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Revisiting possessive for words ending in unsounded s

Can someone point me to justification within the WP confines of why Illinois, Descartes, and Verreaux have an added ’s rather than only an apostrophe? Perhaps I missed it, but I don’t see it on the pages listed at Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Register#Possessives. humanengr (talk) 06:47, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

  • I doubt Wikipedia has decided on this, as it appears to be a matter of dispute. Recently Arkansas passed a resolution that the possessive of the state name be Arkansas's, though some were nonplussed, saying it was "too many esses". I'm in the 's camp. Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 08:16, 19 August 2015 (UTC)
    • I'm also in the always-use-the-same-formula camp ('s); but there are too many detractors to get consensus. I believe that as long as usage is article-consistent, either approach has to be accepted. Tony (talk) 09:13, 19 August 2015 (UTC)
      • I think we should follow Fowler's Modern English Usage, which says "With French names ending in (silent) -s or -x, add 's (e.g. Dumas's, le Roux's) and pronounce the modified word with a final -z." DrKiernan (talk) 14:00, 19 August 2015 (UTC)
  • Agree with the above commenters: Consistently use 's. Leaving it out because of how you think it sounds [which varies considerably on a regional basis, BTW] is eye dialect, and WP is not a novel trying to mimic people's speech patterns. When Jones says something it's Jones's speech. When I break a glass and cut myself while cleaning up, it was one of the glass's fragments that cut me. The temple I was in in Greece last year was a former center of Zeus's worship. People resist this mainly because many Bibles use Jesus' (often in red like that) and they don't ever want to do it differently. If it comes down to it, we can just make an exception for Jesus' in the context of scripture, only (use Jesus's in the context of, e.g., the historicity of Jesus), and move on, the same way it's permissible to use smallcaps for the Tetragrammaton and English Bible translation of it as GOD, and we even templates for this stuff (I just used one of them). A WP:COMMONSENSE exception to avoid religious flamewars and permit "Jesus'" is no reason to throw the rest of the rule baby out with the religion bathwater.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  00:55, 20 August 2015 (UTC)
  • OP here. WP MoS states "For the possessive of most singular nouns, add 's (my daughter's achievement, my niece's wedding, Cortez's men, the boss's office, Glass's books, Illinois's largest employer, Descartes's philosophy, Verreaux's eagle). …" [silent (unsounded) 's' boldfaced]. I was asking not for further argument at this point, but for reference to old discussions to have that as a grounding. humanengr (talk) 03:28, 20 August 2015 (UTC)
Is this any help? --Boson (talk) 19:51, 20 August 2015 (UTC)
thx -- am going through that … will report back humanengr (talk) 06:08, 21 August 2015 (UTC)
(edit conflict) See also Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Register#Possessives. It may not be exhaustive, either. The key material to me is the series of 2009 threads showing that a total mess had been made in MOS trying to account for varying preferences here, and it led to frequent strife, both at articles and here at WT:MOS. This is one of the cases where we just need to pick something and stick with it or the flaming would never die. It appears that once something has been picked and stuck with, virtually no one cares, and dispute dies off almost entirely.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  02:24, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

[outdenting to present new info] The part I’ve gone through so far starts out with a contrived example as an object of discussion: ‘"These are Doris'[s] copies of Morris'[s] books on Socrates'[s] and Descartes'[s] philosophies.”’ It’s slow-going to pick out rationale specifically re the unsounded s. (And nearly all archive search results for ["Possessives"] are after 2009, so a thorough search to find rationale supporting the past decision will be a massive undertaking.) What I've seen so far identifies consistency and simplicity as overall drivers on the Possessives section. Noble goals, perhaps, but what’s striking is how far the guidance is from actual usage.

Looking at the 3 examples given — Google searches for Illinois, Descartes, Verreaux show:

  1. "Descartes's" -"Descartes’” — 12,100 hits
  2. -"Descartes's" "Descartes’” — 19,400,000 hits
  3. "Illinois's" -"Illinois’” — 5,540 hits
  4. -"Illinois's" "Illinois’” — 479,000,000 hits
  5. "Verreaux's" -"Verreaux’” — 21,900 hits
  6. -"Verreaux's" "Verreaux’” — 321,000 hits

In Google Scholar, the ratios are more striking — for Verreaux, there are 0 and 2,820 hits, respectively.

For unsounded s, usage is overwhelmingly in favor of apostrophe only.

Thoughts? humanengr (talk) 20:21, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

Several:
  1. Your statistical method in those searches is invalid because of how Google operates and the nature of the data. Any work that included the string "Verreaux's" would also be likely to include "Verreaux" by itself. Google drops all punctuation from searches, even when the search terms are quoted. This means that, operationally, your searches on "Descartes's" -"descartes'" and "Descartes's" "descartes'" are, respectively, actually being performed as "Descartess" -"descartes" and "Descartess" "descartes", respectively, which are basically gibberish.
  2. Google is useless for this sort of thing, even aside from the punctuation problem, since there is no way to distinguish high-quality sources from random kids' blogs, nor from one regional usage variation to another, nor even from material written by native English speakers vs. those with only partial fluency (or the output of machine translation). There's also no way to use it to distinguish between material written to a particular published style guide vs. another one or vs. no guidance at all.
  3. Published mainstream style guides are more useful, in general, for questions of this sort, but they prove not to all agree with each other, and some have strange rules like use ' not 's (e.g. Zeus' not Zeus's) for "names from antiquity", whatever that means; others are pronunciation based; others are consistent on 's; others are semi-consistent on 's except after another s; etc.
  4. Whether an -s is sounded or not varies from speaker to speaker, often regionally; previous discussions illustrate this actually, though I don't know if you've run into the ones that do yet, so the "based on pronunciation" model fails in an international encyclopedia, even if it (allegedly) works on some national levels (my linguistic training tells me even that assumption is patently false).
  5. Whether it's sounded or not in spoken English is of questionable relevance in written English to begin with.
  6. Rehashing old discussions to "re-legislate" a current issue is rarely helpful. It can be helpful in discerning why a guideline (or whatever) presently says what it says, but generally is not helpful in determining whether to change it or how. It's not necessary to re-argue all previous argument in order for WP consensus to form today.
  7. WP doesn't operate on a "precedent" basis much of anywhere, and even where it is a concern, it's a limited one. So no "massive undertaking" is required to ferret out every prior thread that ever mentioned possessive suffixes (and your search for "possessive prefix" would not be expected to find anything useful, since English doesn't use prefixes to indicate the possessive). Anyway, the WP:CCC principle tells us to rely on current thinking, not thinking from several years ago.
  8. It's more important to examine the present context. Is a MoS rule "working" for the most part compared to an old rule or a lack of any rule? Where disputes arise what are they about? Are they widespread or limited to a specific topic or case? Are they frequent or rare? Are they populous, or is it mostly the same editor or handful of editors re-re-raising the same "issue"?
  9. Is the WP rule based on citation to some external "authority", or based on internal consensus about what works best here? (Obviously the latter in this case.)
This is a case where off-WP guidance is very inconsistent, and where the consensus has emerged to pick the one of several possible treatments of the issue (the version with the least variation, for simplicity), and run with that for the sake of forestalling further strife. As a rule, it's intent is conflict reduction, not propriety (contrast this with a rule like "capitalize after a colon when what follows the colon is a complete sentence", a rule that is found in most style guides, and about which people rarely edit-war; here, the rule is intended to match what actually is a prevailing usage, rather than put an end to a perennial conflict by picking something out of competing usages none of which are predominant). Some MoS rules (perhaps most of them) serve both the "look professional" and "forestall fighting" purposes, but this is not required. (Some serve other purposes, e.g. technical ones, that don't relate to either of those two more common rationales.)  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  21:14, 21 August 2015 (UTC)
> Re #Google is useless for this, since there is no way to distinguish high-quality sources …
Google Scholar:
  1. "Descartes's" -"Descartes’” — 12,100 hits
  2. -"Descartes's" "Descartes’” — 19,400,000 hits
  3. "Illinois's" -"Illinois’” — 11 hits
  4. -"Illinois's" "Illinois’” — 2,300,000 hits
  5. "Verreaux's" -"Verreaux’” — 0 hits
  6. -"Verreaux's" "Verreaux’” — 2,820 hits
    7. > your search for "possessive prefix"
    Apologies for mis-writing the link label. The search was for "Possessives" in the search archives for the MoS page. ("prefix" was inserted by the WP search tool as a code for the page archive.)
    humanengr (talk) 04:27, 22 August 2015 (UTC)
    Using Google Scholar doesn't escape my point #1, above; that search also drops all punctuation even for quoted search terms. See the N-gram data below for what valid data on this question looks like. The N-gram search does not drop punctuation so we actually get what we're looking for.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  19:11, 22 August 2015 (UTC)
    Thanks. More precisely: while Google, Google Scholar, and Google Books drop most punctuation, they don't drop apostrophes within words (Illinois’s), so that’s handled correctly. However, they do drop the apostrophe at the end of a word (so Illinois’ is treated as Illinois). It's because of the latter issue that the results I reported above are misleading. (I provided feedback to Google on this.) humanengr (talk) 22:51, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

    A shipload of N-gram data

    N-gram searches of published book are more useful; although they're provided by Google, it's with different search algorithms that do not drop punctuation, and they are of ostensibly reliable sources, not random webpages generated by the questionably literate. (You may have to re-click the "Search Lots of Books" button after loading each of these URLs, to actually run the searches):

