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MOS:PREFIXDASH

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From what I see, the MOS:PREFIXDASH part has been introduced on the basis of at least this discussion from 2010 citing The Chicago Manual of Style. With the example of "pre–World War II", the manual justifies such usage as "space that cannot be besmirched by hyphens because “World War II” is a proper noun". But it also admits that it "is a rather fussy use of the en dash that many people ignore, preferring the hyphen". Indeed, I see several issues with it:

All in all, I believe MOS:PREFIXDASH/SUFFIXDASH should be deprecated and removed per WP:CREEP. Thoughts? Brandmeistertalk 13:28, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

It's possible that this style is old-fashioned, but it was correct typography back when I learned it. Are you suggesting that we shouldn't follow the old-school convention at all, or that we shouldn't care? WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:53, 17 March 2023 (UTC)
We shouldn't follow it and remove from our MoS, as it doesn't appear to be universally accepted. This would mean that a host of categories moved from hyphen to dash, such as Category:Anti–nuclear weapons movement should be reverted to hyphens, but I think it is worth it. Brandmeistertalk 22:11, 17 March 2023 (UTC)
So, more like "require the opposite" than "it's not important to be consistent between articles"? WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:08, 18 March 2023 (UTC)
  • It was in Chicago some time ago, I think, and in MOS's earlier days was heavily advocated by a US-based editor who may not still be here. I think it's a bit weird, but I don't care much if it's kept. In practice it's used only in a small number of instances. Tony (talk) 04:20, 18 March 2023 (UTC)
  • I agree it's weird, but I'm not convinced it's worth changing the MoS. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:59, 18 March 2023 (UTC)
  • Strongly support removal. The use of the endash instead of a hyphen causes endless problems, especially when used in article titles. Cannot cut and paste due to code page issues. Bot issues requiring – or – to be used in URLs. When trying to edit an article, it makes it hard to search and replace. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 02:33, 21 March 2023 (UTC)
    Could you elaborate on the code- and bot-based issues you mentioned? I'm not super familiar with the technical aspects around here. PhotogenicScientist (talk) 13:51, 24 March 2023 (UTC)
    AIUI these problems aren't specific to this rule. We'll have those complications if people are allowed to use any kind of dash (or certain other characters, such as &) in article titles. And if you have to write the bot code to cope with one article title, then you save nothing by removing it from some article titles. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:52, 24 March 2023 (UTC)
    And I don't buy this argument anyway. For one thing, &#8211 is not URL encoding at all (URL encoding for an en dash would be %E2%80%93). If some technical issue exists, it is certainly not the one that Hawkeye7 is claiming. I use 4 different browsers on a regular basis, and up to 8 for website-testing purposes, and not a single one of them has any trouble handling an en dash in URL. Just try this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada–United_States_relations Your browser may auto-convert to URL encoding (some do, some don't), but it will not fail to handle it, unless you are using such ridiculously old software that WP cannot reasonably be expected to support it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:12, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
  • Support removal. The use of dash makes articles unaccessible to read and edit. A reader cannot simply use the 'find in page' function to search text and is cumbersome to add when editing. It does not make articles easier to understand or readable. Therefore Wp:Creep is a factor as it is adding to Wikipedia's overextensive instructions without giving benefit. This odd usage of en-dash should not be included within Wikipedia's MOS. Carpimaps (talk) 07:34, 21 March 2023 (UTC)
  • No Really? You want to meld Anti–nuclear weapons with Anti-nuclear weapons? You think the difference is trivial? I know, let's stop using commas -- just use periods instead. They look pretty much the same anyway. EEng 01:29, 22 March 2023 (UTC)
    @EEng:, yes, if readers notice the difference between a hyphen and an n-dash, it's a useful distinction. But the variation in the length of these marks between fonts in common use under different operating systems, etc. is such that in practice it's not actually very useful. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:10, 24 March 2023 (UTC)
    the variation in the length of these marks between fonts in common use under different operating systems, etc. is such that in practice it's not actually very usefu[citation needed] EEng 20:02, 24 March 2023 (UTC)
    Using endash might be grammatically correct – though, based on the various style guides it looks like there's no strong consensus – but I think the practical impact of this change to articles/article titles would be minimal. "Anti-nuclear weapons" pretty clearly refers to the position of being against nuclear weapons, not to weapons based on the implied "anti-nuclear" technology. "Pro-civil rights protestors" are pretty clearly protestors who are in favor of civil rights, rather than people protesting for rights who behave in a civil manner. As for proper nouns, I think "pre-Industrial revolution" pretty clearly refers to the time period before the Industrial Revolution, and not to a revolution that happened before industrial (lowercased) times.
    If there are technical issues to be solved by using hyphen vs endash, it might be worth implementing. PhotogenicScientist (talk) 14:03, 24 March 2023 (UTC)
    "Enuf" pretty clearly means "enough", but we don't do that either. EEng 20:02, 24 March 2023 (UTC)
    And "enough" causes no technical issues. PhotogenicScientist (talk) 20:44, 24 March 2023 (UTC)
    If there are technical issues to be solved, as you said. I'm not sure that there are technical issues that this would solve. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:55, 24 March 2023 (UTC)
  • I like this ndash. I also am of the age to have learned this as "proper", but it really helps prime my brain to digest the next unit as a single token. The hyphen binds more tightly than the dash, and implies to me the existence of (using the examples given thus far) "anti-nuclear weapons" detonating from the runaway fission of an anti-nucleus, and the second War in a place called "pre-World". Maybe I'm dumb. Like User:Hawkeye7 above, I do count rather more than five keypresses to input –, but on my device it's a single long press on the hyphen, which gives me the options of mdash, ndash, middot, and underbar/underscore. I don't know that we necessarily need to mandate an ndash in this usage, but I'm certainly opposed to replacing it with a hyphen, if that is the proposal here. Folly Mox (talk) 07:43, 22 March 2023 (UTC)
  • Remove It's fussy and old-fashioned, not general practice in current style guides, and makes article linking difficult. — The Anome (talk) 08:14, 23 March 2023 (UTC)
    I thought that all article titles containing a dash also had a redirect with a hyphen (wasn't there a bot generating these?), so it shouldn't make linking difficult at all. (Of course, it's no issue at all in the visual editor, because you have options there like searching for the page, pasting in the whole URL for automatic conversion, etc.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:31, 23 March 2023 (UTC)
    They don't; they have to be created manually. WMF has tried and failed to make it seamless. Try it with the Category:Anti-nuclear weapons movement. You'll get the soft redirect page. Note that categories do not redirect the way articles do, so every one of them creates additional, ongoing maintenance work. Ndashes should never be used with categories. The whole ndash thing has been a tragedy from the start. Also: I do not use and do not accept, recognise or respect the Chicago Manual of Style. We have the Australian Commonwealth Style Guide per WP:ENGVAR. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 23:10, 23 March 2023 (UTC)
  • Keep as I don't see a strong reason to change/remove it. The source for "AP" above is a summary of the guidelines, so this edge case for compounds not being mentioned doesn't mean using hyphens is AP-approved. The source for "Chicago" above is similarly narrowed, an FAQ question. I was able to find a source for MLA that says hyphens between all words is preferred, except for proper nouns, where endash should be used instead. And I found a source for the complete APA guide (that I don't think I can link for copyvio reasons) that had exactly 0 examples of this kind of compound, in either of the sections on hyphens or dashes. PhotogenicScientist (talk) 22:10, 23 March 2023 (UTC)
  • You can’t beat a discussion on which type of dash to use. WP at its best.. MapReader (talk) 14:25, 24 March 2023 (UTC)
  • Keep. If it's found in Chicago, MLA, and other academic style guides, we should continue to follow suit, since our own style guide is based on those. MoS has adopted virtually nothing from AP Stylebook and we do quite the opposite of what it recommends in many cases, because news style and academic style are very different. WP is not written in news style as a matter of policy (WP:NOT#NEWS).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:02, 27 March 2023 (UTC)
    NOTNEWS is about content. It's about not including everything that is breaking news, nor engaging in celebrity gossip, and being mindful of WP:BLP1E. It's not about writing style. No where in that link is anything about style, because it's a content policy. bay your reasoning here I could just as easily say the section that says Wikipedia is not a scientific journal to say we shouldn't follow MLA styles. That would be a dumb idea, but it's the same flawed reasoning. Writing style is not part of policy for a reason. oknazevad (talk) 01:33, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
    NOTNEWS says "Wikipedia is not written in news style." That sentence of the policy, at least, is about style, not content. WhatamIdoing (talk) 11:01, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
    Indeed, and it's been there for a very long time. I'm surprised how often people miss it. Writing style absolutely is part of policy, just in a simple and broad way, to address the one perennial and tedious problem of people trying to write WP like news because most of them are most used to reading news and get the mistaken impression that it is "the" correct way to write. The details of writing style have been left to guidelines (and, yes, for good reasons).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:56, 21 July 2023 (UTC)
  • Keep – Personally I've found the PREFIXDASH and SUFFIXDASH guidelines quite helpful for clarity, in Wikipedia and in my own personal use. I'm also not convinced that the increased difficulty of typing dashes is very significant for this debate, since we use en/em dashes in so many other situations that everybody agrees are appropriate—I'm sure PREFIXDASH/SUFFIXDASH account for a very small share of dash usage on Wikipedia. (Full disclosure—I'm kind of obsessed with dashes, as a userbox of mine proudly displays. So I'll basically always oppose limiting their use. I'm arguably biased.) — ⁠Will ⁠• ⁠B [talk] 00:19, 14 May 2023 (UTC)
  • Keep – it would just generally make many different categories confusing. Not exactly WP:CREEP if it's a somewhat short section stopping a decent amount of misunderstandings. OfTheUsername (talk) 04:10, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

Conflicting styles for names of laws

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There presently exists either conflicting instructions for how to style the names of laws (i.e. "the Constitution Act, 1982") or no clear acknowledgement of an exception for Canada-themed articles. Presently, MOS:NAT includes court case names as words that should be italicized. But, there is nothing about the names of acts of parliament/laws, implying those should not be italicized. MOS:LAW#Canada just says "The Canadian Guide to Uniform Legal Citation [...] is the most commonly cited guide." But, that's not a clear statement that that governs in-Wiki style; nor that that's what we ought to follow in editing Canada-related Wikipedia articles. (And, how would that work when it's a Canadian law being referred to in an article about, say, New Zealand? Or in an article covering a broad topic like Immigration law, where laws in different countries might be named?) MOS:CANLAW just says, "in Canada, per the McGill Guide, titles of acts are italicized", which, again, isn't a clear instruction about what to do in Wikipedia.

