please ensure that any edits to this page reflect consensus." This applies especially to issues that are under active discussion here and where there are differing views. Please also take care about dubbing the people around here as "anti-Wikipedians", as this sort of language escalates the kind of tension that can arise here, which we're all doing our level best to avoid. Regards, --Stfg (talk) 14:47, 23 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed. This is not a substantive entry for an individual topic, where of course not every change needs pre-approval or prior discussion and consensus, but a site-wide guideline page. There's a rather obvious difference in content and purpose, and hence in terms of the need for stability, as the banner here makes clear. I have no idea what an "anti-Wikipedian" is. N-HH talk/edits 15:01, 23 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

In this case, someone who would prefer to keep a problem rather than solve it, because by keeping it we achieve "stability". Or simply someone who doesn't get (or who opposes) the idea that "everyone can edit". Sadly, there seem to be more and more such people around, not only on this page. W. P. Uzer (talk) 15:21, 23 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Who says I'd rather keep the problem for the sake of stability? And who says your edits solved anything anyway? The first of the two I reverted together removed an entire sentence, claiming it was repetition when it wasn't, since it included the suggestion of using alternative, more common words. The second, which related more specifically to the hyphen/endash point, shuffled text around and added the confusing and confused claim about "a compound which qualifies another noun", when we are actually taking about names and proper nouns. Nor did it do anything to solve the actual underlying problem with this part of the MOS, which is its apparent internal contradiction. That's what's already being discussed, and it doesn't help to have the current text being shuffled around as that discussion takes place. N-HH talk/edits 15:38, 23 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

All right, now you're providing reasons, good. If you'd done that to start with, rather than inventing quasi-procedural justifications for your action, then we would have made progress far more pleasantly. W. P. Uzer (talk) 16:00, 23 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The "quasi-procedural justifications" were a perfectly valid reason for reverting, without or without any fuller explanation of the problems with the content of the edit. If you'd made your proposal here, I and others could have responded substantively to that from the outset. However you try to rationalise this, the bottom line is that someone asked you for your suggestion; instead of explaining any proposed changes and awaiting comments, you simply edited the page and then pointed them to that edit. That is not how the editing process works, not least because if everybody went about it that way, especially for unclear issues and especially on site-wide guidelines, it'd be chaos. N-HH talk/edits 17:02, 23 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

No, that's exactly how the editing process works, or is supposed to work. Even on a site-wide guideline (so what? I didn't change the substance of any guidance), we first try to make things better by making things better. It's honestly the most effective way, and the secret of Wikipedia's success. I won't respond any more on the topic since I know people like you are inaccessible to the light, but I remain in diametric disagreement with you on this point. W. P. Uzer (talk) 20:06, 23 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

All this patronizing lecturing doesn't advance the issue. I still don't know if anyone objects to my changes, and if so, for what reason. This is exactly the kind of behavior which makes "development especially challenging". It would be a whole lot less challenging if people only reverted if they disagreed, and explained why they disagreed. That way we wouldn't waste time on non-issues and meta-issues, problems would be fixed without fuss, and discussion would be focused on such genuine problems as really require it. W. P. Uzer (talk) 14:57, 23 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The revert wasn't "groundless". The grounds were that it restored what had been agreed by a prior consensus, until such time as a new consensus might be agreed. Had you made your proposal here, people would surely have given reasoned opinions of it. Please remember that the MOS represents a previous consensus, which it's fine to change, but not OK to ride roughshod over. --Stfg (talk) 15:45, 23 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

So I changed it, which you say is fine. I didn't "ride roughshod over it"; I didn't change any of the substance of the advice, just tried to improve the way it was worded. If someone disagrees that it was an improvement, that's fine. The implication of the original reasoning was that it didn't matter whether or not it was an improvement, it was that attempted improvements are not welcome here per se, which is obviously not a helpful attitude to take. W. P. Uzer (talk) 16:00, 23 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Just to clarify, what I said is fine to change is consensus; it isn't OK to change text that was hammered out in a consensus-building process, without first changing the consensus by means of discussion. --Stfg (talk) 17:42, 23 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Again, there is no attempt to "change the consensus", just to better express what the consensus is. That oughtn't to require long process, or we'll never achieve anything. W. P. Uzer (talk) 20:06, 23 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I have seen arguments over the years about em-dashes, en-dashes, hyphens, minus signs et al. I have not read all the walls of text about the arguments so maybe my question has already been answered somewhere but I have not seen it. For the reader or anyone for that matter what difference does it make which one is used? Do reader or writers for than matter gain more insight into a subject if the "correct" one is used? Do we lose some understanding if the incorrect one is used? I do not see any reason to worry about this minutia but maybe there is a good reason to spend so much time on dashes. Can someone explain to me why we need to spend so much time and space on this? 69.255.176.248 (talk) 11:37, 22 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, for readers who understand normal English punctuation, the distinctions signaled by punctuation are useful and make it easier to understand the material quickly. Dicklyon (talk) 17:56, 23 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I suppose we spend the time and space here, at a central point, so that editors don't end up spending even more time and space debating the point on many diverse articles. Also, it's fun to apply one's mental capabilities to something that doesn't really matter (hence chess, crosswords, etc.) W. P. Uzer (talk) 11:45, 22 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

There is also always the solution, suggested by me and others in the past, of going back to what many publishers and readers, especially online, are quite happy with: which is to only ever use a hyphen for all such joins (including prefixes) and to not worry about hyphen/endash distinctions to start with. Sadly, it's never going to fly because too many people on these pages think it's "unprofessional" while others seem to quite like these endless navel-gazing disputes about how to apply the rules in each case. N-HH talk/edits 12:00, 22 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I wasn't asking why the time is spent here, I was asking about overall time spent on this issue. I guess N-HH answered the question, editors think it is unprofessional to have the "wrong" dash but it does not look like it really makes any difference, people just love to argue. 69.255.176.248 (talk) 12:14, 22 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The wrong dash? You mean an em not an en dash? Tony (talk) 14:47, 23 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

this is all really lame and of concern only to grammar nazis. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 15:37, 23 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe you could try to make useful comments instead of ranting about "grammar nazis". --JorisvS (talk) 18:17, 23 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

If I might try to continue the more substantial discussion at the bottom of the thread where we can find it, can anyone do a better job than I did at explaining the apparent contradiction (and in the process, perhaps explaining what an "attributive compound" is)? W. P. Uzer (talk) 16:15, 23 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, is it even clear what the problem is? Is it that simply all compounds that are used attributively (whether or not implied) dashes and those are used substantively hyphenated. Or is it whether or not the entity is seen as one whole, no longer considered named after two distinct entities? --JorisvS (talk) 16:22, 23 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It's the latter surely. All the examples listed are names of things and proper nouns, whether it's McGraw-Hill or Hale–Bopp. The problem is that there is no obvious logic to that distinction, or at least no obvious logic than can be applied consistently. N-HH talk/edits 17:05, 23 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The difficulty with the latter is that that rule is pretty subjective, but that need not be a problem for the MoS. It could be worded as "A hyphen is used in proper names when the entity is seen as one whole and is no longer considered named after two distinct entities.". --JorisvS (talk) 18:17, 23 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Well, Wilkes-Barre is presumably considered to be named after two distinct entities, by those who know it is so named, just as Hale–Bopp is considered to be named after two distinct entities, by those who know it is so named. (People who don't know might think anything.) And they are both seen as one whole. So why does one have a dash and the other a hyphen? W. P. Uzer (talk) 20:13, 23 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Nobody got any ideas? Maybe I was right the first time, and we decided to use the dash in Hale–Bopp just because it is a shortening of Comet Hale–Bopp, in which Hale–Bopp is an attributive compound? W. P. Uzer (talk) 20:55, 24 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, it is clear that it is not yet clear what the rule we are supposed to be clarify is exactly. --JorisvS (talk) 11:03, 25 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

So should we not assume that the text is intended to say what it appears to be saying - that such compounds take a dash if they're "attributive"? Thus the clarification would involve merely defining "attributive", doing it in such a way that the definition includes cases like Hale–Bopp even when the word Comet gets omitted. W. P. Uzer (talk) 09:36, 26 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I think we're in danger of drawing a false distinction in terms of meta-language here. Hale-Bopp and McGraw-Hill are both proper names of things – of a comet and a publishing house respectively. In so far as they qualify those latter terms, they are also attributive and adjectival phrases. The fundamental issue, whatever language we use to describe it, seems to be that where the two names have in some mysterious way become one, we would use a hyphen. Until then, we use an endash. It might help if one of the people who regularly stick up for making a rule out of such distinctions – a minority practice among publishers as a whole, especially non-book publishers – and have helped foist it on Wikipedia, explained how, exactly, they think the distinction works and how the MOS might best be worded for clarity and to avoid confusion and apparent contradiction. N-HH talk/edits 10:23, 26 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It does seem that McGraw-Hill is a poor example, partly because its name has now changed, and partly because it always seems to have been attributive in virtually the same way that Hale–Bopp is. Perhaps we should just follow the conventions used in the relevant literature in cases like this. (The official company name, the official comet name as listed by astronomical bodies, etc.) W. P. Uzer (talk) 10:45, 26 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

So why don't we make this easy? Every dash used on Wikipedia looks like this, -. It is easy because you just have to type it on the keyboard and most readers (the people we are creating this for) probably could care less what it looks like. Problem solved. 69.255.176.248 (talk) 20:23, 23 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Or not solved, because many people are used to using and seeing real dashes in certain situations and will try to insert them. There isn't really a problem anyway, because in the rules are clear for the great majority of cases and correspond to what most experienced writers will be used to. The ambiguity we're talking about here affects only a very limited set of cases. W. P. Uzer (talk) 10:46, 24 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I thought a hyphen and an en-dash were the same thing, and an em-dash was something slightly wider which some people insist on in some circumstances I can never remember, and which doesn't have a key for it. If "normal English punctuation" requires us to distinguish identical characters, and use special keys absent from English-language keyboards, with certain rules half the English-speaking world never knows about, then "normal English punctuation" isn't part of normal English. Ananiujitha (talk) 21:31, 24 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

If you have a keyboard that looks something like this, there are only two keys that will directly give a hyphen, and none that will give a dash. The two that produce a hyphen are (i) in the main keyboard, immediately to the right of the digit 0; (ii) in the numeric keypad on the right, directly above the +. These give the same character, which strictly speaking is called hyphen-minus since it has a dual role. In Wikitext, the hyphen-minus and en dash are the same width as each other, with the em dash being slightly longer; but when displayed on a finished page, the hyphen-minus is about half the width of the en dash – which is itself half the width of the em dash — you can enter both of these characters into Wikitext using a variety of techniques. --Redrose64 (talk) 00:05, 25 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I think you'll find the hyphen-minus (-) is different from an en dash (–), the latter being longer than the former. They do perform different tasks. They were indistinguishable on typewriters with fixed-width characters and, sadly, computer keyboard makers failed to differentiate them when other fonts came along and the world got lazy. Microsoft Word automatically converts hyphens to endashes when surrounded by a space on both sides, but most other applications don't, so the subtlety has become lost to many. A hyphen, however, is never a correct substitute for an em dash (—), which basically denotes a parenthetical remark—like this one—where they are paired in the same way as parentheses. It can also be used for a parenthetical remark at the end of sentence without another em dash before the full stop—like this. Luckily, both of these dashes are readily available using the Wiki markup links below the edit box. —sroc 💬 00:46, 25 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It is sad that there is this problem with typing endashes, but it is not relevant for the issue at hand: The rule that describes the few cases when a hyphen should be used instead of an endash. --JorisvS (talk) 11:03, 25 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

So to come back the question of why it's Hale–Bopp with a dash and Wilkes-Barre with a hyphen, does anyone have any better suggestions than the one currently implied: that in the first case the compound is "attributive" (the qualified noun "comet" being understood), while in the second it isn't? And if not, does anyone object to this being clarified with the addition of an explanation of what is meant by "attributive"? W. P. Uzer (talk) 10:21, 28 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Are any external style guides saying that, or are you inferring it from the examples to hand? If the former, could you give us some links? Then I'd say go for it. If the latter, I'd say it's original research, and from an anecdotal sample. And while I'm here, what is the rationale for removing the McGraw-Hill example from the guideline while this discussion is still in progress? The edit summary says "see talk", but I'm missing the explanation, and it may be important, since you've pointed out that it's attributive, which would mean that it's a counter-example to this theory, hence important. --Stfg (talk) 16:06, 28 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'm inferring it from what's written in the guideline, which is supposedly based on a consensus that Wikipedia editors reached. "Attributive" seems to be the key word, and I'm inferring what is meant by "attributive" based on the examples given and my knowledge of what attributive actually means. I can't come up with any logical explanation for McGraw-Hill within the framework given, so I'm assuming it was an error, and since the present name of the company has no hyphen or dash, according to its article, the example seems to have lost its purpose in any case (but please restore it if you think it will help our deliberations). W. P. Uzer (talk) 18:20, 28 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

"Attributive" is something of a red herring; it's incidental to the intended distinction. Using hyphens or en-dashes in the problematic cases being discussed here has to do with the "binding strength" of the two symbols: hyphens bind more tightly than en-dashes. Thus in Lennard-Jones potential the hyphen is intended to show that this is named after a single person called "Lennard-Jones". In Comet Hale–Bopp the en-dash is intended to show that it is named after two people called "Hale" and "Bopp". "Lennard" and "Jones" are bound more tightly than "Hale" and "Bopp". This makes excellent sense, until you consider more evidence and more cases. Thus:

• The distinction for comets is irrelevant, because the naming authority only uses one element of a hyphenated name. Thus if Lennard-Jones and Hale had jointly discovered a comet, the name would not be Lennard-Jones–Hale (1st = hyphen, 2nd = en-dash) but Lennard–Hale. So by using an en-dash in Wikipedia, we are making a distinction which isn't needed.
• Cities can acquire double-barrelled names in several ways. They can be named after two people or two cities can merge. We want the first case to bind the names more tightly than the second case, so a city named after two people uses a hyphen (hence Wilkes-Barre) but a union of two cities uses an en-dash (hence Minneapolis–Saint Paul). However, this leads to an inconsistency between cities named after two people, which use a hyphen, and theorems, laws, comets, etc. named after two people, which use an en-dash.
• What is being attempted is to use hyphen and en-dash to mark in text tightness-of-binding distinctions that can be made in symbolic contexts by parentheses. However, any number of levels can be marked by nested parentheses, but only two by hyphen and en-dash. Since hyphenated proper names can arise by more than two joining processes as shown above (one person with a double-barrelled name, two people, two cities) it's never going to work without some inconsistencies.

Personally, I don't think it's worth making the hyphen/en-dash distinction in proper names of this kind; it just causes too much hassle. However, if we do make the distinction, there are bound to be anomalies. Peter coxhead (talk) 18:14, 28 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Why do you say "We want the first case to bind the names more tightly than the second case, so a city named after two people uses a hyphen (hence Wilkes-Barre)"? Shouldn't it be Wilkes–Barre, for the same reasons as Hale–Bopp and Minneapolis–Saint Paul, namely, the combination of the names of separate entities? I think the hyphen/dash distinction is too subtle for anyone to make any assumptions whether Wilkes-Barre or Wilkes–Barre is one town named after two people or a merger between two towns, without context or clarification, when it could easily be put down to a typo or some editor misunderstanding the distinction. —sroc 💬 22:49, 28 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Personally, I would have thought Wilkes-Barre (hyphenated) was an individual’s surname, as in Double-barrelled name, rather than a thing’s name. —173.199.215.5 (talk) 23:12, 28 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

So does anyone have any idea how to sort out this mess (with minimal change to the substantial consequences of the guidance, I suppose)? W. P. Uzer (talk) 20:55, 29 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'd say leave well enough alone, unless you find a grammar guide that does a good job of it. Wilkes-Barre is a city, not much like Minneapolis–St. Paul, which is two cities. The distinction between Wilkes-Barre and Hale–Bopp is more subtle, but editors mostly know it when they see it, and there's not usually much disagreement that the former is more strongly bound into a single city name and the latter is the names of co-equal discoverers of the comet. Many sources use en dash in Hale–Bopp; none do for Wilkes-Barre, as far as I know. Dicklyon (talk) 06:09, 2 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The problem is that the current wording is unclear (see the link at the beginning of this post), no matter the rules, and so has to be changed. However, for it to be changed, we must be clear on what the rule is. --JorisvS (talk) 09:16, 2 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Here's another example to consider: The Hindi-Urdu language (hyphen, a single language, sometimes called Hindi, sometimes Urdu) vs the Hindi–Urdu controversy (dash, dispute between Hindi and Urdu).

McGraw-Hill is an oddity, but I think is universally hyphenated. It's an idiosyncratic exception that's being treated as a double-barreled name; there's no real reason for it, AFAICT. Guinea-Bissau is irrelevant: That's not a union of Guinea and Bissau, but rather the Guinea of Bissau vs. Guinea-Conakry.

But the constant attacks and attempts to dumb down Wikipedia so it contains nothing an editor doesn't already know is a distraction from actually trying to clarify such issues. If we can't discuss this rationally, I think we should probably just remove the counter-example and leave McGraw-Hill as an eccentric exception, with a link to this discussion rather than to the MOS. — kwami (talk) 07:35, 1 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

And what about Wilkes-Barre? Would you put that in the same "eccentric" category, or do you think its exclusion from the dash rule is connected with the fact that the compound is not "attributive"? W. P. Uzer (talk) 20:02, 1 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Can we find a solution? Is the use of a hyphen instead of an endash:

a) a few oddities

b) because it is not in an attributive phrase attributive (whether implied or not)

c) because these are more strongly bound together (and if so, how to decide which should be used)?

d) or because they are seen as single entities no longer named after which they were originally named?

Or a maybe a combination of these? In any case, the current wording is unclear, as has been experienced here, and therefore must be changed. This can only be done, however, if we know how to change it. --JorisvS (talk) 19:25, 4 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It seems that most people here think "attributive" is in fact irrelevant. So how about we delete that word, and simply say afterwards that if some term (such as Wilkes-Barre) is invariably written with a hyphen rather than a dash in sources, then we do so also? The other examples like Guinea-Bissau probably don't even belong in that section, as Kwami pointed out. W. P. Uzer (talk) 09:41, 5 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

But then, when is it enough? Is one example of a dash already sufficient for us to dash the term? --JorisvS (talk) 09:52, 5 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

So, should we just delete the paragraph and just say that there are a few casewise-determined cases where a hyphen is used where one would expect an endash? --JorisvS (talk) 15:45, 8 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I was thinking, what about an endash is used to indicate a symmetrical relationship, and a hyphen to indicate the unity of the two? This would explain Hindi–Urdu controversy vs. Hindi-Urdu. It would also explain Wilkes-Barre (1 city) vs. Minneapolis–St. Paul (2 cities). It would also explain names such as Lennard-Jones. --JorisvS (talk) 12:39, 11 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

No one disagrees or knows a counterexample? This MOS line style still needs to be clarified, so I'll do that if no one voices any disagreement. The latter explanation seems to be the best one we've been able to find, I think. --JorisvS (talk) 12:54, 15 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think you have a mandate to make changes. Could you print here the current and your proposed new texts first, for our consideration? Tony (talk) 02:28, 16 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Sure. This is what I'm proposing:

An en dash is not used for a hyphenated personal name.

• Lennard-Jones potential with a hyphen: named after John Lennard-Jones

An en dash is used for the names of two or more people in an attributive compound.

• the Seifert–van Kampen theorem;   the Seeliger–Donker-Voet scheme;   the Alpher–Bethe–Gamow theory
• Comet Hale–Bopp or just Hale–Bopp (discovered by Hale and Bopp)

A hyphen is used by default in compounded proper names of single entities.

• Guinea-Bissau; Bissau is the capital, and this distinguishes the country from neighboring Guinea
• Wilkes-Barre, a single city named after two people, but Minneapolis–Saint Paul, a union of two cities
• John Lennard-Jones, an individual named after two families

An en dash is used to indicate a symmetrical relationship, but a hyphen is used to indicate a unity.

• Hindi–Urdu controversy (a dispute between Hindi and Urdu) vs. Hindi-Urdu (an alternative name for the Hindustani language)
• Minneapolis–St. Paul (2 cities) vs. Wilkes-Barre (1 city named after Wilkes and Barre)
• John Lennard-Jones, an individual named after two families

The en dash in all of the compounds above is unspaced.

Does anyone have suggestions or remarks? --JorisvS (talk) 16:32, 16 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

At first look there's a comforting conceptual simplicity in what you propose: "An en dash is used to indicate a symmetrical relationship, but a hyphen is used to indicate a unity." But thinking it through, symmetry is not essential; separateness in the entities is what counts more. Consider:

• US–Australia cultural and linguistic exports.
• A Hanoi–Da Nang train journey.
• Our China–Siberia border crossing.

