Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 103

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Archive 100

Archive 101

Archive 102

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WP:ACCESSIBILITY

Asking again...WP:ACCESSIBILITY is an important page. It's not currently in the style cat or in CAT:GEN, but I would be happy to put it in both, if someone who knows more than I do about images and tables will confirm that it doesn't contradict pages in the style cat or image cat. Sandy often checks articles for compliance with WP:ACCESSIBILITY, so we want to make sure to bring this page to the attention of editors. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 03:28, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

I think it's a good move. IMO, WP:ACCESS should be more than a guideline, because if we don't follow it, it's likely we are discriminating against those with disabilities. Matthewedwards (talk • contribs • email) 03:50, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

I do not know what the style cat is, why there is one, or what it means. It's marked as a style guideline. Do we now have a hierarchy of style guidelines? If we do, 1) I'm unaware, and 2) ACCESSIBILITY should be one of the most important ones, as explained by Matthewedwards. (Why is the font on this page horribly messed up? Is it a scheme to keep people from participating here? :-)) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 04:39, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

I think it just puts all the style guidelines in one category. As for a hierarchy, we probably do. WP:MOS being at the top, the next ones being those in the first section of {{style}}, and the bottom ones being those of specific Wikiprojects, such as WP:MOSTV, WP:MUSTARD and MOS:FILM. I don't treat WP:ACCESS as a style guideline, because every section of that page already has a dedicated MoS guideline. I follow those, then check that my work is accessible and treat it as a policy. Matthewedwards (talk • contribs • email) 05:00, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Per WP:List of guidelines, the list of Wikipedia guidelines is Category:Wikipedia guidelines (shortcut CAT:G). None of the accessibility pages is in that cat or any subcat. Work with me here; I'm trying to get WP:ACCESSIBILITY listed as a guideline. I like the stuff I see, but I'm not familiar enough with image and table issues to know if that page conflicts any current guidelines. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 13:16, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Neutral for now. I have to observe that WT:ACCESSIBILITY sometimes (including right now) has somewhat revolutionary-toned debates on it that, boiled down, seem to suggest that WP:ACCESSIBILITY is the most important thing in the world, and that WP:MOS and everything else should be sort of forced to do what it says. I don't find this attitude or approach very constructive (unless it is a clever agent provocateur tactic, which is possible – I've used it myself before, as at WP:NCP – get lackadaisical but numerous and organized editors not complying with a WP-wide guideline riled enough to change the guideline they are in constant conflict with, to now encompass their needs, instead of simply ignoring it and undermining its guidance value). That said, good points are being raised there, and I cannot for the life of me think of a reason that anything sensible/consensus recommended by WP:ACCESSIBILITY should not be implemented at MOS, NC, LAYOUT, etc., so that they do not conflict with it. I don't have a position on what sort of designation (guideline, essay, policy, etc.) or sub-designation (style guideline, etc.) WP:ACCESSIBILITY should have, and would probably want input from WP:WPACCESS (the project) on the matter before formulating a solid opinion on it. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 18:26, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Agree with all of that. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 02:20, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Article development

WP:Article development has been marked as a style guideline for a while. It seems to me this is a good how-to page, a good page to point people to in See also sections, but it isn't and shouldn't be a guideline. (Look, and you'll see what I mean.) There has been very little activity in the article or on the talk page. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 21:35, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. —Centrx→talk • 23:22, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Yep. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 00:07, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Indenting on talk pages

I have searched but can't find any Wikipedia rules for when and how to indent. Is there a standard procedure? I have been indenting whenever I add to a threaded conversation but have been told that there are certain standards that are to be followed. Perhaps, they are just rules of conduct. I'm not sure. What are the basic principles of Indenting Talk Pages and conversations??? Thanks in advance. --Buster7 (talk) 20:14, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Sounds like you are doing the right thing to me. What are the particular criticisms you've received? Hard to say w/o knowing what the specifics are. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 21:05, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Maybe it's easiest to give an example. In the following, A-F are independent comments:

A
- B (reply to A)
  - C (reply to B)
  - F (reply to B)
- D (reply to A)
  - E (reply to D)

If you look at the structure of the comments, it's easy to see what each one is a reply to. You just have to look up and to the left. Ilkali (talk) 22:31, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Looks perfect to me. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 03:37, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Except that it's complicated to get it right, visually; looks a bit untidy, even if there is a system behind it; and goes against the fact that most comments are simple sequences, not related back to specific existing comments. Tony (talk) 03:05, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

I have a major preference for alternate indenting based purely on chronology:

Comment posted at 09:10
- Reply posted at 09:15
  - Reply posted at 09:35 specifically to the above comment
    - Reply posted at 09:36 specifically on this new thread
Reply posted at 09:17
- Reply posted at 09:19
Reply posted at 09:23
- Reply posted at 09:25
Reply posted at 09:27
- Reply posted at 09:30
Reply posted at 09:37

The splinter threads are very easy to separate from the mainstream. It is a very easy rule to apply, instead of working out whether it is the fifth or sixth indent that is the end, you simply alternate one indented and one not indented. Furthermore, indents are less accessible to reading Wikipedia on small screens - yes, there are increasing numbers of people that do this e.g. PDA and phones. I recommend people at least consider alternating indents. Lightmouse (talk) 16:51, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

I changed to alternating indenting when I saw somebody else do it. Has anybody else changed to alternating indenting? Lightmouse (talk) 17:21, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Excess non Latin script usage

On articles related to mostly Chinese, Japanese, and Arabic topics, I've noticed almost every term, mostly proper nouns has the non-Latin spelling. For example, see List of rivers of China. Are the such scripts really necessary outside the main article or is this an excess? I personally feel this is an excess, and should be curbed as it lends little value to a reader on non topical pages. =Nichalp «Talk»= 07:38, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Depends who the reader is. If I could read Chinese, I would be very interested to see the Chinese characters (particularly since they are not deducible from the Roman script). Since I can't, I don't care (as a reader) one way or the other. So better to include the information, for those who can make use of it.--Kotniski (talk) 16:01, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

I can see a value for searching. If I encounter 黃河, and search for the string in English-language pages, I may encounter an en:Wikipedia page, and find out that it is the Huang He River. Of course, in that case, Yellow River also has the hanzhi, but not all the rivers in the list have articles.--Curtis Clark (talk) 18:16, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

That's unfortunately besides the point if an article exists or not. Is it is really useful to have every third sentence with a non Roman equivalent? =Nichalp «Talk»= 18:49, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

That's an excellent point. In the age of search engines, the way to draw people to a page is to use the right search terms. Mandarin characters are the right search terms, if you're trying to attract people who read them as well as English, and we are; those are the people likely to know the most about things in China. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 18:25, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

It might be more useful to search the Chinese WP, and see if there is a link to a corresponding article in the English one; if that failed, French or German would do as backup. But these also have their useless aspect; at the moment, I'm seeing this section as having two little square boxes. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:29, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Code2000 is what I use. I'm clueless on hanzhi (although I can use SC Unipad to figure out kana), and although I can sound out Russian, I usually have no idea what it means. But it's still nice to have the stuff in the original language in case I should ever need it.--Curtis Clark (talk) 05:25, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

What I'm trying to point is not the use of non-Roman scripts, but the need for it for pages that are not directly about the topic: Korea under Japanese rule has a bit. Why would it be useful to a reader on this page? We don't have the Cyrillic equivalents for Oblasts of Russia (similar to the list of Chinese rivers), so why keep double standards? =Nichalp «Talk»= 18:49, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

I agree that excesssive translations or transcriptions can be annoying in running text, but in lists I don't see much objection to them (except possibly that they might sometimes make list items spill over the ends of lines, but that's not so likely with the Chinese characters). There is a clear difference between Russian and Chinese, though: if you know Russian and you see the Roman transcription of a name, you can deduce the original Cyrillic from it. Same doesn't apply to Chinese.--Kotniski (talk) 18:56, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

I cannot read Russian, so for a lay person like me, making sense of Cyrillic might very well using a mirror to check and see if the mirror equivalents make some sense in English :) But on a more serious note, be it a Russian or Chinese noticeboard, the script still does not make sense to me... No matter how similar cyrillic characters appear to the Latin script. =Nichalp «Talk»= 19:21, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

I eally don't see the harm in including this extra information, nor do I see why Nichalp (talk · contribs) should be so put out by it. Personally, I used Wikipedia last week to find the correct transliteration of a Japanese street address, and why not? Physchim62 (talk) 19:00, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Hi, I don't think you got what I was saying. Having the Japanese transliteration of say Tokyo is perfectly fine and justified on the Tokyo page. My grouse is having a the same transliteration for all Tokyo appearances. =Nichalp «Talk»= 19:21, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Regarding Tokyo, see Wikipedia:Manual of Style (Japan-related articles)#Using Japanese in the article body, which addresses exactly that topic. The idea is simple: In an article about Topic X, the opening sentence should give the Japanese script for Topic X. In another article that links to Topic X, editors should not give the Japanese script for Topic X, since it's only a click away. We acknowledge that articles such as lists (especially glossaries) and sections that catalog items (such as stations on railroad lines) can have Japanese script so that it prints together with English text. But in ordinary running text, since this is the English Wikipedia, we should write in English.

We welcome discussion of the MoS-JA at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (Japan-related articles). Fg2 (talk) 05:27, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

I'll answer further queries tomorrow. Got to go. =Nichalp «Talk»= 19:21, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

So if I'm following correctly, what you are objecting to is repeated use of the untransliterated strings in an article, not their single use in arguably appropriate places?--Curtis Clark (talk) 05:25, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Not exactly, see my post below Michael Z's comment. =Nichalp «Talk»= 06:36, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

The native-script names of things should be present, once, in their own article, for accurate naming, for comprehensiveness, and to assist with search. It may also be useful to have them in stand-alone lists—this also has the benefit of showing the names of things whose articles are red-linked.

But articles' text should be written for the English-language reader, and not cluttered with foreign script which the reader cannot be expected to comprehend. Normal words and names should be translated to English. Foreign names should be romanized for accessibility, and even in linguistics articles romanized transcriptions are preferable to foreign script where they are suitable to convey the point. —Michael Z. 2008-08-31 05:47 z

I think this is a balanced view. Cao Cao violates it repeatedly.--Curtis Clark (talk) 14:58, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Take a look at Cao Cao. Is it necessary to have all names, titles and places with the Chinese equivalents? Take Literature in the Hoysala Empire on the other hand. Kannada is not used anywhere in the article as local equivalents for names or places. =Nichalp «Talk»= 06:36, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

I tend to agree with Nichalp and believe having every Non-English term in another script becomes a bit annoying. As Nichalp has also pointed out, this phenomenon occurs much less frequently in Indian related articles. The only exception that I'm aware of is Glossary of terms in Hinduism which has the Sanskrit/Devangari/Hindi equivalent after every word, and that too in bold. It didn't in the past and despite being able to read the Sanskrit, I don't see any purpose in it on the English Wikipedia and plan to remove it in the near future. Gizza^Discuss ^© 08:03, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

I would say that a glossary is one of the places where foreign-language names would be appropriate, since it directly speaks to the meaning and perhaps source of words. In this case, I would suggest un-bolding all of the Sanskrit, since it is part of the gloss, and not the term being glossed. [In fact, I think I'll do that myself.] —Michael Z. 2008-08-31 17:09 z

One possible reason for the paucity of Indic examples is that until recently, fonts and rendering engines didn't handle Indic scripts well, but East Asian scripts have always been straightforward for any system that can handle multibyte characters.--Curtis Clark (talk) 14:58, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

I don't think Wikipedia was ever held hostage to the availability of fonts. For the past four years, I have never noticed any flagged issues with Indic fonts that would hinder the need for addition of Indic text. We also have a gothic wikipedia that requires one to download esoteric fonts to view the text. =Nichalp «Talk»= 15:53, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

It's not the availability of fonts so much as the ability to do complex shaping. Two of the people who work for me are from India, one from Ahmedebad in Gujarat, and one from Kolkata. We examined web pages in Hindi, Gujarati, and Bengali, using the rendering engine in Firefox 3 and the fonts supplied with Windows (except for Bengali, iirc, where there isn't a Windows font, so we used Code2000). They found problems in every page in all three languages, primarily where display order and reading order differ. Considering that Hindi written in the Devanagari script, perhaps the most ubiquitous Indic language/script combination on the web, still has minor issues after all these years, and that Bengali web pages are still somewhat of a novelty (according to the person from Kolkata), it's no wonder that there's not more Indic on en:Wikipedia. (See also Help:Multilingual support (Indic).)--Curtis Clark (talk) 17:39, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

I agree. The rendering does not appear clearly on Firefox. But that did not stop the hi: wikipedia from taking root. =Nichalp «Talk»= 10:40, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

In English language newspapers in Chinese speaking areas it is common practice to follow all transliterated Chinese names by the Chines characters in brackets (at least the first time they occur in an article). Since guessing the spelling from the transliteration is not generally possible, it helps to identify the person unambiguously and to support starting a search in other media. I support doing the same in Wikipedia. −Woodstone (talk) 09:47, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

I oppose doing the same in Wikipedia. First, Wikipedia is online (it may be appropriate for a print version to have a different style guide) so instead of writing the characters, we should provide a link (at least the first time) to the article on the named person; the characters are appropriate there. Second, Wikipedia is not a specialized publication for the Chinese-speaking community; it's for the general English readership. Non-English content in articles should be limited to the minimum; the link takes care of the need to identify the person unambiguously and the characters are unnecessary. These two major differences make me oppose this style. Fg2 (talk) 09:58, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

That's right. For illustration of the native script, the name can appear once in the titled article. In other articles, linking the English name suffices. This is not a multilingual encyclopedia, but to help various readers we do present the native name, as well as providing potentially dozens of interwiki links. Nor is this an English-language learner's tutorial. —Michael Z. 2008-08-31 17:03 z

Hey, why don't we remove all mathematical equations and chemical reactions schemes as well, as not all of our readers can decipher them. Judo, kayak and a few tens of thousands of other articles should be deleted for not having English titles. We'll have to remove all the photos at breast because I can't look at them at work (after all, pornography by region is work-safe once you scroll past the title) Come to think of it, maybe we should give up trying to write an encyclopedia at all, as it poses accessibility problems for the ignorant. English Wikipedia should be restricted to the Wikipedia and Wikipedia talk namespaces, and non-Latin scripts have no place on it! Physchim62 (talk) 10:33, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

I believe you have not understood what I have to say. Please read my post again. =Nichalp «Talk»= 15:53, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

That fact that Judo and Kayak are not English words has no relevance. It is okay to have articles on them when all the terminology is transliterated into the Roman script. An analogous example would be having the article moved to 柔道 because that is the name of it in the Chinese script. And mathematical equation are supposed to be in an encylopedia despite not everyone understanding what they mean. But information written in Chinese and Arabic is not supposed to be in an English language encylopedia, especially so frequently. And your point about pornography is a complete non sequiter. That is about what you like/dislike or consider to be taboo. Wikipedia allows it because it is not censored but this discussion about non-Latin scripts has nothing to do with "censoring" them. We are discussing whether they have any purpose here. Gizza^Discuss ^© 12:02, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Nonsense!

Kayak and judo are perfectly understandable English words (in use for 250 and 120 years, respectively). 黃河 is not an English word. The former are used in English, the latter can only be presented in an English-language article to illustrate some point. —Michael Z. 2008-08-31 17:03 z

I completely agree that sometimes foreign script use can be excessive; there are plenty of examples of that. But it's a subjective thing, how much is too much, and there are plenty of examples of articles in which what might look excessive to one person is a fairly necessary (or just useful, helpful) amount to another person. As an editor who works extensively on Japan-related topics, I generally include in-text kanji when the romanization or translation alone does not fully indicate what is being referred to as clearly as if the kanji were included; there are often terms that could be translated a variety of ways, and so in order to be clearer about what's referred to, we include the kanji. For students of Chinese/Japanese/other languages and the according history of the respective country, the use of foreign language terms is often more recognizable, more quickly understandable, than using just romanizations and translations. And it's useful and interesting for learning new terms. So I would definitely be opposed to any motion to eliminate foreign language terms entirely from main text sections. Again, I acknowledge that there are certainly cases where it's a bit excessive, but I don't think there is any way to make a policy for this that would fairly and justly address all possible situations, reasons for using the foreign script, etc. LordAmeth (talk) 15:11, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

That would be useful if the general English-speaking population could understand kanji or katakana. But a vast majority cannot and cannot be expected to do so. On the Tokyo page 東京 would be acceptable and very useful, elsewhere it would be a hindrance to easy reading with no tangible benefits to a reader. =Nichalp «Talk»= 15:53, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it is a matter of judgment, but the matter is to judge what is necessary to get the point across to an English-language reader, sometimes to eliminate ambiguity—but often a plain link or a single mention will suffice. This is not an annotated encyclopedia aimed at Japanese (or any other) learners of English. —Michael Z. 2008-08-31 17:03 z

Concur generally with Fg2, above, or rather with the materials cited by that editor. Don't use the native-language version all over the place in running text, only where it makes sense. Several cases where it makes sense: a) Lead of article pertaining to the translated topic; b) usages in running text for which there is nowhere to link; c) glossaries and lists, unless consisting of nothing but entries that do have somewhere else to which to link (generally, I'd say don't provide the non-English for something that has an article, only for entries that don't have any other "home" here other than the list they are in; some might disagree with this last point, as giving the list an inconsistent appearance, so it's not a point I would even hold to strongly). — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 18:08, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Having read lots of articles by LordAmeth, I see his point about leaving room for judgment. A valid question is, how strong should a rule on avoidance of foreign script be? We should not make it so strict that, for example, bots could enforce it; some judgment is necessary. Still, I think it's an important guiding principle, and I continue to favor it. Fg2 (talk) 21:11, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Ok, so do we have consensus on the following:

Restrict the local scripts to the "home" article
Avoid scripts in running text
Scripts are acceptable on non-home pages where they can provide context to a term that cannot be adequately transliterated in English. This should be used sparingly.

Regards, =Nichalp «Talk»= 10:40, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Some (minor) issues:

"Local script" needs to be reworded; hanzhi, Devanagari, and Cyrillic are in no sense local. I would suggest "non-Latin script", except that...
What about the parts of the Latin script in Latin Extended-A, Latin Extended-B, and Latin Extended Additional, and all the diacritics and modifier letters? One might argue that these are unnecessary for English, but ǃKung people, Oʻahu, Māori, and Sḵwx̱wú7mesh suggest that many of these have found their way into English, and many transliteration schemes use these as well (e.g. "kṛṣṇa"). It's arguable whether Sḵwx̱wú7mesh has more recognizability for an average English speaker than Русский, but it's a slippery slope. I'd be in favor of a guideline that referred to "non-Latin scripts", and then re-evaluate after a while to see how it works.
I'd like to see something about redlinks in lists. In List of rivers of China, the hanzhi accompanying the redlinks might be the only way to fully specify the rivers.
I'd amend "Avoid scripts in running text" to "Avoid non-Latin scripts in running text outside of the lead or an etymology section".

--Curtis Clark (talk) 16:33, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

I sort-of concur with Nichalp's take as modified by Curtis Clark, but it's still not really there yet. See Five-pins for example. I think that the non-lead uses of Italian in that article are perfectly appropriate and would still be appropriate even if the game were Chinese and used Chinese characters where Italian is used in this case (so long as Latin-alphabet transliterations were also provided). If we say it's okay to use non-English to provide the real names of things unless they are some script the average American or British person can't read, this will seem a bit discriminatory. That said, we don't need this stuff all over the place (e.g. if the five-pins article had provided Italian for everything to do with the game, instead of just a handful of particular terms of art), only where the inclusion is important in the context. Or something like that. I've had my head in template ParserFunctions all day, so I'm not really thinking in "guideline wording mode" right now, sorry. I can mostly do one or other but not both during any given editing marathon. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 00:23, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

I definitely see the point to this, and it contrasts with "Cao Cao was then instated as the Great General (大將軍) and Marquis of Wuping (武平侯)" from Cao Cao, in that the latter doesn't include transcriptions or transliterations. And the Chinese article on cricket includes the English names (in the Latin alphabet) of the players and parts of the game (and if Babelfish is to be trusted, no sound-transcriptions, either). How about "If unmodified and un-anglicized terms from a foreign language have specialized use in English, they may be included in transliterated or transcribed form, and optionally in the original script."?--Curtis Clark (talk) 03:48, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Yes, the extended Latin scripts are also a major problem. It becomes that much harder to make sense of something not written in the 26 alphabets of the English language in running text. Sḵwx̱wú7mesh is one awful title. Should we notify all the noticeboards to discuss this issue? =Nichalp «Talk»= 14:01, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

All the suggested wordings sound too over-specified and micro-managing to me. There will be many specialized and unanticipated cases, which would be made vulnerable to lawyering by such a detailed and absolute edict.

I think the guideline should present a general goal, and allow editors to use their own judgment in how and when to implement it. —Michael Z. 2008-09-02 16:03 z

Two styles of navigational templates, is one bad?

Template:NBA Awards is a navigational template that is placed vertically on article pages, down the right hand side. Template talk:NBA Awards#Alternate template gives a design for the same template using {{navbox}}. The creator of the original (in use) template said, "I like the current version better because people can click on the links at the top of the page". A discussion ensued, and I said "WP:NAVBOXES should be at the bottom of the page, not in the lead."

I was then asked to return to the talk page and comment once again. I did:

This template appears in the lead section of NBA All-Star Game Most Valuable Player Award. It links to NBA Coach of the Year Award, NBA Rookie of the Year Award and Larry O'Brien Championship Trophy. Those awards are all independent to the All-Star Game Most Valuable Player, even though they are related to each other in the grand scheme of things. Further, the Coach of the Year article does not provide any information that is important to All-Star Game Most Valuable Player article, which doesn't provide any information that is important to the Rookie of the Year Award. That is why my personal preference is to see navboxes at the bottom of articles. Navbox content is not often all that relevant to the content of the articles they appears on. Navboxes usually contain links to related articles and do not provide further understanding of the subjects of the pages they appear on. Lede sections are supposed to be a brief overview or introduction to the rest of the page content. When navboxes appear in the lead, they give the impression that they are contributing to the understanding of the article content, when in fact they do not. They just provide distracting links to other semi-related pages. This is why I don't understand your comment, Chris, "I like the current version better because people can click on the links at the top of the page." Don't you want people to read your article? What if one of the links in the navboxes appears to be more interesting than the page they're currently on?

Anyway, in either format, the template brings together a collection of links of similar articles. It look awkward if the links were all crowbarred into normal prose, and if they weren't in a template they'd all be listed in the "See also" section rather than the Lede section. With that, I've done quite a bit of digging around to find something that can confirm one way or the other.

