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Orderly discussions; orderly procedures

What are some simple guidelines for us editors to keep in mind when we post to this talk page or to any of the other talk pages related to matters of style? I am visualizing an itemized list of one-line principles, for the purpose of promoting orderly discussions and orderly procedures. The list (of perhaps no more than 10 items) can be programmed to appear above the edit window for each of the relevant talk pages. The items are separate from the points listed in the present page notice. Even if that use of it is not to be, I still hope to encourage a polite discussion of those principles here. Here, I list some guidelines.

  • Please record a clear, informative edit summary for each edit that you make.
  • If you are starting a new section, please choose a brief, informative heading.
  • If you are starting a new subsection, please include (in the subheading) a reference to the main heading.
  • Please read and post with correct indentation. (See WP:INDENT.)
  • Please close each post with a signature and a timestamp.

—Wavelength (talk) 16:32, 23 October 2012 (UTC) and 03:30, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

Here are links to two archived discussions about informative section headings.

—Wavelength (talk) 02:46, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

Italic section headers?

Is there a rule either for or against italicizing section headings? See this example. I couldn't find anything under MOS:HEAD or WP:ITALIC either way. Fortdj33 (talk) 18:56, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

I searched a little for explicit guidance, but did not find it. However, italics are used in article titles and also in article text, so use of italics in section headings certainly seems reasonable.
During the past few weeks, I have been checking categories of articles for various errors, including errors of capitalization, often detecting such errors by merely glancing at an article's table of contents. Where italicization distinguishes a specific name from a generic expression, then decisions about capitalization are often easier. Unfortunately, I have found many articles where neither the section headings nor the articles' texts provide enough clues, and in those cases I almost always have left the letter case condition as I found it. In a few cases, I have corrected the letter case in only the headings where I was certain, doing so at the risk of giving a possibly false impression that I was leaving no headings uncorrected. Some categories are especially prone to ambiguity about official status of names or expressions.
—Wavelength (talk) 20:59, 29 October 2012 (UTC)
I agree that the italic headings seem reasonable for titles that would be italicized in the the text. Thanks for working on the caps errors. I, too, find that a glace at the TOC usually gives a good indication of whether an article has been gone over by someone who knows about MOS:CAPS or not. Dicklyon (talk) 22:03, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

Past discrepancies

Have these been fixed? (from archive) Apteva (talk) 01:33, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Thank you, Kwamikagami. Art LaPella (talk) 17:43, 22 October 2012 (UTC)
Sure. I'm a bit surprised there hasn't been any controversy. I thought there might be an acrimonious debate over whether we require US$, for example, and it's been completely quiet. I'm not used to things going smoothly at MOS! — kwami (talk) 00:07, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

WP:HEAD

 Done

  1. WP:HEAD says "Change a heading only after careful consideration, and if doing so use an anchor template ..." But Help:Section#Section linking and redirects doesn't require the anchor; it lists anchors as one of several alternatives. MOS:SECTIONS is similarly permissive, using the word "Consider ..." rather than a simple imperative.
Anchors are not required. They are only used when there are known articles that link to that section heading. The choice is to either change the link or add an anchor. Either can be done. Apteva (talk) 01:47, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
WP:TPOC (version of 09:23, 9 October 2012), point 13, ends by saying: "In order to ensure links to the previous section heading (including automatically generated links in watchlists and histories) continue to work, one should use one of the following templates to anchor the old title: {{formerly}}, {{anchord}}, {{anchor}}." The same benefits apply to article pages.
—Wavelength (talk) 02:15, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
WP:HEAD currently matches MOS:SECTIONS. Did you simply copy an old list I made, or did you look anything up to see how current it is? Art LaPella (talk) 04:25, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
As you go down the list, "fixed" means fixed previously; I didn't fix anything tonight. About half the list has been fixed over the last few years. Art LaPella (talk) 05:34, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

MOS:CURRENCY

 Done

Main page: Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Dates_and_numbers § Conflicting_instructions
  1. MOS:CURRENCY says "In non-country-specific articles such as Wealth, use US dollars (US$123), the dominant reserve currency of the world. Some editors also like to provide euro and/or pound sterling equivalents ..." (emphasis added). But MOS:#Currencies says "or", not "also": "In non-country-specific articles, express amounts of money in United States dollars, euros, or pounds sterling." (emphasis in original)
Not fixed yet. The latter is from the main MoS page, so I suppose the former should be changed to the latter, unless someone otherwise resolves the contradiction. Art LaPella (talk) 04:28, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
Fixed both to plain-text "or". Bringing "also" up for discussion at CURRENCY. This is a serious discrepancy. — kwami (talk) 18:58, 21 October 2012 (UTC)
CURRENCY contradicted itself further down with "Conversions of less familiar currencies may be provided in terms of more familiar currencies, such as the US dollar, euro or pound sterling." I therefore used that wording, bringing it in line with the main MOS page. Looks like someone had changed it to require US dollars, but did not bring the entire page into line with that. — kwami (talk) 23:36, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

I've never heard "as at August" before. Is that a British thing? — kwami (talk) 19:23, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

Yes. —[AlanM1(talk)]— 08:23, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

WP:COPYEDIT

 Done

  1. WP:COPYEDIT#Common edits says "The wording, spelling, and punctuation of literal quotations should not be changed. ... See WP:MOSQUOTE for details." MOSQUOTE starts out the same way: "Preserve the original text, spelling, and punctuation." But then it says "Trivial spelling or typographical errors should be silently corrected ...", and there's no hint that some spelling errors are more trivial than others. Presumably it means that quotes over 200 years old shouldn't be spell checked, but that isn't the most common cause of misspelling. Thus most spelling should be corrected, depending on which guideline we read. Most of MOSQUOTE is about "Allowable typographical changes" that similarly undermine the rule against changing punctuation.
Changed since then, but not fixed. "obvious errors in the original can be marked with [sic]" is inconsistent with "Trivial spelling or typographical errors should be silently corrected (for example, correct supercede to supersede, harasssment to harassment)—unless the slip is textually important." Art LaPella (talk) 04:35, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
I don't think that's inconsistent. "Obvious errors" could mean all sorts of things besides typos: a date that's off by a century cannot be corrected, but it should be marked [sic] so that people don't think it's a WP error (or worse, think it's correct). Calling the vice-president "president" shouldn't be fixed either, but again a [sic] would be called for. Same with a mention of an impossible person or organization: we might know it's wrong without being certain what the correct name would be, and even if we think we know, we'd run into problems with OR and misrepresenting the source.
The way I read it, if we're quoting Swift Who capitalizes all Common Nouns, we should too, and should retain the 18th-c. spelling, but we can fill in a missing 'e' in 'the' or replace a typewriter overstrike of o and / with a proper ø, or typewriter underlining with italics. — kwami (talk) 06:59, 20 October 2012 (UTC)
Rereading COPYEDIT, it gives three options for situations including "spelling": leaving it alone, using "sic", and corrections in brackets. Silent correction isn't one of those options. So "See MOSQUOTE for details" is misleading in the case of ordinary misspelling such as a missing "e" in "the". Art LaPella (talk) 15:17, 20 October 2012 (UTC)
Yes, that should be worked out. I think we might want some discussion, so that we can spell out exactly what is insignificant enough for silent correction. — kwami (talk) 23:50, 20 October 2012 (UTC)
Added "apart from trivial corrections such as typographic errors" to bring them in line. — kwami (talk) 18:17, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

WP:Manual of Style (France & French-related)

 Done

  1. WP:Manual of Style (France & French-related)#Railways says "use the basis Ligne de XXXXXXXX - XXXXXXXX (ex. Ligne de Grenoble - Montmélian)". It should say "despite WP:HYPHEN and WP:ENDASH" if you really want French railways to be an exception to our usual taboo against spaced hyphens. The following section about railway stations says "it should be joined by hyphens. ex: 'Gare de XXXXXX-YY-ZZZZZZZZ'", which isn't a spaced hyphen, but anyway.
  2. The ampersand in the title "WP:Manual of Style (France & French-related)" conflicts with WP:&. I realize it says "Retain ampersands in titles of works", but since we named it ourselves, we can rename it.
1 has been fixed except for "Gare de XXXXXX-YY-ZZZZZZZZ", and I no longer think that is an error since we decided to hyphenate Austria-Hungary for instance. 2 has not been fixed. Art LaPella (talk) 04:44, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
Fixed 2. "Gare de X-Y-Z" could be argued to take a hyphen per ENDASH because it's a single station, unlike the line, which connects two independent cities. That's a marginal case that can be decided there, I think. — kwami (talk) 07:04, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

 Done

  1. WP:Manual of Style (Islam-related articles) says "The first sentence of each article should have the article title in bold ..." To be more consistent with the exception in MOS:BEGIN, it should be more like WP:Manual of Style (mathematics)#Article introduction which says "In general, ..."
Not fixed Art LaPella (talk) 04:51, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
Fixed. I also added a footnote "Exceptions are made for descriptive titles that are self-explanatory". Pls take that out if it's inappropriate—perhaps we don't need to spell out exceptions? But the Islam MOS does not refer the reader to the Lead-style article. — kwami (talk) 06:52, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

WP:ELLIPSIS

 Done

  1. WP:ELLIPSIS says: "Use non-breaking spaces ( ) only as needed to prevent improper line breaks, for example: ... To keep the ellipsis from wrapping to the next line ("France, Germany, ... and Belgium but not the USSR")." But the very purpose of   is to prevent wrapping to the next line. So "Use ... nbsp only as needed to prevent improper line breaks, for example ... to keep it from wrapping to the next line", can be simplified to "Use nbsp only as needed to prevent improper line breaks, for example every damn time."
Noetica apparently agrees to removing the word "only", and hasn't answered concerning the other changes he proposed. So if there is no further comment on this issue, I will remove the word "only" when page protection comes off, which would resolve this old issue. Art LaPella (talk) 04:54, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
Now I have made that edit. So this is fixed. Art LaPella (talk) 18:54, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

WP:NBSP

 Done

  1. WP:NBSP says "Use a non-breaking space ... in expressions in which figures and abbreviations (or symbols) are separated by a space (e.g. ... AD 565". But WP:ERA says "BCE and CE or BC and AD are ... separated from the year number by a space or non-breaking space (5 BC, not 5BC)." (emphasis added)
Fixed long ago. Art LaPella (talk) 04:58, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

WP:DECADE

 Done

  1. WP:DECADE says "The two-digit form [of a decade], to which a preceding apostrophe should be added ..." But MOS:#Longer periods says "(the '80s or the 80s)".
That was also fixed. Art LaPella (talk) 05:00, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

WP:CENTURY

 Done

  1. The end of MOS:#Longer periods says "Centuries and millennia are written ... without Roman numerals". But the section it's supposed to be summarizing at WP:CENTURY doesn't mention Roman numerals.
Fixed (neither place mentions Roman numerals any more) Art LaPella (talk) 05:03, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

WP:MOS

 Done

  1. MOS:#Large numbers says "Because large rounded numbers are generally assumed to be approximations, about or similar qualifications are not normally needed." But MOS:#Currencies says "approx. US$1.4M ... approx. €1.0M".
MOS:#Large numbers is now at MOS:NUM#Large numbers, but it isn't fixed. Art LaPella (talk) 05:13, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
Fixed. #Large numbers is standard for any round number: the default reading is that the actual value is within one-half of the last figure. That is, "3.9" means closer to 3.9 than to 3.8 or 4.0. "Approx." would only be used if the default reading did not hold (say, "approx. 4" if the number were somewhere between 2 and 6). Using "approximately" with normally rounded-off numbers is actually misleading. — kwami (talk) 06:45, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

WP:BULLETLIST

 Done

Main page: Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Lists § Conflicting_instructions
  1. WP:BULLETLIST says "As a matter of style, list items should start with a capital letter. They should not have a punctuation mark such as a period, a comma or a semi-colon at the end, except if a list item is one or more full sentences, in which case there is a period at the end." But MOS:#Bulleted and numbered lists says "When the elements are sentence fragments ... [they] are formatted consistently in either sentence case or lower case. Each element should end with a semicolon, with a period instead for the last element. Alternatively (especially when the elements are short), no final punctuation is used at all." (emphasis added)
Not fixed Art LaPella (talk) 05:09, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
I think we generally want to avoid the punctuation. However, I'm not sure about capitalization. Discuss? — kwami (talk) 07:14, 20 October 2012 (UTC)
Brought up for discussion on that talk page. Crafted a compromise based on what we actually do in our articles pending further discussion. — kwami (talk) 19:07, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

WP:Manual of Style (music)

 Not done

  1. WP:Manual of Style (music)#Usage says "The word hip hop is ... not hyphenated." The compound adjective article says "Conventionally, and with the support of modern writing guides, compound modifiers that appear before a noun phrase generally include a hyphen between each word, subject to some exceptions", and none of the exceptions applies to a phrase like "hip-hop music".
I don't know if it changed, but now I wouldn't call it inconsistent. The compound adjective article says
Further information: English compounds § Hyphenated compound modifiers
which says "If, however, there is no risk of ambiguities, it may be written without a hyphen: Sunday morning walk." Art LaPella (talk) 05:20, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
"High school student" is a common example of that. Since we're an encyclopedia, we might want to hyphenate that so we're not referring to school students on dope, but there's no "hop music" to be hipped, so a hyphen makes little difference. — kwami (talk) 07:25, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

WP:PAIC

 Done

  1. WP:PAIC says "Place inline citations after any punctuation such as a comma or period" ... But WP:REFPUNC says "If an article has evolved using predominantly one style of ref tag placement, the whole article should conform to that style unless there is a consensus to change it."
Fixed Art LaPella (talk) 05:23, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

WP:ANDOR

 Done

  1. WP:ANDOR says "Avoid the construct and/or on Wikipedia", which is often easier said than done. Searching the Manual for "and/or" proves that the real guideline is "Do as I say, not as I do." The same could be said for other guidelines such as spaced hyphens in the subpages, although I have changed many of them to en dashes according to WP:HYPHEN and WP:ENDASH.
At least "and/or" has not been fixed. Art LaPella (talk) 05:25, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
Fixed "and/or" with AWB. (Not locating any spaced hyphens.) Someone might want to review my wording choices to verify that I've made no change of consequence. — kwami (talk) 18:48, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

 Done

  1. WP:Manual of Style (British Isles-related articles) says "The following guidelines apply to all British Isles-related topics ...", but then it doesn't list any guidelines! The Manual of Style banner has been removed, but not the Manual of Style category, so you can still arrive at that dead end from Template:Style.
Fixed Art LaPella (talk) 05:27, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

WP:Manual of Style (mathematics)

 Done

Main page: Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Mathematics § Conflicting_instructions
  1. WP:Manual of Style (mathematics)#Choice of type style says "The most well-known functions—trigonometric functions, logarithms, etc.—have no parentheses. For example: ". But WP:Manual of Style (mathematics)#Functions says "f(x) = sin(x) cos(x)".
Parentheses are more common for trig functions, but there is no need to specify how formulas should be written. Not using parentheses for ln though does make sense - ln 2 but does not need to be in the MOS. Apteva (talk) 01:53, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
Anyway, this contradiction has not been fixed. Art LaPella (talk) 05:30, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
These have slightly different uses, so there may be nuances we're missing. The discussion should probably take place at Wikiproject mathematics. — kwami (talk) 07:10, 20 October 2012 (UTC)
I see this case as analogous to the situation with groups of numbers. According to a prima facie application of the common rule (with which I personally disagree) “Numbers greater than ten are given in figures; others are spelled out,” one might write “The brothers were aged three, eight, and 12 when their parents divorced,” or “In the next three elections the party won seven, 13, and 27 seats,” but I think most will agree that it would be preferable to use the same style for all the directly comparable numbers in each list. Similarly—even if “sin x” is usually the preferred form—since we don’t write “f x”, parallelism calls for the other terms to be styled accordingly in this context.—Odysseus1479 (talk) 20:05, 20 October 2012 (UTC) [corrected (thanks to Wavelength) 21:37, 20 October 2012 (UTC)]
That's a ridiculous rule. Parallel numbers in a list should be either all spelled out, or all in digits, not half one and half the other. I think similar parallelism among two MOS-acceptable styles should hold for math functions.
I'm adding this section to the math MOS page, since it's an internal discrepancy. Where's the rule for writing out numbers? — kwami (talk) 23:54, 20 October 2012 (UTC)
Oh, I agree completely. JFTR most proponents of that rule (and of others like it—my preferred version more or less substitutes “requiring more than one word to express” for “greater than ten”) make an explicit exception for cases where homogeneity is desirable (and always to spell out at the beginning of a sentence, to allow capitalization): that’s why I said “a prima facie application”, meaning a mechanical or ‘blind’ usage ignoring nuances of context.—Odysseus1479 (talk) 00:22, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

Tagged the offending passages at MOS:math, noting that they conflict. Further discussion can take place there, so I've closed this item here. — kwami (talk) 01:03, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

Resolved. Not really a problem, since the mathematically literate know what's needed and aren't going to argue over s.t. like this. — kwami (talk) 23:50, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

Dillant–Hopkins Airport

Unmove request at Talk:Dillant–Hopkins_Airport#Requested_move. This case seems similar to Wilkes-Barre, a single entity named after two people, rather than an airport serving two cities. I would not have moved it to a dash myself. (Of course, "Dillant-Hopkins Airport" would suggest that it's named after some guy named Dillant-Hopkins.) However, the reason given for moving it back, that "all airports use a hyphen, not an endash", is spurious, and it certainly should not be moved on that logic. The airport itself can't decide how to punctuate. I don't know if that's because they feel a hyphen doesn't capture the relation, or if it's simply an esthetic choice. (I suspect the latter, given the distribution of the two formats.) — kwami (talk) 18:46, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

If there was a place named Dillant-Hopkins, like Wilkes-Barre, the hyphen would make sense; or if there was a person Dillant-Hopkins, as you say. But otherwise, the hyphen doesn't make sense. I would be fine with "Dillant Hopkins Airport", which is what their sign says. Dicklyon (talk) 22:21, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
That's the conflict inherent in using a few punctuation marks for an entire language. There are always going to be cases which are ambiguous. This seems to be one of them. "Wilkes-Barre", after all, is a place named after two people, just like the airport, and we have it with a hyphen. So you could argue it either way. Using a space may be a good solution.
Currently the MOS allows an exception for simple compound proper names, such as "X-Y". Attributive use, such as here, is still dashed "X–Y Z" in our examples. So I think you're correct in your reading. Personally, I think this type of name might be worth making an additional exception, but we'd need a discussion to establish the new dividing line between dash and hyphen. — kwami (talk) 01:10, 24 October 2012 (UTC)
I agree some clarification is in order. My impression was that Mr. or Mrs. X-Y and city or country X-Y used hyphens, but that law, airports, etc., named after pairs of persons or pairs of cities used en dash (Richmond–San Rafael Bridge, Bose–Einstein statistics, Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport, Dallas–Fort Worth International Airport). Dicklyon (talk) 20:47, 24 October 2012 (UTC)
Yes, that's what we currently have with our examples. The non-attributive X-Y is given as an exception to the general pattern. — kwami (talk) 22:54, 24 October 2012 (UTC)
I see that Dicklyon is busy renaming all airports to dashed versions despite opposition, and removing any counter-examples:
Apparently, if you can't agree to a change in the WT:MOS, then the proper thing to do is cramming the change own everyone's throats. --Enric Naval (talk) 12:49, 30 October 2012 (UTC)
I'm unclear on what you're saying that I'm doing. Did I move something to an en-dashed title against what the MOS says some place? Did I remove counter-examples of something? Of what? What are the two linked articles examples of? Did we not end up with these at appropriate common names? Dicklyon (talk) 06:54, 1 November 2012 (UTC)
Simple, Dicklyon. If reality is not on your side, change reality. Then you can accuse anyone of anything. Some people think this is an effective tactic. — kwami (talk) 18:42, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

Assistance with WP:ALLEGE

Hi,

I am having a discussion about the meaning of WP:ALLEGE at Talk:White privilege. The examples given in the policy refer to "individuals accused of crimes" but another editor maintains that it may also refer to ethnic groups, in keeping with their edits to the White privilege article.

Additional context is needed, as I believe that the addition of "alleged" to the lede paragraph of the article unnecessarily implies that ideas central to critical race theory (which the article is about) are somehow illegitimate.

Thanks in advance.

UseTheCommandLine (talk) 08:25, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

flags in MMA articles

The use of flag icons in mixed martial arts related articles has come under debate, i am wondering if we can get some guidance from the MoS community. The discussion is happening at WP:MMA. the use of flags seems to be 3 general areas:

1) info boxes - see in both examples below. also this MOS:FLAG Avoid flag icons in infoboxes
2) in event pages - UFC 94
3) in record tables - Anderson Silva

now for my opinion on the matter. the suggestion to remove flags in the info box seems pretty solid, but the use in event pages and record tables i think can be kept. i feel that MMA is an international sport. for example, of the 225 listed UFC events, only 2 have an entier fight card from a single country 1 and 2. examples of pages that use flags in what i feel is a similar way would be Boxing at the 2010 Summer Youth Olympics and Sport_Club_Corinthians_Paulista#Players. Kevlar (talk) 17:57, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

Gay vs homosexual

I started a discussion here on prefering the use of gay vs homosexual, which has negative clinical 1970s connotations. Basically I wanna ask if I should redirect the question to this page, for a less bias more diverse audience, or is something as specific as what to call a class of people beyond the scope of WP:MOS? CTF83! 10:31, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

My initial view is that gay is acceptable in almost all registers and contexts. In a biological or other technical context, homosexual might be preferable. It depends. Not something to get stressed about, but I think homosexual might be undesirable through its elaborateness in most BLPs, now that gay has such wide currency. Tony (talk) 10:35, 2 November 2012 (UTC)
Ok, so should I redirect the discussion from WT:LGBT to here, or is that beyond your scope of topic? Is that something that if agreed to would be added to WP:MOS? CTF83! 10:38, 2 November 2012 (UTC)
Probably not something worth adding to the MOS (I agree with Tony's analysis) as the (core) MOS tries to avoid too many unique cases. I suggest the LGBT project develop a subsidiary manual of style, as many other projects have done, which covers this and other issues. --Errant (chat!) 10:41, 2 November 2012 (UTC)
Sounds good, being that I know nothing about either of you, or your orientations, here is the discussion if you have input. CTF83! 10:45, 2 November 2012 (UTC)
While the link here is helpful, and of course it is true that anyone can edit at WikiProject:LGBT studies, the reality is that such a page will have a particular interest group. This seems akin to delegating the project on ice hockey, or field hockey, to solve the problem of how the entire project should use the word hockey, or mandating wp:Christianity to decide whether matters of faith can be presented as facts. Kevin McE (talk) 12:26, 2 November 2012 (UTC)
That's not necessarily a bad thing. If they do a good job, that's less for us to worry about. If not, it can be revisited here. — kwami (talk) 16:31, 2 November 2012 (UTC)
I third Tony on this. Any of those terms, unfortunately, have negative undertones depending on context and usage. There's also a slope argument in that once we determine how h/g must be used, we must then presumably cover use of the term "lesbian" as well as "straight/heterosexual". I suspect that with enough energy, the debate could be further complicated to arbitrary levels. Kevin brings up a valid point regarding consensus-forming with select participation. My gut feeling is that everybody may be better off with not having a guideline or policy on this, as in my experience they have a tendency to fuel conflict rather than resolve it. Samsara (FA • FP) 16:06, 2 November 2012 (UTC)
Agreed; codifying it will just introduce problems where previously there were none. Sometimes "gay" is better, while in other instances "homosexual" is; an overriding policy or guideline is going to open the door for conflict. EVula // talk // ☯ // 16:25, 2 November 2012 (UTC)
The OP asked about the proper venue for his or her question. We are a small group here. Perhaps the village pump would be best.
As for "gay" having a negative connotation, this is the first I've heard of it outside the schoolchild meaning of "weak"/"effeminate," and that's falling out of use, even with schoolchildren. "Gay" and "homosexual" seem to differ in levels of formality, not levels of propriety. Darkfrog24 (talk) 02:27, 3 November 2012 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

Hi, I do not know if this is a MoS issue or not. If not, please direct me to the correct place. Another editor has been reverting my edits like [1] with [2]. I do not understand why. It is a minor thing, but could someone please determine who is correct? 86.176.211.219 (talk) 03:32, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

Per WP:HOWTODAB: "To link to a disambiguation page (rather than to a page whose topic is a specific meaning), link to the title that includes the text '(disambiguation)', even if that is a redirect—for example, link to the redirect America (disambiguation) rather than the target page at 'America'. …This helps distinguish accidental links to the disambiguation page from intentional ones." Does this answer your question? Bkonrad is correct in reverting you (I believe), but it is an obscure and somewhat counterintuitive rule, so it's certainly quite understandable that you wouldn't know it. —Caesura(t) 03:58, 3 November 2012 (UTC)
Fair enough, thanks for clearing that up for me. I appreciate your help. 86.176.211.219 (talk) 04:02, 3 November 2012 (UTC)
Warning to those who post off-topic stuff here: threads here turn into ropes tying people up for their Wikipedia lives. Churn and change (talk) 18:04, 3 November 2012 (UTC)
You refused the removal of this comment as disruptive: could you clarify how you think it is helpful to the discussion at hand? Kevin McE (talk) 19:56, 3 November 2012 (UTC)
Its purpose is to say: 1. The posting is off-topic (not a MOS issue), and 2. Threads here often run on as people pick finer nits and branch into side issues. You may agree; you may not. Meta discussion of what is happening on the page is valid and should not be removed. Churn and change (talk) 20:04, 3 November 2012 (UTC)
It seemed more like you were trolling for a long thread by posting off-topic junk at the end of a concluded thread, which is why I reverted it. I think we can leave it now. Dicklyon (talk) 20:23, 3 November 2012 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

(OP) WTF? 86.128.3.213 (talk) 21:41, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

Section titles

Is there anything against titling sections, when discussing the contents of a book (for example) Section 1: (section title), or should we stick with the section title used in the book? A reviewer looking over Theory of Literature asked about this. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 04:20, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

I would say "sections" should be treated the same as "chapters." The purpose of a citation is to help readers locate the source easily, and clearly numbers help that better than a descriptive title. Note how using the title confused the reviewer. The Chicago House Manual of Style explicitly allows this. From p. 374 (8.193) from the 15th edition: "The words chapter, part, appendix, table, figure, and the like are lowercase and spelled out in text (though sometimes abbreviated in parenthetical references). Numbers are given in arabic numerals, regardless of how they appear in the original. If letters are used, they may be upper- or lowercase and are sometimes put in parentheses." Examples given are "This matter is discussed in chapters 4 and 5," "The Latin text appears in appendix B," "Turn to section 5(a) for further examples." The MLA Handbook 7th edition, 6.4.8 explicitly recommends adding chapter numbers to ease locating quotations. They recommend using arabic numerals (section 6.4.8); the notation recommended is something like "chapter 2" when used inside text (section 3.6.2) and "ch. 2" when used inside parentheses denoting a citation (section 6.4.8). The APA manual (6th edition) also allows chapter numbers, but recommends capitalzing the first worder and not abbreviating even inside parentheses; an example they give is: (Shimamura, 1989, Chapter 3). Inside the manual itself one sees sentences such as "See section 6.18 for citing parts of classical works." I would say using numbers for sections is not just allowed, it is recommended. Churn and change (talk) 18:31, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

Sentence case in section headings

There is an active discussion at Wikipedia:Reference desk/Language#Where did our capitalisation rules for headings come from? (version of 15:15, 4 November 2012).
—Wavelength (talk) 15:22, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

Linking to categories

I've added a link to Category:Members and Associates of the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists, in a "see also" section of Royal Birmingham Society of Artists; but that's not very elegant. Is there a preferred way of making such links? Should I format it as, say, Members and Associates? The template we use to link to the related Commons category is much nicer; do we, or should we, have a template for linking to our own categories? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:05, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

Another use for hyphens?