I began a discussion about this here: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Text formatting#Conflicting styles. By my interpretation of it, there was a weak consensus that things need to be spelled out more definitively. So, perhaps that can be done here? ₪ MIESIANIACAL 00:08, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

For a US perspective, we italicize the names of court rulings, though not their dates or locations — e.g., Texas v. White, 74 U.S. (7 Wall.) 700 (1869) — and also not the names or locations of statutes — e.g., the Voting Rights Act of 1965 a.k.a. An Act to enforce the fifteenth amendment of the Constitution of the United States, and for other purposes, 79 Stat. 437; or the USA PATRIOT Act a.k.a. Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT) Act of 2001, 115 Stat. 272. – •Raven  .talk 02:12, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
I don’t see this as a problem, any more than different spellings between US and Commonwealth articles is a problem. We have Labour Standards Acts in Canada; the US may have Labor Standards Acts. And yet Wikipedians deal with it just fine. And, the McGill Guide isn’t just proprietary; it’s an attempt to describe the customary usage of the legal profession and courts in Canada. It both reflects standard usage, and guides it. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 03:58, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
How is it not problematic on, say, Abdication of Edward VIII, for example? The one article names laws from South Africa, the Irish Free State, the UK, and Canada. Are you saying it's going to be acceptable to italicize just "Succession to the Throne Act 1937" and leave all the other law names in plain text? --₪ MIESIANIACAL 16:01, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
Yes, but, that doesn't really clarify what's to be done with the names of Canadian laws. Do we italicize or not? And, if yes, how can we make that more clear in the MoS? --₪ MIESIANIACAL 16:01, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
We should centralize discussion of this in one location. —Joeyconnick (talk) 18:34, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
Indeed. That's why I came here. The other discussions puttered out after not much input; those talk pages don't seem to be as active as this one and (I think) I've put notes at all of them directing anyone in those hinterlands to come here. That said... Is there a better place than this? --₪ MIESIANIACAL 23:47, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
How are these acts and laws styled by, say, historians who write about them? Blueboar (talk) 00:03, 31 March 2023 (UTC)
I would have appreciated an @-mention since I am clearly one of the people you mention at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Text formatting#Conflicting styles who has "corrected" you. Or at least a mention of having started this discussion on the Talk:Canadian Confederation page would have been nice.
I've alerted Wikipedia talk:Canadian Wikipedians' notice board. —Joeyconnick (talk) 03:00, 31 March 2023 (UTC)
I thought I'd left a notice of this discussion at the end of that discussion, which you would see, since you got involved at that discussion. However, your comment above implied I did not leave said notice there and, sure enough, I didn't. I've added one now. There was no deliberate effort made to exclude you. --₪ MIESIANIACAL 03:44, 31 March 2023 (UTC)
Fair enough 🙂
There are definitely several places where this could be discussed, that's for sure. —Joeyconnick (talk) 03:59, 31 March 2023 (UTC)
If we italicise statutory laws in Canadian articles, it would be the only example of a style decision we enact by country. We don’t, for example, apply MOS:LOGICAL by geography, and an unitalicised law would not be confusing to Canadian readers, so I don’t see a particular need for this carve out . This style decision is also only applied by legal style guides in Canada, and is not even universally applicable there (unlike how “colour” is universal in England, etc). See also, Wikipedia:Specialized-style fallacy.
However, if other editors disagree, and hold that this style should regionalise per wp:TIES, then the other questions are simple: only italicise statutes in articles that are expressly Canadian. Do not italicise a statute because it is Canadian, but do italicise all statutes in Canadian-styled articles. — HTGS (talk) 00:30, 31 March 2023 (UTC)
That's all very reasonable. However, to clarify, again using the example of Abdication of Edward VIII, which employs Canadian spelling (making it "Canadian-styled"?), covers a Canadian topic, and includes the name of a Canadian law, you would not italicize the name of the Canadian law there because the article is not expressly Canadian (it's also Irish, South African, British, etc). Is that correct? --₪ MIESIANIACAL 03:49, 31 March 2023 (UTC)
I can’t see that Abdication of Edward VIII is written in Canadian style, and I don’t see any reason that it should be. But assuming it were, and if we agreed that Canadian articles get this particular style applied, then all legislation should be italicised, not merely the Canadian law; if the article is not Canadian, then no legislation should be italicised (though case law would be). Think of this as a style that applies to the page, not to the word. — HTGS (talk) 10:34, 1 April 2023 (UTC)
Just to clarify, the Canadian legal style isn't to just italicise Canadian statutes; it's to italicise all statutes and international treaties, regardless of source. And to repeat the point I made above, this is not just the McGill guide making it up; this is standard style, across Canada. For an example, take a look at this Supreme Court of Canada decision: R v Keegstra, and scroll down to the "Statutes and Regulations Cited". (I've picked the Keegstra case because it's got federal and provincial laws, international treaties, and laws from other countries, all italicised regardless of source, so it's a good example of Canadian style, in my opinion. If you look at any other SCC case, you'll see the same style, or cases from other courts on the www.CanLII.org case collection, you'll find the same usage.)
In my view, as mentioned up above in relation to Commonwealth spelling, this is just a specific example of a style that has a strong connection to articles about a particular country: Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Strong_national_ties_to_a_topic. Just as a particular spelling or date style may have a strong connection to a particular country, so too this issue. It's got a strong connection to articles about Canada and should be followed, in my opinion. A simple guide would be if the article already has a "use Canadian English" tag. If that's the case, then all references to statutes and treaties would be italicised, regardless of source. If it's an article that's got a strong connection to some other country, say New Zealand, then we would use New Zealand style, even if the article cites a Canadian law.
And I disagree with the statement above that "it would be the only example of a style decision we enact by country". There are already style guides for different countries, including things like spelling and dates, but other differences as well:
Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Ireland-related articles
Wikipedia:Manual of Style/India-related articles
Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Canada-related articles
Wikipedia:Manual of Style/France- and French-related articles
One of the strengths about Wikipedia, in my opinion, is that the Manual of Style accomodates diversity, so that it's not an American encyclopedia, or a British encyclopedia. The style guide for spelling and dates is an illustration of that. Adding a clause to the Manual of Style/Canadian articles that says statutes and treaties are italicised would be one more example of an acceptance of diversity, which I think is important in an encyclopedia that prides itself on universal global appeal. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 00:14, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
One final point: italicisation of case names is not universal to all legal systems. For example, here's a link to a recent decision of the French Conseil constitutionnel. You'll see that the case name is not italicised, simply underlined: Décision n° 2023-1039 QPC. Italics are used in the case for quotations. Does that mean that in discussing a French court decision, we should italicise it on Wikipedia because that's the common law style? Or do we respect diversity in legal style amongst countries? Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 00:35, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
Well, what I wrote was that Abdication of Edward VIII uses Canadian spelling. I put a question mark beside "Canadian-styled", in brackets, because I'm not entirely certain whether or not it's the spelling that makes an article "Canadian-styled". Regardless, the concern remains: If there's to be a particular way of styling the names of Canadian laws, what does one do in an article that covers a topic that's pertinent to multiple countries and names both Canadian and non-Canadian laws?
I'm not against italicizing the names of Canadian laws, per se. But, I have already identified one example of a problem with treating the names of one country's laws one way and all the rest another way. --₪ MIESIANIACAL 18:03, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
Already addressed upthread: if the article has a strong connection to Canada, use Canadian style for all statutes and treaties. If it's got a strong connection to another country, use that country's style. Sure, there will be judgment calls on certain articles, but for the most part, it's pretty clear whether an article has a strong connection to one country or another. The article on "Abdication of Edward VIII" affects several different countries, and if everyone of them except Canada uses the non-italics style and only Canada uses italic-style, then the majority governs. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 18:14, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
Response to this comment: "I can’t see that Abdication of Edward VIII is written in Canadian style, and I don’t see any reason that it should be." I believe that the point Miesianiacal is making is that the Abdication article isn't just a British article. (But I don't want to put words in your mouth, Mies, so if I've not stated your position properly, please correct me.) As the first sentence of the article states, it's about a constitutional crisis that affected the entire Empire, not just the UK, and there are numerous references to the other Dominions, including Canada, and their laws. It's an article that has a strong connection both to the UK, and to the Dominions that retained the monarch as their head of state. In that case, as suggested above, then majority/consensus would govern. If most of the countries listed in the article don't italicise, then the article doesn't italicise. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 18:18, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
"Think of this as a style that applies to the page, not to the word." Precisely. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 18:26, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
Just realised that there's another piece of the puzzle that I don't think is mentioned: we already have different style recommendations for legal matters from different countries, as set out here: Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Legal. I don't see this as much different; we accept that there will be different legal styles for different countries. 19:22, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
Yes, you interpreted my concern correcly: there are articles out there that cover topics related to numerous countries. That's why I asked above if we're saying articles that discuss only a Canadian topic or topics should have any law names italicized. Otherwise, render them in plain text. Which is all fine. My only question now is: how can we more clearly communicate this in the MoS? Shouls WP:ITALIC contain an instruction to see MOS:LAW for country-specific styling (perhaps under MOS:NAT#Names and titles)? Should the "In Canada" section at MOS:LAW state essentially what we've just determined above? --₪ MIESIANIACAL 21:43, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
And also articles like Demise of the Crown and Accession Council. I think we should put it in the general MOS/Legal and also the MOS/Canadian. How about something like this for MOS/Legal:
"There are also two specific wikipedia articles which may be of assistance: Case citation: Canada and Citation of Canadian legislation."
"In addition, for articles which are primarily about Canada, the titles of all legislation are italicised, including all Canadian statutes and also non-Canadian statutes, such as international treaties and statutes from other countries."
And then something similar for MOS/Canadian.
I would suggest leaving this discussion up for a week to see if anyone has any concerns, before adding it to the MOS/Legal and MOS/Canadian. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 00:10, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
Yes, that's good for MOS:LEGAL. I also think the final sentence at MOS:CANLAW should be edited to say something similar, e.g. "in Canada, per the McGill Guide, titles of acts are italicized. For Wikipedia articles primarily about Canada, the titles of all legislation are italicised, including all Canadian statutes and also non-Canadian statutes, such as international treaties and statutes from other countries." Additionally, a link to MOS:CANLAW should be added at MOS:NAT and, perhaps, at MOS:LEGAL#In Canada, as well.
Agreed on keeping this open for a while longer. Editing the MoS feels rather formidable; I'd prefer to be certain about support for edits before they're made. --₪ MIESIANIACAL 17:57, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
I am normally more focused on content than format but Wikisource cares and a discussion of this type seems like an excellent place to ask if I am correct in thinking that since the repatriation of the Constitution Canadian law, certainly Quebec law, is becoming a hybrid civil law code system? Could someone point me at some resources on this? i sm particularly interested in the personhood of that river. Is that under Innu jurisdiction? Please put any responses.on my talk page as I don't want to hijack this thread more than I already have. Is there a portal somewhere? I am mostly working on disentangling the common and civil law systems, so not necessarily Canadian, but not excluding that given the Innu question. Elinruby (talk) 21:32, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
I will come to your talk page to discuss. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 00:10, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
I don't know why the discussion is so long. For every article we should choose the English language version to use, then apply its legal style guidelines. If an article refers to laws from other countries, for example if a Canadian article refers to a law in the U.S., we use a Canadian legal style guide for citing foreign laws. That may differ from how we would cite it in a U.S. article. TFD (talk) 02:01, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
I think it's a mistake to allow or demand that the styling of some article elements should follow local customs. Wikipedia sets its own standards (e.g. caps for 4 or 5 letter prepositions), and those standards, easy to inspect in the Wikipedia's MoS, help editors and avoid surprises in readers. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 23:53, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
Except Wikipedia already has a policy that some style elements should follow local customs. The US v Commonwealth spelling is a clear example of that, as is the variation in date styles: MDY v DMY, as set out at MOS:ENGVAR. As well, MOS/LEGAL already accepts that there will be variations in legal style requirements depending on the country in question. For example, cites to the US Supreme Court put the year in parentheses at the end; cites to Canadian Supreme Court cases put the year in parentheses right after the style of cause (for the first series of the Supreme Court Reports; square brackets are used for the seccond series). Once it's accepted that there is no single uniform style, then it's not a sufficient argument to say there should be uniformity. The use of italics in Canadian statute citations is extremely well-established as a style convention in Canadian law. Why is allowing the date in round parentheses after the style of cause okay in Canada articles, even though it's different from US legal style, but italics for statutes is not? Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 02:01, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
Don't italicize names of laws/statues/constitutions/treaties. Do italicize case names. This isn't difficult. It's not a style WP invented; it's imported from Chicago and most other style guides.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:08, 10 April 2023 (UTC)
So Wikipedia uses US style guides for all purposes? How about spelling? Does Wikipedia use Websters for all purposes? Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 03:25, 10 April 2023 (UTC)
And in any event, WP:MOS/Legal already recognises that there are different styles for legal citations, depending on the country; Chicago does not govern for all countries. And, in skimming through that section, I just noticed something in the Australia section which I had missed: "A citation to an Australian Act of Parliament should begin with the short title of the Act in italics". That means that WP:MOS has already recognised that italics should be used for statute names in Australia. I therefore don't see what the rationale is for saying italics should not be used for statutes in Canadian articles. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 04:19, 10 April 2023 (UTC)
Or it's another "I found this in some style guide I like better" injection by someone without any discussion or consensus behind it. The main point of Wikipedia having a style guide is producing general consistency across articles (aside from unwavering linguistic variation like the -our/-or ENGVAR split). Importing italicization variances that are at odds with each other, from style guides that have had nothing to do with MoS and its development, is antithetical to MoS's purpose. What happens when some style guide in New Zealand or whatever is published that says song titles should go in italics but albums should take quotation marks? Do you expect us to reverse site-wide practice for every musical act with an NZ connection?  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:20, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