No symmetry, but separate entities invoked. Reversibility is one "test", but it's not always the case. Ontological separateness is what really counts.

We all want a guideline that is optimal for editors to understand. May I ask for a short statement as to what is unsatisfactory or difficult about the current text? That would help us to know where it stands. Tony (talk) 09:09, 18 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, so we say "An en dash is used to indicate separateness of the names, but a hyphen is used to indicate unity." instead. The current text, as explained above, is unclear and appears to directly contradict itself. First it says "An en dash is used for the names of two or more people in an attributive compound.", with Comet Hale–Bopp as an example, but then it says "A hyphen is used by default in compounded proper names of single entities.", even though the name of a single entity was dashed just before. --JorisvS (talk) 09:45, 18 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Any other critical notes? --JorisvS (talk) 12:54, 30 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Exactly what is wrong with the current text? Tony (talk) 13:03, 30 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

What did I say just above? That. --JorisvS (talk) 14:00, 30 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed – exactly as was pointed out at the start of the thread all those weeks and bytes ago. It's amazing how long it can take for some things to sink in. As I recall saying at some point, it would be useful if one of those who initially insisted that WP apply this minority-practice distinction at all and/or any of those who then contributed to the drafting of the current detailed section, could actually weigh in and help out. Those people would include your interlocutor here, among others. N-HH talk/edits 15:39, 30 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see a problem: it says "by default", which indicates that there are exceptions. If it would be clearer, perhaps add "However,"? "However, a hyphen is used by default in compounded proper names of single entities." Tony (talk) 00:57, 1 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

But how is "Comet Hale-Bopp" not a "compounded proper name" of single entity? Fine, there are exceptions to any rule, but how is anyone meant to work out what they are, how frequent they are or how the distinction is drawn? N-HH talk/edits 12:02, 2 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Is there still anything wrong with my suggestion above?

An en dash is not used for a hyphenated personal name.

• Lennard-Jones potential with a hyphen: named after John Lennard-Jones

An en dash is used for the names of two or more people in an attributive compound.

• the Seifert–van Kampen theorem;   the Seeliger–Donker-Voet scheme;   the Alpher–Bethe–Gamow theory
• Comet Hale–Bopp or just Hale–Bopp (discovered by Hale and Bopp)

A hyphen is used by default in compounded proper names of single entities.

• Guinea-Bissau; Bissau is the capital, and this distinguishes the country from neighboring Guinea
• Wilkes-Barre, a single city named after two people, but Minneapolis–Saint Paul, a union of two cities
• John Lennard-Jones, an individual named after two families

An en dash is used to indicate separateness of the names, but a hyphen is used to indicate unity.

• Hindi–Urdu controversy (a dispute between Hindi and Urdu) vs. Hindi-Urdu (an alternative name for the Hindustani language)
• Minneapolis–St. Paul (2 cities) vs. Wilkes-Barre (1 city named after Wilkes and Barre)
• John Lennard-Jones, an individual named after two families

The en dash in all of the compounds above is unspaced.

--JorisvS (talk) 22:23, 3 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Does the silence mean that it is correct this way? --JorisvS (talk) 10:37, 7 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

No. Tony (talk) 09:05, 10 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Then tell what's wrong! Let's correct it and build something better! --JorisvS (talk) 09:00, 11 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Definite improvement. Unless there's s.t. specifically wrong, I say we go for it. — kwami (talk) 06:13, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It looks good to me, too. Removing the "single entity", which is too broad and ambiguous to be useful, is probably a good step. Tony, tell us what you're thinking. Dicklyon (talk) 06:26, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed change

Per the above discussion, I suggest changing:

A hyphen is used by default in compounded proper names of single entities.

• Guinea-Bissau; Bissau is the capital, and this distinguishes the country from neighboring Guinea
• Wilkes-Barre, a single city named after two people, but Minneapolis–Saint Paul, a union of two cities
• John Lennard-Jones, an individual named after two families

to:

An en dash is used to indicate separateness of the names, but a hyphen is used to indicate unity.

• Hindi–Urdu controversy (a dispute between Hindi and Urdu) vs. Hindi-Urdu (an alternative name for the Hindustani language)
• Minneapolis–St. Paul (two cities) vs. Wilkes-Barre (one city named after Wilkes and Barre)
• John Lennard-Jones, an individual named after two families

--JorisvS (talk) 14:20, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

For the sake of consistent formatting, may I suggest:

An en dash is used to indicate a conjunction of separate entities or concepts; a hyphen is used to indicate unity of a single entity or concept formed by combining multiple names.

• Hindi–Urdu controversy (a dispute between Hindi and Urdu); but Hindi-Urdu (an alternative name for the Hindustani language)
• Minneapolis–St. Paul (a union of two cities); but Wilkes-Barre (one city named after Wilkes and Barre)
• John Lennard-Jones (an individual named after two families)

I'm not sure the words "separateness" and "unity" made the distinction clear, so I've suggested alternate wording for the introductory line, too. —sroc 💬 14:48, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I think that looks better. Thank you. --JorisvS (talk) 16:04, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Support: Looking good to me, the examples are better and it's more easily understandable. Also, the numbers are now spelled out. :) However, let's wait to see the feedback from more editors. — Dsimic (talk) 03:19, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• Support for sroc's change, for the reasons given by Dsimic.—DocWatson42 (talk) 18:42, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• Support improved wording by User:Sroc. People, please join this discussion! --JorisvS (talk) 08:22, 27 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The way I was taught the typographic use of a en dash, is that it's showing some sort of relationship between two things. Hence "Human–Computer Interaction" and use in page ranges. That makes sense to me as an explanation of the above examples as well. Well, except Minneapolis–St. Paul, that's an odd one. Arguably that the combination of the two cities represents their close relationship. SamBC(talk) 19:08, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment: I agree in principle with the distinction between separation (Hindi–Urdu controversy, Hindi and Urdu are separate literary registers and/or languages) and unity (John Lennard-Jones is one individual), but I see problems with the examples:

1. Minneapolis–St. Paul is not "a union of two cities" - it is "the most populous urban area ... composed of 182 cities and townships ... its two largest cities, Minneapolis, ... and Saint Paul". Ie it is a single urban area that includes the two named cities and 180 others cities/towns. Perhaps Minneapolis–St. Paul is a good example (named after two separate cities), but it is poor and misleading description.
2. Not shown in the proposed change, but immediately above in MOS:ENDASH is "En dash is used ... Comet Hale–Bopp ...(discovered by Hale and Bopp)." Yes the comet was named after two people, but generally Hale-Bopp is the common name of a single comet. Why does a single comet have an en dash when a single city (Wilkes-Barre), also named after two people, have a hyphen? Do you intend to delete/replace the existing sentence and examples "An en dash is used for the names of two or more people in an attributive compound..."? The "proposed change" didn't say so.

Mitch Ames (talk) 13:34, 28 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

That's a good catch, just corrected the proposal above according to your suggestions regarding Minneapolis–St. Paul. Regarding the Hale–Bopp comet and comparison with Wilkes-Barre, well, that's probably because the comet has C/1995 O1 as it's official name, making Hale–Bopp just an alias. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 23:36, 28 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

An en dash is used to indicate a conjunction of separate entities or concepts; a hyphen is used to indicate unity of a single entity or concept formed by combining multiple names.

• Hindi–Urdu controversy (a dispute between Hindi and Urdu); but Hindi-Urdu (an alternative name for the Hindustani language)
• Minneapolis–St. Paul (a union of two cities an urban area named by its two largest cities); but Wilkes-Barre (one city named after Wilkes and Barre)
• John Lennard-Jones (an individual named after two families)

Corrected according to Mitch Ames's suggestions, so "Minneapolis–St. Paul" is described as "an urban area named by its two largest cities". — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 23:36, 28 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

"Regarding the Hale–Bopp comet and comparison with Wilkes-Barre ..."
Yes C/1995 O1 is its official name, but its common name and the title of the article is Comet Hale–Bopp. When we talk about Comet Hale–Bopp are we referring to the comet or the discoverers? If we have examples of:

• en dash, Hale–Bopp, one comet discovered by Hale and Bopp
• hyphen, Wilkes-Barre, one city named after Wilkes and Barre

I suggest that we need to clearly and unambiguously explain, in the description of the policy, what the distinguishing criteria is, because it is not obvious from the examples. Why is Hale–Bopp "the names of two or more people in an attributive compound" but Wilkes-Barre not? A rule of "named after discoverers, use en dash, else hyphen" or "if the term is a common name for which there is a different formal designation, use en dash, else hyphen" does not sound like a good clear rule to me. Mitch Ames (talk) 13:56, 29 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

These are good points. I can't quite wrap my head around "Wilkes-Barre". Maybe "Hale–Bopp" is dashed because it is short for "Comet Hale–Bopp" and "Wilkes-Barre" is no such shortening? I'm not really sure, but I can't think of any other good reason. --JorisvS (talk) 16:02, 29 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The International Astronomical Union says that all comet names are spelled with a hyphen. But some editors think they can spell better than the naming authority for all celestial bodies, and they insisted on dashing Hale-Bopp..... --Enric Naval (talk) 16:42, 29 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

They IAU, however, does not distinguish between endashes and hyphens, so that's unfortunately useless. --JorisvS (talk) 17:00, 29 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Please cite a source for this statement. Even non-reliable sources will do. Any source. --Enric Naval (talk) 11:17, 30 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding "Hale–Bopp" vs. "Wilkes-Barre", it's probably something like this:

• Comet Hale–Bopp "was discovered independently on July 23, 1995 by two observers, Alan Hale and Thomas Bopp, both in the United States." That means they haven't made it a joint venture, and instead worked without knowing each other, so the title gets an en dash.
• Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania "was named Wilkes-Barre after John Wilkes and Isaac Barré, two British members of Parliament who supported colonial America." That means they were pushing into the same direction, "modifying" each other all the time etc. So, it gets a hyphen.

How about that? I know it's pushing it quite far, but to me that's the only another reasonable explanation. Thoughts? — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 03:24, 30 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

But comets carry a dash regardless of whether the people worked together to discover it or did so independently. This to indicate that it has been named after multiple people, and not one person carrying a double name (like Lennard-Jones). --JorisvS (talk) 08:39, 30 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

If a discoverer has a hyphenated surname, the hyphen is replaced with a space (i.e. 105P/Singer Brewster named after Singer-Brewster) or part of the name is removed. This is to prevent confusion with the hyphens for multiple discoverers. This is sourced from reliable sources in the Singer Brewster article. --Enric Naval (talk) 09:48, 30 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, I wasn't aware of that, sorry. Thanks for the explanations, will remember for the future. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 18:30, 30 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'm rather fond of en dashes but this discussion is troubling, and I can only think of a question to illustrate the difficulty: "Are there any Minneapolis–St. Paul bus routes in the Minneapolis-St. Paul transit system?" Modal Jig (talk) 20:21, 29 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Why would the second one be with a hyphen? --JorisvS (talk) 21:54, 29 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Actually I found the answer to my question (what's the difference between Hale–Bopp and Wilkes-Barre) in MOS already - I just wasn't paying attention. It says (above the Hale–Bopp example) that an en dash is used "for the names of two or more people in an attributive compound" (my emphasis). "Hale–Bopp" is attributive (adjective qualifying a noun) in that it describes/qualifies "Comet". Ie the name is Comet Hale–Bopp, not just Hale–Bopp. In the case of Wilkes-Barre, that hyphenated term is the complete name, it is not a qualifier for another noun.

I'm not sure I like the answer, but it is there. Mitch Ames (talk) 12:09, 30 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The full comet name is "C/1995 O1 (Hale-Bopp)", not "Comet Hale-Bopp". --Enric Naval (talk) 14:04, 30 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Mitch Ames: That makes sense, thanks, but then what about Wilkes-Barre Township, for example? Hm, shouldn't "Wilkes-Barre" have an en dash when used that way? — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 18:30, 30 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I would interpret the MOS guidelines as indicating that Wilkes-Barre Township should be an en dash instead of a hyphen. That could mean my interpretation is wrong, or that the guideline should be changed, or that it is a sufficiently rare example that we can ignore the guideline without worrying about changing it. Mitch Ames (talk) 13:28, 31 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Totally agreed. Any comments from other editors, please? — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 14:30, 31 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, now I'm totally confused as well. Either we don't understand something and/or something is wrong. Well, something is certainly wrong with the MOS, that's why this whole big thread started in the first place, but there are apparently still things we need to find out before we can properly rewrite it. Any suggestions on how to figure this out? --JorisvS (talk) 07:45, 10 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Is Wilkes-Barre simply an exception, or is there a rule to it? Can anyone say something that might help clear this up? --JorisvS (talk) 13:39, 19 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

To me, Wilkes-Barre Township is simply a small mistake in an article title, not an exception. Went ahead and boldly renamed the article to Wilkes–Barre Township – maybe we'll draw more attention that way. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 15:26, 19 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It just struck me: whereas Hale–Bopp is attributive even when used without "Comet", this is not the case for Wilkes-Barre, just like Lennard-Jones, right? Now, just like "Lennard-Jones potential", "Wilkes-Barre Township" is derived from an originally non-attributive compound, whereas this is not the case for Hale–Bopp. Could preserving the hyphen from an originally non-attributive compound be the rationale for using a hyphen in Wilkes-Barre Township? --JorisvS (talk) 15:39, 19 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Makes sense, but again, why "Wilkes–Barre" shouldn't be treated as an adjective compound, qualifying "Township" as a noun, despite the fact "Wilkes-Barre" is also used as a non-attributive compound? Preserving the hyphen—by following the line of creation for these compounds—would also require some history to be involved, as it would mean that "Wilkes-Barre Township" has been coined after "Wilkes-Barre", meaning that the latter compound is older. Hope it makes sense. :) — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 16:22, 19 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it starts out as Wilkes-Barre, without anything to qualify. Wilkes-Barre Township is then named after Wilkes-Barre. That's like Lennard-Jones: that starts out as such, and then something is named after it/him, Lennard-Jones potential, which then preserves the hyphen. Although "Lennard-Jones" of course does qualify "potential", it does so as a single term, whereas in "Comet Hale–Bopp" "Hale" and "Bopp" do so as two terms joined together. --JorisvS (talk) 11:36, 23 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

That totally makes sense, but the small trouble is Wilkes-Barre city was founded in 1769 and formally incorporated in 1806, while Wilkes–Barre Township was settled in 1758 and incorporated in 1790 – that makes it unclear which name was created first? In order for Wilkes-Barre to act as a "single-term" qualifier, Wilkes-Barre should've been coined earlier, if I'm not mistaken? — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 23:02, 23 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm, maybe, but did they also receive their current names when they were founded? And what was the rationale for calling "Wilkes-Barre" just that when there was already a "Wilkes–Barre Township"? --JorisvS (talk) 20:08, 27 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, and I've already asked myself the same two questions, but unfortunately was unable to provide good answers. Any historians around, please, to help us resolve this dilemma? :) — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 20:39, 27 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Is there a specific place where we could ask this? --JorisvS (talk) 08:39, 28 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately, I really don't have a clue. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 04:53, 2 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I asked the question at Wilkes-Barre, but there has been no response. --JorisvS (talk) 11:42, 11 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Wilkes–Barre Township apparently used to include Wilkes-Barre (City) and only later were they split [1]. This would appear to mean that Wilkes–Barre Township should have an endash. Does it also mean Wilkes-Barre should have an endash? --JorisvS (talk) 00:16, 15 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Great find, thank you! With such historical data available, "Wilkes–Barre Township" should have an en dash (as an attributive compound and older term of the two), while "Wilkes-Barre" stays with a hyphen (as it isn't an attributive but a standalone term). In other words, complete name of the city is "Wilkes-Barre" so it goes with a hyphen.

That's how it looks to me. Of course, I could be easily plain wrong there. :) — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 07:02, 18 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, looks like it. So how would you suggest to phrase this in the MOS? --JorisvS (talk) 10:19, 19 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I've taken a crack at it and have made a suggestion below. --JorisvS (talk) 10:34, 19 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Based on a quick look, your proposal is quite detailed and should cover it pretty well; the only thing which to me isn't good enough is the use of "substantively", as that opens a path for putting too many things under such a broad classifier. Of course, I'll have another look at it a bit later, and will try to provide some suggestions for improving that specific area. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 17:59, 21 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Well, instead of "substantively (on its own)" we could write "on its own", though that makes the current phrasing about the attributive use of the originally substantive "Lennard-Jones" less clear. --JorisvS (talk) 15:51, 24 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hm, I've been thinking about it further, and it might be just fine as-is. Only if we could somehow bring your new proposal to attention of more editors... — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 08:41, 26 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• From the IAU's own site, official naming principles: "It frequently happens that a comet is found by (a) discoverer(s) --- whether a single individual, two individuals working together, or a team --- who cannot detect cometary activity with the equipment that he/she/they possess. Such an object may therefore be assumed to be a minor planet and so designated when two or more nights' worth of observations are available to the Minor Planet Center (or posted, for example -- prior to being designated -- on the MPC's NEO Confirmation webpage, if unusual motion is detected)."

  So -- and --- are their best notion a sentence-level dash, it seems. On that page the word dash doesn't appear; nor is there an en dash or an em dash character. But we do find their infamously stupid principle for use of hyphens close by. Tony (talk) 11:45, 30 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Sooo, the IAU does know what a dash is and how to use it in a sentence..... But you don't like how they represent it? If you are using a typewriter, you don't know what a dash is because you can't type it? If you are limiting yourself to ASCII characters for some reason, you don't know what a dash is? Even if you are clearly using a dash, and using it correctly? I don't get your argument......

• The only thing I can gather from your post is that you really dislike IAU's spelling rules. --Enric Naval (talk) 14:04, 30 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Spelling? Tony (talk) 15:05, 30 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Oh, sorry, naming rules. (note that the hyphen is also used in English spelling, or so says the Pocket Oxford American Dictionary and Thesaurus and other books). --Enric Naval (talk) 15:46, 30 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment – What about making the hyphen the default, and the endash to indicate opposition? E.g. use a hyphen in Dallas-Fort Worth but a dash in Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Bwrs (talk) 09:51, 6 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• It is my understanding that a compounded proper name uses the hyphen when the name formed is chosen by the primary parties being joined—the en-dash is used when the compound is chosen by a third party. Married names are always hyphenated unless it is preferred to omit it; for example: Hillary Rodham Clinton and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Companies follow the same standard which is why McGraw-Hill is properly hyphenated and Wells Fargo is hyphen-less—and they have the additional option of choosing an ampersand; as in Black & Decker.

  Conversely, compounds like Hale–Bopp and Epstein–Barr were chosen by a third party; for example: the IAU and the AMA respectively. I believe the term: "attributive compound" was an effort to imply the compound was attributed, or given – requiring an en-dash. The Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania example uses a hyphen because the city was formed by a chosen merge of the two formerly independent cities whereas Wilkes–Barre Township was formed as a Home Rule Municipality by the legislative act of a third party. Other examples include Winston-Salem, North Carolina where both cities orchestrated the merge opposed to Minneapolis–Saint Paul and Dallas–Fort Worth which were both named by a census designation.

  Dashes for dummies says that a compound formed by an en-dash indicates the "existence of tension", which can be created when a name is decided without collaboration. I have seen no exceptions to this as a rule and I am confident a contrary example will not be found.—John Cline (talk) 19:42, 28 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Have you tried looking up attributive in a dictionary instead of making up weird theories about what it might mean? Dicklyon (talk) 05:27, 31 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed change 2

Per the most recent above discussion, I suggest changing:

An en dash is not used for a hyphenated personal name.

• Lennard-Jones potential with a hyphen: named after John Lennard-Jones

An en dash is used for the names of two or more people in an attributive compound.

• the Seifert–van Kampen theorem;   the Seeliger–Donker-Voet scheme;   the Alpher–Bethe–Gamow theory
• Comet Hale–Bopp or just Hale–Bopp (discovered by Hale and Bopp)

A hyphen is used by default in compounded proper names of single entities.