    • The odd American placenames: Illinois's has always trailed Illinois' [1], but the former has been on the rise since the late 1970s, while the latter has been simultaneously declining since ca. the mid 1990s. Arkansas's trailed Arkansas' [2] until the former started to rise in the late 1970s, becoming dominant by ca. 1993, and it remains so [3]. Despite the pronunciation difference at the end (the trailing s in Arkansas is silent), Kansas's badly trailed Kansas' [4] until rising in the 1980s to become even with the shorter spelling [5].
    • The silent French s: Camus's and Camus' [6] have gone back and forth over time, with Camus' leading, starting in the 1950s, then Camus's since the mid 1980s, evening out as of 2008.[7] Descartes's has always trailed Descartes': [8], but not by much, and the pattern has been consistent even in recent publications.[9] Dumas's has achieved parity with Dumas' after a century-and-a-half of the latter being mostly the more dominant form [10]. But this one data point may not be valid, since there are two famous Dumases (pere and fils), and sometimes or Dumas's or even Dumas' (instead of Dumases', the arguably correct form) is used as a plural possessive for them both; MOS is right to advise rewriting as "each Dumas" to avoid this entire question, but it's advice on apostrophe use with regard to Dumas is pointless, wrong to many of us, and should be removed, leaving only the rewriting advice. Moving on: Dubois's mostly has lagged behind Dubois' [11], until Dubois' dropped out of favor in the 1990s, followed by a sharp spike in its use in the early 2000s, with the two variants neck-and-neck since then [12]. But if you switch to the alternative spelling and use Du Bois's vs. Du Bois' [13], the 's spelling has been dominant since the late 1970s, and massively dominant since the mid 1990s. Degas's now rules Degas', though the former was strongly the case [14]. A bigger sample is needed, but so far it seems that if the shorter form still has a slight edge, it is badly eroded. It would be wise in further testing to pick a wide field of test subjects, e.g. from politics, science and sports, since the arts lean strongly toward the shorter version (which makes the above results even more surprising than they might be; I would have expected a landslide in favor of Dumas' and Degas', but it simply isn't there.
    • The silent French x: Verreaux's has always dominated Verraux' [15] (there were big spkies in 's usage in the 1950s and 1970s, which has evened out again, though perhaps indications of a trend further toward 's again recently [16]). At no time has just Verraux' prevailed. Same for Lascaux's vs. Lascaux' [17]. For some such cases, like Vignaux's, the ...x' case (e.g. Vignaux') is not attested in print at all.[18].
    • The [usually] z ending: James's has totally dominated James' [19] since mid 17th century! I didn't expect that. Jones's has mostly dominated Jones' [20], except from the mid 1910s to mid-1940s. The current trend is very strongly away from Jones'. Hodges's has been far behind Hodges' since the early 19th century, probably because Hodges's in spoken English has a repetitive uz-uz at the end. One sticking point: Proper pronunciation of a possessive written as Hodges' would, for many speakers, sound the same as Hodges's, otherwise it would be indistinguishable from Hodge's, and Hodge is an actual name. MoS's present wording "Add only an apostrophe if the possessive is pronounced the same way as the non-possessive name: Sam Hodges' son, Moses' leadership" is meaningless to many native English speakers, depending on their dialect, as many of us would pronounce Moses' as /MO-zez-uz/, certainly not /MO-zez/ or /MO-zuz/). Anyway, back to the data: Hus's and Hus' don't produce enough data to be statistically significant but appear to be neck and neck with Hus's having a tiny advantage. Brahms's has been beating Brahms' since the 1950s [21]. Dickens's has also been beating Dickens', since the 1850s (despite the fact that Dicken is also a name, the correct plural possessive of which is Dickens', skewing the data toward that version). This, by the way, proves the "Hodges'/Moses'" point is in the present wording is nonsense; anyone who pronounced Hodges/Hodges' or Moses/Moses' indistinguishably would do the same with Dickens/Dickens'. Moving on: Leeds's is still trailing Leeds'. [22]. It can't be a British thing, or the Dickens data wouldn't be what it is.
    • The [usually] s ending: Morris's has been beating Morris' since nearly 1700. Dennis's has always dominated Dennis' [23]], except for brief blips. Note that the feminine Denice's has no published Denice' counterpart [24], despite Venice' being attested; the Denise's spelling is common, the Denise' spelling rare. [25] Venice's and Venice' tracked closely [26], believe it or not, until ca. 1950 when Venice's took the lead, which it retains to this day (a quite strong lead since the early 1970s) [27]. Virtually no one writing today would use "Venice'". Similarly, niece's is almost universally preferred over niece' (with regard to the place in France, Nice's is actually at a loss to Nice' [28], oddly enough, after 200 years of back-and-forth, and despite the opposite with Venice, but this may be skewed by the use of "nice" as a regular word; any title or heading ending with the character string Nice' will trigger a hit). Columbus's vs. Columbus' [29] has veered back and forth again and again, Columbus's has been dominant since the mid 1980s. The informal Vegas's vhas followed a similar pattern of recent dominance over Vegas' [30], and this tracks the more formal case, Las Vegas's now beating Las Vegas', both since the latter quarter of the 20th century [31]. Despite a brief "flare-up" of bus' a generation or two ago (depending on your reckoning), the bus's is clearly leading over the bus' [32]; in the 20th century it went back-and-forth several times. Prentice's seriously dominates Prentice', which is barely attested [33], disspelling the idea that pronunciation has much to do with it. Prentiss's and Prentiss', by contrast [34], have long tracked each other very closely, with the 's spelling on the rise again.
    • The doubled ss ending: Glass's and Glass' have tracked each other very closely [35], with a slight edge to Glass' most of the time, but not enough for us to care about; Ross's dominates Ross' [36]; Hiss's dominates Hiss' [37]; Voss's dominated Voss' [38]; Blass's has taken the lead from Blass', though the latter was more prominent for a long time; Klaas's beats Klaas's consistently, Hass's loses to Hass' after years of tied results [39]; but Haas's beats Haas' (also after a long tie/draw) [40]. Hesse's dwarfs Hesse' (barely attested), but we'd expect this, since in proper German pronunciation, the final e is not silent, and some English-speakers know this. But Hess's has won over Hess' for decades. A test for my distant cousins: McCandless's has been beating McCandless' since the latter part of the 20th century. [41] For the boss's vs. the boss' [42] and my boss's vs. my boss' [43], the 's spelling has been consistently preferred since the mid 19th century, and dwarfs the ' version.
    • Let's try a name with lots of variant spellings and a pronounced s (or sometimes z) ending: Nicholas leads against Nicholas' [44], though this was not always so; the former ('s) spelling has been dominant since the mid 1970s. Nichols's leads Nichols' [45] and has since the mid 1980s, after a period of Nichols' dominance beginning ca. 1907 [46]. Nicklaus's beats Nicklaus' [47]; Niclaus's beats Niclaus' (unattested) [48]; Niklaus's beats Niklaus' in modern writing [49] (it was the other way around ca. 1950–1980); Nikolaus's and Nikolaus' [50] have gone sharply back-and-forth several times with the former leading today; Nicolas's presently leads over Nicolas' [51] though it was long the other way around; Nikolas's is suddenly behind Nikolas' after decades of back-and-forth; and so on.
    • Spanish z (plus s variants): Diaz's and Diaz' are an interesting case [52]; this is Spanish name properly pronounced with a final s (or even a th in high Castilian), but usually with a z in American English. Despite some Diaz' spikes in the 1930s and 1960s, it's overwhelmingly Diaz's today [53]; this is surely good data because of the popularity of Cameron Diaz, who gets a lot of press (or did a while back; I don't follow celebrity magazines, an N-gram data only goes up to 2008 anyway). This is especially telling since in this context it's always pronounced with a final z (i.e. "you can't end with 'z-z'" is a bogus rationale that is not supported by the actual data). "Dias" has too many other uses to produce meaningful test results (if you're curious, usage goes back-and-forth, and has converged to even). Cortez's is preferred over Cortez' and mostly has been, though the latter has had its periods of vogue [54]. Cruz's has consistently dominated Cruz' [55] since the 1950s. Rodriguez's and Rodrigues's both beat the Rodriguez' and Rodrigues' spellings [56] [57] in modern writing, though Rodrigues' was dominant over Rodrigues's until ca. 1999, and started slipping in the 1980s [58]. Exact same situation for Gonzalez's vs. Gonzalez' (former always dominant) and Gonzales's vs. Gonzales' (former dominant since the 2000s, rise beginning in the 1980s). The ancestral form, Gonsalves's vs. Gonsalves', also shows the former dominant in modern English writing, again with the rise starting in the 1980s [59].
    • Some "polluted"-by-French cases: Paris's consistently loses to Paris' [60], probably because the s is silent in French and, as a historical figure, it's a "name from antiquity", resulting in a double-whammy. Nevertheless, Paris's has been rapidly gaining since the late 20th century. St. Louis's is now dominant over St. Louis' [61] despite the opposite being true throughout most of the last century-and-a-half, and despite the fact that sometimes it refers to the actual person, where the terminal s is silent.
    • A variable case (usually pronounced with terminal s by English speakers): Soros's has totally dominated Soros' [[62]] since that name hit the media in a big with the George Soros. (The name is properly pronounced with a terminal sh sound, but most English speakers don't know that.)
    • Let's test sh endings: Koresh's totally dominates Koresh' [63]. Same with Tosh's vs. Tosh' [64], a trend that has sharply increased since the early 1970s. Macintosh's dominates Machintosh' by a long way [65]. Names that are also words, like "English", and "Danish", produce too many non-name results to be useful tests, but there are plenty of other sh names, and you can test them if you like. A few more are Jansch's which is real vs. the unattested Jansch' (despite the fame of Bert Jansch); Bosch's which dwarfs the barely-existent Bosch'; and Rakesh's sorely beats Rakesh' [66] (it's one of the top-5 male names in India).
    • Endings in [non-silent] x consistently take 's, as any number of searches show, e.g. Max's vs. Max' [67], Alex's vs. Alex' [68], etc.
    • What about ch endings: Church's dominates Church' [69], consistently.
    • Same goes for Mitch's vs. Mitch' [70]; no contest.
    • Ditto for Milosevic's vs. Milosevic' [71] (properly pronounced with a terminal ch).
    • Just for completeness, here's one ending in the zh sibilant: Sauvage's dominates Sauvage' [72] though the latter is actually attested, perhaps surprisingly.
    • One last thing to test is this notion that names of mythological figures, or "names from antiquity" in general, are treated with a bare '. Zeus's trails Zeus' [73], Xerxes's trails Xerxes' [74], Ramses's trails Ramses' [75]. But the trend is less clear-cut than one might think. Vilnius's was long losing to Vilnius' [76], but this has recently flipped, with a trend toward Vilnius's beginning in the late 1980s [77] Caratacus's has recently taken a lead over Caratacus' [78], and so has Bors's over Bors' [79]; Brutus's has made gains on Brutus' and actually surpassed it before; Venutius's is leading Venutius' again (and has several times in the past); Marius's vs. Marius' has gone back-and-forth more than once; Lucius's has made massive gains on Lucius' (which still leads but only by margin that has probably disappeared since the data was processed in 2008); Wenceslaus's and Wenceslaus's have converged after the latter leading since the 1930s; and Prasutagus's has taken the lead from Prasutagus' since the early 2000s [80]. Combined with the "x effect" shown above, a case like Vercingetorix's clearly dominates Vercingetorix' [81] (a trend that continues with modern names in this style: Asterix's strongly leads Asterix' [82], though this was not always so).
    • As we know already, Biblical names in particular (especially New Testament ones) are most often given in the shorter form, due to the influence of the KJV: Jesus's is very much less attested than Jesus' [83], and so on. But the influence of this particular Protestant religious tradition on other classical names has clearly slipped and continues to do so.

    Conclusion: Sources simply are not even close to consistent on this matter, with writers and publishers following whatever would-be convention they prefer. WP is therefore free to settle on whatever option is simplest for our editors, since our readers will have no consistent expectation at all, other than perhaps for Biblical names, where most Protestant Bibles (maybe also Catholic one – I don't have one handy to check) do not use 's for names ending in sibilants.

    I would do my usual "go through a huge pile of style guides" routine, but I strongly suspect this has already been done (maybe even by me) in a previous edition of this debate, and I don't want to waste the effort if it's not necessary, as it's very time consuming. The point is already proven above: There is no consistent external rule, so MoS should just advise what produces the least conflict. consistently use 's.

     — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  03:02, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

    Hadn't noticed you started a separate section on same topic; will review; thx humanengr (talk) 05:30, 22 August 2015 (UTC)
    Re: "There is no consistent external rule, so MoS should just advise what produces the least conflict." and "WP is therefore free to settle on whatever option is simplest for our editors." Let's not forget the option to NOT choose sides on the issue. The simplest rule would be "We allow both forms... so don't engage in edit wars over to change one to the other." Blueboar (talk) 16:18, 22 August 2015 (UTC)
    Hear hear. Darkfrog24 (talk) 18:07, 22 August 2015 (UTC)
    (ec) We've already tried that, and it's not working.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  19:08, 22 August 2015 (UTC)
    Thanks for your efforts; much appreciated. Interesting that of the ‘unsounded s’ terms, Illinois’ is still favored 2:1 and Descartes’ 3:2. The trend for possessive apostrophe to ‘consistency’ over brevity seems surprising. It's in contrast iiuc to, e.g., prefix hyphenation as well as general language evolution toward efficiency except where new distinctions are required. Anyone care to comment? humanengr (talk) 18:13, 24 August 2015 (UTC)
    It's just a different kind of efficiency, of the same kind that has lost us "thou" and "havest" from Middle English, and all sorts of complications that used to be present in Anglo-Saxon. We don't need hard-to-remember nit-picks when a consistent, simpler rule will suffice. This is also the explanation for full-compounding of once-hyphenated prefixes, etc. People get tired of trying to remember whether it's "co-operate" or "coöperate" (I remember that spelling from my youth!) or "cooperate"; given no reason to hyphenate (there is no "coop" + "-erate" with which to confuse it), "cooperate" is becoming the norm over time. It's also why specialist publication tend to drop hyphenation of compound adjectives; both the writers and reader already understand that "blunt force" in "blunt force trauma" is an adjective modifying "force" and never means anything else; MOS would still hyphenate that "blunt-force trauma", because not all of our readers will know to parse it that way (rather than as a "force trauma" that's blunt).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  19:19, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

    Pronoun pref

    Regarding MOS:IDENTITY I am wondering if we can include Janae Marie Kroc as an illustrative example.

    This applies in references to any phase of that person's life, unless the subject has indicated a preference otherwise

    JM Kroc has stated a desire, in genderfluidity, to be addressed by whatever pronoun is appropriate to how they are presenting. So since Kroc presented as male for the earlier portion of life, it would be appropriate to use male pronouns earlier in their life.

