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List of ENGVARs that are acceptable on English Wikipedia, and how to distinguish them?

I write most articles in Oxford spelling, which means I write "colour" with a u but "optimize" with a z. I also write "colorize" with no u because it looks right to me and the OED calls "colourize" a British variant spelling. For most common words where there is a difference between British and American spelling, my writing looks like British English (I actually learned to write English in public school in Ireland, but that's neither here nor there). I have seen users try to determine which ENGVAR a particular article was originally written in by going back through the page history and trying to locate the first instance where the article used a word or spelling specific to one dialect of English, but a lot of these users seem to be pretty careless in their approach, as they assume a bipolar "British English vs. American English" division, or some more nuanced division that still misses some subtle differences. Two of these users I have a great respect for, and one of them is an admin -- they are just careless about these things.

(Oxford spelling is apparently not taught in public schools in the UK either; I told an English ALT I knew in Japan some time back about how I spell words, and she called it "inconsistent" to mix-and-match like that. I explained to her that this is how the OED does it, and she just said "Oh.")

This means that if I wrote an article used the word "colour" in an earlier draft, they would then take this as meaning that the article is written in "British English" and go about removing the "-ize"s that were inserted into the article later, even if I was the one who added them because that is the (perfectly acceptable, OED-sanctioned) format I use. Even if two different editors were writing in two different ENGVARs, we don't necessarily have unambiguous proof that either was writing in ENGVAR X or ENGVAR Y specifically.

Should we clarify this in some way? Maybe say that RETAIN does not sanction enforcing one artificially assumed "original" ENGVAR on an article that currently contains inconsistencies or apparent inconsistencies.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 00:28, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

OFFS, do we really need this? Can you show us evidence this is an actual problem? EEng 00:35, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

[1]

"Per [the use of colonizing instead of colonising], the ENGVAR is American [and therefore you should continue replacimg the Commonwealth spellings with American ones]".

Now that I've been forced to effectively name both users, I might as well ping them.

(By the way, do you kiss your mother with that mouth? This is honestly a lot closer to what I expected of the level of rhetoric on the MOS talk page than I saw in the "fortnightly" discussion.)

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 04:35, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

Note that I am not saying that either trying to establish which ENGVAR is best for an article or trying to establish internal consistency is bad: I am saying that without clarifying that Oxford spelling (mixture of "-our" with "-ize") is acceptable, this guideline's requirement to retain the previously established usage in an article and its requirement for internal consistency conflict with each other unnecessarily. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 04:41, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

The answer is to use your preferred variant of the {{Use Canadian English}} template at the top of the page to nip this shit in the bud. I've gotten into the habit of doing that whenever I start or rewrite an article. Expect petty squabbling otherwise. As a writer of Canadian English, you can imagine that I've gone through the same hassles in the past. Curly "the jerk" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 05:04, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, that probably works. At least in your case, you're using a form of English named after a country. My one is named after a university press with offices in both the UK and the US, whose spelling preferences look like a mix of the two. :P Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 05:15, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

Which is what Canadian English looks like to anyone who's not Canadian. I've yet to see the ENGVAR indicted in a template overturned, so I'd stick with them. If you're really paranoid about drive-by "corrections", you could fill the article with {{not a typo}}s. Curly "the jerk" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 05:35, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

My advice is to bend over backwards to avoid obsessing or battling in any way, shape or form about English variations. We all know that London should be written in British English, and New York in American English and Toronto in Canadian English and Sydney in Australian English and Mumbai in Indian English and so on. But anyone who wants to battle about English variations in Theory of Relatively should instead spend their time actually improving the encyclopedia instead of wasting electrons. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 05:19, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

Not sure what you expect me to say here, Hijiri88. As currently written, what I suggested in the edit you linked above follows ENGVAR as it is currently written. If you want to try to get yet another version of English for people to try to follow (especially one that randomly mixes and matches British and American spellings), you're going to have to convince an awful lot of people. As for your "they are just careless about these things" comment: We are all human, and we all make mistakes. Even you. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 06:49, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

@Nihonjoe: It doesn't necessarily follow ENGVAR as currently written. There are a lot of varieties of English that are acceptable for use on English Wikipedia, as supported by the Indian, etc. examples currently listed in ENGVAR. "one that randomly mixes and matches British and American spellings" is a pretty odd way of describing the spelling system used (treated as the default) by the Oxford English Dictionary. The reason for Oxford's "mixing British and American spellings" is based on etymology; it isn't "random". We even have a template that explicitly tells editors to use this spelling system in certain articles. (Props to Curly Turkey for bringing this to my attention.)

The suggestion you made in the above diff was that that article should use American English because the earliest regional variant spelling was the -ize form of "revolutionize"/"colonize". This would only be in line with ENGVAR as currently written if there was only one acceptable variety of English that used the -ize spelling. Going back and finding what variety of English was "originally" used would involve checking the earliest version of the article that consistently used one variety of English as opposed to all others. This means that checking when the first -ize entered the article doesn't help. My writing in articles I started or completely overhauled is consistently British-Oxford, which uses -ize. If an article was ENGVAR-neutral before I edited it and I added an -ize spelling, this would have been meant by me as a British-Oxford spelling, not an American one. I know we all make mistakes, and I do too; I did not intend to criticize you or what you wrote last September, which is why I didn't name you or link to your edit. It was only after i was accused of making up imaginary problems that I found it necessary to specifically link to your post. I think that adding clarification of how to establish the variety of Englis that was "originslly" used in an article would prevent mistakes like this in the future.

I also think, even if it's technically in line with the current wording of ENGVAR, it goes against the spirit of the guideline to decide that, for a certain article whose original author was going out of their way to find as many opportunities for MOS:COMMONALITY as possible, the first region-specific form inserted by an IP who didn't know any better and whose edit was later reverted anyway should take preference as the ENGVAR of that article over the ENGVAR favoured by the original author. (Obviously this doesn't apply to the specific page we were discussing last year, but it does apply to most of what I've written.)

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 08:30, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

I have little time for further fractionating English into sub-sub-divisions. Why exactly does it mean so much to you, Hijiri? Tony (talk) 08:48, 5 October 2016 (UTC)�

What exactly do you mean by "further fractionating" and "sub-sub-divisions"? Oxford spelling was around long before either you or I were born, and as far as I can tell it has differed from common British spelling (and agreed with common American spelling) on the aforementioned -ize suffix since before either of us was born as well. As for why it means "so much" to me: I don't like the idea of people altering the way I spell things in articles because they want to be "internally consistent" in accordance with their (very common) misunderstanding about English spelling. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 10:01, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I was about to express a similar sentiment i.e. ... I'm sorry, but I'm still waiting to see (a) substantial evidence (i.e. problems at several articles) that editors are not working this out for themselves without clarification in MOS; and (b) a rough idea of what is suggested to be added to MOS. So far this seems like an enormous discussion over what seems to be a non-problem. EEng 08:50, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

(a) The guideline currently tells users to enforce internal consistency, and also tells them to retain the ENGVAR unless there is good reason not to. As long as Wikipedia editors are not told how to identify the variety of English used in an article, this contradicts itself. Evidence that this is causing problems (in more instances than the one I already mentioned) is unnecessary, because the contradiction is right there in the text. If you want another example from a few years back, Talk:Forty Martyrs of England and Wales#Spelling. There are probably hundreds of other articles that are either currently "inconsistent" and waiting to be "fixed" or already have been "fixed". That was, to the the best of my recollection, the last time I mustered up the masochistic will to talk about ENGVAR on this page. The hostile tone you are choosing to take with me is not exactly making me want to discuss matters of style. If you don't want to have a civil discussion, why are you choosing to post here? (b) Read my initial post again. I suggest we clarify how to recognize what ENGVAR an article was originally written by specifying that -ize is not an "American spelling" per se, as it is also preferred in Oxford spelling, and clarify that while efforts to enforce internal consistency on an article are important, it's necessary to establish which variety of English makes most sense in light of the article's history. This would, of course, be added beneath the "exceptions" currently listed at MOS:ARTCON. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 10:01, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

Two examples, one from a few years back, do not constitute a problem MOS should fix. EEng 10:09, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

So ... what? I should go around and deliberately change a bunch of articles that are currently "internally consistent" because someone changed them from Oxford spelling to normal British spelling or American spelling and see if anyone reverts me, and then come back here once "a problem MOS should fix" has come to light? That seems like it would violate WP:POINT, doesn't it? The fact is that without clarifying what we mean by ARTCON we are encouraging editors who don't know better (the fact that someone as capable as Nihonjoe didn't know any better is proof that a lot of editors, probably most, don't know any better) to violate RETAIN and vice-versa. (The fact that not a lot of editors spend their time enforcing internal consistency in articles -- more probably change regional variant spellings for jingoistic reasons -- and very few editors are carefully reading the MOS to begin with means that the reason you are opposed to my proposed change is essentially redundant.) Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 10:50, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

I agree that Oxford-spelling-related disputes do not appear to be a widespread problem that needs a specific solution here. Also, it's worth noting that WP:ENGVAR itself, when citing examples of differences between US and British English, does not include -ise vs -ize, so it is not stating that that is necessarily a fixed difference, and is implicitly making an allowance for Oxford spelling within British English. Indeed, WP:IZE specifically highlights and explains the quirks of Oxford spelling, as does the template that is attached to articles to identify those written with it.

However, at the risk of sending this on a bit of a tangent, there is arguably the broader question here of what sub-varieties we actually need templates for or need to be listed in the MOS as examples. Of course there are Indian, Malawian etc dialects of English, but WP is not written in dialect. Are there really multiple differences in spelling, grammar etc in formal writing, above and beyond those in the two main varieties, which need to be flagged up, and those articles claimed as being written according to them? This should be a relatively simple and practical style issue, not a question of national "ownership" or pride. N-HH talk/edits 10:24, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

I agree that Wikipedia is not written in dialect. Most of the thousands of regional differences (lexical, grammatical, and indeed spelling) of English would not generally be accepted on Wikipedia per WP:FORMAL. Where I come from, for instance, people say "How's the craic?" as a general greeting and use "craic" in a wide variety of other situations; in writing, they spell the word "crack" as "craic" for jingoistic reasons (it's commonly, and incorrectly, believed in Ireland that it's an original Gaelic word rather than a loanword from English) and possibly to distinguish it in writing from a certain illicit narcotic of whose name it is a homophone; the problem of the different spellings, though, does not matter to us on Wikipedia because the word is slang and nowhere in either Ireland or Britain is it used in the kind of formal writing we are meant to be engaged in on Wikipedia.

In fact, "Irish English" and "British English" are probably almost indistinguishable on Wikipedia, or should be if we are writing in the formal register we are supposed to be, and any minor points of variance would immediately be trumped by MOS:COMMONALITY anyway. The only two "Indian English" examples listed on this page are "Mumbai" (which really isn't "Indian English" anymore -- it's the official name that almost everyone uses in English) and "crore", which we are explicitly told not to use. So a discussion about removing templates that instruct editors to write in certain dialects that, in formal writing, only differ in very minor ways that we are supposed to avoid as redundant, might be worth having.

As for the Oxford spelling thing, though, the fact that ENGVAR avoids mention of -ize/-ise is precisely my problem -- we should be specifying that there is one prominent form of British English that uses the former, so making RETAIN and ARTCON judgements based on it should be avoided.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 10:50, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

But as I pointed out, WP:IZE – a subsection of the MOS spelling page – does specify exactly that. As does the template that anyone can add to a page that does (or should) use Oxford spelling. I'm not sure, beyond that, the MOS should get directly involved in specifying how to police or arbitrate debates that might arise from any confusion; or that such confusion is widespread or leading to intractable arguments. Or that we need that level of detail/explanation on the main MOS page. N-HH talk/edits 10:58, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

Policy on names of organizations

The policy on names of organization (such as expanding abbreviations and omitting the "Ltd") found at Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Cue sports § Respect for official organization names should be introduced into the main style manual and not remain ghettoed in the cue sports policy section. See also Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Names which suggests that the cue sports recommendations should be taken as general. Best wishes. RobbieIanMorrison (talk) 09:56, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

• Agree - possibly some minor edits might be required, but generally Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Cue sports § Respect for official organization names ought to apply everywhere. Mitch Ames (talk) 10:08, 9 October 2016 (UTC)
• Essentially the same advice is given regarding the publisher as used in citation templates, e.g. Template:Cite web #Publisher. That should make the guidance already sufficiently ubiquitous to be be worth applying throughout the encyclopedia. --RexxS (talk) 20:47, 15 October 2016 (UTC)
• Agree with the above editors. Makes sense to adopt the general principle. LK (talk) 02:33, 21 October 2016 (UTC)
• Agree, and let's try to normalize any inconsistencies between the MOS:CUE and WP:CS1 details. I wrote almost all of MOS:CUE. The majority of it is careful interpretation of existing rules (and a few bits of it may need revision, since most of it dates to the 2000s), but some of it was intended to fill MOS gaps that come up frequently in pool/billiards/snooker writing. It also turns out that much of it (other than pool-specific stuff like the difference between "the 9 ball" and "playing nine-ball") comes up in all sports writing, and I've long intended to split that material out into a broader MOS:SPORTS. I'm glad that at least one little bit of it also happens to fill a gap in the main MOS itself.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  08:41, 23 October 2016 (UTC)

And/or

Not sure I want to start a huge thread on this minor point, but I'm not sure of the value of recent edits re and/or (whole spread here). For example, the current formulation is misleading: "and/or" does not always mean the same thing grammatically as simply "or". Personally, I'd happily allow it, as the less bulky and proscriptive the MOS is when it comes to perfectly good and useful phrases, the better. But if the bar is going to be maintained, surely the first para of the old wording on its own is clear and succinct enough. The second para there, and the latest version as a whole, both seem a little excessive in terms of detail and justification. N-HH talk/edits 18:09, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

N-HH, I agree with you that "'and/or' does not always mean the same thing...as...'or'". But wouldn't you also agree that writers often use "or" to mean "and" or "or", as in the example of "trauma or smoke"? (If someone dies of smoke inhalation, wouldn't there necessarily be some trauma?) If it seems important to be precise (as in a medical article), then the examples EEng gave would be useful. I like EEng's wording in the first paragraph. I think "and/or" is vague, unclear, and not encyclopedic. Regarding the second paragraph, I think EEng addresses an important point. However, the last part,

• for the other case write: either wild dogs or dingoes inhabit ....

does not completely clear things up. Readers may figure out that "one case" means when two words refer to the same animal and "the other case" is when the words refer to different animals. However, in this example, it sounds like wild dogs may inhabit this place, or dingoes may inhabit this place, but never at the same time. How often does that really happen? I think the addition of "either" does not help (except in that particular situation I have just described, in which case I think the situation could be described even more precisely), unless further explanation is given. Maybe it's just this particular example.  – Corinne (talk) 21:54, 18 October 2016 (UTC)

In strictly logical readings, "or" is already inclusive. So I don't think "and/or" is needed to express inclusive or, and I don't think that's how it's ordinarily used either.

