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This article is written in American English, which has its own spelling conventions (color, defense, traveled) and some terms that are used in it may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus.
Aeroplane
Why is the title airplane and not aeroplane? Aeroplane is the original spelling, airplane is just a later Americanisation.
I mean really, reading through wikipedia articles you'd think that bloody Americans invented the English language, it's pathetic.
A very civilized interjection. I was about to write how Euro-centric this article is leaning, by barely mentioning the Wright Brothers without any pics of the Wright Flyer. However, to be clear, the American-British spelling of articles has clearly been stated in the Wiki rules.63.152.251.85 (talk) 09:45, 11 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, lol. First off, English people sure didn't invent the language, either. Only constructed languages have inventors. Second off, while Americans didn't invent the language, I can think of one very relevant large flying machine that they did invent. Red Slash18:55, 11 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
It's not just this article, it's the entirety of wikipedia. It always puts 'word' or 'word (British English), like American English is where English came from. I wonder if the German Wikipedia has this problem with Austrian German, or Portuguese has this problem with Brazilian Portuguese.
That's not the British spelling, it's the official spelling, designated by the French, they created the metric system, it's just that Americans spell it differently to the rest of the world. — Preceding unsigned comment added by TraitorBagel (talk • contribs) 10:20, 21 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The sources for the claim that the Wright brothers invented and flew the first airplane link to a non-existent website. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pabloalmeidaff9 (talk • contribs) 20:36, 7 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
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The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.
Oppose - Article has been stable at this title for several years, and the WP:COMMONALITY claim isn't sufficient to override this. - BilCat (talk) 11:45, 7 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose for now, per common and most familiar name, but will watch this interesting discussion. Here is the n-gram result from 1900 to 2008 which wavers but seems to have stabilized in favor of 'Airplane' (n-grams went extinct in 2009, although I have a fossil of one that I keep in a drawer). Has there ever been an RM, before this one? Randy Kryn (talk) 14:31, 7 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support - COMMONNAME is not a valid argument for keeping "airplane", it is not the common and most familiar name, the word is used in just two countries in the world. YSSYguy (talk) 18:46, 7 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - This is another humor/humour case and requests like these are disruptive, Go and read WP:ENGVAR, Also oppose as per COMMONNAME, The article has been stable at this name since creation so there's no need to move it now. –Davey2010Talk00:24, 8 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
If this were simply a choice of national varieties of English, I would not have made the proposal. I have already quoted from ENGVAR - please read the document. Burninthruthesky (talk) 07:46, 8 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support: The WP:COMMONNAME arguments are bollocks - we don't all live in the US and the international consensus should take priority over its local dialect (cue massive partisan backlash). MOS:RETAIN is a guideline not a policy and such standard vs. local usage goes beyond it. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 09:30, 8 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - I'm surprised there hadn't been any past discussion on this matter. So I looked at article history. This article was (effectively) created in March 2013 by conversion of a redirect to fixed-wing aircraft with content from that article. an attempt in February 2012 to create an article at aeroplane(using content from fixed-wing aircraft?) was reverted citing "The RfC for this edit just closed with no consensus for it" though I have yet to find the RFC in question. GraemeLeggett (talk) 10:21, 8 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, airplane is the common name. My country is an interesting example. The official term in Canada is "aeroplane" as used in all the regs and official docs, but no one uses or writes it that way in any common usage, instead "airplane" is the only term used. In this country if you wrote an article for an aviation publication and used "aeroplane" you would be looked at like a 19th century relic. - Ahunt (talk) 12:24, 8 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
There is no proposal to change the variety of English used in the article. RETAIN does not apply. Rather, this is a proposal to use the internationally recognised term in preference to a local variant. Burninthruthesky (talk) 18:20, 8 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. And not just ENGVAR - I haven't seen "aeroplane" used in British-published books, magazines, etc., only "airplane". "Aeroplane" may be de jure official, but it is de facto archaic. "Airplane" is by far the WP:COMMONNAME, and changing it just to be 'officially correct' will do absolutey nothing to improve the encyclopedia; it will only give people more things to laugh at Wikipedia about. - The BushrangerOne ping only22:41, 8 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@The Bushranger: This isn't so. A look at last months British newspapers on GNews are mainly saying "plane", sometimes "aeroplane", but "airplane" only occurs in phrases like "airplane mode". Same with Indian newspapers. http://www.abc.net.au is 1/3 British and 2/3 American usage. In ictu oculi (talk) 12:11, 9 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