    Even now, with Kroc assuming a female name and central identity, this also means they can be referred to as male in present day if presenting as a male, like for example if Kroc was to compete in another male powerlifting event, set a male world record, compete in a male bodybuilding event, or challenge CM Punk in a UFC fight or something. However is Kroc is dressed in female clothing it would be appropriate to use female pronouns. 64.228.91.73 (talk) 17:36, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

    You are interpreting the rule correctly. If anyone gives you trouble, make sure you have a link to a quote of Kroc stating his or her preference. A personal blog is acceptable in this case. Darkfrog24 (talk) 18:50, 14 August 2015 (UTC)
    I believe that this is saying that Kroc is the exception to MOS:IDENTITY because she prefers to be thought of as someone who actually was a man before her body was changed with surgery, not a woman trapped in a man's body. Georgia guy (talk) 18:56, 14 August 2015 (UTC)
    I believe this is why MOS:IDENTITY is poorly thought out. It was authored by wanna-be "allies" not by transgender people, and they're making incorrect generalized, politicized assumptions and WP:SOAPBOXing them here. I know quite a few TG people, and only a small minority are into this "deadname" stuff and trying to erase their past, though many, yes, did feel they were misgendered from an early age. These experiences, sentiments about them, and actual expectations differ widely and frequently. MOS (and, should this be moved, any other policy or guideline) should not attempt to "legislate" some language police WP:ACTIVISTs' personally preferred one-size-fits-all solution, but approach this from a "how to best serve the readership while accounting for WP:BLP subjects' interests where reasonable" perspective like we do everything else. The huge thread atop WP:VPPOL indicates the general shape how to approach this: Use clarifying language (e.g. "Kaitlyn (then Bruce) Jenner won the [whatever medal], competing as a man"), and avoid pronouns. This is not rocket science, it's just clear writing.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  00:57, 21 August 2015 (UTC)
    User:SMcCandlish, what do you support the rule should be changed to?? Please simply reveal what you think the paragraph that starts with "Any person whose gender might be questioned..." Georgia guy (talk) 13:17, 21 August 2015 (UTC)
    I had actually written up a new version, and an analysis, word by word, line by line, what to change and why (from policy, socio-linguistic, utility, and other perspectives) and then lost it in a browser crash. Several hours of work. I haven't had the heart to try it again just yet, and it might be wasted effort until we see what emerges from Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 121#MOS:IDENTITY clarification, which I didn't realize until just now had been archived without formal closure. It's unclear if it will be unarchived for closure, or left to rot, but it's 4:1 in favor of a formal closure of that, at WP:ANRFC. I'm skeptical that changes made here without closure of that discussion, with whatever consensus findings can be extracted by it, would be accepted long term. A large number of people put a large amount of time into that discussion and are unlikely to want to see it ignored. If it the closure request is administratively rejected, or ignored for another month or so, maybe the best approach would be a review it as if closing, and try to figure out what the community wants, and then rewrite from there. I know what my own perception was, but I haven't looked at that discussion in probably a month, and am not certain how it shaped up at the end. In the interim, I guess I could write up what I think some of the issues are with the current wording. It's very palimpsestuous and has a "too many cooks" problem that's resulted in some logic problems, not all of which are immediately apparent.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  04:13, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

    RE MOS:IDENTITY. I searched for Bruce Jenner, which was redirected to Caitlyn Jenner, and I see the article uses she and her pronouns instead of he and him. This is a misuse of the English language. Wiktionary defines "her" as the form of "she" after a preposition. "She" refers to a "female" person or animal. "Female" is defined as "Belonging to the sex which typically produces eggs, which in humans and most other mammals is typically the one which has XX chromosomes." Bruce Jenner does not belong to the female sex by this definition: he is male, i.e. he has testes and XY chromosomes. By calling Bruce "she" you are not using the English language; rather some arbitrary LBGTQ language Ascherf (talk) 18:09, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

    Wiktionary also notes that female refers to the female gender. That is the definition Wikipedia has chosen to follow in MOS:IDENTITY: because Jenner presents as female, particularly with respect to gender identity, articles here use the feminine pronouns. —C.Fred (talk) 18:17, 25 August 2015 (UTC)
    Sex and gender are actually more complicated than just XY or XX. Our genes (chromosomes), gene expression, body chemistry and sometimes even diet and environment all figure into it. For the overwhelming majority of humanity, everything matches and there is no ambiguity, but not always. For example, there are women who have XY chromosomes, women with the more complete form of androgen insensitivity syndrome. They appear female to all outward examination (even when newborn babies with no clothes on), and they have XY chromosomes, but their cell receptors can't process testosterone, so they develop into women during puberty. Many of them don't even know that their bodies have this male trait, and they're called "she" all their lives.
    But that's not the same thing as being trans. I imagine at some point in the future there will be studies out of neuroscience and psychology to explain exactly why some people are trans. Perhaps Jenner always had some kind of female brain anatomy. Right now, though, we have to do the best we can. What we do know right now is that Jenner and Manning and all the other trans individuals in the news are not making this up; something about Jenner always was female, even though her body certainly does have male traits as well. We might as well use the pronoun that is most polite, which in Jenner's case is "she." We don't ask to see under Queen Elizabeth II's clothes to tell what pronoun to use for her; we should take Jenner at her word too. Darkfrog24 (talk) 18:21, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

    Some fairly recent history: See Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 149#Self-designation trumps reliable sources?. The original attempt at this rule was unanimously rejected at the time. What was objectionable about that version has something to do with the problems with the current one, though it's one of only about a dozen problems.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  19:21, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

    Can anyone do this?? (remove comments about gender pronouns from the page history)

    Look at the last few edits to this specific talk page and please try to make them invisible. They were ignorant comments made by User:Ascherf and I reverted them, but they're still visible in the history. Georgia guy (talk) 15:56, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

    Georgia guy, please put back my comment. Deleting comments is vandalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Vandalism#Talk_page_vandalism Ascherf (talk) 16:35, 25 August 2015 (UTC)
    Georgia guy, you may disagree Ascherf's opinion on this topic, but he's right about deleting comments from other users on talk pages. Neither of his edits (especially this one directly above, which I've restored) were off topic or hateful. Argento Surfer (talk) 17:35, 25 August 2015 (UTC)
    Please examine Ascherf's edit just a few edits before I started this particular talk page section. I can conclude from this very edit that Ascherf disagrees with WP:MOSIDENTITY. He supports that chromosomal sex is the proper rule for determining how to refer to people with pronouns, not gender identity. Georgia guy (talk) 17:38, 25 August 2015 (UTC)
    I read it. Is there something wrong with diagreeing with something in the MOS? Argento Surfer (talk) 17:44, 25 August 2015 (UTC)
    He disagrees with it and thus he wants it changed badly. I reverted his edit, and I want it to become invisible in the history, but he keeps saying no; he wants it back. Georgia guy (talk) 17:47, 25 August 2015 (UTC)
    GG means this edit: [84]
    1) @Ascherf:, you're not supposed to put your own comments at the top of an existing section; you're supposed to put them at the bottom or, if they're a response to a specific previous comment, below that comment and indented. If you put them at the top, it looks like you're promoting a political position rather than participating in a discussion. As for using trans individuals' preferred pronouns, [content moved to relevant section by poster]
    2) But yeah, @Georgia guy:, deleting Ascherf's comment outright was excessive. Ascherf is allowed to disagree with the MoS, ask questions about the MoS, suggest changing the MoS and even flat-out complain about the MoS. Moving it would have been appropriate. It does not belong where it was; I doubt you'd have gone so far as to delete it if it had been placed correctly. Darkfrog24 (talk) 17:53, 25 August 2015 (UTC)
    I'm a newbie, and on most forums the new stuff goes on top, so that's why I put it there. Before Georgia guy deleted my comment however Irn had already moved it to the bottom of the section . I put my comment back where Irn had it Ascherf (talk) 18:10, 25 August 2015 (UTC)
    @Darkfrog24: No, that comment was inappropriate and I assume Ascherf read this comment before deleting it. Disagreeing with MOS can be done without naming names or misgendering. --NeilN talk to me 19:26, 25 August 2015 (UTC)
    By "naming names," do you mean specifying a page as an example? Because that's pretty weak. And if you read Ascherf's initial edit, he laid out a pretty clear argument for why he thought the article in question was already "misgendered", hence why he brought it up. Either way, if an editor has an "ignorant" point of view, the correct response is to educate them with links and explanations. Not try to have their opinion erased from the record. Argento Surfer (talk) 20:07, 25 August 2015 (UTC)
    I can see why Ascherf's original post could be mistaken for heckling, but it's since become clear that it's within AGF to say that it's not. Let's not make this a bigger deal than it is. If GG or anyone doesn't want to hear about it (again), then we'll take it to the user talk pages. Darkfrog24 (talk) 20:14, 25 August 2015 (UTC)
    I really don't want anyone to make such comments anywhere in Wikipedia, period. For clarification, this means comments saying that chromosomal sex is the proper way to determine what pronouns to use. Georgia guy (talk) 20:26, 25 August 2015 (UTC)
    WP:NOTCENSORED If they don't ask, how are they going to learn? What if a teenager from a town with no out LGBQT needs to know how to write about such issues on Wikipedia? This place is pretty byzantine. If you're sick of having the educating-the-new-guy conversation, you don't have to. There are plenty of other people who can do it. Plus, if you think about it, considering that people's chromosomes do match their pronouns in the overwhelming majority of the human population, it's not so strange that a few people would get tripped up on how to write about the few people for whom they don't. Darkfrog24 (talk) 20:36, 25 August 2015 (UTC)
    (edit conflict), LOL. WP:NOTCENSORED. That's actually the majority viewpoint of the English-speaking human race, even if you or I disagree with it, so it's not unreasonable for someone to express it here. Desires to change this or that in MOS are a frequent topic here, and many of them are not well-reasoned in WP terms (not cognizant of WP:POLICY, previous consensus discussions, the nature of encyclopedic writing, WP:BLP concerns, how WP:CONSENSUS works and the fact that it trump any old paper style guide, etc. But we don't just delete them.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  20:37, 25 August 2015 (UTC)
    GG, you need a major trouting on this one. Your behavior was entirely unacceptable. Recognize it, apologize, and move on. --Trovatore (talk) 20:51, 25 August 2015 (UTC)
    GG has not attempted to delete the comment again. Let's not make the deletion a bigger deal than it really is either. It's already been fixed. Darkfrog24 (talk) 21:20, 25 August 2015 (UTC)
    Fair enough. --Trovatore (talk) 21:21, 25 August 2015 (UTC)
    It's not the first time comments have been deleted from this conversation so... apparently anyone can do it (which is extremely odd and shouldn't be the case).Cebr1979 (talk) 23:00, 25 August 2015 (UTC)
    They tried to cover up Barbara Streisand's transgressions once. Then again and again. Anyone can do it, but anyone can object much louder, so a public complaint's not worth the trouble for those genuinely wanting to hide something. WP:OTRS is the obscure way. InedibleHulk (talk) 00:05, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

    Proposal: Clarify the difference between logical quotation and British style

    The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
    Rescinding RfC, since it's been trainwrecked by editwarring to disrupt it. I'll try again after the WP:ANEW case is closed.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  02:24, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

    I propose and seek comments on the following minor change which I believe will resolve most of the ongoing conflict between editors about this part of the Manual of Style, and (more importantly) resolve the confusion that has grown up, over the last two years or so, about how to apply logical quotation, the quotation punctuation system that WP (along with various other non-news and non-fiction publishers) uses.

    Working from the present wording (a compromise emerging from some discussions above):

    On the English Wikipedia, use the "logical quotation" style in all articles, regardless of the variety of English in which they are written. Include terminal punctuation within the quotation marks only if it was present in the original material, and otherwise place it after the closing quotation mark. For the most part, this means treating periods and commas in the same way as question marks: Keep them inside the quotation marks if they apply only to the quoted material and outside if they apply to the whole sentence. Examples are given below.

    change it to this (new material underlined to highlight it here):

    On the English Wikipedia, use the "logical quotation" style in all articles, regardless of the variety of English in which they are written. As is usually the case in British style, include terminal punctuation within the quotation marks only if it was present in the original material, and otherwise place it after the closing quotation mark. For the most part, this means treating periods and commas in the same way as question marks: Keep them inside the quotation marks if they apply only to the quoted material and outside if they apply to the whole sentence. Examples are given below.

    or something that retains the spirit of all of these points.

    Benefits
    1. It doesn't incorrectly equate logical and British quotation, two styles that are demonstrably different in a key way that is directly relevant to Wikipedia editing.
    2. It does helpfully relate the two, for people familiar with the most common styles in British vs. American publications, but not already familiar with logical quotation.
    3. It helpfully, accurately, and extremely concisely describes the principal difference between British and logical quotation (the only one that would commonly arise), in a way that editors can apply without any need for additional analysis or research of quotation styles: It compresses into the single word "usually" the concept that in various situations, British style does not actually keep terminal punctuation outside the closing quotation mark if it was not in the original material, and may even change punctuation marks within the quotation, neither of which are done in logical quotation.
    4. The "usually" also happily avoids any confusion between academic "British style" as advocated by Oxford and Fowler (broadly similar to logical quotation), and "British style" as used by some British fiction publishers (a hybrid of "American" punctuation-aways-inside and single-then-double quotation mark nesting order (British news style, another hybrid, is the exact opposite, and can be treated as BQ.)
    5. Avoids giving undue weight to sources that gloss over the distinction between, and treat as equivalent, logical and Oxford quotation for their own reasons. Their not acknowledging the difference does not mean WP is in a position to say there isn't one.
    6. It doesn't delete, against longstanding consensus, the sourced term "logical quotation", the only known name for logical quotation (or what some might want to unhistorically call "a variant of British punctuation that dispenses with any rules that sometimes permit placing non-original terminal punctuation, or altering the original punctuation, inside the quotation marks").

    Two optional copy-edits: Remove the doubly-redundant "On the English Wikipedia" (nothing in English Wikipedia's MoS applies outside English Wikipedia, and the lang:en version at that); and remove the unnecessary repetition of "marks" in the next-to-last sentence.

     — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  14:47, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

    "British" is also a sourced name for this practice, and it is much more common. "Logical" is the alternate name. Darkfrog24 (talk) 16:45, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

    These are two names for the same practice, not two different practices: Direct readers to the article space

    Assertions of fact belong in the Wikipedia mainspace where they can be sourced, not in the MoS.

