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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Dlthewave (talk | contribs) at 17:35, 15 February 2018 (→Capitalization: re). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Template:Vital article

Section on confusion between watts, watt hours etc

I made some changes to this section last week, and I see that these didn't all go over well, so I'm making a second attempt; I hope these changes make the thing clearer. Typing on my phone so apologies if this is terse. Andrew Gradman talk/WP:Hornbook 10:13, 28 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, but I don't see this as a useful change. What is the problem with watt/hr (watts per hour)? Why do we need to mention that at all? (It's not mentioned in the supposed ref) - so why move this misleading "watts per hour" to the top and strip out watt.hours, which are an important unit? Andy Dingley (talk) 10:57, 28 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I don't like the phrase "rate per unit time". A rate by definition is a change over time. And "It should not be confused" is WP:EDITORIALIZING. Kendall-K1 (talk) 04:17, 29 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Needs edit/clarification

"A surface area of one square meter on Earth receives typically about one kilowatt of sunlight from the sun" - over what period of time? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.197.134.148 (talk) 10:30, 23 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Please reread the article and references until you realize why this question makes no sense. Jc3s5h (talk) 16:34, 23 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

First sentence

I'm not happy about this as the first sentence: "The watt (symbol: W) is a unit of electrical and mechanical power." While true, it seems to limit the watt to only measuring electrical and mechanical power. Kendall-K1 (talk) 02:37, 25 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Capitalization

@DePiep: What's the reason for the "lowercase title" template? We normally use sentence case for article titles and I don't see any good reason to make an exception in this case. Kendall-K1 (talk) 01:24, 15 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

  • "The International System of Units (SI)" (PDF) (8th ed.). Bureau International des Poids et Mesures. 2006. p. 131. 5.2 Unit names. In English, the names of units start with a lower-case letter (even when the symbol for the unit begins with a capital letter)
Andy Dingley (talk) 02:39, 15 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
But that doesn't explain it. All English words start with a lower-case letter unless they are proper nouns. But when they are used to start a sentence, we use an initial upper-case letter. That spec you quote does the same thing; see page 144 for an example. This article does the same too; should we change this paragraph to read as follows? "Invented and incorrect terms such as watts per hour (W/h) are often misused when watts would be correct.[21] watts per hour would properly refer to a change of power per hour. watts per hour might be useful to characterize the ramp-up behavior of power plants, or slow-reacting plant where their power could only change slowly." And what about the subsection titles in the "Multiples" section? Should those all be downcased? Kendall-K1 (talk) 04:31, 15 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Of course we know that "watt", the unit name, is defined to be lowercase. I note this is not just a proper noun, but an SI defined name.
Titlecase for (article) titles and grammatical case (uc first letter of sentence) are not always the same: grammatical case is universal, titlecase is an option en:Wikipedia choose (wiktionary and Wikidata do choose not to: wikt:watt and watt (Q25236)).
Technically, this wiki has these options to ensure lowercase: {{lowercase title}} and the more generic {{DISPLAYTITLE}}. {{lowercase title}} has these examples: eBay, iPod. In chemistry, there is A-Vetivone (uc Greek A, lc is α), Γ-Octalactone, L-Arginine ethyl ester: show with lowercase opening letter (or prescribed smallcaps L).
In case of watt/Watt, I think this is extra supportive this way to prevent readerś side misunderstanding, esp. in writing, both between the two words and anyway on incorrectly uppercasing the unit name (sort of extended WP:DAB resolving). - DePiep (talk) 08:39, 15 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Watt (surname) is a proper noun, and capitalised. Whereas watt (unit) is not a proper noun and is not capitalised, even though it derives from the surname. Watts are capitalised at the beginning of a sentence, because that is a local formatting rule which takes precedence. The point is that "500 Watts of power" is incorrect, despite being a commonplace use of it.
The question of WP titles is unclear, to some extent a matter for WP itself (Although that is often taken too far, to the point that comprehensibility suffers). WP has a particular bias against lowercase titles, personally I see a good argument for treating this as a title, thus capitalised by normal typesetting rules. But there is a justification for making it lowercase, derived from the SI. Andy Dingley (talk) 11:42, 15 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The question of WP titles seems perfectly clear to me. WP:TITLEFORMAT, which is a WP policy, says "Titles are written in sentence case." I think we're agreed that "watt" is capitalized at the beginning of a sentence, right? So I think you're asking for an exception to the policy, and I don't see why we would grant an exception in this case. The comparison to eBay is not relevant, as that is covered by WP:MOSTM, and "watt" is not a trademark. And even if it were, it doesn't fit the "Trademarks that begin with a lowercase letter" exception (it would have to be "wAtt"). Kendall-K1 (talk) 16:24, 15 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
OK, these multiple MOS pages made it clear. For me the lc can go, but let's wait for Andy Dingley. - DePiep (talk) 17:05, 15 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I prefer a lower case title. The upper case is not incorrect according to rules of English grammar but it is misleading, because the capitalization changes its meaning from the name of a unit to the name of a person. We can improve Wikipedia by making that distinction clear. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 17:13, 15 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I haven't expressed any preference, either way. Andy Dingley (talk) 18:30, 15 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Section 5.2 of the online brochure contains: "In English, the names of units start with a lower-case letter (even when the symbol for the unit begins with a capital letter), except at the beginning of a sentence or in capitalized material such as a title.". This seems pretty conclusive support for capitalising the article title. &minusWoodstone (talk) 20:40, 15 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
(QDONDERVOGEL 2): this looks pretty clear to me. The DAB you mention (watt/Watt) should be solved differently (hatnote, DAB page, ...). The "Sentence capitalisation" this wiki does makes the whole pretty consistent. (Exceptions like chemicals and eBay are MOS-based accepted, but this is not one). -DePiep (talk) 20:50, 15 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed. Titles in sentence case means that if it is capped to start a sentence, then it is capped as an article title. Just like Tractor, Porridge, Insanity, and about a million others. Primergrey (talk) 21:03, 15 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed, too. No reason to lowercase in the title; it's just another noun. Dicklyon (talk) 03:29, 16 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Yep. While "Use a 60 watt light bulb." is correct, "Watts should not be confused with amperes." is also correct.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:14, 19 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Agree. To elaborate further, the {{lowercase}} template should never never never be used to mean "hey, you might think this takes a capital, but it doesn't, except at the start of a sentence". So for example never use it for anything starting with von Neumann, who has lots of stuff named after him, and whose surname starts with a lowercase v in the middle of a sentence.
The only proper use for the template is for things that should never be uppercased, even at the start of the sentence, like eBay or the mathematical constant e. --Trovatore (talk) 06:57, 23 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The lowercase infobox title is inconsistent with standard English usage as well as similar Wikipedia articles. Lowercase is used correctly in the opening sentence and throughout the article, so there should be no confusion about whether or not it is a proper noun.–dlthewave ☎ 17:35, 15 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Light bulbs