Instead, I would say that "and/or" is a useful sort of equivocation, when equivocation is called for. It means something like "maybe I mean 'and', and then again maybe I mean 'or'; I'd have to think about it more carefully, and I don't think it's important enough to interrupt the flow of thought right now".

But while that's a sometimes-justifiable expedient in speech, we ought to be able to avoid it in encyclopedic writing. We have all the time we need to think about what exactly we want to say. --Trovatore (talk) 22:19, 18 October 2016 (UTC)

My personal preference is that and/or be a marked form, used only where it is very important to convey that there are two options with a definiteness beyond what and provides. In English, by the way, and is the default mortar between the listed bricks; or is exclusive and rather narrower in meaning. Non-native speakers I often see doing what most other languages do: the opposite, where or is the default, and is not exclusive ... and is exclusive in those languages, conveying the sense that the items must all pertain, even simultaneously. Tony (talk) 02:49, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

• Side note to Tony1: Having no idea what position you'd take, I'm hoping you'll find the time to contribute to #DON'T_GIVE_UP_THE_SHIP. EEng 02:55, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

Hmmm. That restaurant serves breakfast and lunch. (But that doesn't mean that you have to eat both when you visit.) Tomorrow I will eat breakfast and lunch. (Strongly suggests both.) Tomorrow I will eat breakfast or lunch. (Suggests only one, otherwise there is no need to make the statement.) Tomorrow I will eat breakfast, or lunch, or both. Well, maybe not so bad. Are there any examples where or both doesn't sound right, or is otherwise inconvenient? Gah4 (talk) 03:22, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

Good examples, Gah, that illustrate my point about English versus other languages. I think "or both" and or all might be clunky or ambiguity-prone in a longish list. But then again, A, B and/or C is ambiguous (all three, or A plus either B or C; and maybe other combinations if the author/reader is being vague). Even my favoured serial comma doesn't make it watertight. Tony (talk) 03:52, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

I don't really agree with Gah's examples. "Tomorrow I will eat breakfast and lunch" doesn't merely suggest both, it requires both. If I say that, and then I miss either meal, then I have made an untrue statement.

However, if I say "tomorrow I will eat breakfast or lunch", and then as it turns out I eat both, then my statement was true.

That's what I meant by my earlier comment that, in strictly logical readings, "or" is already inclusive. I stand by that.

It's true though that there are more subtleties than are covered by this purely truth-functional analysis. If I say "over the hill there is a herd of sheep or goats", and it turns out that there is a herd of sheep, and also a herd of goats, then my statement is true. However, if there happens to be a mixed herd of sheep and goats, if such a thing exists don't look at me; I'm a city boy, then the truth value of my statement is not so clear, because arguably such a mixed herd is neither a herd of sheep, nor a herd of goats.

So in this sort of (somewhat unusual) context, one might be tempted to use "a herd of sheep and/or goats" to indicate a single herd, that may consist exclusively of sheep or exclusively of goats, but may also be a mixed herd.

But I think that's too much meaning to try to jam into "and/or". In speech I have no problem with it; in encyclopedic writing, I think we should go to the effort to say what we mean. --Trovatore (talk) 04:23, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

Well, the content has moved on again since I originally started this. It's been trimmed, which is good, and is less definitive about what "or" means, which is also good, but it does currently still say "or" also implies "both", ie it is inclusive. But it simply isn't in usual speech and writing, at least not always, and I'm quite surprised to find people insisting it is here too. The dictionary definition of "or" is to join alternatives, eg "I'll finish that today or tomorrow". There's reams of grammatical debate around the fact that it can be either inclusive or exclusive, depending on context – and hence why sometimes more precision, such as that afforded by "and/or", or by adding "or both", is helpful. Anyway, this is all a bit academic on the assumption that we want to maintain the bar on "and/or" as a solution to that (which as I say, I'm not sure is necessary, but there you go). N-HH talk/edits 07:39, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

There are too many different contexts and possible meanings involved here; it could be we're just misunderstanding one another. Let's take a very specific case. Do you think "I will have breakfast or lunch tomorrow" could ever turn out to have been a false statement, simply because I ate both meals? I don't. --Trovatore (talk) 07:44, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

By the way, as a separate point, the "finish today or tomorrow" case is not really a counterexample. If you somehow finished the task both today and tomorrow, that would not falsify your statement that you would finish it "today or tomorrow". You may say that it's impossible to finish it both today and tomorrow, by definition of the word "finish", but even if that's so, my assertion is still true, because "if A then B" is always true if A is impossible (see ex falso quodlibet). --Trovatore (talk) 08:03, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

"Tomorrow I will eat breakfast and lunch" doesn't merely suggest both, it requires both. Not that I thought this when I wrote the example, but say I eat brunch. Does that count as both? Or say I eat breakfast food at lunch time? In programming, the usual rule is to choose the one that is most readable, if there is a choice. (It is easier to write unreadable programs than unreadable English.) The actual reason for the example is that it doesn't really matter much. As long as one eats enough food during the day, it doesn't matter much what you call it. But I am sure that there are many examples where the distinction is very important. I am going to fill my gasoline tank or smoke a cigarette, but definitely not both! Now, for the sheep or goat, there might be a geep. Gah4 (talk) 07:48, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

If you eat brunch, and then claim that that makes your prediction that you would eat "breakfast and lunch" true, I wouldn't call that a lie, but I would call it a quibble, a play on words. The usual meaning of "I will eat breakfast and lunch" is "I will eat breakfast, and I will eat lunch", not "I will eat a combination breakfast/lunch". You're toying with the ambiguity of the English language to sneak in the second reading.

However, if you take the position that brunch is breakfast, and that it is also lunch, then I would grant that, if I accept your position, then I must also accept that eating brunch makes the prediction true. --Trovatore (talk) 07:55, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

We're entering the realms of theoretical abstruseness now, none of which helps with the issue at hand. My position is as set out in my comment above. There's no need to debate the minutiae of meaning of specific examples; all that matters is that other examples prove the point that there can be ambiguity in some cases, or clear but potentially different meanings in other cases, around the use of "or" on its own. As I pointed out, this is not a novel, radical or [sic] controversial statement. N-HH talk/edits 08:38, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

OK then, let's take the example in the current text: write simply trauma or smoke inhalation (which would normally be interpreted to imply or both). We don't need to settle the general question; do you agree that this is correct as written? I think it is. --Trovatore (talk) 08:44, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

No, as I said in my last-but-one comment, which I already referred back to, I think it's too definitive about what can be inferred from that example. And even if the example used was more obviously unambiguously inclusive without embellishment, the ambiguous ones would still exist, so it would not be representative of the point. You need an ambiguous example, ie one where "and/or" would otherwise help with clarity, if you want to use one to offer alternative phrasing to people to get the same meaning across (eg "X or Y or both"). N-HH talk/edits 08:52, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

So if 20 people suffered trauma only, 10 suffered smoke inhalation only, and 5 suffered both, you would consider it defensible to say that exactly 30 suffered trauma or smoke inhalation? --Trovatore (talk) 08:59, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

(To be clear, my position is that it's indefensible to say the number is exactly 30. The number is unambiguously 35.) --Trovatore (talk) 09:00, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

I said I'm not going to discuss the minutiae of examples, nor is there any point for this purpose, although I would say that the example in question is also problematic because it has multiple subjects, so there is the added confusion between the collective and the individual experience. Examples can help clarify but they can sometimes just muddy the waters and create more tangential debate. The basic point here, which is widely acknowledged in grammar writing, is that "or" can be inclusive, exclusive or ambiguous as to which. If the MOS is going to ban "and/or" as a means of clarifying ambiguity, it needs to simply state the existence of the ambiguity in some contexts (rather than give an example which is, purportedly, not ambiguous and thereby imply the ambiguity cannot exist) and suggest that: to be clear about exclusiveness, "either X or Y" should be used; and to be clear about inclusiveness, instead of "X and/or Y", "X or Y or both" should be used. It kind of does half of that now, so the problem I identifed above has been ameliorated, but as we have discovered, the example currently cited is making this all more complicated than it needs to be. As I also stated initially, I think this is all proscription/prescription overkill, but that's another debate, and this one has taken long enough. N-HH talk/edits 09:24, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

If you're not going to discuss examples, then I don't know how I can know what you mean. "Exclusive" and "inclusive" are too vague without examples, and so is the notion that there is some problem that and/or can solve. Maybe there really is; I don't know. But I'd like to see an example. (By the way, I don't agree that either...or is exclusive; in my example, there are still 35 people that suffered either trauma or smoke inhalation, and this is unambiguous.)

I tend to agree with you about the MoS being too prescriptive, sometimes. I'm personally OK with the idea that someone might make a judgment call to use and/or somewhere; I'm not going to try to go tracking them down. But if I see it, I'm going to try to figure out what the justification for it is. --Trovatore (talk) 09:36, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

Generally agreed with where Trovatore and Tony1 are coalescing on this. While most uses of and/or are just sloppy writing, there is a marked usage, which most often comes up in formal logic, mathematics, computer science, law and policy, standards documents, and other formal writing, where the expression precisely and concisely conveys "this, that, or both, but not neither", and this is sometimes necessary in encyclopedic writing. It doesn't do readers or editors any service to force them to use a long-winded alternative to and/or. MoS has plenty of "usually don't do x", or "almost always prefer y", or "generally avoid z" instructions, and one more won't cost us anything, while it would reintroduce a small bit of flexibility. I have to note that much of MoS's current emphatic never/always phrasing was engineered by a single editor, who as indeffed back in Feb. It would not hurt at all for us to undo some of these almost entirely undiscussed changes, especially given that the number one complaint about MoS has been alleged rigidity both of MoS's wording in places and of its application. While there are some things we do want consistency on (like most punctuation matters other than optional commas, avoiding loaded terminology, avoiding informal slang, etc.), when it comes to everyday writing choices that reflect a wide range of styles that are still within the encyclopedic register, don't confuse anyone, and don't lead to editorial conflict, then elimination of instruction creep is probably a good idea.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  08:59, 23 October 2016 (UTC)

English (International) keyboard layout found.

46.130.34.150 (talk) 19:47, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

There is a keyboard layout called “English (International)”, a enhanced version of US Layout. It can type most languages in Latin script including Vietnamese and Chinese, a limited set for IPA letters (enough for English IPA), lots of dead keys, smart quotes, various (mostly African and IPA) phonetic letters, dashes, Greek letters (no diacritics) and other symbols. There also superscript/subscript numeral characters too, but unlike plain US-International, there is no pre-composed fractions. English (International) requires fractions to use used by slash and super/sub-scripted numbers.

The English (International) layout can be used in a US-Keyboard. English (International) characters are not labeled. The AltGr can be on right alt key, but some US keyboards label “AltGr” without the “Gr”.

I think Wikipedians should use this layout, since it has useful Unicode characters. It should be downloaded and installed. This would allow to type smart quotes and dashes easily in Wikipedia. Instead of "a text", we would use “a text” instead.

http://kbd-intl.narod.ru/english/en — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.130.34.150 (talk) 19:47, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

The MOS says we shouldn't use curly quotes, and ease of typing is not the only argument against them. nyuszika7h (talk) 20:36, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Not all Wikipedians use a US keyboard of any description. My top row goes !"£$%^&*()_+ compare that to your !@#$%^&*()_+ and you'll notice the pound sign has been replaced by a hash and the quotes by an at sign. The physical layout is also different. On the right hand side you have 3 keys ([]\{}|), 2 keys (;':") and 3 keys (,./<>?), UK keyboards have 2 ([]{}), 3 (;'#:@~) and then the same 3. Even if you made touch typing a prerequisite for editing I'd still be hitting Enter for \| and trying to complete lines with #~ Martin of Sheffield (talk) 13:42, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

This isn't an MoS matter.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  09:03, 23 October 2016 (UTC)

Quotations

This is why MOS:BLOCKQUOTE is not working for us. Hawkeye7 (talk) 01:46, 23 October 2016 (UTC)

You speak in riddles. How is what not working for whom? EEng 02:39, 23 October 2016 (UTC)

(edit conflict)The linked discussion does not indicate any problem of any kind with MOS:BLOCKQUOTE. Someone is excessively quoting copyrighted material, and is being asked to paraphrase and compress. This is entirely normal (in any publication, not just WP).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  09:02, 23 October 2016 (UTC)

The editor does not understand what a block quote is. Part of the problem is the lack of prominent quotes. The quoting is not excessive and I am not going to substitute my own opinion for the quoted text. Hawkeye7 (talk) 06:30, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

Proposed revision: links within quotes

As much as possible, avoid linking from within quotes, which may clutter the quotation, violate the principle of leaving quotations unchanged, and mislead or confuse the reader.

Despite being called into question time and again, the above rule remains essentially the same as when it was added in Oct 2006 following a discussion. When I look at these conversations, it doesn't even look like the rule was ever built upon a clear, unanimous consensus in the first place, or has ever since been firmly supported, established or enforced. I think this obscures its overall validity as a WP:POLICY as well, as expressed in the last comment at this discussion by Pmanderson.