    There certainly is confusion here. "British" and "logical" are two names for the same practice, not two different practices. I would be best to use the most common name for the required practice, which is "British," but it would also be acceptable to use both. However, since both "British" and "logical" have been challenged as unduly loaded terms, it might be best to give no name at all and instead provide a link to the article space where the issue can be addressed in depth, with sourcing:

    On the English Wikipedia, use the following system in all articles, regardless of the variety of English in which they are written. Include periods and commas within the quotation marks if they apply only to the quoted material and outside if they apply to the larger clause or sentence. For the most part, this means treating periods and commas in the same manner as question marks. Examples are given below.

    Sources showing that these are two names for the same system:

    • Journal of Irish and Scottish Studies: "Punctuation marks are placed inside the quotation marks only if the sense of the punctuation is part of the quotation; this system is referred to as logical quotation."
    • Scientific Style and Format: "In the British style (OUP 1983), all signs of punctuation used with words and quotation marks must be placed according to the sense."
    • Chicago Manual of Style: "The British style of positioning periods and commas in relation to the closing quotation mark is based on the same logic that in the American system governs the placement of question marks and exclamation points"

    There are also sources that use the names interchangeably in the same passage:

    • Mark Nichol
    • Grammar Commnet "But in England you would write: My favorite poem is Robert Frost's 'Design'. The placement of marks other than periods and commas follows the logic that quotation marks should accompany (be right next to) the text being quoted or set apart as a title."
    • David Marsh writing in The Guardian:'the British style', which 'rules on message and bulletin boards'. Jolly good."
    • Ben Yagoda in Slate referring to others: "copious examples of the 'outside' technique—which readers of Virginia Woolf and The Guardian will recognize as the British style" (It's also Yagoda's own opinion but, like Marsh and CMoS I'm skeptical about his understanding of the matter.)
    • Announcement from CMoS

    There are many, many more sources that back up the ones I've already provided. The MoS is not the place to push this or any PoV. Fortunately, it doesn't need to tell users how they are required to punctuate Wikipedia articles. Darkfrog24 (talk) 16:42, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

    Comments on LQ RfC

    Discussion of LQ RfC

    I really hope the community will find this an agreeable solution to both of the problems outlined. The bickering about this is non-constructive, and the confusion about how to apply WP's quotation style (for which there's been stable consensus since 2002) to article content has become apparent, primarily due to the deletion of a long-stable intro like this (though a less clear and helpful one) that was present earlier (I have not diffed its deletion, but the intro was present in 2012, and confusion about logical quotation (LQ) was not evident then).

    To elaborate on the Benefits points above:

    1. The basic definition of logical quotation: Punctuation marks are placed inside the quotation marks only if the sense of the punctuation is part of the quotation (Research Institute of Irish and Scottish Studies, 2008). The Linguistic Society of America (2015) puts it this way: The second member of a pair of quotation marks should precede any other adjacent mark of punctuation, unless the other mark is a necessary part of the quoted matter. The Secure Programming HOWTO (Wheeler, 2015): quoted information does not include any trailing punctuation if the punctuation is not part of the material being quoted.. Royal Australian Historical Society (2011): Within a quotation use the spelling and punctuation of the original. Etc.

      By contrast, the traditional/academic British quotation as described by Oxford and Fowler, hereafter "BQ", has a number of exceptions that permit insertion of extraneous punctuation into quotation, even alteration of that punctuation, neither of which are allowed in LQ. The definition and rationale for BQ is different than for LQ: The relationship in British practice between quotation marks and other marks of punctuation is according to sense. While the rules are somewhat lengthy to state in full, the common-sense approach is to do nothing that changes the meaning of the quotation or renders it confusing to read. These BQ rules can be found, e.g., at pp. 148–153 of The Oxford Guide to Style in the 2003 Oxford Style Manual edition (some of them have been abridged from the pocket-size 2005 New Hart's Rules edition). Fowler's Modern English Usage (3rd ed., 2004, pp. 646–647) also covers these exceptions (to traditional British, not logical quotation), and reinforces Oxford on the rationale: All signs of punctuation used with words in quotation marks must be placed according to sense. (emphasis on that phrase is in the original in both cases; note the sharp contrast with "if the sense of the punctuation is part of the quotation" in LQ.)

    2. The primary point of contention in recent years is some editors' (well, one editor's, anyway) insistence on identifying LQ as "British" and insistence on including this label. As demonstrated above, they're not equivalent. But it surely would be helpful for editors familiar with North American and rest-of-the-world publishing traditions to understand at a glance that most of what they know about BQ is applicable to LQ.
    3. A single word here tells people familiar with BQ pretty much all they need to know about LQ for almost any editing situation. By including "usually" in "As is usually the case in British style, include terminal punctuation within the quotation marks only if ...", we automatically exclude the BQ "exceptions" that would violate LQ.
    4. That construction also automatically distinguishes LQ from another "British style" that is not Oxford/Fowler's. Fiction publishing in the UK and elsewhere sometimes uses a hybrid style of punctuation-always-inside but retaining traditional British single-then-double-quote nesting order. There's also a third style, another hybrid, in widespread use in British (and other non-North American) news publishing, of following BR's punctuation-outside-sometimes with "American" double-then-single order. We can treat the third style as identical to BR for these purposes, though it's exact "exception" rules may differ between news publishers (The Guardian, BBC News, etc., publish their own style guides, and many others have in-house style, meanwhile there is no British equivalent of the Associated Press Stylebook used by almost all American news sources.
    5. Two issues with trying to directly equate LQ and BQ on the basis that some sources treat them as synonymous is that it gives WP:UNDUE weight to sources that blur the distinction, and ignores that the publishers of the actual LQ and BQ style rules have in fact published distinct rules that are not the same, that conflict, and which have different determining factors (sense in the original vs. sense in the quoting publication). To equate them is original research (namely, a novel and counterfactual analysis/interpretation that attempts to infer reasoning and unevidenced facts from some sources' convenient conflation of (or ignorance of the distinctions between) the styles. WP is not ignorant of the distinctions, and it's the opposite of convenient for us to conflate them, but confusing to editors. A preference for sources that don't know about or which ignore the difference cannot erase the fact that the difference is reliably sourced; that's simply PoV pushing and WP:CHERRYPICKING. Normally we do not get into sourcing discussions like this at WT:MOS (the WP:CORE content policies apply to articles, not to internal WP:POLICY pages, which are based on the WP community's own consensus). But I needed to do this source research for the Quotation marks in English article anyway (still working on the citation formatting), as the same issue of conflation has arisen there.
    6. There's been editwarring against "logical quotation" being mentioned in MoS (or much of anywhere), but it is the term, and seems to be the only term for this quotation style. In 13 years, since LQ was adopted in the very first version of MoS, consensus has been to retain it, despite perennial attempts to do so. It's a concise term with a specific meaning that editors can read up on if they want to, while this would not be possible if the system were described verbosely but not named, or misnamed, or confused with BQ.

     — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  14:47, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

    SmC, I see that some sources in British style differ, but you have not shown that they differ along "British" vs "logical" lines. Can you show that all the sources that say "British" say one thing and all the sources that say "logical" say the other?
    1. Do the Linguistic Society of America, Secure Programming HOWTO, and Royal Australian Historical Society call the system that they're describing "logical" or do they call it "British" or do they call it by no name at all? The point of this RfC is whether the names are accurate or not. This is not a rhetorical question. If the ones that call it "logical" say X and the ones that call it "British" say Y, and the reverse is not the case, that would be relevant.
    2. I call it British because that's what the majority of sources call it and the one that I consider more relevant.
    3. Actually, two words that at least refer to this system as British are an improvement over not mentioning it at all, but the standard term should come before the alternate. One way or another, I think we'll end up working something out.
    5. In other words, SmC, you like sources that agree with you and don't like sources that don't agree with you. Remember what we're doing here: The sources we should use are the ones best suited to writing an encyclopedia for general-English audiences. Can you show that the sources that you prefer are more suitable than the ones that you don't?
    6. My understanding is that this rule was adopted under a split-the-difference deal between British and American English. It was decided that Wikipedia would use American double quotation marks (it was believed at the time that British always required single) and British punctuation-outside. So LQ was put in place because it is British. [85] EDIT CONFLICT: Here is an older version of the MoS that shows this: [86] Darkfrog24 (talk) 17:12, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
    I've already addressed most of this several times, with no rebuttal from you, just a restatement of your original position as if no one had ever responded to it, but I'll got through these motions one more time in the RfC, just for "the record".
    1. Zero of them call it "British"; that was the entire point. Some name it as logical quotation, some just state the rule without naming it, but it is very strict and the same rule: Do not include punctuation within the quotation marks if it was not in the original. British is not strict; it has that rule by default, but allows for several exceptions if it's suits the writer's desires. British also varies from guide to guide (Oxford to Fowler, etc.), and even from Oxford edition to Oxford edition. LQ does not vary: The British style sources permit extraneous/changed punctuation in the quotation (exactly which exceptions varies by guide), LQ does not permit either, ever, and this does not vary between guides.
    2. Just an opinion, and we've been over this 50 times already. If you're trying to make some kind of WP:COMMONNAME argument, COMMONNAME applies to article titles, not to MoS's (or article's) wording, and it doesn't apply the common name of one thing to a differently named something-else that happens to be similar.
    3. Glad we have common ground that it's improvement. But there is no "standard" in English; English has no equivalent of the Académie française, and arguing that "British" is the "standard" name for LQ is circular reasoning and begging the question, since it presupposes they are identical, the very point you're trying in vain the prove in the first place. I have yet to find any actual style guide anywhere advocating LQ (no extraneous/altered punctuation, ever) but calling it British. Style guides that advocate British (punctuation inside if original, but may be altered in or added to the original if it suits the sense of the quoting writer's material) do not call it LQ. Some style guides that advocate neither, and advise typesetters'/"American" quotation style, have conflated LQ and TQ. For their purposes of "always put commas and periods/stops inside, never outside", LQ and BQ might as well be the same: "usually put them outside". It's not a punctuation-inside style guide's job to in-depth analyze the difference between every style in the world that they don't advocate, only to advocate what they advocate and distinguish it from "that which is different" without bogging the reader down in irrelevant-in-that-context details. Assuming that LQ and BQ are the same because some sources choose to ignore the sourced difference is original research and PoV.
    5. I like a lot, and own, most major style guides (and many minor ones), a lot of which advocate typesetters' quotation, and several of which do not distinguish between LQ and BQ because they don't need to in their context. What I like has nothing to do with anything. You're misusing sources that show that some writers don't distinguish between LQ and TQ as evidence there's no difference
    6. Whether the first draft of the MoS got the history of LQ correct is immaterial. You're also mischaracterizing the original anyway; it wasn't a "deal", it was a decision, stated clearly, for quotation accuracy purposes, and it happened to effectively be a US/UK hybrid, and was described that way for ease of understanding, much the way the "do periods and commas the same way as question marks" text is providing an easy-to-understand mnemonic. But all of that was an aside, and doesn't directly relate the RfC anyway. [Update: I missed that the earliest MoS described it as a hybrid between American and British styles; we didn't start calling it "logical" until September 2005, but what was described was LQ, as defined by the sources above, from day one: no extraneous punctuation inside, without any of the exceptions permitted by BQ.]
    I think that addresses all of those issues, and I hope you won't raise them all circularly yet again without responding to the refutations, as you've done incessantly for several days now. It's a waste of both our time and energy.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  17:59, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
    1. So at the very least not all the sources you've posted are split along "call it British" and "call it logical lines," possibly not any of them. It might make things clearer if you spelled out which source uses what name or none: ("Oxford University Press calls this 'British' and Linguistic Society calls it 'logical' and the Australian Historical Society uses a description with no name," etc.)
    Responses to SmC's other points Darkfrog24 (talk) 18:16, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
    :::2. Let's say that's so. Why use a secondary name in the MoS but omit the primary name? Use both, use the common name alone or use neither.
    3. You believe that English doesn't really have standards. I don't share that belief. More importantly, most of the readers who come to read the MoS don't share that belief. Write for your audience. As for your other point, it's not only style guides that favor American English that describe L and B as the same thing. Some of the ones that do favor American style, like CMoS, describe B/l in considerable detail.
    6. I was refuting your claim. You said something like, "There's been consensus to call it 'logical' going back 13 years," so I showed that it isn't so.
    Darkfrog24 (talk) 18:16, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
    Why are we hiding these ones? Is there a secret? The one about CMoS is probably relevant to RfC respondents.
    3. Cite this standard then. Who issued it? On what authority? CMoS actually barely discusses them at all, but distinguishes between them. At 6.9 (in the 16th ed.) it says "In an alternative system, sometimes called British style (as described in the Oxford Style Manual ...), single quotation marks are used, and only those punctuation points that appeared in the original material should be included within the quotation marks; all others follow the closing quotation marks. (Exceptions to the rule are widespread: periods, for example, are routinely placed inside any quotation that begins with a capital letter and forms a grammatically complete sentence.)" At the end of this section, it says "This system or a variation may be appropriate in some works of textual criticism" (and went into more detail in the 15th edition, but they've been paring back on details about what they don't advise). It's original research to assume that the variations that CMoS affirmatively states do exist, without naming them, cannot have their own names and must all be called "British style". At 7.75, on quoting source code and computer commands: "If quotation marks must be used, any punctuation that is not part of the quoted expression should apear outside the quotation marks" (period, no mention of the "widespread ... exceptions to the rule" in BQ, which of course would defeat the very purpose of 7.75. That's the same as logical quotation, fitting exactly the definitions as given in my original point #1, and CMoS does not call it "British" (of course it would be false to say that CMoS calls it logical quotation, but they clearly give the logical quotation rule, for source, the British rule as an alternative for prose, and BQ or a "variation" on it (which would encompass LQ and who knows what else) for vaguely defined critical [in the humanities, not badmouthing sense] writing. WP consists of such writing (as is clear from the expanded text on this in the 15th ed.). Amusingly, as CMoS shifts more and more toward recognition of the validity of LQ's (and to a lesser extent BQ's) faithfulness to the source, the 16th edition's "Permissible Changes to Quotations" at 13.7 actually contradicts 6.9's "American" quotation rules. But that's something to get into some other time.
    6. D'oh! I was looking at the wrong diff. The logical part was added just short of 10 years ago. [87] The style of LQ dates to 13 years ago, we just weren't calling it that yet.

     — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  19:12, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

    I think you're right that the CMoS part is relevant. SMC, you seem to be saying A) CMoS describes what you, SMC, have been calling "logical" but B) refers to it by the name "British." That supports the idea that RS style guides don't consider these to be two different systems, that they use the names interchangeably.
    SmC, you know up in the "Take four" thread, where you said to use animate pronouns for fictional characters in-universe and inanimate pronouns out-of-universe, but the actual rule (or tendency, call it what you like) in English is to use animate pronouns almost all the time, even out-of-universe? I think you're seeing a distinction that isn't actually there again.Darkfrog24 (talk) 21:53, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
    Because a lot of this is a little bit off-topic. By all means leave it unhatted if you think it's directly related.
    3. Published style guides like CMoS, AMA, Oxford etc. can be considered standard.
    6. Because it's better known as "British."
    As for the hatting, you know how people who don't talk as much as you or I do sometimes go, "Don't post so much! You're preventing other people from talking" even though it does no such thing? Well maybe less verbose Wikieditors will be less likely to feel stampeded by teal deer if we keep things on topic. At least it might cut off any complaints.
    Darkfrog24 (talk) 20:31, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
    You're not reading (what I say, or the source). It describes British style in one section, and it describes another style (identical to what others call LQ) but does not name it, in another section. It's you who's just seeing what you want to see. The source indicates exactly the opposite what you think it does. You're mischaracterizing my position in the pronouns debate: Use animate in-universe, use inanimate when referring to characters as intellectual property, rewrite to avoid confusion. A position several otehrs agreed with. Nice try, though. 3. Since you consider published style guides standard, I guess you'll have to stop ignoring the ones I've cited. 6. You're just repeating yourself endlessly without addressing the refutation.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  21:38, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
    Okay, let's look at the quote you gave again:

    "In an alternative system, sometimes called British style (as described in the Oxford Style Manual ...), single quotation marks are used, and only those punctuation points that appeared in the original material should be included within the quotation marks; all others follow the closing quotation marks. (Exceptions to the rule are widespread: periods, for example, are routinely placed inside any quotation that begins with a capital letter and forms a grammatically complete sentence.)"

    1) It does call the whole thing "British." 2) It does say it's based on original position (which you've been calling "logical") and on sense. 3) It doesn't call it "logical." Do you see what I mean now? CMoS, at least, does not appear to be saying, "The British system uses sense, but the logical system uses original placement." It is saying, "British uses both."
    The way you posted it, it looks like it's all one piece. Are you saying this originally spread across different paragraphs? (You're usually very strict about marking breaks and omissions.) Darkfrog24 (talk) 21:53, 4 September 2015 (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.

    Headings with citations

    According to MOS:HEAD, "[c]itations should not be placed within or on the same line as section and subsection headings." Occasionally, I have encountered these misplaced citations, and, not knowing where to put them, I left them where I found them, and I continued editing. My latest example is "Meithei language" (version of 01:57, 24 August 2015), which has three subheadings with citations. Where should those citations be put? I suggest a brief addition (of no more than ten words) to the existing guideline. (I am hesitant to suggest any addition, because WP:MOS is already very large; maybe a subpage is more appropriate.)
    —Wavelength (talk) 02:13, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

    I have thought about this further, and now I retract my suggestion to add to the existing guideline information about where to move citations from headings and subheadings. Instead, I suggest that the guideline presently at MOS:HEAD be repeated at Wikipedia:Citing sources (WP:CITE), and that the advice on where to put citations removed from headings and subheadings be added in the same place. Also, the guideline at MOS:HEAD can have a link to the information at WP:CITE.
    —Wavelength (talk) 03:34, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

    This seems a similar problem to the one documented as "not enough inline citations"--usually reserved for general references provided--, since the citations are not inline in this case. --Izno (talk) 11:03, 24 August 2015 (UTC)
    Thank you.—Wavelength (talk) 15:49, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

    Quotation template TfD

    FYI
     – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

    There's potentially important TfD at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2015 August 18#Template:Barquote, some possible results of which are (given what has been proposed so far):

    • A change to site-wide block quotation style, by merging the new {{Barquote}} template into {{Quote}} as its new default style.
    • A change to the site-wide block quotation template, by merging the new {{Barquote}} template into {{Quote}} as an optional style that has not been subject to any consensus discussion; this would permit and effectively encourage the addition of random, editor-preferred styles that vary from article to article.
    • A change to WP:MOS to more explicitly state that we have a single, consistent block quotation style. This is presently true, as we have one block quotation template at {{Quote}} – aside from this new "competing" one at TfD – and it applies style consistently via CSS code in Mediawiki:Common.css. Such a clarification might need to happen anyway, since there's some evidence that people are using inline CSS to elaborately mark up block quotations in unusual ways).
    • No change other than deleting the variant template.

    Which ever of these you think is the best result, or if you think TfD is not the right venue for that discussion, you should probably comment in some way at the TfD in question, since at least two of these results would have a WP:FAITACCOMPLI effect of changing site-wide approach to block quotation style without their being any WT:MOS discussion about it.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  22:02, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

    Proposal: Clarify the difference between logical quotation and British style

    unconstructive feuding between two editors
    The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

    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.

    Hat|reason=Rescinding RfC, since it's been trainwrecked by editwarring that has disrupted it. I'll try again after the WP:ANEW case is closed.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  02:24, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

    I propose and seek comments on the following minor change which I believe will resolve most of the ongoing conflict between editors about this part of the Manual of Style, and (more importantly) resolve the confusion that has grown up, over the last two years or so, about how to apply logical quotation, the quotation punctuation system that WP (along with various other non-news and non-fiction publishers) uses.

    Working from the present wording (a compromise emerging from some discussions above):

    On the English Wikipedia, use the "logical quotation" style in all articles, regardless of the variety of English in which they are written. Include terminal punctuation within the quotation marks only if it was present in the original material, and otherwise place it after the closing quotation mark. For the most part, this means treating periods and commas in the same way as question marks: Keep them inside the quotation marks if they apply only to the quoted material and outside if they apply to the whole sentence. Examples are given below.

    change it to this (new material underlined to highlight it here):

    On the English Wikipedia, use the "logical quotation" style in all articles, regardless of the variety of English in which they are written. As is usually the case in British style, include terminal punctuation within the quotation marks only if it was present in the original material, and otherwise place it after the closing quotation mark. For the most part, this means treating periods and commas in the same way as question marks: Keep them inside the quotation marks if they apply only to the quoted material and outside if they apply to the whole sentence. Examples are given below.

    or something that retains the spirit of all of these points.

    Benefits
    1. It doesn't incorrectly equate logical and British quotation, two styles that are demonstrably different in a key way that is directly relevant to Wikipedia editing.
    1. It does helpfully relate the two, for people familiar with the most common styles in British vs. American publications, but not already familiar with logical quotation.
    1. It helpfully, accurately, and extremely concisely describes the principal difference between British and logical quotation (the only one that would commonly arise), in a way that editors can apply without any need for additional analysis or research of quotation styles: It compresses into the single word "usually" the concept that in various situations, British style does not actually keep terminal punctuation outside the closing quotation mark if it was not in the original material, and may even change punctuation marks within the quotation, neither of which are done in logical quotation.
    1. The "usually" also happily avoids any confusion between academic "British style" as advocated by Oxford and Fowler (broadly similar to logical quotation), and "British style" as used by some British fiction publishers (a hybrid of "American" punctuation-aways-inside and single-then-double quotation mark nesting order (British news style, another hybrid, is the exact opposite, and can be treated as BQ.)
    1. Avoids giving undue weight to sources that gloss over the distinction between, and treat as equivalent, logical and Oxford quotation for their own reasons. Their not acknowledging the difference does not mean WP is in a position to say there isn't one.
    1. It doesn't delete, against longstanding consensus, the sourced term "logical quotation", the only known name for logical quotation (or what some might want to unhistorically call "a variant of British punctuation that dispenses with any rules that sometimes permit placing non-original terminal punctuation, or altering the original punctuation, inside the quotation marks").

    Two optional copy-edits: Remove the doubly-redundant "On the English Wikipedia" (nothing in English Wikipedia's MoS applies outside English Wikipedia, and the lang:en version at that); and remove the unnecessary repetition of "marks" in the next-to-last sentence.

     — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  14:47, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

    "British" is also a sourced name for this practice, and it is much more common. "Logical" is the alternate name. Darkfrog24 (talk) 16:45, 4 September 2015 (UTC)


    These are two names for the same practice, not two different practices: Direct readers to the article space

    Assertions of fact belong in the Wikipedia mainspace where they can be sourced, not in the MoS.

    There certainly is confusion here. "British" and "logical" are two names for the same practice, not two different practices. I would be best to use the most common name for the required practice, which is "British," but it would also be acceptable to use both. However, since both "British" and "logical" have been challenged as unduly loaded terms, it might be best to give no name at all and instead provide a link to the article space where the issue can be addressed in depth, with sourcing:

    On the English Wikipedia, use the following system in all articles, regardless of the variety of English in which they are written. Include periods and commas within the quotation marks if they apply only to the quoted material and outside if they apply to the larger clause or sentence. For the most part, this means treating periods and commas in the same manner as question marks. Examples are given below.

    Sources showing that these are two names for the same system:

    • Journal of Irish and Scottish Studies: "Punctuation marks are placed inside the quotation marks only if the sense of the punctuation is part of the quotation; this system is referred to as logical quotation."
    • Scientific Style and Format: "In the British style (OUP 1983), all signs of punctuation used with words and quotation marks must be placed according to the sense."
    • Chicago Manual of Style: "The British style of positioning periods and commas in relation to the closing quotation mark is based on the same logic that in the American system governs the placement of question marks and exclamation points"

    There are also sources that use the names interchangeably in the same passage:

    • Mark Nichol
    • Grammar Commnet "But in England you would write: My favorite poem is Robert Frost's 'Design'. The placement of marks other than periods and commas follows the logic that quotation marks should accompany (be right next to) the text being quoted or set apart as a title."
    • David Marsh writing in The Guardian:'the British style', which 'rules on message and bulletin boards'. Jolly good."
    • Ben Yagoda in Slate referring to others: "copious examples of the 'outside' technique—which readers of Virginia Woolf and The Guardian will recognize as the British style" (It's also Yagoda's own opinion but, like Marsh and CMoS I'm skeptical about his understanding of the matter.)
    • Announcement from CMoS

    There are many, many more sources that back up the ones I've already provided. The MoS is not the place to push this or any PoV. Fortunately, it doesn't need to tell users how they are required to punctuate Wikipedia articles. Darkfrog24 (talk) 16:42, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

    Comments on LQ RfC

    Discussion of LQ RfC

    I really hope the community will find this an agreeable solution to both of the problems outlined. The bickering about this is non-constructive, and the confusion about how to apply WP's quotation style (for which there's been stable consensus since 2002) to article content has become apparent, primarily due to the deletion of a long-stable intro like this (though a less clear and helpful one) that was present earlier (I have not diffed its deletion, but the intro was present in 2012, and confusion about logical quotation (LQ) was not evident then). To elaborate on the Benefits points above:

    1. The basic definition of logical quotation: Punctuation marks are placed inside the quotation marks only if the sense of the punctuation is part of the quotation (Research Institute of Irish and Scottish Studies, 2008). The Linguistic Society of America (2015) puts it this way: The second member of a pair of quotation marks should precede any other adjacent mark of punctuation, unless the other mark is a necessary part of the quoted matter. The Secure Programming HOWTO (Wheeler, 2015): quoted information does not include any trailing punctuation if the punctuation is not part of the material being quoted.. Royal Australian Historical Society (2011): Within a quotation use the spelling and punctuation of the original. Etc.