clarification on MOS:US and MOS:NOTUSA

[mali mi di yibu sheena n-niŋ]

I read MOS:US carefully. It allows for the use of US as an abbreviation for United States of America but not USA as an abbreviation (except in actual quotes, as noted). Is this correct? Also, it seems that editors are divided on whether to change USA to United States while others change it to US, all within identical or similar article context. And if it is indeed correct, what was the rationale for allowing US and not USA. Thanks for any of the rationale on this. L.Smithfield (talk) 05:47, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

Correct, generally do not use "USA'. Also, it seems that editors are divided on whether to change USA to United States while others change it to US: Is that your personal experience, as it's not explicitly in the MOS. As for the USA rationale, you can try using the "Search archives" at the top of this talk page. (Unfortunately, those supporting discussions are generally not footnoted in actual guidelines)—Bagumba (talk) 06:52, 2 May 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for the clarification (in keeping with MOS:NOTUSA). I looked (searched) through as much of the archives as I could and I could not find a relevant discussion of why US is allowed and USA is not. So, I sort of assume that this issue was decided a very (very) long time ago, and might be lost to history. Also, there is no real guidance of whether US is preferred over United States; and yes, from my experiences viewing many articles, there is no clear pattern as to why one of these might be chosen over the other. One might think that a rationale for choosing between US and United States might be to use the spelled out version wherever possible and to only use the abbreviated version (that is US) where space is restricted or at a premium of some sort (table column, other). But no, there does not seem to be a pattern that fits a space-available hypothesis. Both are used in both space-constrained places and otherwise. Any other comments or information is welcomed. L.Smithfield (talk) 11:00, 2 May 2023 (UTC)
Speaking for myself, I find Tɛmplet:Xtg to be somewhat ... "informal" for lack of a better word. It seems to me that US is in a bit higher register. On the other hand Tɛmplet:Xtg is associated with sporting events, with patriotic display, and with the newspaper USA Today (the last uses it almost as an affectation). (It occurs to me that it might actually be reasonable to reexamine allowing Tɛmplet:Xtg in specifically sporting contexts.) --Trovatore (talk) 21:18, 3 May 2023 (UTC)
I've often wondered about this myself, and have never found an explanation. For me, "US" is more informal than "USA" and not what I would expect to see in a reference work. DuncanHill (talk) 22:05, 3 May 2023 (UTC)
I struggled a bit with the word "informal" as used to describe Tɛmplet:Xtg . Maybe it's not quite what I mean. Maybe "flowery" or "affected"? Or, sometimes, informal, as in the sports and patriotic contexts I mentioned. But when speaking in a matter-of-fact, dry tone, you say "United States" and "US", not "United States of America" and "USA".
Or at least you do in the US :-) . Could be a Yank/Brit difference here. --Trovatore (talk) 22:12, 3 May 2023 (UTC)
Wikipedia has a manual of style. One purpose of a manual of style is standardization, that way people don't sometimes see US and sometimes see USA and wonder if there's a difference. At some point long ago a decision was made to standardize on US or U.S. (people have strong feelings about those and we couldn't standardize on one of them). There doesn't have to be a big difference between them or a strong reason for one or the other. As to what to change it to, it depends on context. Use your good judgement and if anyone disagrees discuss it on the talk page or let them win a battle because it's not that important. SchreiberBike | ⌨  22:20, 3 May 2023 (UTC)
We're generally not huge on cross-article standardization for its own sake, and I certainly wouldn't have wanted to ban Tɛmplet:Xtg just for standardization. I find that Tɛmplet:Xtg has an odd tone that (pace Duncan) I would not expect to find in a reference work, and that's a good reason not to use it. --Trovatore (talk) 22:30, 3 May 2023 (UTC)
I agree about the tone. I'm American and live in the United States. I associate "USA" with expressions of patriotism, affection, ceremony. The title of the newspaper "USA Today" conveys to me a sense of "This is our home." I think of "the good ol' USA!" and the lyrics "Good morning, USA" (American Dad) and "God bless the USA!" (Lee Greenwood). It's marked; "US" is unmarked. In addition, "USA" is never used as an adjective, unless perhaps someone is being ironic or dramatic. It's "US interests", "US industry", etc., never "USA interests" or "USA industry". Largoplazo (talk) 10:58, 2 June 2023 (UTC)
Agreed on all of that. "USA" is loaded.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:04, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
For myself, I tend to find the response above by SchreiberBike compelling. Although I was curious about why US was chosen over USA, I agree with SchreiberBike that a MOS standard on one of them is better than both being used and people wondering what is up with that. OK, so the decision was made long enough time ago that we do not quite have the discussion about it handy to reference. If it was a long discussion (which it probably was), maybe we do not want to read all of that anyway. At some point we need to have faith that editors of the long past weighed the options (carefully) and came up with the best compromise. In the present case it turned out to be US over USA. I am fine with what they decided. Thanks to SchreiberBike for apparently having some insight into the past decision. As for what to replace any USA instances with (since there does not seem to be an existing consensus or guidance), I am tending to go with the 'space-available' sort of rationale; that is, if space is available spell out United States and if not use US (except that use within quotes are sacrosanct as per usual, and any other relevant existing MOS:US guidelines). That seems reasonable to me. Thanks for all of the comments. Any additional comments are still welcomed. L.Smithfield (talk) 23:49, 3 May 2023 (UTC)
We really don't generally have standard forms just to have standard forms. See ENGVAR and STYLEVAR and so on. That said, I agree it's possible that that was the original rationale, long ago.
But I doubt it. I think it's more likely to have been the "tone" issue I called out. --Trovatore (talk) 01:55, 4 May 2023 (UTC)
I've seen it said outside of WP to only use "U.S." as an adjective, not as a noun, so that's what I follow if writing new text. —Bagumba (talk) 02:28, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

Tɛmplet:Outdent I think an older version of MOS:NOTUSA said that USA could be confused for United States Army. Purely as personal observation, "US" seems to be the preference in current use in the world, with "U.S." running a distant second and "USA"/"U.S.A as outdated forms.  Stepho  talk  01:25, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

Agreed.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:04, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

Hair space or thin space after dash in block quotations?