I also couldn't agree more with the last comment about this issue on this talk, by SMcCandlish: "it's more helpful to say 'do this' than just 'don't do that'." So here's my proposed revision, in which I attempt to elaborate on the current rule rather than to alter it:

Version 1

Wikilinks within quotations must be kept to a bare minimum. Only link a word or phrase that is unequivocally referring to a unique and specific entity or notion—that is, usually a proper name or technical jargon—except when it is universally recognized and therefore easily understood by most readers (see Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Linking § Overlinking). Excessive: Smith wrote, "The [[1990s]] [[German]] [[film]], [[Cinematography|shot]] on [[70 mm film|70 mm]], is [[Epic film|bigger]] and more [[Film budgeting|expensive]] than ''[[Ben-Hur (1959 film)|Ben-Hur]]''." Modest: Smith wrote, "The 1990s German film, shot on [[70 mm film|70 mm]], is bigger and more expensive than ''[[Ben-Hur (1959 film)|Ben-Hur]]''." If such a subject is mentioned somewhere else in the article, however, then link those instead of the one inside the quote (see also Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Linking § Repeated links). And even if not, consider adding or moving a mention of the subject to the surrounding encyclopedic passage. Confusing: "[[Paris, Texas|Paris]] still has the best", food critic John Smith said in 2007. (Reader must click on link to discover that the obvious interpretation of "Paris" is incorrect.) Acceptable: "[[Paris, Texas|Paris[, Texas]]] still has the best", food critic John Smith said in 2007. Better: "Paris still has the best", food critic John Smith said in 2007, referring to [[Paris, Texas]]. Most importantly, never give links to words that are remotely semantically ambiguous or use piped links to direct to articles whose subject is significantly broader or narrower than the displayed text (Easter egg links). This is to avoid leaving any room for original research or violation of text–source integrity. Bad: [[United States Declaration of Independence|Four score and seven years ago]] our [[Founding Fathers of the United States|fathers]] brought forth on [[North America|this continent]] a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that [[all men are created equal]]. OK: Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Clunky (?) examples aside, I think this generally sums up the points discussed in this talk before (as cited). What I would love to find out is if people think this is overall in the right direction or not, whether they might agree or disagree about some minutiae. Nardog (talk) 08:14, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

Notes

• It's about time we tackled this idiotic provision. Without mulling it carefully (bedtime!) the above is a great start; subject to the OP's permission of course, I added a note to one of the examples.

• Re "Only link a word or phrase that is unequivocally referring to a unique and specific entity or notion—that is, usually a proper name or technical jargon": Too strong, I think. There's no difference between linking within a quote and linking in a paraphrase of that quote: we need to be sure that what we're linking to reflects what the source was referring to; beyond that, if the link helps the reader understand the quote, that's no different from a link that helps the reader understand a paraphrase.
• Re "except when it is universally recognized and therefore easily understood by most readers": Isn't this just trying to say what WP:OVERLINK says, and (I say again) the guiding principles for linking don't need to be any different inside quotes than they are outside quotes, so they don't need to be restated here in different ways.
• Here's another example that might be useful:

The outer of the two rooms is of Alabama marble, with fluted columns and Ionic capitals.

EEng 08:45, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

Yes, I am certainly being conservative here. My approach as a starting point was basically to fist clarify, paraphrase, and elaborate upon the current rule to bring it closer to the reality of what editors do. Nardog (talk) 02:18, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

• I definitely support this change, whether or not the above word is perfect or eventually changed. (It's a #honour to have inspired something.) To be honest, I completely forgot this policy existed. I linked something in a quote the other day. That's just one example of how this policy is widely ignored and not supported by consensus. It definitely needs to be changed, whether or not it's changed to the above specifically. McLerristarr | Mclay1 08:49, 4 September 2016 (UTC)
• Support (with some copyedits). We've needed to rectify this for a long time. Pretty much no one follows the current rule; it's surely the #1 most-triggered WP:IAR, because there are very few circumstances where adding explanatory text outside the quote to provide link points for the words already used in the quote produces better material. (The "Paris, Texas" example is good, because "Paris" by itself is confusing, and per WP:REUSE we cannot depend on an explanatory link to be available.) It instead usually results in redundant and repetitive material that is frustrating for editors and brow-beating and intelligence-insulting for readers. All rules in MoS and other guidelines (and policies) are not followed some of the time by some editors, because people just show up and start editing without reading all these rules first (and we want it that way; these rules are primary for clean-up gnomes). However, we should not retain a bogus rule that is intentionally ignored as nonsense by virtually all editors who are well aware of the rule; it's a matter of WP:CREEP and WP:COMMONSENSE (and WP:POLICY, which tells us these pages exist to codify actual best practices, not try to force changes that no one actually practices).

  Copyedits: Do not use <tt>...</tt>. This element has not even existed in HTML for years (and if you're habitually using it, please stop - cleaning up after it is a maintenance headache). The correct element in this context is <code>...</code>, and it should wrap the entire example that represents wikicode, not just the part with linking brackets. "Only link a word or phrase that is unequivocally referring to a unique and specific entity or notion—that is, usually a proper name or technical jargon—except when it is universally recognized and therefore easily understood by most readers" doesn't flow right. Try "... or technical jargon. Do not link something that is universally recognized ...". Use {{Crossref}} around crossreferences. "If such a subject is mentioned somewhere else in the article, however, then link those instead of the one inside the quote" doesn't have plurality agreement, and we generally do not want people to link multiple instances, remember. Compress the verbiage; e.g., that entire string can be replaced with "If the term is used outside the quote in the article, link it there instead". Other parts of it can similarly be compressed. The whole segment that starts with "Most importantly, never give links to words that are remotely semantically ambiguous" suffers from this problem. We should also not introduce anything like "never" and "remotely", per WP:BEANS; they're just drama-generation tools (see other thread on this talk page about terrible idea for a rule against "inconsequential" changes). Guidelines do best with "do" and "do not" wording versus "always" and "never" (which seems to deny that WP:IAR exists), and subjective pronouncements like "remotely" and "inconsequential" and "most importantly" incite interpretational disputes. "This is to ..." wording is awkward; it's better to integrate policy rationales directly into the rule's sentence. That whole bit should probably be rewritten. We also don't need to provide the "OK" example that just shows no linking. I think part of our point here would be that well-known quotations are often best left without linking inserted into them. It makes more sense to just say so that to provide an "un-example" with no links in it, for no clear reason.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  13:10, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for your suggestions. I'm not an experienced editor here on enwp, let alone its policies, so this is very helpful stuff. So please feel free to make changes below. Nardog (talk) 02:18, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

This is tangential and rather applies to the entire MOSes, but my problem with <code>...</code> is that it totally butchers the {{xt}}/{{!xt}} styling (at least with the default CSS). I found this template {{Plaincode}}, can we use this within {{xt}}/{{!xt}}'s? Nardog (talk) 02:43, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

We've not needed to do this, and have {{mxt}} (green) and {{!mxt}} (red) for this. The main problem is mix-and-matching styles on the same line; just use one:

{{em|Excessive}}: <code>{{!mxt|Smith wrote, "The <nowiki>[[1990s]] [[German]]</nowiki> ...}}</code>

gives:

Excessive: Smith wrote, "The [[1990s]] [[German]] ...

In this case, it's neither necessary nor desirable to show this markup, though. Just use plain {{xt}} and allow the links to link. This will illustrate the "sea of blue" effect in the quoted material.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  20:54, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

Version 2 (currently waiting for SM to edit in his suggested changes)

SMcCandlish, instead of everyone else wading through all your suggestions, why don't you just edit them into the version I've helpfully pasted in below, in a series of self-contained quanta? Start with the most obvious, unobjectionable ones, leaving the ones people may want to discuss or modify for the last. Then people can step through your edits, follow your reasoning in your edit summaries, and revert or modify for further discussion here. (Nardog, I hope you won't object to this approach.) I've already added the "Alabama marble" example, just so it doesn't get lost. EEng 18:37, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

Per suggestion below, I've made some edits [https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style&diff=738826688&oldid=738825763to the V2 text. Mitch Ames (talk) 08:08, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

V2

Wikilinks within quotations must be kept to a minimum. Only link a word or phrase that is unequivocally referring to a unique and specific entity or notion—usually a proper name or technical jargon—and not a common term easily understood by most readers. (See Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Linking § Overlinking.) Example: The outer of the two rooms is of Alabama marble, with fluted columns and Ionic capitals. Excessive: Smith wrote, "The [[1990s]] [[German]] [[film]], [[Cinematography|shot]] on [[70 mm film|70 mm]], is [[Epic film|bigger]] and more [[Film budgeting|expensive]] than ''[[Ben-Hur (1959 film)|Ben-Hur]]''." Appropriate: Smith wrote, "The 1990s German film, shot on [[70 mm film|70 mm]], is bigger and more expensive than ''[[Ben-Hur (1959 film)|Ben-Hur]]''." Where possible, link a word or phrase elsewhere in the article instead of in the quotation. If it is appropriate to link a word or phrase that does not appear elsewhere in the article, consider mentioning and linking it in text near the quote. Confusing: "[[Paris, Texas|Paris]] still has the best", food critic John Smith said in 2007. (Reader must click on link to discover that the obvious interpretation of "Paris" is incorrect.) Acceptable: "{{bracket|[[Paris, Texas]]}} still has the best", food critic John Smith said in 2007. Better: "Paris still has the best", food critic John Smith said in 2007, referring to [[Paris, Texas]]. Most importantly, never give links to words that are remotely semantically ambiguous or use piped links to direct to articles whose subject is significantly broader or narrower than the displayed text (Easter egg links). This is to avoid leaving any room for original research or violation of text–source integrity. Bad: [[United States Declaration of Independence|Four score and seven years ago]] our [[Founding Fathers of the United States|fathers]] brought forth on [[North America|this continent]] a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that [[all men are created equal]]. OK: Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

• OP here. I support this because the whole goal was to just suggest a starting point to revise the current rule, so that you, more experienced editors, can improve it. So please be WP:BOLD. Nardog (talk) 02:18, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

@Jayaguru-Shishya: notified me and others of this discussion and thinks it should be at Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Linking. I don't agree, since the impugned statement is on Wikipedia:Manual of Style whereas Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Linking has nothing about quotes. As regards the substantive issue; I am in favour of not having any "rule" on this and letting editors use their discretion. I am sure some readers find links within quotes to be ugly, but they are a minority who need not be accommodated. Sometimes wikilinking in a quote is convenient and transparent. It shouldn't violate WP:EASTEREGG, but that's not specific to quotes. jnestorius^(talk) 16:14, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

I don't know if Jayaguru-Shishya thinks it should be at Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Linking, because it DOES have something about quotes: one sentence in WP:LINKSTYLE. And I actually sort of agree a written rule about this is redundant, but that was already once dismissed (years ago, though). But wouldn't you agree a revision would be at least better than leaving the current rule (Nirvana fallacy)? I think a change is more easily attained when it's gradual than when it's drastic. Nardog (talk) 16:49, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

So you have already tried proposing this at Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Linking, but it didn't end up that well and now you are posting it here? Did I get it right? That'd be WP:FORUMSHOPing, I am afraid. Posting the same thing over and over in hope to "have better luck next time" isn't advisable either.

Anyway, this is the wrong place to discuss the changes concerning WP:MOSLINK. I bet the majority of the editors there aren't even aware of this discussion. Cheers! Jayaguru-Shishya (talk) 17:59, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

I'm afraid but no, you didn't get it right. I honestly don't even know how one could possibly get such an impression. I proposed this here first, then linked to this discussion on MOS:LINK where it virtually has the summarized version of WP:MOS#Linking (because I had the exact same thought as you that editors there might not notice) only to be reverted by you, so I started a discussion there on WT:MOSLINK as you suggested when reverting. I don't know how that's forumshopping or "posting the same thing over and over". Nardog (talk) 18:29, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

If it's going to affect the wording at the main MoS it's better to discuss it here. See below; an RfC at MOS:NUM is now leading to dispute here because the RfC didn't take into account the wording at this page only at MOS:NUM. In general, any non-trivial MoS-related discussion is probably better held here, because far more people watch and comment at this page than at something like WT:MOSLINK.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  03:13, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

Re: request to edit in changes – Okay, but I'll have to come back to it later. The "give me PoV-pushing quote boxes or give me death" stuff further up the page has soured my appetite for editing here today, and I'm focusing on article copyediting, category cleanup, and template work.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  03:13, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

I've no objection to discussion here about important changes to MOS offspring guidelines, as long as they're section-linked at the offspring talkpage. Is the green-background text above the existing, or has it been edited? I don't really want to encourage editors to use awkward square-bracket placements, although it's not exactly wrong to do it. "Paris[, Texas] still has the best" might be better as [[[Paris, Texas|Paris, Texas]]]. Also, we might consider suggesting that wherever it's convenient to link an item in the vicinity of a quotation rather than withing it, that might be preferable. Tony (talk) 03:47, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

If you mean the block beginning Wikilinks within quotations must be kept to a bare minimum with the vertical bar at the left (I ask because to me it looks more bluish than green), it's all new; the current guideline says simply As much as possible, avoid linking from within quotes, which may clutter the quotation, violate the principle of leaving quotations unchanged, and mislead or confuse the reader. I'm editing your suggestions into Version 2, subject of course to others' approval

• You'll notice, if you look at the rendering of your own post just now, that triple brackets don't work the way one wants -- you have to use {{bracket}}.
• I added Where possible, use linking elsewhere in the article to make linking inside the quotation unnecessary.