WP:Lead says Navigation templates may be in the Lede. That page links to WP:BETTER, which says they should go at the very end, as a navigational footer. BETTER links to WP:LAYOUT, which says the lead section may have navboxes, but also that "Various navigational aids go at the end of the article, following the last appendix section."

All those guidelines link to WP:NAVBOX, which says "There are two basic layouts [for Navboxes]: (1.) On the right side of page - for example {{History of China}}. (2.) Footer boxes - for example {{Health in the People's Republic of China}} designed to appear at the bottom of each article." It goes on to say, "For footer boxes, {{Navbox}} is the standard. Existing hard-coded collapsible tables or NavFrames should be converted to {{Navbox}} if possible. This standardizes the look and to eases future maintenance." This template obviously isn't a collapsible table, and while it isn't coded like a Navframe, it does appear to be a one, albeit without the collapsible bits. If we look at the code for this template, it begins with "{| class="navbox"", if that's the case, it should be a standard navbox. Finally I looked at WP:ACCESS to see how our handicapped readers deal with right-hand column tables. That page also allows this kind of navbox, which it calls a "sidebar", to be present in the lede. WP:MOS incidentally doesn't mention navigational boxes.

So while I don't like it, it seems this template style is allowed. And while it is, I won't oppose any articles or lists at FAC/FLC when they do use it, but I will continue to request that they change it for the reason I gave in my first paragraph.

I then said I would bring the discussion here, because it isn't just this template that does things like this and more discussion is needed. The two I can think of right now are {{Formula One}} and {{World Rally Championship}} (which also happen to appear after infoboxes, something one of the style guidelines I linked to above discourages).

My personal preference would be for horizontal navboxes at the end of the article, the reasons given in the first paragraph of my quoted text. Am I justified in this, or am I flogging a dead horse because four style guidelines say its okay? Matthewedwards (talk • contribs • email) 09:23, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

The Military History Wikiproject uses a set of campaignbox templates, which can be used either way, based on {{Military navigation}}, a standardized application of the navbox. As far as I know, we haven't received any complaints about these.

There was some talk about the accessibility of such templates at WT:ACCESS. It's preferable to have such navigation templates appear after the first heading, so screen reader users don't have to tab through them, but can jump to the first heading. The collapsible campaignbox was said to be less trouble by one screen-reader user. —Michael Z. 2008-09-02 13:47 z

It is generally preferable, for the majority of users (and some users employing screen readers; some only want the summary version) that the sort of quickie summaries available in infobozes be quickly available. If the infobox doesn't offer a quick and convenient summary, there's little reason to have it at all. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:13, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

These aren't infoboxes though because they don't provide information. They're navigational boxes. I just don't get why you'd want to introduce an article, or a section, with links to other pages that don't provide information about the page you're on. Matthewedwards (talk • contribs • email) 17:55, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

They're still summaries of player X's awards, and links to them. There's a case we should not have them at all, because they don't really provide enough additional information; but if they remain, they should be readily visible. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:09, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

No one is introducing articles with navboxes. They are appearing as collapsed, titled nav lists, which are easily skipped whether you are browsing with a visual browser or a screen reader. They are conveniently placed at the top, where the reader can be aware of them before or after they read an article's intro. A good example is Operation Barbarossa, which has three campaignboxes just below the infobox (most occurrences have only one).

This follows common practice on many websites, where topical or secondary navigation links are found near the top, visually subordinate to the site's main navigation links. Placing these apart from Wikipedia's project-oriented navigation links, but clearly subordinate to an article's infobox reinforces the nature of these navboxes to the reader. —Michael Z. 2008-09-02 22:13 z

Italics in links

Both here and at WP:ITALICS, we're saying nothing about the fact that linked words and phrases are less likely to be italicized; we used to. Linked words and phrases on Wikipedia, in mature and not-so-mature articles, tend not to be italicized to point out that they are words used as words, or foreign words, or for emphasis. Not never, but a whole lot less often. I was just doing a review at FAC where the reviewer insisted a linked word should be italicized, and WP:MOS and WP:ITALICS give no wiggle room at all on this; shouldn't they? - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 02:33, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

That's because they are less recognizable as italics if they're blue. In principle, however, articles should be equally readable if they are not hyperlinked, so I'm not sure there is that much wriggle room. What did we say, when we did? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:32, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

I just checked at one-month intervals around the beginning of this year and I can't find it. It said something like, italics are less likely to be used to denote a word-as-word or for emphasis when a word or phrase is linked. I've got a vague recollection this subject came up recently, maybe in May. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 00:49, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

I found the previous wording from WP:MOS in Archive 94, along with a suggestion by some new guy named "Dank55" who was arrogantly making suggestions about a page he had barely read: "Linking a term provides sufficient indication that you are using a term as a term, which [would otherwise require] italics." - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 00:56, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, that's actually non-workable, since if you repurpose WP content, and WP has been designed to be content repurposed from the start, in some way that does not make use of links, blue, etc., you get gibberish because the distinction between use and mention is lost. It's not that things are less likely to be "recognized" as italic if they are blue, it's that editors feel that they've already emphasized the word, which of course isn't true all - all linking signifies is that there's an article or section or something relating to the word/phrase linked, without any form of semantic implication for the linked content, as content in its context. This is actually a common error that I fix when I'm gnoming, and I've never been reverted on such a fix (to my knowledge), not even once. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 08:00, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

For example, the printable version of the articles (available via the link in the toolbox) does not color the hyperlinks. --Itub (talk) 09:18, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Whether words need emphasis of any kind for readability is such a subtle issue that even the most prescriptive style guides tend not to tackle it (except in easy cases), and it's just not going to happen that we're going to get every editor to "pretend the links aren't there". The combination of a very subtle stylistic issue, plus the fact that you're asking editors to ignore something that's right in front of them, guarantees that some editors will see too much fiddling with italics as overly intrusive. I'm not saying you guys aren't right; I'm saying we have to use a light touch, and pick our battles. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 12:48, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Left-aligned images directly below subsection-level

The MoS says: "Do not place left-aligned images directly below subsection-level (=== or greater) headings, as this disconnects the heading from the text it precedes."

What would be the recommendations for the format of a page such as Moorcroft, which appears to suffer from two instances of left image below heading? Anyone care to reformat as a tutorial? --Tagishsimon (talk) 21:41, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Move the second image on the left down a paragraph (possibly down to the references) because it also sandwiches text. This will be unreadable on some monitors. The first image could also migrate down a paragraph; but this also comes under the balnket clause about dealing with conflicts in our advice. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:04, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Ellipsis debate again

To actually say dont put up blank lines by typing blank lines is.............mmmm Lets not discuss the content of what was written , lets discuss how its written , but the actual content, topic, the message, or perhaps the truth of what was actually said, or its just not your idea of personal beleif. Regardless of all that , the original topic was never addressed. Only the format? Makes no sence. We are carbon copy in DNA design, but thank heaven we are not carbon copy in the minds. Sencyman (talk) 06:38, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Nicknames and alt. names in lead section

I can't seem to find a definitive answer to this. How should birth vs. stage names be handled in the intro? I've seen many ways of doing this:

Kid Rock (born Robert James Ritchie)…
Kenny Chesney (born Kenneth Arnold Chesney)…

or

Robert James Ritchie, better known by his stage name Kid Rock…
Kenneth Arnold "Kenny" Chesney…

I prefer the first set, as they match it up better to the title of the article, but so often I've seen people change it to the latter without explaining why. I also think that the first set is much easier in cases where the stage and birth names are quite different. However, I've yet to find anything in the MoS that suggests either way. Ten Pound Hammer and his otters • ^{(Broken clamshells • Otter chirps • HELP)} 00:21, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

I took a look at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (people)#Nicknames, pen names, stage names, cognomens assuming that would help. The examples it gives are:

George Eliot article starts, "Mary Ann (Marian) Evans (22 November 1819 – 22 December 1880), better known by her pen name George Eliot"
Le Corbusier article starts, "Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris, who chose to be known as Le Corbusier"
50 Cent article starts, "Curtis James Jackson III (born July 6, 1975), better known by his stage name 50 Cent"
MC Hammer article starts, "MC Hammer (born Stanley Kirk Burrell"
Dizzy Gillespie begins, "John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie"
Scotty Bowman begins, "William Scott "Scotty" Bowman"

so there's a lot of difference. Perhaps WP:BLP has something. Matthewedwards (talk • contribs • email) 01:36, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Kenny Chesney (born Kenneth Arnold Chesney) sounds like a legal name change; Kenneth Arnold "Kenny" Chesney sounds like a nickname. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 04:04, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Robert James Ritchie, better known by his stage name Kid Rock…...

is smoother writing than the parentheses. As long as all common names, including the off-stage name, are in the first paragraph and visible through bolding, it really doesn't matter. For comparison, many articles about non-English speaking people begin with the local form of the name, like Horace, which begins "Quintus Horatius Flaccus ([dates]), commonly known as Horace...". Some of them even omit the English form of the name, because it is the title. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:18, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

If the relevant guidelines don't give a definitive answer and the actual practice clearly shows no particular "rule" in play, that's an indication that there is no consensus on the issue. There arguably should be one, but that's a different matter. Use common sense and do it the way that seems best to you until such time as a consensus does arise, I would say. My preference has been to give the real name and to follow it quickly with nicknames and alternate spellings, and to keep nicknames out of the name itself (i.e. no parentheticals). But that's just me. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 20:28, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Editing others' talk page posts

It is not necessary to bring talk pages to publishing standards, so there is no need to correct typing errors, grammar, etc. It tends to irritate the users whose comments you are correcting. Do not strike out the comments of other editors without their permission.

Never edit someone's words to change their meaning, even on your own talk page. Editing others' comments is sometimes allowed, but you should exercise caution in doing so. Some examples of appropriately editing others' comments:

If you have their permission

This is copy paste from the talk page guidelines , do not complain about the spaces.

And unless you have permission to change this page. Then please dont do so. Sencyman (talk) 07:13, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

What the heck is all this noise? This has nothing to do with numbers. I'm going to break these ellipsis and typo fixing threads out into their own sections since they have nothing to do with the section in which they were appearing when I arrived here. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 20:16, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Lightbot: please support latest approval

Many of you will know of the activities of Lightbot. It has touched over 140,000 articles with edits relating to dates and units. I've made a new request for bot approval that is largely a clarification/extension of two previous approvals and has wording that should be easier to understand. The bot approvals group is not necessarily aware of what Lightbot does so I would be grateful if you could add a few words in support at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Lightbot 3. I would also be happy to answer any questions here or on my talk page. Regards Lightmouse (talk) 01:43, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

Are you canvassing? If this isn't canvassing, what is? Tennis expert (talk) 17:23, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

See WP:CANVASS. On the one hand, asking for support instead of intelligent consideration is bad; on the other hand, I think it's pretty obvious that anyone wants support for their bot. To the extent this was canvassing, any negative effects of that will largely go away if people who show up there acknowledge that they saw the request here. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 18:08, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Transclusions

There are several sections here which represent sections on other pages, particularly MOSNUM. There are three ways to deal with such sections:

Have the same text here and at MOSNUM. When we do this, the texts tend to diverge, because they are edited one place and not the other.
Have a detailed text at MOSNUM and a summary here, with links between them. This will keep MOS short, which is a good; it also means less risk of divergence, but there will be some; on the other hand, agreeing on a summary can be difficult, and some sections are too short to summarize.
Placing the text on a third page and transcluding it both places. I am cautious about this because it offers editing difficulties, but if there is general support, I would be willing to try the experiment. The difficulties come in two flavors, all involving editing.
- An editing slip oculd lose or misplace the transcluded section on either page.
- If somebody edits the text on one page, the result could be inappropriate on the other: Adding material here which is already in another section at MOSNUM, or sdding detail at MOSNUM which is just too much information here.

Comments? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 13:35, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

I agree with your summary and concerns, and I think a short experiment with transclusion would be worthwhile at the least. It wouldn't be hard to restore the status quo ante if the problems outweigh benefits. Knepflerle (talk) 14:05, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

(e.c) Anderson and I have discussed this on our talk pages. I agree that something needs to be done to rationalise the situation. Is there any disadvantage in doing something very simple here on the MOS (main) page: removing the text that currently lies underneath the level-two and -three headings for sections 9–13, leaving just the "See also:" link to the corresponding section in MOSNUM (some of the see-alsos here are missing; this could be redressed as part of this change). The advantage of this would be that the ToC at MoS (main) would remain, and visitors would see at a glance the structure of exactly what is provided at MOSNUM.

Let's see what you have in mind. Do you mean all of the text? there are some summary paragraphs, and we may want them here; but if you trim too far, some of it can always be brought back. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 14:36, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Alternatively, if people feel they want the whole box and dice to remain here, instead of a click away, I'm sure there's a way of transcluding from MOSNUM that avoids chaos, perhaps by an explicit warning not to edit here. I know that not even that is required for the (transcluded) list of criteria at WP:NFC. Tony (talk) 14:06, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Transclusions are an interesting approach, yes, a little confusing for those unfamiliar with templates but the benefits may outweigh the costs. However, instead of the third page, why not just transclude MOSNUM onto MOS? I don't mean just transclude MOSNUM onto MOS as is. Using <noinclude></noinclude> and <includeonly></includeonly> tags we could easily create two versions of MOSNUM at the one location. For example:

<noinclude>
===Date autoformatting===<!--This section is linked from [[Wikipedia:Only make links that are relevant to the context]]-->
{{shortcut|MOS:UNLINKYEARS|MOS:UNLINKDATES|MOS:SYL}}
{{main|Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)/Date autoformatting}}</noinclude><includeonly>
;Date autoformatting</includeonly>

The linking of dates purely for the purpose of autoformatting is now [[deprecation|deprecated]].<noinclude><ref>This important change was made on August 24, 2008, on the basis of [[Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)/Archive_D6#Again_calling_for_date_linking_to_be_deprecated|this archived discussion]]; a current proposal is [[Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)#A_fresh_start_on_DA|here]].</ref></noinclude> The use of these tools has several disadvantages:
# The feature can only be seen by registered editors<noinclude>, who are a small minority of Wikipedia’s readership, and even then only if they have configured their date preferences ('''My preferences → Date and time → Date format''')</noinclude>.
# The resulting links are normally to lists of historical trivia which have little or nothing to do with the subject of the article.<noinclude> The use of these formatting tools therefore tends to produce [[Wikipedia:Only make links that are relevant to the context|overlinked]] articles.</noinclude>
#<noinclude>Expressing a date as YYYY-MM-DD may imply that it is in the [[ISO 8601]] standard and so  that it is Gregorian. It is undesirable to express dates before the acceptance of the Gregorian calendar in this format. Conventionally formatted dates from that era will normally be in Julian.  Wikilinking such dates will cause them to be autoformatted into ISO 8601 for some users, which would constitute a false assertion they are Gregorian.  Therefore such dates should never be linked.</noinclude><includeonly>For some users autoformatting produces [[ISO 8601]] dates which are only appropriate for the Gregorian calendar.  Thus non-Gregorian dates should not be linked.</includeonly>
#The syntax of dates differs from format to format<noinclude>: the American format should be followed by a comma when the syntax of the sentence as a whole would not otherwise require punctuation; the International format should not be</noinclude>.  

The functions provided by these tools nonetheless remain available; their function is described at [[Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)/Date autoformatting|Date autoformatting]].

I'm sure you can figure out what's going on ... yeah? If you can't it's probably not a great idea after all. JIMp_talk·cont 17:19, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Is something like this (Wikipedia:Lead section TT text) what you are talking about? Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 21:38, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

I think Jimp's got it down. Transclude the mosnum with no the includes in the MOSNUM. This could and should be applied to all the the MOS section possible.Headbomb {ταλκ – WP Physics: PotW} 22:20, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Transclusion adds another layer of technical complication, more watchlist items, and makes it unclear where a guideline is to be discussed.

Detailed text plus summary elsewhere makes the most sense. This makes use of the time-honoured technique of writing to get the idea across. The relationship can be made clear with a link, and perhaps a hidden comment that the summary should reflect the main text. —Michael Z. 2008-09-09 19:27 z

Wikipedia:Avoid weasel words is no longer marked as part of the manual of style

Wikipedia:Avoid weasel words (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been edited so that it is no longer marked as part of the manual of style . This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 18:52, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Ampersand

I read the guidance on ampersands in running prose, but in practice I see & most frequently in notes and references. Which of the following is correct in a note?

Jones & Smith (2010) p789
Jones and Smith (2010) p789

Which of the following is correct in a full reference?

Jones, Bill; Smith, John & Brown, Gordon (2012) History of MoS
Jones, Bill; Smith, John and Brown, Gordon (2012) History of MoS
Jones, Bill; Smith, John; Brown, Gordon (2012) History of MoS

I just wondered, since neither the ampersand nor citation guidance seemed to help jimfbleak (talk) 15:16, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

There's a subsection entitled "Ampersand" in the MoS, but it doesn't answer your specific question. Any of those formats would be OK, as long as consistent in your ref list. Tony (talk) 15:35, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, Tony. I thought that was probably the case, but you never know what's lurking in the MoS woods. jimfbleak (talk) 15:44, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

PS, personally, I'd be inclined to use first-name initials (typical) and to minimise punctuation (less common). Jones B, Smith J, Brown G (2012) ... But it's entirely your call. Tony (talk) 16:04, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Ah, that's interesting. I would prefer that style, but I've always put a full stop after the initial since the American usage seemed to be preferred. jimfbleak (talk) 16:47, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

MOS's ENGVAR under discussion at MOSNUM

Resolved

– Just a pointer to another discussion.

See Date format resolution attempt. Some of the proposed solutions would entail significantly re-doing WP:ENGVAR. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 04:51, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Wikiproject opt-outs (and date-linking)

This discussion has raised a few questions as regards the MoS's applicability. To what extent do we allow individual WikiProjects to make style guidelines that run against the general MoS? Does consensus for this have to be expressed explicitly in discussion on the project talkpage, or as is being argued here is consensus expressed in the current state of the articles? What if articles are members of multiple projects? Does a tag claiming articles for a particular project suffice, or do we actually expect input on those article in the name of the project?

I have my own answers to these questions, but I'm interested in the wider views of MoS contributors. You may also like to contribute to the original discussion [[here too. Knepflerle (talk) 15:30, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

It probably depends. Topic areas may be associated with particular registers or symbolic conventions, and it may be beneficial in some such cases to relax the global rules slightly. But I don't see how the practice of wikilinking years could be affected by a tennis-related context. Ilkali (talk) 16:01, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

As far as I can see, only one person at WikiProject_Tennis is asking for an exception. The exception to MOS compliance is defended on the basis of preserving the 'status quo' and 'pre-existing consensus'. The many date defects and inconsistencies are defended on the basis that the articles are 'work-in-progress'. Those are two opposing philosophies. Sounds like ownership to me. Lightmouse (talk) 16:08, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Nicely argued, Ilkali and Lightmouse. Here's another argument: if you're looking for a project where people don't try to force their will on other people, then you're looking for some project other than Wikipedia. There are plenty of opportunities on the web to write whatever you want. Those of us more interested in process than in outcome will try to keep the ride from getting too bumpy; if some guys get together and call something a guideline, and their ideas seem to us to be overbearing or divorced from the commonalities of professional English, we will probably say something. But FAC people have historically tended to be more interested in the style guidelines, and if people who spend most of their time reviewing GAN's or reviewing for wikiprojects complain that the style guidelines reflect the preferences of FAC people, but then they don't voice their opinions at style guidelines pages, well ... On Wikipedia, anyone with a beef can remove a guideline cat from a page or add it to another page they prefer. WP:Process is important. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 17:43, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Have to add a caveat to that: in general, people familiar with the style guidelines don't wander around randomly enforcing them; in fact, I wish people were faster to complain when people are being aggressive about "enforcement". Generally, we wait for people to visit one of the review processes. No one that I see regularly around style guidelines pages spends their time looking for new ways to throw their weight around, the best I can tell. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 17:51, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

To be honest I agree with everything above, I just wanted to gauge feeling elsewhere. If there are exceptional article where we make tweaks to MoS, I think selecting them by WikiProject is a bad idea - the criteria for inclusion are often weak, sometimes unspecified, unevenly applied and very broad-brush. And that's before the issue of multiple projects' style guides clashing and the fact that most projects' discussion boards are not seen by the majority of the community.

Those are my general feelings - as for this particular issue, I agree with the above and can't see pressing need for an exception for tennis players. Knepflerle (talk) 18:14, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. Regarding "not seen by the majority of the community", that's why it's policy (WP:PG) to require that anything that claims to be a guideline or policy be in one of the guideline or policy cats, so that the larger community can find the pages and comment on them. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 18:43, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

There is no such thing as a "WikiProject opt-out" however much various WikiProjects wish otherwise. WP:CONSENSUS is very, very clear on this (saying it twice in different wording), and the ArbCom has directly addressed it the series of related cases with regard to TV show episode and character articles. The only time projects effectively get to opt out is when they pull off a fait accompli by ignoring a guideline in sufficient numbers and for long enough that the damage cannot be undone, and the latest of the mentioned ArbCom decisions very specifically condemned this behavior. WikiProjects exist to organize article creation and improvement, within the bounds of policies and guidelines, not to set up blocs of wikipolitical constituents pushing agendas. Remember what happened to WP:ESPERANZA? The same thing could happen to the entire WikiProject system if they don't start playing by the consensus rules everyone else does. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 20:36, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

PS: WikiProject Tennis, for whatever inexplicable reason, is a total hornets' nest right now, embroiled in confused and bitter dispute over a trivial matter (to do with how to refer to tournaments - including or not including commercial sponsor name) that is easily solvable by reference to extant guidelines and conventions, and simple application of common sense. That feud is causing a lot of people there to get very angry with one another, so it is not surprising to me to see other questionable "disputes" pop up, as irritated participants look for additional ways to get into it with each other. I would regard anything like this coming from that project to be, well, just plain noise, until they get over the argument-for-argument's sake and calm down. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 20:41, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm not annoyed, I'm not angry, I'm not irritated and it's not a questionable "dispute" or "just noise". I haven't even commented on the date-linking there other than to say I left a note here. It was just a question from a curious editor that has as much to do with Talk:Akhalgori#Wikiproject Banners as anything to do with tennis - the relationship and dynamics of WikiProjects isn't always documented or in-line with common practice elsewhere. I just wanted to check the consensus view is what I expected. It is. Thanks, Knepflerle (talk) 21:02, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, I wasn't talking about you but about the situation. I do know who you are referring to (the single editor with the date linking issue), and I think my take on where his ire is coming from is probably accurate. With some editors, if they are in a frustrating debate about something it leads them to generate more debates about even more nitpicky things. Sorry for the confusion; I wasn't trying to imply that you should not have brought the issue here or anything like that, only that MOS needs to be aware what a boiling pot that project is right now and to treat "issues" raised by upset people in it (the other guy, not you) with skepticism until things settle down over there. NB: I say all of this as the principal founder of more than one project, and the principal author of both a project-specific style guide and naming convention and a project-specific notability guideline (both still in semi-draft form; no one has designated either with {{Guideline}} yet. I am not anti-WikiProject, just anti-WikiProject-mayhem. :-) Hmm, that sounds like a Fight Club reference, but isn't. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 21:17, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

All clear, no offence taken ;) Thanks for your comments and efforts, Knepflerle (talk) 21:32, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

[1] - that summarises the interpretation of the MoS that is being put forward. Knepflerle (talk) 23:43, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

This is a longer version of something I wrote in response to DanK elsewhere on this topic: My concern is a generalized one, not about this project in particular, nor this guideline. What I have noted over the last year or so is an increased number of projects, especially sports ones but others as well, simply pretending guidelines/policies don't apply to them. It is rather disturbing. The modus operandi is simply ignoring the guideline (despite nothing cognizable as a reason under WP:IAR) that the project disagrees with instead of working to gain consensus to adjust it to account for whatever needs the project allegedly has. I would add that this seems to happen largely because the project has a hard time articulating why its special exception (to whatever) is justified. It's more expedient to go the fait accompli route of simply implementing whatever the heck they want, far and wide, thus making it difficult or impossible to undo. It's a basically rather anti-consensus strategy. I'm hardly the first to notice this, of course, but I'm seeing more and more of it, and it seems to morphing into the idea that projects can simply "opt-out" of whatever they disagree with. My view is that if a project cannot convince people outside the project of the wisdom of the project's idea/preference, this is usually a strong sign that what they want to do is a bad idea. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 20:19, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

That's interesting, and sounds to me like something that should be made explicit in the MoS wording. It might be worth proposing a wording and seeing if it gets consensus for addition. WT:CONSENSUS might be interested too. Knepflerle (talk) 20:45, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

In "the instant case" (as a lawyer would put it) it strikes me as bizarre to claim a tennis exception for linking dates; I don't see anything remotely tennis-related about that. On the more general question, though, I think the centralizers' impulse that seems to guide so many who work on the MoS is profoundly misguided. Different choices are appropriate for different ranges of subject matter, and the WikiProjects are most likely to have the editors best capable of offering an informed opinion.