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§ Other uses (em dash only) states that for block quotations, it's best to put a hair space after the attribution em dash. It also says that "most of Wikipedia's quotation templates with attribution-related parameters already provide this formatting". While {{cquote}} and {{quote frame}} do indeed use a hair space, {{blockquote}}—the primary template for block quotations—uses a thin space. As far as I can tell, it's never used a hair space. Am I missing something? Which is correct? — ⁠Will ⁠• ⁠B [talk] 20:26, 7 May 2023 (UTC)

The template is wrong. It should be a hair space. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:11, 29 June 2023 (UTC)
Alrighty, thanks. Fixed now. — Will • B [talk] 03:58, 4 July 2023 (UTC)

"The Right Honourable"

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I've noticed that the infoboxes for most UK members of parliament contain the honorific "The Right Honourable" above the name. See for example Jeremy Corbyn, Theresa May, Enoch Powell. As far as I've found, in fact, they all do unless the figure has a "higher" title, e.g. Oswald Mosley. However MOS:PREFIX states: Tɛmplet:Talkquote Am I missing something here? Is there a consensus somewhere that we make an exception for infoboxes? If so, I haven't found it in the archives. Should the guideline be amended, or should the prefix be removed from the infoboxes? Generalrelative (talk) 01:08, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

The template for the officeholder infobox has a field for "honorific_prefix" as the very first field in the template:
{{{honorific_prefix}}}
{{{name}}}
{{{honorific_suffix}}}
I assume that the MOS directive is meant to keep an article from being littered with honorifics, but the infobox is the formal summary about the individual; the "tombstone" info, and therefore a single use of the honorific at the beginning of the infobox makes sense to me. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 01:32, 15 May 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for the reply. I'd prefer if there were more clarity on this though. If there is agreement that titles like "The Right Honourable" should be in infoboxes, I'd suggest that we should amend the language in MOS:PREFIX to say so, as it does immediately below in MOS:SIR. As it stands, the guideline appears to proscribe it.
I'll say that to my eye this looks a bit like title spamming, though I understand that that may be a cultural bias I have as an American. Broadly, I've noticed that there does seem to be significantly more emphasis on honorary titles in the infoboxes of UK figures, and those of some other nations, than US ones (where e.g. all judges are technically "The Honorable" but even the bios of Supreme Court Justices do not included such prefixes).
On the surface, I suppose it might be fine if bios of figures from the UK and other nations emphasize titles where US ones don't, if that's something that editors who focus on these figures are concerned with, but I wonder if it might better serve the interests of the encyclopedia, and the purpose of this MOS, if we had a bit more standardization –– or just observed the MOS:PREFIX guideline as written –– across the board. Generalrelative (talk) 03:50, 15 May 2023 (UTC)
It's actually quite common outside the US. "Rt. Hon" is used in Canada for the PM and the Chief Justice of Canada, "Hon" for federal Cabinet ministers. Other countries do the same: Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, and South Africa, just to name a few. It's also common with religious leaders, including in the US: Popes, patriarchs, archbishops, presiding bishops, bishops, cardinals, and other ministers in non-hierarchical churches.
I hope you won't take this the wrong way, but frequently in MOS discussions, an argument for "standardisation" means "do it the way we do in the US". See just higher up in this Talk page for a discussion about the use of italics in Canadian legal articles, and "standardisation" = US style.
My view is that Wikipedia is, and bills itself, as an international encyclopedia in English, not an American encyclopedia. That's why different spellings, and dates, and other stylistic conventions vary with the country that an article is about. Diversity of style is an expression of an international encyclopedia. This issue of honorifics is just another example, in my view. If US posters don't want to use honorifics, because that's not their style in their republican (small-r) tradition, so be it. But that doesn't mean that the US preference should bar the usage of honorifics in articles about leaders of other countries, that do not share that US tradition. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 16:08, 15 May 2023 (UTC)
And I just noticed that today's featured article, about an American Jesuit, does use the honorific in the infobox: Enoch Fenwick. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 21:37, 15 May 2023 (UTC)
Let's try to refocus here. I accept that it was me who started making cultural comparisons, but my point was never that there are zero bios of Americans with honorifics in the infobox.
My essential point is that default usage of "The Right Honourable" in the infoboxes of British MPs appears to go against MOS:PREFIX, which states explicitly that this title should not be included except when discussing it in the article body. Our options then are:
  1. Amend the guideline to say that infobox mentions of "The Right Honourable" are cool (as is done for "noble" titles in MOS:SIR)
  2. Remove the prefixes
  3. Agree to WP:IAR in this case
All of these are potentially fine. My purpose was to point out that we appear to be doing #3 by default. Generalrelative (talk) 22:10, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

Tɛmplet:Od For the correct use see The Right Honourable#In the House of Commons. Briefly: ordinary MPs are called "honourable" within the chamber to try to keep debates civilised. "Right Honourable" is only applied to those MPs who are also members of the Privy Council. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 07:51, 16 May 2023 (UTC)

The difference being that "the Right Honourable" is also used outside the chamber for Privy Councillors. The guidelines only refer to the first line of the article. They do not refer to infoboxes, where we tend to use the correct style. Incidentally, use of the Rt Hon has nothing to do with having a higher title. You can be "The Right Honourable Sir". Mosley wasn't a Privy Councillor, so didn't have the prefix. -- Necrothesp (talk) 11:06, 2 June 2023 (UTC)
We make our own manual of style. We respect our sources for facts, but not for style. We do not write "On January 3rd..." even if all our sources do for instance. (Granted, what the outside world does is an important point, tho; just not a decisive one.)
Anybody can call anyone anything and so what. Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords (or however they do it) is no basis for a system of nomenclature that we are bound to use. No need to emphasize them more than we feel we must.
Two thirds of the Anglosphere are Americans. Plus there are hella Indians too, but I'd doubt if they're much inclined to use aristocratic honorifics. Most ESL readers I would also suppose. If true, that means the people using them regularly are like 25% of facile English speakers. Herostratus (talk) 21:54, 10 June 2023 (UTC)
These honorifics should be recorded somewhere in the articles on these people, though I'm not sure the infobox is the best place, and I am sure that WP should not be referring to them this way in running prose. It's not WP's job to declare someone hono[u]rable ("right" or otherwise), but it is WP job in part to annotate where conventional titles apply to people because of their positions. At a guess, I would think we should do for offices like MP what we are doing for hereditary titles, religious officies, etc. If that means consistent presentation in the infobox, then it does, but if it doesn't then conform to how we treat honorifics in other subjects.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:00, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

Strange Titling of Diaspora Articles

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Some diaspora articles follow really strange naming conventions. A lot of articles follow the "List of Lebanese people in Brazil" naming convention of mentioning a people in country. While the articles are intended to list Lebanese–Brazilians, this isn't very clear, as the title also seems imply any sort of Lebanese person in within the boundaries of Brazil could apply, and honestly listing every notable Lebanese person on vacation in Brazil seems frivolous. I moved a couple articles, such as the aforementioned List of Lebanese Brazilians, however when I noticed there was a couple dozen of these types of articles just within Lebanese diaspora I figured I should bring it up in a couple places before I moved anymore.

I've already left comments on WP:Lebanon and WP:Ethnic Groups but iits been a couple days without any responses so I figured opening a thread here would be a good idea. FlalfTalk 16:13, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

@Flalf: This is more of a WT:AT or WT:NCET question. MoS doesn't really deal with article titles except in as much as a style matter that would apply to body text also applies to the title.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:55, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

Discussion regarding MOS:DL

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Information icon There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Linking regarding collapsible sections and MOS:DL. The thread is DL, sections, and mobile readers. Thank you. Folly Mox (talk) 21:59, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

Romanization of Ukrainian

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I’ve posted an RFC at Wikipedia talk:Romanization of Ukrainian#RFC: Romanization of Ukrainian as a guideline in the Manual of Style. —Michael Z. 03:10, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

Capitalization of "the Strait", "the Bay", etc.

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Some articles, such as Strait of Gibraltar and Chesapeake Bay, capitalize phrases such as "the Strait" and "the Bay", apparently viewing them as proper nouns, shortenings of the full name. On the other hand, Strait of Magellan and Hudson Bay refer to "the strait" and "the bay" as common nouns. Some articles are internally inconsistent: for example, San Francisco Bay is about evenly split between "the Bay" and "the bay", and similarly for Strait of Hormuz.

The most relevant part of the Manual of Style seems to be Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Proper names versus generic terms. That section specifically calls out "the City" (meaning the City of London) as an exception when using the term to distinguish the City of London from London (which can also be described by the common noun "city"). But that exception implies that the general rule is that such phrases should not be capitalized.

It seems to me that, in general, phrases such as "the strait", "the bay", "the gulf", and so on are common nouns and should not be capitalized, even when used in reference to a geographical feature that happens to include the common noun in its proper name (such as the Strait of Gibraltar, Chesapeake Bay, or the Gulf of Mexico). Because that is the general rule, exceptions to the rule should require an objective rationale.

So I'm really asking two questions here:

  1. Am I correct in my understanding of the general rule, that phrases such as these should be uncapitalized by default?
  2. Is there an objective guideline to identify exceptions? (In other words, what gives Chesapeake Bay the privilege of being "the Bay" while Hudson Bay has to be just "the bay"?)

—Bkell (talk) 17:10, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

I somehow missed MOS:GEOUNITS earlier; this is a fuller guideline. It does not explicitly mention purely geographic terms such as straits and bays, but it seems clear that they are covered in the same way. I would still be interested in understanding a guideline to identify exceptions. —Bkell (talk) 17:46, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

@Bkell: Like so many things it's hard to make a clear rule. The thing we can do, without too much struggle, is make articles internally consistent. Beyond that, it is a big it depends. The Cape or the Gulf, in an article where it's clear that the topic is Cape Horn or the Gulf of Mexico, seem to me properly capitalized. (Even the Cape buffalo is typically capitalized.) The canyon or the river, where it is equally clearly talking about a specific canyon or river, perhaps because there are so many rivers and canyons, seem best lower case. In between it depends. Use your good judgement and if there's disagreement discuss it on the talk page; if it goes beyond that, I tend to let it go, because I am rarely in the mood to argue. SchreiberBike | ⌨  19:14, 5 June 2023 (UTC)
I wouldn't try to make a rule more specific that what MOSCAPS already has, which has to do with treatment in sources. Contrast "the straight" with "the cape". That doesn't mean their might not be some context in which "the Straight" or "the cape" would be appropriate, but it gives you a pretty clear idea of what sources typically do. Probably most uses of "the Cape" are for the Cape of Good Hope, per these stats. Straight is more mixed, less likely to be used as a proper name. Bay is similar to straight; often capped by locals to whom the bay is "the Bay", but not nearly consistently so, so WP should user lowercase. Dicklyon (talk) 22:00, 5 June 2023 (UTC)
Our MOS tends towards minimizing capitalization, and I find the capital Bs in Chesapeake Bay to be awkwardly informal or pompous. Either it's a nickname (in which case it shouldn't be used in formal writing), or it's descriptive, in which case it shouldn't be capitalized. (I note that it's not even consistently capitalized within the article.) — Preceding unsigned comment added by pburka (talk • contribs)
Here more stats about "Bay". Most of the caps are for proper names of the form "Bay of X" or for "Bay Area", which as far as I can tell usually means the San Francisco Bay Area, but sometimes is used for the Tampa Bay Area and others. For just "the Bay", I'd agree that caps are not needed and therefor not appropriate in WP style. Dicklyon (talk) 00:05, 6 June 2023 (UTC)
Yes, it is correct that the whole point of Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Proper names versus generic terms and its provision of an odd, rare exception or two means that the general rule is "bay" and "cape". We could not possibly insert into that section every such term that is sometimes over-capitalized; we have a general rule for the very reason that doing the former would be tedious and impractical to even attempt.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:16, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