      By contrast, the traditional/academic British quotation as described by Oxford and Fowler, hereafter "BQ", has a number of exceptions that permit insertion of extraneous punctuation into quotation, even alteration of that punctuation, neither of which are allowed in LQ. The definition and rationale for BQ is different than for LQ: The relationship in British practice between quotation marks and other marks of punctuation is according to sense. While the rules are somewhat lengthy to state in full, the common-sense approach is to do nothing that changes the meaning of the quotation or renders it confusing to read. These BQ rules can be found, e.g., at pp. 148–153 of The Oxford Guide to Style in the 2003 Oxford Style Manual edition (some of them have been abridged from the pocket-size 2005 New Hart's Rules edition). Fowler's Modern English Usage (3rd ed., 2004, pp. 646–647) also covers these exceptions (to traditional British, not logical quotation), and reinforces Oxford on the rationale: All signs of punctuation used with words in quotation marks must be placed according to sense. (emphasis on that phrase is in the original in both cases; note the sharp contrast with "if the sense of the punctuation is part of the quotation" in LQ.)

    2. The primary point of contention in recent years is some editors' (well, one editor's, anyway) insistence on identifying LQ as "British" and insistence on including this label. As demonstrated above, they're not equivalent. But it surely would be helpful for editors familiar with North American and rest-of-the-world publishing traditions to understand at a glance that most of what they know about BQ is applicable to LQ.
    3. A single word here tells people familiar with BQ pretty much all they need to know about LQ for almost any editing situation. By including "usually" in "As is usually the case in British style, include terminal punctuation within the quotation marks only if ...", we automatically exclude the BQ "exceptions" that would violate LQ.
    4. That construction also automatically distinguishes LQ from another "British style" that is not Oxford/Fowler's. Fiction publishing in the UK and elsewhere sometimes uses a hybrid style of punctuation-always-inside but retaining traditional British single-then-double-quote nesting order. There's also a third style, another hybrid, in widespread use in British (and other non-North American) news publishing, of following BR's punctuation-outside-sometimes with "American" double-then-single order. We can treat the third style as identical to BR for these purposes, though it's exact "exception" rules may differ between news publishers (The Guardian, BBC News, etc., publish their own style guides, and many others have in-house style, meanwhile there is no British equivalent of the Associated Press Stylebook used by almost all American news sources.
    5. Two issues with trying to directly equate LQ and BQ on the basis that some sources treat them as synonymous is that it gives WP:UNDUE weight to sources that blur the distinction, and ignores that the publishers of the actual LQ and BQ style rules have in fact published distinct rules that are not the same, that conflict, and which have different determining factors (sense in the original vs. sense in the quoting publication). To equate them is original research (namely, a novel and counterfactual analysis/interpretation that attempts to infer reasoning and unevidenced facts from some sources' convenient conflation of (or ignorance of the distinctions between) the styles. WP is not ignorant of the distinctions, and it's the opposite of convenient for us to conflate them, but confusing to editors. A preference for sources that don't know about or which ignore the difference cannot erase the fact that the difference is reliably sourced; that's simply PoV pushing and WP:CHERRYPICKING. Normally we do not get into sourcing discussions like this at WT:MOS (the WP:CORE content policies apply to articles, not to internal WP:POLICY pages, which are based on the WP community's own consensus). But I needed to do this source research for the Quotation marks in English article anyway (still working on the citation formatting), as the same issue of conflation has arisen there.
    6. There's been editwarring against "logical quotation" being mentioned in MoS (or much of anywhere), but it is the term, and seems to be the only term for this quotation style. In 13 years, since LQ was adopted in the very first version of MoS, consensus has been to retain it, despite perennial attempts to do so. It's a concise term with a specific meaning that editors can read up on if they want to, while this would not be possible if the system were described verbosely but not named, or misnamed, or confused with BQ.

     — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  14:47, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

    SmC, I see that some sources in British style differ, but you have not shown that they differ along "British" vs "logical" lines. Can you show that all the sources that say "British" say one thing and all the sources that say "logical" say the other?
    1. Do the Linguistic Society of America, Secure Programming HOWTO, and Royal Australian Historical Society call the system that they're describing "logical" or do they call it "British" or do they call it by no name at all? The point of this RfC is whether the names are accurate or not. This is not a rhetorical question. If the ones that call it "logical" say X and the ones that call it "British" say Y, and the reverse is not the case, that would be relevant.
    2. I call it British because that's what the majority of sources call it and the one that I consider more relevant.
    3. Actually, two words that at least refer to this system as British are an improvement over not mentioning it at all, but the standard term should come before the alternate. One way or another, I think we'll end up working something out.
    5. In other words, SmC, you like sources that agree with you and don't like sources that don't agree with you. Remember what we're doing here: The sources we should use are the ones best suited to writing an encyclopedia for general-English audiences. Can you show that the sources that you prefer are more suitable than the ones that you don't?
    6. My understanding is that this rule was adopted under a split-the-difference deal between British and American English. It was decided that Wikipedia would use American double quotation marks (it was believed at the time that British always required single) and British punctuation-outside. So LQ was put in place because it is British. [89] EDIT CONFLICT: Here is an older version of the MoS that shows this: [90] Darkfrog24 (talk) 17:12, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
    I've already addressed most of this several times, with no rebuttal from you, just a restatement of your original position as if no one had ever responded to it, but I'll got through these motions one more time in the RfC, just for "the record".
    1. Zero of them call it "British"; that was the entire point. Some name it as logical quotation, some just state the rule without naming it, but it is very strict and the same rule: Do not include punctuation within the quotation marks if it was not in the original. British is not strict; it has that rule by default, but allows for several exceptions if it's suits the writer's desires. British also varies from guide to guide (Oxford to Fowler, etc.), and even from Oxford edition to Oxford edition. LQ does not vary: The British style sources permit extraneous/changed punctuation in the quotation (exactly which exceptions varies by guide), LQ does not permit either, ever, and this does not vary between guides.
    2. Just an opinion, and we've been over this 50 times already. If you're trying to make some kind of WP:COMMONNAME argument, COMMONNAME applies to article titles, not to MoS's (or article's) wording, and it doesn't apply the common name of one thing to a differently named something-else that happens to be similar.
    3. Glad we have common ground that it's improvement. But there is no "standard" in English; English has no equivalent of the Académie française, and arguing that "British" is the "standard" name for LQ is circular reasoning and begging the question, since it presupposes they are identical, the very point you're trying in vain the prove in the first place. I have yet to find any actual style guide anywhere advocating LQ (no extraneous/altered punctuation, ever) but calling it British. Style guides that advocate British (punctuation inside if original, but may be altered in or added to the original if it suits the sense of the quoting writer's material) do not call it LQ. Some style guides that advocate neither, and advise typesetters'/"American" quotation style, have conflated LQ and TQ. For their purposes of "always put commas and periods/stops inside, never outside", LQ and BQ might as well be the same: "usually put them outside". It's not a punctuation-inside style guide's job to in-depth analyze the difference between every style in the world that they don't advocate, only to advocate what they advocate and distinguish it from "that which is different" without bogging the reader down in irrelevant-in-that-context details. Assuming that LQ and BQ are the same because some sources choose to ignore the sourced difference is original research and PoV.
    5. I like a lot, and own, most major style guides (and many minor ones), a lot of which advocate typesetters' quotation, and several of which do not distinguish between LQ and BQ because they don't need to in their context. What I like has nothing to do with anything. You're misusing sources that show that some writers don't distinguish between LQ and TQ as evidence there's no difference
    6. Whether the first draft of the MoS got the history of LQ correct is immaterial. You're also mischaracterizing the original anyway; it wasn't a "deal", it was a decision, stated clearly, for quotation accuracy purposes, and it happened to effectively be a US/UK hybrid, and was described that way for ease of understanding, much the way the "do periods and commas the same way as question marks" text is providing an easy-to-understand mnemonic. But all of that was an aside, and doesn't directly relate the RfC anyway. [Update: I missed that the earliest MoS described it as a hybrid between American and British styles; we didn't start calling it "logical" until September 2005, but what was described was LQ, as defined by the sources above, from day one: no extraneous punctuation inside, without any of the exceptions permitted by BQ.]
    I think that addresses all of those issues, and I hope you won't raise them all circularly yet again without responding to the refutations, as you've done incessantly for several days now. It's a waste of both our time and energy.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  17:59, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
    1. So at the very least not all the sources you've posted are split along "call it British" and "call it logical lines," possibly not any of them. It might make things clearer if you spelled out which source uses what name or none: ("Oxford University Press calls this 'British' and Linguistic Society calls it 'logical' and the Australian Historical Society uses a description with no name," etc.)
    Responses to SmC's other points Darkfrog24 (talk) 18:16, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
    :::2. Let's say that's so. Why use a secondary name in the MoS but omit the primary name? Use both, use the common name alone or use neither.
    3. You believe that English doesn't really have standards. I don't share that belief. More importantly, most of the readers who come to read the MoS don't share that belief. Write for your audience. As for your other point, it's not only style guides that favor American English that describe L and B as the same thing. Some of the ones that do favor American style, like CMoS, describe B/l in considerable detail.
    6. I was refuting your claim. You said something like, "There's been consensus to call it 'logical' going back 13 years," so I showed that it isn't so.
    Darkfrog24 (talk) 18:16, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
    Why are we hiding these ones? Is there a secret? The one about CMoS is probably relevant to RfC respondents.
    3. Cite this standard then. Who issued it? On what authority? CMoS actually barely discusses them at all, but distinguishes between them. At 6.9 (in the 16th ed.) it says "In an alternative system, sometimes called British style (as described in the Oxford Style Manual ...), single quotation marks are used, and only those punctuation points that appeared in the original material should be included within the quotation marks; all others follow the closing quotation marks. (Exceptions to the rule are widespread: periods, for example, are routinely placed inside any quotation that begins with a capital letter and forms a grammatically complete sentence.)" At the end of this section, it says "This system or a variation may be appropriate in some works of textual criticism" (and went into more detail in the 15th edition, but they've been paring back on details about what they don't advise). It's original research to assume that the variations that CMoS affirmatively states do exist, without naming them, cannot have their own names and must all be called "British style". At 7.75, on quoting source code and computer commands: "If quotation marks must be used, any punctuation that is not part of the quoted expression should apear outside the quotation marks" (period, no mention of the "widespread ... exceptions to the rule" in BQ, which of course would defeat the very purpose of 7.75. That's the same as logical quotation, fitting exactly the definitions as given in my original point #1, and CMoS does not call it "British" (of course it would be false to say that CMoS calls it logical quotation, but they clearly give the logical quotation rule, for source, the British rule as an alternative for prose, and BQ or a "variation" on it (which would encompass LQ and who knows what else) for vaguely defined critical [in the humanities, not badmouthing sense] writing. WP consists of such writing (as is clear from the expanded text on this in the 15th ed.). Amusingly, as CMoS shifts more and more toward recognition of the validity of LQ's (and to a lesser extent BQ's) faithfulness to the source, the 16th edition's "Permissible Changes to Quotations" at 13.7 actually contradicts 6.9's "American" quotation rules. But that's something to get into some other time.
    6. D'oh! I was looking at the wrong diff. The logical part was added just short of 10 years ago. [91] The style of LQ dates to 13 years ago, we just weren't calling it that yet.

     — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  19:12, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

    I think you're right that the CMoS part is relevant. SMC, you seem to be saying A) CMoS describes what you, SMC, have been calling "logical" but B) refers to it by the name "British." That supports the idea that RS style guides don't consider these to be two different systems, that they use the names interchangeably.
    SmC, you know up in the "Take four" thread, where you said to use animate pronouns for fictional characters in-universe and inanimate pronouns out-of-universe, but the actual rule (or tendency, call it what you like) in English is to use animate pronouns almost all the time, even out-of-universe? I think you're seeing a distinction that isn't actually there again.Darkfrog24 (talk) 21:53, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
    Because a lot of this is a little bit off-topic. By all means leave it unhatted if you think it's directly related.
    3. Published style guides like CMoS, AMA, Oxford etc. can be considered standard.
    6. Because it's better known as "British."
    As for the hatting, you know how people who don't talk as much as you or I do sometimes go, "Don't post so much! You're preventing other people from talking" even though it does no such thing? Well maybe less verbose Wikieditors will be less likely to feel stampeded by teal deer if we keep things on topic. At least it might cut off any complaints.
    Darkfrog24 (talk) 20:31, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
    You're not reading (what I say, or the source). It describes British style in one section, and it describes another style (identical to what others call LQ) but does not name it, in another section. It's you who's just seeing what you want to see. The source indicates exactly the opposite what you think it does. You're mischaracterizing my position in the pronouns debate: Use animate in-universe, use inanimate when referring to characters as intellectual property, rewrite to avoid confusion. A position several otehrs agreed with. Nice try, though. 3. Since you consider published style guides standard, I guess you'll have to stop ignoring the ones I've cited. 6. You're just repeating yourself endlessly without addressing the refutation.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  21:38, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
    Okay, let's look at the quote you gave again:

    "In an alternative system, sometimes called British style (as described in the Oxford Style Manual ...), single quotation marks are used, and only those punctuation points that appeared in the original material should be included within the quotation marks; all others follow the closing quotation marks. (Exceptions to the rule are widespread: periods, for example, are routinely placed inside any quotation that begins with a capital letter and forms a grammatically complete sentence.)"