The best metaphor for Wikipedia is "many overlapping encyclopedias". Because of the overlaps, there are no zones of absolute sovereignty, and uniformity is preferred on purely stylistic questions (linking dates, dashes, etc). But there is also no absolute central authority (except the Foundation, which usually stays out of the day-to-day stuff), and the content-based WikiProjects are usually the best equipped to make decisions on matters that genuinely do relate to their content area. --Trovatore (talk) 22:47, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

I think that strategy will simply lead to chaos and rampant inconsistency. MOS has been built from the ground up stating generalities and then making exceptions to them based on consensus to honor the needs/preferences of particular subsets of editors/topics when logically justified. If project just make up their own rules that contradict WP-wide guidelines then they are not logically justifying what they are doing, they are simply being territorial, exclusionary, anti-collaborative and standoffish. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 23:35, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't think inconsistency is such a bad thing. Within an article, yes; across the project, it's not so terrible, particularly if articles have some reasonable consistency within a subject area. As I say, I don't apply this so much to purely stylistic questions such as the dashes — I'm happy to agree that those should be consistent across the project, because I can't see how they can interfere with the presentation of specialized content. But not all issues treated by the MoS are in fact purely stylistic; some of them have a political or philosophical undertone, some have implications for the presentation of difficult or arcane content (difficult and arcane content being my primary interest at WP).

One of the structural problems here is that people who think like me on this are temperamentally unlikely to be interested in working on the MoS, and therefore the latter mostly reflects the views of the centralists. The WikiProjects form a useful and necessary counterweight. It's really too bad that the tennis dispute is so WP:LAME, as this is reflecting badly on the WikiProjects in general. --Trovatore (talk) 23:52, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

I agree on the need for occasional exceptions for certain classes of article, but I don't believe identifying the classes by WikiProject is necessarily the way forward - these are the questions I originally posted: "Does consensus for this have to be expressed explicitly in discussion on the project talkpage, or as is being argued here is consensus expressed in the current state of the articles? What if articles are members of multiple projects? Does a tag claiming articles for a particular project suffice, or do we actually expect input on those article in the name of the project? ... I think selecting them by WikiProject is a bad idea - the criteria for inclusion are often weak, sometimes unspecified, unevenly applied and very broad-brush.".

I think a better way forward would be if groups of like-minded editors with the relevant expertise could collect and formulate proposals on WikiProject pages, but then bring the discussion and consensus-building here to a higher-traffic generalist forum, where more of us can benefit from and discuss their ideas, and where all the relevant exceptions can be collated for easy reference. And the article classes to which these exceptions apply should be more carefully defined than what some editor tagged on the drive-by one day. Knepflerle (talk) 00:17, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't think things need to be so codified. The answer to your original questions about process is that there don't need to be any uniform answers to these questions. WP is an adhocracy. --Trovatore (talk) 00:25, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Asking the debate to happen here instead of there is hardly making things codified. Knepflerle (talk) 08:39, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Making it a rule with an exception, as opposed to not making a rule in the first place, is making things codified. --Trovatore (talk) 16:44, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

You're calling WP a simple adhocracy on its Manual of Style page? Come off it, that's an obvious oversimplification - there's rules enough to assist in the smooth function and operation. Asking editors to make style-related rules at the Manual of Style instead of obscure Wikiproject talkpages is hardly the creation of a new layer of codified bureaucracy, and worth the advantages it could bring. Knepflerle (talk) 17:15, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Alternatively, a quasi-ad hoc system like Wikipedia only holds together through the use of WP:CONSENSUS - but a consensus with wide community input should not be derailed by a few because they held their discussion on an out-of-the-way talkpage with "Wikiproject" at the top. Consensus matters affecting many articles should not be changed from wider consensus by small Wikiprojects, and pages changed from consensus just because of a tag from a Wikiproject's land-grab. That's not an adhocracy, it's division into fiefdoms. Knepflerle (talk) 17:44, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

I have no comment on the tennis dispute, but there is at least one naming convention that was created by a project, essentially with ArbCom approval (as it stopped the events that led to an arbitration case; see Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Highways#Controversial moves): Wikipedia:Manual of Style (U.S. state and territory highways). --NE2 01:43, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Trovatore, the current state of the debate seems to be: "You guys have to follow all the guidelines, they're guidelines." "No we don't." "Yes you do." "No we don't." What's going to have to happen to move this debate along, so that WP:1 doesn't wind up not getting copyedited, just like WP:V0.7? Here's my guess: the wikiprojects need to lose a few rounds on copyediting issues. That's generally not happening now, because FAC and GAN people only deal with the articles that are brought to them, in general, which means WP:V0.7, with approximately 30K articles, is full of articles that haven't been seen by anyone who's ever read an English style guide or most of the WP style guidelines. Some wikiprojects are so used to not being challenged by copyeditors that they believe they're immune. If we can get wide enough "buy-in" to the style guidelines (by putting work into making them better, by getting together a group of people that the wikiprojects are comfortable talking with, who gain a good reputation for fairness and knowing what's going on ... which btw probably means that FAC people also have to lose a few rounds, otherwise we'll be saddled with the perception of bias), then maybe we can get at least a quick copyedit of the 30K articles before WP:1. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 14:27, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

If large numbers of editors are intentionally ignoring a guideline (not a policy, like OR, NPOV, or V), there is severe doubt that it represents a consensus of the project as a whole. (I also suspect, having seen too many featured articles which are simply appalling, that Version 0.7 has much more severe problems than lack of copyediting for datelinks.) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:06, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

The heavy-handidness of the bots and people implementing the Manual of Style guidelines is the most shocking thing. There was no prior notice on the tennis project. There was no discussion. Lightbot came along and did its robotic thing, changing articles one-by-one without any opportunity for discussion and so quickly that no human could keep up. When I told Lightbot to stop and attempted to protect the preexisting consensus just so a discussion could occur, Lightbot was turned back on within 30 minutes and I was attacked and threatened by various editors who, as far as I could tell, have never before edited a tennis article, much less had over 10,000 edits in that area like myself. Not only were years unlinked summarily, but month-date-years were unlinked. And then some of these same editors went ahead and changed other things that also are supported by overwhelming consensus for tennis articles. Look, as I have said about 10 times already in various ways, I am opposed to some of that consensus. But I respect it until it is changed. And I believe everyone else should give it a similar respect. Like it or not, there is overwhelming precedent for exceptions to be made to general purpose guidelines and policies. (And like it or not, the Manual of Style is just a guideline.) The one that comes most readily to my mind is honoring the clear consensus to ignore the plain and specific guidelines of WP:UE concerning the naming of articles. See, generally, this discussion. So long as that precedent exists (and possibly many others), there should not be any robotic or unannounced application of the Manual of Style in violation of the preexisting consensus until (and unless) that consensus changes. And don't talk about my motives here without knowing anything about them. You guys should take me at my word and WP:AGF. OK? Tennis expert (talk) 17:45, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Looking quickly, my understanding is that User:Tennis expert was saying that the names of certain tennis players shouldn't have characters such as ř in them, because of WP:UE and because a variety of official English sources (list of names by various tennis agencies, for instance) don't write them that way. On the face of it, this sounds sensible to me. Because I'm going to have to stay as neutral as possible for WT:WPMOS, I don't want to comment further at the moment.

Speaking of which, please see WT:WPMOS for discussion of improving and reducing the size of the style guidelines and getting more people involved. It's important, it's hard if you don't know the style guidelines (so please consider volunteering if you are somewhat familiar with them), and it's somewhat urgent because of WP:V0.7. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 19:35, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Tennis expert, article naming is subject to "Naming conventions", which is policy and must prevail. As far as style guides go, some of your colleagues are asking at the WikiProject "where is this consensus" to retain links to dates and date fragments you keep shouting about but don't identify. Instead, you've received comments such as "Just get rid of the links" from your fellow tennis editors over the past few days. Please link us to these locations where you say you were "attacked and threatened": I want to see for myself. Tony (talk) 02:13, 9 September 2008 (UTC) And please note that to disregard a style manual, it says at the top there should be a "common sense" reason and that it be shown to "improve" an article. You need to present evidence of this. Tony (talk) 02:14, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Clearly, you still do not understand what I am talking about. (1) Policy, as expressed in WP:UE, was ignored in the tennis biography naming controversy that I cited above. Have a look at the discussion there, via the links I provided. (2) Precedent proves that any general purpose policy or guideline can be overridden by consensus for a particular issue or for a particular type of article. See the links I've already provided. (3) I am not defending a consensus that I agree with, as I have said many times already. Therefore, it is not my responsibility to present evidence of why the consensus is "common sensical". I am merely defending the fact that there is consensus, as evidenced by hundreds of tennis articles. I would be in perfect agreement with a change to that consensus, which change, as I'm sure you know, must itself be by consensus. Tennis expert (talk) 05:38, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Consensus comes from discussion, not from examples in articles (perhaps with the exception of featured articles, which are also the result of discussion). Where is the discussion that led to this alleged consensus? --Itub (talk) 05:47, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Really? From WP:CONSENSUS: "Editors typically reach a consensus as a natural and inherent product of wiki-editing; generally someone makes a change or addition to a page, and then everyone who reads the page has an opportunity to leave the page as it is or change it. Silence implies consent if there is adequate exposure to the community. Consensus among a limited group of editors, at one place and time, cannot override community consensus on a wider scale." See also WP:BRD, which says that a bold edit that is not followed by reversion results in a new consensus (without the need for discussion). Tennis expert (talk) 08:34, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Really. Since you like to play wikilawyer, I have to point out an important sentence you just quoted: "Consensus among a limited group of editors, at one place and time, cannot override community consensus on a wider scale." Regular editing and BRD is fine for achieving a "local consensus" of sorts on a specific article. It is not fine for overriding style guidelines on a wikiproject-wide scale. Without discussion, how can anyone know if this alleged consensus is really a reasoned consensus and not just ignorance of the guidelines? More importantly, if it is a reasoned consensus, how can anyone know what the reasons are? You have still not provided an example of even a single editor who agrees that this consensus exists. If this consensus really existed, some other tennis editors would have showed up already. Or is it just a "consensus" of one? That would be really strange, since you say you don't agree with the alleged consensus. --Itub (talk) 09:34, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

What is your source for saying that regular editing and BRD is fine for achieving "local consensus" concerning a specific article but not for overriding generally applicable style guidelines on a Wikiproject scale? Aside from lacking a source, your statement is illogical because a Wikiproject consists of several articles. So, if there is consensus concerning article A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, and I, which assumably are the vast majority of articles within a particular Wikiproject, then there is ipso facto concensus concerning the Wikiproject itself. And what is your source for requiring a "reasoned" concensus, one arrived at by editors who know the Manual of Style guidelines? What is your source for requiring editors who have reached a "reasoned" consensus to express their reasoning in a discussion? The consensus I am talking about is evidenced by the edit histories of the articles that use naked year linking. It should be possible for you to go through those histories and find out who first instituted naked year linking and the names of each editor thereafter who didn't change that linking. There are hundreds of tennis editors. It is not a "consensus of one". Tennis expert (talk) 13:25, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm not going to start counting how many tennis articles have years linked and how many don't, but others have pointed out to you that many are not linked (even before the bot) and that therefore your alleged consensus doesn't exist even under your strange definition of consensus. Not having to waste time examining every single article to determine the consensus is the top reason for having a centralized discussion, and is why most wikiprojects do it. They have discussions about the general rules that should apply to the articles on a topic, and if there is a consensus, write them up as project guidelines or style guides. --Itub (talk) 14:19, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Not "many", as I have proven already by going down the alphabet of tennis articles. And while I agree with you that having a discussion about an issue in a Wikiproject is a good thing, the discussion is not and never has been a requirement before consensus exists concerning the articles in that Wikiproject. Tennis expert (talk) 20:41, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

No, tennisexpert, try overriding our NFC policy and you'll be in for a nasty shock. Tony (talk) 07:44, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Logical quotation merge proposed

The weird page at Wikipedia:Logical quotation is a prime candidate for an immediate merge. It is written like a stub article, but tagged as an essay. It is quite short, and the language in it is better on its microtopic than the wording presently in WP:MOS#Quotation marks. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 07:30, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Yep, but shouldn't there be a short article on this topic? It needs a little tweaking and citations if it's to stay as a separate article, though; I have no problem if we borrow from it, whether it's retained as an article or not. Tony (talk) 07:41, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Arguably there should be, but this ain't it. :-) — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 07:56, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

I suggest merging anything useful in the article and then deleting it. I moved it out of article space because there aren't any reliable secondary sources on the subject: as far as I can tell the terminology is mostly internal to Wikipedia. Geometry guy 22:15, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Right. Obviously not good article material. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 07:56, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Pluralization of proper names ending in "y"

Resolved

– Simple answer to this one.

How do you properly spell the plural of Kennedy?

Kennedys; Kennedies; or Kennedy's? I tend to use the first spelling but someone corrected it to the latter, although it was not used in a possessive context. Fvlcrvm (talk) 15:30, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

"Kennedys" is the only one even remotely acceptable, but even then it would be wise to consider rewording. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 15:42, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

I wouldn't even suggest rewording; "Kennedys" is correct.--Kotniski (talk) 15:50, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Concur. Maybe it's not that common outside the US, but "the Kennedys" (the political family) are a perennial topic over here in Yankeeland, and they are called that most often, not "the Kennedy family" or whatever. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 07:58, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. I thought so too.Fvlcrvm (talk) 16:06, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Commas before quotations

Do we have a guideline on this? I couldn't find one.

He said "Hello"

vs

He said, "Hello"

Ilkali (talk) 18:25, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't recall seeing an opinion. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 18:32, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

We don't and we shouldn't. Both are acceptable; the comma becomes more useful as the sentence grows longer. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:21, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps. I do feel the need to say, however, that I hate that comma. I absolutely loathe it. I want to see it die painfully, and then watch it again on high-resolution widescreen DVD. I don't know how it is grammatically excused, but this "He said [pause] 'Hello'" construct annoys me every time I see it.

There, it's out of my chest now. I'd really like to hear a few other opinions on this comma; I regret to say that Mr Anderson's position does not cover me. What I can agree with is that there is indeed no guideline. I'm not sure I want to see one, but I could live with a suggestion. Waltham, The Duke of 23:05, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

I agree when it comes to short passages like your example, but also agree that it can be helpful with longer ones. Nothing worth editwarring over, but I frequently remove these commas myself, and I rarely get reverted on it. By the same-but-opposite token, I am rarely reverted when I add actually-needed commas, such as after "However" in "However she moved to Texas in 2005..." It drives me nuts how often editors (especially British ones, for some reason, but I learned to read and write in the UK and we were taught to use commas there!) omit that comma. Doing so leads to difficult-to-parse sentences and even silly ambiguities (like the one in my example). In that case it's not a general preference issue, but a readability/usability one. But anyway, back to commas-before-quotes: I would be okay with MOS recommending against them except where they aid reading or disambiguation (this can be before long passages as PMAnderson noted, or when the quoting sentence leads into the quotation with the same or a similar word to quotation-beginning sentence, and probably several other cases. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 07:50, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

I couldn't agree more on the "however" point, and not just at the start of a sentence. I very often find myself replacing a "Clause 1, however clause 2" with a "Clause 1; however, clause 2". The former is barely readable. Waltham, The Duke of 14:32, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

On what basis are both usages "acceptable"? The use of a comma here seems to go against every rule of English punctuation that I've ever learnt. Physchim62 (talk) 23:48, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

On the basis that millions use either. Our rules need to be prescriptive, because MOS's purpose is to provide guidance on what editors should do, but our rationales should be as descriptive as is feasible within the bounds of formal writing. Also, not all paper style manuals agree on this either, so citation to outside authority is not particularly useful here. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 07:50, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

It is common in fiction. That's not a particularly strong recommendation for an encyclopedia, of course. But how often is this going to come up? We shouldn't have that much occasion to report dialogue here. --Trovatore (talk) 23:58, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

It's pretty frequent, actually, since articles on media (films, etc.) do frequently quote dialog[ue], and non-media articles frequently directly quote sources and commentators and such. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 07:50, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

OK, I checked the one US edition of a fiction work which I possess and, yes, I found examples of the dreaded comma-before-quote. I guess that I should propose a guideline against it, as it seems to me to be antisemantic (especially after "said"). Physchim62 (talk) 00:30, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

I like that. I haven't read any other manuals of style, but in encyclopaedic writing we use either a straight transition (no punctuation) to a quoted sentence-fragment with logical quotation, or a colon leading to a full sentence, often with the full stop within the quotation marks. There is no place for a comma here. Waltham, The Duke of 03:39, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

I would concur with Physchim62 and the Duke in saying that it is ugly and ill-motivated, seemingly born from the misconception that commas should be placed wherever the speaker might pause. If any punctuation is necessary (and I do not believe it ever is), a colon would make far more sense. Ilkali (talk) 10:44, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

This is not something I want to go into WP:MOS at this time. I more or less agree with the sentiment here, but some kind of punctuation before the quotes was recommended and even required by some style manuals 40 years ago, and therefore, will be present in many sources. This is more the kind of thing that I would talk with a skilled reviewer about, or talk about with editors during a review process; I don't think it works well as law. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 12:15, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

I concur. Most cases in an encyclopedia will be more complex, and should probably not have commas: In replying to this on [date]], Talleyrand said "[Full sentence]", but do remember that we do occasionally reproduce dialogue, especially in articles on fiction. We are large and contain multitudes. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 14:09, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

That's actually a case where I would use that comma, as opposed to ...Talleyrand said "[short snippet]". I would almost never use a colon after "said", unless followed by a list of a bunch of things said. The colon is just redundant there. It would not be if "said" or an equivalent verb were not present: ...surprised by Tallyrand's retort: "[quotation]".

I think that when we reproduce dialogue in an article on fiction, it will usually be a direct excerpt from the fictional work, and therefore off-limits to any guidelines anyway (except the one that says "don't change it".) My most important reason for not wanting a guideline on this is that we shouldn't tell people the "logical" way to do something that's almost never a good idea in the first place.

Why does this whole discussion make me think of songs?

She said, "Nothing that's forced can ever be right/if it doesn't come nat'rally, leave it

And she said, "You don't?"

And he said, "No, ma'am."

And she said, "Yuh get outta my queendom."

And he said, "Yes, ma'am."