• Guinea-Bissau; Bissau is the capital, and this distinguishes the country from neighboring Guinea
• Wilkes-Barre, a single city named after two people, but Minneapolis–Saint Paul, a union of two cities
• John Lennard-Jones, an individual named after two families

to:

An en dash is used to indicate a conjunction of separate entities or concepts when used attributively, even when it is done so implicitly:

• the Seifert–van Kampen theorem;   the Seeliger–Donker-Voet scheme;   the Alpher–Bethe–Gamow theory
• Comet Hale–Bopp or just Hale–Bopp (discovered by Hale and Bopp)
• Hindi–Urdu controversy (a dispute between Hindi and Urdu)

A hyphen is used when such a compound used substantively (on its own) by default:

• Guinea-Bissau; Bissau is the capital, and this distinguishes the country from neighboring Guinea
• Wilkes-Barre, a single city named after two people, but Minneapolis–Saint Paul, an urban area named after its two largest cities
• John Lennard-Jones, an individual named after two families
• Hindi-Urdu (an alternative name for the Hindustani language), but Hindi–Urdu controversy (a dispute between Hindi and Urdu)
• Wilkes-Barre (one city named after Wilkes and Barre), but Wilkes–Barre Township (a township founded before the city and named after the same people)

If this substantively used compound is later used attributively, the hyphen is kept:

• Lennard-Jones potential, named after John Lennard-Jones

Feel free to copyedit my suggestion to bring its style in line with the rest of the MOS. --JorisvS (talk) 10:34, 19 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

People, could you chime in and respond. Is my latest proposal finally good (then please support), or are there still things that have been overlooked so far (then I'd like to know that very much)? --JorisvS (talk) 13:22, 26 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, it would be great to see more opinions on this proposal. JorisvS and I have been discussing some parts of the proposal for a long time, as you can see above. Please comment, so all that work isn't wasted; maybe we were plain wrong there, but however let's discuss. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 01:07, 31 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I don't understand this. Can you point to any grammar guides that do anything like this? Dicklyon (talk) 01:29, 31 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Are you referring to Wilkes-Barre vs. Wilkes–Barre Township or something else? — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 01:33, 31 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'm referring to what seems to be an odd, unfamiliar, or novel set of rules. And can you say what might change if we used these new rules? If there are differences, we'd need to look at them. If there are not, let's leave the rules at what we had a large majority of users supporting. Dicklyon (talk) 03:30, 31 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, for the beginning, could you please explain why did you rename Wilkes–Barre Township article back to Wilkes-Barre Township? Why a hyphen instead of an en dash, I'd really like to know the logic behind? — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 03:44, 31 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I got to reading the talk above and discovered that it had been moved without discussion to provoke a reaction. So I searched for any precedent for the en dash there, and couldn't find any. It seems to be only an effect of your newly made-up rules. Can you explain whether there's any basis in guides for it? Dicklyon (talk) 05:21, 31 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Please don't get me wrong, but I'll respond with a counterquestion. So, are there any guides against the earlier rename? In other words, why the hyphen is correct in "Wilkes-Barre Township", and why the en dash is incorrect? In the discussion above we've examined more than a few logic paths ending up with en dash being correct, so please correct us where we were wrong. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 05:34, 31 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know of any guide that addresses the difference between a city name and a township name, but the logic and newly invented rules seem like a stretch, and there are exactly zero sources that do this for the example in question. If we can treat Wilkes-Barre Township like the city Wilkes-Barre, as a single entity name, not a "Wilkes and Barre" or "Wilkes vs Barre" Township, then we can leave the hyphen. Or we can leave it just because there's no precedent nor guideline to do otherwise. This is nothing like Hale–Bopp, where half of reliable sources style it with the en dash for the same reasons that we do, IAU's recommendations notwithstanding. Dicklyon (talk) 05:58, 31 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

So, in "Wilkes-Barre Township" we're simply preserving the hyphen from an originally non-attributive compound? In other words, "Wilkes-Barre" is a standalone term no matter which way it's used, and not an attributive compound? — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 06:08, 31 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Early spellings/stylings include "township Wilkesbarre", Wilkes-barre, Wilkes-Barre, Wilkes Barre, etc. So, I don't have any good rationale, but the hyphen is what they have standardized on. Dicklyon (talk) 06:21, 31 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hm, but we should provide some kind of a rationale behind it, if you agree, just so it serves well as an example in the MOS. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 06:34, 31 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

But, as discussed above, 'preserving a hyphen' gets into trouble because the township predates the city. How can it be 'preserving'? --JorisvS (talk) 14:16, 31 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Exactly, something can be preserved only if it existed before. That's why we've spent so much time trying to figure out whether the hyphen existed before, or, in other words, whether the township predates the city or vice-versa. All that is inline with the need to provide some kind of a rationale, if you agree. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 16:34, 31 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The rules and rationales that we have incorporated in the dash and hyphen guidance all comes from published grammar guides. I am against making up new rules to support odd cases. I think we can leave "Wilkes-Barre Township" as an odd case if you believe the current rules imply an en dash there even though that is unprecedented. Dicklyon (talk) 15:56, 1 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I'm fine with leaving "Wilkes-Barre Township" as an exception, though it leaves a bit of a bitter taste in my mouth after spending so much time discussing about a likely en dash. :) Of course, we should also hear JorisvS' opinion. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 07:06, 2 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Leaving it as an exception has one problem: It opens the door to creating more exceptions and such discussion is bound to happen. Take the reason for this thread's existence: That Epstein–Barr virus should have a hyphen (it really shouldn't, but quite understandable from the nominator's POV at the time). I'm uneasy with leaving it an exception for this reason, not so much as the time we've spent analyzing it. Maybe if we find a rationale for it as an exception? --JorisvS (talk) 12:32, 2 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Does anyone have a suggestion how to deal with this, then? --JorisvS (talk) 14:58, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately, I'd say this a WP:DEADHORSE case. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 00:10, 9 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Suppose we wish to quote George, who said, "I like cake. I always have. I also like ice cream." Should we write George said, "I like cake... I also like ice cream." or George said, "I like cake. ... I also like ice cream." or George said, "I like cake.... I also like ice cream."? We should include the answer to this question in the Ellipse section of the MOS. Peter Chastain (talk) 14:13, 20 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I just re-read the section and noticed that elipses should be surrounded by spaces. So, I am guessing that the second alternative is correct. Should we put an example like this (i.e., where terminal punctuation preceeds the ellipses) in the MOS? Peter Chastain (talk) 14:20, 20 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the full stop is omitted, and the right way is George said, "I like cake ... I also like ice cream." Note that the space before the ellipsis is non-breaking ( ), but the one after the ellipsis is ordinary. --Stfg (talk) 21:05, 20 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The full stop before the ellipses lets us know that the first part was a complete sentence, which might be useful to a reader who wants to know if something was completely taken out of context. I think I heard (in school 50+ years ago???) that the period should be kept, but I imagine that different style guides treat this differently, and I wasn't even aware that a space should be placed before the ellipses. Peter Chastain (talk) 22:15, 20 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict)FWIW, I've read in style guides to use four dots it an ellipsis appears with a full stop and seven dots if omitting an entire paragraph. Not in our style guide!

My reading of MOS:ELLIPSIS is that there should be a space between the full stop and ellipsis:

None of the exceptions apply to the general rule: "Put a space on each side of an ellipsis" as none refer to an ellipsis appearing after terminal punctuation.

Thus: George said, "I like cake. ... I also like ice cream." —sroc 💬 22:19, 20 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It's poorly written. I take it that it says not to use the space with "sentence-final punctuation" that "directly follow[s] the ellipsis," but with the parenthetical about colons and so forth there, it's awkward and unclear that "directly following" still modifies "sentence-final punctuation." I think it should be re-written to more explicitly address periods.

Another point is that, technically speaking, if the ellipsis were to be in place of the underlined text here: "I like cake. I always have. I also like ice cream." then it would actually be correct not to include the space because the retained period would immediately follow the ellipsis rather than precede it. To be honest, I think this rule is a bit ill-advised for that reason (can't we just ditch the space since it doesn't actually communicate where the period was initially?), but I'm guessing the rule came from somewhere. AgnosticAphid talk 23:20, 20 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I think it's a bit far fetched to argue that the period immediately following "cake" is being elided rather than the one after "have"; it's evident that the second sentence ("I always have.") has been excised in its entirety. It makes no more sense than saying "I... always have" ("I [like cake. I] always have") instead of simply quoting "I always have.")

The rule does "actually communicate where the period was initially" because "I like cake. ..." faithfully leaves the period where it was in the original.

Anyway, the rule could certainly be better written for clarity:

And move the "terminal punctuation" link from the subsequent bullet. —sroc 💬 23:32, 20 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

 Done[2] —sroc 💬 23:38, 20 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

So, if I understand this discussion correctly, the existing rule covers the case where there is an unelided complete sentence, with full stop, followed by an ellipsis. Can we clarify/emphasize this with an example sentence, such as This is a complete sentence. ... and some text after an ellipsis.? Peter Chastain (talk) 13:11, 21 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

That's actually a bad example because the second sentence needs to start with a capital letter:

• If the start of the next sentence is cut off, convert to uppercase with square brackets (This is a complete sentence. ... [A]nd some text after an ellipsis.)
• If the start of the next sentence is included, quote as is (This is a complete sentence. ... Some text came after an ellipsis.)

I'm not sure that an example is needed though, at the risk of instruction creep. —sroc 💬 14:23, 21 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that instruction creep is bad, though I often perpetrate it. However, many (?) of us think we were taught that the correct form is "This is a complete sentence.... [A]nd some text after an ellipsis", which is why I opened this lengthy discussion in the first place. Rather than adding another instruction, can we just put an example like "This is a complete sentence. ... [A]nd some text after an ellipsis" immediately after "France, Germany, ... and Belgium"? Peter Chastain (talk) 03:20, 22 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Peter. This wouldn't be instruction creep so much as instruction clarification. I've been getting this wrong all this time, and would welcome this addition. --Stfg (talk) 10:48, 22 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Fair enough. How about this?

—sroc 💬 08:22, 23 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Like. Thanks. --Stfg (talk) 10:32, 23 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yes! Please! Thank you. Peter Chastain ^{[habla, por favor]} 06:32, 24 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Like Helps clarity. Reify-tech (talk) 21:22, 30 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

An interesting discussion has arisen at Talk:Irish American#Redirect.

• Tvx1 claimed that Irish-American "denotes someone holding dual citizenship of both the Republic of Ireland and of the United States of America" and should not redirect to Irish American "which... denotes an American citizen with Irish ancestry."

• Pburka argued that MOS:HYPHEN requires that "hyphens are never inserted into proper-name-based compounds". The relevant section states:

• I noted that MOS:ENDASH provides examples suggesting that a hyphen is used in compounds formed by multiple nationalities when used as an adjective but not as a noun. I subsequently revised the relevant section to read as follows:

Is my interpretation of MOS:ENDASH correct? If so, does MOS:HYPHEN need to be revised to avoid this (perceived) contradiction or potential confusion? —sroc 💬 01:17, 21 March 2014 (UTC) [edited 23:05, 23 March 2014 (UTC)][reply]

As a (hopefully) clarifying side note here, we've been trying to determine the appropriate way to provide a descriptive definition for the (apparent real-world usage of the) hyphenated noun Irish-American, specifically to describe someone with dual citizenship. It would seem inadequate to modify the WP entry to simply conform to MOS guidance, if that were actually inconsistent with the real-world usage. jxm (talk) 07:01, 23 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Jxm: This may be a better discussion for Talk:Irish American#Redirect, but are you suggesting that Irish American and Irish-American should be treated as an exception to MOS:DASH and should have distinct meanings? Surely if this is treated differently from Japanese American (noun form)/Japanese-American (adjectival form) and other such cases where the presence or absence of a hyphen is used for grammar rather than any semantic distinction, this is more likely to lead to confusion. —sroc 💬 08:33, 23 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Sroc: Hmmm.... I think I'm just trying to address the issue that Tvx1 brought up - i.e. that including the hyphen supposedly changes the meaning of the noun, rather than converting it to an adjective. (I suspect there may perhaps be a difference here between British and North American English.) Earlier this month, I tried to document this usage by inserting this text: The hyphenated term Irish-American describes a concept that pertains to both countries, as in Irish-American relations. When applied to an individual, it indicates that the person has dual citizenship. But that clarification got immediately reverted by Hmains for lack of citations, and Tvx1 has not yet identified any.

At the moment, dashed terms, such as Japanese–American, are not separately defined or redirected; I believe to try and do so probably would be an unnecessary MOS exception. But anyway, to be clear, I'm not at all suggesting that we remove the Redirect and establish a separate entry, as Tvx1 seems to be proposing. jxm (talk) 16:59, 23 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Is the contradiction that you're worried about in the over-broad interpretation of "hyphens are never inserted into proper-name-based compounds"? It means don't put hyphens in when a multi-word proper name gets used as a modifier; it doesn't mean you can't put hyphens between different one-word proper-name-based terms like Irish and American. As for the dual citizenship question, I've never heard of that issue before, bit if a special term is needed to indicate both Irish and American symmetrically, then the en dash would seem more appropriate. Dicklyon (talk) 17:59, 23 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I instinctively felt that an en dash was appropriate for cases such as Irish–American or Japanese–Australian (there's no such place as Ireland America of Japan-Australia), but MOS says otherwise.

If we did make a semantic difference between a dash or hyphen for dual nationalities vs a space for descent or ancestry, then I see three possible problems:

1. A grammatical issue about what to do with our family of Japanese-American traders—do they still get a hyphen, and could this cause confusion by implying dual nationality when it might have referred only to ancestry? (Does omitting the hyphen imply the Japanese family sells Americans?)
2. What to do of all those existing cases that universally use a space—do we need to set about checking each one to see whether a hyphen/dash is required?
3. Edit-warring over individual cases whether a hyphen/dash or space is warranted and difficulties in obtaining sources to verify citizenship status. In many cases, this may be unclear or not supported by reliable sources—so what are we do then?

What is the problem we are trying to solve? If an article on Irish Americans covers "Americans who can trace their ancestry to Ireland" (as it states in the opening line), this would include those who enjoy dual citizenship and those who don't. If clarification is needed in particular cases, this would be more clearly expressed in words rather than requiring a mere punctuation mark to do the heavy lifting and relying on the reader to import all manner of assumptions about what this might mean. —sroc 💬 22:55, 23 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Your intuition needs a tuneup. Whether to use hyphen or en dash should depend on what you want to convey via normal grammar conventions. An American who is Irish (ancestry wise or otherwise) is an Irish American; the adjective form of that gets a hyphen. The en dashed Irish–American implies a more symmetric arrangement, such as a person of both Irish and American citizenship, which what the original poster was asking about. Dicklyon (talk) 01:26, 26 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I really think WP gets this "hyphens and ethnicity/nationality" thing very very wrong. My intuition is exactly opposite to Tvx1's — to me, Irish American looks like someone who is simultaneously Irish and American, whereas, Irish-American makes the "Irish" part subordinate (just ancestry, not nationality). --Trovatore (talk) 04:32, 24 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

All the more reason not to rely on punctuation to carry the meaning here. If a distinction needs to be made in particular cases, let it be expressed in words, not with a hyphen or dash or space that is liable to misinterpretation. —sroc 💬 05:55, 24 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Well, that isn't my real point. The dual-national case is an exception; there, we can explain precisely. For the "American of Irish descent case", though, we should be using Irish-American, and that article should be moved there (and similarly for all similar cases). --Trovatore (talk) 06:18, 24 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

That being the case, are you proposing that MOS:ENDASH be amended to hyphenate conjunctions of multiple nationalities in all cases, whether as a noun or adjective? —sroc 💬 07:30, 24 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I would certainly support such a move, yes. --Trovatore (talk) 07:58, 24 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Would you care to start an RfC with a proposal? —sroc 💬 08:50, 24 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Wow, I'd really want to have my ducks in a row for that. Not sure I have time to give it the attention it merits. But I'd certainly support it, if someone else did. --Trovatore (talk) 07:30, 25 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I do think that the debate is getting rather unduly complicated here. As sroc just mentioned, it's probably best resolved by simply expressing the distinction in words - at least in this case. I was hoping to address the specific issue that Tvx1 had brought up - i.e. that including the hyphen supposedly changes the meaning of the noun, rather than converting it to an adjective. I had suggested including this text: The hyphenated term Irish-American describes a concept that pertains to both countries, as in Irish-American relations. When applied to an individual, it indicates that the person has dual citizenship. But that was reverted by Hmains on the grounds that we had no citations. Tvx1 has not yet identified any, and so here we are.... jxm (talk) 05:33, 25 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Irish-American relations would actually require an en dash (Irish–American relations) rather than a hyphen, in accordance with MOS:ENDASH (as with Japanese–American trade and France–Britain rivalry). I don't think this should change.

There is perhaps an argument that constructions such as Irish–American should have an en dash when referring to an individual (e.g., Francis "Frank" McCourt was an Irish–American teacher...), or perhaps using a hyphen (e.g., Francis "Frank" McCourt was an Irish-American teacher..., as Frank McCourt already reads now). A hyphen has the advantage that it can be used in conjunctions paired with an en dash (e.g., an Irish-American–Italian-American clash), although such phrases would almost certainly benefit from re-wording in any case. —sroc 💬 05:54, 25 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I would like to stress once again that this does not only pertain to the combination of Irish and American, but to any number of combinations of citizenships from all over the world.

Trovatore, are you tryin to tell us you don't know the function of an adjective. Let's get to the basics here. From the Community College Foundation: Adjectives are words that describe or modify another person or thing in the sentence. So now for our example: Irish American. Irish clearly is an adjective to the noun American here. It gives us a description of the noun; a description of what kind of American the subject is.

Regarding the multiple citizenships, I have to admit that it should be a dash rather than a hyphen. From the same source I cited earlier [3]: The en dash is also used to join compound modifiers made up of elements that are themselves either open compounds (frequently two-word proper nouns) or already hyphenated compounds

I would like to point out that this not simply a MOS issue and as a result not about Wikipedia Guidelines. This matter actually involves basic grammar rules of the English language which are, in fact, taught in primary school. Tvx1 (talk) 23:18, 25 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

This is not a question of general grammar. Compounds that describe ancestry with the first word and nationality with the second are a well-defined case apart, and they have always been hyphenated. WP's style is an innovation, as far as I can tell. It's virtually irrelevant to argue whether this is consistent with the general case of adjective-noun.

Moreover it's not really adjective-noun anyway. It's a compound adjective, used as a noun. --Trovatore (talk) 23:26, 25 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Our MOS is not alone in treating it as a normal grammar/punctuation issue. See this blog or this book. Dicklyon (talk) 01:20, 26 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, on reflection, what irritates me most about the WP style does in fact relate to grammar, to an extent. The point is that an Irish-American is not Irish. He or she is American. If you say "Irish American" it sounds like an American who's Irish, but he's not Irish, so that's wrong. He has Irish ancestry, and that's the distinction encoded into the hyphen. --Trovatore (talk) 01:25, 26 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

How does the hyphen convey that? Certainly "Irish-born American" or "Irish-heritage American" convey appropriate meaning, but does "Irish-American" convey the same connotation whereas "Irish American" does not? Would most readers discern a difference in meaning between "Irish-American" and "Irish American"? I wouldn't. —sroc 💬 01:43, 26 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The hyphen in "Irish-American person" merely conveys that here "Irish-American" is the adjective form of the noun compound "Irish American". That's all it does. That noun compound would normally be read as adjective Irish modifying noun American. If that's not the intended interpretation, one could attempt to clarify by using other punctuation, or by using words to indicate something different from what the default standard parse would imply. That's how English works; Trovatore doesn't seem to understand that. Dicklyon (talk) 01:50, 26 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

OK, Dick's trying to get me upset again; I'll try not to fall into that. sroc: Yes, I think Irish-American as an adjective-used-as-noun, or equivalently, in the predicate-adjective position (Michael is Irish-American), does indeed carry a different connotation from "Irish American", which looks like an American who's Irish. It's not that it's a perfect way of getting the distinction across, but it is at least a conventional way. I would go so far as to say it's the normal usage, even if there are a few style guides that disagree. --Trovatore (talk) 02:02, 26 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Dicklyon's interpretation here—or at least it is consistent with my interpretation of MOS:ENDASH (i.e., "Irish-American" as adjective, "Irish American" as noun phrase). You wrote "'Irish American'... looks like an American who's Irish"; but you haven't said what you think it means in "Michael is Irish-American"—couldn't this also mean that Michael is an American who's Irish? In both examples, the difference between whether or not to use a hyphen is based on grammar (adjective vs noun), not a semantic distinction (dual citizenship vs heritage). —sroc 💬 05:15, 26 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I think "Michael is an Irish-American" means "an American of Irish descent", not "an American who is Irish". In any case, in my experience, the hyphen is used much more than not. "Irish American" really just looks wrong, and looks like it's trying to say that the person is Irish. --Trovatore (talk) 05:48, 26 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

But many guides say not to use the hyphen, except in the use of the compound as adjective. Some go further and say never use the adjective. But since the normal rules of grammar work fine here, and are in accord with probably the majority of guides, there's really no reason to make up special-case rules here. Dicklyon (talk) 05:54, 26 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Well, the recommendation of those guides has gotta be a new thing, and it's one I don't like. Of course, I lean conservative on language issues, so I don't like most new things in that area. WP should be conservative too, in the absence of a clear rationale otherwise. But in this case there's a very clear reason not to like it, which goes beyond conservatism, and let me try one more time to explain it.