I have to say, though, that someone's suggestion that we might simply drop the current guideline is an attractive one. If trouble arises, then we can add guidance along the lines of what we've been discussing. EEng 04:08, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

There are other approaches than {{bracket}}; I use [[[Link here]]] because I memorized those HTML character entity codes years ago. You can also do [<nowiki />[[Link here]]]. In all cases, it's fiddly, so we don't want to advise it (no one will comply, and it will be easily broken).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  20:37, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

I should have said, "You need to use {{bracket}} or something." If this basic proposal gets traction, then we can talk about what markup to recommend (since, when you think about it, inside a quote is major use case for a bracketed link). I'm glad we've got back the old Sandy McCandlish we know and love. EEng 21:31, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

I think the biggest argument against removing the rule entirely would be precisely because it has existed for so long. So instead of paraphrasing or elaborating on it, it may be just enough to say something along the lines of "With regard to linking, quoted texts are no different from any other types of texts. But since they are more susceptible to a violation of WP:NOR or WP:EGG, see to it that they adhere to MOS:LINK." Nardog (talk) 08:20, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

Thinking it over, I'm thinking we might keep the first and second examples above, drop the third, and drop the explanatory text in favor of something much shorter such as what Nardog just suggested. But to not confuse things too much, let's wait for SMcCandlish's edits to Version 2, then think about what to do next. EEng 00:16, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

You all can just integrate what I suggested if you want; I probably can't get to this until tonight or tomorrow.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  17:17, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

• I think we'll all be happy to wait for you. You know best what you have in mind. EEng 19:45, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

Some sugestions:

• bare minimum should be minimum. The word "bare" adds no semantic value.
• instead of

Where possible, use linking elsewhere in the article to make linking inside the quotation unnecessary.

use

Where possible, link a word or phrase elsewhere in the article instead of in the quotation.

• In

that is, usually a proper name or technical jargon

the juxtaposition of "that is" and "usually" seems wrong. I suggest just deleting the former, ie:

... entity or notion—usually a proper name or technical jargon—except ...

• The sentence

Only link a word or phrase that is unequivocally referring to a unique and specific entity or notion ... except when it is universally recognized and therefore easily understood by most readers

is potentially ambiguous. The "except" clause could be read as being an exception to "only" rather than "link". I suggest instead:

Only link a word or phrase that is unequivocally referring to a unique and specific entity or notion—usually a proper name or technical jargon—and not a common term easily understood by most readers (see Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Linking § Overlinking)

Mitch Ames (talk) 07:11, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

Version 2: comments

• "If such a subject is mentioned somewhere else in the article, however, then link those instead of the one inside the quote (see also Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Linking § Repeated links). And even if not, consider adding or moving a mention of the subject to the surrounding encyclopedic passage.."

  What is "such a subject"? What does "those" refer back to? And even if not what? Even without addressing those points, a better opening might be: "However, if such a subject is mentioned elsewhere in the article, link those ..."

• Is "most importantly" necessary? ("Never" is already intensive.) "Remotely semantically" is a little clumsy, and what does "semantically" add here? Either remove altogether or replace with "at all ambiguous? Tony (talk) 07:39, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

• Mitch Ames, Tony1: Will you please just edit your ideas directly into V2? A series of small edits, each with a clear edit summary, will allow others to follow your changes. Likely most if not all will be uncontroversi, but if someone dislikes something we can discuss it then. EEng 07:56, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

please just edit your ideas directly into V2 - Done. Mitch Ames (talk) 08:10, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

This edit to the V2 text might address the first of Tony1's points. Mitch Ames (talk) 08:26, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

More Version 2 comments

Version 2 now has changes made by Mitch Ames, which look good to me. Others should feel free to continue modifying it, or if there are concerns that can't be addressed by simple editing, comments can be added here. SMcCandlish, I'm sure we'd all like for you to edit in anything you still want to see changed. (If such edits are extensive, you might want to start a V3.) EEng 21:32, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

SMcCandlish, we're waiting. (And similarly at MOSDATE, too.) Can you please make time for this? EEng 08:33, 18 September 2016 (UTC)

Briefly, on linking from quotes. This should still be minimised as much as possible. The point of a quote is usually to transmit something in the voice of the person giving the quote (i.e. not in Wikipedia's voice). Linking distracts from this. If something is important enough to link from within a quote, then 99% of the time it will be mentioned elsewhere in the article, or should be mentioned elsewhere, and can be linked from there. In many cases, an explanatory footnote, with links, is better than linking from the quote itself. The reason this is rarely done appears to be because many editors are not familiar with how to generate actual footnotes containing text (as opposed to citations and references). Linking from within a quote is, IMO, a lazy way of explaining things to the reader. Taking the time to write the surrounding text so that things are explained without the need to link, is usually better. This is difficult to express in a guideline, though. Wikipedia:Nesting footnotes is useful to explain the 'reference within note' and similar approaches (hands up who uses the obscure methods 'Subnote within note' and 'Subnote within reference'?). Carcharoth (talk) 13:52, 22 September 2016 (UTC)

Is there anything you think should be changed in Version 2? EEng 14:15, 22 September 2016 (UTC)

It is difficult to engage with the examples, because they lack the context provided by the surrounding text which would in many cases suggest ways to avoid linking at all. Example three, I would add the year the quoted text was uttered/published and explain that 'Four score and seven years ago' is 87 years ago and that it is referring to the US Declaration of Independence in 1776. Or even simpler, when attributing the quote, just link to Gettysburg Address (1863). That should be sufficient for most readers. This is why the context of how you are giving the quote is important. Made-up or truncated examples (stripped of their context) don't really work here. Carcharoth (talk) 15:01, 22 September 2016 (UTC)

I would prefer simple text: "Be especially careful with wikilinks in quotations, ensuring that they are unambiguously appropriate to the text. As editors we do not impose additional meaning upon the words of others, except through the editorial voice, and only then when supported by reliable sources."

Why? Because these same problems can arise with wikilinks in article text. An incorrect or biased link from a quote is hardly more damaging than misleading contextual links. ...is widely considered [[Nazi|right wing]].... We can put words in someone's mouth but we can't put a link in their mouth.

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 21:07, 22 September 2016 (UTC).

Version 3

This integrates Tony1's comments (I hope). Rich Farmbrough, I'm uncertain how to integrate the changes you're talking about above. Can you edit that into V3 for us? EEng 04:27, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

Wikilinks within quotations need special care, and for this reason are often worth avoiding altogether. Only link a word or phrase that is unequivocally referring to a unique and specific entity or notion—usually a proper name or technical jargon—and not a common term easily understood by most readers. (See Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Linking § Overlinking.)

Example:

Opulent Architecture said, "The outer of the two rooms is of Alabama marble, with fluted columns and Ionic capitals."

Excessive:	Smith wrote, "The [[1990s]] [[German]] [[film]], [[Cinematography|shot]] on [[70 mm film|70 mm]], is [[Epic film|bigger]] and more [[Film budgeting|expensive]] than ''[[Ben-Hur (1959 film)|Ben-Hur]]''."
Appropriate:	Smith wrote, "The 1990s German film, shot on [[70 mm film|70 mm]], is bigger and more expensive than ''[[Ben-Hur (1959 film)|Ben-Hur]]''."

Where appropriate, put a link in nearby text instead of in the quotation; consider adding suitable text where none exists.

Confusing:	"[[Paris, Texas|Paris]] still has the best", food critic John Smith said in 2007. (Reader must click on link to discover that the obvious interpretation of "Paris" is incorrect.)
Acceptable:	"{{bracket|[[Paris, Texas]]}} still has the best", food critic John Smith said in 2007.
Better:	"Paris still has the best", food critic John Smith said in 2007, referring to [[Paris, Texas]].

Don't link to words that are ambiguous or use piped links to direct to articles whose subject is significantly broader or narrower than the displayed text (Easter egg links). This is to avoid original research or violation of text–source integrity.

Bad:	[[United States Declaration of Independence|Four score and seven years ago]] our [[Founding Fathers of the United States|fathers]] brought forth on [[North America|this continent]] a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that [[all men are created equal]].
OK:	Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

I have made some revisions to the above. I am inclined to remove the advice that applies to all links in running text, such as overlinking. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 12:33, 24 September 2016 (UTC).

I've made minor correction to the punctuation in Rich Farmbrough's new text. Mitch Ames (talk) 05:56, 25 September 2016 (UTC)

This link [2] shows the changes from V2 to V3. I'm fine with them. Comments? EEng 06:14, 25 September 2016 (UTC)

I disagree with this change:

Only link a word or phrase that is create links that are unequivocally referring to a unique and specific entity or notion...

In the original wording the word/phrase in the quote must be unambiguously referring to a specific entity, implying that the link target must be that specific entity. The newer wording says that the target must be a specific entity but does not say that the quoted word/phrase must be unambiguous, allowing the editor to infer the meaning of an ambiguous quote - which we ought not allow. Mitch Ames (talk) 06:41, 25 September 2016 (UTC)

Hmmmm. You may have a point. EEng 06:58, 25 September 2016 (UTC)

There being no further comment, I've edited V3 to undo the change Mitch Ames dislikes. Pinging everyone who's participated so far so see how close V3 now brings us to agreement: Mitch Ames, SMcCandlish, Tony1, Rich Farmbrough, Nardog, Mclay1, jnestorius, Jayaguru-Shishya, Carcharoth. EEng 08:40, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

I support V3. Nardog (talk) 10:30, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

Well, I support V3 in that I consider it better than the current one, but I don't disagree with any of the comments below. Nardog (talk) 14:44, 30 September 2016 (UTC)

Oppose I don't see anything in the V3 "bad" examples that is specific to quotations. Overlinking is overlinking wherever it occurs; ditto for eastereggs. There are three cases:

1. A snippet where the wikilinking is acceptable whether or not the snippet is a direct quotation
2. A snippet where the wikilinking is unacceptable whether or not the snippet is a direct quotation
3. A snippet where the wikilinking is acceptable if the snippet is ordinary running text but unacceptable if the identical wording is a direct quotation

Examples of type #1 and #2 are useless in helping editors see the point and scope of a quotation-specific policy. So advocates of any policy need to focus on finding examples of type 3. jnestorius^(talk) 10:37, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

I don't like it. I generally disagree with the whole "avoid it" thing. The point of linking in any case is so that readers can gain an understanding of the context. This is no different in quotes. The only thing that needs to be avoided is linking to something that the person quoted didn't mean. However, there will be many, many cases where it is obvious or explicit what the person meant. It may even have been explained in another part of the quote that is not given in the article. So I don't agree at all that links "are often worth avoiding altogether". If someone's talking about the Beatles, we know they're talking about the Beatles. There's no need to avoid that outside of the rules that apply to normal linking. There's no reason readers will be any more or less aware of terms used within quotes. I would just delete "and for this reason are often worth avoiding altogether". "Wikilinks within quotations need special care" says enough. This bit – "Don't link to words that are ambiguous" – is either unclear or wrong. If the word (I think term is better) is ambiguous in that it requires interpretation that could be incorrect, then, yes, a link should be avoided for the all the stated reasons. However, if a term is ambiguous in that a reader may misunderstand it, but it's actually certain what the person was referring to, then that's a very good to reason to include a link. If a person says (and hypothetically no previous context was given), "I really hate spam", then "spam" needs to be linked to explain whether the person means the food or junk emails. Without that explanation, the quote is pointless. Yes, you could put an explanation in [brackets], but there may be situations where it's better to link. McLerristarr | Mclay1 14:14, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

• I find Jnestorius' and Mclay1's points appealing. I wonder if we may be heading toward something very minimal, like a simple statement like "Wikilinks within quotations need special care..." and maybe just a bit more than that, and maybe or maybe not an example. But let's take this a bit at a time. How about if we start by changing

Wikilinks within quotations need special care, and for this reason are often worth avoiding altogether. Only link a word or phrase that is unequivocally referring to a unique and specific entity or notion—usually a proper name or technical jargon—and not a common term easily understood by most readers.

to read

Wikilinks within quotations need special care. Only link a word or phrase that unequivocally refers to a unique and specific entity or notion‍—‌usually a proper name or technical jargon.

I don't think we need to xref to MOS/Linking § Overlinking because that applies to all links. Can we all agree on that change, for starters? EEng 18:20, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

• I agree with jnestorius, or if there must be a version of the rule, with Mclay1. Direct quotes are not so frequent that overlinking or easter-egg linking won't be easily enough spotted. Harfarhs (talk) 20:16, 28 September 2016 (UTC)
• I agree with the recent comments that examples which are clearly just overlinking, whether in a quote or not, and examples that are clearly appropriate links, whether inside quotes or not, aren't helpful. Of the three example types, only the third is useful, the example of linking that would be okay in regular prose but unhelpful inside a quoted passage. I agree with the "keep is simple" trend; just using that sort of example and suggesting that quote linking should be handled with more care is probably sufficient, at least for now. If a specific, identifiable pattern of overlinking in quotes arises, it can be addressed more narrowly later. I think our goal here should be to acknowledge that whether there was ever a consensus to completely avoid linking inside quotations (dubious), there no longer is one, just concerns about "mangling" quotations with over- or inappropriate (e.g. PoV-pushing) links. Since we already have material on avoiding both of those generally, it would be instruction creep to re-explain that here specifically about quotations in any detail. Just saying not to overlink or use misleading links is probably sufficient, since we can link to the existing broad advice against doing that.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  10:23, 30 September 2016 (UTC)

A bold alternative

I'm losing hope that we'll be able to agree on particular examples, at least for now. How about if we start by simply replacing the current

As much as possible, avoid linking from within quotes, which may clutter the quotation, violate the principle of leaving quotations unchanged, and mislead or confuse the reader.

to

(Version EE) Wikilinks within quotations need special care. Only link a word or phrase that unequivocally refers to a unique and specific entity or notion‍—‌usually a proper name or technical jargon.