At WP:WikiProject Airports/page content#Body we find a project guideline for formatting shortened airport names in destinations listings:

4. Differentiate between multiple airports in one city using "-" (eg "London-Heathrow", not "London Heathrow").

I've been taking out a lot of hyphens in listings, where the links went to airports with spaces in their titles, like London Heathrow Airport, since I hadn't heard of this use of hyphens in WP (though I've seen it in various sources that list flights this way – rarely, per this book search). Any opinions on this? Is it an example of some more general use that we should represent in the MOS? Or is it a bad idea? Dicklyon (talk) 04:44, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

A lot like Guinea-Bissau in the non-attributive usage. Not sure about attributive London Heathrow Airport, though. — kwami (talk) 08:21, 7 November 2012 (UTC)
I don't think it's like that at all. Guinea-Bissau is a name, estabilshed, well recognized. London-Heathrow is a made-up construction to abbreviate London Heathrow Airport, or to disambiguate the city destination when there are multiple airports, in certain compact contexts. It's quite hard to find in sources, deviating as it does from the established name. Dicklyon (talk) 16:55, 7 November 2012 (UTC)
The Chicago House Manual of Style (15th ed.) has a painful seven-page-long description of the general patterns of hyphen use. This one likely comes under this type: "noun + noun, two functions: nurse-practitioner, city-state, city-state governance'. (Both noun and adjective forms are always hyphenated.)" (7.90, p. 303, emphases in original). I would say "London-Heathrow" has two nouns with different functions, and so needs the hyphen when used standalone. Churn and change (talk) 17:44, 7 November 2012 (UTC)
Found it: [3]. This is 16th, which clarifies those examples as "noun + noun, two functions (both nouns equal)". It's not clear if it applies to two different or unequal functions like city-disambiguator. Dicklyon (talk) 01:18, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
I think the way CHMOS uses it, for a noun-noun combination one either has "first noun modifies second noun" or "both nouns equal." From the context, looks like their definition of "both nouns equal" is essentially "first noun not modifying second noun." Churn and change (talk) 01:47, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
Yes, perhaps that's all they mean. Still, I don't see how it supports inserting the hyphen into noun–noun compounds that are normally set open in more complete noun phrases. Dicklyon (talk) 21:12, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
Yes, Guinea-Bissau is also "a made-up construction", just like Congo-Brazzaville. (Funny no-one ever says "China-Taipei", though.) — kwami (talk) 22:23, 7 November 2012 (UTC)
OK, but Guinea-Bissau was made up and accepted outside of WP, and I'm asking about what appear more like novel compounds made up for WP destination listings, which are not entity names. Dicklyon (talk) 01:18, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

Most of these hyphenated destination listings are piped to more proper airport names. But in a few cases, the odd hyphenation has been used in the actual airport article titles. These seem to be almost always a bad idea, with a space being more sensible as well as more common in sources. So I've moved some of those. In other cases, sources seem to support the idea of a dash, so I've done that in a few cases. Are there cases where a hyphen is really the right answer? Still not clear. But where it's clearly not the right answer, is it OK to use it for a short form in destination tables? Is this a common convention? Why did the airport project adopt it? Still wondering... Dicklyon (talk) 05:22, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

For example, consider these airports in Italy: L'Aquila-Preturo Airport (see [4]) and Perugia San Francesco d'Assisi – Umbria International Airport (see [5]). The former appears variously in sources with space, with slash, with hyphen (including many copied from wikipedia), and with spaced hyphen. The slash and spaced hyphen strongly suggest an en dash in WP style. I don't find it in any English language books not copied from wikipedia, but in Italian books it appears with space, slash, or parens, never hyphen. So I'd go for space, knowing that the dash is sometimes annoying to some editors. In the case of Perugia San Francesco d'Assisi – Umbria International Airport, there's clearly at least one dash needed if we're going to connect so many alternative name and location parts into a title, so I'd be inclined to move it to the name, San Francesco d'Assisi Airport, or the location-based name Umbria–Perugia International Airport. But maybe that's not right. In the Template:Airports in Italy it's called "Perugia: San Francesco Airport"; so maybe Perugia San Francesco d'Assisi Airport? In destination talbes, it's just Perugia, which is fine. Dicklyon (talk) 05:50, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

Typographical conformity

I've copy edited this section, putting the bullet on caps at top, cutting excess verbiage, etc. However, there are some more substantial changes we might want from the style guide quoted above:

  • "The Times does adjust spelling, punctuation, capitalisation, and abbreviations within a quotation for consistent style."

I don't know what they mean by "spelling". Is this just typos, or do they change UK to US spelling? Would we want to do the same in an article that otherwise uses the opposite tradition?

Where the MOS would advise against using abbreviations, should we expand abbreviations within a quotation?

— kwami (talk) 01:33, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

  • As I understand it, changing varieties of spelling in a quote or title is a no-no generally (although I notice my daily newspaper changes the z to s in World Health Organization, which is pretty radical). On the other matters, I personally favour the more interventionist approach. Noetica has thought through the logic of this more than I have, I think. Tony (talk) 02:41, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
I can imagine that altering the national variety of spelling could lead to all sorts of havoc on WP, with the articles going back and forth.
So, add a note on expanding abbreviations? — kwami (talk) 07:15, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
Because of the English Wikipedia's identity as a multi-variety publication, I would go with not changing the variety of English within direct quotations.
The newspaper should not be changing the z to an s in "World Health Organization" or any other proper noun. Darkfrog24 (talk) 03:54, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
Will note that explicitly, just in case. — kwami (talk) 19:49, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

RFC regarding ticker symbols in article leads

Hi. I've started an RFC regarding ticker symbols in article leads: Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Ticker symbols in article leads. Please weigh in! --MZMcBride (talk) 15:13, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

new point

Added MOS:RTL. Technical formatting rather than style, so feel free to move elsewhere as appropriate. — kwami (talk) 19:41, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

Supply of professional editors

In the interest of maintaining a supply of available Wikipedians with professional skill and experience in editing, I bring attention to these categories.

I have started the page "List of professional editors who have edited Wikipedia", a copy of which is reproduced below.

This is a list of list of professional editors who have edited Wikipedia.

Editor Sex Lifespan Nationality User information Activity status
Kurt Andersen M 1954– American Kbanderson (talk · message · contribs · count · logs · email) Inactive
Joseph A. Cafasso M 1956– American Peppetters (talk · message · contribs · count · logs · email)
Ramsey Campbell M 1946– English Ramsey Campbell (talk · message · contribs · count · logs · email)
Kathryn Cramer F 1962– American Pleasantville (talk · message · contribs · count · logs · email)
Mike Dash M 1963– Welsh Mikedash (talk · message · contribs · count · logs · email)
brian d foy M American Scarpia (talk · message · contribs · count · logs · email)
Henry Hardy M 1949– British Henry Hardy (talk · message · contribs · count · logs · email)
Patrick Nielsen Hayden M 1959– American Pnh (talk · message · contribs · count · logs · email)
Phil McMullen M British Ptolemyphil (talk · message · contribs · count · logs · email)
Lambert Meertens M 1944– Dutch Lambert Meertens (talk · message · contribs · count · logs · email)
Sheldon Rampton M 1957– American Sheldon Rampton (talk · message · contribs · count · logs · email)
Jason Snell M 1970– American Jsnell (talk · message · contribs · count · logs · email)

Category:Connected contributors Category:Editors
—Wavelength (talk) 20:29, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

This is just crazy. If you want a "supply" of professional editors, ask for volunteers. This list is useless. Dicklyon (talk) 21:34, 1 November 2012 (UTC)
I don't know about crazy, but certainly seems pointless. Is it presumed that "professional editors" are more likely to step forward if they can have their name in a list? Or is it to make easier for Wikipedians to find these professional editors? I suspect that would tend to deter them from stepping forward. I question whether these individuals have indicated willingness to be "available" (have they been asked?); this could be deemed a form of wp:outing. That some of these users are red-linked shows that they are not so available. This effort seems very poorly conceived. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 00:11, 2 November 2012 (UTC)
The main purpose of the list is to make it easier for Wikipedians to find these professional editors. I do not understand how or why it would deter them from stepping forward. If the list constitutes an infringement of the policy at WP:OUTING, then does not Wikipedia:Wikipedians with articles do likewise? In either case, I did not intend any malice. If I behaved improperly by assembling the information, then please forgive me.
—Wavelength (talk) 01:35, 2 November 2012 (UTC)
What use case are you actually imagining for how Wikipedians might use this list? Are you imagining we might email them and ask them for help editing, or professional opinions, or what? Morwen - Talk 10:39, 2 November 2012 (UTC)
I am visualizing those editors contributing from their expertise to the extent of their ability and willingness to do so. That might involve (1) answering questions, (2) contributing to discussions, (3) applying the MOS guidelines, or even (4) becoming participants in Wikipedia:WikiProject Manual of Style (WP:WPMOS). Also, they might (5) initiate discussions or (6) directly edit the guidelines.
—Wavelength (talk) 19:49, 2 November 2012 (UTC)
Wikiprojects (e.g. WP:COPYEDITORS, plus all the topical ones) already exist to do this. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 20:58, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
I'm a professional proofreader. If you want me to do something, you can just ask.

I guess there's a little ego buzz on being on a pro list, but is there any verification system? Darkfrog24 (talk) 02:24, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

Yes. Someone can volunteer, or even be asked if they might volunteer. But simply extracting and then posting a list inviting people to ask for help (where there is no indication that tese people have actually volunteered) seems tantamount to harassment. (WP:Wikipedians with articles doesn't invite people to contact them.) That some of these users we are being directed to are red-linked really undercuts the intended utility. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:59, 3 November 2012 (UTC)
The act of asking another person for help is not, in itself, harassment. I suppose that a typical human being both asks and is asked for help of various kinds frequently.

According to Wikipedia:Userboxes (version of 12:50, 24 September 2012), a "userbox (commonly abbreviated as UBX) is a small colored box ... designed to appear only on a Wikipedian's user page as a communicative notice about the user, in order to directly (or even indirectly) help Wikipedians collaborate more effectively on articles."

The act of posting the list is not an act of asking for help. Also, the list is not inviting anyone to ask for help.
—Wavelength (talk) 01:15, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

I don't think that asking someone for help is harassment, but this could end up being like telemarketers who call all the time for the editors on the list.

Is there a way to create a list of people who have put an "I'm an editor; ask me for help!" userbox on their talk page? Could such a list be automated? If this is possible, then it would be possible to expand it to lists of chemistry experts, comic book lore experts, Hungarian history experts, etc. for use in specialized articles. So long as it's voluntary and controlled by the editors in question, it could be a very good thing. Darkfrog24 (talk) 02:38, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

The editors at Wikipedia:WikiProject Userboxes/Members might be able to answer those questions.
—Wavelength (talk) 03:27, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
Also, there is Category:Userboxes.
—Wavelength (talk) 16:32, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
[outdent] It will deter them from stepping forward because it will encourage random Wikipedians to pester them with writing questions and editorial review requests. I'm not on that list but have already been pestered with such requests simply for having listed myself as a participant in WP:COPYEDITORS, so much that I'm liable to leave that project. You're also sorely confusing regular Wikipedians who happen to do or have done some professional writing and editing, with professional notable writers with articles about them here, like Ramsey Campbell, who have (or appear to have) created WP accounts. That they have an account is not an indication that they want to engage in daily editing. Category:Wikipedians by profession and Category:People by occupation are completely unrelated and serve totally different purposes (self-identification vs. article browsing, respectively) for different audiences (editors vs. readers, respectively). We already have wikiprojects and userboxes to help active editors "advertise" their professional and avocational skills and join pools of editors interested in working on particular things here. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 20:58, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

Over at Wikipedia:Dispute resolution noticeboard#Glossary of equestrian terms there is a discussion about the phrase "X is a term used to describe Y" which is somewhat (...puts on sunglasses...) MOSsy. I would appreciate it if someone could pop over there and offer a second opinion. Thanks! --Guy Macon (talk) 19:33, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

Two sections with heading "References"

At this time, the Main Page has, in the section "On this day", a link to the article "Japan–Korea Treaty of 1905" (version of 02:58, 16 November 2012). The article has two sections with the same heading "References", but the two sections differ in their layout. MOS:HEAD recommends that each heading or subheading (and so forth) be unique on a page. Should one of these sections be headed "Notes"? Should one of these sections be headed "Sources"?
—Wavelength (talk) 03:46, 17 November 2012 (UTC) and 06:43, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

WP:INITS

Is there ever a reliable source for distinguishing J.S. Bach from J. S. Bach? See Talk at WP:INITS. In ictu oculi (talk) 00:01, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

Category Sorts for "University of"/"College of"

In the Category Category:History of United States colleges and universities, the entries have the sort keys so that "History of University of Alabama" is sorted under 'A' removing the "University of". While I prefer this, it is not done in other categories such as Category:Lists of chapters of United States student societies by college. Is there something formal on this? I can't find anything in Help:Category.Naraht (talk) 14:44, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

Hluhluwe-Umfolozi

Dash/hyphen enthusiasts: please comment here. Axl ¤ [Talk] 23:15, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

Formatting of captions

Regarding Formating of captions, a stand alone sentence in signage, such as a solitary stand alone sentence as a caption of an image, should not have a period on the end of it. This is a solid design principle that no amount of prescriptive grammar can do anything helpful to refute. Who has authority to clarify this point in above cited MOS section? If no reasonable explanation why I am not right is give, in due course I will do it myself. It is quite simply a shockingly rude design gaff to clutter a beautiful page with a misplaced period. I am sure there is hope that Wikipedia will rise above that. Please give this some thought and comment. Thank you! :-) -Rogerhc (talk) 23:52, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

If you change that long-standing guideline, change MOS:CAPTION, WP:CAP#Wording, and Wikipedia:Simplified Manual of Style#Periods and commas to be consistent with your change to Formating of captions. Art LaPella (talk) 03:33, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
Say what? Complete sentences should not have periods at the end if they are captions? Can you point out any publications that follow such a style? Or guides that recommend such a style? If so, then we can start to look at whether it would be a good move for WP to go that way. Dicklyon (talk) 03:38, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
Rogerhc has asked me to comment here. To give some brief context for everyone else, I directed them to this section of the MoS last night with a few edit summaries where I had undone their edits (example). I am unsure why Rogerhc feels so strongly that a sentence used as a caption should not end in a period. My personal view is that they should. Aesthetically, I see nothing distasteful about a period. I do not see why a sentence in a caption should be punctuated differently from a sentence in the main article body. If I read a complete sentence without any terminating punctuation, I feel something is missing.
Searching the archives, it seems that between January 2006 and October 2006, Rogerhc's way was the standard on Wikipedia. The current rule was introduced on 4 October 2006 with these diffs: [6] [7]. The discussion of this change is at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Captions/Archive 1#Using periods, which includes a quote from the Chicago Manual of Style on the subject. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 22:27, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
I've added a link to that discussion to the Register, to save anyone else the search. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 23:06, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
I'm not clear on the what the objection here is. It says that, if the caption is a sentence, it should end with a period. If it is not a sentence, it should not end with a period. This makes perfect sense to me. Practically, I think most captions are not sentences, and would therefore not contain the supposedly "ugly" period. —[AlanM1(talk)]— 22:40, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
It definitely appears that in its short lifetime, the idea of having no period at the end of a one-sentence caption found approximately zero support in discussion. My question remains unanswered: does any publication that we know of use or recommend such a style? Until we get a positive answer, it's not even worth talking about. Dicklyon (talk) 22:44, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
I think the no-period rule for shortish partial sentences as captions is probably a bit inflexible. But if it's changed, I think it needs to allow either, for the purely practical reason that the retrofitting would be horrendous. Any better ideas? Tony (talk) 13:30, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
I would recommend for shortish sentences that could be sentences or could be phrases, such as "Turnips are vegetables" that adding a period or not be completely optional. My own preference even for long sentences is to not end a caption with a period unless it would look strange. The question is, is it a title or a block of text? If it is a title, then no period is used. By the way I have noticed that captions often use title case, instead of sentence case. If it is a block of text, then normal punctuation is used. A caption can be either - a title or a paragraph of text. Apteva (talk) 10:45, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

I found another category of article names that ignores us. Compare Category:Naval artillery, most subcategories, and related categories to what WP:HYPHEN says about hyphenating phrases like "9.2-inch guns". Other sources hyphenate. Art LaPella (talk) 03:32, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

I agree. In books, the hyphen in is almost always used in that context. Dicklyon (talk) 00:51, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

Allowable minimal change per MoS quote

  • Per MOS:QUOTE: "Trivial spelling or typographical errors should be silently corrected ... a few purely typographical elements of quoted text should be adapted to English Wikipedia's conventions without comment. This practice of conforming typographical styling to a publication's own 'house style' is universal."
  • According to the CMOS (16th edition), this type of change is acceptable. The point of "minimal change" is to retain the wording, not the syntax or typography. According to the CMOS: "Although in a direct quotation the wording should be reproduced exactly ... changes are generally permissable to make a passage fit into the syntax and typography of the surrounding text." (p.621), "the initial letter can be changed to a capital or a lowercase letter" (p.622), "words in full capitals can be set in lowercase, if that is the preferred style for the surrounding text" (p.622). From page 624 of the CMOS: "Changing capitalisation to suit syntax: Aside from proper nouns and some of the words derived from them, words in English publications are normally lowercased unless they begin a sentence. To suit this requirement, the first word in a quoted passage must often be adjusted to conform to the surrounding text." "Initial capital or lowercase: "When a quotation introduced midsentence forms a syntatical part of the sentence, it begins with a lowercase even if the original begins with a capital."
  • From the New York Times Style guide: "The Times does adjust spelling, punctuation, capitalisation, and abbreviations within a quotation for consistent style." (p.281)
  • From New Hart's Rules (Oxford): 9.1 General Principles: "While the wording of the quoted text should be faithfully reproduced, the extent to which the precise form of the original source is replicated will vary with context and editorial preference." (p.152) Further, 9.3.4 Typography states: "A quotation is not a facsimile, and in most contexts it is not necessary to reproduce the exact typography of the original." (p.160)
  • Question. - Is it an acceptable typographical/stylistic change to alter capitalisation of "The Beatles" in a direct quote so as to conform to our "house style", i.e "the Beatles"? ~ GabeMc (talk|contribs) 00:10, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
I would say yes, but this is something we never got into in detail. BTW, when CMOS says "syntax", they don't mean syntax. — kwami (talk) 00:50, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
I think you have misrepresented CMOS regarding "the Beatles" vs "The Beatles" in a quoted bit of running prose. CMOS allows for the following:
In this example, the entirety of Harrison's complete sentence, "The Beatles will go on and on," has been changed only by knocking the initial capital 'T' down to lower case. Because the "The" was at the beginning of the sentence, CMOS assumes that Harrison would have made it lower case in running prose. The CMOS stands opposed to your position regarding the case in which a writer purposely puts a capital 'T' in running prose; the guideline says to keep true to the original typographical style as much as possible. This much, I think, is possible for us to follow. Binksternet (talk) 00:52, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
I don't think the CMOS cares one iota about what Harrison wanted, this has to do with maintaining a consistent "house style". I'm also not seeing where the CMOS prescribes the exact reproduction of quoted material. Can you point me to where it says this? Publishers adapt prose to their house style, so why wouldn't we? At any rate, our MoS says: "a few purely typographical elements of quoted text should be adapted to English Wikipedia's conventions without comment", why do you think this does not apply? What have I misrepresented IYO? ~ GabeMc (talk|contribs) 01:04, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Music#Names (definite article). — kwami (talk) 02:05, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
GabeMc, my 15th edition CMOS says: "Syntactic and typographical considerations. Although in a direct quotation the wording, spelling, capitalization, and internal punctuation of the original should be reproduced exactly, the following changes are generally permissible to make the passage fit into the syntax and typography of the surrounding text." This is why I think CMOS endorses the odd/awkward capital in a direct quote embedded in running prose. Yes, the Wikipedia house style is now "the Beatles" in running prose. Binksternet (talk) 03:25, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
Binksternet, the same section in my 16th edition states: "13.7 Permissable changes to punctuation, capitalisation, and spelling. Although in a direct quotation the wording should be reproduced exactly, the following changes are generally permissible to make the passage fit into the syntax and typography of the surrounding text." (p.621) So, it would seem the CMOS editors have made a significant substantive alteration to the text of the 15th edition. Do you now agree that the latest version of the CMOS supports my assertion that "t"s should be brought in-line with our house style, "the Beatles", and not reproduced as a facsimile. ~ GabeMc (talk|contribs) 03:42, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
I acknowledge that CMOS has had a change of heart on the matter, from the 15th to the 16th edition. The fact that there have been two different practices recently advocated by CMOS weakens the argument. Binksternet (talk) 05:27, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
Does it weaken the argument more than this strengthens it? Also, the 15th edition of the CMOS is 7 years old, while the 16th is 3. Shouldn't we be using the most recently updated version as our guide, and not an outdated one?
  • From the New York Times Style Guide: "The Times does adjust spelling, punctuation, capitalisation, and abbreviations within a quotation for consistent style." (p.281)
  • From New Hart's Rules (Oxford): 9.1 General Principles: "While the wording of the quoted text should be faithfully reproduced, the extent to which the precise form of the original source is replicated will vary with context and editorial preference." (p.152) Further, 9.3.4 Typography states: "A quotation is not a facsimile, and in most contexts it is not necessary to reproduce the exact typography of the original." (p.160) ~ GabeMc (talk|contribs) 05:31, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
The flightier sources (fansites, etc.) use a capital T in "The Beatles," but the more professional sites say "the Beatles." The impression that I get is that the fansites are trying to aggrandize the band and playing fast and loose with English (which is pretty loose, I'll grant) to do so. I'd go with yes, it is acceptable to correct the capitalization and use a lowercase t. However, Beatles fans have made such a ruckus about it that you should wear asbestos clothing while doing so. (To translate said joke into action, yes, use a lowercase T when inserting text, but expect to be reverted by a fan. Don't change it back unless you're prepared for a long fuss on the talk page.) Darkfrog24 (talk) 03:50, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

GabeMc has been systematically misquoting, ripping out of context and cherry-picking the material he quotes from the Chicago Manual of Style and Hart's Rules.