This sort of shortened form of a fuller name has been discussed before and rejected. Words like bay and cape are descriptive nouns that are made specific to a particular referent by the definite article (the). They are not proper nouns. Capitalising them would fall to MOS:SIGNIFCAPS - and we don't do that. Cinderella157 (talk) 03:36, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

With regards to crimes

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Not sure if there's anything more specific here (tried searching, only got 'legal' listed first, but this isn't about court cases)... so, I don't know if there's anything already established, or not, in which case it's just random and how authors happen to write articles, but... when there's incidents, where murder is involved particularly, I noticed a pernicious pattern, where nationality is only mentioned if the perpetrator isn't from the same country, with those born there just having an age attached, usually... are there guidelines about that, and if not, shouldn't there be? I think it promotes a certain xenophobia in doing this, and I realize news sites already do it a lot, which is why it may be reflected here, but surely information should be consistent, so even if it's the country's same nationality it should be mentioned, or none should be at all... it's seriously insidious as it is as of now, by implication a far-right undercurrent... and, surely, the least an encyclopedia can be is consistent (which, I assume, is where 'mos' comes in), if nothing else... 92.18.125.136 (talk) 11:36, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

MOS:ETHNICITY would apply. Peaceray (talk) 14:21, 8 June 2023 (UTC)
So... does this apply in these cases? "Ethnicity, religion, or sexuality should generally not be in the lead unless relevant to the subject's notability. Similarly, neither previous nationalities nor the country of birth should be mentioned in the lead unless relevant to the subject's notability.
And, magically, for all the same-nationality crimes it's not notable, and the reverse? Well, it's discriminatory and just not consistent... and this site should seriously not merely derive notability from the desire of the far right to blame whole populations for the actions of individuals, which many articles are currently feeding into...
92.18.125.136 (talk) 19:37, 8 June 2023 (UTC)
Do you have some specific cases in mind? It's hard to be certain what it is you're objecting to without examples. The could be cases where mentioning the nationality is important, e.g. in the case of a hate-crime against people of that nationality.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:50, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
No, I meant the nationality of the perpetrator, not victims... see e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westroads_Mall_shooting - where it doesn't say at all, until later on clarifies below (born in uk, but to american parents, so clearly shouldn't blame the nationality, in some editors' minds it seems...)
Then, linked in the same article due to being similar circumstances... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Munich_shooting - and, so, apparently, this time editors seem to totally want to blame iran (despite literally being born in germany)... also the article linked below it in the previous page...
You get the picture... this is pretty much the state of all such articles on the site, which I think only serves to inflame racial tensions for no reasons whatsoever (and it's one thing for tabloids funded by hateful billionaires to do it... but an encyclopedia that strives for neutrality, really?) 92.10.153.30 (talk) 17:00, 23 July 2023 (UTC)
I'm generally sceptical of arguments which take two examples and use them to state a vague conclusion about the entirety of Wikipedia. So as a Brit, I went looking through our recent list of terrorist attacks, and found...not much to support your ethnicity argument, if I'm being honest? 2017 London Bridge attack, 2017 Westminster attack, 7 July 2005 London bombings, Manchester Arena bombing, Liverpool Women's Hospital bombing, 2017 Finsbury Park attack, Murder of Jo Cox, Murder of Lee Rigby. Only the last mentions the ethnicity of the attackers in the lead, and even then only at the end of the second paragraph. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 20:16, 23 July 2023 (UTC)
Yeah, this seems like something to bring up at Talk:2016 Munich shooting, etc., on a case-by-case basis.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:59, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

WQHS-DT

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Bde1982 and I are in disagreement on the correct possessive for a passage in WQHS-DT involving a company name.

Which of these is correct?

Tɛmplet:Tqb

or

Tɛmplet:Tqb Sammi Brie (she/her • t • c) 20:43, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

@Sammi Brie: MOS:'S describes this:Tɛmplet:Tq2 —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 20:48, 10 June 2023 (UTC)
Thank you, @Tenryuu; this is what I had suspected, but I wanted to tag the user since he reverted my retention of the MOS:'S-compliant usage. Sammi Brie (she/her • t • c) 20:50, 10 June 2023 (UTC)
Worth mentioning that "correct" in this context only means "complying with the MOS", it does not necessarily mean grammatically correct for all variants of the English Language. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 21:18, 10 June 2023 (UTC)
Also worth noting that MOS:'S goes on to say that where this rule produces awkward pronunciation, in this case "channel communicationziz", rewording should be considered. Perhaps something like The aggressive approach by Channel Communications towards WCLQ-TV failed to yield a positive return.... Davidships (talk) 21:52, 10 June 2023 (UTC)
How is that pronuncation awkward?--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 22:40, 11 June 2023 (UTC)
@Davidships didn't say that it was awkward, just that if the rule does produce awkward pronunciation, rewording should be considered. Also, what sounds awkward varies from person to person and from one part of the country to another. In this case if a resident of Cleveland said it sounded awkward to them, I'd take their word for it. If it sounded wrong to someone both ways, then rewording is a good option. SchreiberBike | ⌨  01:56, 12 June 2023 (UTC)
But it doesn't produce an awkward pronunciation, so why bring it up, just to muddy the water?  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:51, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
Channel Communications's (so weird!) can only begin to be justified if Channel Communications functions as an ordinary singular when it is used in a sentence. And indeed, that's how it works at the company's website: "Channel Communications uses state and federal funds to help local towns and villages with engineering design ...". But is functioning as a singular sufficient to make that s's a proper genitive ending? No. If it were sufficient, why shouldn't the WP article The Bahamas have "The Bahamas's booming economy [led to it becoming a beacon for immigrants]", instead of "The Bahamas' booming economy" as at present? For that matter, the WP article McDonald's treats McDonald's, quite rightly, as an ordinary noun in the nominative or the accusative: so by close analogy the genitive should be McDonald's's, right? Wrong. Too silly.
Editors here should give rational guidance that reflects actual usage. The problem case is not covered in WP:MOS, nor adequately at Apostrophe to which MOS explicitly directs users: "For thorough treatment of the English possessive, see Apostrophe." This MOS page therefore needs adjustment; and so does Apostrophe, which has acquired substandard and unevidenced alterations over the years. 49.190.56.203 (talk) 08:57, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
There is a simple rule: if when speaking you would add "-ez", then write "'s" (as in Tɛmplet:Notatypo book => "James's book"). Just because "actual usage" in some parts of the world reflects mis-understanding or over-compensation (see also Greengrocer's apostrophe) does not mean we have to accept sloppy writing. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 10:01, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
Whatever the MOS does say, the MOS should be written to avoid absurdities such as adding 's in cases where it isn't going to be pronounced. I think it's fair to say that virtually nobody is going to say "Channel Communicationziz", that nobody should say that, and it's just plain dumb to add a suffix that implies that it should be pronounced. Even more absurd is to hold that the possessive of the name of the restaurant chain Denny's should be "Denny's's", both bad in writing and implying a pronunciation that doesn't exist. "Denny's's gross revenue in 2022 was ..."—no. The best treatment for the two names should be "Capital Communications'" and "Denny's'". The latter still looks strange, sure, but at least it matches the pronunciation.
For an MOS guideline to say, basically, "If our guideline produces stupid results, the answer is not to revise the guidelines but to avoid having to apply it" seems an acknowledgement that the guideline is bad. Largoplazo (talk) 11:17, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
JMF: Yes, there is that simple rule. It is not at all universally accepted. It would settle things for Channel Communications, but not for the genitive (possessive) of McDonald's. An almost universal unstated assumption (can you find a style guide that states it?): there should never be a further possessive apostrophe applied immediately after a possessive ending, just as (irrationally) there is never a further period (full stop) immediately after a period that marks abbreviation: like this, etc..
Largoplazo: see above. You write:
The best treatment for the two names should be "Capital Communications'" and "Denny's'". The latter still looks strange, sure, but at least it matches the pronunciation.
If you say so. But that's not how anyone proficient in real-world English for publication does it. Find us a respectably published source, or a style guide, that uses or recommends Denny's' or McDonald's'. Rewriting may be a cowardly way out, and not always available (we sometimes need to transcribe what people say). The sort of thing we usually find in print:
KFC's fries are like McDonald's but with chicken flavour.
While McDonald's's can be seen in print, it's not common. Can anyone find an instance of McDonald's' in print? I tried.
49.190.56.203 (talk) 01:12, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
It'll be rare because a) most of the material that would write about the fries at McDonald's are going to be news-style material (which doesn't follow the consistent-apostrophe-s rule [yet?] except at a few particular publishers; it's mostly an academic-style-guides matter at this point), and b) most writers would write around the awkardness (e.g., as I did in this sentence by using "the fries at McDonald's").  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:01, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

Blond/e? (informal RfC)

[mali mi di yibu sheena n-niŋ]

"Blonde/blond" is the only (or one of a very few) gendered adjectives in English (it can also be a noun" "Blond man" and "blonde woman" is correct (and like it or not this remains strong, according to this Ngram. "The blonde woman..." (or just "the blonde...", when referring to a woman) is correct, we do it, no problem there.

But what about objects, and persons of unknown gender, or collections of people? "Blond/e-colored wood...", "The blond/e person"..., "Many blond/e people in the crowd"... how is that handled? As near as I can tell, there's no rule in English. So what do we do?

(This is important for the article Blond, but probably comes up very very rarely anywhere else. Maybe in "The Nazi blond/e Aryan ideal" or something".}

So, what to do, what to do? I'm seeing five choices:

  • A) Nothing. Rare. Don't need a rule. Let the person writing the passage decide, but stay consistent within articles.
  • B) Blond in all such cases.
  • C) Blonde in all such cases.
  • D) Avoid. Use "fair-haired" or "light colored" or what have you in all such cases.
  • Other, specify. "Blond/e" or "Blondx" or whatever. Coinflip, I don't know. (Thread creator is Herostratus (talk).)