Whereas, as I've said, "Irish American" seems to mean "American who is Irish", "Irish-American" (used as a nominalized adjective — note in passing that there are no actual nouns here; even "American" is a nominalized adjective rather than a noun in its own right) is sort of an inherent compound. The hyphen warns you that you can't just separate it into its constituent parts. Sure, if you use it to modify a real noun in the direct position ("Irish-American man"), then you lose that distinction, but used as a nominalized adjective or in the predicate-adjective position, it lets you know that something is up, that the two words are more connected than that. In this case, the connection is that "Irish" is not to be taken as meaning, you know, actually Irish, but just an Irish-sort-of-American. --Trovatore (talk) 06:05, 26 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

No, if you say Micheal is Irish-American it means neither "an American of Irish descent" nor "an American who is Irish". It means that he is both Irish and American to an equal extent (i.e. holds both nationalities simultaniously). Tvx1 (talk) 11:55, 26 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Well, no in turn. As a general observation, it means whatever the author was intending to mean or describe when they included the hyphen. The only thing that is certain from the bare phrase alone is that there is some mix there, or nationality/citizenship, ethnicity, both or whatever else. The use or otherwise of a hyphen is no definitive or universally accepted indicator of what type of mix might be involved. For some it might carry great and specific meaning, albeit of potentially very different things to what an individual reader might assume, while for others it will simply be typographical convention. And that's before we even get to the acknowledged adjective vs compound noun issue. If WP wants the use or otherwise of a hyphen, en-dash or whatever in this context to convey specific and consistent meanings, the MoS should probably say so, if people are that bothered. N-HH (talk) 13:18, 26 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Right, there's nothing universally accepted, but in my experience, Irish-American is the usual formula for an American of Irish ancestry. Tvx1, a little less lecturing to native speakers, when you're not one, would be appreciated. --Trovatore (talk) 17:36, 26 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with N-HH. I would add that "[i]f WP wants the use or otherwise of a hyphen, en-dash or whatever in this context to convey specific and consistent meanings," the MOS should say so, however, it should not be assumed that the reader will innately understand this meaning without this being further explained in the text. —sroc 💬 22:27, 26 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

So, Trovatore, are you trying to say that just because I'm not a native English speaker I can't know and understand the rules of English grammar? If you'd take a look at my contributions in Wikipedia's talk pages you'll notice my English is more than adequate enough. It's on near-native level. Believe me, if have spend more than enough hours of my life studying the rules of the grammar of the English language. And in all honesty, I found it quite astonishing that, as a non-native speaker, I had to explain basic grammar rules to native speakers of that language. Tvx1 (talk) 20:14, 27 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

One of the biggest problems that a serious and competent student of a second language has is not being able to deal adequately with subtleties that seem in some way at variance with a general rule. Believe me, I have plenty of experience with that in Italian. After I had been living in Italy for the better part of a year, one of my instructors told me tu sei fin troppo bravo per essere stato in Italia un solo anno, ma il problema e` che vuoi essere di madrelingua, e questo non lo sei.

In this case, you've just flat-out missed a usage that, had you grown up in the States, you would have to have come across. --Trovatore (talk) 20:20, 27 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I grew up in the states, and what's clear is that there is no consistency to hyphen usage and omission. In books in the first half the twentieth century, usage was mixed, as it remains. But there's no evidence of any pattern more prevalent than the pattern of following the usual punctuation rules for compounds. The punctuation at least clarifies the structure, if not the exact intended meaning. Dicklyon (talk) 04:06, 28 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, I disagree. The use of the hyphen for <ethnicity>-<nationality> is plainly more prevalent than for anything else grammatically comparable. For example, German-American, but not Protestant-American; I almost want to put an asterisk in front of the latter. --Trovatore (talk) 04:10, 28 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, I've floated this question past WP:Reference Desk/Language, but I'm not convinced it's the best place to ask, because I'm basically asking a question about MOS conformity. Guillemets 《 》 come up a lot in articles about Chinese subjects (and elsewhere I'm sure), for example here. MOS:QUOTEMARKS indicates that straight quotes are the preferred quotation mark for articles, but I'm curious what the procedure is in a table like below, where we are noting the Chinese title. Do we use italics/quotations (as appropriate for major/minor works) or do we retain the guillemets?

Since my question appeared to cause a little confusion, here's a little background. I use the AutoWikiBrowser (AWB) and I was thinking of setting up some rules to automatically find and replace guillemets with straight quotes per MOS:QUOTEMARKS. This typically works fine when replacing "smart" quotes with straight quotes, but guillemets seem a little different.

In the English example above, we italicize the film A Magic Doctor in Suzhou because a film is a major work. So do we represent the Chinese title with italics (姑苏一怪) because it is a major work? Or do we use guillemets (《姑苏一怪》) because that is how the Chinese would present the work? Or do we use a plain translation (姑苏一怪) and skip the punctuation altogether? Or is there another preferred way to present the material? Thank you, and sorry for what is probably a weird niche question. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 01:53, 21 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

MOS:QUOTEMARKS says: "Likewise, avoid using the „low-high“ or guillemets (« ») quotation marks that are common in several foreign languages." So why contemplate using guillemets at all? —sroc 💬 02:51, 21 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Whatever you do, don't italicize the Chinese, unless it is customary to use Chinese italics for this purpose. We should not export our rules to Chinese. Peter Chastain (talk) 03:01, 21 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The guillemets are better than Italics in the context of Chinese names, but if such titles are sometimes represented in sources with neither, I'd go with that. Dicklyon (talk) 05:00, 21 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting mix of responses! Peter Chastain, Dicklyon, and sroc I'm perfectly fine with not using italics—they look kinda funky with Chinese characters anyway. I'm of the opinion that a straight substitution of guillemets with quotation marks is the intuitive fix, and the MOS seems to hint that this would be the way to go, but I'm hoping to get some definitive answers so I don't commit to a ton of AWB edits only to find out I've ruined the articles. :D Cyphoidbomb (talk) 05:55, 21 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

FWIW, our Guillemet article does not mention Chinese as a language that uses guillemets.

I think we need to consider why we use highlighting (italics, quotation marks, etc.): to separate an entity from surrounding text, to identify material in a foreign language, etc. In your example of a table, the material is already separated and needs no further highlighting, IMO. Consider, for example, this bizarre sentence:

I ate some fromage and then sat down to watch 姑苏一怪 and eat 怪.

(Please forgive me: if I knew any Chinese, I could probably come up with something better!) I would think that:

• The first italization is needed, because fromage is not an English word.
• The second italicization is needed, because the term refers to a movie (?) and is in an English sentence. (I realize that I may seem to be contradicting what I said about not exporting our rules to other languages, but the key here is that it is in an English sentence. )
• The third expression (怪) needs no italicization, because nobody would confuse it with an English word.

As to the whether we should use guillemets where they would be used in the foreign language, I am not sure, notwithstanding MOS:QUOTEMARKS. Consider Carlos dijo: «Tengo hambre» (Carlos said, "I'm hungry"). I would argue that, in the rare event that we quoted the sentence in en:WP, we should keep the original punctuation (the colon and guillemets), rather than imposing English rules (Carlos dijo, "Tengo hambre" or "Carlos dijo, 'Tengo hambre'") and thereby misquoting. And, of course, we use guillemets in the Guillemet article. Other than that, I cannot think of any cases where we need them. Peter Chastain (talk) 08:31, 21 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The more I think about this, I am coming up with "an interesting mix of responses" all by myself. Definitely don't put guillemets around the Chinese title in the table. If Chinese uses italics to indicate titles, then I would italicize it in the table, just as you italicized the English title. Peter Chastain (talk) 08:45, 21 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Chinese characters should not be italicized, whether for emphasis or any other reason, ever. It doesn't add anything for the user who understands Chinese, it adds no information for the mono-English speaker, and it can be made clear both in article text, A Magic Doctor in Suzhou (original title: 姑苏一怪), or in a table without adding typographic emphasis that isn't actually used in Chinese:

So for your example of You Benchang, I would strip the guillemets from the table, and I wouldn't introduce new quotation marks or italicization.__ E L A Q U E A T E 10:42, 21 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The reason we wouldn't italicize 姑苏一怪 is that we wouldn't use 姑苏一怪 as the main reference to the movie in an English sentence; we would use A Magic Doctor in Suzhou. We might reference 姑苏一怪 as the original title in Chinese, but as shown by things like WP:MOSQUOTE, we would treat it as an additional explanation of what we wrote in English. Wikipedia shouldn't have a sentence that requires understanding Chinese to read. We generally add the original non-Latin text only to expand on the English, not the other way around. This is the same treatment as for Korean, Arabic, etc. We wouldn't have a sentence like I ate some fromage and then sat down to watch 姑苏一怪 and eat 怪. because we wouldn't have the Chinese characters untranslated like that as if it's an understandable English word on its own. __ E L A Q U E A T E 11:17, 21 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Elaqueate, thank you for clarifying that italics are not used in Chinese. And I agree that we should never have a sentence like She ate some fromage and then sat down to watch 姑苏一怪. We might use fromage, because maybe the fact that it was French cheese is significant, and the mono-English reader can sort of pronounce it, so I would change the sentence to She ate some fromage and then sat down to watch A Magic Doctor in Suzhou (姑苏一怪), if I thought the reader needed to see the Chinese. I think that agrees with what you have suggested. Cyphoidbomb, does any of this help you with your original question? Peter Chastain (talk) 13:03, 21 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

So it seems like we're leaning toward no punctuation at all, just a straight non-italized, non-quoted representation of the Chinese characters? Ignoring the table above for a moment, because it represents an atypical scenario, my concern is that when this content appears in prose without explanation or translation (and this is a semi-regular occurrence when you're cleaning up random articles) removing the guillemets alone won't be too helpful because now we don't know what the text IS. Is it an animal? Is it a film title? Replacing guillemets with straight quotes would allow us to indicate that the text represents a title, while still adhering to the MOS. I don't particularly see a problem with having the Chinese conform slightly with English rules, since we are allowed to make minor edits and typographical fixes even to direct quotations, and since this is the English Wikipedia. It doesn't mean we don't love the Chinese. :) So a sentence as I propose it might look like: Ip's fourth book, "憤怒的雞" sold twelve copies. Thoughts on this take? (The Chinese text was a mechanical translation of "The Angry Chicken") Cyphoidbomb (talk) 15:43, 21 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

(Sorry this is a longer response; it's an interesting question.) First, I don't think a sentence of the type Ip's fourth book, "憤怒的雞" sold twelve copies. is appropriate in English wikipedia per the helpful advice at WP:NOCHINESEITALICS. Article text should not rely on non-Roman text alone for user friendliness, accessibility, and browser compatibility reasons (Even a table should not be composed of Chinese characters alone). I think that would be revised as Ip's fourth book, The Angry Chicken (憤怒的雞) sold twelve copies. which also makes it clear it's a book title and is readable by a general reader. The Chinese should enhance an English sentence that can generally stand on its own. I think it's great to have more information than less, but adding quotes does not tell a user that it's describing a media title if it's unclear what it says in the first place. The two sentences from WP:NOCHINESEITALICS that seem to apply regarding Chinese characters are (for article text) They should always be put within parentheses, as if they were call-outs not part of the sentence. and (for tables) Chinese insertions to list and table entries can be done without parentheses because these items are seldom read like sentences. If you take a look at a different working example that lists a lot of movie titles (The University Days of a Dog) you can see that adding quotation marks around any of the non-roman film titles would not significantly help indicate it was a title, and would make it less readable and useful overall. I fully agree we should make an indication that something is a book or film, but quotes around Chinese characters isn't the way.__ E L A Q U E A T E 16:54, 21 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I also looked here and I think adding quotes in that situation would be messy and harmful to clarity. It would be nice to address your concern where content appears in prose without explanation or translation, but Chinese characters shouldn't be without explanation and translation in article text per this, and in direct quotes per this. If you have a more specific article example, I'd look at it.__ E L A Q U E A T E 17:47, 21 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Elaqueate Okay, so fine, no quotations it is! I wish I had a better example of random Chinese text appearing in articles. My question was mostly geared toward smaller niche articles that are hastily assembled, and general maintenance of these articles, as opposed to ones that are well crafted and get a lot of editor traffic. My question also wasn't oriented ONLY on Chinese articles--guillemets come up in French and such. AWB is an automated tool, so I was hoping to give it some rules to easily process this recurring content, the way that I automatically change smart quotes to straight quotes. That's easy! I've removed the guillemets at You Benchang. I greatly appreciate the feedback from y'all, thank you. Incidentally, the prose at You Benchang reminds me of a Choose Your Own Adventure book. "You joined the Chinese Dramatists Association in 1980. You first rose to prominence in 1986 for playing Ji Gong in the television series Ji Gong. You drink the vial of liquid. Turn to page 12."

Russian also uses guillemets and I retain them when quote marks are needed, e.g.: "My Beloved Arctic" (Russian: «Я люблю моё Заполярье») is... Why do I do this? Because I like it that way. If a different person was translating the article and he wanted to use straight quotes that'd be OK too.

If another person came along and changed my guillemets to straight quotes, that'd be OK I guess but pointlessly substituting one person's aesthetic sense for another's, it's not recommended; instead a WP:ENGVAR-type ethos of "let it be" is much happier-making. I'd recommend that the editor do what he thinks looks and works and best that other editors respect that. Herostratus (talk) 14:20, 26 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

As a reader, I would prefer that foreign language text not be redacted when it is quoted. In particular, I would prefer that the original punctuation be retained, including guillemets. The question is whether wiki policy has enough wiggle room to allow retaining them. Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 16:21, 26 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

OK. It's rare for quote marks to actually be part of a quotation. Only with something like Employing his usual atrocious Russian, Belvedev wrote "Если бы я был мужиком, я бы сказал: «К черту с тобой!» к каждому дворянину." (English: "If I were a peasant, I would say 'To hell with you!' to every nobleman.") I guess, which that sort of construction would be pretty rare. The outer quote marks were not written by Belvedev, they are our Wikipedia way of indicating that it's a quote. And the vast majority of quote marks are of that kind. (The inner quote marks should use whatever Belvedev used, since they're part of a quote,I think.)

In the example I gave above, "My Beloved Arctic" is not a quotation or part of the song name, the quote marks are there because that's how we designate song names. IMO either "My Beloved Arctic" (Russian: «Я люблю моё Заполярье») is... or "My Beloved Arctic" (Russian: "Я люблю моё Заполярье") is... would be OK. Anything that's not expressly forbidden is allowed here, I think. Herostratus (talk) 05:10, 28 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Need advice: I noticed that many skiing articles are awash with little flag icons. It's been pointed out to me that the skiing world championships are individual and don't recognise countries; what's more, the flags icons seem to be pervasive and mostly used to "flag [sic]" locations where the races took place. So today I've been working hard at removing the MOS:FLAG violations whilst at the same time aligning dates per MOS:NUM. However, I've just been reverted at two articles[4][5] by the same user without explanation. Is there a problem with my interpretation? -- Ohc ^¡digame! 16:50, 21 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I agree you're right on the flag issue, but without comment from that user , they might be objecting to the date format change - even though yes, in both cases dmy makes more sense than mdy per nationality, the articles are more consistent (like, 90%+) in the latter and per DATERET, you probably should not change those without gaining consensus. The flag and link removal, though, seems spot on. --MASEM (t) 16:55, 21 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

MOS::FLAG specifically allows flags in sports articles, so the editor is absolutely correct in reverting. Hawkeye7 (talk) 20:17, 21 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I checked where the flags were and they were used not to identify the skier's nationality (which MOS:FLAG does allow for) but to indicate the nation where the various competitions were held, and that's a use strongly discouraged by MOS:FLAG. --MASEM (t) 20:28, 21 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment Now OhConfucius and I have butted heads at the meaning of MOS:NUM and how it is applied, but this is one issue in which I am in complete agreement with him on. In my opinion, flags should be removed from just about everywhere they occur. It is true that MOS:FLAG allows flag icons in certain articles and in certain places, but it never allows them in the infobox. The fact that a few articles have survived this long with flag icons in the infobox is mostly a result of a few tendentious and very vocal editors who manage those articles on a daily basis. These articles are mostly F1, Ice Hockey, Golf, and Tennis. The rest of the sports articles on Wikipedia have pretty much done away with infobox flag icons altogether. --JOJ ^Hutton 16:05, 22 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• Masem: "they were used not to identify the skier's nationality ... but to indicate the nation where the various competitions were held"—count me as one who was totally fooled until you said that. In any case, I think flags without country-names are a grand disservice to readers: what's that one with the thee red–white–red horizontal stripes? To insert just the country-name, or even an abbreviation of it if space is tight, provides direct information without the stained-glass-window effect. Tony (talk) 02:15, 23 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I have been having disagreements with an editor at Aadhaar, where I find my changes have been successively reverted despite discussion and my attempts at addressing his concerns. In the edit summary of their last revert, they say: "Reverting the non-value-add changes made without building consensus". I have invited them here to voice any further concerns, and to confirm that article-level consensus is not required to implement style guidelines. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 05:14, 23 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Update the major sticking point for the editor concerned seems to be their insistence on using American spelling on an article about an Indian subject. Said editor seems reluctant to come here to discuss. Could someone help out before there are any WP:POINT-violations and edit warring? Thanks, -- Ohc ^¡digame! 13:04, 26 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

  While I agree that British/Indian English should be used in the article, I don't see any evidence that this has been discussed on the article's talk page. I suggest starting a discussion there. Pburka (talk) 14:06, 26 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I see a lot of bickering there, but it doesn't seem to be about this particularly.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ⚞(^Ʌⱷ҅̆_⚲͜ⱷ^{^})≼  07:34, 29 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The wikiproject natives are restless and making up their own rules again. This is a problem because wikiprojects are just pages at which editors agree to coordinate their collaboration on particular topics; they are not independent authorities on anything, much less WP style guidelines, and per WP:LOCALCONSENSUS policy, they cannot trump broader consensus, as at MOS. In particular in this case, the misnamed Wikipedia:WikiProject Climbing/Article Guidelines#Routes is giving a "guideline" that conflicts with MOS and MOS:ITALICS specifically, making up a new case of "required" italicization. It's seems to be yet another incidence of WP:Specialist style fallacy at work, an imposition of a style quirk from specialist publications that doesn't make sense in a general purpose encyclopedia and violates the WP:ASTONISH rules for all readers other than those who are climbing enthusiasts who read lots of publications that use these italics; it's simply emphasis for its own sake. This has implications beyond climbing, since it would imply the italicization of other forms of trail, which would then imply italicization of larger and more formal trackways, e.g. lanes and streets and highways. [It actually has even broader implications, for the italicization of all "creative performable works" in sport, as detailed below. Beyond this, the root issue is actually broader still, about declaration of novel, narrow-audience stylistic quirks as "conventions" without evidence that their uses is conventional in English at all. This is not trivial. 07:11, 7 April 2014 (UTC)]

My recommendation would be to:

1. Immediately move Wikipedia:WikiProject Climbing/Article Guidelines to Wikipedia:WikiProject Climbing/Article recommendations I've already performed this move; if it's reverted, I'll open a WP:RM discussion.
2. Change the wording there to: "While route names are sometimes italicized in climbing publications, Wikipedia does not italicize route names (nor formation names). For example: The Nose of El Capitan, not The Nose of El Capitan.

 — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ⚞(^Ʌⱷ҅̆_⚲͜ⱷ^{^})≼  06:00, 29 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

PS: Most articles at Category:Climbing routes do not even comply with that pseudo-guideline anyway.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ⚞(^Ʌⱷ҅̆_⚲͜ⱷ^{^})≼  06:02, 29 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm. I'm not familiar with other cases of 'WP:SSF' (whoever wrote that essay obviously has got overly annoyed about this at some point) and whether they do any harm to the encyclopedia or not. Some points/questions about this case:

1. Quite a lot of climbing guides etc. do use italic names for climbing routes so this doesn't seem an unreasonable thing for Wikipedia to do.
2. I wouldn't rely on the average article on a climbing route, climber etc. as being a good guide for precedent. Climbing articles are in general pretty underdeveloped.
3. Climbing routes are normally named by the person who (thought them up or) first successfully climbed them. In a sense they are the 'major works' of the climber, with a subsequent climb of the route being somewhat akin to a performance of the of the work.
4. WP:ASTONISH! Really? I think the Principle of least astonishment is meant to apply to things far more astonishing than the choice of 2 similar styles of displaying text. About the strongest reaction I could imagine from the average reader would be 'Oh, I didn't know climbing routes were italicized'. If I'm missing something could you please explain how 'The average reader' is 'shocked, surprised, or overwhelmingly confused' by italicized climbing route names?
5. Could you elaborate on why italicized climbing routes are 'simply emphasis for its own sake' and how the same statement doesn't apply to the other names and titles in WP:ITALIC? Equally could you elaborate on why italicized climbing route names don't make sense in a general purpose encyclopedia?
6. Do any general style guides cover the italicization or not of climbing route names? Or even the general case of what to do with things that haven't been covered by a style guide? If I look at some guides to italicization online they don't mention climbing routes, but given that proportionately few people write about climbing routes this is hardly unsurprising in a general guide.
7. If I give a couple of examples from Lynn Hill, a recent featured article on a climber, so probably the most heavily scrutinised:
   • 'but after experimenting with it during her ascent of Vandals, she found it a useful way to learn challenging climbs' - Doesn't seem confusing to me as it is. Without italics would be clear too.
   • '1979, Pea Brain 5.12d, Independence Pass, Colorado − First free ascent and first female ascent of the grade, with John Long' - Again doesn't seem confusing. Without italics it would need extra punctuation of some kind. This is from a section that is rather like a bibliography or references section in a book or paper, which often italicize the name of the work. I find that having italic sections in bibliographies aids my ability to scan through them - I find the same here, without any italics the whole section would become harder to read.
8. I don't find the slippery slope argument very persuasive. It doesn't seem reasonable to extrapolate to roads especially as AFAIK there is no particular precedent for roads being italicized.JMiall₰ 19:30, 30 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure why you think you can refute the reasoning at SFF if you aren't familiar with it and haven't even come to an opinion on whether the issues it raises actually matter to the encyclopedia. Denigrating those who do care about it has having "got overly annoyed" isn't a valid argument. Taking your points in the same numerical order:

1. This is the main line of faulty reasoning that necessitated WP:SSF. MOS bends over backwards to accommodate specialist preferences, but only when they do not conflict with normal usage. This conflicts with normal usage, namely the principle that we do not willy-nilly emphasis things for non-conventional reasons, like grocers' signs so often do. As for this particular issue, field guides of all sorts almost universally engage in various sorts of emphasis-for-its-own-sake, specifically to make scanning the text easier. (SSF actually already mentions that.) Has nothing at all to do with what WP should do in encyclopedic writing (WP actually has its own version of this, namely boldfacing the article topic in the lead). It does not at all indicate a professional convention within a field.
2. Consensus is not based on "precedent". What is actually being done at climbing articles, by the entire range of editors who have worked on them, is a very, very good indication of what the consensus is on how to edit them, vs. one editor's recent insistence on adding this odd-ball italicization and trying to make a "guideline" out of it. Aside from that, there is a strong, decade-long consensus at MOS to not italicize (or boldface, etc.) things unless they're enumerated as exceptions here. Per WP:LOCALCONSENSUS policy, this trumps micro-consensuses at wikiprojects, who really need to come here and gain consensus to change MOS to add their case as an exception.
3. No one could take that argument seriously. By that reasoning, every single thing that's not being done before should be italicized and named after whoever does it first. But we don't do that at all. Works are published or performed creative output, not exercises in navigational problem-solving. Even where we do actually treat some such successes as proper names, they are not italicized, e.g. names of sailing and other trade routes, names of long-distance racing routes, etc. I observe that in fact plenty of them are not actually named after their first climbers. There does not seem to be any real standard being applied here, even at the proper-naming level, and even if there were, that has nothing to do with italics. See also the fact that we do not italicize other moves and maneuvers in other sports or other fields more broadly. Not movies in chess, not medical procedures, not skateboarding tricks, not welding techniques, even when they are treated as capitalized proper names (which is also done too often on Wikipedia, but that's another matter).
4. You seem to be unaware of how WP:ASTONISH is frequently applied here. It is in fact quite surprising to people to see italicization and other style effects applied in nonstandard ways, and this astonishment and negative reactions brought on by it are a perpetual source of strife on Wikipedia. This is why MOS exists in the first place, and it's why ArbCom cases like WP:ARBATC have led to discretionary sanctions hovering over the topic. People get very worked up about it, even if you personally don't. But I guess you do, too, if you're going to write an itemized list of 8.2 arguments in favor of italics here.
5. It's emphasis for it's own sake, because it's emphasis, but there's no widely-recognized rationale for it here. We have some universally-accepted italicizations, e.g. of book titles and movie title, but this isn't one of them. It doesn't make sense in a general-purpose encyclopedia for the same reason that putting certified "gold"-selling album titles in a yellow font doesn't make sense, or underlining the names of movie characters doesn't make sense. It's emphasis just to emphasize for reasons "someone" finds important but which the average reader won't understand and for whom it's distracting and annoying.
6. Not that I can find, and I have a whole shelf-full of such books. The general rule is to not use italics or boldface or other form of emphasis except by convention. This isn't a convention MOS recognizes and no one's made a case to recognize it. The existence of such a convention in number of external style guides on English writing would help persuade people on WP that this is a convention that is recognizable enough that it's not unhelpful here. But we don't have any such evidence. The facts that it's just some handful of people writing about a narrow specialist topic and making up their own unrecognizable "convention", so unknown even to climbers that most climbing articles here don't even use it, are the very reasons that this is unencyclopedic SSF stuff. You can't demonstrate how solid and universal a convention it is by noting how few people use it and how little it matters in the real world and how few of the specialists in that area even use it. probably writes for one of them, or reads one a lot, is trying to get WP to adopt it, but even the project on this topic isn't bothering.
7. The examples don't seem confusing to you because you're used to them and like them. And whether it's confusing or not isn't the criterion of interest here anyway; it's distracting, unusual emphasis (in this case, not even based on a real convention) being pushed by specialists in a narrow field on everyone else, and it causes readers to stop and think "this is weird; why is this italicized?", instead of just absorbing the article. The fact that something might need punctuation is perfectly fine, and expected. Emphasizing misc. things as a substitute for punctuation is not permissible. That example needs punctuation anyway, since we cannot count on italics being preserved in all re-uses of WP content (any time you're depending on italics or boldface to be available in order for the content to be parseable, you're probably making a mistake). Besides which, a route being treated as a proper name and capitalized is already more than enough emphasis to begin with.
8. You're failing to understand, then, why it's a slippery slope, despite my spelling it out clearly. On a gentler grade, there is no difference between an climbing route and a trail. There is no particular difference, nomenclature-wise, between a barely-established trail and a very well established one, worn into ruts. There is, next, no particular difference between a long-term trail and a road; the one historically becomes the other. Cf. also the likening to racing routes, etc.; we never italicize any such things.

 — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ⚞(^Ʌⱷ҅̆_⚲͜ⱷ^{^})≼  23:09, 2 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• For those who like external sources to ground MOS reasoning in, The Chicago Manual of Style (16th and still-current ed., 2010) says at "8.55 Thoroughfares and the like" that such things are capitalized (only - not also italicized). A climbing route is a thoroughfare, just a vertically specialized one used by a select few. Who wants to bet that precisely zero mainstream English-language style guides recommend italicizing something like this?  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ⚞(^Ʌⱷ҅̆_⚲͜ⱷ^{^})≼  08:08, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

As I thought I clearly said, I was trying to deal with just this case on its own merits not all the other cases that prompted the writing of that essay. Good job you didn't denigrate anyone with your 1st sentence eh?

1. Can you give an example of where some specialist usage agreed with normal usage and then the MOS bent over backwards to accomodate it? As far as I can tell climbing routes get italicized for exactly the same reason that book titles are - because they are strings of words applied as a name that it might be possible to misconstrue if it wasn't made clear that it was a title of some kind. Seems conventional to me.
2. I only mentioned this because of your PS above. What point were you trying to make other than one about precedent? Anyway, WP:Consensus#Reaching_consensus_through_editing rather undermines your claim that consensus is not based on precedent.
3. I take that argument seriously although I'm not saying that it should necessarily outweigh other arguments. Creative output is coming up with new things, whether they are climbing routes or books or whatever. You seem to be trying to argue based on generalising massively and I'm not sure this is helpful. The italicization of ships in the MOS is quite specific and yet hasn't led to all things that travel through the ocean being treated the same.
4. If it is being applied like that then I suspect it is being applied wrongly. Minimising total surprise of all wikipedia readers would mean that the MOS here had to follow the most common style in the world. And no I really don't get worked up about italics, I'd never really thought about it before, the guideline was nothing to do with me. I've checked my edit history and I've listed climbing routes as both italicized and non-italicized. I just thought that it was worth replying as nobody else from the project had.
5. but what is the rationale for italicising book titles etc here? If fundamentally it is just that when book titles are written about externally then they get italicized so we do it here, then why doesn't the same argument apply to climbing routes? If it is that when book titles are written about externally then they get italicized to avoid confusion from the reader so we do the same here, then whey doesn't the same argument apply to climbing routes?
6. Your are making things up - it is not unrecognisable, it is fairly common in climbing guides but not universal. If it was unknown to climbers why would any articles use it at all? Steph Davis which has had a bit of recent attention uses this format. I would love to find a style guide that covered the case of writing about climbing routes in a generalist kind of way. As you've checked a shelf full of books I think it is fairly safe to say that no convention has been set by a style guide. Therefore if there was a general convention set by books that mention climbing routes then it would be a reasonable one for wikipedia to adopt.
7. If someone hadn't come across written climbing route names before then why would they think it weird? If they had then there's a decent chance that what they had seen previously was italicized.
8. ships haven't generalised to all vehicles or things on water, books haven't generalised to all written things.JMiall₰ 21:02, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

1. That was three discussions in one:
   1. The entire MOS consists largely of such cases, MOS:NUM in paritcular is mostly a long string of specialist stuff that MOS has adopted because it was clearly demonstrable in sources, was arguably helpful and (not "or") didn't not sharply conflict with normal English usage or cause any other WP:KISS or WP:ASTONISH problem. As just one of hundreds of example, the requirement to format unit as 42 ft. It's geeky and nitpicky, and virtually no one cares, and it even contradicts common usage (which is to run the number and unit together), and it forbids another common usage, to add "." of many non-metric unit abbreviations, and so on. Many editors hate it, a very large number ignore it, but virtually no one ever editwars over it. People just get over the fact that it doesn't match their preferences and they move on.
   2. I've already addressed your "climbing routes are like book titles" analogy. Reiterating it as if no one addressed it doesn't magically make it unaddressed. You're also again ignoring the facts that no reliable sources on the English language agree with your desire to capitalizing climbing routes or any other kinds of routes. And reliable sources on climbing in particular (which are not really relevant with regard to what MOS should advise as a writing style matter, if the style jars with normal reader expectations) have not agreed on this as a uniform convention, you just have a few who do it.
   3. Your position that climbing routes are "creative works" is unadulterated WP:OR.
2. We just disagree on that, and it's a side point anyway.
3. All style guides generalize. All rule systems about anything generalize. They have to. There's a finite limit to the number of rules anyone can remember much less care about enough to adhere to. NB: I'm unaware of any ocean-going vessels that are not italicized, so I'm not sure what you're talking about there.
4. Then open a thread about what you see as misapplication of WP:ASTONISH at its talk page and work to clarify it's wording or scope. NB: Wikipedia generally does use the most common style in the anglophone world for whatever style question has arisen, as determined first by consulting reliable sources on usage and grammar and secondly by seeing what mainstream sources do (e.g. Google N-Grams tells us what's being done in books). As noted in point 1, if it's not confusing/annoying to the majority of readers by directly conflicting with normal usage, and it's reliably sourceable as a real-world convention, and likely to be helpful to readers, MOS will often override an imprecise common usage with a more precise technical one (again, see MOS:NUM for piles of cases). Italicizing climbing routes doesn't meet any of these criteria.
5. Italicization of book titles is universal convention recommended by all style guides and familiar to all readers.
6. Not universal even in the specialist field you claim it's a standard in. It's NOT a standard, it's something you like and that some other climbers like. No one said "it was unknown to climbers". Who's "making stuff up", again? Please to read WP:SSF; you argument fits the pattern there.
7. Because it's not normal English usage, and is interpreted as inappropriate, confusing, even misleading emphasis.
8. Ships have in fact generalized to aircraft, spacecraft and probably several other kinds of vehicles other than automobiles, and real-world style and grammar authorities note these cases as conventions. None of them accept such italics for routes/ways/tracks/trails of any kind. Next. Book title italicization has of course generalized to all written things of a similar scope, such as plays, screenplays, magazines, journals, poetry anthologies, opera librettos, etc., etc., as well as e-books and e-magazins, comics, and by analogy to photographic, radio and electronic programming including TV series, movies, webcasts, etc. By analogy with quotation marks used for book chapter titles, they are used for magazine, journal, website, etc. article, for TV show and webcast episodes, etc. All of this usage is consistently covered in all style guides and used almost consistently in all mainstream publications. Again, not true of climbing routes or anything related or analogous to climbing routes.

 — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_⚲͜ⱷ^ʌ≼  06:55, 7 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

This isn't really about climbing routes in particular, it's about the declaration of something novel and of limited, specialized interest to be a "convention", when there's no evidence that the usage is in fact conventional in English at all, maybe not even in the field for which the claim is being made. (Note how closely this relates to the topic dominating most of this page below this thread, and every other thing that pops up on the radar at WT:SSF, BTW).

It may be helpful to take a step back, away from a subject you are personally invested in and replace it with something fictional. Here's what your argument equates to: "My hoverboarding magazine always puts hoverboarding tricks in italics, and lots of hoverboarders read it, so they're familiar with it and I'm declaring it a convention, and by the way these tricks are creative, performable works and so are just like movies and books. No mainstream style guides so far cover hoverboarding tricks, so the magazine is the reliable authority and MOS has to obey it and use italics for tricks in hoverboarding articles. Um, no, no, it doesn't.

If you still don't believe this, go have a look at real-world articles here and tell me how many places you find any of the following italicized: football plays, fencing moves, skateboarding or surfing tricks, cue sports techniques, martial arts moves (except where they're italicized for being in a non-English language), or any other "performable work" in any sport. You're the one who liked that analogy to named "creative works" that can be re-enaced as performances, remember, since the analogy to trails and roads didn't work for you? It's certainly a much more apt comparison than books and movies.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_⚲͜ⱷ^ʌ≼  07:11, 7 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

That hoverboard statement isn't what I'm saying but I'll rewrite it so that it is something that I agree with:

Hoverboarding magazines, books etc. often but not always put hoverboarding tricks in italics, and people who have ever previously read about hoverboard tricks are likely familiar with this, and other people at the hoverboarding wikiproject, probably more knowledgeable than me, have declared it a convention on wikipedia, which I'm happy to go along with. By way of deciding if some more general principles regarding italics should instead apply to this case, then one that can be considered is that these tricks are in some way creative, performable works and so are in some way like movies and books - other principles should also be considered. No mainstream style guides so far cover hoverboarding tricks, so the canon of works that do cover them is the best available reliable authority, and as MOS hasn't previously considered hoverboard tricks if it wants to be bothered having a rule for them, then either the position of adopting the wikiproject convention or the general convention used in the canon should have reasonable weight in the decision.

In fact surveying say 100 random works from different eras and publishers that cover hoverboarding tricks, preferably works that are as generalist as possible, and establishing what the normal usage is would seem a very sensible thing to do.

By way of a very small survey of climbing magazines that I have available where I am now:

1. Climber (magazine) - italicizes climbing route names, book names & other standard things in body text
2. Summit magazine - doesn't italicize climbing route names or book names in body text

Both achieve a readable end result. Both would be perfectly reasonable ways to format wikipedia.

I am not claiming that all things that are a bit like creative works should automatically be italicized, just that the same principles should be applied generally. So if many reliable style guides say something should be italicized that has properties x, y & z then there's nothing inherently wrong with italicizing other things that have properties x & y if the style guides don't mention what to do with them, provided a readable end result is achieved. I have no idea if football plays etc. are normally italicized externally to wikipedia. If they always/never are then wikipedia should do the same. If they mostly are/aren't then wikipedia should probably do the same. Either way italicizing them here is no big deal as they are by nature things that are only going to appear in a very small proportion of articles.

Imagine a Venn diagram of all possible phrases in which certain subcategories are picked out as things to be formatted. The subcategories each belong to several more general categories that themselves have other subcategories. If general style guides don't indicate which general category formats, or similar subcategory formats, should take precedence for formating a subcategory then shouldn't we bear all of them in mind when deciding what to do? JMiall₰ 19:07, 7 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Too tired to get into all of this right now, but "people who have [n]ever previously read about X" is not a rationale we use for anything on Wikipedia.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  13:37, 8 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The argument about book titles being italicized per standard rule is all fine and dandy; however climbing, is a relatively new and evolving sport, and it has to start somewhere. The guide books, and a lot of climbers use it, in time it will probably be a standardized format, just like books. When the first book was written was its title italicized then? No, because it took time for the new rules to take effect. Who decided those rules? (rhetorical) If the rationale is used that The Chicago Manual of Style, wait The Chicago Manual of Style doesn't specify to, then you are admitting that grammar, and such are a non-evolving science, which nobody in their right mind could agree with. Just my 2 cents. speednat (talk) 18:45, 10 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Most of the discussions at WT:MOSCAPS are dominated by confusion, misguided proposals that can't work, and general hemming and hawing for weeks over "issues" that would be settled in seconds at WT:MOS proper, because of the institutional memory of the regular participants here, and the sheer number of watchers, who are liable to rapidly detect missteps and overgeneralizations and bring them up. There seems to be a general trend at that sub-guideline to be more permissive than MOS itself is, usually on the perennial, false basis of misapplying the "follow the sources" maxim to try to reoly upon souces that are reliable for facts about a topic as if reliable for styling text in an encyclopedia. MOSCAPS in particular is arguably a consistent, perpetual problem in this regard, more so than most other MOS subpages, but definitely not the only problematic one in this "drifting slowly into a PoV-fork" vein; MOS:TEXT goes there often (see below), and MOS:NUM does it sometimes, too. There are other problems inherent in this divvying up of MOS into fiefdoms model. E.g., MOS:CAPS and MOS:PN overlap excessively (they could safely be merged, actually). But for the short term, I'd like to encourage more MOS watchers to either participate in discussion at WT:MOSCAPS and keep them on track, or better yet move them here for resolution when they become moribund or confused at MOSCAPS.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ⚞(^Ʌⱷ҅̆_⚲͜ⱷ^{^})≼  07:17, 29 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

MOS:TEXT#Uses of italics that are specific to Wikipedia now inexplicably says we do not italicize self-refs (e.g. instructions to the reader, like "(see also War of 1812)", but of course we consistently do italicize these; there are hundreds of thousands of such cross-references, almost universally italicized, including by a huge family of templates {{See also}}, etc.) that auto-italicize them. I've raised this issue in more detail at WT:MOSTEXT#Italicization of self-refs, and suggested specific clarifying examples.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ⚞(^Ʌⱷ҅̆_⚲͜ⱷ^{^})≼  07:18, 29 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The short version: In various places we advise against capitalizing things like "Director" and "River" and "Trust" when they are not used with or as part of a name, but this principle needs to be generalized into one rule in one place, instead of it being reiterated piecemeal with not-entirely-consistent rationales, and consequently not being applied in several places where it should be.

The "Generic words" provision at MOS:CAPS#Institutions (and a similar one a section later, about geographic names, and another similar one, I think under job titles; MOS proper repeats some of this stuff) is really a general fact about any such proper name or title. It would be nice if we codified the following examples (or some like them) into one overarching rule:

• Correct: according to Vice-president of Marketing Jane Hernandez of The Hernandez Company
• Correct: according to the vice-president of marketing of that company
• Incorrect: according to the Vice-president of Marketing of that Company
• Correct: along the Colorado River
• Correct: along the river, the largest in Colorado
• Incorrect: along the River, the largest in Colorado
• Correct: some members of Mishmiense Group were reclassified
• Correct: some members of that group were reclassified
• Incorrect: some members of that Group were reclassified

These things are capitalized when they're used as part of a name, but not when used generically (with rare conventional exceptions like President (of a nation, not an organization), and Prime Minister, and Secretary General (of the UN) still being capitalized when referring to the office generically. Not sure how to best write the rule, though. Ideas?  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ⚞(^Ʌⱷ҅̆_⚲͜ⱷ^{^})≼  07:20, 29 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Firstly, it should be Vice-President (title) or vice-president (generic), not Vice-president.