--Trovatore (talk) 20:49, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Can't really agree. A vast amount of material in MOS and its subparts is making a specific recommendation and why, which is necessarily stating the logical reason for it. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 07:50, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Indeed. It's the right of editors to ignore the Manual, but if they follow it, then they should be able to find what is the recommended practice. Waltham, The Duke of 14:32, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Neither of you seems to have addressed with my point, which is that WP articles should almost never report dialogue, except as a direct excerpt from a work that does report dialogue, in which case we use the choices made by that work. Therefore it's probably a bad idea to tell people how to do something that's probably a bad idea in the first place. As far as what the MOS already does, well, the MOS is too extensive and too detailed already. --Trovatore (talk) 17:25, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Footnotes#Style recommendations proposed merge

Yet another style guideline lurking around outside the MOS. Should be merged in here, and simply summarized and cross-referenced from WP:Footnotes. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 06:47, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Just that section, or is anything else in FOOTNOTES a target to be merged with MOS, CITE or LAYOUT? There are currently 4 style guidelines that concern endsections: LAYOUT, CITE, EL and FOOTNOTE. Patrolling that many pages that tend to attract endsection warriors has always been just a little outside my comfort zone. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 15:22, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Preferable to have the summary and a link here. Anybody writing footnotes is just as likely to go there; and this page is too long now. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:59, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

A lot of stuff was recently moved out of CITE to FOOT. Matthewedwards (talk • contribs • email) 16:06, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Or is something like this: Wikipedia:Accessibility TT lead section as an alternative solution? (One that would keep the problem of diverging guidelines from popping up again and again.) 14:57, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Quotation length

Is there any maximum length a quotation may be before it starts to infringe on copyright? I have looked around for a wikipedia policy on this but can not find one in MoS. Perhaps somewhere there is a copyright page on this that someone can point out to me. Also, are there guidelines on how much of an article can be devoted to quotes? At what point can one say that there are too many quotes in the article. Thanks, —Mattisse (Talk) 17:19, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

There is no definite maximum, it depends on a multitude of factors. Only a court can decide for sure. As for how many quotes there can be in an article, it's a matter of taste. If you don't like the way an article looks, feel free to write what you think is a better version. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 17:24, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Regarding U.S. law, if you have a copy of AP Stylebook (print or online subscription, either is cheap), they deal with this in their "Briefing on Media Law" section. I'd tell you, but they advise me not to use long quotes :) Also see WP:NFC and discussions about speedy deletion per WP:CSD, criterion G12 - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 20:00, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

National varieties of English in International Articles

I'm okay with the British spelling of words in an international article such as 2008 South Ossetia war but I do have a question. I don't know if it's still in this group of articles or not, but there was a sentence that said something to the effect that "The United States Embassy organised an evacuation of it citizens....." I changed it to "organized" under the justification that the United States does not "organise" an evacuation but does "organize" one. A US embassy would truly not ever "organise" anything, but it would "organize" something. I only changed the variety because the entire sentence involved the actions of the United States Embassy. This situation was not mentioned in the MoS, and goes against the "Consistency within the article" section. But I felt it was the right spelling for the above mentioned reasons. Would anyone please comment on this. I feel this is a legitimate situation which is not covered in the MoS. Jason3777 (talk) 21:52, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

The variety of English should be consistent throughout the article, except in direct quotations. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 22:46, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Of course you don't change the language of a sentence every time you mention an entity from a different country. —Michael Z. 2008-09-04 23:19 z

I completely agree, but I am not talking about a different language; I am talking about the spelling of a specific word (i.e. "c" ==> "z"). US Embassies don't "organise" evacuations, they "organize" them. This is suppose to be an international encyclopedia. Is British English the only appropriate spelling of ALL international articles? Jason3777 (talk) 01:17, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

British English is used in all articles with strong ties to the UK, such as Liverpool or J. R. R. Tolkien. If an article is about a non-English speaking country, the first major contributor chooses the variety of English to use. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 01:32, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Jason, a US embassy does indeed "organise" when this is being reported in British English; just as a UK embassy would "organize" in AmEng. ~~Just as important, "it" should be "its" in the original quotation.~~ Tony (talk) 01:46, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

I just wanted some feedback. I majored in English Literture in the US and got points deducted if I used British spelling on exams even if it was a course on British writers. Just wanted to know what the deal was. And I do know the difference between it, its and it's. (Come on it was a typo). I was just asking a question on a talk page. If you see I do this on an article page, please correct it. I'd do it for you. Jason3777 (talk) 02:32, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, Jason: it was uncalled for (and I thought it was third-party text). Tony (talk) 03:07, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

C'est rien. Jason3777 (talk) 03:21, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

I think it's clear that the language variety should be consistent within the article and not vary depending on the topic of a particular sentence. But on "-ize/-ise" specifically, is it not true that the "-ize" forms are acceptable also in British English (and possibly all other Englishes)? (See American and British English spelling differences#-ise, -ize.) That being the case, there seems to be no reason for us not to use -ize everywhere.--Kotniski (talk) 07:24, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

I fear you will find that to be a controversial suggestion. As the above says "however, the -ize spelling is now rarely used in the UK in the mass media and newspapers, and is often incorrectly regarded as an Americanism." Whether or not it is "incorrect" in my experience that is how it is very widely viewed. Yourz etc. Ben Mac Dui 07:50, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

The Guardian organise 6,890[2], organize 87[3]. The Daily Telegraph organise 7,890[4] organize 387[5]. The ise have it. Ty 08:07, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't want to make a big deal of it, but aren't the above both British media? Jason3777 (talk) 08:32, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Jason: Yes, I think that's implicit in the point being made, which concerns transatlantic differences.

General remarks: Since the mid-60s, there has been a clear move in the UK, Australia, Ireland and New Zealand from "-ize" (and its siblings "-iza" and "izi", known to all professional editors) to the "es" form. In Australia, this has been ensconsed in the Australian Government Publishing Manual since the early 70s, I think. In the UK, the OED has strangely failed to adjust the order of zed and es in its entries, so that the zed continues to be privileged as "first spelling". This is despite widespread preference for the "es" outside North America, except for a few notables, such as OUP and The Times.

Then there's the irritating fact that unless you know how to stop it, Windows computers revert back to US spelling (bringing with it the zeds) every time you log into Word. Worse still, the so-called Australian spellchecker for both Mac and Windows versions of Word forces the zed—still, after all of those updates! (I have to insist that people use the UK spellchecker, which allows both es and zed.)

My strong preference is that engvars outside North America use the "es" form. This webpage provides interesting information on the matter. Tony (talk) 08:38, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Y'all, I can write British and I have no problem doing it unless it is an American article. I just wanted to know what form of spelling to use in the international articles. It's weird; why do I find myself always stepping into a "hornet's nest"? Jason3777 (talk) 08:57, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Well, the answer, pretty clearly, is "whichever style is already being used", with the exception of articles with a strong connection to a particular locale. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 09:31, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

A related question: Is there an accepted way to annotate an article or talk page to indicate the ENGVAR used? I can't say that I've seen it anywhere, but it would seem to be an easy way to pro-actively avoid inconsistencies.LeadSongDog (talk) 18:16, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Is it not obvious after only a few lines what the ENGVAR is without pointing it out. One of the great things about English is how open it is, so that people can come up with new spellings and new words, (although I hope ENGVAR does not last). Free expression is what matters. --Alphasierra (talk) 23:52, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Transclude text has been marked as part of the Manual of Style

Does anyone have any idea what this Bot message is about? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:53, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

The category 'Wikipedia style guidelines' was added to Wikipedia:Transclude text, which means that page is now part of the Manual of Style. The messages are to let people know when pages are added to, or removed from, the manual of style. If there is any way I can improve the 'more information' page, please let me know. — Carl (CBM · talk) 18:56, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

ah, thanks, now I get it. Maybe you should add User talk:Tony1/Monthly updates of styleguide and policy changes to the notification list? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:59, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

That would be very easy to do. Tony, when you read this - how do you feel about that? — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:01, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Also, are you notifying WP:MOSCO? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:04, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Yes, in the interests of east–west harmony the announcements left here are also sent to MOSCO. The risk is that conversation will be fragmented, so everyone will have to go out of their way to centralize discussion on the talk page of the page that had a change in status. — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:41, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

OK, now the issue (and thanks for the notice). I don't agree that page is ready for guideline status nor that it should have been added. By what process was it added and by what process do we remove it? While the goal is indeed worthy, until redundancies and contradictions across existing MoS pages are catalogued and resolved, we can't be transcluding text from one (possibly disputed, as in the current case of Sister projects) page to another. This isn't ready for primetime yet; first things first. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:04, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

The page itself is labeled an experiment. Is there any reason why it shouldn't, with that limitation, be included on a list of style guide articles? Better to give it the light of day (to live or die on its merits) rather than hide it away in a corner to fester in darkness. (In response to Sandy's concern: There isn't a Sister project transclude text page in part because it is disputed.) Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 19:34, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm going to respond at WP:MOSCO, where I believe this belongs, to keep it in the most logical place. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:37, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Opportunity to make friends

That sounds so much nicer than "chores to do", doesn't it? Wikiprojects have been invited to list pages between now and October 20 that may need light spelling and grammar copyediting at Wikipedia_talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Copyediting. Editors who have listed their pages might be appreciative, because these pages will be going on the (not widely distributed) WP 0.7 DVD. Do one or twenty; there's no sign-up sheet and no obligation. I don't mean to pull anyone away from other duties; this is less strenuous work, for when your brain needs a rest. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 22:00, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Apostrophes in surnames

Resolved

– MOS is clear on this - deprecates curly quotes/apostrophes.

I hope this is the right place to bring this up, but I've discovered the same individual's article has been created twice at Rod O'Loan and Rod O’Loan. Before I merge them I was wondering if Wikipedia had an agreed-to stance when it comes to apostrophes in surnames. After scanning this article I didn't spot anything about it. Cheers.--Jeff79 (talk) 04:56, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Use the straight version (') just like it says. The curly version should redir to the non-curly one. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 21:50, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Styles and formatting template

How do u get that box on the right that says styles and formatting???Rayman 1110 (talk) 03:16, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Why? Where are you thinking of putting one? It should not be added to random "Wikipedia:" namespace pages. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 02:48, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Non-breaking spaces on the left side of dashes

Resolved

– Recommendation has been removed from MoS per consensus below.

Right now, under the non-breaking space section, we recommend using non-breaking spaces in front of en dashes. Personally, I think this recommendation needs to be removed for several reasons:

Text on the internet has been wrapping before dashes for 20 years now. We don't need to fix a shortcoming of browsers by replacing every dash on the internet with a non-breaking space and then a dash.
This recommendation has led to more obfuscated text that is harder for people to edit -  –.
This recommendation has led to us replacing a fundamental piece of punctuation with a template - {{ndash}}.
Browsers wrap before em dashes, so why do we care if they wrap before spaced en dashes? If we are using them interchangeably, shouldn't they behave the same?
There is no recommendation to do this in the section that discusses spaced en dashes in the dashes section.

Kaldari (talk) 16:31, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

I completely agree, for all the reasons provided. -Exucmember (talk) 16:39, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not the internet.
True.
Who cares?
Fixable.

In short, why is this enough of an issue to even worry about? (By the same token, I don't recall what the original impetus was for putting the nbsp in there in the first place; probably something equally trivial). — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 21:48, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

McCandlish knows more about this than I do, but from the standpoint of not burning out editors by forcing them to argue over things they can't fix, my feeling is that making lines wrap correctly is the job of the publisher, i.e. the devs can send the html code to the browser that does the job, and if the counterargument is that we want the lines to wrap prettily when the text is borrowed, well, that's the job both of this publisher (to make the text available in some form that exports in the way they want it to) and of whoever is publishing the exported text. I've seen too many editors complain about trying to fix stuff that is very impractical to fix on our side. Is there a case in which it's preferable for lines to wrap just before rather than just after an en-dash? If so, can the rules defining this case be expressed in an algorithm? Then it's the publisher's job. If not, then it's the publisher's job. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 22:22, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

A case where it is preferable to wrap before a dash rather than after a dash is when the dash precedes a quote attribution. Kaldari (talk) 18:59, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Agree, too. Unicode nbsp's (typed option-space on the Mac) before en-dashes actually work nicely, but some stupid web browsers silently convert them to plain spaces during edits, so there's not much point in entering them. They're going to end up not wrapping correctly anyway, so it's best just to stick to single em dashes instead of typing space-en dash-space with little benefit. And it's far worse to clutter ordinary sentences with extra markup in the wikitext. —Michael Z. 2008-09-16 23:06 z

I can't keep track of all the various reasons for nbsp that people come up with. I have yet to be inconvenienced by line wrapping on Wikipedia when viewed in three or four different browsers. I have seen more nbsp than I wanted to see. Can't we put limits this bizarre obsession? Lightmouse (talk) 19:25, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm fine with removing the recommendation to add the non-breaking space; not fine with recommending unspaced em-dash only, as spaced en-dashes are a broadly acceptable style and don't involve any usability problems of any kind (some find them more readable than unspaced em-dashes, in fact, since, well, they're spaced and not run up against the text). — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 02:45, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

My good friend Sandy will grimace at me, because I know she values the effect of such hard-spaces; but I'm gonna come out in favour of removing the recommendation. Tony (talk) 14:22, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

I agree with SMcCandlish that we should toss the non-breaking space recommendation, but retain the text that explains that you can use a spaced en dash instead of an em dash. Although I prefer em dashes, myself, I know that spaced en dashes are becoming quite popular. Kaldari (talk) 15:16, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Entirely serious dash-related question

The document title is currently

<title>Editing Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia</title>

Should this actually, according to the MOS, contain an m-dash or an n-dash instead of a hyphen? Just curious. — CharlotteWebb 16:49, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Yes, but that's something for the system operators of the site to deal with. Maybe bring it up at the village pump. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 02:50, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Ok, so should it be an m-dash or an n-dash? Yes the village pump would kindly tell me that the page controlling this is MediaWiki:Pagetitle but I already know that. This is a question for MOS experts, and "yes" isn't a helpful answer: which dash should be used? — CharlotteWebb 14:01, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

As MOS says, either would work:

<title>Editing Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style—Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia</title>

<title>Editing Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style — Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia</title>

The latter is arguably more readable, and requires the most minimal change. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 18:37, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't understand the question; I've never seen evidence that the devs give a rat what the style guidelines say, so it's not our problem. And, btw, I'm with the devs on this one; dashes in title bars are rare. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 14:19, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Charlotte, a dash as a separator in albums/song titles, etc, is normally a spaced en dash – like that. This is the usual practice for list items that require a separator (a colon is an alternative, but often isn't quite right for the purpose). In running prose, use a space en dash – or two – to set off a nested phrase sharply; alternatively, an unspaced em dashe—like that—is standard, too. Is that what you needed to know? Tony (talk) 14:59, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

It's been plainly established here that I don't need to know anything, but what I want to know is what punctuation should (according to our MOS and whatever it is derived from) separate the name of a written work from the anthology in which it is published. I doubt it's a hyphen, but maybe an m-dash, maybe an n-dash, or maybe something else. I'm asking you because I honestly have no idea. — CharlotteWebb 16:59, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

If you want to intpret it as "name of a written work" and "the anthology in which it is published" that's an entire different matter, and would depend on the chosen citation style. I'd say "let's don't go there". It's much simpler to interpret it as simply text identifying what page you are at (and what if anything is being done with it), followed by a blurb identifying the site. I'm with Tony in suggesting spaced en-dash. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 18:37, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

I agree, the devs probably don't care, which is why it would be pointless to bring this up at the village pump. But the devs do not have direct control over this, they only set the mediawiki software default (hyphen) which can be changed later by people who do care about correct typography, and I figured WT:MOS would have the highest concentration of such people. If I'm wrong about this and nobody actually does care I will drop the issue. — CharlotteWebb 16:59, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

It's not a dev issue, as one of the devs reminded us at MOSNUM. The devs create the software. Wikipedia has system administrators who deal with the geeky bits of Wikipedia's installation of the software. But as CharlotteWeb points out, this particular text is actually in an editor-editable page anyway, so we don't actually need to go to the system administrators (via VP or otherwise). — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 18:37, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

In "normal" text, as Tony says, a spaced en dash would be right. However, page title bars aren't necessarily normal. For example, I'm reading this in an oldish version of Internet Explorer, and I see a spaced hyphen in the title bar between the page title and the inscription "Microsoft Internet Explorer". I presume this hyphen is browser-generated and nothing to do with us. So having an en dash (ours) followed by a hyphen (Gates's) would look even stranger than having the two hyphens. Don't know if the same thing happens in other browsers or newer IEs, but I suspect they don't use en dashes. --Kotniski (talk) 17:19, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

We don't need to (in fact should not) bend over backwards to cater to obsolete software. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 18:37, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

The issue of converting hyphens to dashes has come up before regarding article titles, but never page titles. See here or here for example. Kaldari (talk) 15:13, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

In en dash vs. em dash in this case, the answer is em dash since it is used as is a colon. En dashes are primarily for separation of numerical values and separated entities. The very basic rule among typesetters is "only use dashes in phone numbers or hyphenated forms". See Dash. The questions that arise are 1. should the em dash be separated from preceding and following text by spaces?—I would say yes in the case of a webpage title, it just looks better and 2. would the additional characters used in coding of the em dash, at 7 bytes (—) cause problems with search engine optimization and title guidelines?—I doubt it, but developers and interested parties may want to see [6]. Sswonk (talk) 15:42, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, you lost me at "SEO logic". I don't care what gets more "google juice", I'm asking what would be typographically correct in this context.

Is the dash (or hyphen or whatever) actually replacing a colon? If somebody asked me to separate the short story "Science vs. Luck" from the anthology "Sketches New and Old" using a colon I'd put them in the opposite "big-endian" order (and as an entirely practical matter putting "Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia" first would make most of my browser tabs difficult to distinguish).

— CharlotteWebb 16:59, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Right. I have to disagree with Sswonk, too. MOS doesn't actually say that, and the debates about this (of which I was a part) concluded that a spaced en-dash and a spaced em-dash can be used interchangeably. And the punctuation here isn't being used as colon anyway, since the relationship is inverted, as CharlotteWebb notes. I.e. Wikipedia: "{{PAGENAME}}" would be a (fairly common) style of indicating a work/piece relationship. With the order reversed, the punctuation would depend on any of several citation styles, some of which would make it look pretty weird, e.g. by using a period to separate them. Again, it's best to just treat them as two strings being separated by a dash, and to make that an en-dash for readability, though an em-dash could also be used, but is harder to visually parse. Treating the two strings as having a parent–child relationship just complicates the matter unnecessarily. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 18:37, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Did you mean unspaced em-dash? - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 04:39, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

I have to say that I have no problem "visually parsing" either dash. Sswonk (talk) 07:37, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

That it's not functioning as a colon is subject to semantic debate, so the response to your blanket statement that I can contribute is: don't make blanket statements. In titles, either end can be "big-endian", just like 19 September and September 19. Please do not argue this point, I'm not arguing that it could be either en or em. Based on my experience, I would use an em.

The SEO logic bit was not meant to lose CW, more to pose the question to others of whether my assumption that we shouldn't care how many bytes either dash adds was correct. Sswonk (talk) 19:30, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

I just noticed the German Solution which seems to be an n-dash [7]. Perhaps they had this same discussion six months ago

.

Anyway I think it's three bytes as I'm getting literal n-dashes and not "–" in my browser, and they seem to be encoded as – in urls, but I wouldn't be surprised if different things get sent to different user-agents (not that any of this should affect decision-making).

— CharlotteWebb 21:09, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

– is the percent escaped URI encoding of the Unicode UTF-8 character set code for en dash, U 2013. An algorithm is used to encode Unicode characters for use in URLs. The two wikilinked articles and this chart provide more details. I opened the chart page in a text browser (Lynx) and the source shows a single dash for hyphen and en dash and two dashes (--) for em dash when using the default display charset, ISO 8859-1. Lynx configured to display using UTF-8 displays a hyphen as about half the size of an en dash, and an em dash the same as an en dash. That page was served as UTF-8 as well, and my thinking is that the UA is not a factor. So, using an en dash may make no difference to a text browser, some cell phone browsers, etc. Sswonk (talk) 07:37, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

I cannot claim to know the full extent of em-dash usage in typography, but my personal practice is to use them only for parenthetical interruption—like here. As long as it entails no problems, I fully support the usage of a spaced en dash for the purpose discussed here. It is what our style conventions support; spaced hyphens are a no-no. Waltham, The Duke of 18:39, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Ships/Guidelines has been marked as part of the Manual of Style

Wikipedia:WikiProject Ships/Guidelines (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as part of the Manual of Style. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 18:52, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Parent-instructor

Is your "parent-instructor" example consistent with your own rule that en dashes should be used " ... for marking a relationship involving independent elements in certain compound expressions (Canada–US border, ... "? I've been changing similar expressions to en dashes, but perhaps I still don't get it. Art LaPella (talk) 17:40, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

A simplification of the current rule is: use a hyphen if you're talking about one thing with a double name or double identity, and use an en-dash if you're talking about two things. The US and Canada are two things; a person who's acting both as parent and instructor is one thing. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 23:20, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Right. Parent–instructor (en-dash) would imply something like a relationship between a parent and their child's teacher. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 00:32, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Manual of Style (Macedonia-related articles) is no longer marked as part of the Manual of Style

Wikipedia:Manual of Style (Macedonia-related articles) (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been edited so that it is no longer marked as part of the Manual of Style. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 18:52, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

My doing, apparently. This is an old proposal, which has not advanced beyond {{proposed}}, and probably never will; I adjusted the cats accordingly. No actual change of status here, although there is a suggestion on Talk that it should be {{rejected}}. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:00, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

'Tis a pity. At least that page was better than outright warfare. Physchim62 (talk) 21:42, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Not much. It's being used as a justification for outright warfare. The most recent spasm has now convinced me that it should be rejected. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:20, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Quotation marks and quote formatting

Logical quotation marks and curly quotes

I could not disagree more with the current MOS policy on punctuation inside/outside quote marks and directed/non-directed (curly/straight) quote marks, and would like to vote that the policy be changed.

Commas and periods should always go inside quote marks, regardless of whether they are part of the material being quoted or not. While doing it the other way may seem more “logical,” it is nevertheless typographically incorrect, and looks messy.

Messy/incorrect: Arthur felt that periods outside quote marks were more “logical”.

Neat/correct: Arthur felt that periods outside quote marks were more “logical.”

Also, directed (curly) quotes should at least be allowed, if not recommended. Again, they look neater, and they’re the professional typographical standard. We want Wikipedia to look clean and professional. Felicity4711 (talk) 23:50, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

I couldn’t agree more with the your view on using correct Unicode entities for quotes. But I’m pretty sure the United States is the only English-speaking country that insists on always keeping punctuation inside quotation marks. I actually find the less-ambiguous way to be more aesthetic because I’m used to the non-US way—it’s really a matter of aesthetic preference. Keep-the-quotes-inside is globally less correct, is aesthetically superior only to those accustomed to it, and is more confusing to readers.

Dmyersturnbull (talk) 22:27, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Curly quotes are intollerable because they are too hard to edit. They are not present on typical keyboards, nor are they availabie among the special characters in the edit window. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 00:43, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

See WT:COPYEDIT#Logical quotation for more information. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 01:44, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Felicity, if we were slaves to CMOS, we'd agree with you. But WP has particular requirements, conditions, and readership profile; CMOS and most other guides are primarily intended for hard-copy text. In particular, WP places high value on the sanctity of original quotations; thus, if there is no period or comma at the end of "the original quotation," we should not deceive our readers into thinking there was, or "might have been." The typographical correctness that Felicity refers to was a preference long ago by manual typesetters for the quotation marks rather than a dot or comma to lie at the end of a segment. That this is retained in a modern guide (incidentally, one that often doesn't take its own advice) is a reflection on its utter conservatism in the modern era.