    1) It does call the whole thing "British." 2) It does say it's based on original position (which you've been calling "logical") and on sense. 3) It doesn't call it "logical." Do you see what I mean now? CMoS, at least, does not appear to be saying, "The British system uses sense, but the logical system uses original placement." It is saying, "British uses both."
    The way you posted it, it looks like it's all one piece. Are you saying this originally spread across different paragraphs? (You're usually very strict about marking breaks and omissions.) Darkfrog24 (talk) 21:53, 4 September 2015 (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.

    Avoiding further confusion on use of British/logical quotation with intro material

    unconstructive feuding between two editors
    The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

    The reason there's any confusion about how to use LQ is that the clarity of the section has been lost over the course of several years of nitpicking and erosion. The obvious fix is to restore something like the early introductory material, which appears to have been deleted without any consensus discussion anyway.

    To merge the current text and a version from 2012, and to make clearer that inclusion of the original punctuation inside the quote is permissible not mandatory, replace this:

    On the English Wikipedia, use logical quotation style in all articles, regardless of the variety of English in which they are written. Examples are given below.

    with this:

    On the English Wikipedia, use logical quotation style in all articles, regardless of the variety of English in which they are written. In short: Place terminal punctuation marks outside the quotation marks unless they are part of the quoted material and it is syntactically important to retain them. This punctuation system, used because it is more in keeping with the principle of minimal change, does not require placing final periods and commas outside the quotation marks all the time, or always including them at the end of quoted material that had them, but rather not inserting them into material when they were not present in the original. Examples are given below.

    This would forestall a lot of hair-pulling.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  06:58, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

    Comments

    That would be easily misinterpreted (i.e. cause more of the confusion we're trying to resolve and prevent). The main point of LQ is "are part of the quoted material" (or "are in the original quotation" or something to this effect); "unless syntactically important to retain" (or something to that effect) is a separate, secondary point. They shouldn't be combined.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  13:44, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
    • Remove POV. Refer to this system as either "British" and "logical" or as neither. The only purpose of including the name is name recognition (so people can go, "Oh British/logical style! I know what that is and can now skip that long list of examples") and that is well served by leaving out the most common name. We should also remove the claim that this decision is related to the principal of minimal change, because it is not true and pushes yet another POV that American punctuation violates the principal of minimal change (it doesn't). The FAQ already has a discussion of the reasons behind the use of this rule on the MoS. The example is also longer than it needs to be.

    On the English Wikipedia, use the following system in all articles, regardless of the variety of English in which they are written: Place terminal punctuation marks inside the quotation marks if they are part of the quoted material and it is syntactically important to retain them and outside otherwise. This does not require placing final periods and commas outside the quotation marks all the time. Examples are given below.

    I'm also not 100% that "maintaining their original position" needs to be there. In proper British style, the sentence "I think she looks carefree" looks like it's supposed to be written as "He said 'carefree'." more than "He said 'carefree.'"
    Hm. Also "syntactically important" and "maintain the original position" seem to contradict each other. Darkfrog24 (talk) 12:52, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
    LQ is not British style. Already proven. Please stop beating this dead horse.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  13:44, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
    No, SmC, it's been proven that they are the same. You have disregarded the sources that I've shown you. Per your own DEADHORSE, please just accept that you don't agree with me—or CMoS or AMA or APA or Purdue or the David Marsh article that you linked to just today—on this point and move on. Darkfrog24 (talk) 14:04, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
    I thought you said you wanted to move that discussion to #Talk page terminology and British/logical punctuation systems. Whatever. Just re-re-re-asserting your position after having been proved wrong doesn't somehow change the fact that your claim has been debunked. No amount of sources showing terminological confusion on the part of some writers can ever undo the fact that sources for the actual style rules prove the styles are in fact different. It's over.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  20:35, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
    I had the idea to start that thread after I made that comment. And for the love of all that's holy, just you find your personal positions convincing doesn't mean you proved a darn thing. Darkfrog24 (talk) 20:46, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
    To move on, back to the actual topic, now that the "British" distraction has relocated to another thread: "maintain the original position" isn't in the wording, so I'm not sure what you mean by a contradiction between "syntactically important" and "maintain the original position". If the latter was meant to be "are part of the quoted material" (or "are in the original quotation", a possible alternative), they don't relate. (The exact wording of "syntactically important" may not be all that crucial).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  20:35, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
    I mean that "place it according to sense/syntactic importance" and "place it according to its original position" are often mutually exclusive. Darkfrog24 (talk) 20:46, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
    We're making progress here. "Place it according to sense" vs. "place it according to its original position" is the difference between BQ and LQ. The RfC below covers this in enough detail for anyone, probably. None of it's news, but it's right here, right now. As for this particular thread, BQ's "place it according to sense" is not the same thing as "if ... it is syntactically important to retain them". The former means "put it where it flows best" without full regard for minimal change, while the latter means "keep it inside [if it was in the original] only if needed, but move it outside otherwise."

    To get back to trying to build common ground, your "people can go, 'Oh British/logical style! I know what that is and can now skip that long list of examples'" purpose, above, is precisely the motivation for the [currently extant] compromise/merged intro wording in the guideline section (other than equating BQ and LQ; showing that they only differ in one key way resolves the dispute). It's disappointing that you immediately started reverting in it. Please just leave it alone for a while. I'm bending over backwards to leave your approach in, and keep the crucial "only if part of the quoted material" raison d'etre of LQ (which Curly Turkey also clearly wants, and which consensus has long been there for, since MoS version 1.0 in 2002), and to make it clear that "logical quotation" is a term of art and a name not WP's own value description, and to include "British", and to help all editors have the "Oh!" realization you, and me, and CT, all want to see, and to distinguish BQ from LQ properly, the way the sources that define what they are in the first place clearly do. There's an RfC open on it, let's let others have their say.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  16:37, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

    The sources suggest that the British might contradict itself in some way or might just allow two different practices, but they do not suggest that "British" and "logical" are not both names for this somewhat fuzzy system. Like I said below, the sources that call it "British" and the ones that call it "logical" use the exact same descriptions. It does not seem to be the case that the ones that say "place according to sense" all use one name and the ones that say "maintain original placement" use the other.
    I actually do appreciate the reference to "British" that you put in there. That's what makes me confident that we can work this out. Darkfrog24 (talk) 18:22, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

    Shorter intro for WP:LQ for unfamiliar readers

    FYI
     – This is a duplicate thread; the original is still open at #Example sentence for editors unfamiliar with British/logical style, above

    You know, I still think this one's better:

    For the most part, this means treating periods and commas in the same way as question marks: Keep them inside the quotation marks if they apply only to the quoted material and outside if they apply to the whole sentence.

    Our target audience is likely to stumble over "syntactically," and the question mark example won't require as many people to stop and figure out what we're talking about. Do you think "whole sentence" or "whole clause" is more appropriate? Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:03, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

    Nothing wrong with it, but it's a specific point about periods and commas, if we even need it; it's not intro material, but an example preface.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  13:44, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
    But remember what it's there to do: give a concise and readily absorbable explanation for people not already familiar with British style (and face it they're probably not used to words like "syntactically") so that they know what the MoS wants them to do in the article space. Whether we do this with intro material or an example preface doesn't really matter. Darkfrog24 (talk) 14:04, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
    I understand, but it doesn't really do that. The point of LQ is not "do stuff like question marks", it's "if the punctuation was not in the original, do not include it in the quotation". I also have to mildly object to you inserting your version, after opening two threads about it at once, when there's another proposal on the table, and neither have consensus. But maybe a hybrid version will be viable in the interim.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  07:03, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
    The sources say that the system we're using is "placement according to sense." The best way to translate that to people who don't already know how to use British style is "that thing that you were taught in school to do with question marks." As to when I inserted it, it was right after you said you liked it. The "placement by sense"/"original position" is in the thread above. Darkfrog24 (talk) 12:45, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
    They don't say that. The RfC demonstrates this with direct quotes. BQ says that, LQ does not. I would agree that one good way to convey what MoS wants to them to do, because BQ and LQ only differ in one major way, is to give them a mnemonic like "do it like question marks", and that's why I didn't revert or monkey with that insertion, but merged it with the "only if in the original material" point, which is central. With them both in there (and with "British" included correctly, per the RfC), it will actually become difficult for anyone to get it wrong! :-)  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  17:02, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
    Among the sources that you and I both supplied to that RfC, some of them say "sense," some say "original position," and CMoS 16 says both are part of the same system, referring to sense as the primary and original position as the exception.
    The RfC has revealed one thing: We need to hammer out exactly what the system required by Wikipedia is before we go further into explaining it to others—you and I have looked at the same sources and come to very different conclusions about what they mean. The passage you quoted from CMoS 16 seems to have the best idea. But first we have to wait until your unfounded and disruptive complaint against me runs its course. Darkfrog24 (talk) 03:36, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

    Talk page terminology and British/logical punctuation systems

    unconstructive feuding between two editors
    The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.


    The comments about my use of the term "British" to describe British punctuation are causing undue digression from otherwise potentially productive discussion, so I will deal with them here. I only have a bit of time and do not have access to most of the notes that I've taken on the subject over the years, so there are probably even more sources than I have listed here, but these should do for now. The point of this passage is to demonstrate that RS refer to the system currently required by Wikipedia as both "British" and "logical."

    There are a few sources that refer to the system "British" and "logical" in the same passage.

    • Grammar Commnet "But in England you would write: My favorite poem is Robert Frost's 'Design'. The placement of marks other than periods and commas follows the logic that quotation marks should accompany (be right next to) the text being quoted or set apart as a title."
    • David Marsh writing in The Guardian:'the British style', which 'rules on message and bulletin boards'. Jolly good."
    • Ben Yagoda in Slate referring to others: "copious examples of the 'outside' technique—which readers of Virginia Woolf and The Guardian will recognize as the British style" (It's also Yagoda's own opinion but, like Marsh and CMoS I'm skeptical about his understanding of the matter.)
    • EDIT: Another one Mark Nichol

    Far more common are sources that use either the name "British" or "logical" but describe the same system:

    • Chicago Manual of Style: "The British style of positioning periods and commas in relation to the closing quotation mark is based on the same logic that in the American system governs the placement of question marks and exclamation points"
    • Journal of Irish and Scottish Studies: "Punctuation marks are placed inside the quotation marks only if the sense of the punctuation is part of the quotation; this system is referred to as logical quotation."
    • Scientific Style and Format: "In the British style (OUP 1983), all signs of punctuation used with words and quotation marks must be placed according to the sense."

    If you want to see more sources that deal with this issue, you can find a large list compiled here: [92]

    To sum up my point:

    You do not have to agree with the conclusion that these are two names for the same practice. Everyone is entitled to their opinion. You do have to accept that this conclusion is reasonable, legitimate, and consistent with Wikipedia's core principles regarding reliable sources, and therefore accept that it is perfectly appropriate for us to to refer to this practice as "British" or "logical" on talk pages as we see fit. Treat it as the non-issue that it is.

    If you can't do that, then at least confine any further complaints or other comments to this thread so that we can address the other issues that have been raised. Darkfrog24 (talk) 17:10, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

    This has nothing to do with "everyone is entitled to their opinion". This is a matter of facts and sources. I have no idea how someone can walk away from reading (skimming? I dunno) an article about the differences between LQ and BQ and say that the article equates them. But no one is going to be fooled by that, and it doesn't matter anyway.
    It's very simple:
    1. Some writers use the terms interchangeably for their own reasons (generally because they are glossing over distinctions for simplicity or convenience).
    2. But other sources that detail the actual rules of these styles/systems, have clearly demonstrated that they're distinct.
      • As just one point already reliably sourced to the Oxford Style Manual, the fact that what can probably reasonably be called British style (i.e. that recommended by Oxford / Hart's / Fowler's, as used by the majority of nonfiction book publishers, news sources [perhaps decreasingly], and non-technical/science journals, in the UK) permits the alteration of the full stop (period) into a comma within the quotation marks proves that British style and logical quotation are different. That one fact alone is sufficient, but there are many others. We needn't list them here, because WT:MOS is not for cataloguing every difference in every style guide to "extra prove" moot points (and it's all been said before here anyway).
    3. Fact #2 makes fact #1 irrelevant: They are not the same thing. It does not matter how many millions of people call bison "buffaloes"; the animal properly called a bison and those properly called buffalo are not the same thing, because reliable sources about their details prove they are distinct genera.

      You've had many opportunities to retract the claim of identity between LQ and BQ and the claim that no one as "ever" provided sources showing them to be different – or simply to drop the matter – but that's clearly not going to happen as long as you think anyone is going to take your claims seriously.

