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At Manchester Small-Scale Experimental Machine and other articles, User:Eric Corbett has styling the reference sections in a novel way using Template:style-nt that he created recently, to give himself control over text point size, whether or not an edit button appears by the headings, whether they show up in the TOC or not, and what-all. The coding looks cryptic, and it's hard to discern any good reason for not going with the usual default style that one gets with normal section and subsection heading markup. He keeps putting it back, with little justification; see User talk:Eric Corbett#What does Template:style-nt do?. Does the MOS have anything to say about editors going their own way on such styling? Dicklyon (talk) 04:28, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

What does it do? What's the point of writing documentation if nobody reads it? Eric Corbett 04:55, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

This template should probably be submitted to WP:TFD. The headings are the way they are and users really shouldn't be trying to Make Their Pages Perfect With Respect To Their Preferences. There is also a bit of false documentation regarding whether bold headings are allowed by MOS--they aren't. --Izno (talk) 05:15, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

That's not what the MoS says at all. What it explicitly discourages is the use of the semicolon as in ";pseudo-heading" to produce bold headings, not bold headings per se. And it strongly encourages the use of heading markup as in "===Real heading===" for accessibility reasons, which this template supports. But I'm interested in which part of the MoS you're using to justify your assertion that "users really shouldn't be trying to Make Their Pages Perfect". Do you have a link? Eric Corbett 06:45, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

Focusing on the template issue is really to miss the point. I could, for instance, achieve a similar result to the template by prefixing a normal section header with something like <div id="section-header" style="font-size:14px;"> and suffixing it with </div>, or I could even override the default look of a level 3 header - or any other - by writing a new CSS definition. What would the MoS have to say about that, and why should it care? Eric Corbett 07:12, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

Yes, you could do that, and it would likely get reverted (I see you've made a pointy edit to that effect at already). The use of the template is more insidious, as the naive editor will see it and just think it's some widely used way of making some consistent styling, rather than your personal idiosyncratic way of styling, which is what it really is. Can't we all just use a consistent style? Aren't you a software engineer? Have you not bought in to the advantages of coding with a shared and understood style guide? Dicklyon (talk) 14:23, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

Why would it get reverted? In what way does it go against the guidance in the MoS? Of course we could all use a visually consistent style, this one for instance, which is more aesthetically pleasing than the default site-wide css for level 3 headers. Is it necessary to point out that the purpose of such css definitions is so that they can be overridden? And it's rather insulting to call my demonstration, clearly labelled as such, as pointy, but insulting behaviour appears to be your forte. One final thing: inconsistency in other areas of the MoS is actively encouraged, date formatting and spelling are two obvious examples. Is your next campaign going to be to force a single date format down everyone's throats? Eric Corbett 14:35, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

That sounds uncomfortable. Dicklyon (talk) 14:46, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

To address the broader question: MoS is a guideline primarily about the most common WP-writing "style" (spelling, grammar, tone, layout, etc.) questions and problems. It is not the One True Source of all common sense and consensus on Wikipedia, the general operating principle of which is that what has been working fine for a long time and is well-accepted by the community is the consensus, even if it was not established in a particular discussion. If someone changes something about that de facto consensus, and the change is met with little or no objection then widely adopted by others, it becomes part of the new consensus. Otherwise, we'd have to have millions more consensus discussions and a huge database to keep track of them, a project that might exceed the scope fo WP's actual public-facing content. "MoS doesn't have a rule stopping me" doesn't equate to "I can do anything I want". Otherwise MoS would have to be longer than The Chicago Manual of Style combined with New Hart's Rules, to account for every imaginable style idea. PS: I have no objection at all to adding an explicit MoS rule against using CSS tricks (manual or templated) to alter the default formatting of headings and other page elements, except inline CSS within a heading to make it conform to a particular MoS expectation. There may be some other already-accepted tweaks of this nature, such as ToC template options to suppress display of level-3 and lower headings in some cases when necessary to prevent excessively long tables of contents. If there's something wrong with how elements like the headings work on Wikipedia, and it can be addressed in CSS, then the idea should be proposed at Mediawiki talk:Common.css for inclusion in the site-wide stylesheet. If it's a sweeping change, it should probably be proposed at WP:VPTECH first.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:45, 8 May 2018 (UTC)