Anderson will take this opportunity to peddle his "do as you please" policy, but that has been argued and rebutted countless times, so spare us please, just once? Tony (talk) 01:45, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Agree with Tony, Dan and Gerry. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:16, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

We've been down this road quite a few times. You can search the Talk:MOS namespace for the previous protracted cycles of discussion. Strad (talk) 06:17, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

By now, more people have objected than supported; unfortunately, like yourself, they come one at a time, and are shouted down by the usual handful. Ignore this page, if you like; it may well mean that you won't get FA, but FA is a dubious process for this reason among others. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:51, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

"While doing it the other way may seem more “logical,” it is nevertheless typographically incorrect, and looks messy". To you, because that's the style you've always used. There's nothing inherently "correct" about either of them. Ilkali (talk) 20:56, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

The same can be said for personal preferences, induced by education, between AD and CE. Nevertheless, we have agreed to live and let live on these. Except in the rare cases where the terminal punctuation is significant, we should do so here. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:00, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

While I won't take sides on where to put the period, I'd like to point out that every usage of quotation marks here has been incorrect. There's no reason to put them around logical or correct at all. Reywas92 ^Talk 21:08, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

WP:KETTLE. There's nothing incorrect about using quotation marks to delimit words-as-words. It's a stylistic preference just like the topic of this thread; some prefer italics, some don't. MOS explicitly allows both, because either usage can be virtually impossible to distinguish from other uses of italics or quotation marks used for other purposes in some articles (e.g. articles with a great number of foreign words and phrases, all in italics; one would want to use quotation marks for English-language words-as-words, to distinguish them from the italicized foreign material). — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 16:36, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

The words-as-words part is correct, but, for example, the usage of quotation marks in the original post do not refer to the word "logical" and are incorrect. I'm not sure how kettle applies as I didn't do anything wrong myself. Reywas92 ^Talk 20:01, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm tempted to slap a {{Resolved}} on this, as perennial rehash. This non-issue has been beaten to death again and again and again. WP uses logical quotation for a reason (namely that it's, well, logical). It is unambiguous, and quotes sources precisely, not questionably. Period. End or story. Please drive through. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 16:32, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

HTML q element

Resolved

– Wrong venue.

Does anyone know why <q> tags are filtered by the Wiki software? They're handy because they delegate the decision over what quote type to use to CSS, so every user can choose whatever they prefer. Ilkali (talk) 14:15, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Because the quotation marks don't actually exist in the content at all. Wikipedia is open content that can be repurposed any way anyone in the world wants to (with credit), including non-HTML uses, HTML uses with other stylesheets, etc., even plain ASCII text; and some browsers don't support stylesheets to begin with. The content has to be 100% complete in the actual rendered HTML, with or without a stylesheet. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 16:32, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

"Wikipedia is open content that can be repurposed any way anyone in the world wants to". We already have embedded HTML and Wiki-specific markup. How would this be any different?

Is there some statement somewhere of what percentage of internet users should be able to view Wikipedia properly? How many people are actually using browsers that neither process stylesheets nor provide default rendering for <q> tags? Ilkali (talk) 17:35, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

The difference is that if I copy-paste an entire article or some segment of it into an plain-text e-mail (as many of us regularly do), all that is lost is visual formatting - bold, italics, etc. - none of the content. If we use <q> that would no longer be true. This is the same reason that {{Frac}} exists (as I recently learned). I have no idea if there is any kind of policy or other statement on percentages. As for your last question, the answer is "lots". Not many in North America or the UK, mind you, but there are many very poor places where many people speak English (Jamaica, Liberia, etc.), and the few that have computers mostly have crappy old ones, with old operating systems, old browsers, and dial-up connections that cost by-the-minute (which is why there are guidelines about article size limits, and why the WP/Commons image system makes small versions of images on the fly, and dosen't just inline the full-size version with <img width="X" height="Y"...>, etc., etc.) The en.wikipedia is for those people too. PS: I am hardly the only one to criticize W3C for <q> and various other blatant violations of the separate-content-and-presentation paradigm of the semantic web that linger on in [X]HTML. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 04:05, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

"if I copy-paste an entire article or some segment of it into an plain-text e-mail (as many of us regularly do), all that is lost is visual formatting". There're a number of exceptions to that, including uses of templates (ever wanted to paste a table?) and places where formatting is highly meaningful. Why wouldn't you copy the rendered material rather than the source?

"I am hardly the only one to criticize W3C for <q> and various other blatant violations of the separate-content-and-presentation paradigm of the semantic web". What? <q> embodies that paradigm! "This is a quote" is semantic. "This is surrounded by quotation marks" is presentational. Ilkali (talk) 08:04, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes, tables have always been a problem and always will be; no one in the world seems to have a solution to that problem, and it has nothing to do with what WP can, should or will do. As for the second point, let's not be silly; the quotation marks are part of the content, inextricably and indivisibly, no less so than any other form of punctution. "This is surrounded by quotations marks" is semantic, because it is the demarcation boundary of the (also semantic) "this is a quotation". "This is surrounded by this particular style of quotations marks" is presentational. There could have been an [X]HTML CSS way of allowing flexibility with regard to the presentation that did not muck up the semantics, but W3C dropped the ball on that, back in the 1990s, and now we're stuck with it for the forseeable future. (Another uck fup of this kind is lists - the bullets and numbering are not copy-pasteable, in any browser I'm aware of. Oops.) This will almost certainly have to ultimately be fixed at the browser level (i.e. a preferences/settings switch to auto detect quotation marks (in any of at least 5 different styles) around arbitrary content and render them the way the end-user prefers, just as most modern browsers can do different things to links (underline or not, obey CSS or always use the same colors, etc.), or use a specific minimum font size, or whatever. It's not a WP issue. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 12:06, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

<q> is no more appropriate "separation of presentation from content" than would be forgoing full stops in favor a <sentence> tag. --Random832 (contribs) 14:37, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Please visit Bugzilla:671 for a detailed discussion of this subject. --Yecril (talk) 09:09, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

RFC: Formatting of block quotations

{{RFCstyle}}

One thing I have noticed is that the manner in which quotes are formatted is sometimes different in the same articles many places here at Wikipedia. Example: Quackwatch. In some articles some of the quotes are indented in the simple and normal ":" or "*" manners, while others are indented and formatted using the <blockquote> or {{quote}} template formats.

This is an unfortunate way in which editorial POV can creep into an article. An editor can insert a quote and make it more noticeable than other quotes. Either positive or critical quotes can end up getting highlighted! It may even happen with no greater ulterior motive than personal preference for a certain method of formatting, but the results are still not right. I think all quotes should use the simple wiki markup ":" or "*" methods of indenting, unless there is some special reason not related to editorial POV for doing otherwise. It isn't proper to highlight some quotes in big quote boxes, while others are kept more obscure, sometimes even hidden as part of the inline text, even though the quotes are several lines long. MOS allows both methods, but I find it to be misused at times, and would rather avoid making POV differences.

I have undone such formatting (the last two methods) in several places where I have found it.

Proposal. I would like to see our MOS guidelines modified to ensure that POV-style quoting formats aren't used anymore, at least in controversial articles. In other places it is very appropriate to use nice quote boxes. My main point is that POV-driven use of quote formatting be forbidden.-- Fyslee / talk 04:56, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Comment. * is inappropriate; long quotations are supposed to be indented, not bulletted. <blockquote> and {{quote}} both indent the quotation and make the text smaller (they don't put a box around the quotation), and I find them to be most appropriate for long quotations for two reasons: (1) The smaller text size makes it easier to visually differentiate the quotation from the surrounding paragraphs (this is done in printed works as well), and (2) the use of special tags provides metadata for editors and software, and allows uniform changes to quotation formatting across all articles. As far as templates like Template:Quotation, Template:Cquote, and Template:Rquote, I agree that they absolutely should not be used for anything but pull-quotes and similar special-effects quotations (epigraphs; quotations from the subject of an article, if appropriate; etc). This is already made very clear on the Cquote page, but not on very many of the other special quotation templates. Strad (talk) 06:32, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Comment: I agree with Strad; Cquote and other "quotation special effects" are utterly inappropriate as substitutes for simply block-quoting; I nuke them on sight. Come to think of it, I have never even once seen an article appropriately use Cquote and its ilk; the only time I've ever seen a valid use for it has been in the "Wikipedia:" namespace, when it was used for pull-quotes from policy/guideline/essay pages. Someone with a few minutes, please go copy the "don't abuse this" documentation from Cquote to the other templates like it! I would, but I have to run... — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 04:21, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the information. My main point in the above is that POV-driven use of quote formatting be forbidden. I'll add that to the above. -- Fyslee / talk 06:43, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

We could have language reminding people that undue emphasis on one quote against another can be unneutral. But attempting to fix this by a standard quotation technique, independent of warranted emphasis, length, and clarity, would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:35, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Such wording is just what we need. -- Fyslee / talk 14:24, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Quoting from comics

I asked this at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (capital letters) but haven't received a reply. I figure this is a more watched place, so I bring it here.

Most text which appears in comics is written upper case. When I've quoted this, I tend to place it in sentence case as appropriate. Sometimes certain parts of the text is in bold, for emphasis. Would we still embolden it, or instead italicise for emphasis? Hiding T 10:47, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Also, what about sound effects. I read a review of a collection the other day which made a good and useful point about sound effects being examples of Onomatopoeia. Would we still reduce those to sentence case? I'm thinking of KRA-KOW and the like. Admittedly it would be nicer to excerpt the actual art containing the lettering to better illustrate any such point, but where that's not possible it would be good to get some guidance. Hiding T 10:51, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

I would a) not do it in upper case, as that is simply a font styling matter; b) use bold or italics (some comics do in fact use slanted text for emphasis sometimes) as the original did; and c) for sound effects and other strange forms of emphasis, because they are again just matters of visual font styling, use lower case and either bold or italics as appropriate. An explosion might be ka-boom or even ka-boom depending on how it was done in the original art, and a quiet knife sound effect might be snik (actually a big explosion would probably be an exclamatory onomatopoeic sentence by itself: Ka-boom!) Just my opinion, based on how this sort of thing is handled in pure-text novels sci-fi novels and the like, and how most editors seem to render this sort of material in trascription from film or television. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 04:15, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

You pretty much mirror my own thinking. Thanks for the reply and confirmation. I'll add that to the comics style guide. Hiding T 17:19, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm having difficulty understanding why comic book text would be quoted in the first place. It's not like we're referring to what some expert said on some nonfiction topic. DreamGuy (talk) 22:35, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

With a "BOP!", Fatman said "only a dummy would run into my tummy!" --NE2 22:50, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Length of quotations requiring a block quote

Currently Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Quotations reads "Block quotations A long quote (more than four lines, or consisting of more than one paragraph, regardless of number of lines) is formatted as a block quotation, which Wikimedia's software will indent from both margins." The problem as I see it is that "four lines" is really system and browser dependent - I recently switched computers and things that were four lines on my old system are now only two or three lines. Would it make sense to express this as a number of characters (preferred) or to specify a screen resolution? Thanks, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 04:37, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Good point. About how many characters is "four lines" in a Wikipedia article, in 12 pt type at 1024x768 and full-screen browser window? How many "words" does this equate to? (I forget what the average word length is.) — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 12:09, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

The question is: what do we want? more than about 60 words or 300 characters seems about right. We should use both words and characters; it depends on what you're doing which is easier to count. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:03, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I think the standard in legal writing, per the Bluebook, is to indent a quotation if it's at least two sentences or at least 50 words. JamesMLane t c 16:21, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Having to count the words or characters is a bit a hassle. How about giving a guideline in terms of lines of wikicode? The edit box has a standard width (unless someone uses some script to resize it, but then that's their problem). --Itub (talk) 13:31, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. While this would work for unlinked text, any sort of links would throw this off. DYK hooks can't be more than 200 characters long and that does not seem to be a huge problem. PArtof why I brought this up here was because I was not sure how to solve the problem myself, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 14:21, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

And the length of a line in editing space is machine-dependent. Estimate it roughly for youself (probably somewhere around 75 characters), and then multiply; this isn't intended to be a hard boundary. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:15, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

All of which brings us back to the original question - what should the minimum length of a block quote be in terms of characters / words? Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 15:38, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

←Last discussion was Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Archive_101#Block_quotes:_four_lines_or_four_sentences.3F. In the section #Punctuation inside/outside quotation marks below, you see a lot of short sentences that look like blockquotes; that wouldn't look good in an article. On the other hand, 150-character blockquotes are not uncommon in U.S. magazines and journals, if there's a reason to draw special attention to the quote. I don't have any particular talent in layout, but if nothing else is creating whitespace in the vicinity, I don't see the problem with this, and it doesn't seem to me to violate the look-and-feel of mature WP articles. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 13:22, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

I suggest using a rule based on word count but used approximately. Count the number of words in a typical line and multiply by the number of lines. This is easier than counting characters, because there are fewer words to count and multiply. The rule depends on the length of the words, but that's not as bad as one based on sentences. Sentences in old texts can span several lines. The rule also depends on the use of wiki code such as for block-quoting, emphasis and links. But such code will be limited in quotations because of the principle of minimal change. -Pgan002 (talk) 06:12, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Punctuation inside/outside quotation marks

Pardon me for bringing up something you've no doubt covered before. Here's a quote from MoS at present: "Punctuation marks are placed inside the quotation marks only if the sense of the punctuation is part of the quotation". Up till very recently I took this to mean: "only put the punctuation inside the quotation marks if it would be nonsensical to have it outside, ok?" But now I examine the examples given, I reach the conclusion that the punctuation should be outside the quotation marks only if "a clause or phase is quoted", but "If a whole sentence is quoted then the fullstop should be inside the quotation marks." This means that a perfectly innocuous passage of text could have a visually inconsistent appearance. Firstly, can I double-check that this is what is intended by the rule? (The wording as it is at the moment has confused at least one person!) Secondly, it would be good if someone could reword that sentence to remove the touch of ambiguity. Thank you! almost-instinct 22:33, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

That is confusing, and it didn't use to be worded that way, but much more clearly, saying basically: Include the punctuation inside the quotation marks only if the punctuation was part of the original quotation, otherwise always put the punctuation outside the quotation marks. This is known as "logical quotation" (also called by some "British quotation", though that is a misnomer; some major British newspapers use interior or "typographic" quotation as do most US ones). Logical quotation is favored in technical and other exacting disciplines, because it is more precise and less likely to lead to quotation errors.

Example: I said "It's really hot today" in a neutral tone. Someone can't believe I said that, because they feel cold, and they quote me saying this, with incredulity. In "typographic" quotation, this must be rendered "I can't believe SMcCandlish just said 'it's really hot today!'". This is both a misquotation, strictly speaking, and (for those familiar with this quotation style) a fatal ambiguity - readers who (like most Americans) are used to being uncertain whether terminal punctuation really belongs to the original quotation or not will also be uncertain whether I shouted or whether the quoter of my expression is astounded. WP, like most non-US publications, just avoids this mess entirely. In logical quotation "I can't believe SMcCandlish just said 'it's really hot today'!" and "I can't believe SMcCandlish just said 'it's really hot today!' are very distinct and unambiguous.

Anyway, the text in the guideline on this needs to be improved (e.g. by reverting to what it used to say, or by fixing what it says now to be clearer, like what it used to say). — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 11:15, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for the depth of your answer ... unfortunately my confusion exists on a far, far more banal level. Because the opening line says

Punctuation marks are placed inside the quotation marks only if the sense of the punctuation is part of the quotation

I took this to imply that fullstops shold be always outside the the quotation marks, whether the quote was a phrase or a sentence. So, since reading that, every time I've tidied up a page I changed something that looks thus:

Many people agree that "people who tidy punctuation in wikipedia articles need to get out more."^[1]

to something like this:

Most people think that "spending hours fiddling around with punctuation—and then getting it wrong—is truly tragic".^[2]

If this was wrong, then I've an awful lot of clearing up to do. Yours, crestfallen, almost-instinct 22:58, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

This is fine. Tony (talk) 01:40, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, that looks fine to me, too. It's not even problematic to quote a full sentence but put the period outside; the problematic part is insertion of punctuation that does not belong to the quoted passage into the quotation, as this falsifies the quoted material. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 21:13, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Clarifying the passage

D part of WP:BRD: So what are the substantive objections to the edits I made to this section and which were reverted? — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 14:42, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

I think I agree with Kotniski's edit summary that that particular sentence was supposed to be about periods (full stops) and not about, for instance, question marks; that is, I don't want someone to read that as permission to quote "Who me?" as "Who me". I also agree with both of you that what we had didn't cover the bases and clarification is welcome. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 23:31, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

Was spacing between ' and " discussed?

I'm not seeing discussion for this, did I miss it? "Use {{" '}} ... Do not use plain or non-breaking space ( ) characters, as this corrupts the semantic integrity of the article by mixing content and presentation." I've never seen {{" '}} before this. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 12:44, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Was discussed ages ago, but the guideline recommended using   which is simply semantically wrong. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 03:09, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

The link on semantic integrity leads to Semantic Web, a concept I have never heard of before - and which approaches WP:CRYSTAL. I have just finished writing that MOS is at least not used for POV-pushing; I may have to revise that. Emending to mention the templates, as an editorial choice, may be preferable. It looks like they use a thin space, which we otherwise avoid, because it's not universally supported. (Whatever semantic integrity is supposed to mean, this presumably only violates it a little bit. ;->) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:49, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Well, so it's a poor article; the concept of the separation of semantic content and presentational display dates all the way back to CSS Level 1 (well, pre-dates that, since CSS 1 was created to address that issue). Who is "they", using thin spaces? If you mean the templates, no they don't; all you have to do is read the template source code. Falsifying or mangling content "a little bit" is still falsifying or mangling content. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 03:09, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

The last sentence should be deleted as meaningless. The use of the templates – recommended in the previous sentence – is as much a break of "semantic integrity" as an HTML non-breaking space. Physchim62 (talk) 17:10, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Um, well, no, it isn't. The template does not alter the rendered content in any way whatsoever, unlike inserting bogus, ungrammatical space characters. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 03:09, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Dan: please provide a searchable phrase that we can use to find this sentence, and please confirm that this is located in the Manual of Syle. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 17:20, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

The phrase " ' works - so does CSS or semantic integrity; it's under Quotations on this project page. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:23, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

I see no indication that separation of content and presentation was ever a goal of the wiki markup language; the main goals seem to have been few keystrokes and marked up text that isn't too hard for a person to read. If this separation were the actual goal, we would have unique markup for such things as titles of books, movies, etc. instead of italics and titles of articles within journals instead of putting them in quotes. We would not have markup for boldface, rather we would be marking things as certain types of information (such as first instance of the subject of an article in a lead paragraph, and they would be shown as boldface. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 17:32, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

If separation of content and presentation was not a goal of wiki markup language, it would not do what it does with CSS. In fact, it would not validate under the DTD that the delivered page says it uses. But it validates. Of course MediaWiki is designed to produce valid code with separation of content and presentation, or it would be a laughing stock. And {{' "}} is only 7 characters, while ' " is eight, and requires at least basic understanding of HTML character entities codes (e.g. knowledge that the "&" and the ";" are mandatory, etc.), while the template only requires knowing basic template syntax, which far more WP editors know than know HTML character entity encoding. Basically, if something can be done with a template it should be if the template is simpler than the alternative, which is clearly the case here. We could have unique CSS classes (in templates probably) for titles instead of plain italics, and so on; I'm kind of surprised that we don't already. I have noted increased deployment of CSS classes all over WP, so maybe that is already in the pipe. And if you look at the rendered source as delivered to the browser (after translation by MediaWiki from wiki markup), you'll see that the italicization is in fact done with CSS, not with HTML 4's deprecated element, and this is of course as it should be; we seem to be on the path to better semantic handling already, and I've also noticed people implementing more and more microformats, which are seriously semantic, so it's not like no one around here is thinking about this sort of thing. Anyway, the point is that just because WP is not 100% perfect in semantic and non-presentation-clouded content markup doesn't mean that the idea isn't part of WP's goals, nor that we should not seek to improve WP in this direction. If that were the case, WP would be using table-based layouts, the tag, etc. (The font tag works in wikicode, but is actually translated on-the-fly into a span with CSS; MediaWiki does lots of stuff like that, and sends validatable code to the user agent). — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 03:09, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Detailed rationale

I apologize for the assumption that everyone would just automatically "get" this; I sometimes forget that some people are not web development geeks for whom this sort of thing is old hat.

The templates are pretty self-documenting.

Background: Read cascading style sheets and do an advanced Google search on mandatory terms "content", "presentation" and either/or terms "separate", "separation", for in-depth background info on the electronic design and information architecture philosophy surrounding this.

The short version is that the strings "'" and " ' " are not the same. Meanwhile, the strings "'" and {{" ' "}} are in fact the same in rendered content (copy-paste them into a plain-text editor, you'll see); the latter is simply kerned to be more readable on Wikipedia, in a way that does not affect the underlying content in any way.

We should not falsify the content (especially not quoted content!) just for a visual typographic/legibility effect, but that is what trying to improve the visual display with   does. We also should not reduce the content to ungrammatical gibberish just for a visual effect, either, but that's what we've been advising that editors do. No style guide on the planet would approve of ending a nested quotation with ...foo.' " We should really, really not do this if there is an alternative that doesn't raise these problems, but provides the same visual improvement sought.

Please note that this is not the same as the recommendation to use non-breaking spaces between unit amounts and their symbols (23 cm) – a space does belong there, meanwhile using a non-breaking one serves our purposes and does nothing nefarious to the content.

There may have been some confusion that the change to recommending the template has something to do with a defect in the display of the   version; this isn't he case (indeed, the templates' goal is that they look identical). So, no one is going to get out a micrometer; this isn't about what it looks like, or what editors will do to figure something out, but about what the content actually says. Wikipedia consists of content that is open and may be repurposed in any way anyone wants, in any format, including monospaced formats, or pre-kerned environments, where anything like " ' " will look totally retarded (as well as simply be grammatically incorrect nonsense). The unconstrained reusability of WP content (with credit) is part of the very core of WP's design and purpose (even if more abstraction of content semantics would be a good thing, like the bold subject in leads, and italicized book titles stuff mentioned earlier).

Another way of putting it: It is the very fact that   means what it means that is the problem here (but a non-problem with unit spacing and other uses). It inserts an actual extraneous character into the content in this case, instead of only visually kerning things to be more readable. It doesn't have anything at all to do with whether or not   is displayed properly - I'm unaware of any browser that does not display " ' and " ' (i.e. a normal space-bar space) identically. Not related to the issue addressed by the change. It may help to actually look at the code of the templates; you'll see that there is no space (in the content) between the quotation mark characters; instead there are CSS directives saying to pad this character or that a little to the left or right for display purposes only; if the content is copy pasted, it is copy pasted as "'" (or whatever, depending on the template in question), not " ' ". The character entity, by contrast, is a real character, just like "Q" or "9" or "₤", in, and altering, the content.

By doing the visual spacing with CSS instead of the insertion of extraneous space characters, we preserve the integrity of the content, and different presentation/rendering environments with no CSS support or different, custom CSS, will do things their way correctly without mangling the content, or being mangled by the incorrect content. We need to do this spacing with CSS instead of extraneous space characters for the same reason that we use CSS positioning for page layout, instead of 1996-style abuse of tables, use CSS to do font effects like sizing and boldfacing instead of deprecated HTML markup for these purposes ( tags, etc.), and so on.

By way of comparison, someone who liked the cute little ½, ¼, ¾, etc., Unicode characters (the 9 fraction characters in Unicode, which in many fonts don't even display consistently with each other, but that doesn't really affect the hypothetical here) could cleverly create tiny images for missing ones like "4/5", "9/10", "7/16", etc. that in theory look exactly consistent with the real Unicode characters (for users who have not customized Wikipedia's diplay by changing to another font), with the intent that they be used in-line in articles because (to this person) it visually looks better than the output of {{Frac}}. We wouldn't use them, because they falsify the content, not to mention it would be an accessibility problem.