Poll (I f'get what you're supposed to call this section)

[mali mi di yibu sheena n-niŋ]
  • C, blonde. It's 50-50, so why not give the women pride of place in this rare instance when we can. More below. Herostratus (talk) 21:31, 13 June 2023 (UTC)
  • A, we don't need to interfere here. Blond is a more American spelling and blonde is more preferred in British English in general for all uses. However it's not a hard and fast rule. Whomever writes it in an article first then just stay consistent and don't change English variations. Canterbury Tail talk 22:01, 13 June 2023 (UTC)
    I don't think that that's true (willing to be corrected), so it would not be a WP:ENGVAR issue. I think. Herostratus (talk) 16:43, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
  • A, mostly, until you get to the Tɛmplet:Tqq part, which is not what's happening in blond. That article looks okay (based on a quick skim through), so let's not create a new rule that requires us to screw up that page. — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits) 22:28, 13 June 2023 (UTC)
    That article has been WP:BRD'd back to always using its original term ("blond") for all unspecified-gender cases, which is what is basically always done (and should be) for internal-consistency in cases like this. Herostratus (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 19:25, 16 June 2023 (UTC)
    (*sigh*) — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits) 20:58, 18 June 2023 (UTC)
    What? What'd I do? Herostratus (talk) 20:45, 20 June 2023 (UTC)
  • A. We definitely do not need a rule on this, since it is not something people frequently edit-war over. See any dictionary: blonde is feminine, blond is masculine. Just for concision reasons, use blond when the context is generic.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:13, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
    Similarly, generic "he" is more concise then "they" or "she", and also historically very common in our historical sources, maybe we should use that when gender is unknown? Herostratus (talk) 16:43, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
    The preponderance of style guides that MoS is based on now recommend against "generic he"; they don't recommend against "generic blond".  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:54, 18 June 2023 (UTC)
    That's right. Thus we are thrown back on our resources. Herostratus (talk) 20:50, 20 June 2023 (UTC)
    This point is that WP does not "lead the charge" on any form of language reformation. The community has been over this to death-and-beyond many times, most obviously in how we write about trans and nonbinary people, but in various other ways as well (including actress, generic he/his/him, etc.) Unless and until the style guides that MoS is based on mostly decide to use one spelling or the other and to avoid gendered spellings, and to avoid defaulting to male gendered spellings, MoS and WP should not be taking some kind of language-change activistic position on the matter. Most especially not prescriptively, since editors will just disobey it, pointedly. We're supposed to be describing not forcing practice. Going with blonde as the default would even conflict with previous loose consensus to default toward actor, aviator, etc. That is, when we do go, or lean, toward choosing one form over another, it is the form that does not have feminizing add-ons like -ess, -trix, or in this case -e.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:46, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
  • A As long as an article is consistent throughout with using blond / blonde, we don't need another rule per WP:MOSBLOAT. Masterhatch (talk) 16:40, 18 June 2023 (UTC)
  • I agree with A on general small-MoS principles, but if we did want to have a rule, it should be B. "Blonde" is only for a (female) person (a blonde woman has blond hair). --Trovatore (talk) 18:27, 21 June 2023 (UTC)
    Not according to Webster ("She has blonde hair like her dad; Two of the boys are blond like their dad.") For people. For things, it does say to use blond. Herostratus (talk) 08:45, 26 June 2023 (UTC)
    That doesn't make much sense to me, given that hair is a thing and is not people. --Trovatore (talk) 00:10, 27 June 2023 (UTC)
  • A. Something this trivial really doesn't need to be codified in the MoS. So long as it's consistent I don't particularly care. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 01:30, 29 June 2023 (UTC)
  • A, because we all have better things to do. Or WP:CREEP, if it has to be something. Mathglot (talk) 03:57, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

Threaded discussion

[mali mi di yibu sheena n-niŋ]
Extended ran... er, exposition, that's it, exposition

OK, Got to put on our male ally hats so we can mansplain which one best shows being awake to the need to not imply women are in an inferior position. Right? But how? Let's see... first of all I think it needs do be either "Blonde" or "Blonde". The other choices are kind of forced, except A, which basically will devolve to B because... well, uh, tube steak soire, if you get my drift. The article Blond uses the male term. Coincidence? Maybe. We see that in the Actor/Actress debate. The argument is between keeping it is, or using "Actor" for all thespians... erasing the profession of actress and forcing all thespians to use the male term. Might as well go back to generic "he" then. We could use the term "Actress" for all thespians -- it's a wiki, we can do what we want. But proposing this literally -- literally -- causes editors' brains to pop out their skulls and go running around the room apparently. You can't demote Tom Hanks to being an Actress! Alright, I'm not seriously proposing that, we do have to follow the outside world to some degree.

But with "blonde/blond" we don't have that problem! Right? Either term can be used for people of unknown gender and it doesn't jar. 50/50, so why not give the women a win for once? Sounds like being awake to the needs of women, right?. So, blonde, q.e.d.

But wait! "Blonde" as a noun, in the outside world, is overwhelmingly applied to women. "The lawyer and a tall blond walked into the room." Even with the misspelling, what gender do you think the writer intends to imply? Isn't that going along with the patriarchal notion that a man would be described by his occupation, a woman by her appearance? Cannot have that!. So, using "blonde" assumes that for hair color description of a person of unknown gender, we are implying that describing this appearance point, we are assuming it's probably a women, because after all that is the gender that it is fit and proper to be to describe so. Patriarchy! So, blond, q.e.d

But wait! Go the drugstore (not right now) and look at the hair color aisle. Lots and lots of blonde dyes aimed at women, none at men (maybe one). For the men, it's color some of the grey, get that senior vice president look. For the women, it's more to look pretty. It's true! So here we're talking about, not men describing women but womenwanting to have fair hair -- hella women. Are they bubble-brained bimbos concerned mainly with appearance? We're talkin lot of women, isn't that kind of harsh? Should a woman be ashamed to want to be pretty? And should we deliberately ignore the agency of these women? Ignore that fact that -- like it or not -- more people are blonde than blond? I don't think so. So, blonde, q.e.d.

Well, I'm tired, can't stay awake anymore. But when I wake up, I hope to be fully awake, to read the discussion (if any) by other awake people (well, you kind of have to be to participate in the discussion) It's a very complicated issue, that would tax even Kant (altho, granted, mind-numbingly unimportant, except for the one article). Herostratus (talk) 21:31, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

She reached into her bag and slid a photograph across the desk, a five-by-three glazed still. It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window.

Tɛmplet:MdashRaymond Chandler, Farewell, My Lovely (via EEng)

The TL;DR for the above detailed gollywogging is: 1) Both blonde and blond are both used regularly in real life, 2) unlike actor/actress, waiter/waitress where I suppose we must default to stuffing unspecified-gender persons under the male term, we don't have to do that here -- either will do -- and 3) why not, this one time when we can stuff unspecified-gender persons under the female term, why not allow women to see their gender as the default, this once? Mnmh? Plus, 4) other reasons. Thus, blonde. (Herostratus (talk) 19:15, 16 June 2023 (UTC))

See the passage to the right ->. Must -- or can -- an editor convert that to blond (if it wasn't a quote)? Reversing the gender of the person in the photo (whose gender is not specified). Isn't that misleading the reader, on purpose? Herostratus (talk) 19:32, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

No, because you must never tweak a direct quote if you're using it as a quote. Canterbury Tail talk 20:35, 16 June 2023 (UTC)
True, but you could have "Smith's work in hair science, though, was regularly interrupted by series of blond fans coming through his lab." "Jones regularly spoke of the blonde, blue-eyed ideal he hought mankind should strive for" "Williams generally used what he called blonde-colored wood for his creations". And so forth. Herostratus (talk) 20:43, 20 June 2023 (UTC)
This seems like a quibble. It's quite obvious that the subject of the photograph is a woman, even if it's not stated in so many words. --Trovatore (talk) 18:52, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

Trademarked brands that have become pseudo-synonymous with a term

[mali mi di yibu sheena n-niŋ]

I think we need a guideline for trademarked brands that have become pseudo-synonymous with a term. There is a dispute that has been going on on the talk page for the redirect for the term Realtor. In the US, Realtor is often incorrectly used as a synonym for real estate agent. I can't find any guideline to apply but it is clear that this term is not a correct synonym despite popular usage.

Similarly,

And as you can see, we have no consistency. Some redirect to the generic product, some redirect to the brand.

Clarification in MOS would be good. Toddst1 (talk) 13:16, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

Genericization of trademarks is a natural part of language evolution. If we do develop a policy around it, we shouldn't base it on a prescriptivist approach. Common usage isn't correct or incorrect, it just is.--Trystan (talk) 14:15, 21 June 2023 (UTC)
Aside from the National Association of Realtors getting all pissy when you call them real estate agents, what is the actual difference? Subway calls their employees "sandwich artists", but there's no difference between that and "sandwich makers". How is "realtor" vs "real estate agent" different? --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 18:05, 21 June 2023 (UTC)
The difference is that it's their brand and they mean it to aid in their marketing of themselves as practitioners of distinction. Being accorded the right to brand oneself a Realtor is meant to serve as a mark of professional achievement and merit, like "certified public accountant". Largoplazo (talk) 18:11, 21 June 2023 (UTC)
But a CPA doesn't get upset when they are called an accountant. What is the difference? --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 18:17, 21 June 2023 (UTC)
I don't recall hearing of NAR members objecting to being called "real estate agents", only to non-NAR-member agents being called "realtors". Also not sure how it's relevant to the question. Do you want to clarify? I haven't been following the discussion at the page and can't really claim I'm interested enough to do so, so if it's something from that discussion, maybe summarize. --Trovatore (talk) 18:24, 21 June 2023 (UTC)
  • Question… is the term “realtor” used outside the US? And (if so) does it only refer to those with a specific license or membership, or is it used more generally? Blueboar (talk) 18:41, 21 June 2023 (UTC)
  • This is a content dispute, not a MOS issue. But I've fixed the Reynolds Wrap redirect—thanks for pointing it out. pburka (talk) 18:42, 21 June 2023 (UTC)
  • Not a MOS issue unless it's been a chronic problem. See WP:MOSBLOAT. EEng 18:47, 21 June 2023 (UTC)
  • Blueboar, it's not used outside the US (and Canada?). But most readers will work it out from the "real", which starts the rather ungainly "real-estate agent" in use elsewhere; and from having seen "realtor" in AmEng text. I wouldn't bother inserting the equivalent in parentheses if I were writing an article. Tony (talk) 05:24, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
    • Definitely used in Canada, and not as a trademarked term.[1] Meters (talk) 05:36, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