One more question: what does the name style-nt mean? nt for "next thing" maybe? Dicklyon (talk) 14:24, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

What does it matter? I would have preferred to call it simply ((style)), but a template with that name already exists. Eric Corbett 14:40, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

So why not style-ec? It matters because the Template namespace is intended to be understandable and usable by editors; it's not your personal playground. Dicklyon (talk) 14:46, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

I've really done with discussing anything with you, anywhere. You're quite impossible to deal with. Eric Corbett 14:51, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

In what way? His point is correct and sensible, though what this template is named is the least of the concerns about it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:45, 8 May 2018 (UTC)

A specimen, for delectation. I like gadgets, this is fun! Batternut (talk) 11:08, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

Apparently WP isn't meant to be fun. ;-) Eric Corbett 12:00, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

When misinterpreting WP as a CSS hacking playground and display case of Web-styling wizardry, that assessment is essentially correct. WP is meant to be an enjoyable environment in which to work on building an encyclopedia, but it's not even intended to be "fun" for readers, but simple and informative. It's not an entertainment website or a MMPORG, nor a place to flex one's Web coding skills in personally aesthetic ways. This is all covered at WP:NOT (#GAME, #WEBHOST, and some other sections).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:45, 8 May 2018 (UTC)

• See Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2018 May 7#Template:Style-nt Jc3s5h (talk) 13:16, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

  I was about to suggest TfD.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:45, 8 May 2018 (UTC)

• I don't think this really has anything to do with references, apart from the fact that the headings being formatted are in reference sections. The issue is using markup to change the way that section headings are formatted. The MOS does not cover this explicitly, but that's because it does not try to discuss every convention. In this case, there is a clear convention across the project not to try to change the font, size, weight, or other aspects of section titles. So editors should just leave that formatting as is, rather than trying to achieve some kind of special heading formatting in specific articles. I don't think this needs to be in the MOS, actually - 99.99% of editors seem to follow the convention without any trouble, so it's just a matter of fixing any uncommon articles that don't follow the convention. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:18, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

  Agreed. This isn't about refs, but about consistency of standardized interface elements – or, rather, about unusual deviations from that consistency which don't seem to provide enough reader utility to cover the editorial cost of the divergence, or the cost to reader expectations in loss of consistency. There's a reason we don't do things like switch to a green background and a Celtic-y uncial font at articles about Ireland, and so on, despite the sense that "designer" types have that it would be fun and evocative to do so. WP is not a brochure, nor a Web-design experimentation platform. PS: Speaking of which, I'm strongly reminded of WP:TFD deleting quotation-stylization templates that attempted to mimic the blockquote styles of various blogging platforms.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:45, 8 May 2018 (UTC); annotated further: 23:36, 18 May 2018 (UTC)

  More on this matter at User talk:J3Mrs/Archive 16#The H3 template where I was shot down for daring to question the purpose of what was, at the time, the ((h3)) template (I shall probably be shot down for bringing up the matter here, but I see it as germane to the topic). When I first saw this thread, I hadn't actually realised that ((style-nt)) had originated as ((h3)) which is why I've not commented here previously. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 07:26, 19 May 2018 (UTC)

• Note: Multiple closely related templates&modules are being discussed at TFD Template:H4. Alsee (talk) 06:48, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

Advice is requested at Talk:Regional corporations and municipalities of Trinidad and Tobago#ndash vs hyphen in article titles. Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 07:26, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

This edit request to Wikipedia:Manual of Style has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

In Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Celestial_bodies, it says sun, earth, and moon are not capitalized except in astronomical use. MOS:CELESTIALBODIES says the same exact thing except with solar system added. I am questioning whether solar system should be added to Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Celestial_bodies because the article title of the solar system on Wikipedia is capitalized while on other sites it is not. I can't think of other ways solar system is used outside of astronomical use. 2601:183:101:58D0:34E8:552C:3EB8:46BF (talk) 20:07, 10 May 2018 (UTC)