Can we agree to just do that for now, and then someday, if it seems needed, reopen a discussion about adding some examples? (We can tinker with the exact text, of course, but what I'm looking for here is agreement on the basic idea that for now we're just going to do something simple similar to what I just gave, not all the examples and stuff.) EEng 05:12, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

• Not an objection... just tossing in a thought (feel free to ignore if it complicates reaching agreement). In my experience, when a quote contains a word or phrase that could be linked... that word or phrase will almost always also appear elsewhere in the article - ie in the running text of the article. When this occurs, I think it is better to place the link in the running text, rather than in the quote. Blueboar (talk) 12:17, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

Yes, that's one of the points made in the more elaborate guideline that's been stalled, so when that discussion's revived that will be in the mix. EEng 02:45, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

Blueboar, would you be able to support the text proposed in this subthread? EEng 05:41, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

• I support this inasmuch as I think the point is, as I mentioned when I started this proposal, that the current rule has been called into question numerous times, and an overwhelming proportion of people seem to think that it at least needs to be replaced (the weird thing is, some of the criticisms raised against the proposed versions are also applicable to the current version). If so, we can just replace it with a minimal, least controversial version to start with, and revise it if necessary whether boldly or via discussion. Nardog (talk) 15:56, 2 October 2016 (UTC)
• Pinging SMcCandlish, Mclay1, Mitch Ames, jnestorius, Tony1, Rich Farmbrough, Harfarhs, Jayaguru-Shishya, Carcharoth. EEng 02:45, 3 October 2016 (UTC)
• Agree with Blueboar's point. Also, the points to not clutter quotations and not mislead or confuse the reader shouldn't be lost. I agree with the goal of replacing the current poor advice with better advice, with or without examples.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  05:33, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

SMcCandlish, if you can find it in your heart, can you support the simple text I proposed at the beginning of this subthread, so we can make at least some definite progress after all this work? EEng 05:40, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

Not a matter of heart, just a matter of that wording not, as Mclay1 points out, including any rationale why quotes should be linked with care. The more I read it, the more I don't think it addresses the nature of the beast. I'm not sure "a unique or specific entity or notion" is really the heart of the matter. We could make it simpler yet, e.g. with: "Avoid linking from within quotations in a way that may mislead or confuse the reader, or when the same link can be provided earlier in the article or immediately after the quotation." (This would also address Blueboar's point.) I don't have an outright objection to working in the other material, e.g. with "Most often, an appropriate link in a quotation will be to a specific entity or notion." ("Unique" and "specific" are redundant.) We could also address the most common forms of misleading/confusing the reader, e.g. with: "In particular, avoid linking anachronistically to an article on a term that has changed meaning since the quotation was originally published, or to a general topic when a more specific subtopic was intended by the original speaker or writer. Piped links can be used to direct readers to specific sections of general articles."  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  07:26, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

• Support. Blueboar may be right, but I don't think it needs stating in the guidelines. However, I think it does need to briefly state WHY links within quotes need special care, i.e. to avoid POV interpretation. The current (the one currently in the MOS) explanation is not good, and I disagree with the concept of clutter (blue or black text – who cares?). McLerristarr | Mclay1 06:04, 3 October 2016 (UTC)
• If we consider that the cluttering part is already covered by MOS:LINK and its concerns about overlinking, then we're still left with including concerns about PoV/misleading/confusing; you say "Support", but simultaneously point out the need to say why handling with care is required, which the proposed language doesn't do.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  07:26, 3 October 2016 (UTC)
• Support (in case that isn't obvious). EEng 06:37, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

---

OK, per Sandy McCandlish, can we all get behind

(Version SM) Wikilinks within quotations need special care. Avoid linking from within quotations in a way that may mislead or confuse the reader, or when the same link can be provided earlier in the article or immediately after the quotation.

--as a first step? EEng 08:00, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

I don't object... however, I think we are really dealing with two separate issues: 1) whether to place a link within a quotation in the first place (vs elsewhere in the text)... and 2) when we do link within a quotation, taking care that the target is appropriate to the quote.

So... I would flip the suggested wording around... to something like: Best practice is to avoid Wikilinks within quotations. See if the desired link can be placed in the main text of the article (either earlier in the article text, or soon after the quotation). If this is not possible, use care to avoid linking to targets that may mislead or confuse the reader. Blueboar (talk) 11:47, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

I would support Blueboar's wording, or something very similar. Carcharoth (talk) 11:56, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

Disagree, I'm afraid. I think "Best practice is to avoid.." is too close to what we already have, and will end up with the same problems. I would support "Wikilinks within quotations need.." - it seems to me to deal effectively with the two issues. Harfarhs (talk) 12:59, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

(Version JN) How about Take special care with Wikilinks within quotations, to avoid linking to targets that may mislead or confuse the reader. See if the desired link can instead be placed in the main text of the article, either before or soon after the quotation. ? jnestorius^(talk) 13:43, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

That works as well. For those who don't want to see wikilinks in quotations discouraged, the problem here is that those who are cautious with how they link don't need reminding. It is those who add links liberally (thinking that a link is better, maybe, than nothing at all) often do so without realising that it can be a problem. It is those people that need this guidance (not that they will have read it anyway, but they will be pointed at it). Carcharoth (talk) 14:34, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

I'd be so happy just to get rid of the current no-links-in-quotes rule I'll get behind almost anything. EEng 15:47, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

In cases where the quotation is taken from an online source, there could be a perception that a link was present in the original cited text. Is there a way to distinguish between links added by Wikipedia editors and links from the original source? isaacl (talk) 16:02, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

That's a very apposite question - almost the reverse situation to the one for which this thread was opened. It's likely that we will not be able to maintain those links embedded in the original text, which may well link to other articles/headlines in the original publication. This would breach guidelines on use of embedded extermal links? Are we meant to not use, such passages at all? Or just to ignore the original links? Martinevans123 (talk) 16:12, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

Most sources of the kind that contain their own links (e.g. blogs) aren't RS for most purposes anyway, so I think this is an unusual case. ME123 is right that we can't maintain them anyway. They should just be silently omitted. No one's going to think links we add were in the original. In some weird case where a link in the source is important, we should say,

Smith wrote in his blog, "I believe in freedom." (Jones pointed out that Smith linked the word America to a Libertarian Party website.)

But please, please, can we first focus on OKing what's in the text on the table (Version JN, above, at this point), instead of what maybe could be added? EEng 17:13, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

A lot of newspaper sites and news analysis sites are now including hypertext links. I raised this specifically because I wanted to gauge opinion on the implications of adding a link to a quotation: would readers consider any included hypertext links to also be a direct quote from the source material? If so, then there is an issue with Wikipedia editors adding links to a quote. isaacl (talk) 15:50, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

Then I suggest you to open a new thread. This could not be the right place to gauge opinion on that. Nardog (talk) 04:30, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

To put it another way, I'm not sure I am in favour of adding links within quotes taken from written sources, as this alters the original quote in an imperceptible manner. Accordingly I have raised the issue in this discussion thread on the proposal. isaacl (talk) 05:49, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

• How about Take special care with Wikilinks in quotations: avoid linking to targets that may not represent the meaning within the quote. See if the desired link can instead be placed in the main text of the article, either before or soon after the quotation.

(I think we can cause as much damage by bad context links, as I mentioned above, but nonetheless I prefer this wording.)

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 20:19, 3 October 2016 (UTC).

I think Rich Farmbrough's version is an improvement - it addresses something that has been bothering me but that I've not been able to put into words until now. In particular the earlier versions' Avoid linking ... that may mislead or confuse the reader... is a bit vague as to why it may mislead/confuse. RF's avoid linking to targets that may not represent the meaning within the quote is more specific to what (I think) we intend. However I'd go a bit further in that respect and propose:

(Version MA) Take special care with Wikilinks in quotations: link only to targets that correspond to the meaning intended by the quote's author, and only when the author's meaning is explicitly known (rather than assumed). Ideally, link from text outside of the quote instead.

Mitch Ames (talk) 13:10, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

Suggestion withdrawn - I am going to withdraw my suggestion that we include something about linking outside the quote... that is really a separate issue from what is being discussed, and mentioning it in conjunction with the whole "appropriate target/meaning of the author" issue gives the impression that linking to a target that the author of the quote did not intend is somehow OK... if placed outside the quote. That is wrong. Choosing an appropriate target for a link is important, regardless of whether the link is placed within the quote or elsewhere in the text. Blueboar (talk) 15:40, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

With your permission I'm striking your now-withdrawn text to focus attention on the prior text on the table, Version JN, with an eye toward seeing if there's any serious objection to it. Again, I'm hoping we can focus on the acceptability of what's there, and not worry for now about what might be nice to add. EEng 18:22, 4 October 2016 (UTC) Later: Ooops, undoing my strikeout, because somehow I thought Blueboar's comment was from Mitch Ames. This discussion is getting too confusing, and my clumsiness didn't help. Blueboar, at this point I can't tell what suggestion you were withdrawing (energy... fading... can't.... focus........). EEng 03:27, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

Repeated in next subthread, below

Caution Fidelity Minimality Attribution SM Wikilinks within quotations need special care. Avoid linking from within quotations in a way that may mislead or confuse the reader, or when the same link can be provided earlier in the article or immediately after the quotation. JN Take special care with Wikilinks within quotations, to avoid linking to targets that may mislead or confuse the reader. See if the desired link can instead be placed in the main text of the article, either before or soon after the quotation. RF Take special care with Wikilinks in quotations: avoid linking to targets that may not represent the meaning within the quote. MA Take special care with Wikilinks in quotations: link only to targets that correspond to the meaning intended by the quote's author, and only when the author's meaning is explicitly known (rather than assumed). Ideally, link from text outside of the quote instead. MA2 Take special care when adding links to quotations: link only to targets that correspond to the meaning intended by the quote's author, and only when the author's meaning is verifiable. Ideally, link from text outside of the quote instead. If a quote includes any link, add an editorial note, [link in original] or [link added], as appropriate. EE2 Add links to quotations only where the targets clearly correspond to the quotation's meaning. Where possible, link from text outside of the quotation instead – either before it or soon after.

Note that in Version MA (and JN and RF, although obviously I prefer MA), the second sentence ("link from outside the quote instead") could be dropped if necessary, without affecting the first sentence. The first sentence is the fundamental principle and would stand alone. Mitch Ames (talk) 11:43, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

Support I guess I prefer Rich Farmbrough's wording, but I can certainly get behind this one for the sake of pro tem consensus :) Harfarhs (talk) 19:22, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

Harfarhs, since you made your comment during the time I'd mistakenly struck out MA's proposed text, can you clarify which version you're supporting? EEng 03:23, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

Any reason SMcCandlish's suggestion of including the "why" can't be implemented? (Would it be too much clutter?). Tony (talk) 04:23, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

Support version JN or version SM - either would work fine for me. Harfarhs (talk) 17:32, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

• We've got four similar proposals on the table, and I really like to not see this stall because we can't decide what direction to go in. To try to narrow things down, I'd like to start like this: Mitch Ames, I think your "only when the author's meaning is explicitly known (rather than assumed)" is too strong -- when are we going to have an explicit indication of the author's meaning? Would you be willing to withdraw your proposal to narrow us down to three? Remember, we can always revisit later. EEng 06:55, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

I'm not willing to withdraw my proposal, because it's the only one that says "link only to targets that correspond to the meaning intended by the quote's author" and I think that it is important to say that, because it is fundamental to not misrepresenting the author. I said "only when the author's meaning is explicitly known" because if the author's meaning is not explicitly known then assuming it would original research. Typically we would know the author's meaning from the context from which the quote was taken. However I concede that the word "explicit" might be unnecessary, ie "... only when the author's meaning is known (rather than assumed)" would probably suffice. (Whether the author's meaning is "known" can be argued per-case if necessary.) Mitch Ames (talk) 07:30, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

Actually "verifiable" is probably better than "known (rather than assumed)". Mitch Ames (talk) 08:09, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

Note that #Random break to avoid derailing other discussions below makes a valid point. I propose that we should explicitly state whether any link was added, or in the originaleg as we do for italics, per [[MOS:#Italics within quotations|MOS: § Italics within quotations]]. Such a statement would be in addition to "Version MA" above.

To allow for existing links in a quote, I'd change "with Wikilinks in" to "when adding links to", and make the whole thing:

(Version MA2): Take special care when adding links to quotations: link only to targets that correspond to the meaning intended by the quote's author, and only when the author's meaning is verifiable. Ideally, link from text outside of the quote instead.
If a quote includes any link, add an editorial note, [link in original] or [link added], as appropriate. Mitch Ames (talk) 08:09, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

But I think "verifiable" is too strong. Think of Opulent Architecture said, "The room is of Alabama marble, with fluted columns and Ionic capitals." -- how would these links be verified? Aren't we justified in adding the obvious links? So would you accept dropping and only when the author's meaning is explicitly known (rather than assumed) and add clearly, so that we have, "link only to targets that clearly correspond to the meaning intended by the quotation's author"? Also, would you accept If possible link the same term from the main text of the article, either before the quotation or soon after? If so, can I strike MA and MA2, and add this to the table as MA3? EEng 08:47, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

But I think "verifiable" is too strong.
Verifiability is a core policy. By adding a link to a quote we are, in effect, stating that "when the author says [linked text] s/he means [link target]", ie we are making a statement about the author's intent. As with any other statement, it should be verifiable. Given that we are effectively putting words into people's mouths, I think verifiability should be stated explicitly. [[MOS:#Original wording|MOS: § Original wording]] already says "Quotations must be verifiably attributed" - so by extension, any expression of intent (not just the quoted words) ought also be verifiable, and most likely can be, from the same source.

Think of "Opulent Architecture .." -- how would these links be verified? Aren't we justified in adding the obvious links?
If the links can't be verified, they ought not be there. They might be "obvious" to someone familiar with the subject, but there is a risk of WP:SYNTHESIS if the quote source does not define the terms. If the quote source does define the terms, there's the verifiability.

So would you accept dropping and only when the author's meaning is explicitly known (rather than assumed) and add clearly, so that we have, "link only to targets that clearly correspond to the meaning intended by the quotation's author"?

No, I think "explicitly known" (version MA), or better still "verifiable" (MA2) is important.

Also, would you accept If possible link the same term from the main text of the article, either before the quotation or soon after?

I think my version is more succinct, and therefore better.

If so, can I strike MA and MA2, and add this to the table as MA3?
It looks like your simply trying to reduce the number of entries in the last column of the table. While I can see the merit in being able to easily see what's the same and what's different between the versions, that's not a reason to change any particular version.