Finally, the Internet, and Wikipedia, and computers are not perfect yet, if they ever will be. WP seems to get along just fine with a lot of arcana (non-techie editor complaints at WP:VPT aside). At very least, most editors recognize that {{something}} means "this is a template, and if I go to the template page there almost certainly will be documentation", which is something they can't get for  . Anyway, the problems (the issue these templates solve, and some editors being unhappy with templates in WP) are not really related. One is about doing this proper thing for the encyclopedia's content, and the other is about making things easy for editors put off by markup they are unfamiliar with. It isn't expected that the average editor will make use of these templates, in the first place, just as they do not bother to do 23 cm instead of 23 cm despite what MOSNUM says; rather, others who do bother to pay attention to MOS will fix it later (or their bots will), so it isn't really an editor burden at all (even if ' " were actually easier than the shorter and more symmetrical {{' "}}, which it isn't). There are probably at least 50 nitpicky things like this in MOS and its subpages; one more won't kill anyone. :-)

Hope that 'splains it better.

PS: Elsewhere, Dank55 pointed out that ultimately we should ask the developers to fix this. A dev fix shouldn't be hard, even in PHP, Python, Ruby or ASP (I have no idea what the MediaWiki software is actually written in). You'd just tell it (in pseudo-code, here):

If character string ("'"), then new character string ("'")

and move on to the next test, for ("'), or ('") or whatever. Pretty trivial, really. If that were implemented, no one would manually ever have to do anything at all with regard to quotation mark spacing. If there were some weird case where it was desired that these characters butt up against each other, any number of tricks would work, as long as the string in the wikicode was broken in a way that did not rendered visually, e.g. ("')

— SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 05:34, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

This is less than clear. If I understand it correctly, it is only a negative argument: the templates do not, despite appearances, introduce spaces not in the original, and so do not defeat the purpose of logical quotation to represent quotes exactly as in the original.

Would it suffice to mention the templates, without requiring them? That way those who understand and agree with S. McCandlish's argument can use them, and the rest of us can continue using double and single apostrophes as we have always done. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:49, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean by "less than clear" since you do in fact seem to have apprehended what the templates do. :-) The fact that it is "a negative argument" isn't relevant; MOS regularly gives advice of this sort. What language are you proposing instead? If you just want to use '" I've already explained that this is what we expect the average editor to do anyway, just as we expect that editor to write 23 cm not 23 cm, but we recommend the latter directly in order to forestall reversions by people who don't understand the change to a non-breaking space character in MOS-noncompliant prose they just wrote. I don't see that anything is gained by just mentioning a template instead of recommending its use (we mention {{Sic}} specifically, etc.). That said, my principal issue here is getting rid of the recommendation to insert extraneous   entities. My only concern is that simply mentioning the templates will be wishy-washy. Guidelines should generally offer affirmative guidance, not "maybe do this, maybe do that, whatever". — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 16:21, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm still not sure I understand the rationale, or that anyone else will, but it is negative argument in the sense that (if valid) it shows only that using the templates isn't wrong, doesn't change the quotation. A positive argument would show why we must use the templates, and can't just type "'", as would be natural.
If we expect the average editor to use "'", we should make clear that it's his choice. Not everybody will find "'" as unsightly as S McCandlish does. Some will find the appearance of an added space undesirable. We should not simply waltz in, change things, and overrule protests with "MOS says so", we should follow WP:BRD and that includes real discussion.
If a wide consensus is persuaded by these templates, fine; we can reword But at the moment, whatlinkshere gives no evidence that anybody outside this talkpage even knows about them.
When facing a choice of disadvantages (in this case, appearance on one hand and the inconvenience of using a template on the other) we should explain it and let editors pick. That's why we have editors. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:40, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

It isn't necessary that one understand a rationale to trust that one exists and is sensible and created in good faith. :-) I cannot think of any way to explain the issue any more clearly: A) "'" and " ' " are not the same content. B) "'" and "'" are the same content. The end. I gave a positive reason for using the templates: It achieves the desired result without violating the integrity of the content. It still says that, just differently, so I'm happy. I don't think it follows that we should "make it clear" that it's the editor's choice. Everything not subject to actual WP Policy is the editor's choice, so we need not state the obvious, and using wishy-washy language in guidelines reduces their ability to effectively guide. We shouldn't do this unless the topic in question is a matter of something close to a 50/50 split between editors' preferences for one option or the other. But the present language seems okay.

We didn't "waltz in"; the observation that "'" is pretty close to illegible when rendered was made quite some time ago, and the desire to visually space them just a hair for readability has gone unchallenged since before I took my months-long wikibreak. There is no dispute that has been raised with regard to it other than right here, but we seem to be discussing the language of the recommendation, not whether the recommendation should never have been made in the first place. If some editors do find the appearance of a little more space undesirable, they have been keeping quiet about it, so we needn't bother with trying to account for them (WP:CREEP, WP:BROKE, WP:BEANS, etc.) Also, I wasn't the one that brought up the issue in the first place; it isn't that I find "'" unsightly, it's that enough editors did to get critical mass to add something about it to MOS, that was well accepted. All I did is fix it to use a solution that isn't grotesque. Whatlinkshere won't be relevant for a while; I created the templates only a few days ago, to provide MOS with a solution to the identified spacing problem that did not cause more harm than it solved. I.e., I am not trying to change consensus, only fix the tech side of the implementation of what consensus said needed to be done.

Current wording already indicates choice, since it now says that "'" "may" cause visual problems and points to where the templates are without demanding that they be used, so I think your final bullet point is satisfied. I'm okay with the passage, too.

Are we any closer to consensus on this one? — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 22:46, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

I have tweaked the text; the text I found offered the choice required, but I hope this is clearer. Saying that we want the text, character for character, exactly as in the original covers the ground as well as "semantic integrity" and may be more intelligible. Some may still object that the appearance is what matters, and we should not use kerning which looks like extra space either, but they can avoid the templates. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:51, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Works for me! I don't think anyone will object to the appearance; I tested this in a bunch of browsers on both Mac and Windows and the output is as-desired (i.e. it looks just like the   spacing which wasn't controversial to begin with, just a poor implementation for reasons not considered at the time). — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 18:39, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

For me, there's a commonality between this issue, date autoformatting, and line wrapping/hard spaces: from now on, I'm not going to get involved in anything that I see as a fault of the publisher (which might mean the devs, or someone else...don't know, don't care). Wikipedia ought to display single quote/double quote so that it's readable, dates should never have been wikilinked, and lines ought to wrap in some sensible way. Not my problem. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 00:03, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Curly quotes again

I think it’s a sad decision to encourage straight quotes. They are explicitly discouraged by the Unicode standard. Plus, curly quotes are easy to type on a US-international keyboard (with deadkeys): Alt 9 = ‘, Alt 0 = ’, Alt Shift [ = “, Alt Shift ] = ”. Let the world move forward. H. (talk) 12:11, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Not everyone who contributes to the English Wikipedia uses a US-international keyboard. And from what I gather, curly quotes cannot be searched for. Matthewedwards (talk • contribs • email) 16:02, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Indeed, that’s why there is MediaWiki:Edittools, look below the edit field in the category ‘Symbols’. (Wiktionary has solved this better, btw, maybe an administrator can have a look there and take it over here: you only need one click for both quotes.) Though of course I urge everyone to use a proper keyboard layout ;-) And then there are tools like gucharmap, Additional characters under Windows accessories and an applet in the Gnome panel. H. (talk) 11:57, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Of course, editors are not required to enter curly quotes. This is no reason to discourage them.

Searching for any kind of punctuation may be problematic, but I'm not aware of any particular problems in searching for curly quotation marks. Why would you want to do so? —Michael Z. 2008-08-29 17:24 z

What matters is consistency. If there are two characters representing the same grapheme and they're randomly distributed, I have to search at least twice whenever I'm looking for text including that grapheme. Ilkali (talk) 22:37, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

That’s why I am consistently creating a redirect from a page title with curly quotes to the one with straight quotes, whenever I encounter them. This is also (probably unwritten) policy on Wiktionary. H. (talk) 11:57, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm talking about text searches as well. Redirects won't help me (or Google) find text within an article. Ilkali (talk) 12:34, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Text searches are incremental, aren’t they? They are in Firefox. So that would be no problem, I suppose: just type Godwin and most likely you’ll already be there. Seriously, I think this is a minor problem. Most users probably don’t even know how to search a page. H. (talk) 10:16, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Specifically, as often happens, on Mac systems it differs (Option key=Alt key): Alt 9 = ª, Alt 0 = º, Alt [ = “, Alt ] = ‘, Alt Shift [ = ”, Alt Shift ] = ’. I posted a marginally related question that hasn't been responded to about a specific instance where not knowing the difference between straight vs. curly can cause problems in wikicoding edits, if anyone reading this can help me out. Sswonk (talk) 16:29, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

FYI, that's on the regular English-language Mac keyboards. —Michael Z. 2008-08-29 17:24 z

Indeed, I explicitly said: US-intl with deadkeys. Although indeed these also differ slightly between Linux and Windows. (Mainly in deadkey behavior, not in the symbols present, I think.) H. (talk) 11:57, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

"They are explicitly discouraged by the Unicode standard". Can you cite this? Ilkali (talk) 22:37, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict) "[Straight quotes] are explicitly discouraged by the Unicode standard." Oh, really? How about ^{[This quote needs a citation]}!

(To both above:) http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U2000.pdf contains:

U 2019 RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK
- this is the preferred character to use for apostrophe

and http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0000.pdf contains:

U 0027 APOSTROPHE
- neutral (vertical) glyph with mixed usage
- U 2019 RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK is preferred for apostrophe
- preferred characters in English for paired quotation marks are U 2018 LEFT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK & U 2019 RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK

and

U 0022 QUOTATION MARK
- neutral (vertical), used as opening or closing quotation mark
- preferred characters in English for paired quotation marks are U 201C LEFT DOUBLE QUOTATION MARK & U 201D RIGHT DOUBLE QUOTATION MARK

It says ‘in English’, but this is valid in a lot of languages. H. (talk) 11:57, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm on a Mac myself, and codes up there didn't even display properly! The first two characters show up as a miniature "a" and a minature "o", both superscripted, not any form of quotation mark.

That’s unfortunate indeed. Seems like you have a configuration problem. I thought since Mac is Unix-based now, it would have switched to UTF-8 as a default as well? H. (talk) 11:57, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

"Why would you want to [discourage curly quotes]?" Because they are often parts of literal search strings. "Godwin's law" and "Godwin’s law" and Godwin‘s law" are all completely different character strings from the perspective of the search system. There are other reasons to not use curly quotes as well; see many, many previous discussion on this topic. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 22:46, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes, and if I search the page for “Canada”, then I won't find “Canadian.” So I would search for “Canad” and “Godwin”. There are hundreds of similar examples, and the fact is that readers who use better search strategies will get better search results. Perhaps someday in-browser text search will be as smart as Google search.

We shouldn't be dumbing down and micro-managing orthography to optimize lowest-common-denominator text search. Next we'll be specifying a controlled vocabulary and approved sentence structure. This is long out the window anyway, since I believe there is already an article or two in Wikipedia which has a curly apostrophe. —Michael Z. 2008-09-04 15:03 z

See my remark about redirects above. H. (talk) 11:57, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Curly quotes do cause wikicoding problems, especially since some fonts do not distinguish between the straight vs. curly characters at all for visual display purposes.

— SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 22:46, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Actually, the characters above are displaying correctly as you describe them on your Mac. (I included them in the list to compare with the keystroke examples in the first comment of the section. Sswonk (talk) 18:19, 2 September 2008 (UTC)) See this complete chart from Adobe. Do you have any insight regarding my questions at the text formatting subpage? I understand that possesives of italicized titles are a rare case and that coding them can cause problems, but there is a solution: use a curly apostrophe. It is a matter of style but as far as I can tell it isn't discussed in any style guidelines. Sswonk (talk) 17:09, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

And there you touch on my main argument in favor of using curly quotes: there is not risk they are confused with the apostrophes which are used for markup. Not only in wiki, but also in most all computer languages this is a big advantage (I tell you this as a localizer of several programs: it is a bliss not to have to escape quote signs all over the place.) H. (talk) 11:57, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't think any human would ever confuse them, and problems with the markup engine are limited to highly specific contexts. Ilkali (talk) 12:34, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

(outdent)I am sending this back to the left margin because there are a few conversations going on and I am attempting to answer two points well indented in separated parts of the thread.

First, yes Mac has been Unix based since the beginning of this century but the issue isn't the OS, it's the keyboard. The history of the Mac system is strongly influenced by the adoption of the Macintonsh GUI based system and the laser printer in the mid-eighties and onward as production machines in the printing an publishing industry. These systems were quickly accepted as replacements for large, tempermental and very expensive phototypesetting systems throughout the industry. Thousands of people who produce printed material, whether they be called typesetters, desktop publishers or pre-press artists, learned to key information using the classic Macintosh system, which used - and uses - special keystrokes to produce a large number of glyphs commonly found in printed pieces. These include the symbols for trademark, copyright, section and bullet. This was learned well in advance of the Windows system of using ALT 0XXX to produce non-standard ASCII characters. The base of production people who use the Mac keyboard and can fly through typesetting complicated documents using QuarkXPress or Adobe software is entrenched, so Apple and Adobe can be excused for leaving these keystrokes as they were for 15 years prior to the switch to FreeBSD OS X variations. I know all this WP:OR because I have been working on Macs doing that sort of work for the last twenty years.

Second, and really related to the first comment, is that "curly quotes" in the publishing industry are actually just "quotes" and "apostrophes". They are the typesetting standard, and the "straight quotes" are used only to denote measurement in inches and feet (28" striped bass, 16' pole vault). Those of us in the industry have been known to refer to those characters as "inch marks", and they are often one of the first things a typesetter must repair when importing text from ASCII or word processing sources. So, although I understand that this is very arcane stuff to a great many, and probably completely inaccessible to a vast number of casual editors, the preference of professional graphic artists is to use what is here being called "curly quotes", which is also born out by the Unicode document provided by H. above. Sswonk (talk) 14:01, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

No, inches and feet use the characters ′ (U 2032 PRIME, Alias names: • minutes, feet) and ″ (U 2033 DOUBLE PRIME, Alias names: • seconds, inches). (Some brokes fonts display them curly, but that's another matter; PRIME is the character used for Derivative#Lagrange's notation.) -- Army1987!!! 13:15, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Suggested change

To the main point, I agree with Sswonk. I too use a Mac and have appreciated fine typography since the mid 80s. The Mac makes an ellipsis (…) easy to type (option-semicolon) whereas it is such a pain on Windows machines, many editors just type three (or even four) periods in a row. Hyphens, endashes, emdashes; they’re all easy as pie on a Mac. But I also am keenly aware that typographer’s quotes are hard for users of Windows machines to type. So there is a good point to not burdening Wikipedia’s editors pounding on barbarian OS machines by requiring that they have to mess with them. So the current admonition against their use in order to keep it simple for others makes sense and seems appropriate. But…
(there, I used a true ellipsis again) Typographers quotes do look nicer—that’s why they exist. And unless someone has a big-ass monitor running at 640 × 480, I don’t accept that typographers quotes “look good in print but not on a computer monitor”—certainly not with LCD monitors in excess of 100 pixels per inch. So I recommend the following:
In articles that have grown as large as they need to go and are relatively stable, typographers quotes are fine since the number of edits requiring attention to quotes are minimal to none. I’ve seen editors change highly stable articles from typographers to straight (all of them), not because he or she had an edit to make involving a quote—just because MOS said to. Typographers quotes exist because they not only look better, but they help the mind to recognize where a quote is starting and ending; good typography is all about facilitating smooth reading and mental flow. So I would recommend the following bullet point be added to the current policy:

• For mature and stable articles (they are no longer growing nor are in a state of flux), the use of typographers’ quotes and apostrophes is acceptable. Eligible articles should use one style consistently.

After sorting through how typographers quotes really looked on monitors, I had made the aforementioned recommendation here in Archive 100 on 4 July 2008 and didn’t get any negative feedback—I didn’t get any feedback at all. Such a bullet point doesn’t pull the rug from under the existing reasoning whatsoever.

And, by the way Sswonk, now that most small-business page layout has gone from the pros at typesetting houses to secretaries pounding away on barbarian computers, the units of time (minutes and seconds) and the plane angle (minutes and seconds) are now often done—improperly—with straight quotes. However, they are properly done with ′, and ″, not ' and ". I forget what the Unicode symbol is for them. I used the Unicode originally but editors eventually come along and replace my hand coding to the resulting character. Greg L (talk) 20:38, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

I oppose the use of curly quotes because it is very burdensome to distinguish between straight and curly quotes in the edit windows (at least for some browser-OS-computer combinations. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 21:00, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Exactly Gerry; I think my suggestion addresses your concern. We keep the current admonition against using them for that reason: typographer’s quotes can be a nuisance for some editors when articles are growing and/or in a state of flux and are undergoing a lot of editing. But for articles that have grown as large as they need to go and have proven to be quite stable, typographers quotes are fine since the number of edits requiring attention to quotes are minimal to none.
I think we need more shades of grey on Wikipedia. Defaulting down to a lowest common denominator of quality is fine when there is a legitimate concern—like ease of editing. In the absence of that reason (where articles are undergoing very little editing), there’s no reason to no longer allow them.
This puts Wikipedia on the slow track towards an increasingly professional product—but only where doing so isn’t needlessly burdensome. Greg L (talk) 22:26, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

There are no stable articles on Wikipedia. They all suffer from vandalism. I don't ever want to see a curly quote in the edit window, and if I find one, I will expunge every single one of the suckers from the whole article. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 22:31, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

To expand on the previous paragraph, when I want/need to make a minor edit to an article I already have two many style matters to worry about that are not readily apparent in a single screenful of the article: the date format, the citation format, the national variety of English, whether SI or American customary units come first. . . now you want to add another item to the list. No. I don't give a crap about the relative merit of curly quotes, there are just too many things to search around for before making an edit to an article; I won't cooperate with adding another one to the list. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 22:38, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Fine, you won’t cooperate. You don’t think there is any sort of thing as a stable article because even mature ones undergo vandalism. Of course, that is no argument because the "undo" button requires nearly no effort at all and bots take care of that a lot of the time.
But when you write “I won't cooperate with adding another one to the list.” and then shout about how you will do this and do that to articles if you find something you don’t like, are you suggesting you have some sort of veto power as to what happens on MOS, or that you don’t care how others feel and their views don’t matter? Do you just want others to *feel your power* when you threaten “if I find one, I will expunge every single one of the suckers from the whole article.”? Your style of communicating here is striking. Or was that just unintentional and you are just stating your opinion here?
Sswonk made some valid points, I think, and I was seconding his motion. But rather than simply allow them—even for rapidly growing articles or ones that are in a state of flux—I was suggesting a compromise solution that seemed a win-win. Specifically, I propose a way to improve Wikipedia by the introduction of some flexibility: keep it simpler when articles are new and in a state of flux, and make them look better when they are more mature and stable. Specifically, this:

• For mature and stable articles (they are no longer growing nor are in a state of flux), the use of typographers’ quotes and apostrophes is acceptable. Eligible articles should use one style consistently.

That seemed a rather painless compromise that would put Wikipedia on the slow track to become a more professional looking publication while keeping it simple in the earlier stages. Dumbing Wikipedia down to the lowest common denominator to make it simpler for editors using computers with cumbersome operating systems when making edits is a rational thing to do. But absent the pressing need of making very many edits, that imperative disappears and there’s no need for lowest-common-denominator quality. But rather than truly discuss, you seem prone to vitriolic statements that fan flames with nonsense arguments like how easy-to-revert vandalism means all articles are “in a state of flux”, slam doors shut, and make threats of what you’ll do if you see anything that displeases you. Greg L (talk) 01:02, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Greg L, your proposal makes every single edit that might add or alter a quote more difficult, because the article might contain curly quotes, so before beginning the edit, the editor has to discover whether the article uses straight or curly quotes. Maybe I'm a bit insistent in my language, but at least I'm not proposing to increase the burden on every editor like you are. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 02:03, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

I think I understand your point. If you are saying that if an editor wanted to add a quote or modify a sentence with a contraction of possessive form, they’d first have to look for another apostrophe or quote to see which is used. I don’t see any of that effort as being necessary. In fact, wording to that effect can be added to the bullet point if necessary to make that clear.
If an edit is made to a mature article, they tend to be—as you pointed out—vandalism (too easy to revert) or minor stuff like grammar corrections. In the rare case where you’ve got a mature article that uses typographers quotes, and the edit introduces straight quotes, that’s perfectly understandable; I suspect there will be one or more shepherding authors who will be more than willing to upgrade them to curlies. The burden of using typographers quotes needn’t be on those who don’t want to deal with them.
The gist of the bullet point I am proposing is that it would sanctify the practice on mature articles. What I mainly would hope to accomplish with this wording is A) allow their use in suitable (stable) articles, and B) prohibit edits to eligible articles that do nothing but convert existing typographers quotes to straight quotes. Like I said before, I’ve seen perfectly stable articles where the only edit is to convert all typographers quotes to straight quotes. The edit wasn’t accompanied by any need to add a single apostrophe or quote; the edits were only to make wholesale conversion to the quote style—no other purpose than that. Those sort of edits are pretty much a testament to the fact that the article was mature enough (no other additions or changes were made), and the whole point was just to dumb the article down per MOS. For mature articles, that sort of editing is wholly unnecessary.
Looking up at my {quotation} of the proposed wording, I’m not seeing anything that *requires* anyone to use typographers quotes; it only permits their use. I see that it does say that articles should “use one style consistently” though, so if you feel wording should be added that takes the onus off those who don’t want to think about it, that’s would be fine with me.
Perhaps wording like this:

• For mature and stable articles (they are no longer growing nor are in a state of flux), the use of typographers’ quotes and apostrophes is acceptable. Eligible articles should use them consistently.
• The burden of adding and upgrading typographers quotes shall lie with those editors of an article who are willing to deal with them, however, editors shall not convert existing typographers quotes to straight quotes in eligible articles.