Secondly, what's wrong with the current guidance at MOS:CAPS#Institutions? We needn't crowd this section with more examples than are needed to convey the point. —sroc 💬 02:47, 1 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Well, obviously what's wrong with it is that it's at #Insitutions, and that only covers institutions. Last I looked, job title, rivers and biological groupings are not institutions. :-) PS: No, it wouldn't be "Vice-President" in that context; we do not capitalize after a hyphen in English. The Vice-President of the United States is a weird conventional exception dating to the late 1700s, before capitalization was fully standardized. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ⚞(^Ʌⱷ҅̆_⚲͜ⱷ^{^})≼  22:12, 2 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Any objections (that actually understood the point...)? It's been about a week now.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ⚞(^Ʌⱷ҅̆_⚲͜ⱷ^{^})≼  11:56, 5 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I thought I was learning to tolerate traditionally incorrect uses of "due to", but I'm having difficulty accepting this:

"Due to historical events, Germans are often called Hitler in a derogatory manner."

Could I get a second opinion? 86.176.211.10 (talk) 02:27, 1 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Presumably you're referring to List of terms used for Germans#Hitler? Disregarding grammar, it's unsourced and, I think, unlikely to be true. I suggest deleting the whole line. Pburka (talk) 02:34, 1 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I deleted some irrelevant material there, and was tempted to delete the whole section, but my purpose here is to get opinions on the grammar. 86.176.211.10 (talk) 02:44, 1 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

See User:Wavelength/About English/Expressions "because of" and "due to".

—Wavelength (talk) 02:56, 1 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

In WP:REFPUNC, it is stated that a reference tag should go after adjoining punctuation (e.g., period or comma), except that it should go before a dash and sometimes before a closing parenthesis. Should the tag also go before a colon, especially when the colon introduces a list that is not in-line? See, for example, the list in Waste hierarchy#Challenges for local and regional authorities. Peter Chastain ^{[habla, por favor]} 02:55, 3 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

No. After a colon or semicolon. Dicklyon (talk) 03:13, 3 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Concur; after, for the same reason it goes after a period or comma. WP:IAR applies to any odd case in which it might be important to not do that, e.g. The counties of US states, called parishes in Louisiana^{[citation to source for "parishes" fact only]}: Long list here, citing other sources for the data in the list inline or at end of list That is, there can be cases where the citation should go before the colon, just as there are such cases for placement before a closing parenthesis/bracket.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ⚞(^Ʌⱷ҅̆_⚲͜ⱷ^{^})≼  11:54, 5 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

An editor just made a bold edit to say that individual works of art should be set off with quotation marks. I reverted it, since existing guidelines throughout the MOS say to use italics for all works of art.

Am I reading the guideline right that we use italics for all works of art, or is it a small/large work sort of thing, similar to songs v. albums? Are there standards in the art world for using quotation marks that we need to take into account? The other editor made a passing mention but didn't supply specifics; that's why I wanted to open discussion. —C.Fred (talk) 19:10, 3 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I collect art and deal in it on a small scale. I'm used to italics for, e.g., paintings, drawings, etchings and sculpture (including reproductions, e.g. prints and bronzes). I think the complainant may be overly accustomed tothe imprecise usage of semi-pro sellers on eBay, signs in antique shops, and tags on the wall at local "galleries" (i.e. painting sellers, not museums). I have to think that such entities have about as much authority on such style matters as greengrocers do on use of all-caps, quotation marks and apostrophes. Actual style guides like Chicago Manual of Style say to use italics (CMoS 16th ed., 2010, sect. 8.2: "Chicago prefers italics to set off the titles of major or freestanding works such as books, journals, movies, and paintings.") I have an enormous number of art books, and virtually all of them use italics for this purpose, while most of the few I can find that don't italicize use boldfacing, one used small-caps mixed with real ones (it was basically a font where all the letterforms were majuscule, and only size determined which were real capitals), but none I've looked at so far used quotation marks, except a couple of lower-end auction catalogues (i.e. more "art greengrocers"). Our recommendation of italics for this purpose is very solid. Even people who want to try to make style matters be about what [usually specialized] reliable sources [that they prefer] do, rather than what reliable sources about English language usage say (to italicize) and what other encyclopedias do (italicize – Britannica and Columbia both italicize, as do the several art encyclopedias I have on hand), are going to have to concede on this one, because the italicization is nearly universal in art-related books, too.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ⚞(^Ʌⱷ҅̆_⚲͜ⱷ^{^})≼  10:41, 5 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for thoroughly researching and confirming the above. The original editor has quietly acceded to the reversion, considers the issue closed, likely will be more cautious about bold edits in the MOS, and has resumed uneventful and constructive editing of articles. This is based on help messages I left on the editor's Talk page, responses, and observed behavior. Cheers! Reify-tech (talk) 00:44, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I conflated two different editors with whom I had communicated separately (I was working late). Nevertheless, the issue appears to be closed. Cheers! Reify-tech (talk) 21:36, 7 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I know it has probably been ongoing for a while, but please can someone give me a link to the discussion to change the font for Wikipedia headings (and probably articles)? Thanks, Matty.007 19:31, 3 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Does this help? __ E L A Q U E A T E 19:38, 3 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the heads up. Matty.007 19:48, 3 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Some nice voting here on the village pump. —Neotarf (talk) 08:22, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hello fellow Wikipedians. It has come to my attention that there is a lack of consensus among the community about how to summarise an entertainment product's critical reception. Such "products" would encompass books, films, albums, songs and video games, and as such the issue can be applied to articles within the scope of multiple WikiProjects. The "summary" in question refers to the statement usually found at the beginning of a "Critical reception" section and echoed in the lede that gives the reader a short, one-sentence summary of the product's reception.

The problem I identify is that while we do our best to summarise using language attributed to WP:RS, our word choices often violate our WP:PEACOCK policy and more often than not stray into WP:OR territory. One of the best examples I can find is the article Yeezus, having passed a GA Review with this language; "The album received rave reviews from music critics". Dictionary.com considers the word an informal term. The usage of the word on Yeezus ignited a widespread debate where no clear consensus was established, and the language has remained. It is adopted in other articles, such as Beyoncé (album) and Good Kid, M.A.A.D City.

Common among articles as well is the usage of "universal", a term defined as " relating to or done by all people or things in the world or in a particular group; applicable to all cases". Such language suggests that, quite literally, the product in question received an entirely positive reception among any person capable of being receptive to it. A similar problem is brought out by the use of "overwhelming", which could perhaps imply that reviewers were literally taken aback by the brilliance of the product to the point of being unable to perform other bodily functions until their fingers typed up a review to summarise their experience.

You could say I'm being hyperbolic. I feel that neutrality, one of the project's biggest problems (knives out, wolves of Conservapedia), is being exacerbated by the use of such language. It's in direct conflict with our MoS policy on peacock words, yet such handles have been so widely used now with no direct policy in the MoS to address them.

Proponents of the language may put forward the argument that it is supported by reliable sources, making it okay. We often use Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic as our bible, echoing the language used by these sources. Now here's my thesis: if the language is echoed by a reliable source, why is it not being directly attributed to it? When summarising reviews in an article, the language may be supported by sources. I propose that if such is the case, we have a duty to our readers to clearly attribute the peacock language to the source. In doing so we remove the bias from the language by clarifying that the language is not our own. In these instances, there should quotation marks around the term with a footnote directing the reader to the usage of the language by the source.

This, I feel, is an appropriate compromise for those who feel that the language is backed up by the sources, and those who feel that it introduces bias into the article. I propose the drafting of a new policy in the MoS, based on consensus among us, that clearly explains how, in the scenarios where the writer boldly wishes to use such language, it is to be written and verified.

tl;dr - If we're going to be using peacock language when summarising critical reception, we need to make it crystal clear that the language is not being used by us, but rather is attributed to a reliable source

CR4ZE (t • c) 13:54, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

This is definitely something that needs to be discussed. I agree that any peacock language should be quoted, and/or attributed to the source in which that language is used. I would suggest that the word "mostly" be used when describing something that received critical acclaim. I'm relatively new to Wikipedia, however, so I'm not an expert in this field. Twyfan714 (talk) 14:00, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I think when a product has something like over 90% positive reception, we can use the phrase "overwhelmingly positive" without it being POV or peacock. In these cases, it's just a statement of fact. Adding a cite for it is fine, but it should be presented later in the prose anyway. In other cases (e.g. 80% positive reception), we can use the more tame terms "generally positive" or just "positive".

"Rave" should never be used, as it is informal and lacks concrete definition. Similarly, "universal" shouldn't be used either unless something was REALLY, literally universally hailed, like the invention of sliced bread. Just my $.02. — Frεcklεfσσt | Talk 14:51, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Bah! Its rave reviews made tearing and dunking comparatively barbaric, and now I never get invited to dinner parties. InedibleHulk (talk) 20:24, April 4, 2014 (UTC)

We have guidelines at WP:SUBSTANTIATE and WP:TONE that can apply here. I think that Wikipedia's goal of having a formal tone means that we should avoid using informal words like "rave". I would also say that "universal" is too hyperbolic to be "clear and understandable" per WP:TONE. In regard to films (since Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic were mentioned), WikiProject Film has guidelines at MOS:FILM#Critical response that says, "The overall critical response to a film should be supported by attributions to reliable sources. Avoid weasel words. If any form of paraphrasing is disputed, quote the source directly. Detailed commentary from reliable sources of the critics' consensus (or lack thereof) for a film is encouraged." The part about disputing paraphrasing comes from muddled attempts to interpret Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic, especially when Rotten Tomatoes just says a review is positive or negative, never mixed. (E.g., The Avengers has a similar RT % to Gravity, but Gravity's Metacritic score is much higher due to Metacritic actually classifying some reviews as mixed.) I don't think it's a matter of guidelines lacking -- they are just being overlooked and need to be enforced better. There's pretty constant discussion at WikiProject Film in this regard, and we talk out the best ways to report on critical reception. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 17:44, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Erik, though Rotten Tomatoes states "Fresh" or "Rotten," I don't think it's accurate to state that it says that a film is either positive or negative; its critical consensus summary is more indicative of what the critics there felt, and we all know that 50%, for example, is not simply positive or simply negative. What we really have with regard to Rotten Tomatoes seeming positive or negative because of their fresh rating is that they did not think of a term to indicate something between fresh and rotten. Flyer22 (talk) 21:40, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Rotten Tomatoes says so itself here, "A good review is denoted by a FRESH red tomato. A bad review is denoted by a ROTTEN green tomato." It's similar enough to be interchangeable. It says here that it does not do mixed ratings to keep it simple. Whenever I cite Rotten Tomatoes now, I make it absolutely clear that it only does positive/negative classifications, and indicate that Metacritic does a positive/mixed/negative breakdown. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 00:35, 5 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I don't really count Flixster as Rotten Tomatoes, parent company or not. But either way, I still see it as fact that "[the Rotten Tomatoes] critical consensus summary is more indicative of what the critics there felt." If they feel that a film is bad, they state so in clear enough words; when a film there has a 59% score, for example, never is the film indicated as a purely bad film by their summary, and it would be silly anyway to state that a film is bad because it's 1% away from a 60% "good" score, a rating that can change very easily depending on one or more extra reviews. Anyway, what do you mean you "make it absolutely clear that it only does positive/negative classifications"? We shouldn't be adding "Rotten Tomatoes only judges films as good or bad," or something similar, to our critical reception sections, especially when their critical consensus summary shows otherwise. Flyer22 (talk) 00:50, 5 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps an issue in this context is that, in general, critical responses are not summaries of critical response, while those sites that make it their business to summarize critical response are not attributed. Our purposes fall somewhere between. --Ring Cinema (talk) 19:13, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• In general, we have far to many quotes in our critical reception sections, especially for commercial music and films. Why quote a review that says "rave" at all? Doesn't it just transfer the hyperbole (and potentially the POV) from there to here? And I think "overwhelmingly positive" is bad even if it's 99% -- too emotional (who is supposed to be overwhelmed?) "Extremely positive" may be OK, or write in terms of "a large majority". --Stfg (talk) 19:53, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • We need to make a distinction here. The concern here is how to neutrally word the summary of a work's overall critical reception. It is not about quoting an individual critic's opinion. In this case, we should be talking about sources that summarize how critics are responding to a given work. We can (should?) attribute the sources in-text and paraphrase any hyperbolic quotations with a formal tone. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 20:58, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • Good point. (And I agree with the "should"). --Stfg (talk) 21:24, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
      • How about, as I said, "mostly" for predominantly positive or negative critical reception? Seems fairly neutral to me, but that's just my two cents. Twyfan714 (talk) 00:44, 5 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

That is what we often do for the critical reception sections of film articles, Twyfan714; we add "generally" or "mostly" in clear-cut cases, though some WP:FILM editors would rather that we not, especially because what is clear-cut on these matters can sometimes be debatable; such a matter has been recently discussed at WP:FILMMOS, which, until a few minutes ago, I thought this latest discussion was also taking place at; that's the talk page such discussions are supposed to be made at with regard to films. All WP:FILM editors are against adding "generally mixed," though, because it is senseless; see this latest discussion there about that, where I point to past discussions about film critical reception sections. Flyer22 (talk) 01:05, 5 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Erik and Stfg - In some cases, editors may summarise reviews by adopting language used by a journalist; they don't just take from review aggregates. In regards to the use of the word "rave", in the Yeezus article I cited, the usage of the word has in fact been attributed to a journalist, not an aggregate like Rotten Tomatoes. Reading through the long talk page debate, Dan56's justification was that the word exists in the dictionary and can be attributed to reliable sources. I don't consider that an adequate justification, especially not with how it was written, which is why I feel this debate is important so that we can avoid contention in the future. My argument is that if editors wish to do so, I certainly would never agree with it, but they should at least put "quotations" around the statement and provide a footnote directing to its usage. It's good to see that MOS:FILM#Critical response attempts to address this, however I don't think it quite covers all the usages and wouldn't stand up if it was brought into video game or album articles. This is why I would propose a uniform policy that applies to all entertainment mediums; peacock terms are best avoided, but if you wish to use them they should be directly attributed to an RS to remove bias.

@Twyfan714 and Flyer22 - I think terms like "generally" or "mostly" (or the synonymous "largely") remove a great deal of bias in comparison with the excessive "rave" and "universal" terms. However, I think on a by-case basis, editors should carefully consider how they would justify such language, because the attribution is certainly debatable. CR4ZE (t • c) 06:50, 5 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, any peacock language must carry quotes and a source. However, too many vague quantifiers could make for vague articles. As I mentioned above, it isn't the usual thing for a reviewer to attempt a summary of critical response, and a heavy dose of skepticism should greet such an effort anyway. Memories are fuzzy, if I recall correctly. --Ring Cinema (talk) 07:36, 5 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Wrong venue; this is a WT:RS discussion, not a WT:MOS one.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ⚞(^Ʌⱷ҅̆_⚲͜ⱷ^{^})≼  09:46, 5 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

<shrug> It's also about Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Words to watch and WP:NPOV (not to exclude others, perhaps). --Stfg (talk) 10:27, 5 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. It's as much an issue to do with language as it is to do with sources. As long as we have one coordinated place to discuss it, that shouldn't matter. CR4ZE (t • c) 10:53, 5 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@CR4ZE - I think that if over 75% of the reviews on Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic are positive, then I think we could safely put "mostly" or "generally" without there being too much of a fuss. Now of course, for something that is not on those two sites (or any site that sums up reviews and is reliable), then it gets to be more difficult. But how does that sound? Twyfan714 (talk) 13:44, 5 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Twyfan714 - Yes, I agree with you on that, but you just have to be careful as to what constitutes "mostly". Here's one problem with Metacritic; if a video game receives a score of 89, it is deemed "generally favourable reviews", yet if it receives a 90 it gets "universal acclaim". There's no attribution between "okay" and "amazing". We have to go on a by-case basis and use the best language we can, but in some cases, we could go even more neutral; "[x] was well-received by critics" is perhaps the most neutral statement we could use when handling that hazy area between "generally" and "universal". CR4ZE (t • c) 10:29, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Flyer22, my justification at the Yeezus article was more than what you said it was. "Awfully limited language does not demonstrate any neutrality. If the reviews were strong enough for these folks to use 'rave', then that's the tone of the material in question. We're not misleading readers with a perfunctory 'positive reviews' when that can range from lukewarm ('B-' anyone?) to what Metacritic likes to call 'universal acclaim', especially when there are several sources backing it up." In short, if reviewers chose "to talk or write about someone or something in an excited or enthusiastic way" (Merriem-Webster), then they by definition raved about it. The tone of the word would only become a neutrality issue if it wasn't accurate. If reviewers raved about something, I don't see why readers shouldn't know it simply because the tone of the word rubs some the wrong way. In the case of Yeezus, several sources verified the nature of the positive reviews, and if it was only one journalist's choice words, then obviously we'd defer to what most sources said. Dan56 (talk) 00:47, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Dan56, I didn't state anything about your justification at the Yeezus article or anything about you at all in this discussion. Flyer22 (talk) 01:08, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Forgive me, I meant CR4ZE. This discussion is very messy. Dan56 (talk) 01:11, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Dan56 - the exact word choices made by reviewers, who have more creative leash when it comes to expressing their opinions, does not give us free rein to use any language we like. We have to be a notch above what a reviewer thinks because the reviewer's words are their own opinion, but if we are to approach the standard of an encyclopedia, we are required to report here with as neutral a tone as we can write. "Rave" is not a neutral term. It is a peacock term, plain and simple. Whether or not a journalist "raves" about the album does not change the context of the attribution when we use it. However, you're far from the point of this discussion - I'm not here to try and get you to change "rave", because you're basically married to it and won't let go. What I'm proposing is that we create new policy that mandates that if we are to use such terms, we remove the bias by treating "rave" as a direct quote from an RS, instead of it being our own language. In the case of the Yeezus article, what I would personally want to see is quotation marks and a footnote around the term "rave" in both the lead and the reception section. WP:LEADCITE requires that we balance the desire to reduce redundant citations in the lead, but for a term which you absolutely cannot deny is contentious I would deem it absolutely necessary. CR4ZE (t • c) 10:29, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't used to be such a hardliner on this issue, but I now regularly strip out all emotive language and unsourced analysis from reception sections. Although MOS:FILM, WP:SAID, and WP:PEACOCK cover these issues rather well, I think more explicit advice might be helpful – and perhaps help prevent other articles from reaching Good/Featured with such non-neutral language. I would strongly support a blanket ban on "rave", "universal", "overwhelming", "acclaim", "hail", etc. If you wouldn't use the word in a mixed review, don't use it in a positive or negative review. For example:

• The film received overwhelmingly mixed reviews." What? This doesn't make any sense. Don't use "overwhelmingly".
• The film received universally mixed reviews." Doesn't make sense. Don't use "universally".
• Critics raved that it was an average film. Doesn't make sense. Don't use "raved".
• Critics hailed it as an average film. Doesn't make sense. Don't use "hailed".