Why not just write your own preferred version and add it to the table for consideration? Mitch Ames (talk) 09:47, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

I've just struck out MA and added MA2 to the table. I'm not sure that converting it to a table was a good idea. Mitch Ames (talk) 10:01, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

As I raised earlier, I believe distinguishing between added links and original links when quoting written sources avoids the issue of imperceptibly changing a quote. Thus I would favour having a label to identify the provenance of any links. isaacl (talk) 14:47, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

Mitch Ames, I think you're reading too much into the verifiability requirement. If, instead of a direct quote, an article said, According to Opulent Architecture, the room was of Alabama marble, the columns being fluted with Ionic capitals, no one would give a second thought to those links. And this would be even more true if, as is quite likely, the attribution was omitted entirely i.e. simply The room was of Alabama marble, the columns being fluted with Ionic capitals. I just don't see how the selection of links is any more fraught inside a quotation than it is in a paraphrase, or in an unattributed assertion of fact.

I went looking for something about the question of link "fidelity" (for lack of a better term), and to my surprise I can find nothing on point in either WP:V or MOS:LINK. And I have to say that in eight years of editing, although I can recall the occasional disagreement about over- or under-linking, I honestly can't remember a single time there was dispute over what would be the right link. Has your experience been different? If not, are we possibly worrying about a potential problem which isn't an actual problem? EEng 17:11, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

Without quotation marks, there is no expectation of the quotation being a literal copy of the original source. With the quotation marks, there is an expectation that the quote accurately reflects the original. As an example of a traditional exception, generally speaking a publication may make spelling changes to conform with its style guide, though I think current practice on Wikipedia does not do this. This type of change is a purely mechanical one that does not alter the meaning in any way. However, adding a hypertext link does involve editorial judgment: both the destination and the appropriateness of including the link are content questions. Accordingly, I am uneasy with adding links where none were present: it gives the impression that the original source made the decision to select Wikipedia pages as its links. isaacl (talk) 04:38, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

The discussion here is selecting the right links to be added to quoted material, not whether it's appropriate to add such links at all. But since you bring it up, I think only the most naive reader would be under the misapprehension you describe -- the same kind of reader who might think, for example, that a red link means the linked subject is somehow related to communism. If you want we can put a disclaimer somewhere. EEng 05:45, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

The context (#Proposed revision: links within quotes) is about whether it's appropriate to add such links. The MOS policy is still that links ought not be added at all. So we need to get consensus that (1) links can be added, and (2) suitable wording of a new policy that allows such additions, and any constraints that apply. Mitch Ames (talk) 13:19, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

In your first post, you quoted the current guidance, including "violate the principle of leaving quotations unchanged" as being one of the concerns with adding links to quotes. Accordingly, I believe it is reasonable to discuss this aspect. Mitch Ames has proposed adding a disclaimer; is this what you are thinking of and so are willing to go along with? isaacl (talk) 21:23, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

My point was that this section of the thread assumes we're going to remove the current prohibition, and focuses on replacement guideline text. Obviously the whole thing will need to be agreed to in a final round of consensus. EEng 03:58, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

Newspapers use single quotation marks to mean paraphrase. So it is doubtful that there is such an expectation. The use of quotation marks is about our style. It is also common practice to add more explanatory information in square brackets. Our wikilinks do no more than that. Hawkeye7 (talk) 23:38, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

If what you're saying, Hawkeye7, is that links are like bracketed glosses in that readers will readily see that they've been added by us WP editors, I fully agree. EEng 03:58, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

Yes, that is what I am saying. Hawkeye7 (talk) 20:24, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

I think a few years ago, this may have been the case, but nowadays, a lot of online news articles contain a plethora of explanatory links to Wikipedia and pages on other sites (as well as links to internal coverage). I think norms are shifting in reliable sources to take fuller advantage of hypertext, and so English Wikipedia may as well address this problem head on. isaacl (talk) 16:45, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

Assuming you aren't speaking of a single-quote versus double-quote standard (some cultures prefer using single quotes in citations), or scare quotes, I don't know of any examples of what you're saying. Newspapers don't quote when they paraphrase. Scare quotes aren't paraphrases, but a mechanism for signalling emphasis or irony, and is not done in encyclopedic writing. isaacl (talk) 16:45, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

For the conventions regarding quotation marks in newspapers, including their online versions, see here. I take your point about encyclopaedic writing, but I'm not sure everyone understands that either, given your other point about the cultures using quotation marks differently. Hawkeye7 (talk) 20:24, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

The article you cite is describing headline writing, for which concision and fitting the words into the available space take precedence. In actual article text, using quotes to quote someone is specifying the literal words used. isaacl (talk) 04:45, 12 October 2016 (UTC)

"... If, instead of a direct quote, an article said, ... ... I just don't see how the selection of links is any more fraught inside a quotation than it is in a paraphrase, or in an unattributed assertion of fact."

The difference is one of "voice", ie who is saying it, Wikipedia or the author of a quote. There's a fundamental difference between Wikipedia says X, and Wikipedia saying that Joe said "X". As has been pointed out already, unless we state otherwise, including a link inside a quote implies that the quote's author made that link and/or intended that particular meaning (the target of the link). Mitch Ames (talk) 13:07, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

"I honestly can't remember a single time there was dispute over what would be the right link. Has your experience been different?"
Yes - Talk:Red pill and blue pill#Derrida, Foucault. This edit is where I removed the links from the quote, triggering the question and my response on the talk page. I'm saying it's common, but it does happen. Mitch Ames (talk) 13:14, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but as Hawkeye7 says (I think) above, readers will readily understand that we have added the links. I cannot endorse a requirement that some sort of [links added] disclaimer be attached everywhere, because that's hopelessly awkward, and I think unnecessary. To add to the mess I've thrown my own Version EE2 into the ring in the table above. EEng 03:58, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

DON'T GIVE UP THE SHIP

Well, here I am again pleading that we not let this discussion peter out with no result. And my resolve is redoubled by this edit [3] I encountered recently, in which someone objected to linking Tic Tacs in Donald Trump's cringeworthy teenage-boy-talk, "I've got to use some Tic Tacs, just in case I start kissing her." So please, can we keep this alive?

I've reproduced all the live proposals below, and am meekly asking whether people can get behind EE2, which is about as simple as I think it can get. Please??? If problems come up we can always add more guidance. EEng 00:55, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

	Caution	Fidelity	Minimality	Attribution
SM	Wikilinks within quotations need special care.	Avoid linking from within quotations in a way that may mislead or confuse the reader,	or when the same link can be provided earlier in the article or immediately after the quotation.
JN	Take special care with Wikilinks within quotations,	to avoid linking to targets that may mislead or confuse the reader.	See if the desired link can instead be placed in the main text of the article, either before or soon after the quotation.
RF	Take special care with Wikilinks in quotations:	avoid linking to targets that may not represent the meaning within the quote.
MA2	Take special care when adding links to quotations:	link only to targets that correspond to the meaning intended by the quote's author, and only when the author's meaning is verifiable.	Ideally, link from text outside of the quote instead.	If a quote includes any link, add an editorial note, [link in original] or [link added], as appropriate.
EE2		Add links to quotations only where the targets clearly correspond to the quotation's meaning.	Where possible, link from text outside of the quotation instead – either before it or soon after.

I suggest that if we want to change the policy, which pick the "safest" one, ie the one closest to the spirit of the existing policy and the spirit of WP:OR and WP:V and see if we can get support for that. Presumably the "safest" one ought to be the easiest to pass, being closest to the spirit of what we currently have. Of course, I believe that my version MA2 is the best for this. Mitch Ames (talk) 02:05, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

Are you seriously saying that in quoting Trump (above), and linking Tic Tacs, we have to awkwardly add a note telling the reader that the link is ours and not Trump's? EEng 02:42, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

we have to awkwardly add a note telling the reader that the link is ours – Yes, just as we would for italics/emphasis, per MOS:NOITALQUOTE. While Trump probably can't include a link in his speech, the web page that is our reference could have included a link, hence we need to say whether the link was added by Wikipedia or Wikipedia's source. Mitch Ames (talk) 03:28, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

"Take special care" is not sufficiently restrictive, in my view. I would write it thus: "Insert a wikilink within a quotation only when it would be awkward to provide the same link earlier in the article or soon after the quotation; and never when there is a risk of misleading or confusing readers as to the quoted author's or speaker's original intention." Tony (talk) 03:09, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

Insert a wikilink within a quotation only when it would be awkward to provide the same link earlier in the article or soon after the quotation – I think that's excessive, but would support it as a second choice to my own version. However I still think that misleading or confusing readers is simply too vague; link only to targets that correspond to the meaning intended by the quote's author is quite specific (and deliberately does not require us to make judgements about whether our readers will be confused or misled). Mitch Ames (talk) 03:39, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

Mitch, I think it would be too vague in isolation; but my suggestion qualified it: "and never when there is a risk of misleading or confusing readers as to the quoted author's or speaker's original intention" (my italics). 03:46, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

I have no particular objection to the EE2 version.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  09:04, 23 October 2016 (UTC)

Anyone else??? EEng 23:25, 29 October 2016 (UTC)

Random break to avoid derailing other discussions

Comment: I'm here explicitly intending to avoid !voting either support or oppose, but… Just as a data point, I am inclined to be opposed to links inside quotations because they cause too high a risk of problems related to neutrality, original research, and the case (mentioned above) regarding extant links in the quoted material. Especially as regards the latter issue, the idea that these can be disregarded because such sources are unlikely to be reliable sources is already incorrect and will only get more so over time.

All the most prestigious university presses now have substantial digital services for their output (that would traditionally have been in paper form, in a printed book or journal, and static). A prime (counter)example here would be Oxford Scholarly Editions Online which contains digital-first (i.e. authored for the medium) "books", including links. OUP has a ton of related online services and a growing number of them are "digital-first"-type services that will take advantage of the ability to hyperlink. Similarly, a lot of prominent scientists in many fields are now blogging, both on personal blogs and on blogs affiliated with a relevant institution; both of which are reliable sources.

One prime example of each, from my field, would be Stanley Wells, perhaps the most prominent Shakespearean scholar of our time, who posts articles like Digging up Shakespeare by Stanley Wells; and the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, that maintains the blog Blogging Shakespeare with contributions by both the curators at the Trust and from affiliated or visiting scholars.

I don't think allowing links inside quotes, except in exceptional circumstances, can be done safely and should be discouraged. Guidance in the MoS for the need to explain parts of quotes should point at ways to do it without altering the quote (e.g. link outside the quote; in a footnote attached to the quote; inside editorial insertion marked by square brackets; etc.), much like the guidance for elisions and similar aim to make any modification by Wikipedia clear and unambiguous.

As an example, while digging up the links for this comment, I ran across this article by Colin Burrow (a well known author in Shakespeare studies) on the OUP literature blog. In it he links the text "John Florio’s translation of Montaigne’s Essays,"—which we are now proposing it would be ok to decorate with inline, in-quote, wikilinks to John Florio, Michel de Montaigne, and Essays (Montaigne)—while Burrow actually linked it to another article, by William M. Hamlin, at the same blog. Did we mean to imply that Burrow and OUP linked to those articles on Wikipedia (quite an endorsement!)? What if the article Burrow had linked to was one that argued that Montaigne had a ghostwriter for his essays, that is, one that in some substantial way actually disagrees with Wikipedia's article on Montaigne? There are a nearly endless variety of such issues, most of which will amount to nothing worse than slight confusion for some readers, but where some few cases will be flat out disastrously misleading.

Anyways, I don't have the spare cycles to participate in the actual discussion here, so I'm instead leaving this comment here so that those who do may opt to take it into account (or ignore it, obviously, as the case may be). Apologies for the interruption. --Xover (talk) 19:05, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

PS. And then there are those who take the MoS guidance and arrive at this as a good and proper course of action (note particularly the first part of the edit summary). And, no, this is not really an argument for allowing links inside quotes. --Xover (talk) 19:38, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

I think Xover makes a very good point. [[MOS:#Linking|MOS: § Linking]] and the proposals to change it assume that the original material being quoted did not itself include a link - and that is not necessarily the case when we quote from a web page. Perhaps the solution is to add an editorial note to any quote that includes a link – [link added] or [link in original] – eg as we do for italics, per [[MOS:#Italics within quotations|MOS: § Italics within quotations]]. Mitch Ames (talk) 07:44, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

See Version MA2 in #A bold alternative above. Mitch Ames (talk) 08:12, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

For several years, I have been removing wikilinks in quotes because of this MOS provision, and sometimes, I am regretful. In This edit of McCulloch v. Maryland, I regretted that, without the link, readers would not guess that Western Shore is an article, and many readers probably do not know that the term refers to an area of Maryland west of the Chesapeake Bay. I don't think any reader would have thought that the link was in any way original to the 1818 legislation. Unfortunately, the article did not have any place outside of quotes to link to Western Shore, so I followed the rules and removed what was probably a benign and helpful link. If we are going to change the rules, this is an example of a link that I would favor being allowed.

In this edit of Walther Hewel, I regretted losing the links to Wilhelm Canaris and Abwehr. I did not regret losing the links to artichoke, venison, or Gemütlichkeit. The last of the three, while a foreign word in English, is one that I think curious readers would search on their own, so I had no regret there. I would disfavor any changes to the MOS that encourage or allow links to artichoke and venison. I wouldn't mind changes to the MOS that allowed for links to Wilhelm Canaris, Abwehr, and Gemütlichkeit.

The rules should mandate not linking within quotes if the link can be anywhere else in the article, not just within a short distance. After all, per MOS:DUPLINK, "Generally, a link should appear only once in an article, but if helpful for readers, a link may be repeated in infoboxes, tables, image captions, footnotes, hatnotes, and at the first occurrence after the lead." At minimum, wikilinks within quotes should be used only (1) in compliance with a conservative reading of Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Linking and (2) where there is no place else in the article to place the link. Further limitations may be warranted. —Anomalocaris (talk) 00:49, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

Yes, common nouns like "venison" would rarely be linked—perhaps in a food article, once, especially if the technical distinction from other cuts is important. On linking within quotations: if the link can't be placed on the same word outside the quotation (often a good fix), we come down to what are good things to link in quotations, and what are not. Tony (talk) 01:23, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

Notice of RfC on macrons in titles of Japanese articles

FYI

 – Pointer to a discussion elsewhere.