Greg L (talk) 02:59, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

I see no issues with Greg L’s proposed statement regarding mature articles. I fully support the statement and the well reasoned movement of the encyclopedia toward a more professional looking appearance. Mature articles using typographer’s quotes can be marked as such in a talk page template and a task force assembled to maintain the appearance. Sswonk (talk) 03:12, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Curly quotes look better; I use them in Word documents, even though it's tedious on the occasions you need a straight glyph for angular and time expressions.
On WP, the keys for single and double left and right curly quotes are a bore, even on my Mac: Command-[, Command-[[, Command-] and Command-]]. It's worse on Windows, I believe. And moving down to the "Insert" box below the edit-window is tedious (now, irritatingly, you usually need to change the tab—who did that?).
There's no way of escaping the additional maintenance that will be required because edits will be made in the "other" glyph. Who checks beforehand? Editors can't even check the raw date format in the edit window to keep their additions consistent.
Until the system/keyboards improve in this respect, my first preference is to go for the second-best appearance and use straight glyphs only; but if people are keen to keep the option for the better-looking curlies, and Greg has put a strong case, I suppose I'd support the freedom to do so. But it's hard to enforce maintenance obligations ad infinitum for those articles. Probably an editorial comment needs to go at the top. Is there a script/bot that can regularise the glyphs in such articles tagged with the "This article uses curly quotes" note? (PS What has article maturity got to do with it?) Tony (talk) 03:51, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Wow, a “curly bot”. Never thought of that. But I don’t mind doing the work. Really, if editors didn’t come to some articles with their “curly Uzi” and blast them all, it would be ridiculously simple for those of us who maintain articles that feature them. Greg L (talk) 03:59, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

This should be a relatively uncontroversial amendment to what’s already on MOS and seems a thoroughly reasonable compromise for the two camps so I’ll post it. It will help bring peace to this issue and will put Wikipedia on the slow track to becoming a more professional product. What this amendment accomplishes is threefold:

It doesn’t put any burden whatsoever on those who don’t like to deal with curly quotes and places the burden squarely on the shoulders of the advocates (there are many) who don’t mind.
It sanctifies the use of typographers quotes in eligible articles (fully grown, largely stable ones) and should *hopefully* reduce instances where editors wade into such articles and do nothing more than a big-ass global change of all typographers quotes to straight quotes. And…
It ought to actually reduce the number of articles using typographers quotes because it provides that they are clearly unsuitable for use in articles that are in a state of flux and/or are expanding. Proponents of typographers quotes should better abide by a guideline that gives them a clearly delineated field of operation.

Greg L (talk) 16:19, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

There. I’m quite satisfied now. Whereas I might be active on MOSNUM, I take little interest in the goings-on over here on MOS. I have no other pressing matters to attend to here. Thanks. Greg L (talk) 16:52, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Oh god no. I'm taking this back out; this is a fairly heavy change to the recommendations, doesn't quantify "mature" or "stable" well enough, and it makes editing said "mature" and "stable" articles a pain in the ass for those of us (almost everybody) who can hardly tell the difference on a monitor and who don't care anyway. This is needless instruction creep for the sake of a minority of users, and in the real world will be detrimental to the usability of our articles. The benefits have not been shown to outweigh the costs, and some of the arguments put forward ("not prohibiting curly quotes will make them less common") are self-evidently bogus. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 17:03, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

There’s no need for a knee-jerk reaction here Chris. This issue keeps coming up over and over and a little flexibility (that shouldn’t burden you one iota) will entirely solve it once and for all. There is certainly no need to define “mature articles that are not in a state of flux”. Common sense is more than enough to divine the litmus test: the point at which attention to quotes is minimal. And the costs (to you) are next to none because there is no burden on editors who don’t want to use them. It was right in the added text that the onus of dealing with them in eligible articles is on the editors who want to use them; editors who don’t—in the rare event they need to type a quote or apostrophe—don’t have to deal with the hassle.
As for the “benefits v.s. costs” issue you raised, I’ve already pointed out the cost angle of that equation. Whereas you don’t see any benefit, those editors who appreciate fine typography certainly do and using typographer’s quotes in mature articles makes Wikipedia a more professional product. You don’t see the benefit. At least grant me the possibility that those who appreciate fine typography do see a benefit and your view on this issue might not be the definitive and final word on this matter (though your wholesale reversion makes it seem like you do).
Now, you’ve painted a picture of pestilence in your fields and how midwives will weep in your village over this, but it’s clear that this would have no impact on you whatsoever—you don’t have to even think about this issue if you don’t want to; just keep editing as you’ve always done. So please stop reverting text that is a perfectly reasonable compromise. If you don’t like ‘em, don’t use them. Greg L (talk) 17:24, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

How will it "not burden me one iota"? I edit across a broad swathe of articles, and have been strongly in favour of consistency and standardisation in the way we treat every one of them from the time I started editing here. With your rewording, I now have to go check if the page is at GA before I'm allowed to add apostrophes to it. That's not on. Our style guidelines should apply equally throughout the project. Furthermore, a large part of FA is being MoS-compliant, and another large part is being stable, so that would rather imply that FA-class articles would be expected to use curly quotes (and that mass conversions would be acceptable). This is a significant change to the guidelines. And frankly, while Firefox 3 (the most advanced browser available) still doesn't match straight quotes to curly ones in an in-text search, this is still obviously too ivory-tower to be under serious discussion. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 17:25, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Jeez Chris! You write “With your rewording, I now have to go check if the page is at GA before I'm allowed to add apostrophes to it.” That’s what I’m talking about when I said “knee-jerk reaction.” Go click on the historical version and actually read what was there before you unilaterally reverted it. It said you don’t have to do any of that. Greg L (talk) 17:29, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

What your version says is that conversion is fine for "mature and stable" articles (which isn't defined), and that "editors who don’t want to use typographers quotes shall not needlessly convert existing typographers quotes to straight quotes in eligible articles". Given that your definition of "needlessly" does not cover things like "allowing people who restrict their use of the search tool to typography available on their keyboards" or "allowing editors to use the section-edit tool to work on an article without first examining the article's existing punctuation with a magnifying glass", this would appear to be a one-way street.
Furthermore, two additional comments: "Many editors use operating systems that make it inconvenient to deal with typographers quotes" should read "all editors", unless your keyboard has curly quotes on it, and the curly quote that you dropped into "the use of typographers’ quotes and apostrophes is acceptable" is contrary to your own recommendation that pages be consistent. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 17:51, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

A further reason to object to the curly quotes is that passages from articles may be copied to other articles, or to works outside Wikipedia, and these passages will be more difficult to edit if they use curly quotes. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 17:17, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

The same issue applies to copying text from many Word docs, Gerry. If we wanted to default to lowest common denominator for everything else on the internet, we’d be optimizing Web pages so no scrolling is required on 640 × 480 screens. Progress marches on. Greg L (talk) 17:28, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

The Wikipedia edit window, and many other editing environments, are not up to the task of working well with curly quotes. Time may march on, but editing software just accumulates more useless/annoying bells and whistles with few fundamental improvements. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 17:34, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

As a matter of fact, all Macs effectively have curly quotes on the keyboard; that’s why you’ll see most editors willing to deal with them also use Macs. In my particular case, my aftermarket Mac keyboard has the option-characters printed on the keytops in the upper right-hand corner. Anyway, the objections you two are raising still aren’t substantive arguments. After deleting a perfectly reasonable compromise solution, Chris then came here and wrote “With your rewording, I now have to go check if the page is at GA before I'm allowed to add apostrophes to it.” The wording, quoted below, is abundantly clear that no editor who doesn’t want to even think about that has to deal with them. So I’m still waiting for an objection that is based on real facts here. All I’m seeing is a knee-jerk reaction out of Chris (fearing he’ll be required to do this or that) without taking the courtesy of actually reading and comprehending what he reverted. His objections aren’t supported by fact. That happens just too often on Wikipedia. As for arguments of the use of typographers quotes not improving Wikipedia, that’s just absurd to couch that opinion as fact; typewriter quotes seem clearly inferior to very many editors who appreciate fine typography.
Here’s the full text of the passage in question:

Straight or curly?

There are two options when considering the look of the quotation marks (that is, the glyph):

Typewriter or straight style: "text", 'text', text's
Typographic or curly style: “text”, ‘text’, text’s

(Emphasis added to better distinguish between the glyphs.)

In articles that are growing and/or are in a state of flux, editors should exclusively use typewriter (straight) quotes and apostrophes to make it easier for editors. Many editors use operating systems that make it inconvenient to deal with typographers quotes.
For mature and relatively stable articles (those that are no longer growing nor are in a state of flux), typographic quotes and apostrophes are acceptable since edits involving quotes are minimal. Eligible articles should use them consistently for the sake of appearance; also, mixed use interferes with searching (a search for Korsakoff's syndrome could fail to find Korsakoff’s syndrome and vice versa).
The burden of adding and upgrading typographic quotes shall lie only upon those editors who are willing to deal with them. However, editors who don’t want to deal with typographic quotes shall not needlessly convert existing typographers quotes to straight quotes in eligible articles.

Whenever quotation marks or apostrophes appear in article titles, make a redirect from the same title but using the alternative glyphs.

The following types of quoting should not be used:

Grave and acute accents or backticks (`text´) are neither quotation marks nor apostrophes, and must not be used in their place.
Foreign characters that resemble apostrophes, such as transliterated Arabic ayin (ʿ) and alif (ʾ), are represented by their correct Unicode characters, despite possible display problems. If this is not feasible, use a straight apostrophe instead.

Do you see that third bullet point? There’s no burden on editors who hate thinking about curly quotes. The only thing that bullet points asks of the “don’t wanna think about it” editors is that when they go into articles that use them, that they not go out of their way and spend a whole shit-load of time doing a global replacement on them all; that’s just intolerance at its worst. Greg L (talk) 20:01, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

I have to oppose this proposed change (re-change, really; this is rehash, and consensus has not changed). It's not a "don't want to think about it" issue (that's a red herring); it's a "it's not on my keyboard and impedes my ability to edit" thing, among many others, including search results problems and so forth. For every person who searches for a text string with a curly quote/apostrophe in it, there are probably 5000 who search for it without, because really no one is going around intentionally using complicated key combinations or pop-up character utilities to write something like "O'Sullivan" with a curly apostrophe. Curly quotes are nothing but decoration from a WP perspective, and their use is too problemlatic for editors and readers to use the cuteness of them at the expense of everone for whom they are problematic, which is almost everyone. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 22:00, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

That’s not a valid argument SMcCandlish. Intra-article searches of terms that have apostrophes and quotes are rare. And on those rare occasions where someone might need to perform one, copy/paste works just fine—even better—than typing. That’s about as weak of an argument as how copying text from Wikipedia would bring along curly quotes (OMG!). Well, the same thing is true for copying text from most any Word doc; that’s no argument.
You also seem terribly quick to argue your points by providing links to things like WP:CCC (consensus has not changed): a Johnnie Cochran-esqe “it’s in blue so it must be true.” You behave as if there’s no need to argue the merits because you’ve already proven your point with your links. It doesn’t work that way. Consensus can change (it happens all the time), and a valid and substantive reason has to be put forth to argue against a perfectly reasonable compromise solution.
Sswonk wrote “The author and main promoter of the style guideline, SMcCandlish, is fairly relentless.” The word “tenacious” comes to mind when I think of the tactics you’ve pulled lately. And his perception points to a possible problem here with you: climbing the Reichstag dressed as Spider-Man over every single little thing that doesn’t go entirely your way. I note that you wrote “Curly quotes are nothing but decoration from a WP perspective”. You mean from your perspective. And if you really meant “WP”, then you are equating you and Wikipedia to be one in the same thing in your mind. That’s a problem. A serious problem. So I guess I’ll try a page from your playbook: You’ve got a bit of a WP:OWN problem here on MOS. You don’t own this venue and need to actually listen to what other editors are pushing for and not be so quick to slap everyone down at every turn who has an idea that isn’t perfectly in line with what you want.
Several editors above have stated perfectly valid reasons for using typographers quotes. I can also see that some opponents raised perfectly good objections regarding how dealing with curly quotes is burdensome. My compromise solution solves all that by putting the burden entirely on those who want to use them and would further clearly delineate precisely where they can’t be used. And now your only comeback is only something lame about thoroughly rare intra-article searches involving quotes and apostrophes (an issue that is easily bypassed).
There is a serious problem with the opponents of this: Chris reverted the new guideline and fallaciously claimed that “With your rewording, I now have to go check if the page is at GA before I'm allowed to add apostrophes to it.” He obviously hadn’t even read what he reverted. And then you repeat the same line with your “it's not on my keyboard and impedes my ability to edit”-argument. Again, with my compromise wording, you don’t have to use them. You guys are going to have to do better than this.
Jimbo’s “Wikipedia:Ignore all rules” isn’t a guideline, it’s an official policy. Many editors have quietly been using typographer’s quotes to improve Wikipedia and have just put up with editors who do nothing more to articles with typographers quotes than make a global change to convert them all. (*exasperation*) Revert the change. It’s time to make peace between these two schools with a guideline that gives them a clearly delineated set of articles where their use is appropriate and doesn’t burden editors one iota if they don’t want to use them. Greg L (talk) 00:21, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

My 2c: I'd be a lot more sympathetic to Greg's position on this if we had curly quotes that actually looked good; say, the ones that LaTeX produces with the Computer Modern font. But we don't. They look purely awful, at least in my browser. Until that changes I'm against curly quotes in WP. --Trovatore (talk) 01:04, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Trovatore. What OS? What browser are you using? What default sanserif font? And mainly, have you tried setting your default font to something else? Can you take a screenshot of what you are seeing? Greg L (talk) 02:02, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

You didn't get my point. My statement that "before I add an apostrophe to an article, I have to check if it's GA or not" was intended to signify that it would, in the ivory-tower future, be unacceptable for me to add a straight quote to a mature article which used curly quotes. Now, althought you specifically discounted this, by saying that "the burden... shall lie upon... those editors who are willing to deal with them", this evidently doesn't work: the MoS applies to everyone who edits an article, and you can't tack on optional extra rules for "those willing to deal with them".

As for IAR, IAR is for situations where something has broad consensus but is being held back by WP's rules. It is emphatically not for situations where a proposal has dubious support.

And you still have not addressed any of the issues raised. Contemporary browsers and search tools cannot normalise curly quotes to straight ones when searching. 95% of editors have no intuitive way of entering curly quotes with their keyboards. The MoS's rules currently apply to every article, and you want to create a two-tier system where good articles use different rules from other ones. None of these have been adequately answered.

Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 08:25, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

No, Chris. You wrote above that “[what I wrote earlier] was intended to signify that it would, in the ivory-tower future, be unacceptable for me to add a straight quote to a mature article which used curly quotes.” The compromise solution I’m proposing addresses that concern by providing as follows:

• The burden of adding and upgrading typographic quotes shall lie only upon those editors who are willing to deal with them. However, editors who don’t want to deal with typographic quotes shall not needlessly convert existing typographers quotes to straight quotes in eligible articles.

If an editor goes to an article that uses typographers quotes and needs to add a quote of their own or something with an apostrophe, you can type away as they’ve always done. In mature articles, the addition of straight quotes will happen only rarely, and when it does happen, the shepherding author(s) who like them will upgrade it to a curly quote. All you would be asked not to do is spend a whole bunch of time going out of your way to make a global search & replace of the others.

As for searches, intra-article searches of terms that have apostrophes and quotes are rare. Many editors who want to look for Johnnie Cochran’s rhymes will just search on rhymes. And on those extremely rare occasions where people have an article that mentions both Johnnie Cochran and rhymes innumerable times, which makes searching on just one or the other inconvenient (how often is that really going to happen?), copy/paste works just fine—even better—than typing.

One of you guys above argued that copying text from Wikipedia into another application would bring along typographers quotes. What kind of mentality is this? Most every Word doc you will ever receive uses such typography (fine-looking typography). What do you do when you receive Word docs? Cry “Oh the humanity” and throw up your hands in frustration because funny-looking punctuation has once again darkened your doorstep?

This is all absurd. Lots of editors are using typographers quotes in Wikipedia’s articles, want to continue to do so, and will continue to do so. Let’s adopt a practical policy that makes peace and doesn’t burden you with any duties you don’t want to undertake. Greg L (talk) 17:11, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Belated reply to Greg L's borderline attack on me above: It's very unhelpful that you run to accusations of bad-faith editing (WP:OWN, etc.) when you don't immediately get your way. Most of what you're written above simply makes no sense to me. I am not the principal author of MOS; I'm frequently involved, but MOS was around long before I touched it, and my impact on it has been minimal. I did not even edit MOS or any of its subpages for much of 2008 until the late summer. I feel no "proprietary" interest in something I've had little to do with. I do feel, as many editors do, a WP:CONSENSUS conservatism when it comes to MOS pages, because their scope can literally affect every single article on the system, and should not be modified on a whim to suddenly recommend a radical change, especially when the pros and cons of doing so have already been hashed out for years, but the advice has remained stable, well accepted and broadly implemented. This debate is a duplicate; consensus has not changed. Please actually read the archives on this matter. If you can come up with a new reason to make the change, then maybe there's something worth discussing. You have not brought up anything new, just the same old arguments that didn't persuade anyone last year, or the year before.

I have no idea what to say to your accusation of Cochrane-esque debate on the basis that I don't bother to type out every guideline name in full (we have shortcuts for a reason), other than to point out that its very hypocritical to throw in an accusation like that when your own argument leads with "WP:OWN".

Saying that I don't have "a valid argument" when I actually have several arguments, and you think you have found a problem with a single one of them is not rational debate. And you haven't found a problem with it at all, since searches for names containing apostrophes (all Irish surnames beginning with "O'" for starters) are in fact common. This wasn't even an issue originally raised by me, so attempting to tar it simply because it's mine and you think I'm WP:OWNy is ad hominem and guilt by association fallacious silliness.

"You don't have to use them" is a false argument, as several others have pointed out to you here and which you just don't seem to understand. If either style were permissible at editorial whim, as you say you want, then because only one style can be used in an article (basic MOS premise with regard to everything), and because curly-quote pushers will continue to go around adding them to article after article, it would effectively mandate that everyone use curly quotes, later if not right this very moment. The number one message of all of MOS is "be consistent within an article". Even for the short term, any article that uses curly quotes under your system would force all editors of that article to use either weird keyboard shortcuts no one memorizes, or a character chart utility to insert these things, since (as is quite clear from your behavior and complaints to date) you and the rest of the demanders of curly quotes object strenously to their removal. It's just basic logic. If curly quote people would not let curly quotes be converted to straight ones, despite most editors wanting to use the latter; and if MOS does not permit inconsistent style in the same article; and if curly quote editors are going to continue to add curly quotes to articles; then (and all three of these conditions appear to be true) the only mathematically possible result is that all articles will eventually use curly quotes, despite the fact that only a small minority of editors (you and... who else?) want to use them. That is why you are meeting resistance here. It has nothing to do with alleged ownership of MOS; it's simply a matter of common sense.

The fact that you are engaging in argumentum ad Jimbonem is a strong sign of agenda-pushing and lack of understanding of consensus building processes, which require compromise. You are also sorely misinterpreting WP:IAR; there is nothing about using one glyph over the other that "improves the encyclopedia" - it is just a stylistic choice, and one which has already been made by consensus for ergonomic and other practical reasons, while your camp has nothing but subjective, aesthetic ones (that are themselves meeting with resistance anyway, as not everyone here even agrees that curly quotes look better to begin with, an assumption that you been taking for granted the entire time) for undoing that long-stable decision.

We've never had and surely never will have a system where GA/FA candidates have one set of expectations/requirements and all other articles have different ones.

You misinterpreted me, and then ran off on a straw man bashing expedition. I did not say that "curly quotes are nothing but decoration from the perspective of all Wikipedians", the implication you somehow walked away with (How?!? Do you believe that I believe that I am psychic and can read the minds of all editors at once?). I said "curly quotes are nothing but decoration from a WP perspective" (link added). From the vantagepoint of this site as an encyclopedia, curly quotes do nothing useful that straight quotes do not do, and the latter's ease of editing use means more and better article faster. That is pretty much the entire debate right there. If it comes to usability vs. aesthetics, aesthetics loses. Cf. WP:MOSICON for really clear example basic principle in action.

You also seem to have gone off on another strawman, about how copy-pasting from Microsoft Word isn't a real problem, which I certainly never mentioned and I haven't seen anyone else bring up either. Please do not add extraneous weird arguments to a comparatively simple debate just so you can attack them and make it look (to someone unaware of reason and critical thinking) that you are a debator with a strong position to advance. We're all smarter than that here.

I could go on, but I find too much of what you're posting here to just be irrational, overly-emotive ranting (especially toward me, since I had the audacity to be critical of your bogus poll) and repetition, as if telling everyone they are wrong enough times will convince them that they are (hint: it won't). Greg L, you are just far too entrenched in pushing your personal aesthetic preference on this matter to possibly lead any such discussion to a conclusion with a new consensus. You apparently just do not hear the non-aesthetic reasons against this proposal, and have no reasons for the proposal other than aesthetic (i.e., subjective personal preference) ones.