Tɛmplet:Ref list

  • Whether a trademark has actually become genericized or not is a legal matter that is settled (on a per-jurisdiction basis) by a court of competent jurisdiction there. None of the above examples are actually genericized in any jurisdiction I'm aware of (unlike aspirin, which is probably genericized everywhere). Where we have an article on the brand, the term should go there. Where we do not, it should go to the general topic, and the fact that it's a trademark should be covered somewhere in the general-trademark article. We are making some legal mistakes in a few places, that probably open WMF to litigatory liability under US and perhaps other trademark law. E.g. Frisbee should be moved to Flying disc, no matter how often people call them all "Frisbees" regardless of brand, and the lead sentence should absolutely not be presenting "frisbee" in lower case as a generic term. It is correct in later presenting "Frisbee" as a trademark, with details on the trademark holder. There really should probably be an article at Frisbee that is about the brand, or at least it should redirect to Wham-O as one of their brands.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:39, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

Relist Template talk:Infobox military conflict#RfC on "supported by" being used with the belligerent parameter

[mali mi di yibu sheena n-niŋ]

Relisted for further input. Cinderella157 (talk) 11:56, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

Feedback requested at 'Cisgender'

[mali mi di yibu sheena n-niŋ]

A discussion is taking place about whether the central topic of the article Cisgender should be changed. Issues of MOS:LEAD and MOS:WAW are involved. Your feedback would be appreciated at this discussion. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 04:50, 24 June 2023 (UTC)

Dashes in empty table cells

[mali mi di yibu sheena n-niŋ]

Table cells with no value often have a dash in them, but I don't see anything in MOS:DASH about that, like whether en and em dashes are equally OK, depending on cell size, or whatever. One editor was recently changing en dash to hyphen in empty cells, using AWB, which I questioned; he wants to know if there's anything written about a preference. Dicklyon (talk) 17:52, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

A recommendation from The Chicago Manual of Style (16th edition, § 3.65): "If a column head does not apply to one of the entries in the stub, the cell should either be left blank or, better, filled in by an em dash or three unspaced ellipsis dots." Doremo (talk) 18:10, 28 June 2023 (UTC)
A recommendation from Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (4th edition, § 3.68): "If a cell cannot be filled because data were not obtained or are not reported, insert a dash in that cell ...." (The examples imply that this is an em dash.) Doremo (talk) 18:16, 28 June 2023 (UTC)
That's pretty typically what I see. But also en dash in a lot, esp. in narrow columns where entries are mostly single-digit numbers. Hyphens are sometimes found, too, and think it would be good for us to guide away from that toward a dash of one sort or another. Dicklyon (talk) 19:30, 28 June 2023 (UTC)
I think that when you see a hyphen, it's someone trying their best, but not knowing how to put in a proper dash. WhatamIdoing (talk) 13:46, 29 June 2023 (UTC)
The symbols are directly beneath the edit box. It's no excuse for sub-professional writing. Tony (talk) 05:21, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
Tony, I appreciate your high standards, but I also think most editors just have no idea that the en dash even exists, since so many styles, esp. on the web, use a hyphen/minus glyph to stand for an en dash. So, "no excuse" seems a bit harsh, tough their "best" is sub-par. Where it gets interesting is with editors who are familiar with dashes and the MOS yet argue for a hyphen where an en dash is what a pro would use. Pretty much the same ones who say no diacritics, since they don't see those on their keyboards, either. I see them all on my Mac keyboard, since I studied up on the keyboard layout when it came out, 39 years ago. Dicklyon (talk) 05:38, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
Not everyone uses RefToolbar. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 15:11, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
Usually, yes, but what brought me here was a user with a script designed to replace those dashes with hyphens. He wanted to know if there's a consensus written somewhere. Sounds like we have it (except that en vs em is up in the air). Dicklyon (talk) 05:02, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
An en dash generally looks a little too small for my taste (on my browser, with my skin, etc.), but a hyphen looks very much too small. I wouldn't necessarily change from an en to an em dash, but I frequently change hyphens to em-dashes, especially in discographies. The guidance at WP:DISCOGSTYLE never made it to MOS status, but the sample tables there explicity indicate that Tɛmplet:Tqq (that is, an em dash). That's become my standard indicator since then, or even before then (ca. 2011); anything else (except, of course, {{n/a}}) catches my eye as "wrong". — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits) 23:18, 28 June 2023 (UTC)
I generally agree, except that this came up in a table with mostly 1-digit entries, in which case the width of an en dash looks like a better fit. If people prefer to standardize on em dash, that's OK, too. In any case, this validates my pushback on hyphen. Dicklyon (talk) 05:16, 29 June 2023 (UTC)
And part of the problem is that there are lots of fonts where the hyphen and the en dash are barely distinguishable. I use a font where they're quite distinct, so I'm more sensitive to these differences than many readers and editors. Dicklyon (talk) 05:44, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
Adjacent to this matter, let's talk principles of web accessibility—which, among other things, call for the elimination of empty cells in data tables. Not that there's any hope of achieving real accessibility for screenreader users with tables on Wikipedia edited by thousands of people unfamiliar with the principles, but it's good to try. A dash isn't going to be read, nor are hyphens, daggers, asterisks, and so forth. It would be useful to have a set of templates, maybe {{cell no entry}}, {{cell not available}}, {{cell statistically insignificant}}, one for the case, I forget what it's called, where a number isn't reported because the population it refers to is so small that it would risk revealing personal information for members of that group, and so forth, which display a chosen symbol (can be a dash by default) and the corresponding words to be read by a screenreader. Example:
{{cell no entry}}
yields
<span aria-label="no entry">—</span>
while
{{cell no entry|*}}
yields
<span aria-label="no entry">*</span>
Largoplazo (talk) 01:12, 29 June 2023 (UTC)
Good idea. And those could be substituted in by a bot, I expect. Dicklyon (talk) 05:16, 29 June 2023 (UTC)
I think that span without a role will not be read aloud by most screen readers. Have you tested that? Also, at the risk of sounding stupid, wouldn't the words be the most accessible? For example, "no entry", "unknown", "not available", "none", "no data", or whatever fits the table's content best. In any case, this doesn't seem like something where the MoS should prescribe a specific solution. Regards, Rjjiii (talk) 04:08, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
En dashes would be the ideal. Tony (talk) 10:09, 29 June 2023 (UTC)
Personally, I'm OK with flexibility here. The em dash looks better (to me) in wide fields. Can you say why you think en dash would be the ideal? Dicklyon (talk) 05:40, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
In narrow columns the em dash can look a bit lumpy and disruptive. Tony (talk) 07:00, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
I like the suggestion of a {{cell no entry}} template. That's the right thing to do, and could easily be implemented in a script, to take effect whenever more substantial changes are being made to the article. Colonies Chris (talk) 12:32, 29 June 2023 (UTC)
Em dash would be the ideal. No opinion on templates for lack of entry. —Anomalocaris (talk) 05:29, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
I usually use an en dash for this, because we use en dashes widely for many purposes, but reserve em dashes for a limited number of specified uses. But I don't have a strong feeling on the matter otherwise, except against robotically repalcing dashes with hyphens, which certainly look too small, and which aren't intended for this kind of purpose (they are joiners of compounds). I could see specifying to use an em dash or an en dash for this purpose. And I think it should be specified (WP:MOSBLOAT notwithstanding), if we have evidence that people are going to editwar or WP:MEATBOT about it. MoS's no. 2 purpose (after ensuring consistent and sensible presentation to the readers) is preventing or at least ending arbitrary "style fights" among editors. It's fine to have a template like {{cell no entry}} but that still requires us to settle on what that template should output by default (and whether it should even have an option to vary from that default). It should do something sensible and consistent. I just don't personally care much whether it is en dash or em dash, as long as it's not hyphen. And certainly not *, which implies a footnote that people will go looking for in vain.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:31, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
Why not mandate the use of, e.g., {{n/a}}, and let style changes be in a single place? -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 10:00, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

positional phrasing in articles, such as "see below"

[mali mi di yibu sheena n-niŋ]

Is there any style guidance for phrases such as "see below" in article space? It's clearly discouraged for images, but I haven't found anything about text in particular. I find it problematic, because an editor may in good faith move sections around without noticing that this impacts the usefulness of a positional phrase in another part of the article. If there's a style entry about it, I'll follow that rather than my gut. ~TPW 14:39, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

I'd try to link to the appropriate section with helpful piped text that flows with the prose, and try to avoid "see there", if possible. —Bagumba (talk) 07:13, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
Nevertheless, it's often important in long, complex articles, and it is often much less confusing to the reader to explicitly refer to later (or earlier) material rather than to pipe a link that appears to be to a different article. Editors who "in good faith move sections around" have an affirmative duty to clean up after any mess they make; it's just part of being a responsible, competent editor. If "Tɛmplet:Xref" or "Tɛmplet:Xref" sorts of crossreferences were not permissible, we would not have {{Crossreference}}.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:23, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
In ye olden dayz, it mattered whether the piece of text you were referring to was "above" or "below" the reference. Since the advent of hypertext, it doesn't matter anymore if they are "above" or "below", because the hyperlink takes you straight there. Precisely because someone may move things around, my take is to just wikilink the section (or anchor, as the case may be), and don't introduce "above's" and "belows" that don't help anybody get there faster, and might need to be altered later, without improving the page, just keeping it from being mistaken. One way to avoid the appearance of a link destination being in a different article is to use {{section link}}. Mathglot (talk) 04:10, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
Not every internal cross-reference is to a section, nor are these techniques at cross purposes anyway, as they can be effectively combined: "(see § Widgets, below)". And I think you fundamentally misunderstand how humans generally process documents. Leaping around the page without any idea whether you're going backward/up or forward/down in the overall document flow is disorienting to the reader. I'm a [semi-retired] Web usability specialist; I've done this kind of stuff for a living pretty much since the Web existed. Even understanding where readers' eyes are most likely to track is important, along with related concerns like avoiding left-floated images pushing headings inward, etc.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:17, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
The MOS frequently uses "above" and "below". See, for example MOS:UNDERLINK: Relevant connections to the subject of another article that will help readers understand the article more fully (see the example below). Hawkeye7 (discuss) 06:36, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
Yes, this "but it may someday move" argument is a red herring. If that kind of reasoning held here, then a tremendous number of things we do would become verboten by the same reasoning. (Most obviously: using an inline citation immediately after the text we're citing it for, creating a close relationship between the material and the citation. It's a fact of editing that later incautious editors may insert new material between the original material and the citation for it, making it look like the new material is cited to that source, and even that the old material doesn't have one. But we just fix it. That's how WP works: just fix it, and try not to break it in the first place by being a cautious editor who checks for unintended consequences before moving on.)