Please take part in the discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Japan#RfC: Shall we ban macrons in titles? Curly "the jerk" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 00:52, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

Applicaion of MOS:TENSE to "first" status that is no longer "only" status

Our article A Midsummer Night's Dream (1909 film) currently reads It is the first film adaptation of the eponymous play. This to me reads like a contemporary statement that implies there were no subsequent film versions. Would It was the first film adaptation of the eponymous play not read better? Is this an IAR scenario, or would formatting the R to cover cases like this be better? Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 05:09, 30 October 2016 (UTC)

It's "was the first" if it was the first and is now not the only. This is just normal English usage. We already covered this exact question last month, just about a different article. I'm not sure which subpage that was on, though. I'm skeptical any rule changes are needed, since aside from these two back-to-back questions about this, no one seems to misinterpret what to do here. The present-tense-for-fiction rule is to describe the existence of any extant work with a present tense verb ("Aliens is a film ...", and to do likewise with facts intrinsic to it (e.g. it's content: "Aliens is about ..."), so as not to imply it is no longer an extant work (or, in the second case, that its content or other characteristics have somehow changed when we weren't looking). If someone wrote a manuscript, just one copy on paper, and it went up in flames, thus lost forever, then that would be, e.g., "The Giant Cat of Fluffington was a children's novel by ...". Nothing about the rule implies that it applies to all statements of fact that involve a work. We would never write "J. R. R. Tolkien publishes The Hobbit in 1937." The normal rules of English still apply. The reason there's any rule at all is because both "Aliens is a film" and "Aliens was a film" are correct English, just with different meanings. The first describes it as a work that was created and has not been lost; the second describes it as a formerly-ongoing concern in a very specific sense (e.g., "Aliens was a film showing theatrically for a certain period"). Alternative example: "Firefly was a great TV show, and shouldn't have been cancelled" is a short way of saying something like "Firefly is great TV show (see for yourself on Blu-ray), and as an ongoing, still-produced series, it shouldn't have been cancelled." The past tense in the shorter construction is an implicit reference to a past occurrence, the ending of the show as an ongoing concern. WP doesn't deal in implicit; if we use past tense to describe the work itself, it means it is a lost work with no hope of recovery. I don't think we even do this with lost silent-era movies, since a copy could be found at any time. Maybe we do it with some works from classical antiquity that are believed to be permanently lost; I haven't checked. Anyway, it's perfectly fine to say "The first film adaptation of X was Y", because that's a statement about order of adaptations not about whether that first adaptation has been hunted down and all copies of it destroyed. :-)  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  10:43, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

List of Loanwords

I have made/ am making a list of all english loanwords at WP:LWN, should I file it under proposed guidelines and make an RFC for it, even if it just a list? Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 23:27, 28 October 2016 (UTC)

See Category:Lists of English words of foreign origin. —Wavelength (talk) 23:57, 28 October 2016 (UTC)

@Wavelength: I am using those as a resource, I am creating one central bank for all loanwords. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 00:02, 29 October 2016 (UTC)

Why should MOS include such a list? EEng 00:09, 29 October 2016 (UTC)

@EEng: Building off of WP:MOS#Common usage in English, which says that loanwords are not to be italicized, the list gives a list of said words not to be italicized, basically that if there is a dispute about whether a word should be italicized based on its foreign-ness, they can look at the list and either go "Yep, not a loanword", or "oh it's a loanword, it should not be italicized." While there are lists separated by the language(s) they come from, this would act as a central list of all of them, so a quick page search would ideally immediately tell you if the word was a loanword or not. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 00:42, 29 October 2016 (UTC)

You could search an online dictionary and find out the same thing. Is there any evidence that editors are having trouble working this out for themselves? Absent that, I don't see any need for such a list, and if MOS doesn't need something added to it, then it needs to not have that thing added to it, because it's far, far too big as it is. This strikes me as one more way editors can argue over nothing, and we don't need that. EEng 00:52, 29 October 2016 (UTC)

@EEng: Arguments over it happen, I admit infrequently, often on stub or small pages. The list wouldn't get in the way at all, it would just add {{See-also|WP:LWN}} to the MOS page, which would bring you to a full list of loanwords for ease of use. I don't really see how it can cause an argument. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 00:58, 29 October 2016 (UTC)

Barely on topic, why is the shortcut WP:LWN and not WP:LNW?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 01:07, 29 October 2016 (UTC)

@Trappist the monk: Thats a good point, I made it to sound out to Loan, but you're right it should be LNW, Ill change it now. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 01:10, 29 October 2016 (UTC)

If you don't see how it can lead to arguments then you haven't been hanging around MOS very long. I'm sorry, but based on what you're saying there definitely should not be such a list appended to MOS. (And that's what you're doing when you create Wikipedia:Manual of Style/List of Loanwords.) According to the page itself you're planning to include words like chemistry, and that's ridiculous. English has, I would guess, anywhere from 40,000 to 400,000 words that might qualify as loanwords, making the whole project infeasible anyway. Please rethink this. EEng 01:12, 29 October 2016 (UTC)

@EEng: Alright, how would you resolve it? Perhaps make the list merely about words commonly inappropriately italicized? Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 03:56, 29 October 2016 (UTC)

One thing MOS should not be doing is dispensing information that applies generally to all formal English writing, and that's what this is, especially since there's no evidence that this is a significant recurring problem that editors aren't resolving easily on article talk pages. Do you have diffs showing otherwise? EEng 04:10, 29 October 2016 (UTC)

To expand on EEng's point; whether a word is a loanword or not is not a matter of style. Whether loanwords should be italicized or not is. I appreciate that the OP wants to inform more editors of our style of not italicizing loanwords, but a style guide is not the place to define what a loanword is. Primergrey (talk) 04:46, 29 October 2016 (UTC)

Plus, it'll just be a PoV debate factory, since definitions differ even among linguists, lexicographers, writers, etc. In some views, every word in English that doesn't have an Anglo-Saxon root is a loan word. In another, it's any word borrowed directly from another language and used with little or no alteration for more-or-less its original meaning, to fill a gap in English, and which has not been 100% assimilated as English (e.g. Festschrift and cul-de-sac are loan-words, and users of them are conscious of this, while "role" is not). In another, it's any word borrowed from another language since the Early Modern era began (i.e., since English stabilized to a great extent after the introduction of the printing press and comprehensive dictionaries), regardless how we've altered it in form and meaning and regardless if people know it's not "really" English. And so on. I'm skeptical even a proper encyclopedic stand-alone list article can be written, due to unclear inclusion critieria. It would serve no purpose as an MoS supplement since whether something is a loan word or not isn't a style question. I think there's a WP:NOTHERE risk in such a pursuit, too. It would take a tremendous amount of work, but have dubious use for improving the encyclopedia's content or its operation. And it's a WP:NOTDICT matter. I would suggest that Opus meum pursue that little language exploration hobby as a personal project elsewhere. Maybe people at Wiktionary need something like this?  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  12:03, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

I went to look at loanword which has a see also at Lists of English words by country or language of origin. We don't need to call them loan words to be able to say that they come from another language/country. --Izno (talk) 12:08, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

True! Can't see how adding such a list to MoS itself would be useful though (not that I think you're saying otherwise).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  13:28, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

Pronunciations for Latin taxon names

As most biologists will tell you, there is no "correct" pronunciation for Latin taxon names since there is no standardized pronunciation for New Latin. As our article on New Latin states: "New Latin had no single pronunciation, but a host of local variants or dialects, all distinct both from each other and from the historical pronunciation of Latin at the time of the Roman Republic and Roman Empire." Nevertheless, some people still add IPA pronunciations for taxons or {{pronunciation needed}} tags.[4] This is misleading, however, as it implies that there is a "correct" pronunciation. To quote a couple sources:

• "Latin is now a seldom-spoken language, and we do not know precisely how it was spoken in the Roman world. Many scientific names are words that were not a part of ancient Latin and would sound as foreign to the Romans as Latin does to us. Many English-speaking botanists pronounce Latin names as if the words were written in English. This is known as the Traditional English system. There are many variations and these are often passed on from teacher to student… On the other hand, most classicists and many European botanists prefer Reformed Academic Latin in which strict rules govern the pronunciation of particular letters or combinations of letters… Although there is no consensus among botanists of the world regarding the pronunciation of vowel sounds, there are some general guidelines…" — Vascular Plant Taxonomy
• "These rules cannot satisfactorily be applied to all generic names and specific epithets commemorating persons. About 80 per cent of generic names and 30 per cent of specific epithets come from languages other than Latin and Greek. A simple and consistent method of pronouncing them does not exist… Botanical Latin is essentially a written language, but the scientific names of plants often occur in speech. How they are pronounced really matters little provided they sound pleasant and are understood by all concerned." — Botanical Latin: History, grammar, syntax, terminology and vocabulary

With this in mind, I would like to propose adding the following sentence to the Animals, plants, and other organisms section:

Do not include pronunciations for Latin names, as there is no standardized pronunciation for New Latin.

Any thoughts on this? Kaldari (talk) 05:03, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

Oppose Not sure if that's right. Where there's a long name in wide popular use that people find hard to pronounce – as in dinosaurs and some garden flowers – it seems sensible and encyclopedic to inform readers of the most common pronunciations. After all, there's no standardized pronunciation for anything (try "either", "controversy", ...). Chiswick Chap (talk) 08:13, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

Oppose While it might not be common knowledge among biologists, few people are experts in multiple fields, and palaeolinguists have done substantial reconstruction work to discover how Latin was spoken in Roman times. Rhialto (talk) 08:36, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

That's irrelevant, though: taxon names are not in classical Latin; they often feature letters and consonant clusters wholly or virtually unused in classical Latin. AlexTiefling (talk) 08:59, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

The counterpoint to that is that if we are saying these are not classical Latin (or even 'New Latin') but simply modern pronunciations, then pronunciation guides can still be provided on wikipedia using a descriptive approach of examining what is the actual common pronunciation in use. Rhialto (talk) 09:46, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

I don't disagree - I'm simply saying that while I strongly endorse the use of reconstructed classical pronunciation for classical Latin, it can't be relied upon for New Latin, which has its own contexts and standards, not all of which are fully codified or necessarily compatible with each other. Taxonomy is a good example of this - I wouldn't expect taxonomic Latin to be pronounced particularly similarly to, say, the Latin text of papal letters. So there almost certainly are norms of pronunciation, but classical models are no particular guide as to what they might be. AlexTiefling (talk) 10:09, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

Alan's point is entirely correct. There's essentially no connection at all between reconstructed pronunciation of historical Latin, and scientific circles' often conflicting pronunciations of names in ISV ("New Latin" is a misnomer, as ISV terms are often Greek- not Latin-based, or a mishmash). The liturgical Latin of the Roman Catholic Church has of course has some influence on ISV pronunciations, but they're still diverging rapidly.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  03:28, 27 October 2016 (UTC)

"New Latin" is not exactly a misnomer, since although the sources of scientific names for organisms may be Greek, the names have to conform to some degree of Latin morphology – more so in the case of botanical Latin than zoological Latin, it's true. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:30, 27 October 2016 (UTC)

• Comment I agree with Chiswick Chap that in some cases it is both sensible and encyclopedic to inform readers of the most common pronunciations – with the stress on the plural. The problem is that there are many pronunciations of the Latin names of taxa – a discussion of how the ending of plant family names, -aceae, is pronounced came up with four or five commonly used variants, which differ both between and within English-speaking countries. So a properly neutral presentation might have to list what seems to me to be too many alternatives. So although I don't favour a "ban", I don't think we should encourage the addition of pronunciations of scientific names. Peter coxhead (talk) 12:36, 24 October 2016 (UTC)
• Comment - I have to agree with comments above, that although a ban seems excessive, opening cans of worms is also not an attractive prospect. There is some discussion of pronunciation at Botanical Latin, with scholarly source. New Latin is not the best reference for how taxon names are pronounced. Botanical Latin, as has been pointed out above, has some peculiarities, particularly in the naming of taxa. If any pronunciations are to be added, I would like to see sources, but I doubt that there are many good sources, and know that there are some that I would not wish to emulate, since they reflect the peculiarities of exactly one author. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 23:34, 24 October 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose Bottom line is people will naturally want to know how to pronounce (or one way of pronouncing) a name. If editors of a given article can figure out a way of doing that selecting a usable pronunciation from available sources, let them. EEng 00:00, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

If editors of a given article can figure out a way of doing that, let them – no, there needs to be a source for each and every pronunciation; it's not for editors to generate pronunciations. Peter coxhead (talk) 07:51, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

I've modified my comment to avoid the potential misreading that I meant editors would devise the pronunciations themselves. EEng 08:33, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

• Oppose. While there may be no one true way to pronounce such terms, we can still provide the most common one (or ones, where several variants are frequent), as most dictionaries and other such works already do.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  03:28, 27 October 2016 (UTC)

Provided that an appropriate range of dictionaries are consulted, fine, but what I often see is one dictionary based on one ENGVAR used to add one pronunciation that is not in widespread use, which is not helpful. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:33, 27 October 2016 (UTC)

@Peter coxhead: Isn't that already covered by WP:UNDUE? Wondering what MoS is supposed to say that wouldn't be redundant. Serious question: Is it a problem that editors are trying to prevent the later inclusion of additional, also reliably sourced, pronunciations that are more or equally common? Or is it just that some obscure articles have only minority pronunciations in them, for a while, until someone notices? As for the thread as a whole, I don't like the "let's suppress verifiable information" approach taken by the proposal, though I understand that's probably not the conscious thought behind it, nor your idea; I just see it as a not-well-thought-out solution to what looks like an illusory problem. That said, in editing biology-related articles (especially domestic animal breeds) I've encountered information inclusion resistance that is senseless and would be surprising to anyone who hadn't seen it with their own eyes, so that's why I'm asking the question I asked. :-)  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  11:47, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