  1. GabeMc purports to quote the following: "Although in a direct quotation the wording should be reproduced exactly ... changes are generally permissable to make a passage fit into the syntax and typography of the surrounding text. The ellipsis in the middle is highly distorting. What the CMOS actually says at that point is (emphasis mine): Although in a direct quotation the wording should be reproduced exactly, the following changes are generally permissible to make a passage fit into the syntax and typography of the surrounding text. GabeMc has conveniently glossed over the fact that the CMOS is here presenting an exhaustive list of well-defined exceptions, rather than delivering a general blanket endorsement of whatever minor changes an editor might decide upon, as his quote makes it appear. Needless to say, none of the limited classes of exception actually listed after this sentence apply to the "the/The" Beatles case.
  2. GabeMc purports to quote: the initial letter can be changed to a capital or a lowercase letter. He omits the fact that the actual passage in the CMOS further points to some following sections ((see 13.13–16)), and those sections make it abundantly clear that they refer exclusively to cases such as the following: (13.14): When a quotation introduced midsentence forms a syntactical part of the sentence, it begins with a lowercase letter even if the original begins with a capital (the CMOS goes on to provide examples such as Benjamin Franklin admonishes us to “plough deep while sluggards sleep.” This is exclusively about the use of capitalization to mark beginnings of sentences.
  3. GabeMc quotes, purportedly from p. 622 of the print version of the 16th edition of CMOS (the same page as the one of quote #1): words in full capitals can be set in lowercase, if that is the preferred style for the surrounding text. I have no access to the print version but only to the online version, same 16th edition, and I cannot find that quotation in that context at all. What I do find is something else entirely (emphasis mine): Words in full capitals in the original may be set in small caps, if that is the preferred style for the surrounding text. This, too, points to another section for more details, which makes it clear that it refers exclusively to matters such as "nasa" rather than "NASA". Gabe, did you accidentally misquote, or does the print edition have different text than the online edition?
    In any case, nothing in the CMOS has any bearing on the non-trivial issue of the use of capitalization to mark proper nouns. This is not a matter of trivial typographical style but a matter of orthography, and as such far beyond anything the CMOS section contemplates.
  4. GabeMc purports to quote from Hart's Rules (Oxford UP), p.152 the following: While the wording of the quoted text should be faithfully reproduced, the extent to which the precise form of the original source is replicated will vary with context and editorial preference. Again, he makes this sound as if it was a blanket endorsement of whatever orthographic changes an editor prefers. He conveniently leaves out the following on p.157: In quotations from printed sources the spelling, capitalization, and punctuation should normally follow the original. This, as in CMOS, is again followed by a limited, exhaustive set of well-defined exceptions (p.158). Among them are the same two allowances for changes to capitalization: the initial letter of a whole quotation changed to integrate it into the surrounding syntax, and changes to words printed in all-capitals.
  5. GabeMc further purports to quote from p.160: A quotation is not a facsimile, and in most contexts it is not necessary to reproduce the exact typography of the original. He conveniently leaves out the context: this is the section about "typography", and the next sentence makes it unmistakeably clear that it deals only with issues such as "change of font, bold type, underscoring, ornaments, and the exact layout of the text". This clearly does not include issues of orthography such as capitalization, because those have been dealt with in a preceding separate chapter ("spelling, capitalization, and punctuation")
    Again, there is nothing even remotely hinting at the possibility of a non-trivial orthographic change like the one he proposes.
  6. GabeMc also quotes from the New York Times style guide: The Times does adjust spelling, punctuation, capitalisation, and abbreviations within a quotation for consistent style. I have no access to the full text of this guide here, but from what I gather, this statement is from the context of a discussion of journalistic quoting of spoken language. I see no indication that it has any bearing on how to deal with written sources.

GabeMc needs to stop misusing these quotations for his "the" crusade. If he continues trying to change quoted text in Beatles articles, or continues using these blatant mis-quotations of guidelines in support of doing so, I'm quite prepared to block him for disruption. Fut.Perf. ☼ 12:12, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for looking up the various style guides to see the full context. It is wrong for anybody to misrepresent a style guide in order to push a personal preference that is not intended by the style guide. Binksternet (talk) 14:51, 11 November 2012 (UTC)
That is a very good rebuttal of GabeMc's misleading quotations. However, it is still acceptable to change a capital t to a lowercase t when the direct article is capitalized in error, as in "The Beatles." The question is whether or not an [sic] tag is required. Darkfrog24 (talk) 20:44, 11 November 2012 (UTC)
Oh please, let's not start this again all over now. Capitalized "The"s in sources about the Beatles are not "errors"; they are a conscious and systematic orthographic choice made by a substantial portion of the reliable, carefully edited literature (albeit not the majority usage, and not the usage recommended by most style guides). Come on people, we just had a months-long decision process debating all these things to death. Fut.Perf. ☼ 21:12, 11 November 2012 (UTC)
Brad does not decide for the entire Wikipedia project what is and what isn't an orthographical error. ~ GabeMc (talk|contribs) 21:56, 11 November 2012 (UTC)
When those sources consciously and systematically capitalize the definite article mid-sentence, they are constantly and systematically wrong. There is no need to replicate poor English on Wikipedia just because writers on other publications think something looks cool. If I felt like spelling "gender" "gendre," I'd be free to do so in my own writings but we wouldn't replicate that here. Wikipedia is a general-English publication and should use general-English rules. Darkfrog24 (talk) 23:38, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
When the The is part of a proper name, then it should absolutely be capitalized, and this is a totally standard general-English rule. The question is whether it is, or not, in the Beatles case, and this is a question of fact rather than law, as a lawyer would say. Almost everyone agrees to capitalize The Hague, for example, and while some would like to claim this is a one-off exception, that is absolutely not so (compare The Colony, which also takes a capital The).
A decent rule of thumb is to ask whether it still makes sense to separate the definite article from the rest of the name. John was a Beatle, George was a Beatle, etc, so the core proper-name part seems to be Beatle. So the Beatles is probably reasonable. Similarly for Scorpions, Eagles, etc.
On the other hand, there's no such thing as an individual Who or an individual The, and without the definite article, those names are not very recognizable as appertaining to the relative bands. So I would propend for The Who and The The. --Trovatore (talk) 23:47, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
Commendably logical, but not reality. Publications that use 'The Who' use 'The Beatles', ditto 'the Who' and 'the Beatles'. Rothorpe (talk) 23:54, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
My main concern is that the MoS not attempt to settle questions of fact, such as whether a particular instance of a definite article is or is not part of a proper name. That should be left to case-by-case determination. --Trovatore (talk) 23:57, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
The Hague absolutely is a one-off exception to the standard rule that "the" not be capitalized mid-sentence. Fans do not get to decide whether their own preferences are standard English. As for Trovatore's question of fact issue, considering that the sources that use "The" are largely fan sources meant to aggrandize the band and the ones that use "the" are the ones that tend to be written using standard English and have no reason to aggrandize the band, it is safe to say that "the" is the correct usage for the band, that "the Beatles" is not a Hague-type exception. Darkfrog24 (talk) 07:52, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
No, The Hague is not a one-off exception; I gave another example, The Colony, that is quite indisputable. The question is whether the the is an integral part of the name, or whether it's a standard English definite article. Sometimes it's one, sometimes the other, but there is no special case for The Hague. --Trovatore (talk) 08:35, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
Guys, let's not side-line this discussion. The general question of whether and why "the" Beatles should be capitalized, in normal text, has been settled. We had a huge mediation process about it, and the result is it should be lowercase. There's no use rehashing that debate here now. This thread here should remain purely on the topic of how to deal with quotations. Fut.Perf. ☼ 08:54, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
The discussion came out wrong. Maybe not for the Beatles case, for the reason I mention, but definitely for The Who. Contrary to Darkfrog's claims, I am not particularly trying to "aggrandize" them; it's just that the The is an integral part of the name, and therefore, according to the absolutely standard rules of English, should be capitalized. --Trovatore (talk) 08:58, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
The mediation discussion was exclusively about the Beatles case. If the Who case is linguistically different, it's not affected by the decision in any way. Fut.Perf. ☼ 09:41, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
It's only been settled in the sense that Beatles fans made a fuss until they got their way, kind of like WP:LQ and the capitalization of bird species. That's not the same as being right. I support correcting whim-based policies. "The" is not an integral part of the name in any way that necessitates that it be capitalized. The "ge" in "George" is an integral part of the name, but that doesn't mean it needs to be capitalized. The "b" in "Yellow-breasted" is an integral part of the name, but we don't capitalize it, even in title case.Darkfrog24 (talk) 18:03, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
Huh? What on earth are you talking about? The Beatles RfC decided in favour of lowercase – exactly the proposal you (and I) supported. What are you still unhappy about? Fut.Perf. ☼ 21:48, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
This problem was corrected? That's great. But then we're back to the same issue: The question is whether or not a [sic] tag is required. Darkfrog24 (talk) 23:43, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
FWIW, I am pretty sure in "the Who", that "who" is being used as a noun, so while it may seem different than the Beatles, its really not linguistically. An article of speech lets the reader know that a proper noun is to follow, so "who" is a proper noun in this usage. Afterall, if it wasn't a proper noun, then why would we capitalise it? Please do correct me if I am wrong. ~ GabeMc (talk|contribs) 23:55, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
Will do. No, articles do not indicate that a proper noun is to follow, as in "the basket," "a cube," "the article." Darkfrog24 (talk) 23:21, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
Sorry, you're correct. An article of speech indicates that a noun is to follow, but not necessarily a proper noun. ~ GabeMc (talk|contribs) 23:40, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
Please bear in mind that The Who is very different from the Beatles. When writing the Beatles, the sentence could either be about the band or about members of the band, who are known as "Beatles". Members of The Who are not known as "Who", but as members of The Who. The is a part of the name of the band, The Who. The is not a part of the descriptor "Beatles" used to refer to members of the band. The decision to use lower case the in text for the band the Beatles refers only and applies only to the Beatles, and can not be extrapolated to other entities named with The as a part of their name. Apteva (talk) 00:07, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
For examples of "Who" being used as a descriptor see: "Tributes pour in for Who guitarist" and "Pete Townshend leaves the stage at Who concert in Florida". Also see the Who's bio at Rolling Stone, or Allmusic, or at the Encyclopedia Britannica. The Chicago Manual of Style (16th edition) specifically uses "the Who" as an example and states: "A the preceding a name, even when part of the official title, is lowercased in running text." (original emphasis) (2010, p.416) Are all these sources wrong? ~ GabeMc (talk|contribs) 00:18, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
  • Fut.Perf., on your above point number 1: "GabeMc has conveniently glossed over the fact that the CMOS is here presenting an exhaustive list of well-defined exceptions", one of those well-defined exceptions is "2. The initial letter may be changed to a capital or to a lowercase letter." Another is "5. Obvious typographic errors may be corrected silently." ~ GabeMc (talk|contribs) 22:28, 11 November 2012 (UTC)
  • On your above point number 2: "This is exclusively about the use of capitalization to mark beginnings of sentences." What? It pertains to mid-sentence use of quoted material with caps. ~ GabeMc (talk|contribs) 22:28, 11 November 2012 (UTC)
  • On your above point number 3: You: " ... the non-trivial issue of the use of capitalization to mark proper nouns". 1) Why have you declared an unpronouncable orthographical alteration non-trivial? Under what authority? 2) Correction. - "the" is an article of speech, not a proper noun as you stated above.
  • On your above point number 4: You seem to be confusing wording with orthography, two very differnet things. Per "and changes to words printed in all-capitals" It actually says: "Text that is printed in full caps may be rationalised to upper and lowercase (or caps and small caps)". Also, on page 159, 9.3 Styling of Quoted Text, 9.3.2 Interpolation and correction: "In some contexts editorial policy may allow the correction of trivial errors in the original, judging it more important to transmit the content of the quoted matter than to reproduce its exact form."
  • On your above point number 5: I think an unneeded capital intended to glorify the band constitutes an "ornament".
  • On your above point number 6: WP:AGF. ~ GabeMc (talk|contribs) 22:28, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

Use of "the" in section headers

I'm sure that I read somewhere that we should not normally start a section heading with "The" (e.g. ==Problem== is better than ==The problem== unless "The" is necessary as the title of something or a quote), but there is nothing about this in MOS:HEAD so I'm wondering if I imagined it. Can anyone shed any light on this? Thanks. --Jameboy (talk) 03:05, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

"Headings should not refer redundantly to the subject of the article, or to higher-level headings, unless doing so is shorter or clearer. (Early life is preferable to His early life when his refers to the subject of the article; headings can be assumed to be about the subject unless otherwise indicated.)" would apply. Adding "the" is redundant. Apteva (talk) 03:43, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Article titles, point 3 (version of 22:12, 26 November 2012) says the following.
  • Do not use A, An, or The as the first word (Economy of the Second Empire, not The economy of the Second Empire), unless by convention it is an inseparable part of a name (The Hague) or it is part of the title of a work (A Clockwork Orange, The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien).
Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Section headings, paragraph 2, sentence 1 (version of 22:12, 26 November 2012) says the following.
  • The provisions in Article titles (above) generally apply to section headings as well (for example, headings are in sentence case, not title case).
—Wavelength (talk) 04:02, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
I see. Many thanks. --Jameboy (talk) 04:08, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Headers that begin with a numeral: capital letter for text?

Should we use an initial text capital in headers such as the following which start with numbers?

  • 1964: Research continues
  • 1964 – Research continues
  • 11:00 a.m. – First report

Or should these be lower case?

  • 1964: research continues
  • 1964 – research continues
  • 11:00 a.m. – first report

This is something of an extension of the question about whether to capitalize following a colon. I think that in the case of a header, the initial capitalization should be preferred even if it is not preferred in running prose. Binksternet (talk) 16:16, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

I agree that the initial capitalization should be used. EVula // talk // ☯ // 17:38, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
I think it's different if there's a colon or dash; for instance, "research" would be left uncapitalized in:
  • 1964 research
just like in running prose. And perhaps the recommendation should be to avoid numeral+colon or numeral+dash beginnings for sections. -- JHunterJ (talk) 19:06, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
According to Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Section headings (version of 07:18, 8 November 2012), "[t]he provisions in Article titles (above) generally apply to section headings as well (for example, headings are in sentence case, not title case)."
All pages with titles beginning with 2012 A, All pages with titles beginning with 2012 a, All pages with titles beginning with 2012 c, All pages with titles beginning with 2012 e, All pages with titles beginning with 2012 f, All pages with titles beginning with 2012 i, All pages with titles beginning with 2012 m, All pages with titles beginning with 2012 n, All pages with titles beginning with 2012 p, All pages with titles beginning with 2012 r, All pages with titles beginning with 2012 s, All pages with titles beginning with 2012 t
—Wavelength (talk) 19:49, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
  • According to New Hart's Rules, "The word following a colon is not capitalised in British English (unless it is a proper name of course)." (p.74)
  • According to the CMOS, "6.61 Lowercase of capital letter after a colon. When a colon is used within a sentence ... the first word following the colon is lowercased."(16th edition, p.327) Also, 8.1 "Chicago's preference is for the 'down' style ... sparing use of capitals." (16th edition, p.387) ~ GabeMc (talk|contribs) 22:29, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
I think that the MOS suggests avoiding unnecesary caps, and not capitalizing in headings things that would not be capitalized in text, with the exception of the first letter. I don't see a good case for that exception being pushed to after a number. Dicklyon (talk) 04:21, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
I agree, an initial capital should be used following a colon preceded by a numeral. ~ GabeMc (talk|contribs) 06:15, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
I think you mean you disagree with me then. Dicklyon (talk) 04:09, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
I guess I was confused by your comment, I thought you were saying that Binksternet was correct and I was not. I've heard this both ways depending on who you ask, or who reverts you. So, was I correct or incorrect in lowercasing the first letter following a colon in header? ~ GabeMc (talk|contribs) 23:09, 11 November 2012 (UTC)
Perhaps a bullet point should be added to clarify this, as there is no obvious indication (TMK) in our MoS as it currently stands. ~ GabeMc (talk|contribs) 23:08, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
What letter case is required or recommended for the first letter in the subheading at The Morgan Library & Museum#2006 Renovation (version of 17:50, 10 November 2012)?
—Wavelength (talk) 17:55, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
It shouldn't be capitalised, like 1964 research above. Usual running-prose lower case. Rothorpe (talk) 14:13, 11 November 2012 (UTC)
Rothorpe, would you say the same for 1964: research? ~ GabeMc (talk|contribs) 04:58, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
Not as a bullet point, no, as it's no longer adjective followed by noun: the colon balances the two parts (1964: Research), so the second is a sentence fragment, or title in its own right. But I've often noticed people using caps after colons mid-sentence, which normally they shouldn't. Rothorpe (talk) 14:59, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
How about as a section header? Ala: 1964: research. How do you stand on this issue? ~ GabeMc (talk|contribs) 22:45, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
Section header is what I meant, indeed. Capital after colon, new sentence. Rothorpe (talk) 01:15, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
Downcasing in headings was one of the most intelligent, far-sighted decisions WP ever made. I think it was long ago. Tony (talk) 13:28, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
  • Yeah, but I still can't tell what the consensus here is for or against. Is it "1960-1970: the Beatles" or "1960-1970: The Beatles"? ~ GabeMc (talk|contribs) 04:48, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
    That is not even a question. The band's name is "The Beatles", so in that case it makes sense to use a capital letter. If the band was named "Jefferson Airplane", the answer per above would be "1960-1970: the Jefferson Airplane". I was taught in school to capitalize after a colon. New Hart's Rules, section 5.2, page 89, says "In British English, matter following a colon begins with a lower-case initial, unless it is a displayed quotation or extract, but in US style a capital letter may be used if it introduces a complete sentence." I always thought of New Hart's Rules as being a British publication, but page 122 has four colons, two of which are followed with lower case sentence fragments, two of which are followed with upper case sentence fragments. It would be pretty bizarre to say:
    the sun is up. The sky is blue. It's beautiful, and so are you.
    Not capitalizing the first sentence of a quote, just because it was after a colon. Section 4.5, page 74 of New Hart's Rules says "A colon is used after the title of a work to introduce the subtitle. It may be followed by a capital or a lower case letter (Oxford style uses a capital)." I should add, though, that if it was a sentence with a colon, such as "After the early years, 1960-1970: the Beatles did not perform very much anymore in public." But I can construct a lot better sentences than ones like that that artificially use a colon. Apteva (talk) 10:07, 24 November 2012 (UTC)
This thread has to do with headers, not quotations in running prose, e.g. 1964: Research continues or 1964: research continues. GabeMc (talk|contribs) 01:36, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

Visit From the or Visit from the?

What do you guys think about this? – ὁ οἶστρος (talk) 13:21, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

I believe the author is not able to dictate Wikipedia article titles. -- JHunterJ (talk) 14:17, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
Right. And it's "from" not "From". — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 11:55, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

Funny but not funny BLP issue in the "Commas" section

Seriously, folks, hilarious as it is, we cannot use supposition of baby-producing infidelity between a pop star and a major world leader, both living people, as silly hypothetical examples to illustrate points about comma usage. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 11:55, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

WP:NCCAPS → "shorter than five letters" rule

With regards to this and this, and in general, isn't this whole "shorter than five letters" notion leading to inconsistent, illogical results? And where does it come from? (like, what's the reference work for [English-language and otherwise] title capitalization out there?)

I mean, as is, when in mid-title, it produces things like this:

"than", "from", "till", "Until" – ... from ... Until... looks weird, does it not?

To conform to this, From Dusk Till Dawn had [rightly] just been changed to From Dusk till Dawn – problem is, it seems to be spelled From Dusk Till Dawn virtually everywhere else (a similar case would be Stranger than Fiction vs. IMDb's Stranger Than Fiction);

also, it's still Wait Until Dark, although "until" is just a one-letter-longer variant form of "till".

But if "till" were changed to "Till", we'd still have the lowercase "from", making for constructions like ... from ... Until... and ... from ... Till....

Changing "Until" to lowercase in turn would then be at variance with a whole host of other five-letters-or-longer prepositions and conjunctions.

Seriously, what the heck? I'm confused out of my mind... – ὁ οἶστρος (talk) 15:15, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

Commas should be treated as dashes, for PUNCTFOOT.

A bot has been moving footnotes to the other side of the comma, much to my chagrin. I realize it's just following orders, but it's orders don't seem right to me. A comma is often used to separate two pieces of info. Why should the source for the first fact be on the other fact's side instead of directly beside what it's sourcing? It seems like the same rationale used for allowing footnotes before the dash should apply to commas, which serve the same type of sentence-breaking purpose, but in a "softer" way. Agree? Disagree? Both? InedibleHulk (talk) 08:58, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

Disagree. It just looks ugly to write Some assertion[28]. instead of Some assertion.[28] It's even worse when styles which include the page number are used, e.g. Some assertion[28]:112. (Visually the ideal would be to have the superscript set vertically above the punctuation, but this isn't a style easily available in web pages.) Peter coxhead (talk) 10:30, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
I don't understand how one is "uglier" than the other. I agree we should have the footnote after a period, since the source backs the entire sentence (or should, anyway). I'm just talking commas here, where the source is backing only the claim before the comma. InedibleHulk (talk) 11:06, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
Ultimately this is surely about the basic aesthetics of the visual appearance, rather than about any deeper rationale or implication. As a result it's all pretty subjective, but I agree that having the superscripted footnote number appear before rather than after the comma is the uglier option. As for the dash comparison, a dash (whether en or em) of course represents a bigger break – both literally on the page and in terms of sense – hence there's more justification for keeping any footnote marker closer to the word and preceding the punctuation; and, by contrast with commas and full stops, in this case I think having it that way round simply looks better. N-HH talk/edits 11:04, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
Not an aesthetic thing. I find footnotes as ugly on one side as the other. It's a question of relevance. The source is relevant to the claim preceding it, and so should be on that claim's side of the divide. If you wrote your above dashed sentence with commas instead, it would mean the same thing. So the same rule should apply. InedibleHulk (talk) 11:08, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
Well, you asked for opinions (about a fairly minor point), and you've got two so far that make the point about aesthetics and visual appearance, both of which come down on the side of preferring to tuck the footnote just beyond the comma; and, as I said, I simply don't agree that this might suggest that the footnote does not apply to the word or phrase that precedes the comma. Yes, they're only opinions, but that's the point: it's exactly what you asked for, and there doesn't seem much point in arguing with opinions of this sort anyway. Otherwise it just looks like you didn't get the opinions you wanted. (And when it comes to en-dashes, as in my post above, they are rather obviously different from commas in that there is already a gap between the preceding word and the following punctuation mark. The point is that the footnotes markers, as used currently, do not interrupt the usual flow of text and gap in either case, whereas the change you suggest would create a gap between the footnoted word and the following comma, where there was not one previously. The application may technically be different in one way for commas and dashes, but the outcome is the same in principle, in terms of maintaining the structure and formatting you would see were there no footnotes at that point). N-HH talk/edits 11:33, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
I appreciate the opinions. I just thought they were missing my point, so clarified and reworded. You've got a good point on the gap thing. InedibleHulk (talk) 17:10, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
You could make the same arguments against the placement of references on one side of a fullstop as well, yet you have not. Why do you find these two cases different? --Izno (talk) 15:47, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
Not sure. Maybe the difference between those is purely aesthetic. InedibleHulk (talk) 17:10, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

I think that placement in the case of commas and full stops is just a matter of aesthetics. For example, if the placement were semantic, in some cases the reference should be before the full stop and in others after. E.g. It is found in Borneo and Sumatra.[12] would mean that [12] supported the whole sentence, but It is found in Borneo[11] and Sumatra[12]. would show that [12] only supported the second location. Peter coxhead (talk) 12:47, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

But that pretty much automatically means it is not a matter of aesthetics, since you just pointed out a semantic difference. The entire point of using logical quotation is that "in some cases the reference should be before the full stop and in others after", because of what the source actually said, vs. what lazy application of habitual journalistic punctuation can be (unintentionally or otherwise) used to make it seem like the source "might" have said or implied. This is the entire crux of the logical quotation "debate", which was really over several years ago. LQ is demonstrably, provably more precise, and that's really all that matters for us. This is not a WP:ENGVAR issue, because nothing at ENGVAR approaches core issues of verifiability and end-user reader interpretability. It's not like "tyre" vs. "tire" or "bonnet" vs."hood". In the most important cases, it's whether a quotation – a potentially very controversial one – is complete or (intentionally? manipulatively and misleadingly?) fragmentary. Just adhering to the discipline of using LQ when writing article text here is a very good exercise is checking oneself against small, subtle forms of WP:OR, by the way. It's mean to say it (and I'm an American), but most generally unintentional "run too far with the source" edits of that sort are by Americans, and it's because, due to 1700s typesetters' quotation being habitual in US publications, they have not learned this mental regimen of compartmentalizing *the sourced facts* from *their assumptions of what the sources "really" mean*. LQ borders on crucial to WP's credibility. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 13:07, 29 November 2012 (UTC)
There's a major difference between quotation and referencing which means that the placement of reference marks has little if any relationship to logical quotation. Defining the precise limits of the text which a reference supports is impossible with any of the standard reference systems.
  • With the Harvard system, how many sentences after an opening like "Smith (1988) said ..." are supported by the reference? Or how many sentences before and after the occurrence of "(Smith 1988)"?
  • With the superscript numbers system, how many sentences back does a number after a sentence (including its full stop) apply? If it's the last sentence in a paragraph, does it apply just to that sentence or to the whole paragraph?
Unless at least every sentence is required to have a reference, readers have to trust writers (or be prepared to check the source if they don't).
Quotations are different because their beginning and end is clearly marked (whether by quote marks or indentation). There's an sound argument that the punctuation inside these markers should, as far as it has semantic content, be that of the source, even though this produces sequences of punctuation marks which many find inelegant if not downright ugly.
I suppose it would be possible to have a referencing system which had similar beginning and end markers, but none of the standard ones do. So nothing of great substance is gained by attempting to distinguish between ... Sumatra.[12] and ... Sumatra[12]. whereas there is a small but useful information gain in distinguishing "... Sumatra." and "... Sumatra". Peter coxhead (talk) 15:59, 29 November 2012 (UTC)
  • Agree with N-HH. And to add, Nature has small superscript numerals as ref-tags, before the punctuation. I don't like it much. The problem is the large amount of white space underneath, especially if there are multiple units in the same location (I've seen five ... really ugly). Tony (talk) 13:05, 30 November 2012 (UTC)
"LQ borders on crucial to WP's credibility." — SMcCandlish. Wow. Hyperbole, much? I guess any publication that doesn't use LQ borders on lacking credibility. Quale (talk) 23:10, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

Singularity commas

A badly needed addition to the end of the serial commas section is something like the following, but made less geeky than I wrote it, if possible:

Commas can also indicate singularity, and this can be used inappropriately if sources do not support the singular. E.g., her daughter, Jane, was born in Albuquerque conveys that the subject has one, and only one, daughter and that her name is Jane. The construction Her daughter Jane was born in Albuquerque does not imply such singularity – the subject might have daughter or three. In the absence of a source that reliably confirms singularity, always default to using the form without the commas; even if plurality is not sourced, the comma-free form remains logically correct, regardless of the number of referents, and this is never wrong, only imprecise at worst. Imprecision can be resolved later with better sources.