@Kbrose: I earlier proposed removing the light bulb examples. No one objected, so I went ahead and removed them. Since apparently there is an objection, I'm going to re-state here what I said earlier:

I wonder if it's time to do away with the light bulb comparisons. You can't buy a 100 watt light bulb any more, so some time soon young people reading this article won't know what we're talking about. Worse, at least in the US, light bulbs are starting to appear on the shelves that are marked "100 watts" when they actually only consume 12 or so watts. Kendall-K1 (talk) 03:05, 16 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Outrageous. They should use something people have an intuitive grasp of, like horsepower. EEng 04:07, 16 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
If my hardware store sold "⁠1/100⁠ hp" light bulbs I would buy them. Actually I think they might still use "candlepower" in some cases. Kendall-K1 (talk) 04:44, 16 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
You can buy 75W CFLs, in ES mounts. They're a super-life grade from Philips, intended mostly for places where the cost of fitting a replacement is far greater than the lamp cost, such as big stairwells and atria. I've also recently bought a load of 50W and 100W LEDs, but they're wire-in, not lampholder-fit. Andy Dingley (talk) 11:16, 16 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know about elsewhere, but in the UK there is always a comparison against incandescent, for example a halogen much say '70 w = 92 w'. People generally think in watts, rather than lumens, etc. –Sb2001 10:58, 22 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Exactly. If I search on Amazon for a "60 watt light bulb" the first five results consume 10.5, 43, 8.5, 75, and 8.5 watts. And most of them say "60w" or even "60-watt" on the label. Kendall-K1 (talk) 15:18, 22 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Light bulbs are (used to be???) a great example to use when describing electricity use, mainly because (1) a bulb always use electricity at a constant rate (e.g. 60 W), and (2) everyone is aware of the power rating on the bulb, so that they can attempt to get the correct bulb to replace it when it breaks, and (3) everyone can identify with the fact that some use electricity faster than others (e.g. a 50 watt bulb uses energy at half the rate of a 100 W bulb). But since bulbs no longer have an easy link of watts vs brightness due to changes in the technology used, we should try to discover another easy, clear example to use. (I can't think of one off the top of my head). If a better example does exists, then we should use it. If not, then I don't think it is a big deal to continue using the light bulb example, perhaps with different (lower) watt ratings. Carlroddam (talk) 07:08, 23 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
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