@2601:183:101:58D0:34E8:552C:3EB8:46BF: Umm ... you seem to be requesting that this page not be changed but rather MOSCELESTIALBODIES (which you could edit directly) be changed and the article Solar System be moved accordingly. For this reason, your edit request is unanswerable on its face. If I am misinterpreting you and you actually think this page should proscribe the use of "Solar System" ... well, that's not going to happen because you made an edit request on this page, unless there is also consensus to move the article. It should, however, be noted that there is not currently a contradiction between that article's title and MOS:CELESTIALBODIES; the article is about astronomy, and specifically our solar system (i.e., it's using it like a name rather than a common noun). That this page doesn't go into quite as much detail as the capitalization subpage should be a given. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 01:43, 17 May 2018 (UTC)

I think (aside from the fact that one page contains extra detail, which is not necessarily an error) that the anon is misunderstanding. "I can think of other ways solar system is used outside of astronomical use" is an indication of this. If you say something like "There's a whole solar system of lobbyists orbiting around the senator", that's not something MoS (at either page) would have you capitalize, and this is not an oversight. Nor would it have you capitalize "the solar system of Alpha Centauri", for that matter. It means for you to capitalize our solar system when it is referred to as "the Solar System", a proper name. It the same as astronomical use of "the Sun" to refer to our star as a celestial body. But it's "She received a second-degree burn from extended sun exposure while unconscious in the desert". Here, it's a not a reference to the star, but a shortered version of "sunlight". If you were actually exposed to the Sun, literally, then you'd become plasma in under a nanosecond. Sun even in an astronomical sense isn't capitalized when it doesn't mean our sun as a celestial body: "the two suns of Tatooine" (celestial body, not ours); "Apollo was the sun god of the Romans" (our sun, not as celestial body in the literal sense, but as something the ancients didn't understand and deified); "My car gleams as bright as the sun" (our sun, not as a celestial body literally, but as a source of light we squint at, used in a figurative sense).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:14, 18 May 2018 (UTC)

Closing duplicate threads: This has also been forum-shopped or at least talk-forked to Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters#Solar System capitalization (closed) and Talk:Solar System#Requested move 23 May 2018 (speedy closure requested).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:11, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

The lead of our Katano, Osaka doesn't quite sit well with me. According to ja.wiki, the town of Katano was formally declared a "city" in 1971, but using "founded" brings to my mind an image of settlers venturing into the wilderness and establishing a new settlement. Our Takizawa, Iwate article describes a similar process with the word "promoted". There's also the problem of "new" municipal governments being established from mergers or dissolutions, which I also wouldn't think "founded" would accurately describe.

But this might all just be me and my hang-ups, so rather than changing it unilaterally (and I could almost certainly "get away with it") I figured I'd ask here. Thoughts?

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 01:33, 17 May 2018 (UTC)

• Reading the Japanese version, it sounds like that's when it went from being a -chō "town" to a -shi "city". The ja.wp version describes the -chō as being "市制前の名称" ("the name before municipal organization"?) I get the feeling that that's something like "incorporation". Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 01:45, 17 May 2018 (UTC)

No doubt - alternatives might be "achieved city status", "was declared a city" or something. Not founded if there was a pre-existing settlement. Johnbod (talk) 02:01, 17 May 2018 (UTC)

@Curly Turkey and Johnbod: What about cases like Ōshū, Iwate, which was apparently "created" in 2006 from two cities, two towns and a village that had existed before without any specific connection to each other? I'd still be averse to saying "founded" when describing municipalities that were created from mergers even when no city called "Ōshū" had existed before. (BTW, I'm pretty sure the name of the city is just as arbitrary as it sounds.) It may be hypothetical because that article currently uses "established", which I'm fine with, but I'm pretty sure there are a lot of places like this in Japan and maybe elsewhere (not Ireland, if I recall, and I don't know a lot about others). Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 07:07, 17 May 2018 (UTC)