It's 4:30 in the morning in my time zone, and I give up trying to get this MOS point across in friendlier language. It's an important thing to add in some form, though. Misuse of the singularity commas is one of the most frequent grammatical/typographical errors I correct in WP articles, day in and day out. It's certainly way more of a persistent problem than most of what pops up here as "issues". — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 12:39, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Commas (version of 11:52, 29 November 2012) includes the following guideline.
  • Pairs of commas are often used to delimit parenthetic material, forming a parenthetical remark. This interrupts the sentence less than a parenthetical remark in (round) brackets or dashes. Do not be fooled by other punctuation, which can mask the need for a comma, especially when it collides with a bracket or parenthesis, as in this example:
Incorrect: Burke and Wills, fed by local Aborigines (on beans, fish, and "ngardu") survived for a few months.
Correct:    Burke and Wills, fed by local Aborigines (on beans, fish, and "ngardu"), survived for a few months.
A new guideline can be inserted immediately after that guideline to explain the type of restrictiveness that you described.
  • Similarly, pairs of commas often determine that enclosed information is non-restrictive, and their absence indicates restrictiveness. Commas can be added for non-restrictiveness if and when more precise details are obtained.
Restrictive: Her daughters Jane and Martha were born in Albuquerque.
Non-restrictive:    Her daughters, Jane and Martha, were born in Albuquerque.
—Wavelength (talk) 17:22, 30 November 2012 (UTC)
I don't think you can mark one of those as correct and the other as incorrect. Simply point out that the commas here imply that these are the only daughters, while their lack does not imply that but may still be acceptable even if there are only two daughters. And if you want to use those terms, a more accessible explanation than what you find at the blue link would be useful. Dicklyon (talk) 20:00, 30 November 2012 (UTC)
If the word "similarly" suggests more similarity than what is actually there, then that word can be omitted. I did not intend to suggest a dichotomy between correctness and incorrectness; accordingly, I used the words "restrictive" and "non-restrictive". If a more useful link can not be found, then the words "restrictiveness" and "non-restrictive" can be unlinked and even reworded.
—Wavelength (talk) 22:25, 30 November 2012 (UTC)
But you used the red !xt macro. Probably you should just change it to the green xt. Dicklyon (talk) 22:27, 30 November 2012 (UTC)
You are correct; I missed that. I copied the other guideline and revised it, but I neglected to revise "!xt". Here is what I meant.
Restrictive: Her daughters Jane and Martha were born in Albuquerque.
Non-restrictive:    Her daughters, Jane and Martha, were born in Albuquerque.
—Wavelength (talk) 23:22, 30 November 2012 (UTC)
Except that neither construct is either restrictive or non-restrictive and both could be read as meaning two or more daughters and both could be read as meaning only two daughters. Two of her daughters, Jane and Martha vs. Her two daughters, Jane and Martha, is clearer. I do not think that the MOS should be trying to give advice on good writing, such as is found in Strunk & White. The MOS is for explaining how we do things in Wikipedia. Apteva (talk) 06:10, 1 December 2012 (UTC)
I have provided feedback on how a new guideline could be expressed, but I prefer that this information about commas not be included in the main page of WP:MOS. It is important information, but it is not as important as that. If each editor has a guideline wish list of 50,000 bytes, and if the union of all guideline wish lists has 500,000 bytes (from accommodating every wish for an added guideline), then something more important might be lost if and when we accommodate someone's wish for the main page to be smaller. All editors should be encouraged to study English grammar and English punctuation, and not to be wrongly influenced by broadcast journalists who wrongly avoid pauses (perhaps to avoid losing audiences).
[I am definitely not advocating (for) a reduction in the size of WP:MOS—the present size is 160,930 bytes—but to every editor who proposes an addition, I would pose these questions: "What would you remove from it in exchange, (in order) to satisfy editors who (do) advocate (for) a reduction?" and "What would be your justification for such an exchange?" and "How can we objectively measure relative importance?"]
—Wavelength (talk) 17:34, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Modification to MOS:IDENTITY

A few weeks ago, there was a proposal at WP:VPP to modify the wording of MOS:IDENTITY, specifically Point 2; the archived discussion is here. It gained some traction, but it died down without any kind of resolution, so I want to raise it again. The specific change being sought is;

"Any person whose gender might be questioned should be referred to by the gendered nouns, pronouns, and possessive adjectives that reflect that person's gender at the time of notability as reflected within the prevalence of mainstream reliable sources. Identity changes thereafter should be dealt with chronologically but should always follow the conventions used with prevalence in mainstream sources."

Instead of copying over the rationale, the link to the archive shows Berean Hunter's rationale, and other examples are provided in the thread. If people think this would be better discussed elsewhere, that's fine, but since the waters at VPP have been tested this seems like the most logical place. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 17:49, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

I made a similar proposal back in May here. I agree with Blade that we need to follow what mainstream sources say rather than get ahead of these sources by making a judgment based on an individual's statements. GabrielF (talk) 18:11, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
Does this mean we'll have to change Template:MOS-TW?? Georgia guy (talk) 18:40, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
Yeah, it would. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 18:46, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
What would the template's words have to change to?? Georgia guy (talk) 18:48, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
Hadn't thought about it... that'll obviously need some work. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 18:55, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

Can you clear up the exact meaning of this proposed rule?? Is it any similar to the following:

Trans women who are notable for being trans women should be referred to as she/her. However, trans women notable primarily for an event before the operation of surgery for a reason that has nothing to do with being transsexual should be referred to as he/him as if they were cisgender men. Georgia guy (talk) 22:29, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

Almost. The first sentence is right, but the idea is to refer to, say, Laura Jane Grace as "he" when he was identifying as Tom Gabel and "she" after coming out in public as a she. Make sense? The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 00:10, 5 October 2012 (UTC)
You mean, we should assume that trans women actually were men, not women trapped in men's bodies, before the operation?? Georgia guy (talk) 00:13, 5 October 2012 (UTC)
To couch it in less loaded, more policy-based language, it's to avoid outright misleading revisionist history such as "she captained her tennis team at Horace Mann" (in the article on Renée Richards); specifics are in the linked VPP conversation. We at Wikipedia aren't here to play psychologists and pass judgment on whether or not they were really men or just women all along, we're here to report facts; in the cases of Grace and Richards, among others, they were notable under different names and sexes and our articles should reflect that. And this also works the other way too; the article on Andreas Krieger should be treated the same (and as of writing is actually a good example of what I'm shooting for). The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 01:34, 5 October 2012 (UTC)
Notable under different names and sexes?? This phrase actually does imply the statement I was asking above whether we should assume. Georgia guy (talk) 19:14, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
The sex the person was commonly believed to be at the time. I think this is a slam-dunk. We do not — we must not — take a position on whether a person's "real" sex is. The choice to retroactively apply a sex change to previous notable events is nothing short of advocacy of a particular point of view; it must stop. --Trovatore (talk) 20:02, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
And likewise the choice to refer to people by the genders to which they were misassigned at birth is also advocacy of a point of view -- it's a claim that the person writing the article knows better than the subject what their name and gender are. Stealth Munchkin (talk) 01:12, 27 October 2012 (UTC)
In the case where we have the person saying "I am gender X, I have always been gender X, and things were misreported by the media". I agree with you. We rarely have such a statement. Quite often the person THEMSELVES represented themselves as the other gender at times in the past. Saying they did not is a lie, and unenclyclopedic, regardless of what they may have felt. Gaijin42 (talk) 01:43, 27 October 2012 (UTC)
In the case of Laura Jane Grace, we have someone who actively sought to be and maintain a public image as a man; rewriting the article to state otherwise (as some people attempted to do before someone hacked out a temporary solution) is downright inaccurate. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 02:21, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

This section can be archived, just like any section of a talk page. I remember from 2004-2006 the "Georgia moving poll" which was wasn't archived for a long time. (It was at Talk:Georgia; now it's in an archive.) Can we put this discussion in a similar area so that it won't be archived too quickly?? Georgia guy (talk) 17:00, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

Not sure... anyone familiar with this talkpage have suggestions? The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 22:15, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
Think I've got it... now on with the discussion. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 22:31, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
I support this change. This issue is also coming up in The Wachowskis article as Larry/Lana has now come out after transitioning male->female. Obviously most notable for events when she was identified explicitly as male "The Wachowski Brothers" etc. However, renewed notability with the recent release of Cloud Atlas where she is doing interviews etc as Lana. General lede/summary information should use the prefered gender/name. However, historical information should use the gender used by that person at the time, as reported in reliable sources. it is WP:OR to assume we know what they considered their gender in the past; WP:OR to assume they considered themselves "trapped" etc, unless they have explicitly said so. Not everyone's LBGT path is the same. The guidance provided in the current MOS leads to innacurate information - the given example of "He gave birth->He became a parent" in particular is a loss of precision unacceptable for an encyclopdia. There are a multitude of ways to become a parent (father, give birth, adopt, just take responsibility for, etc) and removing a factual statement because the gender doesnt make sense is inaccurate. Gaijin42 (talk) 16:18, 25 October 2012 (UTC)
Perhaps we can add something to say prefer neutral language wherever possible where the historical information disagrees with current preference, or add qualifying statements such as "John so and so, who prior to their gender transition identifed as Jane, gave birth" etc. Gaijin42 (talk) 16:36, 25 October 2012 (UTC)
We should keep the current rule, in which we use the individual's most recent preferred pronoun. If a source from 1986 says that singer Crystal Zing was born in Nashville, but Zing later digs up her birth certificate and finds out that she was really born in Memphis and only grew up in Nashville, then we should no continue to say that she was born in Nashville, even though an otherwise reliable source says that she was. That source was wrong. It is the same idea with people who undergo gender transition, like L. Wachowski. The sources (like most of the rest of the world) made a good-faith mistake in referring to Wachowski as male. More accurate information has come to light showing that Wachowski is female. Darkfrog24 (talk) 00:32, 26 October 2012 (UTC)
You are making an assumption that you know that Wachowski considered themselves female at that point in the past (and in this case when they explicitly identified themselves repeatedly as "Wachowski Brothers". Not everyone who is trans has felt that way their entire life. You might not claim Zing was born in Nashville. But you might say that she SAID she was born in Nashville until X, which was true before the birth certificate, and will be true forever. To say that they always claimed to be born in Memphis is inaccurate. Gaijin42 (talk) 01:07, 26 October 2012 (UTC)
Not everyone who is trans has not felt that way their entire life. If our aim is to respect trans people's subjective experiences, shouldn't we allow for the possibility that some trans people will make statements along the lines of, "I have always been a woman," and respect that when they do? On a related note, while it is necessarily the case that trans people found their identities before being public about them, it is not necessarily the case that the prevalence of "mainstream, reliable sources" will reflect their identities in a timely manner. Indeed in the case of some trans people -- I have in mind certain historical figures and trans people whose only mention in mainstream media is in obituaries in which they have been misgendered -- this will never happen. -- Marie Paradox (talk) 02:38, 26 October 2012 (UTC)
This is an encyclopedia, not an LGBT publication; we don't rewrite history to pretend peoples' previous names/identities didn't exist. Just as we don't refer to Eminem (I can't believe I'm using him as an example for anything) by his stage name until he himself used it, so we should do the same here. It's one thing when someone wasn't notable at all before transitioning (c.f. Andrea James, which is completely fine), articles on these people wouldn't be affected. However, in extreme cases we get articles like Dee Palmer; due to the current rule, the article is misleading and almost unreadable. We're referring to Palmer as "she" 35 years before Palmer transitioned. Palmer is almost exclusively notable for having played in Jethro Tull, and through that entire period was known as David Palmer; to pretend otherwise is 1. outright advocacy for a particular point of view on the matter (the only places I've ever heard Palmer referred to as a she while with Jethro Tull are LGBT publications and Wikipedia) and 2. misinforms our readers, because no one would have referred to Palmer as a she during that period. At Laura Jane Grace people have at least managed to hack out a decent solution for the time being; however, the same problem described above exists with the Renée Richards article and is spectacularly bad at Theresa Sparks; the proposed wording would be able to resolve that. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 03:57, 26 October 2012 (UTC)
Agree with Blade. It's an encyclopedia not an exercise in making people feel good about themselves. Otherwise any person with a biography on here could complain that they're not happy about the section concerning their adultery, massive fraud, or the murder of half a dozen people and we should remove it because it offends them and they say that they don't feel they ever really killed all those people, it was the voices in their head. The encylcopedia should reflect the history as it is, Lana Wachowski can have felt like a woman since she was born but she identified herself as male, went by male monikers, filed credits for films as Larry Wachowski or The Wachowski Brothers, filled out forms as a male, that is the reality of the situation. I raed the above link to Laura Jane Grace and an IP on there actually advocated removing all mention whatsoever of the name Tom Gabel and retroactively modifying the history of the person as if there was never a man named Tom Gabel in existence. It's ridiculous over sensitivity and not what the place is about, otherwise that album cover with the underage girl on it would have been removed quite sharpish. Darkwarriorblake (talk) 22:10, 27 October 2012 (UTC)
Darkwarriorblake, if the problem is that some people want to remove all mention of the name -- not merely every instance in which the name is used to refer to Laura -- then why not deal with that problem? Why not explain to the user what "refers to" means and that nothing in the MOS forbids wording such as, "Laura Jane Grace, whom people used to call . . . ." In The Wachowskis the problem is almost the opposite; I have been trying to remove every instance in which Lana's old name is used to refer to her while retaining mere mentions of her old name, but another editor insists on referring to her by her old name. To prevent future violations of this sort should we revise the MOS to say that all mentions of trans people's former names is forbidden? (And, just to be clear, I am definitely not proposing this.) I do not see how that would be more overkill than what you are suggesting. -- Marie Paradox (talk) 13:55, 28 October 2012 (UTC)
Blade, when have I ever advocated "rewrit"ing "history"? There is no reason we cannot acknowledge people's previous names while still referring to them in accordance with their new names, e.g., "John, whose name used to be Jane, lived with his parents in Wyoming until 1983." (This is exactly the sort of solution I have time and time again said I would support regarding The Wachowskis.) While editors may not refer to Eminem as Eminem while writing about his past, we do frequently refer to Mark Twain as Twain, even while talking about his childhood. We cannot avoid "outright advocacy" by writing articles as though a trans person is, say, Jane one day and John the next; that is a not very subtle suggestion that the correct view of trans people is a particular view that real people have advocated. This is an encyclopedia -- not an anti-LGBT publication. -- Marie Paradox (talk) 13:55, 28 October 2012 (UTC)
(Note; only a response to the section addressed to me) The names aren't an issue; it has been worked out that we use the proper nouns publicly in use at the time period being written about (in addition to Laura, The Wachowskis and Angela Morley are written this way), and MOS:IDENTITY contains nothing suggesting otherwise. A better non-transgender comparison is Muhammad Ali, as unlike Eminem or Twain he actually did change his name. We avoid advocacy by doing exactly the same with gendered pronouns. To use the Renée Richards example, the early life section is actively misleading; contrary to what the pronouns in the article state, Raskind was not attending a girl's school and captaining the girl's tennis team (Horace Mann at that time separated boys and girls, but then as now was one school, parenthetical added 16:46, 28 October 2012 (UTC)). It's not anti-LGBT to do what I'm suggesting, it's accurately documenting peoples' lives. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 15:27, 28 October 2012 (UTC)
The Renée Richards example is a false analogy. If she was in a class intended for boys, it was inaccurate to say she was in a class intended for girls. However, there is nothing inaccurate about using names or pronouns based on one's current situation. That is why we can say that someone named Isabella was born on such and such a day, even if Isabella did not have a name until some time after she was born. Indeed this is the pervasive practice in such situations. If there is disagreement over whether, say, a trans woman really was a woman, the only neutral, natural way to handle it is to call her by the currently used pronoun; it is only when we start calling her by anything else that we take a side in the matter.
Incidentally, the proposal, though being offered as neutral, is advocating more than I have suggested above. The proposal does not take all reliable sources into consideration; it simply privileges some sources (i.e. mainstream media sources that were written at the time) over others (e.g. mainsteam media sources that were written after the fact, the style guides of the same mainstream media sources, revised birth certificates, and genetic or neurological research that shows that trans people have had their genders from birth). If the proposal were to go into effect, we could not even take retractions written after the time of notability. Do I need to explain why painting ourselves into a corner like this is a bad idea?
-- Marie Paradox (talk) 16:04, 29 October 2012 (UTC)
There are two problems with this. One, how do we deal with the fact that Richards has records under the name Richard Raskind as a male tennis player? The current approach makes the entire Early life section seem to contradict itself. Secondly, I'll once again point to the Dee Palmer article as evidence why the current one-size-fits-all approach breaks down. As I've pointed out above, the article right now makes no sense (anecdotally confirmed by both people I've asked IRL to attempt to read it and by someone at Talk:The Wachowskis, which I'm sure you've seen) because we're going back 40 years to retroactively change someone's sex; Palmer was known as David through the entire time he was playing in Jethro Tull. The goal here is to remove these instances where articles are being left unreadable because of this. I've asked in a couple venues for some fresh input, so hopefully we can get a few people; I'm not sure whether or not this is RfC-worthy, but we can certainly do that if people think it's warranted. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 22:23, 5 November 2012 (UTC)
I am not advocating an all-or-nothing approach, though that is exactly what the proposal above is. If Kim's old name was Tim and Tim is a notable name for whatever reason, then we can include sentences along the lines of, "Kim, whose name used to be Tim, left her small town at the age of 23." This gives the reader all the information they need about Kim's name without referring to Kim as Tim. Looking at the "Early Life" section of the Renée Richards article as it currently stands[8], I do not see what the problem is. I must confess that I have not collected anecdata myself, but I suspect that if I asked the people in the circles I run in whether the section makes sense, at least 90% would say yes. If anyone does not understand why Richards would say she was raised a "boy", the mention of her old name provides a clue. And if readers have trouble understanding an article that is naturally, accurately, and sensitively worded, shouldn't our approach be to give them the information they need to understand it instead of protecting them from the aspects of reality that challenge people's worldview? -- Marie Paradox (talk) 05:47, 7 November 2012 (UTC)
There is no entirely neutral way of dealing with the issue of gendered pronouns for transgender individuals. If we refer to a male-to-female individual as "he," then we are taking a position. If we refer to a male-to-female individual as "she," then we are taking a position. If we switch back and forth, we're taking a position (and we look stupid). Because these three options are roughly equal with respect to politics, we should choose the person's most recent preferred pronoun because, unlike the other two options, it is polite.
What that does not involve, however, is revisionist history. Referring to Lara Wachowski as "she" does not make the assertion that she was born with female genitalia, only that she is properly referred to by a female pronoun. The way to prevent the readers from misunderstanding is to clearly refer to Lara Wachowski as a transgendered person by saying "Lara Wachowski, then Larry Wachowski," or "Lara Wachowski, who would undergo gender transition at the age of [XX]..." Any biographical article that that does not acknowledge a person's gender transition clearly needs to be rewritten in the first place. Whatever the politics of the matter, it's an important and relevant part of a person's life, at least as important as what school he or she attended or whom he or she married.
In this way, referring to a male-to-female individual as "she" while saying that she went to a single-gender school is not misleading so long as the article either 1. states that this is a male-to-female transgender individual or 2. refers to the school as an all-boys school. Darkfrog24 (talk) 16:10, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

Request for comment

Should the above proposed change MOS:IDENTITY Point 2 be instituted, or should the current wording be retained? The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 18:24, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

I think my view is pretty much evident from the above, and hopefully we can get some more input from an RfC. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 18:24, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