Another way to put this: The desire to force editors to stop using "(see below)"-style crossreferences is a solution in search of a problem, and prescribing something about it in MOS would be objectionable WP:CREEP and WP:MOSBLOAT. If after 20-odd years MoS and WP have done just fine without a prescription against this, and editors are not presently fighting to the virtual death over it, then there is no demonstrable cause for us to start legislating about it. The guidelines are to describe best practice, not force a change in long-accepted practice.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:17, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

An important use of "below" or "following" is to give a reference before a list or diagram (such as a cladogram) that follows, e.g. something like "As of DATE, SOURCE accepted the following species:REF". Peter coxhead (talk) 09:17, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

Is "no." or "#" meant to be used on comic issues?

[mali mi di yibu sheena n-niŋ]

For citations on comic books with volume and issue numbers, are we meant to use the number sign, the number abbreviation, or is that up to the editor?

  • MOS:POUND says: An exception is issue numbers of comic books, which unlike for other periodicals are conventionally given in general text in the form #1, unless a volume is also given, in which case write volume two, number seven or Vol. 2, No. 7.
  • MOS:COMICSVOLUME says: Where a comic-book series has been published in a number of volumes — Legion of Superheroes, for instance, has had five volumes — the specific series should be referred to by volume number, as indicated by the indicia of the series, not by year of first issue being published or by first series or second series. The preferred styling for this is Title, vol. 2, #1.

Thanks, Rjjiii (talk) 06:44, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

MOS:POUND should be followed, and MOS:COMICSVOLUME edited to comply with it and resolve this accidental WP:POLICYFORK. The whole point is that "#23" is a short-hand that is pervasive in the comics sphere, but if you are going with long-hand notation in something like "Vol. 2, No. 23" you are already out of the short-hand territory. Don't mix the styles half-and-half. And our citation templates are not going to support "#" anyway. Using "#23" style is more for running prose, not for citations to issues.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:18, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
Thanks SMcCandlish. While digging into this, you seem to be the last editor involved in forming these policies who is still active.
My concern is just with the citations as I am updating {{comic strip reference}} so that it can finally be merged with {{cite comic}}. You say our citation templates are not going to support "#" but that is actually what got me here. The {{cite comic}} template is rather basic in some ways will take either "1" or "#1" as a parameter. As of now, it doesn't really format the input and (as suggested by WP:CMOS#CITESTYLE) many editors have stashed a pound sign in there.
To borrow a citation from Crystal Frasier (7 July 2023), I see these as both valid:
Rjjiii (talk) 06:42, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
It would still be weird to see output of "Vol. 3, #2", in a mixed style like that. Really, I would think that citation templates should always emit "No. 2" regardless of the |issue= input being "2" or "#2", because we want citations to be consistent with each other across the article. Again, the "#2" shorthand is more for running text, like "Superman #2 at a grade of 92 sold for US$80,000 in an auction in Dubai in 2023" or whatever. It's not meant for citations, which are a formal presentation of consistent publication data.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:57, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
Awesome, that's how {{comic strip reference}} currently handles it.
{{comic strip reference| Writer = [[Greg Rucka|Rucka, Greg]] | Penciller = [[David Lopez (artist)|Lopez, David]] | Title = [[Wonder Woman]] | Volume =2 | Story = Affirmative Defense | Issue = #220 | date = Oct. 2005 | Publisher=DC Comics }} generates:
Tɛmplet:Comic strip reference Rjjiii (talk) 07:17, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

Manned/Human Spaceflight

[mali mi di yibu sheena n-niŋ]

I may not be the first person to bring this up, but I'm sure as part of a refresher, some of my ideas will resonate with others here. Some of the new terminology being used vis-a-vis NASA and human spaceflight seems to be a polarizing and somewhat controversial topic among space enthusiasts in this day and age. I also realize this is NASA's new, preferred expression more so than that of Wikipedians who happen to frequently write about NASA and space exploration. While I can appreciate the use of "crewed" (and also sometimes "piloted") as a more gender-inclusive version of "manned," it does also sound kind of excessive in a lot of respects. Even during the latter half of the 20th century, female pilots and workers/scientists at NASA still used "Manned," whether or not they regarded it as sexist. Should manned be permanently and almost entirely replaced by crewed? Maybe not.

While I'm more than in favor of bringing in more diverse groups of people to organizations like NASA and elsewhere, I really think this (gender identity/identity politics) issue should be left alone. Also, while NASA is largely doing the right thing to appeal to more (especially marginalized) groups of people, I personally think they are making a bit too big a deal about this, especially when NASA should still be focused on endeavors like cooperation with groups such as ESA, CSA and JSA, as well as competition with the Chinese Space Program and what's left of the Russian Space Program. Wiscipidier (talk) 22:49, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

You're right; you're not the first person to bring this up. There was, for example, an RfC in 2019, and another short discussion in 2021. And while I, personally, might not change "manned" to "crewed" when I'm working on an article, I certainly wouldn't Tɛmplet:Tqq "manned" with "crewed", for fear of being disruptive. Someone else might (either or both), though, which would be rather consistent with that RfC (although it actually only dealt with the MoS), and if they did, I wouldn't revert. — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits) 21:16, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

Phrasing of exception to British rule about treating organizations as plural.

[mali mi di yibu sheena n-niŋ]

Pol098 implemented a change of:

In British English, such words are sometimes treated as singular, but more often treated as plural, according to context. Exceptionally, names of towns and countries usually take singular verbs (unless they are being used to refer to a team or company by that name, or when discussing actions of that entity's government).

to

In British English, such words are sometimes treated as singular, but more often treated as plural, according to context. Names of towns and countries usually take singular verbs, but exceptionally, for example when used to refer to a team or company by that name, or when discussing actions of that entity's government, plural is used.

Which is better? —DIYeditor (talk) 17:54, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

I think we're agreed on what actually happens, but the wording was bad: "Exceptionally, names of towns and countries usually take singular verbs". Singular is not exceptional, it's the norm. And "exceptionally" and "usually" in the same sentence are confusing and contradictory. Before seeing this discussion I made a change that may be acceptable to all concerned; but the clause I quote is definitely wrong. Before seeing this comment I edited the article back to what I had written, with an extra clarification (which I don't really think is needed) that it's regional. Best wishes, Pol098 (talk) 18:09, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
Treating an organization as singular is the exception to the rule in British English, not the norm. —DIYeditor (talk) 18:14, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
I still think we agree on the facts, it's just the words. In British English, would you agree that "the names of towns and countries" (which are not collective nouns) usually take singular verbs (this bit is not about organisations, we've left that subject)? Or am I getting confused? It would help if someone else would comment. For the time being I've experimented with adding a paragraph break. Best wishes, Pol098 (talk) 19:37, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
I think this ENGVAR claim is bogus to begin with. I've been reading almost exclusively British-published material for the last 3 months, on a daily basis, and this alleged habit of British English "more often treat[ing] as plural" the names of organisations has not been in evidence. It seems to vary widely by the preferences of the writer and by the nature of the organisation in question, and even the nature of the sentence (is it saying something about the organisation as a collective of individuals with opinions and making choices and so on, or is it about an official position taken by the organisation as an entity?).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:35, 21 July 2023 (UTC)
When I moved to America in 1989, it was one of the first and most glaring differences I noticed between British and American English. I'd been reading American fiction for a long time so I shouldn't have been surprised; I was probably partly bilingual already (bi-langvarial?). What surprised me was how universally Americans corrected the plural to the singular. So I suspect you're right to say it's sometimes right in UK English to use the singular, but it would be wrong to have a rule that denied the plural was ever valid. My own, now somewhat polluted, recollection is that companies are almost always plural, since that's the context in which I recall noticing it. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 02:48, 22 July 2023 (UTC)
It may well vary for companies nowadays, but for national teams the difference is stark. Comparing "England are playing Australia" v."England is playing Australia" in leading news outlets, the British ones (BBC, Times, Telegraph, Guardian, Sky Sport as well as the tabloids and regionals) are unanimously plural. Considering other EngVar, Indian media are almost consistently singular; Australian, New Zealand and West Indian media differ between titles, though mostly singular. Surprisingly, I also found "are" used in CNN International. Davidships (talk) 15:47, 22 July 2023 (UTC)
Yeah, sports jargon seems to be "its own thing", and it varies more nationally (even where one might expect some "Commonwealth English" commonality). But I don't think this really translates into a broad generalization (e.g., about companies, not-for-profit organisations, etc.)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:08, 24 July 2023 (UTC)
The Engvar claim which you described above as "bogus" specifically encompasses both teams and companies. It's certainly not so in relation to teams. For companies and the like, I agree that BrEng does vary considerably by writer and context - and sometimes also skewed a bit, at least colloquially, where there is a non-plural added "s" (eg Tescos/Tesco's, or W H Smiths/W H Smith's).Davidships (talk) 11:14, 24 July 2023 (UTC)
I agree. I still regularly read British commentary on sports and the use of the plural for teams is universal. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:50, 24 July 2023 (UTC)
Just as one point of reference, the Guardian style guide has a specific entry about plurals for companies, sports and bands (under "singular or plural?" https://www.theguardian.com/guardian-observer-style-guide-s)
It's definitely something that varies in British English, but is more fixed in American English. Popcornfud (talk) 12:59, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

From Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Manual of Style

[mali mi di yibu sheena n-niŋ]

Tɛmplet:Tqb Note: since WikiProject Manual of Style is inactive, I have quoted that section here. Edward-Woodrow :) [talk] 16:58, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

@Edward-Woodrow thank you. Thryduulf (talk) 20:26, 21 July 2023 (UTC)
Yep, good idea.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:05, 24 July 2023 (UTC)
  1. ↑ Canadian Oxford dictionary (2. ed.). Don Mills, Ontario: Oxford Univ. Pr. 2004. p. 1287. ISBN 0195418166. realtor noun N Amer. a real estate agent
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