@SMcCandlish: I don't think the MOS needs to say anything, one way or the other. I'm all in favour of properly sourced pronunciations being included if it can be done in a way that is sourced, accurate and avoids favouring one ENGVAR over another. I've tried to do it myself for the Latin names of plants that are well-known to non-specialists. The problem I find is that it's mostly older sources that give pronunciations, including some very old and out-of-copyright sources that have been digitized; a lot of modern botanical and horticultural works seem to have given up. So properly sourced pronunciations often aren't the ones I hear people using now, because they are more based on classical Latin. Peter coxhead (talk) 12:13, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

Ah, yes. I guess that's in the "treat 100-year old sources as primary and weak" bucket.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  16:17, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

• CommentThere are two separate issues in sourcing pronunciations that may require editorial decisions: 1. Published pronunciations being sourced may have been derived from historic convention, including rules of prosody and transliteration when Romanizing Greek such as if sourcing from “The Naturalists Lexicon” or “Birds of North America.” For example the letter “e” in Australopithecus is a transliteration of the Greek letter “eta”, thus creating a paroxytone, meaning the accent is placed on the second to last syllable (the penultimate law). 2. Published pronunciations may reflect estimates of apparent usage, for example many anthropologists treat Australopithecus as a proparoxytone (accent on the third to last syllable) likely through lack of awareness of classical phonology, and that is the only pronunciation given in WP. Similarly, modern typography omits the ligature in the digraph “ae” as in Canidae, which can result in pronunciation of “ae” as the “a” in “day” rather than the Anglo-Latin “ee” sound as in “anaemia.” In sourcing a pronunciation it may be desirable to indicate whether the source is usage-based or rule-based. Ecol53 (talk) 19:48, 3 November 2016 (UTC)
• From a linguistic and encyclopedic perspective, only the usage-based pronunciations matter to our audience (and arguably at all). This is not a new problem; Google turns up dozens of earnest, handwringing discussions about this (a typical and illustrative one is here). It is clear that there are regional variances in how this is generally pronounced (e.g. ae or æ tends mostly though not always to be pronounced /i/ to rhyme with 'see' in British English, but varies in North American English from /i/ to /ei/ as in "hay" to /ai/ as in "high" to (in some positions) /ɪ/ as in "kit", or even a schwa). But it also varies by specialty, with mathematicians, dentists, anthropologists, botanists, etc., all taking different approaches that are often not even internally consistent within the field. Then it can vary by age of the speaker, due to changes in how Latin is taught; by religion (or lack of one) due to exposure level to heavily Italianized church Latin; and by other influences, like knowledge of how Classical Latin in various stages was pronounced (e.g. one may prefer /k/ over /s/ for any c including before a vowel; and inconsistent "grandfathering" of common pronunciations of more assimilated words (e.g. "see-zer" for Caesar, when German Kaiser is actually much closer to the original pronunciation in multiple ways), even by people who may be sticklers for a more Old Latin or Late Latin pronunciation otherwise; and so on. There's no one "right" way to do it. All we have to go on is how RS tell us people actually do it (in modern usage). To return to your example, virtually no one (in English) pronounces Australopithecus with stress on the penultimate syllable (the "e" before "cus"), though exact stress varies from "au-stral-o-PITH-e-cus" with secondary stress on the "stral" (mostly North American, I think), and "AUS-stral-o-pith-e-cus" with secondary stress on the "pith", which mostly seems to be a British/Commonwealth usage. The difference isn't marked, compared to *"aus-tral-o-pith-E-cus" in English (I have a degree in anthropology and have never in my life heard that pattern from an English speaker, though a Spanish speaker would default to it, following Spanish rules).

  Short version: If modern dictionaries (including dictionaries of science, etc.) provide one or more pronunciations we could offer it/them as a/some pronunciations, and should note their distribution if possible. Century-old books are not reliable for this, since they'll be giving "do it this way because ancient Romans [or mediaeval priests] would" Victorian prescriptivist dogma, not linguistic description.

  Alernative approach: Create an article along the lines Pronunciation of New Latin in English (or perhaps a Help:-namespace page) that explains the various quasi-systemic approaches to this, and their irregularities. Then just always link to that article for pronunciation. We have Help:IPA for English and Help:IPA as used by IPA templates; kind of similar in concept.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  03:45, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

Minor error in MOS:DASH

When one of the elements in a construction divided by an en dash contains a space, the en dash is spaced: Christmas Day – New Year's Eve. We borrowed this rule directly from Chicago Manual of Style and other academic style guides, and CMoS says this explicitly. We didn't quite integrate it clearly, since we're not consistently applying this throughout, and later provide incorrect examples: New York–Los Angeles and Seifert–van Kampen. These should be corrected to New York – Los Angeles and Seifert – van Kampen, and the note about spacing made more general. It's presently worded as if it only pertains to temporal ranges, but that cannot have really been the intent, since it's confusing in both being inconsistent and in being hard to parse. I don't know anyone who actually treats it the New York–Los Angeles way, and it becomes clear why when you see a complex example with less universally recognizable parts as major cities, e.g. a melodic punk – progressive rock fusion band, which would be hard to parse as a melodic punk–progressive rock fusion band, which implies a direct relationship between just the "punk" and "progressive" elements, and suggests an incorrect meaning of "a melodic, rock fusion band with a punk–progressive sound" (it's wrong twice over because a) punk and melodic punk are not the same thing, b) progressive applies to multiple genres, e.g. progressive metal, and c) it's not WP's place to declare a band to be melodic). The relationship is actually between "melodic punk" and "progressive rock", which are discrete entities (well-defined genres) with compound but non-hyphenated names, a fact not apparent to those who are not popular music experts. The point becomes even clearer with a more complex example: a futurepop – techno-industrial – goa trance album which is rendered into confusing gibberish as a futurepop–techno-industrial–goa trance album. PS: I think this incomplete integration of the rule happened because it was first introduced into MOS:NUM, where only numeric uses were under consideration, and then back-ported to MoS-main without sufficient integration work.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  07:52, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

I completely disagree with what you're saying. I don't anyone who would treat it the New York – Los Angeles way; to me, that's an eyesore and hard to parse. Also, I can't see any sense in your point(s) about those musical descriptions. The use of an unspaced en does not imply a direct relationship between just the "punk" and "progressive" elements in that example – a hyphen would do that. In this and other examples, the solution could well be to reword the description and so avoid a truckload of compound adjectives. Your alternative, to introduce spaces around the en, translates to a regular dash, making it utterly confusing. Similarly, a futurepop – techno-industrial – goa trance album reads to me as if "techno-industrial" is in some way an alternative term or a definition of futurepop. I'm sorry but many of us here do not live in the world of the Chicago Manual of Style or "other academic style guides", and nor should Wikipedia adopt something that's quite alien to English speakers/writers who never see those style points in action. JG66 (talk) 08:21, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

'Use of an unspaced en does not imply a direct relationship between just the "punk" and "progressive" elements in that example – a hyphen would do that.' Nope. Please actually read MOS:HYPHEN and MOS:DASH, then revisit this discussion when you've absorbed it better. Hyphens do not indicate such a relationship at all. (See in particular: "In some cases, like diode–transistor logic, the independent status of the linked elements requires an en dash instead of a hyphen.") Hyphens used with non-fused prefixes/suffixes ("Franco-Italian", "techno-industrial", "Kafka-esque"), to link compound modifiers ("a well-behaved child"), and for double-barreled surnames (one entity with a complex name, not a relationship between two or more entities).

Whether you prefer and "live in the world of" CMoS and other academic style guides is of no concern here; you can write any way you want on your own blog. WP has its own style manual, based almost entirely on academic and book-publishing style guides (because an encyclopedic is an educational mega-book). It is a guideline with which you're expected to comply [or at least not monkey-wrench its application by others ^*], just as you would comply with that of the New York Times if you wrote an article for them. [^* Actually, no one cares if anyone complies with MoS when they add content, since we want content more than we want consistency, and consistency can be worked in later by editors who care about that aspect of WP's quality. MoS is principally for cleanup editing, and new editors generally do not, and are not expected to, read all of it. It's a reference work, primarily for avoidance and resolution of style disputes, not a law book.]  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  10:12, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

Oh stop being such a pompous dickhead. To repeat: Your alternative, to introduce spaces around the en, translates to a regular dash, making it utterly confusing. Similarly, a futurepop – techno-industrial – goa trance album reads … as if "techno-industrial" is in some way an alternative term or a definition of future pop.

Yes, I or anyone can write any way we wish to on a blog. But you could get your kicks compiling and safeguarding your own, private manual of style elsewhere, instead of attempting to own this one and constantly encouraging a division between its contents and what editors are actually using across the encyclopaedia. There is no need for this document at all but for the articles. You'd have to do some writing (rather permanent sentry duty here) to appreciate that. JG66 (talk) 11:25, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

"Someone pointed out I was wrong about hyphens, so I'm going to throw a tantrum, call names, and make accusations that don't even make sense given that my target has been almost entirely absent from this page since September, working on articles, templates, and RfC resolution". [clap, clap].  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  15:54, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

No, more like: "Someone pointed out I was wrong about hyphens and then, conveniently, completely ignored the majority of what I was saying, and has continually demonstrated himself to be a control freak regarding this Manual of Style …" JG66 (talk) 16:07, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

Not taking the bait. Please see WP:CIVIL, WP:NPA, WP:ASPERSIONS. More substantively, when all we have is a handful of glyphs, and all of them are operator-overloaded for multiple purposes, no solution can be 100% perfect for every possible construction, as far as ambiguity-free interpretation goes. The best we can do is have it make the most sense to the most people the largest percentage of the time, and having a consistent approach is the main way to do that. A "space it this time, but not that time" pair of conflicting rules, when the two circumstances are functionally identical, is a very unhelpful form of inconsistency.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  16:09, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

S, I think that if you go back to the 2011 big dash discussion, you'll find that this was explicitly considered and rejected; not an oversight. Style guides differ on this. Dicklyon (talk) 15:26, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

Well, style guides differ on everything. What's the actual rationale for approaching this so inconsistently? If there's a good one, I might agree with it, but if there's not, we generally get rid of the inconsistencies since they just lead to squabbling and confusion.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  15:54, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

@Dicklyon: Would you mind providing a link to the 2011 discussion. I'm sure that if it's so abhorrent to a certain "editor" here to return to past MoS issues, such as consensus regarding MOS:LQ, that any 2011 discussion on this use of ens will also suffice. JG66 (talk) 16:07, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

Please drop the childish public [member]-waving. I get it; you don't like me. You don't need to reiterate this in different words every time you reach for the keyboard. You're just acting obnoxious and illogical now (and hopefully it due to lack of coffee or something and not your usual approach to anyone disagreeing with you). When I ask Dicklyon for the rationale(s), I'm obviously meaning with particular reference to the 2011 discussion he's thinking of.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  16:26, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

Well, you just beat me to it: I was about to strike part of/reword that comment of mine above. I apologise for my tone here, but I have seen you consistently batting away productive editors and article writers on this talk page as if they're flies. I should say also, I did like – I was relieved by – much of what you've suggested in response to the MOS:LQ issue raised again recently, because it's long been a darn nuisance trying to apply LQ on Wikipedia but finding that wording in the MOS link is inadequate.

But look, are you really saying you're not attempting to overturn or skirt around the rejected spaced-en usage that Dicklyon mentioned? I'm sorry, but in your reply to him, it most definitely appears that you are. JG66 (talk) 16:42, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

@JG66: Thanks, and sorry if I came off as dismissive. Overturn? Skirt around? I'm asking to revisit the rationale for some fine details in the wording in this section because it appears to have cognitive dissonance and we haven't looked closely at its wording in a long time, and this dissonance has caused an issue at an ongoing RM. It's actually very much like the LQ discussion above; we had not closely examined the exact wording in a years, only dealt with perennial ranting to delete the guideline in question, and the same pattern has been around MOS:DASH, which various editors also like to rattle swords at. In both cases, some wording tweaks may resolve the issues.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  18:08, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

• I largely agree with SMcCandilish's line, I think, but I'm in a rush right now for Signpost publication (the usual pain), and need to read the long thread later. But what I can say is that there was strong agreement at the original RFC on spacing the dash in internally spaced dates; a few scientists strongly objected to the open spacing of Seifert – van Kampen (not often seen in the literature was their point – maybe they have a point – although one reason we have MOS is that the outside literature is usually chaotic WRT such matters, and might I say, CMOS doesn't always obey its own rules, sigh). Another issue raised was the potential for confusion with the spaced en dash as interruptor on clause/phrase level, which I have some sympathy for. I recall arguments objecting to the glueing together of internal elements only, where either or both sides of the dash have multiple (spaced elements); I have sympathy for that too, and it certainly won the day WRT dates. We should consider this matter further. Tony (talk) 04:07, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

Review the 2011 discussion starting here. You might need to do more searching to find exactly how this was resolved, but it certainly did get discussed in depth. I don't see SMcCandlish there, so it's not surprising that he was unaware of it, or that there would be a strong other side to his point. And I have no particular objection if people want to re-open this question and maybe decide differently. I just don't want it to be seen as an oversight; it was deliberate. Dicklyon (talk) 04:17, 4 November 2016 (UTC) And reviewing that, I must say that I really do miss Noetica, Kwami, and JeffConrad. Great editors. Dicklyon (talk) 04:21, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

I'll definitely raise a glass to our missing friends! Anyway, I think that discussion must have taken place during one of my extended wikibreaks.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  05:42, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

• Ah, the edit conflict saved me from stating a few (now) redundant points. Thanks – everyone – for the above. I am concerned about the potential for confusion between this use of spaced ens and when an article already uses spaced ens as dashes. When ems are the chosen type of dash, this wouldn't be much of an issue, of course. JG66 (talk) 05:28, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

We would definitely need to cover that if we did anything here. Might even need to cover it anyway, since the use of spaced en dashes in temporal and numeric ranges can still have the effect JG66 is concerned about. Then again, the ambiguity is most likely to arise in tripartite constructions (foo bar – baz bar – quux bar), and these are quite uncommon. I'm skeptical any instance of one cannot be written to not use a dash-based construction in the first place. If it came to it, we could simply say outright to rewrite such constructions to not use dashes, because of the ambiguity issue.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  05:42, 4 November 2016 (UTC)