The current wording should be retained for the following reasons:
  1. It is common, if not usual, to refer to a person at any point in the past using the referential words that currently refer to them. People, including Wikipedia's editors, refer to El Greco as El Greco, even when writing about the artist's childhood.[9] Similarly, though there is a time when it is acceptable to say, "It's a girl!", we would not say, "It was born in 1983," when talking about someone who is currently an adult. People often flout the common practice when they are being sensationalistic (e.g. "He's a she!") or when they are exercising poetic license (e.g. "Cassius Clay was born in Louisville . . . Muhammad Ali was born in Miami"[10]). Whatever the merits of these styles of writing elsewhere, it does not fit an encyclopedic tone.
  2. Referring to someone using the words that currently refer never suggests anything about what terms were appropriate in the past (see Point 1). On the other hand, using different pronouns does indicate that they were the right pronouns in the past, even though some people view trans people as always having been the genders they currently identify with, and we might not know how trans people identified in the past. This raises questions regarding neutrality and sensitivity.
  3. The proposed change is incoherent. If it were adopted, how would editors handle sentences like "Lana Wachowski has been a director since 1995"? This concerns a period that begins at a time when the media referred to Lana as "he" and ends at a time when they referred to her as "she". According to the proposed edit, we must therefore refer to Lana as both "he" and "she".
  4. The adoption of the proposed change would allow or even require editors to refer to trans people using phrases like "he-turned-she" (as the New York Post once did[11]). This is unwieldy and insensitive.
  5. As I argued above[12], the proposed change would put unreasonable limits on what would be considered reliable sources.
  6. The proposed edit would require us to disregard the recommendations of trans advocacy groups.
As far as I can see, the only widely agreed upon rationale for making the proposed change seems to be that it would eliminate confusion. There are already people who have been making edits along the lines of what the proposed change would require, and I personally find the fruits of their good faith edits to be more confusing than the text they are trying to fix. In any case, there are better ways to reduce confusion. If the problem is that some readers are not acquainted with trans people's new pronouns, the current MOS allows us to use a wide range of methods to indicate how the person was once identified (e.g. "John, formerly known as Jane, was born in 1983"). If the problem is that readers do not understand trans people, the current MOS does not forbid us from linking to pages (trans woman, trans man, etc.) that will help them understand.
At this point the only relevant change I would like to see made to the MOS would be to make it explicit that trans people should be referred to using not only the pronouns but also the names by which they are currently identified.
-- Marie Paradox (talk) 19:19, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
I believe that the wording should be retained and that we should use the most recent pronoun. 1. Confusion can be removed with careful rewording, as Marie Paradox says. 2. We can't avoid making political statements about trans people no matter what we do, and using the most recent pronoun is the most polite of our options. When accuracy is a matter of debate, courtesy can serve as a tiebreaker. 3. Personally, I see the use of a more recent pronoun as a correction of inaccurate previous reports. Darkfrog24 (talk) 23:43, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
Your #3 statement reflects advocacy and historical revisionism. How could previous reports be inaccurate when they were correctly reporting the identity professed by the subjects at the time? Those reports didn't get anything wrong.
 — Berean Hunter (talk) 14:11, 15 November 2012 (UTC)
If they said "he," when the person was really "she," even if the person in question also mistakenly believed herself to be "he," then yes they did get something wrong. That's not revisionism. That's a correction. If we dug up Franklin Roosevelt's birth certificate and found out that he was born in 1883 and not in 1882, changing all the "1882s" to "1883s" wouldn't be revisionism, even though many reliable sources say "1882."
I hold the belief that transgender individuals discover that they always were the gender to which they socially and sometimes surgically transition. I figure you don't, but that doesn't have anything to do with historical revisionism. No one is trying to claim that Chaz Bono wasn't raised as a girl. I would be eager to correct any article that claimed that his parents thought he was a boy. Darkfrog24 (talk) 02:50, 1 December 2012 (UTC)
  • Support proposal which would bring WP more in line with sources and prevent historical revisionism.
     — Berean Hunter (talk) 14:11, 15 November 2012 (UTC)
  • Support the proposal in spirit but I might tweak the wording a bit This is a thorny issue. My major concern here is that the current wording creates a loophole that seems to preference personal statements above reliable sources. I think that loophole needs to be closed. When, say, The New York Times, refers to a person before their transition as a male and after their transition as a female, but we decide to use female pronouns for all stages of their life, as the MOS current advises, we are taking an advocacy position that contravenes reliable secondary sources. From a stylistic vantage point, using one pronoun throughout an article is confusing and switching pronouns in the middle of an article is confusing. Using one pronoun is confusing in that it seems to imply that the person was never a man (which may be some peoples' opinion but certainly confuses me when I read about "she" doing things that are male). Additionally, if the date when the person transitioned is not explicitly mentioned than it is unclear when she transitioned. Switching pronouns in the middle of the article is confusing in that the reader may find it difficult to follow who we're talking about. Switching pronouns seems a bit clearer to me stylistically. The current proposal could be tweaked to be a bit clearer - particularly the part "...that reflect that person's gender at the time of notability..."
    • Here is a draft rewrite: "When writing about a person whose gender might be questioned, editors should be guided by the usage of gendered nouns, pronouns, and possessive adjectives preferred by mainstream reliable sources. When summarizing this person's life, for instance in the lede section of an article, editors should use the terms preferred by recent sources. When writing about events in a person's past, editors should use the terms by which that person was referred to at that time but should always follow the conventions used with prevalence in mainstream sources." GabrielF (talk) 04:17, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
  • Oppose the proposal; retain current version – for the reasons outlined by Marie above. Being more compatible with older sources, as Berean Hunter suggests, is of no particular value; changing the reference terminology is not saying that the older sources are inaccurate, just that there's a modern modern way to convey the information.. It is better to respect the present, and to respect the subject of the BLP. Dicklyon (talk) 04:20, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
    This implies, for instance, that the sources referring to Richard Raskind playing in the 1974 men's 35 and over tennis tournament were somehow wrong. At that time, Raskind lived as a male and played in a men's tennis tournament; how is referring to a "she" during this period not revisionist history? It has nothing to do with respect (I certainly think very highly of Renée Richards and what she did), it's a matter of accuracy; pretending that Richard Raskind was a "she" playing in male tennis tournaments and fathering a child is actively misleading. To provide an NYT example, this is a great article on Renée Richards. And it's also worth noting that I think GabrielF may be onto some better wording; I'll look it over in the morning. And incidentally, this doesn't just affect BLPs; Angela Morley has been dead for a few years now, but the article still looked atrocious until I hacked out a semi-decent solution (it works for that article, but it wouldn't be feasible for articles like Dee Palmer). The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 06:58, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
  • Support. - Seems no different than referring to Ali as Cassius Clay pre-conversion. Makes sense to me. ~ GabeMc (talk|contribs) 07:18, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
  • Oppose - Roughly speaking, per Dicklyon, I would prefer to err on the side of stylistic respect for all our article subjects, and see this as more a matter of style (e.g,. Manual of Style) and respect than a matter of conveying some external "truth". Two additional comments. First, I've seen MOS:IDENTITY used (see recent edits, for example, at Wendy Carlos) to suggest that complete exclusion of prior names is appropriate. E.g., [13]. (Added note: this turns out to be a bad example since "Walter" is used elsewhere in the article, but perhaps you take my point.) That seems a step too far to me, there's encyclopedic damage to not including the oft-sourced name "Walter Carlos" in that article--while I would argue for not using in general discussion, I do feel that it deserves mention and connection in the article, much as would any alternate name. Second, there's a question about Template:MOS-TW--as the creator of those templates, it was my intent to *communicate* consensus, not dictate it. Whatever we decide here should be reflected into Template:MOS-TW and Template:MOS-TM, of course. --j⚛e deckertalk 19:21, 23 November 2012 (UTC)
    On rereading the supports, I think I can perhaps draw my own line in this more clearly, I find the use of the phrase "historical revisionism" is telling. To the extent that an article, clearly, provides reliably sourced information that someone transitioned and changed their name, when, and so forth, how we treat pronouns and proper names beyond that point is, in my view, not a "revision" at all. It is a stylistic choice, not one of the essential meaning we are attempting to convey. And one properly guided by issues of style, respect for living persons, and so on. However, to the extent that we would entirely *omit* properly sourced prior names or transitions, that would (in my view) be a form of historical revisionism, and of course deeply problematic. Perhaps this better captures what I suspect is the fundamental difference in view between myself and the proposer. --j⚛e deckertalk 20:08, 23 November 2012 (UTC)
  • Oppose/Retain current per reasons by Marie above, especially #2. It also adds undo weight to the change of presentation by constantly and confusing switching pronouns used for someone. Especially for articles that are not organized chronically. PaleAqua (talk) 04:06, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
    That seems to be advocating OR; since some people might not have ever considered themselves their cisgender, it falls on us to right great wrongs and "correct" past and present sources (c.f. the NYT link above). There's a reason that link doesn't take you to a section on preferred editing practices. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 18:54, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
    I don't see what original research has to do with it. By having a style guideline with a nice clear guideline about what pronoun to use we side step a lot of issues. We should use what sources reflect their current presentation is instead of trying to arbitrarily flip back and forth between pronouns based on what the pronouns the particular source uses. I don't see about why we even have to answer the question of if and when the subject of the article decided/realized knew that they were cis/trans/bi-gendered. Going down that avenue with our style guides seems like it would lead more to original research and less article stability. What happens if you have an older source that talks about a more recent time using the birth gender and an newer source talking about an earlier time using the presented gender? Normally in the case of transsexual and transgender individuals you will get a lot of articles that take not only about their transition but their very early life. Whereas the notability under the birth gender might only have articles about stuff that happen around the time that they became notable. Changing the wording just seems like it would invite edit warning and selective source bias. PaleAqua (talk) 22:21, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
    It's original research because it requires us to make a judgment about what that person might have identified as for parts of his/her life. We'd be going out of our way to "correct" sources which are in many cases particularly clear. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 19:19, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
    I'm suggesting avoiding making a judgement call—which would be OR—by using the current presentation, mentioning the presentation change / name change etc. as needed. Of course if using quotes from sources those should be not be edited even if they use a different presentation. Even if the sources are in the past the writing of the article is the present. Should articles on places of antiquity only use names from the original language even if there is a modern common English name? PaleAqua (talk) 00:33, 9 December 2012 (UTC)
  • Oppose Per PaleAqua above. The proposed change is confusing and non-encyclopedic. --Sue Rangell ✍ ✉ 01:54, 30 November 2012 (UTC)
  • I believe that Wikipedia should use the most recent preferred pronoun throughout the article, explaining and acknowledging the gender transition wherever necessary. Darkfrog24 (talk) 02:39, 1 December 2012 (UTC)
  • Use the most recent preferred pronoun throughout the article. I substantially agree with Darkfrog24's comment of 16:10, 28 October 2012 (UTC). -sche (talk) 06:39, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Centralisation of MOS-type pages (tidying up)

In mid-2011 there was an effort to move all MOS-type pages into MOS-space. There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject South America/Falkland Islands work group/Units whether or not the page WP:FALKLANDSUNITS should likewise be moved into MOS-space. Martinvl (talk) 08:01, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

Why does that page even exist? Is there something special about the Falklands that they need particular advice about what units to use? Seems unlikely. Dicklyon (talk) 21:56, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
Check the page. They do use odd units there, such as stones for a person's weight. Apteva (talk) 20:08, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Proposed redesign of image policy structure

I've suggest the redesign of the Manual of Style page WP:Manual of Style/Images at WP:VPP#Image use policy. I should not that whether or not the guideline page is part of the MoS is a side issue, best not get bogged down with it. So in theory I've pitched it outside the MoS, with the effect of removing the current WP:Manual of Style/Images from the MoS, hence the post here. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 20:01, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

Three corrections

Per a request at WP:AN/RFC, this RfC (originally dated 7 October 2012) is closed with a consensus not to change the present wording. -Nathan Johnson (talk) 18:01, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Please comment if there are any questions. Apteva (talk) 00:30, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

It appears that the example "the Uganda–Tanzania War; the Roman–Syrian War; the east–west runway; the Lincoln–Douglas debates; a carbon–carbon bond" while not commenting that it is a little long (do we really need so many examples?), is in need of two corrections; in the first example, "the Uganda–Tanzania War", war should not be capitalized (see google book search), and it should be "but not the Roman–Syrian War (as Roman-Syrian War is a proper name)". The article at Uganda–Tanzania War should also be moved, to Uganda–Tanzania war, and if it is a proper name, a better example used, and it be moved to Uganda-Tanzania War. (already moved) [and now it needs to be moved, but there is an RM to decide that...] Apteva (talk) 23:08, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

  • Comment. I have reverted Apteva's undiscussed move of Uganda–Tanzania War, which was apparently done to prove a point here and not in the interest of the article itself.
    This section attracted no comment before Apteva elevated it to an RFC, probably because Apteva is pushing on proper names, en dashes, and hyphens at several forums at the same time – including an RM, now closed as not moved, for the long-settled Mexican–American War. I have explicitly said, on this talkpage and elsewhere, that general issues with WP:MOS guidelines should be raised as general issues, right here. Not at several locations, and not as particular sparring points. It seems to me that this RFC is yet another waste of time. I comment on one detail only: yes, obviously many examples are needed in the guideline. Even more than we have now, perhaps. Some editors are still refusing to accept the principle it is based on as consensual; and Apteva, for example, is playing hard by appeal to inconsequential differences among the present examples. If any element of the long and meticulous community consultation on dashes in 2011 needs review, let it be done in an orderly and informed way. Some recommended background reading for those interested: the article Proper noun, most of which is now accurate. (It needs a move to Proper name.)
    NoeticaTea? 21:48, 7 October 2012 (UTC)
    It was a correct move. Uganda–Tanzania war is not a proper noun and is not capitalized. Nor was it undiscussed. The date and time in the above discussion shows that it was pointed out on September 27 that it should be moved, and that it was not moved until October 5 (and a check of the edit history will show that I noted that it had been moved when I opened the RfC on October 7). Clearly plenty of time and some for anyone to disagree with the proposal. Seeing none, I took it as approval, not an unusual response. Should an RM to move proper noun come to my attention I would object. And I think that would be the consensus. The word phrase "proper noun" did not enter use until about 1890. The dictionary, if it contains "proper name", defines it as proper noun. The two terms are interchangeable. I have called for an RfC because I am not going to get into an edit war over the Revert. In the BRD cycle, after R comes D. There had been no response, so I am asking for a response. I do not believe that a review of a clearly embarrassing discussion needs to be reviewed. Proper names use hyphens and our MOS says so. 10,000 books use a hyphen and maybe a 100 use something else. Case closed. I would like to remind everyone to focus on the issue, not the editor, though. WP is never an authority on anything, proper nouns included. WP articles can never be used as a RS. Apteva (talk) 02:40, 8 October 2012 (UTC)
These topics have already been the focus of much long and pointless argumentation that wasted the time of multiple editors, time that could have been spent elsewhere, like in creating content. I don't understand the point of reopening these discussions so soon after they have finally and painfully been settled by consensus. --Neotarf (talk) 08:03, 8 October 2012 (UTC)
Congratulations to Noetica, the proper noun article has just been cited by no less an authority than Mark Liberman at Language Log. [14] --Neotarf (talk) 08:09, 8 October 2012 (UTC)
Hey, that's good for WP's reputation. Tony (talk) 13:26, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
There are still improvements that are needed - fix the misleading and incorrect examples. If someone wants to argue that proper nouns are not capitalized or that sentences do not need periods, not questions of course, then certainly their time is better spent elsewhere, but if someone insists that Roman-Syrian War is spelled with an endash they will have a very hard time supporting that premise. Is War capitalized in "Uganda-Tanzania War"? Possibly, but if it is the punctuation is a hyphen and not an appropriate example of where to use an endash. If war is not capitalized, Uganda–Tanzania war is an example of where an endash is used, and the capitalization needs to be fixed. In both cases the current article needs to be moved - either to Uganda-Tanzania War or to Uganda–Tanzania war. There are always people who misspell things, and use incorrect punctuation, and that is why there is an edit tab and a move option. Apteva (talk) 03:49, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

Uganda–Tanzania war

Uganda–Tanzania war has not "achieved proper name status" and should be spelled with a lower case w in war. If it has "achieved proper name status", then it should be spelled with a hyphen. When something has not achieved "proper name status", it is simply a construct of words, using punctuation to convey meaning. Since it is a war between Uganda and Tanzania, an endash is used, instead of a hyphen. While few editors would notice the nuance, it is reasonable to be correct. Whether dashes should be allowed in titles is a discussion which belongs at WP:TITLE, not at WP:MOS. Apteva (talk) 07:24, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

Roman-Syrian War

As this has achieved "proper name status" it is be spelled with a hyphen, using common usage. Likewise, Mexican-American War is also spelled with a hyphen, in the vast majority of sources. Apteva (talk) 07:24, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

Comet Hale-Bopp

This example: "Comet Hale–Bopp or just Hale–Bopp (discovered by Hale and Bopp)" needs to be removed because used either with or without the word "Comet" this is still a proper noun and therefore uses a hyphen, as supported by the thousands of reliable sources that use this punctuation. According to Google Books there are 31,900 sources, the overwhelming majority of which use a hyphen. It is not even close. Apteva (talk) 22:47, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

Nonsense. Many of those reliable sources do use the en dash, which confirms that it is simply a styling choice. The fact that many sources have a style that substitutes hyphens in the traditional role of the en dash, and that the Google books OCR can't tell the difference, does not mean that WP needs to adopt that style. There's nothing special or unique about Hale–Bopp here. Your concept of "proper noun, therefore hyphen" is unsupportable hallucination. Dicklyon (talk) 01:01, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
Not nonsense at all. There are some sources that do use en dash, but if there were many, as in many more than use hyphen, then statistically at least one would have appeared in the first ten. Out of the first 100 how many use hyphen? Out of the first 1,000 how many? Google books has 32,900 to look through. I strongly disagree with the supposition that an OCR can not tell the difference as there are a huge number of occurrences in google books of both endashes where they are appropriate and em dashes where they are appropriate. While it is far easier to do a text search, I am completely confident in my assessment that there are no endashes in the first 10 results that I obtained. As was pointed out before, any suggestion of "many" needs to also include "out of how many", as saying there are 432 examples of using Hale-Bopp with an endash sounds impressive until you find out, say, that that was out of 32,000, with 29,000 using a hyphen and 3,000 using a space, just as a made up example. Proper noun hyphen is not fiction. It is in our MOS and I really have yet to see any example of a proper noun that does not use a hyphen. I am not saying they do not exist. I can certainly imagine that if someone named Hale-Bopp and someone named Lennard-Jones discovered a comet it could be called the "Hale-Bopp–Lennard-Jones Comet, to distinguish between one discovered by Hale and someone named Bopp-Lennard-Jones, or by one person named Hale-Bopp-Lennard and one named Jones. Normally exceptions to rules are pretty easy to find. It is academic to find them, but still interesting, and I really have not seen one. One editor perhaps looked for examples of endashes in WP article titles and came up with two that are not proper nouns and two that are using incorrect punctuation on WP. Since when has WP ever been considered a reliable source? Apteva (talk) 04:27, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
Nonsense. Several of them DO in fact appear in the first page of 10 hits on Google Book Search (with previews). You need to actually look at the previews to see how they are styled, as the OCR does not distinguish hyphen from en dash usually (and sometimes it sees en dashes as em dashes—I was going to say like this one, but it turns out that one really did get typeset with an em dash, due to some amateur typographer's blunder). If en dashes do show up sometimes in snippets, in probably from books that they got electronically, as with this one, where you can tell they got it electronically because if you zoom way in the letters aren't blurry or pixelated; they're being rendered from text. The same effect is often seen in Google Scholar, where papers with en dashes often show up as hyphen, but not always; in spite of that, nearly half show up on the first scholar results page with en dash. It's not an usual style like you're making it out to be. Dicklyon (talk) 05:33, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
Am I hearing an echo? 5/20 is a long way from "nearly half". It is 3 to 1 in favor of using a hyphen. Which is correct based on that information? Clearly a hyphen. Apteva (talk) 06:35, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

For now I have changed "Comet" to comet, per p. 48 of the New Oxford Dictionary for Scientific Writers and Editors, and per our article on the comet, which does not capitalize the word comet - hence an endash is correct as it is not treated as a proper noun. There is an open RM to move the page to Comet Hale-Bopp, treating it as a proper noun. Sources clearly favor proper noun status. Halley's comet, on the other hand, does not favor proper noun status and can also be corrected. Apteva (talk) 16:28, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

Please see WP:Policies and guidelines#Not part of the encyclopedia: "The policies, guidelines, and process pages themselves are not part of the encyclopedia proper. Consequently, they do not generally need to conform with the content standards. It is therefore not necessary to provide reliable sources to verify Wikipedia's administrative pages, or to phrase Wikipedia procedures or principles in a neutral manner, or to cite an outside authority in determining Wikipedia's editorial practices. Instead, the content of these pages is controlled by community-wide consensus, and the style should emphasize clarity, directness, and usefulness to other editors."
The "New Oxford Dictionary for Scientific Writers and Editors" does not have any authority over Wikipedia. The Wikipedia house style for comets is here: WP:Naming conventions (astronomical objects)#Comets.
--Neotarf (talk) 18:22, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
Irrelevant. The name we have chosen is "comet" not "Comet". Using "Comet" gives it proper noun status, and it becomes Comet Hale-Bopp, with a hyphen, not an endash. the section referenced says to use the common name, and if none, give it proper noun status (how generous). The example, Comet Hyakutake, is littered with references that use comet and ones that use Comet. Apteva (talk) 18:53, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
IMHO, recalling high school grammar classes might be of help here. Is the word "comet" a part of the name, or it just reiterates what the name is about? In other words, can we leave "comet" out without loss of meaning? Does the (c/C)omet Halley-Bopp resemble the "New York Times" newspaper and a McDonald's restaurant, or, rather, The Wall Street Journal and the White House?
To my feeling, that particular space object is called Halley's Comet, and another one is called Hale-Bopp Comet. Since the names of space objects (planets, stars, comets, galaxies, constellations, etc.) are always capitalised (e.g., Mars, Jupiter, Neptune, Aldebaran, Vega, Milky Way, Sun, etc., etc.) , the word "comet" should also be capitalised in all the instances, since it is an inseparable part of that object's name. Rules as to dash/hyphen should apply accordingly. kashmiri 19:52, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
Of course Comet Hale-Bopp (however hyphenated) is a proper noun. All names are proper nouns. Some sources may choose not to capitalize it; that's a style decision (a poor one in my view, but style rather than grammar). But even in those sources, it's still a proper noun — that's a grammatical rather than stylistic category. --Trovatore (talk) 20:29, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
That may be obvious to any number of people, but it is not obvious to the people who write articles about the comet, or Articles as in scientific articles published elsewhere.[15] In both cases the spelling of the dictionary is used. Why would we write a style guide that no one was using? Style guides should follow what we are doing, not make up rules that no one uses. I suggest that Comet should be changed to comet in Celestial bodies to agree with common use. We use sun and moon when 99.9+% (probably a lot more 9s for sun than moon) of the time we actually mean Sun and Moon, and it is ridiculous to capitalize it, and not done in common practice. Our style guides need to follow common practice, not introduce peculiarities. Apteva (talk) 21:04, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
Your reference to "common use" seems misguided: Sun and Moon are always capitalised when used as names of celestial bodies (i.e., not in sun lotion, sunbathing, moonlight, etc.); so are Earth, Mercury, etc. As to your removal of capitalisation in "Comet", I would thus suggest you refrain from making edits that deliberately violate WP:MoS. Any such changes should be reverted. kashmiri 21:44, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
Speaking only for myself, I am not making any edits that violate the MOS. The MOS says that proper names use hyphens, so I am moving articles that are proper nouns and use an endash, like, for example, Mexican-American War and Spanish-American War. Doing that brings them into compliance with the MOS. I am removing the examples in the MOS that are not in compliance with the MOS. The MOS says that proper nouns use hyphens, and has three examples that are proper nouns yet use an endash. One of them, comet Hale–Bopp, is not capitalized in our article, is not capitalized in a respected dictionary, and yet is capitalized as an example in our MOS. What's up with that? What I do need to do, though, is politely ask editors to read the section of the MOS on hyphens and note that there actually are places they are used - like in proper nouns. We all need to get on the same page here though, and if someone can show me 10,000 books that use an endash in Mexican-American War, and that there are less than use a hyphen, by all means that is what we also should use. But no matter how some editors came to the conclusion that Mexican-American War should have been spelled with an endash so they are going to use one, if in fact that is not a reasonable decision, it needs to be re-opened. In case no one has noticed, out of 4 million articles, there are some that have errors, and that is where I would prefer to spend my time. Fixing errors - like the spelling of Mexican-American War. Apteva (talk) 02:27, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
A Google Books search shows about 50% capitalize "Comet". Art LaPella (talk) 23:57, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
True. But how many dictionaries capitalize Halley's comet or comet Hale–Bopp? Apteva (talk) 02:27, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
Most online dictionaries on the OneLook list capitalize the "C". Some capitalize it inconsistently. None on my list uncapitalize it consistently, although Dictionary.com's Halley's comet definition comes closest. Art LaPella (talk) 04:51, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
But now I found two uncapitalizers elsewhere. Art LaPella (talk) 05:07, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

The dictionary link for Comet Hale-Bopp is amusing - links to WP with a hyphen, even though the article uses an endash, as of 2011 - "05:05, 26 January 2011‎ CWenger (talk | contribs)‎ . . (31 bytes) (+31)‎ . . (moved Comet Hale-Bopp to Comet Hale–Bopp: MOS:ENDASH #1, comet discovered by Hale and Bopp)".

We found 3 dictionaries with English definitions that include the word comet Hale-Bopp: Click on the first link on a line below to go directly to a page where "comet Hale-Bopp" is defined.

General dictionaries General (1 matching dictionary)

Comet Hale-Bopp: Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia [home, info]


Computing dictionaries Computing (1 matching dictionary)

Comet Hale-Bopp, Hale-Bopp, Comet: Encyclopedia [home, info]


Slang dictionaries Slang (1 matching dictionary)

Comet Hale-Bopp: Urban Dictionary [home, info]

I checked to see if it was just copying the punctuation used in the search entry, and replaced the hyphen with an endash and got:

Sorry, no dictionaries indexed in the selected category contain the exact phrase comet Hale–Bopp. Apteva (talk) 15:59, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

  • You might want to check s.t. other than a dict, such as Cometary Science after Hale–Bopp (Böhnhardt, Combi, Kidger, & Schulz, eds, Springer 2003), which uses the en dash in numerous papers and research notes, such as The 1995–2002 Long-Term Monitoring of Comet C/1995 O1 (Hale–Bopp) at Radio Wavelength; Large-Scale Structures in Comet Hale–Bopp; Modelling of Shape Changes of the Nuclei of Comets C/1995 O1 Hale–Bopp and 46P/Wirtanen Caused by Water Ice Sublimation; Observations of Rotating Jets of Carbon Monoxide in Comet Hale–Bopp with the IRAM Interferometer; From Hale–Bopp's Activity to Properties of its Nucleus; The Shadow of Comet Hale–Bopp in Lyman–Alpha, 73P/Schwassmann–Wachmann 3 – One Orbit after Break-Up; Nitrogen Sulfide in Comets Hyakutake (C/1996 B2) and Hale–Bopp (C/1995 O1), etc. These are proceedings of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) Colloquium No. 186 "Cometary Science after Hale–Bopp" (Tenerife, Jan. 2002), which followed the First International Conference on Comet Hale–Bopp in Jan. 1998. There are other, similar uses, such as 4015/Wilson–Harrington, 55P/Tempel–Tuttle, the Kuiper–Edgeworth (K–E) belt, the Hertz–Knudsen relationship, and the Stefan–Boltzmann constant. They even use the dash for Hale–Bopp in their references, though I suspect that if we followed up, we'd find that many were published with a hyphen. That is, they punctuate according to their in-house MOS, which is s.t. people here have been arguing we're not allowed to do (esp. in article titles, claiming it violates COMMONNAME). — kwami (talk) 18:19, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
  • (edit conflict) Comment. Hale-Bopp carries a hyphen because the IAU says that it's spelled with a hyphen. Hyphenated surnames have the hyphen replaced with a space, like Singer Brewster, discovered by Singer-Brewster, or cut in half, like Bally-Clayton (1968d C/1968 Q1), discovered by Bally-Urban and Clayton. Some people had already moved a couple of featured comet articles via RM. Kwami (who is posting right above me by pure chance) then moved dozens of comet articles to dashed articles, then proposed "Hale-Bopp" for the MOS draft as an example of a dash names. He didn't mention that all comet articles were hyphenated only a few weeks ago, or that he had moved dozens of himself a couple of days ago without discussion. Months later I realized the problem and I tried to correct it, but the usual suspects stonewalled the change. Now Kwami has been desyosped for making massive moves against consensus. Maybe it would be time to discuss comet hyphens again..... Or should I wait until Noetica is topic banned for stonewalling and edit warring? --Enric Naval (talk) 18:45, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
And Enric Naval posts pictures of cats he's killed on his user page. If you can provide a source for the IAU rule, great, but that would simply be their in-house style. We don't copy the in-house styles of our sources any more than they do, as the result would be chaotic. Punctuation varies from source to source, and is even adapted in references and quotations.
The IAU convention, BTW, is similar to typewriter hyphenation. It's because astronomers send the IAU telegrams of their discoveries, and telegrams can't handle dashes. — kwami (talk) 19:14, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
The IAU has a comet naming guideline, not a style guideline. It's the only body that can name comets, and its naming decisions are internationally accepted. --Enric Naval (talk) 11:29, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
Valuable link. Although I can't help an impression that the document deals more with naming than with typography. I wouldn't be surprised if its authors did not understand a difference between a hyphen and a dash. Astronomers hardly ever are typesetters... kashmiri 12:06, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
What it says is that spaces or hyphens are used: "each individual name is to be separated by a hyphen", and it is recommended that no more than two names be included. If someone has a hyphenated name that hyphen is replaced with a space or one of the two names only used. So that eliminates the ambiguity of Hale-Lennard-Jones - it would be either Hale-Lennard Jones or Hale-Lennard or Hale-Jones. Apteva (talk) 14:54, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
And the comet names were always announced in circulars, printed in paper, with diacritics, umlauts, scientific symbols, minus and plus signs, superscripts, and French letters like ç. The telegrams were coded and illegible, and they never contained any comet name. --Enric Naval (talk) 11:41, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
I don't know whether this has to be a joke or what. This is a printout of a French-language news release from 1920 regarding the position of an observed new planet. Nothing about comets, naming, etc. See, basic knowledge of French prevents being misled by comments like yours. kashmiri 12:02, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
The IAU circulars communicate the discovery of all types of astronomical bodies: stars, asteroids, minor planets, comets, etc. as well as observations of interest, corrections, etc. Here you have the printed IAU circulars announcing 1919 g (Skjellerup) and Reid 1921a and Väisälä 1944b. More recent version are available by subscription. As you can see, the official names have always been announced in printed circulars, which don't have any restriction for diacritics, umlauts, dashes, scientific symbols, etc. Decades before the circulars started, they were announced in printed journal Astronomische Nachrichten, which also didn't have any restriction in characters. Telegrams didn't play any role in name announcements, they were just for quick announcements of discoveries. At discovery time comets only had a provisional designation like 1944b (second comet discovered in 1944). --Enric Naval (talk) 16:27, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

I am not sure about the coded and illegible part. The IAU recently, though, asserted[16] using capital letters for planets, etc., but it is not clear if that extends to comets. Hale-Bopp for example could simply be certified as being "the comet Hale-Bopp", which provides no insight into capitalization of comet. The examples given were Solar System and Earth's equator.