Seems almost common sense to me, but what do I know? I'm not a universally acclaimed Wikipedian. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 03:51, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

NinjaRobotPirate - You nailed it. Explicit advice is exactly what I feel we need, as well. CR4ZE (t • c) 10:29, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Although it's not only about phrasing that doesn't make sense, but about hype and POV, which, per other examples cited previously, will sometimes make sense on its own terms but hardly be appropriate for an encyclopedia entry. I'd also support explicitly blocking for example "universal acclaim", which appears everywhere, usually based on the specific Metacritic judgment. The problem is that film and music pages are often written by fans, who want to seize on every piece of favourable hyperbole and journalese they can find and cram it in. If you dispute it, they will claim it's sourced, failing to understand, as WP editors often do, that the issue is one about encyclopedic presentation and language, not one about sources per se. N-HH (talk) 10:40, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

To make it clear, what I would personally want to see in a best-case scenario is a total block on all of these POV attributions. However, the editors on the other side of the coin will argue that when the language is used, it's justified in the sources. As I stated above in my response to Dan56, I don't agree with that. I brought it up in my GA review of Threes! but Czar and I happily reached a compromise (with some insight from Sergecross73, Masem and Tezero). That compromise is what I would want to see as an explicit policy; If you're going to use the peacock terms, it's not the best choice, but you're allowed to so long as it is crystal clear that it is coming from a source, not us. Enforcing a total ban will disgruntle too many editors and exacerbate the problem. CR4ZE (t • c) 11:34, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

In the video game context I've also worked with Sergecross73 in a large discussion that eventually turned into an RfC over the term "universal acclaim" here. The word "universal" has a precise definition which is totally at odds with the way Metacritic uses the word. Wikipedia isn't a Metacritic affiliate so we should not be using their terminology unless attributed and in this case we should completely avoid using such a misleading term of art. As for the word "rave", I have fewer problems. Maybe saying "Critics raved about the film" is misleading in that it suggests that all critics raved about it, but the word "raved" isn't a peacock term if it's true. Sometimes critics do rave about a film/game/album/book/etc. So I think it would be acceptable to say something like "Roger Ebert raved about the film, describing it as 'a rare treat of a film - like some exotic tarte poire noisette'[ref1]" as long as it's properly reffed. I suppose it's possibly treading into the territory of original research to use the term, but it's not outrageous in my view. -Thibbs (talk) 11:44, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

CR4ZE, "rave" isn't the reviewer's word, it's the journalists who are reporting how the reviewers received whatever they reviewed. Should we abstain from using "praise" too when articles on a creative work's reception use it to describe how reviewers received it? Dan56 (talk) 14:48, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that if an RS uses the term "raved" then we can use it and ref it. It seems as though CR4ZE is asking for attribution in this case, though. So we'd say something like "According to XYZ Magazine, critics raved about the film.[ref2]" If we as editors are using the term, again I don't think it's outrageous, but ultimately it's a matter of interpretation. Did a specific reviewer "rave"? Did he "gush"? Did he "laud to the heavens"? Some might argue that any kind of interpretation violates WP:OR and we should just say "Joe Reviewer said 'I would sell my first-born to see the film again'" without seeking to interpret this as a positive or a negative review. This is a very hardline approach. -Thibbs (talk) 14:59, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Surely the point about "rave" specifically is that it is informal and/or journalese. Just because a newspaper might use the term, that doesn't mean an encyclopedia should, whether referenced and even attributed or not. Things here really need to be written in a more sober, and less definitive and/or hyperbolic, style than even reputable sources might rely on, even when simply describing an individual review or the overall reaction rather than making any direct assertions in WP's own voice. If there's evidence, eg from Rotten Tomatoes or wherever, that most or even all the reviewers singled out rated something positively, we can and probably should just say it was "critically well received" or whatever, not that critics "raved" about it or that it had "universal acclaim"; if we single out an individual review, just take a representative quote. N-HH (talk) 15:23, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

A rave is a certain kind of positive review. It's characterized by excited enthusiasm. I don't see a tone problem in describing the degree of positivity in a review if it's actually sourceable. If for example a normally reserved reviewer gives a wildly enthusiastic review of a work and this fact is noted by an RS then I think we could neutrally point this out in Wikipedia as well. The word "rave" itself shouldn't be put on the list of peacock terms in my view. -Thibbs (talk) 15:33, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

CR4ZE, you keep stating "policy." But we don't have policies on words in the way you are suggesting. We have guidelines and essays, and the main guideline in that regard is Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Words to watch (the one others have pointed to when linking to sections of it, such as WP:PEACOCK); that is where you should make your proposal about such words. Since that page is generally inactive, though, it would be best to alert editors of this talk page to any discussion you start there about the matter.

As for "universal acclaim," if we use "universal acclaim" based on Metacritic, then it should be attributed to Metacritic via WP:Intext-attribution, just like we often use WP:Intext-attribution to attribute the other Metacritic ratings; for example, Metacritic's "generally favorable reviews" rating is attributed to them at the The Avengers (2012 film) article. Flyer22 (talk) 15:50, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'd just avoid using the term "universal acclaim" completely. It's an exceptional claim and it would require exceptional sourcing. Almost never is something universally acclaimed. Metacritic uses the term in a specific way (>90% positive reviews) that isn't shared by the rest of the world. If we're using it with attribution, I think we'd have to also include a note explaining what Metacritic means by "universal acclaim". -Thibbs (talk) 15:56, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

When WP:Intext-attribution is involved, I disagree. That's what the WP:Intext-attribution guideline is there for -- to make it clear who is stating it. In the case I cited, we are stating that Metacritic judged it that way; it's the same for when Metacritic judges something as "universal acclaim." For film articles, the most we go in explaining what Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic mean by their classification systems is what you can see in the The Avengers (2012 film) article; we link to review aggregator, the sites' names, sometimes for "average rating" or "rating average" we WP:Pipelink "weighted arithmetic mean," and we state the score based on how many reviews. I don't think that the reception section of film articles or of other type of articles should be digressing into how these rating systems work; if the readers are too lazy to click on the links and the references, that is on them. Flyer22 (talk) 16:15, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Metacritic's usage and goals are different from ours but it's hard to see how quoting them is going to turn out badly. Readers can judge for themselves. --Ring Cinema (talk) 16:17, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Most of Metacritic's terms are comprehensible without further explanation. "Generally favorable reviews" on Metacritic means very nearly the same thing as it does in standard English. The term "universal acclaim," however is quite different from its standard English equivalent. That something is "universal" is an absolute statement in standard English whereas it's only used relatively on Metacritic. Again, it's a exceptional claim and it requires multiple high-quality RSes to back it up. Simply attributing it to Metacritic results in confusion for the reader interpreting it from a standard English perspective. For further discussion of this term see the above-linked RfC. -Thibbs (talk) 16:30, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thibbs, like I stated, I can't agree that "universal acclaim" is an "exceptional claim" when it concerns WP:Intext-attribution and that it therefore requires multiple high-quality sources to back it up. If it's specifically Metacritic's terminology, reflecting their rating score, and is attributed as such, no multiple high-quality sources are needed to back it up (it's simply an aspect of reporting Metacritic's rating score), and I'm certain that such a thing will never be endorsed by WP:FILM or the wider Wikipedia community. Flyer22 (talk) 20:14, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I guess it depends how it's handled. If the line was something like: "The film received what Metacritic described as 'universal acclaim' (an average score of greater than 90%)" then that would be fine because a someone unfamiliar with Metacritic's nonstandard use of the word "universal" would be able to clearly see that criticism may not have in fact been universally positive. If the line was more like: "The film received universal critical acclaim.[ref Metacritic]" then there are big problems even though it's reffed. The fact of the matter is that if there are 100 ratings averages then Metacritic could still call the result "universal acclaim" even if 1 in 10 had scored the film in the single digits. That's misleading. So I'd even have a problem with: "Metacritic noted that the film had received 'universal acclaim'". Without explanation of what "universal acclaim" means, readers are quite likely to interpret it literally. Not everyone is familiar with Metacritic's interesting use of repurposed words. -Thibbs (talk) 21:17, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Have you looked over the RfC linked above, by the way? There was fairly broad support at the time for simply giving the raw Metacritic score and replacing "universal critical acclaim" with simply "critical acclaim". I think that still makes the most sense. -Thibbs (talk) 21:19, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Again, this is why I mentioned WP:Intext-attribution and brought up that WP:FILM editors often do their part in assisting readers in understanding the Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic rating systems. It is not our part to go into digressions about those rating systems; readers have the links and the references to assist them on that. And the word noted should generally be avoided, per WP:SAID; the WP:SAID guideline exists to help describe things neutrally and accurately. Flyer22 (talk) 21:24, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Just came across this and as the largest contributor to Beyoncé, I'll offer my two cents. I can't speak for film articles as I haven't been involved in many on a significant level, especially not their Reception sections, but I notice from editing album articles and generally reading music criticism, most albums tend to receive "positive reviews". A significant, but less, amount of albums garner mixed reviews and quite a small number of albums are negatively received. I think it's quite customary for journalists to award a safe 3/5 to albums (perhaps in the interest of the publication), indicative of good music but nothing excellent; a score which would = 60/100, creeping into Metacritic's "positive/generally favorable" band. I think this is why Metacritic has avoided lumping all positively-reviewed albums together, awarding "universal acclaim" to anything 80>, because the album in question is not commonplace and has caused journalists to consider it differently from the standard rock/rap/pop/r'n'b album with some hits, but filler aplenty. @Thibbs: I understand your point, but I think "universal acclaim" has to be read purposively. I don't think the reasonable person would think that the film/album in question has been enjoyed by every reviewer in history, but there is a consensus among journalists that this is an excellent work. —JennKR | ☎ 20:07, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It's a hyperbolic term. Interpreted literally it's an exceptional claim; interpreted metaphorically it is confusing and in my view it sets an unencyclopedic tone. -Thibbs (talk) 21:17, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Exactly. As a stylistic/presentation point, the phrase reads horribly and should rather obviously be avoided as being hyperbolic, misleading or both, whichever way you cut it. It's not an answer to that problem to say that it's OK so long as we attribute it and/or that readers can go and find out what Metacritic technically mean by it according to their internal system and terminology. Prima facie, in basic English, it means something very different and much more definitive. N-HH (talk) 22:16, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

If properly attributed with intext language, it's hardly any different to me than relaying that "[So and so] critic stated that the film is the best film ever." Just not a problem with intext attribution, as far as I'm concerned. Flyer22 (talk) 00:58, 7 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

N-HH, I think you're point about an encyclopedia shouldn't have to use the term was brought up at the discussion in the Yeezus article talk page, where I pointed out that encyclopedias have used it (Oxford, Brittanica) If that's the case, would it in any way change your position? Dan56 (talk) 01:39, 7 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Well, @Flyer22, the immediate point here was about "universal acclaim". As for your links re "rave reviews", they don't show widespread usage; if anything, they suggest it's not commonly found in encyclopedic writing, even if it is once or twice. I guess like any other phrase, it would be fine with attribution and as a specific quote but I'm not sure even then it would ever be needed as such. Again I do not think it is OK to say in WP's voice, for example, simply "Album X received rave reviews" even with a footnote and reference.

Back to "universal acclaim", and @Dan, of course there's obvious difference between saying "According to Critic A, it was the best film ever" and "According to a review aggregator site, the film had universal acclaim". The first statement clearly simply reports the critic's personal view, and will obviously be read as such. Even if one believes the critic's view is "wrong", the statement stands as a fact. By contrast, the second purports to convey a more objective, definitive and quasi-scientific judgment to the effect that every single critic acclaimed the film, when that is not what the Metacritic rating means and unlikely to ever be the case. Sure, you can say "well no one will believe it literally means that" but some people may well do. Equally, it's an odd defence to argue that it's OK to use phrases that don't actually mean what they literally appear to because people will realise they don't mean what they appear to. Why not use a phrase which does mean what it appears to, and is neither misleading nor hyperbolic, such as "critically well received"? N-HH (talk) 09:05, 7 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I know this was @Dan, but in my opinion, and as I said before, most things are "well received" by journalists. In an ideal world, I don't think 60-70% would mean "well received" but it just has come to do so, by Metacritic and the reviewers themselves. I think these terms have been necessary to distinguish good albums/films from excellent albums/films. You can argue they are hyperbolic, but if an album/film does receive "rave/extremely positive/etc." reviews, I don't see the problem with including and attributing this as surely the hyperbole must derive from the enthusiasm of the journalists, the very thing we must present? Fundamentally, we are writing about people's opinion, and if people's opinion is truly enthusiastic, then why not report it as so? Also, when the Metacritic score is inserted, universal acclaim is always done in quotation marks, i.e. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from music critics, the album received an average score of 100, which indicates "universal acclaim", based on X reviews, is this problematic? I mean, a footnote could be inserted explaining universal acclaim is awarded to a score of 80>, but I think the quotation marks certainly imply it's their words and not WP's. —JennKR | ☎ 12:19, 7 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I see little reason to directly quote a misleading statement when a perfectly comprehensible paraphrasing can be achieved with minimal effort. Metacritic is an aggregator so it's not supposed to be expressing its own journalistic enthusiasm. It purports to be aggregating reviews from a select universe of critics. When it claims that there is "universal acclaim" it isn't expressing an opinion. It's categorizing using a specialized jargon that means something different from the common usage (i.e. that all critics in the Metacritic universe acclaimed the work). As editors we spend much of our time paraphrasing sources rather than directly quoting them. Rephrasing "universal critical acclaim" to "widespread critical acclaim" or something similar would avoid the problem of readers mistakenly thinking that "universal" means "universal" in this context. -Thibbs (talk) 12:37, 7 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

N-HH, about "rave reviews" and links, you must have been talking to Dan56, because I was not speaking on that topic.

JennKR, I think 60% and 70% would mean well received...generally well received...in an ideal world as much as it means that in this world, unless an ideal world means unanimous critical reception (as in everybody liked the work). 70% is a significant majority. Both 60% and 70% indicate a significant majority, which is why percentages in that high of a range are held up as a majority matter in various aspects of life. Of course Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic represent portions of the world's professional critics, not the vast majority of the world's professional critics, but, when it comes to the western world, if a film gets over 70% (or let's go higher and say 90%) based on over 300 critical reviews, I don't think it's good logic to say that the film likely would have done much worse if only 300 or so more professional film critics had weighed in. I feel that way because western critics may have their own tastes that have a lot to do with western society and the beliefs of that society, and these tastes can therefore be out of step with other cultures' tastes; for example, when a western film is loved by American and British critics, but is panned by Japanese critics. If, for example, a film failed to impress 300 or so professional film critics within a given society, I don't think it's likely that the score would drastically change to positive if only 300 more professional film critics from that society weighed in. As for "universal acclaim," I've already made myself quite clear on that topic. As you can see, I agree with Thibbs when it comes to "universal acclaim" without WP:Intext-attribution, but I disagree with him when it comes to the notion that there is even a problem when WP:Intext-attribution is used for "universal acclaim." Flyer22 (talk) 16:17, 7 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Also, as shown at Metacritic article, "universal acclaim" does not necessarily mean "all critics in the Metacritic universe"; rather it means the vast majority of critics who participated in judging that work. Flyer22 (talk) 16:34, 7 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

And I guess that's my point. At Metacritic, "universal acclaim" does not necessarily mean "all critics in the Metacritic universe" whereas in the rest of the world that's exactly what it would mean. That's confusing for a reader unfamiliar with Metacritic. For the record I agree with Flyer22's idea that it is possible through disclaimers and attribution to directly use the term "universal acclaim," but it seems to me that it's something that should be avoided in the interest of minimizing reader confusion. There isn't actually any need for Wikipedia to use the term exactly as Metacritic does even if it's possible through carefully worded attribution. Neutral standard-English paraphrasing (as practiced throughout the rest of Wikipedia) should be good enough for articles on topics that Metacritic has covered. -Thibbs (talk) 11:41, 9 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, apologies, I got my @s the wrong way round in the 9.05 post above .. N-HH (talk) 22:07, 7 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

N-HH, I hope you're not assuming any critics were cited as sources for statements such as "the album received rave reviews" or whatever, or that it's a case of "According to Critic A, it was the best film ever". It's an objective journalist who, in the case of the Yeezus article, reported on the album's reception in an article for the International Business Times ([6]). Why are we calling this source's objectivity into question? It's not a critic. Furthermore, in Channel Orange#Critical reception, the sentence "received rave reviews" is attributed to an article written by Metacritic founder Jason Dietz. These aren't critics being cited to support what you feel are hyperbolic phrases. Dan56 (talk) 22:09, 7 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

No, I said nothing about critics being cited as sources for "rave reviews" or "universal acclaim" and nothing I have said is in response to any such assumption (although as it happens of course there is a significant overlap between critics and journalists, and the idea that journalists are by definition "objective", on matters of arts and culture or anything else, would be news to many people). I simply talked about the phrases in their own right and, in fact, explicitly said that the problem with the former was that it was "journalese". Nor did I call any source's objectivity into question (although, as noted just now, I would quite happily if relevant). Finally, as noted above, I flipped my @s by mistake and my comment about "According to Critic A" was directed at Flyer, who made the point about critics suggesting a film might be the "best ever". Hope that clarifies everything. N-HH (talk) 22:22, 7 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I still think this is a WP:UNDUE issue, not a MOS one, really, but I have to question the utility of ever, at all, using "rave views" and the like, no matter who it's sourced to. Editorial commentary in journalistic sources is basically categorically unreliable noise on something like this. See also the discussion elsewhere about using "award-winning"; it's the same crap. Doesn't matter if 50 sources say it. Journalistic sources use puffery and filler like this constantly, but there's nothing encyclopedic about it.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  13:45, 8 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The comments about it being unencyclopedic language here should stop. Encyclopedias have used this language before (Oxford, Brittanica, [7]). Also, if critics really did "talk or write with extravagent enthusiasm" about something, then it fits the definition of the word. Dan56 (talk) 22:32, 9 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

People are offering legitimate views and judgment about what is encyclopedic language or not. There's no reason they should stop suggesting "rave reviews" is not, just because you happen to take the opposite view. As for your three links, you've already provided two of them I think previously; and, at that point, received the immediate response (albeit addressed by me to the wrong username) that, if anything, those search results show how infrequently the phrase crops up in encyclopedias. As for dictionary definitions, what the word means is not in dispute; this is about the tone of the writing and WP:WTW (and hence also a valid issue for MOS-based discussion). N-HH (talk) 15:32, 10 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The lead of MOS presently closes with:

Discuss style issues on the MoS talk page. Some of the past discussions that led to decisions on aspects of style guidance are recorded at the MoS register. In case of discrepancy, this page has precedence over its subpages and the Simplified Manual of Style.

This should really read

Discuss style issues on the MoS talk page. Some of the past discussions that led to decisions on aspects of style guidance are recorded at the MoS register. In case of discrepancy, this page has precedence over its subpages, the Simplified Manual of Style, and (on style matters) other guidelines.

I made this edit here, and added a citation to policy on the matter at [8]. All of this was almost immediately reverted by Trovatore here, with an edit summary of "that the MOS represents a broader consensus than other guidelines is not clear at all. The MOS mostly represents the views of a small core of people interested specifically in the MOS". I have since restored the policy citation, since it's applicable to the text before the "other guidelines" change. Per WP:BRD, let's discuss that change.

• The objection: Trovatore's objection doesn't actually make sense. Of course the MOS represents a broader consensus than other guidelines on style matters, which is the only thing under discussion here. Anyone who disagrees is welcome to point us all to the Wikipedia Stylebook, or Wikipedia Style Manual, or whatever alternative to the Wikipedia Manual of Style that more authoritatively treats style here, that we've all somehow not noticed. The Good Article and Featured Article processes generally require compliance with MOS, not with some alternative to MOS - not a wikiproject one, not a personal one, not a competing WP-wide one. Trovatore's second objection seems to mean "my views haven't gained much traction at MOS so I don't like it". On it's face it's meaningless; every policypage on WP represents the views of the comparably small number of editors interested specifically in writing it. This is just as true of WP:Verifiabilty and of WP:Consensus as WP:Manual of Style.

• The rationale: Various guidelines, especially among the naming conventions pages, as well as wikiproject-authored wannabe guidelines, frequently attempt to contradict the MOS. They POV-fork on a rather frequent basis when editors with an axe to grind, a peeve to pet, fail to win consensus here. The most obvious way to put a stop to this is to close the gaping loophole in MOS's wording that encourages this nonsense. It's not even an change in policy in any way; WP:LOCALCONSENSUS already invalidates such attempts to ignore site-wide consensus in favor of little "micro-consensuses". All the change would do it put an end to a lot of perennial strife and bickering.

 — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ⚞(^Ʌⱷ҅̆_⚲͜ⱷ^{^})≼  07:04, 5 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Some cases in point
I was asked for examples so here are some. Just current/recent stuff, not historical:

• Someone's put bird common name capitalization into Wikipedia:Naming conventions (flora)#Scientific versus vernacular names. Yes, the plants guideline.
• Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (flora)#Proposed rewording a.k.a. WP:NCFLORA, 2014-04-05, tries in several ways to usurp MOS guidance and turn WP:NCFLORA, a naming (article titles) convention, into an article content guideline in direct conflict with MOS; this has been answered with a more reasonable counter-proposal at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (flora)#Alternative proposal, 2014-04-05, that sticks to naming conventions subject matter.
• Controversial pro-caps changes made to WP:Naming conventions (fauna) without discussion or consensus, 2014-03-12.[9]. This was objected to as far away as Wikipedia talk:Article titles#Bird species name, where the NC-related discussion on this stuff is now centralizing. This has mostly been reverted, 2014-04-04.[10]
• Similar but even more radical changes made to WP:Naming conventions (capitalization)#Organisms, again without consensus or discussion, 2014-03-07.[11], and mostly reverted it again, 2014-04-05.[12] Centralized discussion, again, at Wikipedia talk:Article titles#Bird species name, though I also enumerated the various reasons why the edits were bad at that talk page.
• Editor in a related debate exploiting the loophole to engage in the pretense that the WP:NCFAUNA guideline and WP:BIRDS#Naming wikiproject essay are immune to MOS concerns at WP:MR because they're not MOS subpages, as a technicality: [13]

See also problems with MOS's own subpages:

• Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Capital letters#Animals, plants, and other organisms a.k.a. MOS:CAPS – It was largely cleaned up to agree with MOS:LIFE as of 2012-02-29. But as of 2014, it is severely out-of-line with MOS and flagged as disputed, especially for adding a new "exception" to capitalize some insect categories when there isn't even a consensus to do so at the projects in question. This is nuts. It also has no business being hidden in MOS:CAPS, where it conflicts with both WP:MOS and WP:NCFAUNA.

 — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ⚞(^Ʌⱷ҅̆_⚲͜ⱷ^{^})≼  04:55, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

My objection makes perfect sense. It is not clear that the MOS represents a broader consensus on any particular style question than another guideline that treats that particular question. A guideline does not have to be about style in general to represent a broader consensus on a particular style point. --Trovatore (talk) 07:21, 5 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

As for the MoS being a site-wide consensus, that's the point in dispute. --Trovatore (talk) 07:26, 5 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The idea that WP's site-wide style guideline, that anyone can edit and which is one of the most-watchlisted policypages on the entire system, with very, very high levels of participation on its talk page (see the enormousness of the archives) is somehow how not really a site-wide guideline, is absurd on its face. This pseudo-rationale has been raised before and rightly ignored before. You don't get to declare any or every policy and guideline on the project invalid just because they don't reflect your views, sorry. You seem to have missed that I already addressed your claim that MOS somehow doesn't represent consensus because of who edits it most: I'll repeat it for you here: "On it's face [your objection is] meaningless; every policypage on WP represents the views of the comparably small number of editors interested specifically in writing it. This is just as true of WP:Verifiabilty and of WP:Consensus as WP:Manual of Style." It is clear that MOS represents a broader consensus on style questions. If some other guideline wants to treat a particular question of style on Wikipedia in more detail than MOS does, it's still necessary to get consensus at MOS to go along with it, or it simply isn't a style guideline here and MOS will, as a patter of policy at WP:CONLEVEL supersede it. This is an ineluctable fact. Ensuring that is pretty much the entire point of CONLEVEL, which was written in direct response to RFARB cases involving people (especially but not exclusively at wikiprojects) trying to POV-fork their own "rules" in contravention of site-wide guidelines. Much of MOS is made of things that originated at wikiprojects, as topical editors bothered to gain consensus to add them here, instead of digging themselves into adversarial positions of bucking the system just to buck it. I don't know what sort of definitional games you're trying to play with "site-wide", but no one here has any patience for it and you've not raised a valid objection to the edit you reverted.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ⚞(^Ʌⱷ҅̆_⚲͜ⱷ^{^})≼  09:42, 5 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

What you have not established is that it's a site-wide consensus. Secondarily, even if it were so, nothing in any policy you've quoted gives the MoS any monopoly on style questions (or, as far as I can tell, even mentions the MoS). Why does the MoS have a broader consensus on a particular style question than another guideline? Say it's a question about the style of how Elizabethan sonnets are to be indented, and a broader group of people have participated in a guideline specific to sonnets than have participated in it at the MoS? Just because it's a style question, you think MoS gets to take priority even in that case? I see no support in any policy you've quoted for that. --Trovatore (talk) 21:25, 5 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Are you sure you understand how en.wiki operates? If you don't think MOS is a a site-wide consensus, go delete the {{Guideline}} tag from it. Of course MOS takes priority over other guidelines on style question; it is WP's style guideline. If someone thinks that something at MOS conflicts with how people in their field prefer to x (plug in any value, e.g. "indent Elizabethan sonnets" or "present common names of organisms") they raise the issue at WT:MOS and get consensus for a change. You (and SlimVirgin) are sorely confusing the WP:BOLD ability of projects or anyone else to fill a void in style guidance, with an imagined right to tell established style guidance to go to hell if it conflicts with what you want to do and consensus isn't going your way. Technically speaking, WP:IAR provides such an escape value as a last resort. Even if you're of the camp that, say, Cougar should be capitalized in running prose (I got bit by a Cougar), and you know the whole project is against you on that, you're not going to get blocked or topic banned for writing it as [[Cougar]] when adding new material. Now one can force you to spell it a way you don't like,. You will, however, get into trouble if you keep changing it to upper case, and reverting others changing it to lower case per consensus at MOS:LIFE. Neither you nor any wikiproject has some right to WP:OWN articles and force other people to use your style quirk on the basis of some personal or local micro-consensus.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ⚞(^Ʌⱷ҅̆_⚲͜ⱷ^{^})≼  03:01, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

You have not cited anything that supports this claimed monopoly for MoS on any point that is argued to be a style point. On a given point, LOCALCONSENSUS does say that the broader-based consensus takes precedence. It does not say that the broader-based consensus on the point is automatically the one in the MoS, even if the point is a style point. In fact, it doesn't even mention the MoS. --Trovatore (talk) 00:33, 7 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Why/how could you think that a policy stating that wikiprojects cannot make up their own rules in conflict with wider policies and guidelines, somehow means "policies and guidelines other than MOS" because it didn't mention MOS by name? To use your favorite phrase,the burden of proof is on you to show that MOS is excluded from LOCALCONSENSUS.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  14:28, 8 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

SMcCandlish, if I understand correctly, says that MoS is a broader consensus because there isn't an alternate style manual. I'm not clear what to make of that assertion since the processes here don't allow an alternative. It's not evidence of a broad consensus that MoS has no competitors; it's evidence that good editors have more important things to do than discuss minutiae. As to the question of where there is the broadest consensus, that is found in the practices of Wikipedia editors, not in any written policy. Micro-consensuses are actually all the consensuses we have and it's exactly spot on that the consensus at MoS is the consensus of a relatively small number of self-appointed experts. That is not a criticism, though, since no page like this could function if everyone with an interest participated. But policy reflects practice on Wikipedia and MoS editors help provide some consistency, which is one value among many. --Ring Cinema (talk) 07:58, 5 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Ring Cinema, if I understand correctly, says that those who care about so-called "minutiae", like style in encyclopedic writing, are not "good editors". The evidence of broad consensus for MOS is that virtually everyone follows it here on virtually every point except rank noobs and those with particular pet peeve axes to grind. If you think micro-consensuses are all we have, you've clearly not read and understood WP:CONLEVEL. This debate is academic, however. The matter here, in this little proposal, is whether any other guideline on the system is more authoritative on style than MOS. Clearly the answer is "no". If you and Trovatore want to engage in existential navel contemplation about what consensus "really" means or whatever, here fun with that, but it's not germane to the discussion of closing this silly loophole in MOS's lead wording.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ⚞(^Ʌⱷ҅̆_⚲͜ⱷ^{^})≼  09:42, 5 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry you don't get the drift. To just state the facts, each and every last consensus anywhere on WP is a local consensus, and this page is no exception. Even bestowing the tepid honorific "guideline" doesn't make the consensus any broader. Perhaps this disappoints. Editors on MoS don't dictate to other editors and, as I've pointed out, it is better to reflect good practices than to attempt to claim "authority". Claims of authority are fallacious on their face in this context and an authoritarian's fantasy. --Ring Cinema (talk) 04:04, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

See your talk page. You are misinterpreting WP:CONSENSUS among other pages. This debate does not need to get mired in further discussion of your approach to that (including this dispute you seem to want to raise with the {{Guideline}}, which belongs probably at Wikipedia talk:Policies and guidelines. No one said anything about anyone dictating anything to anyone. The only claims of authority being made are those being made by propoonents of the fantasy that WP:AT conflicts with MOS and has "authority" over it (there is no such conflict).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_⚲͜ⱷ^ʌ≼  07:33, 7 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I notice with disappointment that there are no examples given of cases where this "gameable and frequently exploited loophole" has been exploited. Given the proposer's involvement in some quite heated and controversial discussions recently, I think we should ask exactly which discussions they think this change would affect, and what that effect would be. Andrewa (talk) 09:00, 5 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Careful what you wish for. Here's a recent example of you exploiting the very loophole I'm talking about, engaging in the pretense that WP:NCFAUNA and WP:BIRDS#Naming are immune to MOS concerns at WP:MR because they're not MOS subpages, as a technicality: [14]. See also several other threads I've started immediately above; they're all about various other guidelines PoV-forking from MOS. The WP:NCFAUNA and WP:NCFLORA issues in particular are exploits of this loophole. PS: I'm not sure what sort of aspersion you're trying to cast by criticizing my argument on the basis of my having been involved in debates you characterized as "heated and controversial", but that's three different fallacies at once (guilt by association, ad hominem, and confusion of correlation and causation); not impressive.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ⚞(^Ʌⱷ҅̆_⚲͜ⱷ^{^})≼  09:42, 5 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I suspect I want to reject all four accusations of logical fallacy, and also the implied breaches of good faith on my part. But Let's try to focus on the topic at hand (I have restored the heading of this section, which you deleted, [15] I hope that this was simply an accident on your part... if not some explanation is due IMO). Do you really want to cite this diff as a prime example of the easily gameable and frequently exploited loophole that you wish to close? Really? Andrewa (talk) 15:33, 5 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

That's a user-talk matter; it's not germane to MOS. I'll bring it to your talk page.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ⚞(^Ʌⱷ҅̆_⚲͜ⱷ^{^})≼  02:45, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

And I have replied there. [16] The issue that is germane to this discussion is that you have cited this edit of mine as the prime and only example you offer of someone exploiting the easily gameable and frequently exploited loophole that you want closed, which is the topic of this section, which you named and started. I just wanted to be sure that this was the case, because I think that anyone examining the diff will wonder what you are on about. But I could be wrong and am very interested in other views on that. Andrewa (talk) 11:09, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, I pointed you to several other discussions on this page that are evidientary of the problem. [I've listed this more clearly above] Please read more carefully. PS:, I just going to go with WP:SPADE here, because WP:CIVIL doesn't require being nice, and what you're doing is pseudo-nice on its face: Please stop engaging is such florid, unctious [[[WP:CIVILPOV]] faux-genuflection. It comes off as extremely snide. It's okay for us to disagree and debate here, but this "oh I'm so fallible and so terribly interested in your views" sarcasm is obnoxious and a strong impediment to civil discourse.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  12:18, 7 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

While I certainly agree that the MoS should take precedence on style matters, if only because it's easier to find all the rules if they're in one place, the question of whether or not it does is relevant. Of course any debates held here will be disproportionately attended by people who prefer this page. Where would we go to establish that the MoS trumps these other pages? Darkfrog24 (talk) 14:01, 5 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Here, of course; the place to discuss the content and meaning of any page on WP is on its talk page. And its not true that only people who like to work on MOS and believe in its purpose watchlist this page; a large proportion of watchers of it, maybe even a majority of them, are people who don't like MOS or some aspect of it they have filed to get consensus to change.

There is no policy question to ask and settle here. The proposed change is a clarification of existing policy, not a change to policy in any way. I think you and some others, above, are mistaking this for some kind of hierarchical power-struggle question; it's not. It's matter of basic reasoning and of preventing further strife from people who cannot quite follow WP policy processes. MOS, the style guide on Wikipedia, is about style, and other guidelines (besides MOS's own subpages) are not. To the extent they sometimes wander a little bit into style territory, as WP:NCFAUNA does for example, when it gets into why or why not to capitalize or italicize in animal-related article titles, it already explicitly defers to MOS; it has big fat hatnotes that do this, unmistakeably. Despite this, because of the loophole in the wording of the MOS lead, people are still WP:GAMEing the system to POV-fork the style advice (we're not talking about any non-style, article titling material that is clearly NC/AT territory, only style, here). WP:LOCALCONSENSUS already makes it clear that a few editors can't go off to a wikiproject, or some other guideline, to make up a contradictory "mini-consensus" amongst themselves that conflicts with MOS. This is not permitted, as a matter of official policy. The change I'm proposing is a similar reminder of this.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ⚞(^Ʌⱷ҅̆_⚲͜ⱷ^{^})≼  14:23, 5 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

No, LOCALCONSENSUS does not in fact say that it is not permitted to make a guideline that conflicts with the MOS. It doesn't say anything about the MOS. It talks about site-wide versus local consensus. You claim that the MoS represents site-wide consensus. You have not established the factual basis of that claim.. ---Trovatore (talk) 21:10, 5 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting fringe view. Have fun with that.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ⚞(^Ʌⱷ҅̆_⚲͜ⱷ^{^})≼  00:45, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The burden of proof is 100% on you. You have not met it. --Trovatore (talk) 02:15, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The most obvious way to test this theory of yours is to remove the {{Guideline}} tag from Wikipedia:Manual of Style, and remove the page from lists of guidelines. Then enjoy your lengthy block for POINTy disruption.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  08:21, 7 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I don't have to test anything. The burden of proof is on you. You have not met it. --Trovatore (talk) 08:42, 7 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

No one on Wikipedia believes that but you. I'm citing Argument from repetition and WP:DFTT, and just moving on, sorry.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  12:18, 7 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

And I repeat: Why/how could you think that a policy stating that wikiprojects cannot make up their own rules in conflict with wider policies and guidelines, somehow means "policies and guidelines other than MOS" because it didn't mention MOS by name? To use your favorite phrase,the burden of proof is on you to show that MOS is excluded from LOCALCONSENSUS. Everyone but you knows that it isn't. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  14:28, 8 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• NB: As an independent matter, I added a citation to WP:CONLEVEL policy so people know where MOS superseding its subpages comes from in policy; clearly many people have been very confused about this. I guess just to follow me around and reflexively blanket-revert me as much as possible, I've been reverted on this twice already by the same party for no expressed reason (only a false claim that this citation was under discussion, which it was not). This kind of editwarring is not acceptable and is a example of why discretionary sanctions have been authorized for dealing with MOS and AT disputes. Either raise a substantive disagreement (could there possibly be one?!) for why a guideline should somehow not cite the WP policy from which it derives a not very well understood authority, or stop your revert-warring, please.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ⚞(^Ʌⱷ҅̆_⚲͜ⱷ^{^})≼  14:23, 5 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• You've just linked to Wikiproject Deletion Sorting. The relevant shortcut is AC/DS, or even better, a link to the specific one. --Stfg (talk) 14:42, 5 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Fixed. The link is Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Article_titles_and_capitalisation#Remedies.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ⚞(^Ʌⱷ҅̆_⚲͜ⱷ^{^})≼  00:39, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hi SMcCandlish, I reverted your addition of the footnote citing WP:CONSENSUS. Groups of editors can indeed decide not to apply the MoS (as can individuals); see the GA criteria for an example. GAs are expected to comply with five of the MoS subpages (LEAD, W2W, etc), but not with the main MoS. The point of that part of WP:CONSENSUS is to stress that groups of editors can't decide not to be neutral, for example, or to override a wiki-wide RfC, but that can't be extended to guidelines like the MoS, parts of which may have very little consensus. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 15:12, 5 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hi SlimVirgin. Hang on a minute: the GA criteria aren't a Wikiproject. What WP:LOCALCONSENSUS says is: "unless they can convince the broader community that such action is right, participants in a WikiProject cannot decide that some generally accepted policy or guideline does not apply to articles within its scope". (My italics). It kinda pains me to point that out, but that is what it says.

All the same, I do think we need some pragmatism here. At present there are plenty of bird FAs capitalizing bird species, though FA does require MOS. Is the world going to end because of it? I'd have thought that some kind of SPECIESVAR, requiring only that articles were self-consistent, would be quite enough for WP. --Stfg (talk) 16:42, 5 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Stfg, I think whether we call them a WikiProject or some other group of editors, the point is that, as a matter of fact, groups of editors (and individual editors) can and do decide to ignore the MoS. The GA criteria have been that way for years. They wouldn't be able to say "we have decided that GAs need not be neutral," but if they say they're not adhering to the MoS, no one bats an eyelid. That's the key difference here, not whether they are called a WikiProject. I agree with your point about pragmatism, but better still would be just to leave things alone. Adding SPECIESVAR would be instruction creep too. The MoS already says: "Style and formatting should be consistent within an article, though not necessarily throughout Wikipedia." SlimVirgin ^(talk) 17:06, 5 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Your opinion about what wikiprojects can or should do doesn't match policy nor the WikiProject Council's own guidelines, and is not relevant to whether MOS can cite the policy on which it bases its ability to supersede its own subpages, which is what we're talking about here. You have thus given no actual basis for your revert. Please do so, or undo it. PS: Since you seem unaware of them, here are the relevant policy and guideline:

• Wikipedia:Consensus#Level of consensus (WP:LOCALCONSENSUS): "Consensus among a limited group of editors, at one place and time, cannot override community consensus on a wider scale. For instance, unless they can convince the broader community that such action is right, participants in a WikiProject cannot decide that some generally accepted policy or guideline does not apply to articles within its scope." And: "Wikipedia has a higher standard of participation and consensus for changes to policies and guidelines than to other types of pages. This is because they reflect established consensus, and their stability and consistency are important to the community."
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Guide#Advice pages: "The best [wikiproject-based] advice pages do not conflict with the site-wide pages and avoid unnecessary duplications with site-wide pages. However, in a few cases, projects have wrongly used these pages as a means of asserting ownership over articles within their scope, such as insisting that all articles that interest the project must [comply with the advice page], and that editors of the article get no say in this because of a "consensus" within the project. An advice page written by several members of a project is no more binding on editors than an advice page written by any single individual editor. Any advice page that has not been formally approved by the community through the WP:PROPOSAL process has the actual status of an optional {{essay}}.

Again, this is an interesting side discussion, but does not address why you are reverting MOS citing a policy it relies on. Please explain how blocking that could possibly make sense.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ⚞(^Ʌⱷ҅̆_⚲͜ⱷ^{^})≼  00:39, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I think that's what I'm coming around to too, for many reasons. It's not just birds, see Talk:Crowned crane#Other examples. What the proponents of compulsory non-capitalisation don't seem to realise is that we use English, and that means we're not going to be 100% consistent. It's not our job to promote any variety of English as the standard. Not only is that contrary to policy, it also reflects an obsolete view of linguistics.

In a project as vast as ours, and with no editorial board, the MOS is very important, to help editors to produce consistent articles and thus give the best reader experience... always our bottom line. But we need to be clear on its purpose, and ours.

WikiProject Birds are doing a good job, including their decision to capitalise common names. They should be supported. If the MOS says otherwise, it's the MOS that should change. If the MOS is not sufficiently clear, as seems to be the case, then it should be clarified.

And if we do that, I think we can call it progress, and hopefully reduce the angst and all get back to improving the encyclopedia. Andrewa (talk) 18:09, 5 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The process you think doesn't exist already exists. It's called coming to WT:MOS and gaining consensus, based on reason and evidence, that MOS needs to be changed to account for some particular style convention. MOS is entirely composed of such cases. What has happened in this case is that proponents of a particular style quirk have failed to gain consensus on it, because their reasons are weak and sometimes downright false. This happens all the time, too. There is not one single rule in MOS that doesn't have its detractors, somewhere. Just yesterday someone came by and tried to change italicization of major works of art to be double quotation mark style, as just one recent example. There is also probablh not one single rule that doesn't have detractors who can cite sources (from one specialized context or another) "proving" their way is "right"; style conventions very frequently conflict, and MOS has to settle for advising the variant that best serves our largest readership, not the one most pleases a tiny handful of specialists. (Ideally they actually coincide, e.g. formatting units like 43&nbsp;cm</code>, not 45cm or 43 cm. or 43 CMs; but often they don't. That's just tough.

When these failures to gain consensus occur, they do not, through some mystical process, reverse themselves into reasons that consensus has been reached, that MOS must change to support them, simply because the losers go off and write up their WP:POVFORKed rule on another page and use WP:FAITACCOMPLI editing practices to engage in WP:OWNish behavior that makes it seem like they have consensus in a particular topic area. That's precisely the kind of WP:GANG and WP:BATTLEGROUND behavior that WP:LOCALCONSENSUS policy exists to put a stop to. Editors are increasingly getting indef blocked for tendentious disruption along these lines, including in partiuclar editwarring in favor a style quirks (changing en-dashes to hyphens is a recent-ish example) on the basis that some external "standard" demands it and that MOS has "no consensus" to go against these "reliable sources". It's a ridiculous argument that's been debunked 1,000 times. Reliable sources on facts about our article topics are not magically also reliable sources on how to style prose in a general purpose encyclopedia. WP:AT, etc., explicitly refer to MOS for such style matters for a reason - they are style matters and this is our style guide. If you don't like something in the style guide, work to gain consensus to change it. You don't burn down Congress/Parliament, or declare your own independent republic and army, because you disagree with a law they passed, you work to make legislative changes within the system. If you'd rather take the revolutionary insurrection approach, please see WP:BATTLEGROUND, WP:SOAPBOX, WP:NOTHERE, WP:GREATWRONGS, and other instructive pages.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ⚞(^Ʌⱷ҅̆_⚲͜ⱷ^{^})≼  02:43, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]