This sub-thread has prompted me to look around a bit. Both the Oxford and Cambridge online dictionaries now accept "airplane" as an alternative UK spelling, while the BBC seems to mostly use "aeroplane" but does sometimes use "airplane". A quick scan of my books and magazines published in the last ten years reveals several uses of "aeroplane" but none of "airplane". This all suggests that, while the tide may be beginning to turn, it has not turned yet. Whatever advocates of either position may think, the situation is certainly not clear-cut. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 15:19, 9 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I agree it is not clear cut. My unscientific comparison showed a slight edge for aeroplane when a boolean exclusion of "Wikipedia" (as suggested in wp:commonname#Use_commonly_recognizable_names "Other topics") is applied to a google search. DonFB (talk) 01:21, 10 January 2018 (UTC) ADD: Hmm, just did the comparison again and this time airplane was far ahead, so my 1st effort was apparently faulty, and I'll therefore Oppose, based on Commonname. DonFB (talk) 01:35, 10 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose because the initial request is based on the argument from authority, namely that "The ICAO term... should be used in preference to a national variant." Since when does some outside organization trump Wikipedia guidelines and policies, even if it is a respected international aviation organization? If we're going that route, then I oppose per IATA's preference for airplane over aeroplane by 1160 to 72. Mathglot (talk) 00:42, 9 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Comment why are we being shown out of date historical data from Ngrams? The way to check this is GNews which is current. But then GNews shows all countries using "plane" not airplane/aeroplane.... In ictu oculi (talk) 11:52, 9 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Looking at the demographics of the countries where the two terms are used, the US and Canada comprise approximately 360M people and the British Isles, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand comprise approximately 107M people—compared to those who use "airplane" as their preferred spelling, fewer than one third use "aeroplane" as their preferred spelling. Stated another way, about 23% of English speakers use "aeroplane". This by itself doesn't suggest that North American usage should prevail in all articles. I further suggest that the country that established the technology described should get a nod. Accordingly, I suggest that nautical terms, e.g. "gibe" versus "gybe", should use British English, given Britain's sea-faring heritage. Here, North America should get the nod. User:HopsonRoad14:24, 14 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
To these must be added countries whose Wikipedias are less comprehensive than ours and many of whose inhabitants speak English, so they come here often both as visitors and editors. These populations include about half of Europe and over 140,000 in the Indian sub-continent (10%+ of 1.2 billion in India, plus 50% of 0.2 billion in Pakistan, plus others). Most of these nations are more closely aligned to British English than to American. You can prove anything with statistics. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 10:18, 15 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.
Do we really need an entire article about how aircraft engines are numbered?
This seems like something more appropriately included as part of the article on airplanes, not something to make a stand-alone article out of. It's not really "notable", and consists of nothing but a list of different layouts by number of engines, and how they are numbered, even though anyone with basic math skills ought to be able to figure it out from the statement "they are numbered starting from the left to the right, from 1 and up". Do we really need a list to tell that that means that No. 1 is the left and No.3 is the inner right? The name is also not great; what does "Aircraft engine position number" actually mean? Are they in fact "position numbers"? I think someone has been over-enthusiastic is all. I appreciate the effort (and I can kind of see the motivation; I used to have a hell of a time remembering whether "1" was on the left or the right. This article doesn't really do any harm, I'm just not sure it falls under the category of "article material", and there is little chance of most people ever finding it or using it. Also little chance of it ever being expanded into anything more interesting, unless someone can come up with interesting international variations and/or historical details to fill it out more.
Here's one; a twin-tandem engine aircraft, like one of the old early 1930s British or French bomber designs, with two nacelles, each containing a tractor and a pusher prop: what is the numbering sequence? 1 and 2 for front and rear on the port, 3 and 4 for front and rear on the starboard? How were the engines of the Dornier Do X numbered? These sort of details might turn it into something resembling a legit article, but they are lacking now. What we have here is a couple sentences worth of info from the "Airplane" page bulked out to make it into an "article". AnnaGoFast (talk) 00:16, 31 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
This article is semi-protected, and being french, I can't edit it, so I post here.
I find it strange that there is no mention of Clement Ader first flights.
Actually he was the first to fly, before Wright brothers, in 1890 then 1897 in front of a military committee for 300 meters, protected by military secret, and did have patent anteriority that led to multiple trials.
For the record, he coined the word "avion" which means airplane in french, and aviation is also a word borrowed from french.
--HugoMe (talk) 15:11, 18 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
HugoMe, Yes, that needs to be fixed to add Adler. There's no prohibition on editing the article if you are French, so feel free to edit it if you wish. If you feel unsure about your level of English, you can add your proposed text here on the Talk page instead, and we can adjust it for proper English before moving it to the article. And finally, you may post your proposed addition here in French if that is easier for you, and I'll translate it. Just make sure to use citations to reliable sources, and ((ping)) me to get my attention, when you are done.