It was noted that the naming of all planets so far has long predated the existence of the IAU. I think that rather than naming things they standardize names and certify them, and are an arbitor, but they do not make up the names, or sell names.

The IAU frequently receives requests from individuals who want to buy stars or name stars after other persons. Some commercial enterprises purport to offer such services for a fee. However, such "names" have no formal or official validity whatever.

Based on the survey of google book results below it is clear that the endash conclusion in 2011 took an extreme minority viewpoint and put the MOS in conflict with WP:TITLE. I suggest that it be reversed in light of new information, and that the examples of wars and comets with endash be removed from the MOS and replaced with hyphens. Whether the use of hyphens will remain dominant or, like Kiev could be replaced with a new spelling remains to be seen. WP is not a crystal ball and does not try to reflect what people should be doing or what they might be doing but simply what they are doing. Just as Kiev remains the overwhelming spelling in common usage, Comet Hale-Bopp (with a hyphen) is the dominant spelling for the comet Hale-Bopp (correctly not capitalized when preceded by the), along with airports and wars which have achieved proper name status and if there are any other names with endash or hyphen they, like Comet Hale-Bopp can be tested to see if they use an endash or a hyphen in common usage, but the MOS does not need to pretend that endash rules apply inside names, because that is not the interpretation of the vast majority of book editors. Should that change, clearly WP would eventually reflect that change as well, but certainly can not be expected to precede that change. To do so would be original research. Apteva (talk) 13:49, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

The IAU decides who were the original discoverers and in which order they made the discovery, and the spelling of the comet name (the thing with modifying the hyphenated surnames). The IAU also fixates the transliterations of foreign names so they are spelled in only one way by everyone, although I can only give a example for a Moon crater(1). The IAU can ignore suggestions, see what happened to Hugh Percy Wilkins. If you disagree with a naming decision you can only appeal to the IAU itself. Most importantly, you can't assign arbitrary names to comes that you discovered yourself, the IAU will decide the name for you whether you like or not.
(1) The Far Side of the Moon: A Photographic Guide. 5.1 Identification of Named Features. Spelling of Feature Names. The IAU has fixated the transliteration of "Tsiolkovskiy (crater)", which is named after a Russian rocket scientist. You could drop the last "i" and still have a valid transliteration of the guy's name from the Russian language, but then it wouldn't be the crater's correct name. The IAU standardized all Moon crater names in 1975, and it only accepts names of dead people, except for Apollo astronauts; some old names were retained, others were changed [17]. In 2008 the MESSENGER probe mapped Mercury, and the IAU made rules for the names of it surface features: the biggest basin received a unique name, cliffs were named after famous ships, and craters were named after "'deceased artists, musicians, painters, and authors who have made outstanding or fundamental contributions to their field and have been recognized as art historically significant figures for more than 50 years.". The IAU approved names for each feature and then published official maps.[18][19]. The IAU can pull this stuff because it's the naming authority in astronomy matters.

Q: Who is legally responsible for naming objects in the sky?

A: The IAU is the internationally recognized authority for naming celestial bodies and surface features on them. And names are not sold, but assigned according to internationally accepted rules. "Buying Star Names", IAU's FAQ

(...) rules established by the IAU, which emerged as the arbiter of planetary names and coordinate systems during the early years of space exploration. Back then, standardization helped to prevent the Solar System from being plastered with conflicting sets of names used by Soviet and US scientists. These days, the tensions are less nationalistic and more interdisciplinary: a dust-up between the geologists who tend to lead planetary missions and the astronomers who comprise much of the IAU. “Why should I let astronomers name things just because they’re on another planet?” asks Mike Malin, a geologist and principal investigator for the mast camera on NASA’s Curiosity rover mission, which has generated its own conflict with the IAU over the naming of a feature at its Martian landing site. "Space missions trigger map wars. Planetary explorers rebel against nomenclature protocols". Nature 22 August 2012

To avoid further disputes as proud pioneers sought to thank benefactors, curry favour or merely indulge themselves, the IAU went on to establish working groups to set rules and conventions for nomenclature.

, Procedures now make sure that mountains on Mercury are named with words for 'hot' in various languages, canyons on Venus christened after goddesses and small craters on Mars twinned with villages on Earth. Just last month, a 39-kilometre-wide Martian crater was named Moanda, after a town in Gabon. "The Name Game". Nature 22 August 2012

By that time, tiny P4 should have a real name. "We're tossing around some ideas," says Showalter, "but the name has to come out of Greek mythology associated with Hades and the underworld." That's according to the International Astronomical Union (IAU), which formally approves the names of heavenly objects — and which has strict and sometimes arcane guidelines for what's permitted. Underworld myths are the rule for moons of Pluto; for moons of Uranus, it must be characters from the works of Shakespeare and Alexander Pope — specifically Pope's poem "The Rape of the Lock." That required Showalter to learn the verses well. "I'm the discoverer of two moons of Uranus," he says. "We named them Cupid and Mab."

The IAU is also responsible for the decision in 2006 to demote tiny Pluto, just one-half the size of Earth's moon, to the status of dwarf planet. "Pass Out the Cigars! Pluto Is a Papa" Time, Science section, 25 July 2011

So who's in charge of naming solar system objects that are discovered now? Since its organization in 1919, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) has been in charge of naming all celestial objects. When an astronomer discovers an object, or wants to name a surface feature, they can submit a suggestion to the IAU, and the IAU either approves it or suggests a different name. Since we don't think there are any undiscovered planets, the IAU focuses on the naming of moons, surface features, asteroids, and comets and has websites about naming conventions for each. "Curious About Astronomy? Ask An Astronomer: Who named the planets and who decides what to name them?" Astronomy department of Cornell university.

The only official body which can give names to astronomical objects is the International Astronomical Union (IAU). (...) All official names have to be adopted by the IAU. There are certain rules which have to be followed in the official names allocated to different types of object; some of these are outlined below. (...) Comets. Comets are named after their discoverers. (...) In 1994, the International Astronomical Union updated their mechanism for naming comets (...) For more information on comet designations, please visit the International Astronomy Union website (...) "The naming of stars" Royal Observatory, Greenwich

So, is it clear now that the IAU's naming guidelines are not an "in-house style"? And that the IAU is the only body with the power of naming astronomical stuff and defining the exact spelling of each name? --Enric Naval (talk) 22:59, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
The words "The MoS presents Wikipedia's house style" need to be nixed too. WP is not a publishing house and does not have a house style. WP is not a monolithic organization under the command of one person, even though some editors would prefer that. There are many styles that are appropriate, and the MOS explains what some of them are. It is not either inclusive nor exclusive. Editors refer to it for suggestions, but use their own common sense in applying what it says. Britannica, on the other hand, is a publishing house, and does have a house style. The words "house style" are not common language and have no reason for being used, even if we were a monolithic organization, and even if we did have a "house style", which we do not. Apteva (talk) 17:08, 18 October 2012 (UTC)
Let's not expand the scope of this section so much, or we will get nothing done. We were talking about comet names: the capital "c" in "Comet", the hyphens, and the proper name status. --Enric Naval (talk) 18:02, 18 October 2012 (UTC)


Above, Enric Naval ignores the difference between naming and styling, and between official names and common names. The IAU has a brief style guide in which they "recommend" capitalization of names of individual astronomical objects (just as many other organizations have style guides that recommend capitalizing the important items in their respective fields). "The IAU formally recommends that the initial letters of the names of individual astronomical objects should be printed as capitals" as their web page says, referencing their style guide which clarifies that this is "in IAU publications". If they have a recommendation for how the general public should choose to style the names, I'm not sure where it is. And if they have info that says "comet" should come before or after the name, I'm not seeing that, either; it's clear that in common names, Halley's comet is more common the comet Halley, but others go the other way. Does IAU control this? I don't think so. Do they have an opinion on en dashes? Like many style guides, theirs doesn't say anything about that. Dicklyon (talk) 17:45, 18 October 2012 (UTC)
(I'll comment on hyphens. I won't comment on comet/Comet.) The IAU's comet naming guideline, not styling and not an in-house style, says that discoverer names are separated by hyphens. And says to remove hyphens from hyphenated surnames to avoid confusions with said hyphens, like Singer Brewster, discovered by Singer-Brewster, or drop part of the name hyphenated surname, like Bally-Clayton, discovered by Bally-Urban and Clayton. Thus, these compounded names are not built with standard English rules, they are built with IAU's naming rules, which give explicit instructions for using hyphens and spaces to separate the name in a manner that doesn't cause any confusion about how many discoverers the comet has. (Thus, it's not necessary to use dashes to separate surnames, because there is no possible confusion with any hyphenated surname in any comet name, past or future.) --Enric Naval (talk) 18:02, 18 October 2012 (UTC)
First a clarification. The IAU is not referring to an internal guideline about how they should internally recommend capitalizing or recommend using spaces and hyphens - they are the final arbitrator as to what the "official" name of a comet or planet is. They use those guidelines in helping them make those decisions, and they publish their answers. Bally-Urban was certainly asked would you like to use Bally or Urban because you can not use both. Singer-Brewster could have been asked, but the guideline permits using up to two names. Some names go on much longer. Secondly while there is a difference between the official name and the common name of many things, in neither case do comets use a hyphen. Common usage is tested, as it was here, by checking as many sources as possible and determining the most common usage. Scholarly sources could tend to prefer the official name, but not necessarily. Common names could tend to prefer comet Halley or Halley's comet, or Halley's Comet. It is not clear whether the IAU is even specifying whether comet goes before or after the name and is simply addressing the variable portion of the name - the word planet is not a part of the name planet Earth, why would comet be part of the name comet Hale-Bopp? It is completely acceptable, in context, to use Hale-Bopp. The dominant convention though, is clear, for most comets, it comes first. But the MOS is not the place for establishing title rules. That domain is at WP:TITLE, which has, like the MOS, 70 subpages for assistance. Apteva (talk) 19:29, 18 October 2012 (UTC)
WP doesn't care what IAU wants to do stylistically. WP is not an astronomy journal. IAU allegedly asserting that its stylistic decision to favor hyphens over dashes (I would bet good money they did not in fact draw any such distinction, and are only drawing a distinction between using a space and using a dash that they have misnamed a hyphen, because they're astronomers, not grammarians; Apteva's own post of 14:54, 16 October 2012 (UTC) supports my view here) is actually a naming matter not a style matter is simply an alleged assertion and not one that WP is magically bound to recognize when it defies common sense and conflicts with our business as usual of creating an encyclopedia. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 22:15, 21 October 2012 (UTC)
Did you read all the quotes I posted above? The IAU has a naming guideline, not styling. It decides the names and how they are written, and how foreign names are transliterated from other languages. I have seen several sources explaining that comet names use hyphens, and how hyphenated surnames need to have the hyphens removed so they don't conflict with the other hyphens. I have never seen any source saying that the IAU really meant to use dashes and not hyphens. --Enric Naval (talk) 13:28, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
It would be possible to name a comet in a way that would use a hyphen; Hale–Bopp is named in a way in which Wikipedia's current consensus style guidelines would use endash. Is there a source that says the IAU was distinguishing between hyphens and endashes? Or do they not mention endashes, and perhaps were they just using "hyphen" the way many non-Wikipedia sources do, as a catch-all for hyphen/minus/endash/half-an-emdash? -- JHunterJ (talk) 13:10, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
I still don't see any argument beyond "IAU only sets the styling", which is patently incorrect according to multiple reliable sources, and "IAU meant a dash", which is not supported by any reliable source and directly contradicts a few of them that make explicit mention of this rule. So, are we going to remove Hale-Bopp as an example of a compounded name in English. Maybe we should rename all counterexamples lik the airport names:
--Enric Naval (talk) 13:20, 30 October 2012 (UTC)
The fact that Hale–Bopp is so often found with en dash in sources, including astronomy journals, is strong evidence that the IAU naming guidelines are not being interpreted as styling guidelines in either astronomical or general publications. Dicklyon (talk) 18:07, 30 October 2012 (UTC)
I looked at the first 50 results in google books, and only 3 use a dash[20]. Even if you discard books that use wikipedia material, self-published books, uncheckable books, and books from suspicious publishers, there is only a tiny minority of books that choose to use a dash, 3 versus 40. Google news also show a supermajority of hyphens[21]. I think that this is much stronger evidence that astronomical and general publications actually look at the IAU when they make style decisions. And, yes, you can find as many isolated examples as you want, but they are still a tiny minority when you look at the whole of publications. --Enric Naval (talk) 18:52, 2 November 2012 (UTC)
I thought that y'all might be interested in [22]. AgnosticAphid talk 00:13, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
This [23] second requested move is much more relevant to this particular discussion.AgnosticAphid talk 18:30, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Apteva has claimed that this discussion has resulted in a clear agreement for using the hyphen instead of the en-dash for the comet article. I do not read any such clear consensus; participants other than Apteva, please correct me if there is a new consensus. -- JHunterJ (talk) 01:59, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

I think he's saying that since nobody bothered to argue with Enric Naval's last point, we must have all accepted it. That's wrong. I didn't bother to reply since he had ignored where I pointed out "including astronomy journals". You can see what I was getting at here, where a healthy percentage of scholarly papers, largely in scientific and astronomy journals, style this one with the en dash. It would not be appropriate to declare them all "wrong" for not following the IAU's style on this. Dicklyon (talk) 03:17, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
That is how I read it as well: that no new consensus had been reached, but that the participants did not restate the responses above the last point again below the last point. Thanks. -- JHunterJ (talk) 14:00, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
I would not characterize one out of ten a healthy percentage. I have looked at the first 500, though, and out of them slightly less than 1/4 use an endash, with the vast majority, over 3/4, using a hyphen. It would behoove Wikipedia to not intentionally create a conflict between one guideline and another. Would anyone be willing to allow comets to defer to the dominant spelling of using a hyphen, as stipulated by the IAU? My preference is to have an encyclopedia provide accurate and correct information, although that may be a strange concept to propose. As to capitalization, there is more variation, but it appears that the IAU treats comets like planets, the word comet is not a part of the name, so it is comet Hale-Bopp, just as it is planet Mars, and planet Earth. Hale-Bopp is interchangeable everywhere with comet Hale-Bopp, much less so Halley's and Halley's comet. Common usage may indicate Halley's Comet - dictionaries are split, with Oxford English having the entry say Halley's comet, and Oxford American saying Halley's Comet. In books, Halley's comet has been dominant up until the most recent siting, although each time it comes around there has been the same spike in ill-informed spellings, which I would not recommend Wikipedia emulate.[24] Apteva (talk) 18:23, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
So, most astronomy journals (~75%) use hyphens. Percentages in books and news articles are even higher. I don't know where Dicklyon is seeing any "healthy" percentage of dashes. --Enric Naval (talk) 22:11, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Survey

Survey-hyphen/endash
Prefer hyphens for comets
Prefer endash for hyphenated comets
Prefer endash or hyphen as appropriate, for comets or for anything else, per the Wikipedia style guidelines
  1. It would be possible to name a comet in a way that would use a hyphen; Hale–Bopp is named in a way in which Wikipedia's current consensus style guidelines would use endash. -- JHunterJ (talk) 19:01, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
No preference
Survey-upper/lowercase
Prefer lower case comet
Prefer upper case Comet
No preference

Post-survey break

Please address the arguments I presented. The last I fell into the trap of making a "survey", aka a poll, and one person presented a series of flawed and vague arguments, and the usual suspects piled up in support and stonewalled the change --Enric Naval (talk) 22:04, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

It would be possible to name a comet in a way that would use a hyphen; Hale–Bopp is named in a way in which Wikipedia's current consensus style guidelines would use endash. -- JHunterJ (talk) 19:01, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
Following that logic, we should blindly use "Comet Singer-Brewster" despite all the sources explaining the lack of a hyphen? Why aren't we doing that? Oh, right, because that's clearly preposterous. You don't "style" a name when reliable sources say explicitly that it's spelled in a specific way because of specific orthographic reasons (to avoid confusions with hyphenated surnames). --Enric Naval (talk) 13:48, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
Invoking words like "blindly" don't help the discussion. We do not style spaces as either hyphens or endashes; I agree that would be clearly preposterous. So I might stand corrected; it appears the IAU will only use one type of punctuation in its names, to connect two names and not to modify one name with an adjective or adjectival noun, so we should continue to use endashes for all comets (or at least all comets with a common name that follows IAU naming). -- JHunterJ (talk) 14:02, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
"to modify one name with an adjective or adjectival noun", sorry, I'm lost, how is this related to "Comet Hale-Bopp"? We are not talking about "Hale—Bopp's comet", which is a different constructions and not the actual name of the comet. --Enric Naval (talk) 10:20, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
Who brought up Hale—Bopp's comet? I'm lost as well. My point was that the IAU apparently isn't going to assign names with dashes that that WP style would use hyphens instead of endashes for (although there's always the hypothetical possibility that common usage might vary from IAU for some comet(s)). My earlier point is that the IAU apparently does not distinguish between hyphens and endashes, or address endashes at all, while WP does. -- JHunterJ (talk) 12:54, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
The IAU seems to distinguish hyphens pretty well: "each individual name is to be separated by a hyphen (but family surnames with two or more words separated by either spaces or hyphens are to be distinguished in comet names by single spaces only between each surname word -- although, for simplicity, the discoverer shall in such cases also be given the option to choose one main word from his or her name to represent the surname on the comet, with such choosing strongly encouraged)" IAU Comet Naming Guideline
The hyphen rule is repeated and explained by several RS, none of them ever mentions about any confusion with dashes. --Enric Naval (talk) 15:34, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
I hope you understand what I'm saying and are just deflecting it because it doesn't suit your conclusion. In order to distinguish between two things, one must mention those two things. If the IAU doesn't mention any dashes other than hyphens, it hasn't distinguished hyphens from endashes. -- JHunterJ (talk) 15:53, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
They are talking about hyphens in relationship with hyphenated surnames. According to the International Comet Quarterly discoverer names were already separated by hyphens back in 1886![25]. You can check that they use a hyphen (not a dash) in contemporary astronomy journals, in English, in Italian, in German and in French. All in print journals that are capable of printing dashes, superscripts, scientific symbols, etc. Back when they wrote the naming guidelines, hyphens in comet names had been a tradition for at least 117 years. Maybe it didn't cross their mind that someone could think that they were Eonglish-impaired enough confuse a hyphen when a dash?
I have compiled a long list of sources over the last months. Sorry for the awful formatting. Newspaper articles, astronomy books and journals, popular astronomy books, all sort of stuff. All sources mention hyphens, hyphenation, linking with hyphens, etc. In a span of more than 120 years, there is not a single source mentioning or implying that the IAU confused a hyphen with a dash or viceversa. --Enric Naval (talk) 19:08, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
The use of en dash in Barnard–Hartwig also dates from 1886, as here. Just depends on the editor's style preference. In German, a spaced hyphen is also found, as here, indicating not the usual hyphen. Dicklyon (talk) 23:54, 24 November 2012 (UTC)
Right: there is not a single source mentioning or implying that the IAU has distinguished between hyphen and dash. Where many, many sources conflate hyphens and dashes or ignore one or the other of them, Wikipedia styles some as explicit hyphens and some as en-dashes. -- JHunterJ (talk) 20:57, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
I think I have met my burden of proof by presenting dozens of sources that unambiguously support that comet names have been hyphenated for more than a century. I couldn't find any reports of confusion with dashes or with any other punctuation mark. Above I provided sources saying that the IAU is the ultimate decider for all astronomical names in the universe. And here you are claiming that the IAU can't tell a hyphen from a dash and that nobody has noticed for over a century, except you. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. --Enric Naval (talk) 22:22, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
I didn't say they can't tell a hyphen from an endash, I said they haven't distinguished them. They may have no pressing need; the hyphen may serve them adequately, whereas WP has for some reason opted to distinguish hyphens from endashes. Simple. -- JHunterJ (talk) 03:31, 23 November 2012 (UTC)
My preference is to prohibit dashes from titles, but there is a huge difference between distinguishing between endashes and hyphens and misusing endashes for hyphens. Give someone a hammer and everything looks like a nail. Give someone a hammer and a screwdriver and it is absurd to try to use a screwdriver to hammer in a nail or a hammer to drive in a screw (though that does sometimes work). State that half of the population has an IQ of 100, and if someone disagrees you can immediately put them into the lower half. So if we did prohibit dashes from titles this problem would be a lot less of a problem, because it would be only a matter of editing instead of moving articles. The MOS does not determine article titles though, or content, only how to portray that content. It does not and can not tell editors to misspell words, such as telling them that Hale-Bopp is spelled with an endash, because it is not spelled with an endash. I consider myself to be one of the roughly less than 1% of editors who can distinguish between an endash and a hyphen, which is why there has been very little participation in this discussion. Apteva (talk) 06:52, 24 November 2012 (UTC)
Comet names explicitly use a hyphen, which is a specific punctuation mark. They have used hyphens for over a century and it's explicitly indicated in dozens of sources. A dash is a different mark and it's not mentioned anywhere in said sources. --Enric Naval (talk) 14:55, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
That it's not mentioned anywhere is my point. Styles that lump dashes and hyphens together would have no need to mention dashes if they specify when to use hyphens. -- JHunterJ (talk) 12:47, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
You keep claiming that the IAU conflates dashes and hyphens together, with not a single iota of evidence. And again, it's naming, not styling, they specify the punctuation mark that has to appear between the components of the words. They don't say "you should write it like this", they say "it is written like this". --Enric Naval (talk) 13:51, 29 November 2012 (UTC)
I claim that the IAU has not explicitly distinguished the two, and they haven't. If Wikipedia styles their hyphens as endashes, that's a style choice, not a misspelling. You keep claiming that it is incorrect naming and not styling, with not a single iota of evidence. -- JHunterJ (talk) 14:02, 29 November 2012 (UTC)
  • Our style guide did not address airports, bridges, or comets, and made a fallacious suggestion for Mexican-American War, that someone would think it was a war of Mexican-Americans, instead of between Mexicans and Americans (neglecting the obvious that Mexicans are Americans), something that would never happen no matter what punctuation was used. That fallacy led to the even worse travesty of using endashes in bridges, airports and now comets, where there is not a shred of commonsense to use an endash. It just keeps getting worse and worse and more and more bizarre. Fix the original problem. Spell Mexican American War the way everyone else does (98%), and this whole malarkey goes away. The MOS should be reflecting the things that most people do, and not making its own rules about things, and should be staying away from making rules on issues where there are more than one way to do things (this is not one of them - this is an issue where a rule that does not apply has been applied to spell something incorrectly). Apteva (talk) 17:45, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
  • Refuting Apteva and Enric Naval –

Apteva has been pushing the theories that en dashes are not used in proper names; that they are not used in airport names; and that they are not used in comet names; and other variations. Enric Naval has joined in supporting him in the case of comets; not sure about the others. The claim seems to be that reliable sources use en dashes in two-name attributive compounds in comet names so infrequently that there must be an underlying rule, habit, convention, law, or decision to avoid en dashes in such cases, and that WP must respect that prohibition.