    The ugly truth:
    • Way back in May 2009, someone explained clearly that LQ is neither British nor American [93].
    • Darkfrog24, in the same thread, explicitly agreed that LQ is not British (or American) style and (in edit summary) that MOS should "explicitly state" so. Here's a direct quote: "I'd also advise adding a line stating that the system differs from both standard British English and standard American English as part of the explanation, already shown, of why Wikipedia adopted this policy."[94].
    • After this, another editor also observed that logical quotatation [sic] is different from the British style" (and went into detail) [95].
    • Darkfrog24's direct response to this: "True. As I mentioned at the time, I found a source yesterday that said this. One source concurring with a POV is a hundred times more effective than a thousand people singing its praises without one." [96]. This post was sandwiched directly between the other editors' posts I just diffed. (I guess I could diff the "yesterday" post, too, but this should be enough.)
    Darkfrog24 knew all along that LQ and BQ are not the same, sourced it personally and accepted it, even advised that MOS state it clearly, then self-reversed for some reason and has been playing a "pretend it never happened" game with us for more than half a decade, and been "less than factual". I'd like all that wasted time and energy back, please. And changing one's position doesn't somehow erase past sources, facts, and knowledge of them.

    I think this should surely be the end of it. If it's not, these four diffs are just the tip of the iceberg, from a single thread. There are many others.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  20:11, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

    I know more about this topic now than I did six years ago. I did at one point believe that the MoS imposed some obscure third system that contradicted both standard British and standard American English, but as I read more sources and learned more about it, I found that it was in fact just British punctuation under another name. That means that instead of being wrong in British and American English articles, it's only wrong in American English articles. It is natural for people's positions to change as they acquire more information.
    There are sources on British English that differ slightly in their treatment of terminal punctuation, but they do not do so on British/logical lines. By that I mean that some say X and some say Y, but it's not as if all the ones that call it "logical" say X and all the ones that call it "British" say Y. What this means is not that British and logical are two different things but that there is a difference of opinion among sources on the best way to execute British style.
    Getting back to the point: Because I have shown you that my belief is based on sources and not on whims, you should respect my preferences regarding which term I use on the talk page, as I have tolerated yours. Darkfrog24 (talk) 20:33, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
    And honestly, if someone referred to an American bison as a "buffalo" in a talk page discussion, would that really be that big of a deal? Hang on... according to the American Heritage Dictionary, "buffalo" is a legitimate name for the American bison: [97] Oxford too: [98] So it would be inappropriate to insist that other editors only not refer to the American bison as "buffalo" on talk pages or even in Wikipedia's public space. I believe this is apt here. Darkfrog24 (talk) 20:40, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
    And you're still not getting it. It has nothing to do with your opinions or beliefs, nor with party A respecting party B, only with sourced facts. The facts are that the systems differ. Not even a bazillion sources, and a gazillion faithful believers in their errors, that confused the two systems terminologically could ever erase the proof that the systems are different in fact. There is no way around this. And it's a fact you already knew about, and pretended you didn't, and pretended no one had sourced. Please observe the law of holes. PS: Your "point" about buffalo/bison is proving my own point for me. Read it again, think about it.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  20:44, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
    I have shown you sourced facts. When I said, "everyone's entitled to their opinion," I meant that you, SmC are at liberty to ignore the sources and the facts so long as you stop insisting that I or anyone else do so as well. If you don't find CMoS et al. convincing, that's your business. But when you disrupt other discussions with repeated digressions about how I have to use the loaded terms that you happen to like, you're making it mine. Darkfrog24 (talk) 20:52, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
    Circular argument to which I will not respond, other than to say you probably don't want to bring up CMoS. It doesn't say what you think it does.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  22:44, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
    I'll be even clearer: You don't have to say "Darkfrog, you're right." What I'm going for is closer to, "Darkfrog, I can see that your belief that 'British style' and 'logical style' are the same is reasonable even though I think it's wrong. I will now stop insisting that you refer to this style only as 'logical.'" Remember when I referred to your "English doesn't really have rules" as "just SmC's shtick"? I mean that of course I think you're wrong, but it's not a big deal that you phrase things the way you want on the talk page, and we don't need to make an issue of it. Think of "it's British" as my shtick if you have to. Are you worried that people will think you agree with me if you don't make an issue of it every time? Darkfrog24 (talk) 20:57, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
    It isn't reasonable though. You seem to want them to be the same, and you're mistaking the conflation of them by some as evidence that they are the same, but it's not, because how they differ has already been shown many times. We've been over this something like 5 times now today alone, and you just pretend it isn't there, cannot rebut it, and just reset back to your original assertion. I have never "insist[ed] that you refer to this style only as 'logical.'" I even said you can call it Squeedlyborp or Style J4 if you want. You don't have consensus to remove it from MOS pages or articles. You don't have consensus to falsely conflate it with British in them. You don't have the right to try to hijack and distort my clarification proposal into something factually wrong. And if you make arguments that wrongly conflate LQ and BQ then you can expect me or someone else to object to the error. It's already been explained repeatedly why logical quotation (an externally sourced name) is called that (it's about the logic of the function of the punctuation in the original material, not about the "logic" of how much sense it makes).

    If you detest that name so much, no matter what it means, why don't you just use something different? Like, maybe call what WP uses the "punctuation-outside" system, and what the British style manuals use (which is "punctuation-mostly-outside-but-less-often") the "Oxford" system (since the term "British" system, coming from you, will never have a clear meaning to anyone because of the way you've historically mixed them). They'd be made-up, unsourced names and not suitable for guideline or article text, but we could all easily understand what you meant. "It's British" isn't just your harmless shtick, it's directly clouding discussion and confusing the guideline text (as well as making your own posts incoherent, because no one knows, from one clause to the next, which of these styles you really mean, and you've mixed them several times today alone, talking in one breath about WP's system and rules, and in another trying to apply what British sources do, which are not to our rules, just something similar on many points, but different in the most important one).

    What or who anyone thinks I agree with is immaterial (it's not about me). When LQ and BQ are confused in these discussions, it makes the discussion likely to turn into an unresolvable mess. Various Oxford/Hart's rules do not apply to LQ, but you keep insisting they're "correct" under LQ on WP. The fact that you keep doing this after the differences between LQ and BQ has been laid out (many times over the years, and again just today, in part by direct citation to Oxford, in part by diffs to two others laying it out for you) makes it increasingly difficult to continue assuming good faith. Especially when you make advocacy statements like "I am as stout an advocate of American punctuation as ever", and more recently "I support lifting the ban on American punctuation", etc. It's hard to see how this is not a WP:GREATWRONGS and WP:SOAPBOX issue, especially since it's being going on like an "It's British, it's British, it's British ..." broken record for so many years. [I'm done with this for today, and decline to respond further until we've all had a breather from this.]  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  22:44, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

    I call it "British" because I've looked at the sources, observed that most of them call it "British," and have decided to do the same thing. That is what you have to accept as reasonable, that I am following the widespread practice of mainstream reliable sources. I also consider "British" to be the most accurate and relevant name because it is the prevailing practice in British English, and because the MoS distinguishes between national varieties for most things. I'd love it if the rest of you guys quit calling it "logical" because the term is so loaded, but I accept that you guys have your preferences. I understand why you wouldn't believe me that this system is British, but why don't you believe the Guardian or Oxford or your own eyes?
    SmC, you cited the David Marsh source earlier, saying "This article criticizes Wikipedia for calling British and logical punctuation the same," and what it actually says is "One of Wikipedia's examples is misleading" (and it's wrong). The person who sees what he wants to see in sources here is you.
    Yes, you don't believe that "British" and "logical" are two names for the same system, but you've seen that I do and that I'm not pulling that belief out of thin air. What, in addition to this, is it going to take for you to stop complaining, "Darkfrog, don't call it 'British'! That's bad!" (summarized for brevity)? It's really causing some problems. If not these sources, if not the fact that I do the same thing for your fringe views, then what? Darkfrog24 (talk) 23:04, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
    No, reliable sources describe the differences between these systems, and have already been cited. Sources that choose to ignore differences between two systems cannot be used to disprove the differences between them that other sources document. Why do you think otherwise? Until you demonstrate that this is somehow possible, none of the rest of this matters, since it all depends on your belief that sources that use the terms interchangably somehow invalidate those that specify how the systems differ. The Oxford manual directly contradicts your position. This is the second time in the same day that you've been presented a source and just gone into a reality-denial routine about what the source says. Also, please stop pushing your disproven "logical quotation is British quotation" stuff into wikt:logical quotation.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  06:27, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
    SmC, because, so very much of the time, you say, "The source says X," when it really says, "Y-Z+X/9," please tell me which sources you believe establish that the British and logical styles are not the same. Link to them, and show the exact text that you believe supports your position, like I did in the first post of this thread. I am willing to read them (again, probably) but I am not willing to guess at what you were thinking.
    I believe they're the same because the sources, including but not limited to the ones I've cited in the first post of this thread, show them to be the same. To be more specific, when a wide range of published sources say they're the same, but you (or any other Wikieditor) say they're different, I will believe that the published sources are right. You keep saying, "Don't listen to the sources; they're wrong. Listen to me instead." Okay, I'll hear you out. Why? Darkfrog24 (talk) 12:40, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
    I've never said anything remotely like that. For what must be at least the dozenth time: Listen to the sources that specify the styles, and which spell out what the differences are, not sources that don't know about (or, for their own convenience/focus/audience, choose to gloss over) the differences. The fact that the differences do not matter to everyone in the world all the time enough for them to comment on them does not mean that they don't matter here or don't exist (they're already reliably sourced to exist, as quoted in detail in the RfC below, as they've been quoted, and the importance explained, many times in past discussions in which you've participated) And please stop engaging in projection about source misreading (among many other things; it's hard not to notice that virtually every editing behavior criticism/objection I've made about what you're doing, you then parrot back at me a post or two later, without evidence; it's just a "no I'm not, you are!" game. PS: Thank you for conceding that you were in fact actually aware already that these sources exist and that you've read them. So please explain your repeated denials that they exist or that anyone has "ever" been able to provide one.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  16:16, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

    [moved]

    The problems with this analysis are a) the sources that actually specify these rules do not equate them; b) secondary sources that don't know/care about the distinction can't erase the bare fact that the distinction exists; and c) your sources are not all saying what you think they say, anyway. Yagoda, for instant, saying that readers of British literature will recognize LQ as BQ is a statement by Yagoda of the likely thought processes of those readers; it's an exemplar of original research to suppose that Yagoda personally cannot tell, or will not recognize, any difference. And WP doesn't care what Yagoda's opinion on that matter is anyway, in an op-ed for a webzine; his editorial is not a style guide, but a pop-culture observation piece on punctuation usage shift. Just one example.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  17:15, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
    In other words, SmC, you like the sources that agree with you and don't like the ones that don't. You have cited the Yagoda article in the past. I agree that he's not perfect, which is why I also cited Marsh, his principal critic. They're agreed on this point. Darkfrog24 (talk) 17:19, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
    In other words, you still have no argument, and can't respond substantively to anything. Sources that gloss over a distinction can't hide the fact that it exists in other sources. Why won't you ever address this?

    Observing that Yagoda wrote an op-ed not a style guide and didn't bother to distinguish in that piece isn't a criticism of Yagoda, just an observation of simple facts. "Like" has nothing to do with anything. Interestingly I just defended Yagoda as a well-known language writer a couple of hours ago, against you deleting him from the Quotation marks in English article, to which (along with wikt:logical quotation) you've moved your editwarring now that your 3RR are up for the day here. You deleted and broke other citations to that source, and put in an anti-LQ, self-published blog post instead, then revert-warred to delete any and all dispute tags, and engaged in the same incoherent I-can't-hear-you nonsense on the article's talk page, against multiple editors. So when does this rampage end?  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  03:03, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

    For the third time, I replaced Yagoda with other sources because it looked like you were complaining about it. Like I said on the talk page, I thought you were the one attacking Yagoda, and I said, "Okay, we can use someone else; here's one." The way to respond to that is, "Oh, that's actually not what I meant; I actually don't mind if Yagoda stays in," not with accusations.
    Just because you don't agree with the sources I showed you doesn't mean that I have no argument. Your repeated assertions that because I don't share your precise conclusions I must be up to something wrong are getting uncivil. And you know what? I'm going to say it. We have a term for when the sources say one thing but an editor cobbles together another and it's WP:OR. This is why I not only don't have to take your word for it; I'm required not to.
    What 3RR? If you're going to make any more accusations, you must say what the heck it is that your overactive imagination has convinced you that I did because—like this Yagoda matter—you might have blown it clear out of sight of proportion. Darkfrog24 (talk) 03:31, 5 September 2015 (UTC)
    I'll see if I can be even clearer. You know how Chicago MoS 14th ed has one paragraph in which it says "American practice is this" and another in which it says "British practice is that," clearly showing that, at least in its own voice, that there are two different practices with two different names? Do you have any source that does that for "British is this" and "logical is that"? Because you have shown sources here that do the opposite. Darkfrog24 (talk) 03:40, 5 September 2015 (UTC)
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