PS: Calling another editor "tendentious" when your principal modus operandi of involvement at WT:MOS appears to be to dredge up long-settled issues for personal reasons and advance them and advance them and advance them, with increasingly hostile language, combative behavior and illogical arguments, comes off as even more hypocritical than the Cochrane comment. I was hoping that after your heavily manipulated poll fell apart that you'd take the hint and chill out, but this doesn't seem to be happening. If anything, it's just getting worse. I have seen you behave here in ways much more conducive to consensus-building and progress, and it's quite a mystery to me and I think to several others here why this quotation marks glyphs issue has you so worked up. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 02:39, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't think our guidelines forbid editors to use typographic quotation marks and apostrophes; they merely entitle other editors to change them to the typewriter versions. Personally, I should never edit an article just to do that, but I should probably find something else to correct as well, and it would make for a worthwhile edit. As a matter of fact, I usually only spot them in the edit window. I use Firefox 3, and in normal view the two styles look identical unless the quotes are in bold, italicised, or both. This does not prevent them from being treated differently in search, though—the other way for me to discover them. (For that matter, there is the additional complication with the curly quotation marks in that the opening character is different from the closing one.) I don't know about other browsers, but for me a change of the guideline would be purely negative. And any attempt to introduce limited usage of typographic quotation marks would soon devolve into chaos; many editors would be confused, many would not even be aware of any usage differences, and any distinctions would be pretty much arbitrary anyway. I find that the purported benefits of using curly quotes are insufficient to justify the problems and complexities of its usage, and that anything short of the current arrangement of straight-quotes "monopoly" has a discernible headache-inducing potential. Waltham, The Duke of 13:22, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

The trouble Duke, is that many editors believe the current guideline does forbid typographers quotes. And although you personally wouldn’t spend a whole lot of time changing curly quotes to straights, some do. Constant editwarring over this is unnecessary. We need to have a guideline that doesn’t inconvenience editors who don’t want to use them, limit curly quotes to mature articles where edits involving quotes are rare, and make it clear that in such articles curly quotes are fine but that the burden of maintaining them falls on the proponents of their use. Greg L (talk) 17:03, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Oh, it does recommend against them, and this was intentional. It is a misstatement to say that MOS "forbids" them (or anything) since it is just a guideline. But Duke should not be under the impression that it says "use either one or other other". It doesn't, by design. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 02:39, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Given the hard positions taken by both sides in this discussion, it appears that the standards would be better served by maintaining the status quo. I originally merely pointed out that typographic quotes are the written and defacto standard of publishers and printers and referred participants to the documents H. linked in his early comment in this thread. It is difficult to see how their use is or would have a negative impact on the style and presentation of the encyclopedia. However, positions held being what they are and technical considerations being unresolved, I think this proposal may be better suited for a discussion of style guidelines for final versions of articles, for example those chosen for use in DVD distributions like Wikipedia 0.7 and 1.0. Embedded subroutines in the presentation of the DVD may be able to handle the search and display issues involved, and edit window problems aren't problems on a read-only venue. Greg L has stated the preference of type professionals well and made a good effort at compromise. However, the issue appears to be at a stalemate and our energies are likely to be better spent improving the style and substance of current and future articles per the present guidelines rather that focusing on this particular minor issue. Sswonk (talk) 13:53, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Sswonk, see my above response to Duke. This issue keeps coming up again and again and clearly isn’t going away. Persistent editwarring on Wikipedia can almost always be traced to unwise, inflexible guidelines that were rammed through by forceful editors with highly polarized views. Changing these sort of guidelines isn’t easy but that’s no reason to back down from what you believe in. Usually, a little bit of sensible compromise satisfies both camps. This is a sensible compromise that gives both camps everything they need. We’ve heard the reasons for using them, but using them in any article isn’t wise. And we’ve heard the opposition to using them—they don’t want to be inconvenienced in their editing—and this takes care of that too. The remaining arguments against their use in a limited subset of articles (mature ones undergoing little change), just don’t hold water and are clearly borne out of knee-jerk reaction to the fear of having to deal with curly quotes on a Windows machine.
Obviously, typographers quotes look better than typewriter quotes. So dumbing down Wikipedia to a lowest common denominator at all times isn’t wise. We can’t have an attitude of “there are Morlocks who edit too, so to have consistent looking caves, all Eloy will have to act like Morlocks at all times”. If advocates of typographers quotes want to use them, their use should be limited to suitable articles, and they should shoulder the burden of their use. Similarly, all that would be asked of editors who don’t want to use them is that if the article is a largely stable and mature one, they should simply don’t worry about it: If they have to add a quote, do so using straight quotes if you like—just leave the rest of the curly quotes not directly involved with our edit alone. Greg L (talk) 17:05, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Wow, Greg L, it just never really occurred to me that everyone who disagrees with you is "dumb" and a cave-dwelling troglodyte. Of course! Why didn't all of us wrongheaded subhuman morons see this earlier. I'm sure we'll now all agree with your infinitely wise and superior POV-pushing. Sswonk has, of course, read WP:CONSENSUS correctly. Recasting a simple debate about a glyph preference in near-revolutionary terms of progress, a class struggle of the masses against a stagnant elite who are unthinking reactionaries, has to be one of the most over-the-top uses of hyperbole I've ever seen here. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 02:39, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

You take too great offense to what was intended as tongue-in-cheek humor. And your point also seems to be too quick to construct a straw man argument that this is all nothing more than a clash between two classes of users: those with Macs, where it is easy to deal with typographers quotes, and those with Windows machines, which makes it much more cumbersome to deal with them.
In fact, the genesis of the problem is more basic than that. The simple fact is that there are many editors who do use typographers quotes (making Wikipedia a better product in most cases) but dealing with typographers quotes is cumbersome for many others. The solution: limit the use of typographers quotes to mature articles that undergo few if any edits dealing with quotes. And even for these eligible articles, don’t require that editors use typographers quotes if they aren’t comfortable with them; put the burden on the proponents who don’t mind dealing with them. It’s a simple, compromise solution that addresses the major concerns of both camps and is a much better guideline than the current one, which is lopsided and obtuse.
This long-standing friction over the use of curly quotes on Wikipedia is clear evidence that the current guideline isn’t satisfactorily addressing the issue. It’s time for editors who have bullied their way into an WP:OWN relationship with MOS and imposed their highly polarized values into its guidelines to lighten up a tad and actually permit others to try out a different approach. Sometimes a scalpel works better than a sledgehammer. Greg L (talk) 05:45, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

I apologize if I mistook your humor for something else, but it didn't come off as very funny to me. It seems to identify those who prefer straight vs. curly quotes as stupid. I don't see a way around that, no matter how it is phrased.

I haven't said anything about an actual clash of classes of users, much less it being a Mac vs. Windows thing. I was criticizing what seemed to be you reducing it to such a class issue. You seem to be arguing that dealing with curly quotes is trivial for Mac users but difficult for Windows users. The fact that it's difficult for something like 92% (I haven't checked Windows vs. Mac stats lately; that's a guess) should be enough to just settle the matter right now, the end. But I'm a Mac user. I don't find curly quotes easy to deal with, and like several of the above commentators, I remove them on-sight since MOS says not to use them (despite your claims to the contrary, this wasn't my idea, and I did not write MOS; in fact, much longer-standing MOS editors have been [wisely, in retrospect] strongly resistant to various changes I've tried to introduce). So, if I'm a Mac user, for over a decade now, and I find curly quotes to be a pain in the butt from an editing perspective, what does that say about your apparent position that Mac users have an easy time of it, and Windows users don't, but we should just go ahead and use them anyway?

You keep asserting that using curly quotes is "better", but there doesn't seem to be any factual basis for such an assertion (and you've certainly not provided one), only some individuals' personal, subjective assessment that they look prettier. An assessment countermanded by at least one commentator here, who says that they look awful in some browsers. If that were actually the main issue, it would be worth serious looking in to. But it's not the main issue, which is the ergonomics of the situation, with additional concerns related to search results, and so forth. I mean, c'mon, at least try to convince us there is a practical reason.

Your "solution" creates more problems than it solves (if any), by creating a two-tiered editing system in which FAs or GAs or whatever have one set of guidelines and best practices and everything else in the unwashed masses of articles do not. This is inimical to Wikipedia's goals. Every article is intended to eventually be of featured article quality, and they get there incrementally, not by using one set of standards one day, and then changing to another when FAC time comes.

There are editors who use curly quotes, yes. You and a few others, among thousands who do not. Oh, and various people obviously copy-pasting material in from somewhere else. One of the best tell-tale signs of a copyvio in my experience is the presence of curly quotes.

There are no "major concerns of both camps", and so no tortured "compromise" is needed. One "camp", the majority of editors who simply use their keyboards, has serious concerns, identified already in detail, about curly quotes, while the other "camp" who prefer them has a preference that is at odds with the real concerns, but have raised no actual concerns of their own so far from an encyclopedia-writing perspective. "We think it looks nicer" just doesn't cut it, especially in the face of editabilty and accessibility problems, as well as perhaps lesser ones relating to readability in certain browsers, and searchability issues.

There is no "long standing friction" over quotation style here. There was a "do one, the other, or both" debate that resolved itself quite a long time ago in favor of straight quotes, and then there is you (just you, from what I can tell) gaming the heck out of the system by dredging up a dead issue and "asking the other parent" doggedly in hopes of resurrecting it. If people were pouring in from all over to say, "hey, this isn't working", that would be a different story. But that's not happening. Its one vociferous editor. Just like on logical quotation, and just like on spoiler tags, and just like on everything else that's been considered, tested, and gone a particular way that some individuals won't agree with. It's physically impossible for us to keep everyone happy. The compromise is to keep almost everyone happy and to provide good reasons for why those who aren't happy just have to live with it. There are probably 20 things MOS says that I don't like, but I live with them, because the greater good (smooth, consistent, editing, basically) is more important that my style peeves. The current guideline does "satisfactorily address the issue" from a consensus perspective. Yes, there will always be people who think that curly quotes must be used, and, well, life is tough. WP:CONSENSUS on micro-consensuses and lone-wolf opposition to consensus: "Consensus among a limited group of editors, at one place and time, cannot override community consensus on a wider scale". Show us a wide-ranging concern among the editorship at large about the lack of curly quotes.

"Lopsided and obtuse". Ri-i-ight. Everyone who disagrees with you is necessarily biased and stupid. I thought I already covered this above and at your talk page. I'll repeat in simpler terms: Attacking people you are trying to convince of something usually gets your ideas rejected, not welcomed.

The closing remarks in that passage of yours are hard to respond to, other that to observe that they borrow and invert much of which has been said critically of your position, sometimes in the exact same words (actually, your entire post and many before of yours before it do this, even apparently copy-pasting the same wikilinks; do you really think that "no I ain't, but you are!" is a solid debate technique?) About all I can really respond to is that no one is brining a sledgehammer to the debate that I know of. Proponents of maintaining the status quo against use of curly quotes here have provided numerous and particular (i.e. "surgical", if you like) rationales for doing so, and you have neither provided a "scalpel" in the opposite direction, nor surgically taken apart these positions of those you disagree with. Yelling in the operating room usually doesn't help. Your apparent position that everything but what you are proposing is all retarded nonsense is what is looking like a bludgeon.

— SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 08:08, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

[Outdent; this is really in response to two threads at two different indentation levels by same party, and really more of a meta-point anyway.] Greg L, please actually absorb Wikipedia:Tendentious editing if you're going to cite it. (I spelled that guideline name out fully for you lest I be accused of being Cochrane-esque for abbreviating again.) Let's look at it in particular detail. WP:TE#Characteristics of problem editors on signs that one is being tendentious:

"You repeatedly undo the 'vandalism' of others." – Cf. your rather recent poll-related reverts of me in particular, and their related talk page posts, labeling me a vandal (twice that I noticed). Yes, you did use that word.
"You find that nobody will assume good faith, no matter how often you remind them." – Cf. other recent edits and edit summaries accusing me of WP:OWN violations, among other such bad-faith-editing claims by you against me, and various more generalized recent accusations against all of your opponents as being stupid ("obtuse", "Morlocks", "dumbing down", "barbarian", etc.).
"You often find yourself accusing or suspecting other editors of 'suppressing information', 'censorship' or 'denying facts'." – Cf. another recent edit summary of yours accusing me of censorship - your word, not mine.)
"You challenge the reversion of your edits, demanding that others justify it." – Cf. your reverts in the face of edits that did actually come with justifications, while yours did not, consisting only of attacks.
"Your citations back some of the facts you are adding, but do not explicitly support your interpretation or the inferences you draw." – Not 100%-directly applicable here, since this is not an article and sources are not the issue, but your selective demonizing of certain arguments of your opponents as stupid certainly smacks of this, as does your selective focus on what you see as holes in the overall consensus against using curly quotes, while completely sidestepping all of the substantive issues you can't find holes in, in order to get your way; even if one of the 5 or 8 or whatever rationales given were faulty, you still have to deal with the rest of them.
"You find yourself repeating the same argument over and over again, without persuading people." – I don't even need to comment on this one; this whole page consists of little else!
"You delete the cited additions of others with the complaint that they did not discuss their edits first." – Again this is not 100% applicable as it is about articles, but you certainly violate the spirit of it, mostly by turning it on its ear, both in recent reverts of changes that came with well-explained rationales, and in your insistence, on this particular matter, that everyone who doesn't agree with you is just plain daft, despite having provided you with rationales that you will not substantively address. In the poll mess you were asked to discuss matters, and discussion was already ensuing against your railroading the poll into a "phase 2", yet you reverted anyway, on the basis that this opposition hadn't been discussed (despite actually being discussed more and more at that time), and continued to push for your poll #2 in face of multi-editor opposition to the idea.
"You do not thread your posts on talk pages." – While you don't completely fit the pattern described there, your edits have lately been fitting the spirit of it, by using !vote-style bulleting instead of indentation to give your own posts more visual weight than everyone else's (which has in turn led to a mass-bulleting escalation and increased polarization as people begin thinking in terms of votes – another theme you have pushed very hard here, in the face of vociferous opposition – despite you being pointedly asked to stop bulleting everyting like that), and by refusing to address issues raised, inline, and instead bottom-posting unindented "new threads" without explanation (as I have provided for my out-dent) as if you are saying something new and moving beyond the old debate, while instead simply rehashing it again.
"You ignore or refuse to answer good faith questions from other editors." – You have been asked repeatedly to provide some, any, rationale for such a change that does not depend upon your personal, subjective opinion with regard to the "looks" of the quotation marks, but have not done so, and been asked to provide any substantive objection to the concerns raised by others, and have not practicably done so, producing only a two-tiered editing system proposal that others here find grotesquely foreign to the way Wikipedia works.
Even this one: "You have been blocked more than once for violating the three revert rule; you argue about whether you in fact reverted four times or only three, or whether 3RR applies to a calendar day or a 24-hour period." – I am quite certain that the only reason you didn't violate the 3RR policy is because I mentioned that you had not, at WP:ANI (and technically you did violate it, but I argued against that interpretation, for your benefit), and I mentioned it with the goal in mind that you see my post about the matter and not "go there". I may disagree with you, but I've never had anyone blocked other than for sockpuppetry or [actual] vandalism.
Finally, "On returning from a block, your first action is to head right back to the article and repeat the edit." While you were not blocked during the poll fiasco, you were warned to stop making personal attacks, and one commentator there did suggesting "bringing down the hammer" on you, and you and I both were admonished to try to settle the problem through discussion. Rather that actually take this, and my requests on your talk page to take a calmer approach, as a sign to cool off, you have instead become more aggressively debatory, taken to mocking me on your home page, personally attacked me at least twice as somehow WP:OWNing this page (yeah, right! Just ask Tony1 or PMAnderson/Septemtrionalis, et al., if they think I can do whatever I like here!), repeated yourself again and again here without addressing the objections of others, and became more shrilly insistent upon your way in this particular debate, while dismissing concerns that were coming in from an increasing number of editors about the other one (the poll matter).

Look all that over and think about it. There is not a single point at WP:TE that you haven't run afoul of lately, sometimes in spirit (which is what counts, after all) and in many cases completely and literally.

Another way of looking at this: What do you think you are accomplishing here? I got pissy with MOS editors when I first arrived here too. Got me nowhere. I started addressing their concerns, and raising mine without denigrating them as control-freaks and idiots, and actually looking at and trying to understand the rationales for things that I didn't immediately personally like, and guess what? We come to compromise pretty often. Try it. Play ball instead of trying to light the ballpark on fire. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 08:08, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Wow. (*excuse me while I wipe some e-spittle off my screen here*). There you go again, making this a personal thing, using a link to Tendentious editing in one of your classic “if it’s blue, it must be true” tricks of yours. I don’t fall for that foolish tactic and no one else around here does either. Further, your lengthy, nearly incoherent rant, above is obviously the product of a great deal of labor and appears to constitute a borderline unhealthy obsession. Perhaps playing some “chill” music would do you some good. And boy, is your “WP:TD” link a case of the pot calling the kettle black. If there has been anyone who has been doing tendentious editing, it you, with your deletion of a runoff vote on WT:MOSNUM, and, after I restore it, filing an ANI over how people are discussing things you don’t want them to discuss. ‘And, and… Greg L started this *free speech* thing!’ As of this writing 43 people have now voted on that poll. That still seems to be bothering you: that so many editors chose to vote with their fingers and you didn’t want them to have the opportunity to do so.
You know, it really looks like you think both MOSNUM and MOS are your private domains. Sswonk observed “The author and main promoter of the style guideline, SMcCandlish, is fairly relentless.” Any objective look at the 500-edit history in August would lead most to conclude you are indeed quite active here. Human nature being what it is, that might explain your quick tendency towards being territorial here as well as your tendancy to quickly slap down anyone who treads on what you consider to be your turf. Well, it’s not. And until you can present me and the rest of us here with your *I am really, really special* license, you can stop acting like the mayor of MOS. Several editors above have advocated the use of typographers quotes. Your reaction all along has only been to simply dismiss their suggestions out of hand. And this apparent ownership of the current guideline regarding typographers quotes (which has been a less-than-stellar success) seems to underlie you fanatical efforts of guarding it here. I’m clearly seeing a WP:OWN issue with you. So please stop attacking the messenger because you don’t like the message and start listening. Stick to the issues and cease with your laughable, endless rants over how I am somehow responsible for all the pestilence and plagues that have ever befallen Wikipedia and causes your fainting spells or whatever your problem is.
Let’s see if you can raise the level of your arguments beyond a juvenile ‘Greg L is a poopy-head’ and actually address the issue at hand. So far, you have not raised a single substantive reason why editors can’t use typographers quotes in mature articles. You tried “it's not on my keyboard and impedes my ability to edit.” However, that argument lacks that necessary virtue of being remotely grounded in fact. Here’s the proposal:

Straight or curly?

There are two options when considering the look of the quotation marks (that is, the glyph):

Typewriter or straight style: "text", 'text', text's
Typographic or curly style: “text”, ‘text’, text’s

(Emphasis added to better distinguish between the glyphs.)

In articles that are growing and/or are in a state of flux, editors should exclusively use typewriter (straight) quotes and apostrophes to make it easier for editors. Many editors use operating systems that make it inconvenient to deal with typographers quotes.
For mature and relatively stable articles (those that are no longer growing nor are in a state of flux), typographic quotes and apostrophes are acceptable since edits involving quotes are minimal. Eligible articles should use them consistently for the sake of appearance; also, mixed use interferes with searching (a search for Korsakoff's syndrome could fail to find Korsakoff’s syndrome and vice versa).
The burden of adding and upgrading typographic quotes shall lie only upon those editors who are willing to deal with them. However, editors who don’t want to deal with typographic quotes shall not needlessly convert existing typographers quotes to straight quotes in eligible articles.

Whenever quotation marks or apostrophes appear in article titles, make a redirect from the same title but using the alternative glyphs.

The following types of quoting should not be used:

Grave and acute accents or backticks (`text´) are neither quotation marks nor apostrophes, and must not be used in their place.
Foreign characters that resemble apostrophes, such as transliterated Arabic ayin (ʿ) and alif (ʾ), are represented by their correct Unicode characters, despite possible display problems. If this is not feasible, use a straight apostrophe instead.

The proposal’s third bullet point is clear that you wouldn’t have to type them. Now, put up a good reason why this perfectly reasonable compromise solution won’t work or hold your peace. The fact that this issue keeps coming up again and again is simple proof that the current blanket prohibition lacks the nuances to properly deal with the problem. The problem here seems to be that “compromise” doesn’t seem to be part of your lexicon. Greg L (talk) 21:57, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

For the record, since Greg has sourced my "relentless" comment from his talk page a couple of times, the term is not a pejorative one. Tiger Woods, for example, is often relentless. Sswonk (talk) 17:16, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Gerry, regarding your recent reversion wherein you wrote in your edit summary that “No consensus to accept curly quotes”. Well, based on all the above suggestions from editors who want to use curly quotes, and based on the fact that this issue keeps coming up again and again, it is clear there is no consensus to use typewriter quotes.
Also, I have repeatedly asked above for opponents of this proposal to advance a substantive reason to oppose it. Most every opponent cited how having to use typographers quotes when they don’t want to would be a bother. Well, the new guideline clearly says such editors wouldn’t have to. The proponents haven’t advanced a single substantive reason to oppose the use of typographers quotes in eligible articles. And there must be good, substantive reasons; without them, MOS is just being hijacked by a minority fringe with extreme views, who frequent MOS and use it as as a vehicle to impose their personal views, which are dressed up to masquerade as properly deliberated and debated guidelines. Merely showing a willingness to editwar over this isn’t good enough.
After I first posted this (and was reverted), we then spent a week discussing this. We discussed and debated it until it was clear that there was no legitimate reason to not permit their limited and controlled use. If you want MOS to remain silent on the issue, that would be perfectly acceptable. There is no basis for the regulars here continually slapping down every editor who has been coming here with a proposal to use curly quotes. The regulars who frequent MOS and have undo influence aren’t, IMO, doing as good a job as their counterparts on MOSNUM and have got to start listening and show a willingness to compromise. The previous wording (a blanket prohibition), lacks any subtlety on the matter. A nuanced approach that brings order to this is needed. Try it for a while. I think you’ll see that it will finally bring peace to this issue. Greg L (talk) 19:04, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Substantial objections have been given. Greg L's judgement to the contrary is wrong. Because Greg L. sees every point he does not agree with as worthless, I'm done arguing with him. We'll just have to see whether his edit to the guideline prevails or not. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 19:33, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Gerry, all I’m suggesting is that this has been a long-standing issue that keeps coming up again and again. And all I’m asking is that we give this a try for a few weeks—or even a month or two—and see if it finally makes peace on this issue. Notwithstanding my B.O. and other shortcomings, I’m actually not the flaming asshole I can sometimes come across as. Just because there is a guideline that I had a hand in authoring doesn’t mean that I’m going to become all emboldened and want to try my hand at even more here. Nor does it mean I’m going to be all enamored with this one guideline and take a position that it is somehow all “grandfathered” in or something. Let’s all just give it a fair try and see if the proponents of typewriter quotes and the proponents of typographers quotes can better live in harmony under this guideline. If this new guideline overestimates the maturity of some of the editors that inhabit Wikipedia and it causes even more problems than there currently are, I’ll be first in line to propose jettisoning it. Greg L (talk) 20:08, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Gerry Ashton position. I do not think that [user:Fnagaton] can not claim "Gerry Ashton failed to demonstrate a lack of consensus." as Fnagaton has done several times including this edit for not accepting a change in quote styles (the version Gerry Ashton had reverted to is basically the version that was on the page at the start of the month and has been broadly the same for a long time. --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 09:44, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Curly quotes are easy to enter on any keyboard that can enter HTML. They are easier to type than the pipe character "|" which my keyboard sadly does not have when I type in Polish.

code	gives
’	’
‘	‘
&rdquo	”
“	“

And they are present on the standard shortcut panel.

--Yecril (talk) 16:33, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

No quotes in genitives

The place for saxon genitive examples like text’s is in the SPELLING section and not here because it is not an example of a quote being used. The difference between an apostrophe and a quote is that an apostrophe is a diacritic mark and a quote is a punctuation mark. I am going to remove all examples using Saxon Genitive from this section because they do not belong here at all. --Yecril (talk) 13:47, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

That page is solely about British vs American spelling. The spelling of possessives seems to belong with the other material in this page's “Usage” section, which is distinct from the section on quotations. (Irrelevant to the argument, but the apostrophe is not a diacritic which modifies a letter, but a separate word character) —Michael Z. 2008-09-30 14:56 z

^ Heat, October 11, 2008, p.45
^ Morning Star, September 13, 1973, p.4

[1] Heat, October 11, 2008, p.45

[2] Morning Star, September 13, 1973, p.4

[1]

[2]