But where is their evidence that reliable sources interpret the IAU's hyphen-based comet naming as a prohibition to style those names with en dashes? Perhaps they could show that the frequency of use of en dash in comet names, or airport names, or proper names in general, is signfiicantly less than the frequency of en dashes in non-proper attributive compounds of name pairs (such as in Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease), or significantly less than the occurence in other parallel pairs (love–hate relationship). Or they could find specific publications that would use en dash in Creutzfeldt–Jakob (or whatever), but hyphen in Hale-Bopp. So far, I don't believe they have presented evidence of either sort. If they do find such evidence of lower frequency of en dash usage in certain situations, then we can entertain a motion to amend the MOS to say to use hyphen instead of en dash in certain types of name compounds.

Lacking such a proposal based on evidence, all we have is an annoying level of continuing disruption based on opinions and imagined rules. In many cases, their imagination seems to be exacerbated by their inability to find or recognize en dashes in books, as I've pointed out to both of them several times. For example, Enric claims only 3 of 50 books in Google book search use en dash in Hale–Bopp. But in this book search I find these 10 that use en dash in the first 50: [26], [27], [28], [29], [30], [31], [32], [33], [34], [35].

This 20% is a not an unusual rate of use of a style with en dashes in parallel attributive compounds, proper name, comet, or otherwise. If it's a bit lower than some, it's likely because some astronomers do take the IAU literally and style with a hyphen where they might have used an en dash otherwise. It's hard to say without more evidence. But still, 20% use of en dash in this comet name is a "healthy" percentage. Certainly it would be ridiculous to declare these many books "wrong" in styling the coment name as they do, especially in light of the many scholarly articles and journals (including Icarus; Nature; Earth, Moon and Planets; Planetary and Space Science; Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society) that style it that way, too.

To declare the WP:MOS style to be "wrong" here, based on no evidence, is baseless. Dicklyon (talk) 20:21, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

Kindly remove any reference to any specific editor. Doing so is completely inappropriate. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and has a responsibility to its readers to provide correct and accurate information. No one can argue that comets are not correctly spelled as they are spelled by the IAU - with spaces and hyphens. No one can argue that it would improve the encyclopedia to misspell them with any other form of punctuation. It is easy, though, to find out why some editors want to spell them with an endash. It all goes back to the fallacious argument that spelling Mexican-American War with a hyphen would indicate that it was a war of Mexican-Americans, instead of a war between Mexicans and Americans, which is wrong for two reasons, one English does not make any sense - idioms often have meanings that simply need to be memorized, and secondly because most sources do use a hyphen instead of an endash, and if the MOS did decide that an endash should be used it would introduce a conflict between this guideline and WP:TITLE. I did over 7,000 edits, with none to the MOS or it's talk page. But when someone starts misspelling things and using a misinterpretation of the MOS to do it, I get real interested in the MOS. Apteva (talk) 06:52, 24 November 2012 (UTC)
As far as I know, the only one pushing a theory of "misspelling" is you. Nobody is saying that sources that use hyphen in such compounds are "wrong"; they simply have a different style, where the role of the "long hyphen" as the Cambridge guide to English usage calls it, is served by the hyphen. In WP, the MOS says we prefer the en dash to serve that role. So when you say "No one can argue that comets are not correctly spelled as they are spelled by the IAU", I agree, there's nothing there that anyone would argue about. If there's a "fallacious argument" you want people to consider, a link to it would be useful. Dicklyon (talk) 19:02, 24 November 2012 (UTC)
([36], [37], [38] are the same book from different editors.)
>80% is still far more healthy that <20%..... And, of course, the typical name-throwing by Dicklyon: all those journals use sometimes hyphen and sometimes dash, with most journals using hyphen almost always, like Earth, Moon and Planets [39]. Planetary and Space Science is about 50-50 [40] Nature has 50-50. Only Icarus uses dashes more often than hyphens, and only by a small margin (32 out of 60). Of course, a proportion of >80 means that most journals use mostly hyphen. --Enric Naval (talk) 14:55, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
Enric, what you've demonstrated is that the styling choice of en dash versus hyphen in many journals is probably not controlled by the journal's editorial staff, but by the authors. With 25% of all articles using the en dash, and possibly some journals enforcing the IAU hyphen style, the proportion of authors choosing to use en dash is probably higher. Certainly none of them are falling into it by default, or because they can't find their preferred choice on their keyboard, as many of those using hyphen probably are. The point is, the IAU has not imposed a style on the field, either in general publications, or in specialist journals, where the prevalance of styling with en dash for Hale–Bopp is not so different from other things that one might style that way. The hyphen remains the most common, the default, and the least common denominator styling for those who don't know or care about the difference, and for some who do. But that is not a reason to say that the en dash is "wrong". Dicklyon (talk) 21:41, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
Less than 20% of articles. And more original research and opinion about styling, when I showed with reliable sources that it's a naming problem, and that the name uses a specific punctuation mark. --Enric Naval (talk) 11:56, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
It's not forbidding me from turning left! The sign doesn't "distinguish" between left and right!
Unclear who this is addressed to:
I don't think you realize how preposterous your argument is. According to you, the IAU should have said: "and by a hyphen we actually mean a hyphen, like we have been doing for over a century in all compounded comet names, as explicitly indicated many times before in astronomy articles and books; not a dash, which is a different punctuation mark with different usages, and which has never been used in any comet name, and which, unlike the hyphen, has never been mentioned as part of a comet name in any source". --Enric Naval (talk) 14:55, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
I'm unclear on who you're saying has proposed something about what the IAU should do or should have done. I've only argued that what they've done has had little effect on styling usage, as far as I tell. Your "over a century" also ignores the fact that I pointed out above that en dash usage in comet names dates from the same year (search up for 1886). Dicklyon (talk) 21:50, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
By the way, your sign example may be lost on most Americans. We don't use signs like that, where a positive (the right arrow) is taken as a prohibition of alternatives; we'd have a "NO LEFT TURN" sign instead, or a left arrow with a red circle/slash; or "ONLY" on a black&white right-arrow sign. Styles vary. Dicklyon (talk) 21:55, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
The link above to an 1886 publication using an endash also uses a hyphen for the same comet. Click next to see the second reference.[41] No one is suggesting that no one has ever used an endash for a comet, but what is being suggested is that it is less correct than to use a hyphen. I do not see any possible argument against that supposition, and not correcting the MOS is ludicrous. The advice to capitalize the word comet is also not correct, as it appears that the word comet in the name is the same as the word planet in the name of a planet - not a part of the name. On the other hand, system, is a part of the name Solar System, as indicated in the example provided by the IAU.[42] "An initial capital letter is not required when the name of a person (or object) is used as an adjective or as the name of unit, unless it forms part of the name of an individual object (Isaac Newton Telescope)." Since comet is the name of the unit, it is not capitalized. Thus it is planet Mars, planet Earth, planet Saturn, Halley's comet, and comet Hale-Bopp. There is not consensus to follow this practice on Wikipedia for Halley's comet, even though it is correct, as Halley's is not commonly used separately from Halley's comet. Apteva (talk) 23:53, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
Yeah. You can see a full copy of the 1886 publication with the hyphen in p. 208 [43]. And, of course, you are again cherrypicking one example that fits your position, and tiptoeing around the dozens and dozens that don't. --Enric Naval (talk) 12:21, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Conclusion

"To declare the WP:MOS style to be 'wrong' here" is not baseless. What was done was to answer the simple question, which should never have been asked - "which should be used, a hyphen or a dash?" The reason it should never have been asked, is that it is not the providence for the MOS to teach grammar, spelling, or punctuation. Those arguments belong only with the articles where they occur, and at the reference or help desk, or at the wikiproject level. What was methodically done was ask, what is correct punctuation to use between dates and nouns, like in the date range 1846-48? Or in the Michelson-Morley experiment? The correct, pedantic punctuation to use is in both of those cases, an endash, as in 1846–48 and Michelson–Morley experiment, but the problem is that logic does not even necessarily apply to the Michelson–Morley experiment, if no one actually calls it that, and instead uses a hyphen all the time. That is why Wikipedia refers to reliable sources and uses no original research and everything must be verifiable. The next logical step taken was, well how about other things that have two nouns or two words joined with a hyphen, should they maybe also use an endash, like a Red-winged Blackbird, or someone named Hatfield-McCoy? This was a Spock like logic approach, but humans do not use logic, and it led to an absurd result, like naming the Mexican War the Mexican–American War, a name only used by about 0.2% of reliable sources - about 2 out of every 1,000 books use Mexican–American War (with an endash), while 90% use Mexican War, a simple fact that was brought up but not checked, at a time when the article had the name correct (in Mexico it is unsurprisingly called La Invasión Estadounidense, "the United States invasion").[44] Ngrams does not find even one instance of using Mexican-/–American War[45]. In naming things, we are constrained to the names that other people use, not rules of logic, which can lead us to use bizarre names for airports and comets, as can be seen by calling the comet Hale-Bopp, Comet Hale–Bopp. What we need to do is end this foolishness and simply use the test used by WP:TITLE, and in the case of both proper nouns and common names such as the Michelson–Morley experiment, what is the most common name used, and what is the official name used, and pick one, but it is not the providence of MOS to do the picking, it is the providence of the article in question talk page, which is where such discussions belong, not here. We can not, and should not try to choose names, to teach spelling, grammar, punctuation, or how to tie shoe laces. Sometimes we lose sight of the forest for the trees, and this is a case where we have clearly done exactly that, to the huge detriment to Wikipedia. We really need to trust that someone is going to have a dictionary, or a copy of Strunk & White, and fix sloppy grammar, punctuation, and spelling - without defining them in the MOS and by doing so, introducing bizarre anomalies, like spelling airports and comets with endashes. Apteva (talk) 19:59, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

"To declare the WP:MOS style to be 'wrong' here" is baseless. It's a style guide. It may be inappropriate, (although I don't think it is), but it cannot be 'wrong'. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 21:26, 11 December 2012 (UTC)
It provides incorrect advice, and is in conflict with longstanding policy, but is easily corrected. Apteva (talk) 06:37, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

While it is perfectly acceptable for a publishing house to use any punctuation they think looks pretty, and any newspaper to dash off copy calling comet Hale-Bopp anything they think it is called, it is not acceptable for a reference that is either used or laughed at by all of them to not take the trouble to find out what the correct spelling of comet Hale-Bopp is, and use that in the article, so that when it comes around again sometime around 4385, anyone reading the article will see the correct spelling and punctuation. Hopefully sometime shortly before then this discussion will have come to a conclusion. [And sometime in the next day or two would be even better.] Apteva (talk) 20:18, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

The conclusion is that most people would rather ignore what reliable sources explicitly say about how a certain name is spelled. They prefer their original research about what is the "right" spelling. Reliable sources of the highest quality are rejected on the basis of personal appreciations of what they really wanted to say (p.ex. when they say "hyphen" they actually mean "hyphen or dash" unless they explicitly say that they didn't mean a dash[46][47]). --Enric Naval (talk) 09:59, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

I trust that was intended as sarcasm. I would hope that most people would agree that the standard of putting what most people use to be the most logical conclusion, instead of personal appreciations. Apteva (talk) 00:46, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

What multiple reliable sources explicitly say

Rather than accept what all reliable sources say, some editors prefer to claim that all sources meant "an horizontal line that could be a dash or a hyphen", rather than simply what they wrote, a hyphen. This includes people who have co-discovered several comets, among them a co-discoverer of Hale-Bopp:

  • International Comet Quarterly when explaining how comets are designated: "Rare cases of multiple discoveries were denoted with hyphens, e.g., '1886 IX (Barnard-Hartwig)'"[48]
  • Rose Center for Earth and Space / American Museum of Natural History "Their discovery [Hale's and Bopp's] gave the comet its catchy hyphenated name."[49]
  • a professor of astrophysics: "Comet Hale-Bopp was discovered by two astronomers on the same night, which explains the hyphenated name.[50]
  • The Australian Astronomy Journal "This soon produced the first hyphenated comet name, to indicate more than one independent discoverer,"[51]
  • British Interplanetary Society "Comet nomenclature. (...) If there are two or more independent discoverers, each name is ascribed, but separated by a hyphen, e.g. Harrington-Abell."[52]
  • Chicago National Museum: "When more than one person reports a new comet at the same time it gets a hyphenated, and sometimes sort of funny-sounding name: Comet Mitchell-Jones-Gerber, Comet Ikeya-Seki, and Comet Schwassmann-Wachmann, for example."[53]
  • The Review of Popular Astronomy "[Winnecke] discovered a comet which Encke found to be identical with that of Pons' 1819 discovery, hence the hyphenated title ."[54]
  • United States Naval Observatory "In some cases the names of more than one discoverer are given, separated by a hyphen."[55]
  • Alan Hale (astronomer) (discoverer of Hale-Bopp: "In such cases, it has been customary to name the comet after each of the discoverers (with the individual names separated by hyphens), (...)"[56]
  • Fred Schaaf (astronomer, has several astronomy books and articles in Astronomy and Sky & Telescope) "Independent discoveries of the same comet sometimes resulted in several names linked by hyphens, as in Swift-Tuttle."[57]
  • Fred Schaaf (when writing for newspaper The Atlanta Journal-Constitution) "Although their names [Shoemaker Levy] are now forever linked as the hyphenated co-discoverers of one of the 20th century's largest comets,"[58]
  • a Doubleday book Astronomy Made Simple: "Therefore, many of the discovered comets bear such amateurs' names as West, Austin, Levy, and Ikeya-Seki (hyphenated names mean that there was more than one discoverer)." [59]
  • a Simon & Schuster book Comet Fever: "If a new comet is discovered simultaneously by two or more observers, it receives a multiple, hyphenated name, like the tongue-twisting Whipple-Fedtke-Tevzadze, the staccato Tago-Sato-Kosaka, or the more melifluous Swassmann-Wachmann. [60]
  • astronomer Patrick Moore: "(...) in a discovery, their names are hyphenated; this explains Schwassmann-Wachmann, Grigg-Mellish, Giacobini- Zinner, Arend-Roland, Tuttle-Giacobini-Kresák, and many others. (...)"[61]
  • astronomer Gerald Hawkins: "(...) if two or more people discover the same comet, then hyphenated names are used in (...)"[62]
  • astronomer James Sayre Pickering "A hyphenated name given to a comet may mean that the comet was discovered by a partnership of observers, as in the case of the Arend-Roland Comet of 1957. The hyphen may also mean that the original discoverer and the observer who first saw the comet on its first return have both been given credit."[63]
  • astronomer James Sayre Pickering (in a different book) "How are comets named? A comet is usually given the name of the individual who discovered it. Sometimes a comet is given two names, separated by a hyphen, as the Pons-Winnecke comet. This indicates that one of the men discovered it. (...) could also mean that the two men, working as a team, discovered the comet, as in the case of the Arend-Roland comet."[64]
  • Popular Astronomy "Now there are six Metcalf comets (one hyphenated with the European)" (probably a reference to 23P/Brorsen–Metcalf). [65]
  • astronomer Brian A. Skiff, co-discoverer of several comets: "Then there are the hyphenated ones where I'm given top billing or where I'm the junior partner, (...) There are in addition several 'LONEOS' comets (some of them hyphenated as well) (...) Some (but not all) of these hyphenated comets with the survey name given rather than the observer (...)" [66]
  • comet hunter Donald Machholz: "If several observers discover the comet at about the same time, then the names of the first three discoverers are given to the comet, each separated by a hyphen (-)."
  • Association of Lunar and Planetary Observers (U.S.) "Otherwise, up to three names can be applied to a comet, each separated by a hyphen (-)"[67]

In the last two items an actual hyphen is shown between parenthesis. Isn't that enough distinction to appease any possible doubts that they meant an actual hyphen and not something else? --Enric Naval (talk) 11:57, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

The standard response usually given here by those opposed to changing the MOS is that reliable sources of the kind you give above are reliable only as to content but not as to style; only style guides are reliable sources for style.
Now there are non-style-guide sources that are treated as reliable as to style, namely codes of nomenclature produced by internationally recognized bodies. For example, double quote (") is used in Wikipedia as the top level quote mark; single quotes (') are reserved for nested quotations. However, the International Code of Nomenclature for Cultivated Plants legislates that single quotes must be used for cultivar names, and this has been accepted.
So it seems to me that what is relevant here is (a) whether there is an authority that determines the official names of comets (b) if so, whether that authority explicitly specifies the use of hyphens. If the answer to both is "yes" then the MOS should certainly recommend the use of hyphens in the names of comets. A body which could be the required authority is the International Astronomical Union. Its website shows that it does prescribe the format of certain kinds of designations used for stars (see e.g. [68]) but I can't find anything about comets. Peter coxhead (talk) 18:04, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
Or we could decide not to follow such authorities on matters of style for various reasons. One reason might be that the style is at odds with the rest of Wikipedia's style. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 18:27, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
We could indeed. But there is a difference between deciding not to follow a style explicitly set out in a widely accepted international code and deciding not the follow the style used by a particular set of publications. The former decision would be far less likely to gain consensus, particularly among editors who were specialists in the field covered by the code. Peter coxhead (talk) 19:32, 15 December 2012 (UTC)
(a) The IAU is the authoritative naming authority for all celestial bodies (galaxies, nebulae, quasars, stars, planets, asteroids, comets, etc.), see several reliable sources. Around 1970-1973, the United Nations considered taking over that responsibility, but they decided the IAU was already doing OK, see UN Resolution "Standardization of names of extraterrestrial topographic features" The IAU also decides who gets credited for the discovery, and the order in which the discoverers appear in the name. Its decisions can only be appealed to the IAU itself.
(b) IAU comet-naming guidelines "When there are two (or more) independent discoveries of a comet (...) each individual name is to be separated by a hyphen (but family surnames with two or more words separated by either spaces or hyphens are to be distinguished in comet names by single spaces only between each surname word (...)"
--Enric Naval (talk) 16:11, 16 December 2012 (UTC)
Nobody disputes the authority of the IAU for naming comets, asteroids, etc. But here the question is how to style the names. The IAU has a system that works on plain ASCII, and they clearly merge hyphen and dash into one concept, as evidenced on at least one of their pages [69]. And they don't allow diacriticals for the same reason; but WP's astronomy editors do still style those names in WP with diacriticals, as in 3628 Božněmcová. If you wanted to make a case that the IAU's hyphen statements are actually interpreted by editors as you say, that they should influence typographic styling in print and online media, you'd need to show publications that use en dash between names but then switch to hyphen when the names are in an IAU-defined comet name. And show that such things are more common than sources that style both types of name pairs with en dash. Without such evidence, you don't even have anything to start to make your case with. Dicklyon (talk) 18:03, 16 December 2012 (UTC)
As this is an encyclopedia, there are only two things that need to be shown - what is the correct, official name, and second, what name is most commonly used. It is easy to find publications that correctly use endash and use a hyphen for Hale-Bopp (the first one checked in google scholar), but definitely not necessary to show that they also use an endash between names, for example in the same article. Using a hyphen is far more common than an endash for Michelson–Morley experiment in scholarly articles anyway. This one did,[70] but they also used an endash for the name of the university, for right–hand, light–cones, mass–term, Yukawa–like, etc., none of which normally would be spelled with an endash, so their use of it in Michelson–Morley experiment is not instructive. Apteva (talk) 20:04, 16 December 2012 (UTC)
Indeed, the only thing that paper shows is that one can abuse dashes by not following the normal punctuation rules. Dicklyon (talk) 05:41, 17 December 2012 (UTC)
The IAU uses more than ASCII characters, and it uses diacritics marks:
The IAU is conscious of the importance of proper and precise punctuation, and the punctuation of names is debated when making new naming guidelines and assigning new names (these are the rules for minor planets, not for comets):
  • Back in 2006, when the IAU decided that Pluto was not a planet and will no longer be called a "planet": "Otherwise, the debate has degenerated to the level of hyphens and commas. When the Resolution committee removed the hyphen from the “dwarf-planet” category of version 3, settling on “dwarf planets”, they created some ambiguity about whether this second category, which includes Pluto, were really planets or not. One solution put forward this morning (see post IAU:invasion!) was to say “planetinos” instead of dwarf anything. (...) The option tabled instead was the introduction of inverted commas around the dwarf, to give ‘dwarf’ planets. (...) Update: the quotes, I have since learnt, are intended to go around both dwarf and planet to give ‘dwarf planet’, which makes slightly more sense"[71]
  • "Names shall be limited to a maximum length of sixteen characters, including spaces and hyphens. (...) Names should be pronounceable, preferably expressible as a single word, and no more than sixteen characters long."Minor Planet Naming
  • "How have the nomenclature rules changed and how they should be changed in the face of database-oriented astronomy (e.g. case-sensivity; special character handling; dealing with spaces in names (...) 'Special' characters include Greek letter, hyphens and spaces." Proceedings of the Twenty Seventh General Assembly Rio de Janeiro 2009
  • When discussing the name of Makemake (dwarf planet). "The Lowell Observatory's Bowell said Makemake was nearly unanimous among the committees, and the only discussion came over whether to hyphenate, combine or separate the two "make" parts."[72]
  • "There has always been a preference for names consisting of a single word. This rule could not be maintained, however, since the names of some of the people to be honored consist of two or even three words. Thus names combined of more than one word had to be tolerated. Some designations contain a hyphen, and some an apostrophe." Dictionary of Minor Planet Names. 6º edition "A total of 82 designations contain a hyphen, and 46 an apostrophe."5º edition
--Enric Naval (talk) 10:22, 17 December 2012 (UTC)
I have no personal interest one way or the other in the names of comets, but on the basis of this evidence it does seem to me that (a) the IAU is the authority to be followed (b) they have prescribed hyphens. The clincher, though, would be to show that they distinguish between hyphens and dashes and have explicitly chosen the former in the way that the ICNCP explicitly distinguishes between single and double quotation marks, insisting on the former for cultivar names. Peter coxhead (talk) 14:25, 17 December 2012 (UTC)
When they explicitly use the word "hyphen" it is clear that "hyphen" was meant, and not "tilda", "emdash", or any other short horizontal character roughly midway vertically located. Distinguishing between single and double quotation marks is obviously necessary in that case. Distinguishing between a hyphen and a dash is obviously not necessary. The issue is clear, the official name uses a hyphen, the most common usage uses a hyphen, and for wikipedia to use anything else would be strange, and counterproductive to the purposes of an encyclopedia - to inform and educate. Apteva (talk) 01:21, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

@Coxhead. Well, a quotation mark can be single or double, but a hyphen can only be a hyphen..... Anyways, I can see your point. I have sent an email to cbatiau AT eps.harvard.edu:

Good day:
I am having a dispute in Wikipedia about the punctuation in comet names when there is more than one discoverer.
Your "Comet Naming Guideline" says that "each individual name is to be separated by a hyphen". But some editors say that you didn't distinguish between hyphens and dashes. This would mean that the IAU allows comet names to be written with a hyphen or with a dash.
So, according to the IAU, is it correct to write Comet Hale-Bopp with a dash?
Sincerely, Enric Naval.

I'll wait for their reply. --Enric Naval (talk) 18:58, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

Good job sending a biased question to drag someone official into your squabble. If they reply that it is not correct to use a dash, and that you must say "Hale-Bopp", they are likely referring to their own requirements for reporting and naming; it would be less likely that they're declaring that Nature and Icarus and other journals are violating their rules, doing something they don't "allow", in publishing papers with Hale–Bopp styled as WP does with en dash. So what are you thinking you might find out from this inquiry? Maybe they'll say "Yes, we've sent multiple cease-and-desist letters to Nature and Icarus, and our lawyers are working on the next steps, about which we are not allowed to comment at this time..." That would be cool. Dicklyon (talk) 19:54, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
(Dicklyon, please feel free to send a "non-biased" question and see if you get a different reply.) --Enric Naval (talk) 11:30, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
I got this reply from the vice-president of IAU's Commission 6 [73] (they are responsible for comet naming):
Dashes are marks like semi-colons, commas, and periods, used
grammatically in sentence structure. Hyphens link words together,
not dashes. It is strictly not correct to write "Comet Hale-Bopp",
but rather "Comet C/1995 O1 (Hale-Bopp)". Many comets carry
the same name, so designations are paramount, not names;
names are secondary. It's better to just put "Comet C/1995 O1"
than "Comet Hale-Bopp".
Regards, Dan Green
Well, it looks to me like the IAU has consciously distinguished hyphens from dashes, and it has chosen hyphens. --Enric Naval (talk) 11:30, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
¿Qué? "The IAU has consciously distinguished hyphens from dashes, and it has chosen hyphens." No way! They have done no such thing, any more than they have "consciously" distinguished hyphens from commas.
A brilliant demonstration of what the genuine experts on style have been trying to tell you again and again, Enric: content experts are often clueless about style. Just look at this gem from the reply you elicited:

"Dashes are marks like semi-colons, commas, and periods, used grammatically in sentence structure. Hyphens link words together, not dashes."

So much for CMOS, New Hart's Rules, and every other respectable authority on style that makes provision for en dash as a nuanced and semantically justified occupier of the broad "hyphen" role.
Suggestion to editors opposing the current consensual and best-practice MOS provisions for hyphens and dashes: read CGEL's chapter on punctuation, written by the academic linguist who has addressed the topic at greater depth than anyone else alive. Then come back when you actually know something about the topic. Till then, you're wasting your time and everyone else's. ♥
NoeticaTea? 13:12, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
Green's ignorant response is less surprising within the context of styles that don't use an en dash. The "dash" he refers to is only in the role of em dash, and all connections are made with hyphens. This is all one could do with typewriters, ASCII, and Microsoft Word without a user manual. But for typographers, people with Mac keyboards, people who read publishers' style guides, etc., the statement is pretty funny. At least what he said was "strictly not correct" doesn't discriminate! Dicklyon (talk) 16:03, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

What RFC?

This stale section from September was recently tagged as an RFC, but is only attracting repetitive argumentation, in the form of "conclusions", from the same people who it went stale on earlier. There is still not much support for the ideas presented. Can we move on? Dicklyon (talk) 03:50, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

Having read the arguments above I do not see why article titles should not follow common usage. When I last looked this project has "4,120,583" articles and it is silly to try to argue that one style fits all. It may well be that some disciplines mandate the use of hyphens in their naming conventions. It may be that another discipline mandate the use of dashes. If most reliable sources about those topics follow the official bodies recommendation, then the common usage in reliable sources will use the official names. If not and the common usage follows other names then we should use those names. This may mean that the construction of titles will vary over 4m+ articles but that does not matter if we follow the usage in reliable sources. What we should not be doing is recommending one style for the titles of articles if it contradicts the usage in reliable sources. This argument about ignoring sources makes about as much scene for hypes and dashes as it would for a preference for "southeast" rather than use "south east".
Also this is a question for the WP:AT policy talk page and not the MOS talk pages. I think to make this clear the paragraph that starts "MoS applies to all parts of an article, including the title..." should be removed because as far a I know that was never agreed as part of the WP:AT policy (if it was then please show me where in the archives of Wikipedia talk:Article titles where such a consensus was reached). -- PBS (talk) 21:19, 15 December 2012 (UTC)
That's not the topic here. The topic is Apteva's idiosyncratic thesis that when an en-dash-connected term gains proper name status, its en dash changes to a hyphen; a pure MOS question, which would of course affect titles to the extent that the MOS styling applies there, too. Dicklyon (talk) 22:15, 15 December 2012 (UTC)
Sorry, but PBS nailed it perfectly. Apteva (talk) 00:51, 16 December 2012 (UTC)
Sorry, but Dicklyon nailed it perfectly. -- JHunterJ (talk) 12:56, 16 December 2012 (UTC)
Adding the talk page guidelines has certainly reduced the bickering here, but not eliminated it - yet. This page is solely and only for the improvement of WP:MOS. Any comments about someone are legitimately moved on sight to their talk page. But as an admin that should be clear.
This section is about fixing the MOS so that it is in line with the rest of the encyclopedia, by deferring to common use in spelling comet Hale-Bopp, in spelling Roman-Syrian War, and in spelling Uganda–Tanzania war - in other words, in improving the MOS. I have no idiosyncratic thesis. I have a suggestion that the MOS get its act together and quit being goofy. People turn to encyclopedias for knowledge, and it would be nice if that information they found was factual, like comets are treated the same as planets, the word comet is not a part of the name, and is not capitalized. Just as it is planet Mars, it is comet Hale-Bopp. And that comets and airports use slashes, spaces, and hyphens, but never dashes in their names. Seriously, this is not rocket science. And yes, we do also have articles about that too. Do we want experts in a subject to roll their eyes, or be proud that what they read is accurate? Apteva (talk) 14:40, 16 December 2012 (UTC)
Some have expressed rebellion against dash rules in general. But although I found some comments like this agreeing that "when an en-dash-connected term gains proper name status, its en dash changes to a hyphen" based on ENDASH, you have abandoned that argument. If we can't find any supporters, that makes it idiosyncratic, and you shouldn't need us to tell you that. Art LaPella (talk) 20:04, 16 December 2012 (UTC)
It goes back to the same old problem: what is common usage. All publishers have house styles. WP is no exception. Tony (talk) 10:22, 17 December 2012 (UTC)
Common usage is normally not difficult to determine. It is a question we answer thousands of times a year at WP:RM. The diversity of wikipedia, and the diversity of uses of wikipedia, as well as the diversity of the editors result in the idea of an enforced house style being meaningless. If we were a publisher, we could review each article and approve them for publication for that purpose and for that edition with a particular style, but we are more like the putty that is used by anyone for any purpose, and wikipedia is constructed by multiple thousands of editors, covering multiple thousands of subjects, many of which have particular requirements, making it meaningless for us to attempt to enforce a house style. If fact I would recommend that all of our advice on spelling, punctuation, grammar, and good writing be relegated to essays and not be a part of the MOS. Apteva (talk) 01:37, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

Ending the endash/hyphen warring

This has been a divisive issue for too long. Proposal:

  • Within articles hyphens are a valid substitute for an endash if used consistently.
  • For proper nouns hyphens or endashes defer to common usage. See WP:TITLE. As of 2024, there are no known proper nouns which use endashes. For example, Mexican-American War is spelled with a hyphen more commonly than with an endash or a space.

Adopting this will eliminate all of the endash/hyphen warring. Apteva (talk) 05:41, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

Can you clarify what warring you are referring to? Dicklyon (talk) 05:46, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
Ah, apparently the kind of edit war that you are trying to start here, while ignoring the discussion that you had been involved in here. Dicklyon (talk) 04:18, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
More specifically, I think you are referring only to the controversial compound (or union, etc.) proper names, right? You're not talking about any changes to the rules for numbers, dates, etc., right? —[AlanM1(talk)]— 13:29, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
Both. Dashes are used correctly in numbers, dates, and to separate sentence clauses. They are used correctly to denote meaning in phrases such as the Michelson–Morley experiment (two people, not one with a hyphenated name), but using them there is controversial. They are not used correctly in comets and airports. They are not used correctly in wikipedia in any place where common use prefers not using them - and not using dashes at all is perfectly acceptable - and unless the article is FA or FAC, fixing them takes a far lower priority than other improvements, other than to make the article consistent, such as removing a dash if the rest of the article uses hyphens, or vice versa. While there are rules for using dashes, wikipedia does not have rules, and it is really outside of the charter of the MOS to try to teach spelling, grammar, punctuation, or good writing - although all of that can and should be available in essays. What is in the charter of the MOS is to explain what an encyclopedic style is, and how we structure articles. The rest can be deep sixed converted to a group of essays. Apteva (talk) 15:03, 16 December 2012 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Hyphens are ugly when used to replace en dashes. I'm not in favor of uglification. Binksternet (talk) 05:48, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
    • Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. The ugliest thing in Wikipedia right now is extending the length of a hyphen in a comet name so that it looks more like it is suspiciously an endash instead. One must be careful with the pen in making hyphens, and not make them so long. Hyphens are used in some places, is every hyphen, ugly to someone? Endashes are correctly used in some places, but it is not incorrect to substitute a hyphen for an endash. In an article that only does that, it is not correct for someone to change the whole article from using hyphens to endashes. What is correct, is if it uses mostly one or the other to change the one or two that are out of place. If there is only one hyphen on the page, for a date range, for example, it is not correct to change it to an endash, because substituting a hyphen for an endash is an acceptable style and our MOS says so - after this proposal is adopted. It is the content of the article that is important, not the style of the content. Proper nouns are referred to WP:TITLE because most of them are notable enough to have their own article, or are person's names (not personal names as our MOS called them - a personal name is calling the Moon Minney, or Mickey), where hyphens, like in comets and bird, are exclusively used. Apteva (talk) 18:56, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
  • Comment: "Warring", of course, means megabytes of debate, much of which was supplied by the same editor who proposes to rescue us from that same "divisiveness" by doing things his way (to be fair, Dicklyon also debates en dashes.) We can be pretty sure that victory for the hyphens wouldn't end the warring; the en dash empire would strike back. Maybe it's just as well that en dash wars continue; otherwise, the same people might war over something that matters. Art LaPella (talk) 06:36, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
Probably you're right that he's referring to these disruptive debates that he keeps starting. If there's any place were I've posted even half as much as he has, let me know and I'll throttle myself. Dicklyon (talk) 15:31, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
  • Oppose promotion of the consistent errors. Note that WP:TITLE is about article titles, not proper nouns, and the only thing it says about dashes is "Sometimes the most appropriate title contains diacritics (accent marks), dashes, or other letters and characters not found on most English-language keyboards. This can make it difficult to navigate to the article directly. In such cases, provide redirects from versions of the title that use only standard keyboard characters. (Similarly, in cases where it is determined that the most appropriate title is one that omits diacritics, dashes and other letters not found on most English-language keyboards, provide redirects from versions of the title that contain them.)" It doesn't mention hyphens at all, except for the allusion in that statement. -- JHunterJ (talk) 13:04, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
  • Oppose—We've been over this, I don't see anything new here that would change the outcome. Within articles hyphens are a valid substitute for an endash if used consistently.—sure, if that is your house style or if you're confined to ASCII or something then using hyphens as a substitute would be reasonable. We don't have these limitations. Anyone can go ahead and write with hyphens, of course—nobody should be giving anyone a hard time for using hyphens. Others with the desire and know-how can go through and use the correct mark. Before I figured out how to type them in with my keyboard I was grateful to others for fixing what I wrote, eg. for page ranges. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 06:07, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
    It is inappropriate to pretend that wikipedia is a publishing house and has a "house style" when it comes to things like hyphens. It makes absolutely no difference to write 1-4 or 1–4, and it does not need to be fixed. Sure, it can be fixed, but it is better left alone if that is the only place on the page that a number range is used, and nothing else is being changed. Sure in a featured article things like that can be "prettied up", but even in a good article there are far more important things to fix than to change hyphens to endashes. And hyphens should never be changed to endashes within proper nouns - because that violates common usage. If someone wants to publish a section or all of wikipedia they are welcome to use whatever "house style" they wish, and change all the punctuation to whatever they wish, but wikipedia has an obligation to use whatever is the most correct, and the most common usage. And no it is not most correct to use an endash in Mexican-American War. Using endashes in proper names creates edit wars, using hyphens in proper names eliminates those edit wars. Doubt me? Look at the ten times that Mexican-American War has been moved. Apteva (talk) 07:45, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
    • Au contraire, mon ami. Wikipedia is a huge and widely consulted publisher with over 4 million articles. Our current house style is already quirkily schizophrenic in that no style governs all articles, and I certainly don't subscribe to the view that we should be tolerant to what goes on elsewhere beyond the considerations that went into building our current MOS. -- Ohconfucius ping / poke 07:56, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
    So quit pretending that it is a house style, when it clearly is not one. The purpose of the MOS is to help us, not hurt us, and it has long overstepped its boundaries. Time to fix that. Apteva (talk) 08:10, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
  • Oppose, on both issue-based grounds (people who will not accept that en dashes are proper punctuation and demand replacing them with hyphens are simply grammatically wrong, and we've proven this again and again), and procedural ones (re-re-re-f'ing-re-proposing this is not going to magically force consensus to change, and is a blatant example of gaming the system by "asking the other parent", i.e. regurgitating the same proposal/demand again and again in different forums here in hopes of coincidentally finding a sympathetic audience, after it's already been rejected by consensus multiple times). Enough is enough. This is not even a dead horse any longer, it's just a jelly stain in the dirt you keep flogging. Cf. WP:NOT#SOAPBOX, WP:NOT#BATTLEGROUND, WP:TE, WP:GREATWRONGS, etc. PS: Of course WP:MOS is our house style. That's its entire raison d'etre. The only thing "hurting us" when it comes to this topic is your endless, angry "my way or the highway" attitude, for so long it feels like an eternity. WP:JUSTDROPIT. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 12:10, 29 November 2012 (UTC)
    • The words "raison d'etre", according to wiktionary, mean "The claimed reason for the existence of something or someone; the sole or ultimate purpose of something or someone." Yes it is the reason that the MOS exists to tell us to use sentence case in headings and how to lay out articles, but it is not appropriate for the MOS to tell us how to spell words or use punctuation. That comes from dictionaries and knowing how to write well. By doing that, the MOS has overstepped its charter and introduced very bad advice. And just why do we use sentence case in subject headings anyway? That makes no sense at all. Sentence case in titles makes a little sense, but not in headings. Apteva (talk) 20:41, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
  • Support. Show me a single commercially made standard QWERTY keyboard which provides hardwired endashes - and emdashes for that matter. I wonder how many thousands of tons of coal have been burned to provide the electricity to support the extra keystrokes for use of endashes and emdashes in the course of the history of Wikipedia? My stance is not that of a luddite, but rather that of one opposed to endless accumulation of baroque ruffles and flourishes. Trilobitealive (talk) 13:29, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

Alternate proposal

This has been churning for too long, agreed. Alternate proposal:

  • Within articles, hyphens or endashes or both may be used consistently per MOS:HYPHEN and MOS:DASH.
  • For proper nouns, hyphens or endashes or both may be used consistently per MOS:HYPHEN and MOS:DASH.

Ending the endash/hyphen warring will eliminate all of the endash/hyphen warring. -- JHunterJ (talk) 13:04, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

I don't think this solves the problem; it supports the current guidelines, sort of, but the "within articles...consistently" might tend to confuse some editors about what the guidelines say. The "warring" that you and Apteva refer to is I think just his consistent pushing to change the rules, via repeated disruptive RMs and MRVs and proposals to change the MOS, none of which have found any significant support (certainly nothing that can come close to the support for the current dash dashlines, which found wide consensus in a big and non-disruptive process over a year ago). Dicklyon (talk) 15:29, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
  • Oppose. This is not a serious proposal and does nothing. The problem of edit warring - people moving Mexican American War to an endash and back to a hyphen ten times, only goes away when people who edit the MOS agree not to impose absurd standards on the encyclopedia. In date ranges, numbers, we do not have rules, the world has rules. We have guidelines and policies. Our Manual of Style can either help us develop the encyclopedia or it can hurt us. When it introduces bad advice, it hurts us, and it is absurd advice to misspell the comet Hale-Bopp on the MOS, and even worse to argue against it being fixed. The hyphen is on every keyboard, not so the endash. If someone wants to read the MOS and learn how to enter an endash for the years 1914–1918, they are welcome to do so, but they are also not prohibited from substituting a hyphen, and writing 1914-1918. If that is the only place a hyphen is incorrectly used as an endash in that article, it is better to just leave it as a hyphen. If someone who is making another edit wants to fix it they can, but it is not a valid edit to simply perform the edit just to change that hyphen to an endash. Edits are costly. Using hyphens for endashes are not worth correcting. Using endashes for hyphens will trigger an edit war if the MOS is not corrected, because they will always be corrected. Apteva (talk) 18:56, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
  • No thanks: who wants sub-professional standards at en.WP by going against standard typographical conventions? Tony (talk) 00:31, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
    You're in favor of not using style guidelines, because that will be more professional? -- JHunterJ (talk) 01:27, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
    More likely he replied at the end of Apteva's section, not realizing there was an intervening subsection. I get caught by that kind of problem a lot myself. Maybe he'll fix... Dicklyon (talk) 06:23, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
    Ah, thanks. If that turns out to be the case, and it does end up being indented, any editor is free to delete my comment of 01:27, 27 November 2012 as well as this one. -- JHunterJ (talk) 13:00, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
    Or maybe he objects to "consistently", which might be read to mean that an article has all hyphens or all en dashes, which would be nonsense. That's why I said it might tend to confuse. Dicklyon (talk) 16:20, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
    Ok, that is what I thought the proposal was. I'm confused. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 17:06, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
  • Oppose—I don't think there's any need to adopt a hodgepodge style. We hashed it out, examined relevant style guides etc, the support for the current style was/is quite overwhelming. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 06:07, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
    I may not have phrased it clearly enough then. My alternate proposal was supposed to offer support for the current style (or "do nothing", as Apteva put it). -- JHunterJ (talk) 12:59, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
    Yeah, pardon, I may not be understanding you here, sorry. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 17:06, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
    Indeed, it seems that everyone except Apteva is against changing the guidelines, so we can let it go at that. Dicklyon (talk) 17:20, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Keeping the current guidelines is a vote to a) use inaccurate entries and b) create edit wars. I am certain that no one is in favor of either. Therefore the only option is the above proposal (allow hyphens as a valid alternative and use hyphens in proper nouns). Apteva (talk) 07:27, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

While it may not be your intention, "b" reads as sort of a threat. Just because some users might edit war over something isn't a reason to force policy in one direction or another. Personally I think this is a stylistic issue and while I don't care which way has been chosen or will be chosen we should follow the house style what ever has been/is/will be decided it is. Having an enforced style guide is a tool against editwars. For example consider ENGVAR, instead of someone changing colour⇔color in a article and then having a huge back and worth about which is right, it can be reverted to the version called for by WP:ENGVAR and much of the discussion and edit warring avoided. If a style guideline was given a large consensus to use apostrophes for possessive ( Sally's car ), right single quotes for the rare plural cases ( dot the i’s ) and a superscript i for abbreviating is ( itⁱs true ). I might argue against it here, but wouldn't edit war about it in articles. PaleAqua (talk) 17:57, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
Apteva, we had a lot of edit/move warring, then we hashed it out and came up with the current guidelines. This has done a remarkably good job dealing with edit warring, as far as I can tell. In other words, the status quo appears to me to be the way to stop edit wars. Are there edit wars going on now that you have noticed that would be solved by your proposal? ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 18:55, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
No one would have had any edit warring if the MOS made the correct choice of using hyphens in proper nouns. Mexican American War would have been moved once and only once - to using a hyphen. Yes there are still edit wars going on now, and there will be forever until the MOS is corrected. The status quo is to use hyphens, not endashes. Apteva (talk) 04:35, 29 November 2012 (UTC)
Now that's definitely a threat of continued disruption, since you're the only one fighting en dashes in titles as recommended by the MOS. You are the only person who has complained about, or tried to move, Mexican–American War since the new dash guidelines were worked out. And the only one trying to remove en dashes from titles of articles on airports, bridges, etc., too. To end the edit warring, just cut it out. Done. Fini. And look up status quo. Dicklyon (talk) 04:43, 29 November 2012 (UTC)
No, it is not a threat, it is a statement of fact, and not by me but by the hundreds of millions of readers who expect wikipedia to be correct, and will inevitably attempt to correct errors, like spelling Mexican American War with a hyphen if they see it spelled with an endash. Here is what status quo means - "the existing state or condition". The existing state or condition is that every proper noun is spelled with a hyphen (of those that use a hyphen or endash). Some of them on wikipedia are misspelled with an endash, and need to be fixed. English can change. Come back in 50 years and find out what the most common spelling for Mexican American War is and act accordingly. Right now it is spelled with a hyphen by a 50:1 margin. The MOS needs to be fixed to say that hyphens are a valid substitute for an endash and that proper nouns defer to primary use as stipulated in WP:TITLE. Until it is fixed there will always be edit warring over hyphens and endashes. Apteva (talk) 07:55, 29 November 2012 (UTC)
Not a threat? "Until it is fixed there will always be edit warring over hyphens and endashes" sounds very much like one unless it's accompanied with a personal undertaking from you not to pursue the issue or war over it. -- Ohconfucius ping / poke 08:26, 29 November 2012 (UTC)
Not a threat. Am I the only one who read the clarifying words "not by me"? Apteva is predicting that "hundreds of millions" will flock to his cause, which is absurd but not a threat, because that unimaginable event would be outside his control, and thus not "An expression of intent to injure or punish another" (Wiktionary:threat) and certainly not punishable. I'm more open to the complaint that Apteva is much too repetitive about en dashes. Art LaPella (talk) 07:02, 30 November 2012 (UTC)
  • Oppose for reasons I've already given above. This is a non-issue. MOS is not in a position to be held hostage by tendentious editors with pet peeves they refuse to drop, and re-re-re-introduce as if they magically are immune to the fact that the idea has already been repeatedly shot down. MOS's mission is providing a consistent set of rules for WP editing, period. By definition, doing so will necessarily mean WP arrives at rules that not everyone is entirely happy about, because it only has rules for things that are contentious (note that we do not have a rule that "p" is spelled "p" and not "7", because no one fights to spell "p" as "7"). MOS's purpose is not to declare what is "proper" or "right" or "correct", only set a standard for what is most useful for WP as the encyclopedia with the broadest readership in the entire history of the world (this fact automatically militates against exceptionalist geeky bullshit). All other style concerns are entirely secondary. Just get over it and move on. PS: To put it more plainly, the answer to "Ending the endash/hyphen warring", to quote the section title, is "stop engaging in 'sport argument' about it and go do something productive or stop wasting everyone's time". PPS: I do not mean to imply that JHunterJ's attempt at appeasement is tendentious; rather, Apteva's tendention on this and various other nitpicks is so mind-numbingly, endlessly browbeating, that it has become disruptive and is arm-twisting people into suggesting compromises that do not serve Wikipedia's interests, just to get Aptvea to shut up. Giving the Apteva what it wants is not the only solution to the problem that Apteva's tendentiousness presents. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 12:22, 29 November 2012 (UTC)
    The preceding personal attack is neither warranted nor appreciated. The MOS is wrong and needs to be fixed. Apteva (talk) 01:26, 30 November 2012 (UTC)
    Apteva, to me it looks like only you believe the MOS should be fixed, that it is wrong. Binksternet (talk) 05:43, 30 November 2012 (UTC)
    And see also WP:Call a spade a spade: "[B]eing civil should not be confused with being friendly or courteous, let alone charitable or credulous." Apteva, criticizing your blatantly disruptive pattern at WT:MOS and elsewhere is not a "personal attack", it's a reality check. I'm happy to discuss this in user talk, since you've started a discussion at User talk:SMcCandlish#MOS (I have replied there at more length). But the short version is, you need to read and meditate upon the very short page at WP:Nobody cares, which precisely describes what is going on, then also internalize WP:Drop the stick and back slowly away from the horse carcass and finish off with a mixture of WP:Get over it, WP:Don't be a fanatic (especially points 3 and 4), and WP:Just drop it, especially the section "Forum shopping". See also the first law of holes. You'll be much happier if you apply those principles. As Tony1 and some others can attest, my first foray into MOS was oppositional and demanding, and resulted in me being angry and everyone else here being angry with me. I later figured out that it was more important for MOS to exist and provide a reasoned but often necessarily arbitrary baseline of "standard operating procedure" for style and grammar here, than for me to get my way about what I preferred MOS to say about this nitpick or that. There are many things in MOS that aren't the way I would write them, but I don't keep dredging them up and browbeating everyone about them month after month. MOS is explicitly prescriptive, and has to be, and it is not tied to what any particular external "authority" on style and usage says, but determined by consensus here, or as close to consensus as we can get, based on WP's own particular needs and nature. It is also an undeniable fact that various people will be unhappy about every single rule in MOS; we would not need to make rules about things unless they were things people disagreed about and editwarred over. The fact that you disagree to the point of outrage over one such point is simply evidence that we do in fact need a rule about it, and that such a rule will be arbitrary. So it goes. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 09:22, 30 November 2012 (UTC)
Apteva, please be more collegial. I find the fact that you're going for adminship right this moment very odd. Admins need to be skilled at defusing tension, not causing it. Tony (talk) 13:09, 30 November 2012 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Another alt proposal: RFC/U

This section was previously a subsection of #Ending the endash/hyphen warring above, but Apteva pulled it out of the RFC-tagged section for unknown reasons. Dicklyon (talk) 05:27, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

Given the above re-asserted threat of continuing disruption, I think we need an RFC/U requesting as a remedy a halt of Apteva initiating anything to do with en dashes. I'll work on a draft in user subpage User:Dicklyon/Apteva; others can add evidence of previous attempts to resolve the problem, etc., and if it looks sensible I'll submit it. Dicklyon (talk) 04:18, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

The RFC/U is opened at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Apteva. I realize I may have not done the right thing in using the create button at Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/User_conduct/Creation#General_user_conduct and copying the contents from my user subpage, since I lost the history of other signers that way. So if an admin agrees that this way a mistake, they can do some technical patchup for me please. Dicklyon (talk) 17:47, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

Will do. -- JHunterJ (talk) 18:42, 30 November 2012 (UTC)
Shouldn't it be listed on this page also? PaleAqua (talk) 22:07, 30 November 2012 (UTC)
Yes, thanks for the reminder; I added it there to the candidates section. I'm not sure who decides when it's "certified". Dicklyon (talk) 22:13, 30 November 2012 (UTC)
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