"Merged" or "amalgamated" work—or "formed as a result of the amalgamation/merging of XXX and YYY". That was part of the whole 平成の大合併 about a decade-ish ago. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 07:29, 17 May 2018 (UTC)

Yes - "founded" is really only appropriate for greenfield sites, or where there was just a little village. It's mainly appropriate for once-colonial places, or imperial whims. Johnbod (talk) 13:06, 17 May 2018 (UTC)

The term "incorporated" seems to be the more appropriate term, as far as I know, from municipal corporation. A city is incorporated rather than founded.--Jayron32 16:17, 18 May 2018 (UTC)

"Achieved" and "promoted" are PoV wording that presupposes that towns are worse, somehow, than cities. A neutral term would be "designated".  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:33, 18 May 2018 (UTC)

Towns are not worse, but lesser. Are majors "worse" than colonels? The term "incorporated" does not help when a town goes to a city. Johnbod (talk) 16:45, 20 May 2018 (UTC)

You're making my point for me, really. There is no hierarchical relationship between "city" and "town" (except perhaps within a particular municipality defined as a city and which has named its encompassed boroughs "towns" just to be a pain in the backside of collective understanding). If I live in the town of Apple Valley, California, the nearby cities of Victorville and Hesperia do not have jurisdiction over me (or control over my town's local government). If I serve under Major D'Lemma, and she answers to Colonel Korn, I also answer to Korn. They cases are not even remotely parallel. Anyway, the entire notion is still biased. Just read what you said: "Towns are ... lesser." This simply isn't a true statement categorically, only by particular rubrics that happen to interest you, such as perhaps the population level, the square mileage, or the tax monies in the coffer. By various other measures, cities are lesser. Some typical examples are quality-of-life and safety-related, including crime rates, suicide rates, frequency of deaths by fires and car wrecks, pollution levels, and many other things. Many towns also have longer and richer histories than many cities, with many of the latter being less than a century old, especially in difficult ecozones like Arizona that take significant modern technology to be support large human settlements.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:47, 23 May 2018 (UTC)

I think you're making my point here - none of this matters in the slightest for the issue at hand. What about villages? They can be lovely too. So what? Johnbod (talk) 15:03, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

So, they aren't in a better/superior/commanding versus worse/lesser/subordinate hierarchy, in which wording like "achieved" and "promoted" might make sense. I thought that was pretty clear in my first post, especially since we have wording like "designated" that is accurate (the labels are an official designation, not a law of nature) and doesn't have this PoV problem, nor the reader confusion (hell, writer confusion) problem of "founded" or "established" being used for something that was actually founded/established long before the city designation.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:19, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

This started off dealing with Japanese cities, now it is appearing to be US-centric. Frankly if any city hasn't got roots of a thousand or more years it ought to be called a modern town. :-) Consider the cities of Heidelberg, London, Rome, Athens and then approach on bended knee. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 13:27, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

• I noticed the same thing in another article, there are three people claiming to be the first mayor of a location. One was mayor when it was part of another township, one was mayor when it was incorporated as a township on its own, and the final one was mayor when it was reorganized as a city. The obituaries all call them the first mayor of the location and the local government does not keep a canonical list. --RAN (talk) 14:55, 20 May 2018 (UTC)

  So we should simply be specific: "first mayor of the township of Foo", "first mayor of the city of Foo", or whatever the case may be. Sometimes this requires better research than that performed by an obit writer.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:47, 23 May 2018 (UTC)

• Local government reorganisations, like rail-replacement buses are a local speciality round my way. Take a look at City of Rochester-upon-Medway to see multiple ways of describing the disruption. ClemRutter (talk) 08:04, 23 May 2018 (UTC)

  Rochester. The only English town to lose its city status by accident. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:49, 23 May 2018 (UTC)

Is their a stylistic difference we should be aware of between en-us and en-gb usage of semicolons? There obviously is a difference in what we call conjunctival adverbs - does this permeate further?--ClemRutter (talk) 19:02, 22 May 2018 (UTC)

In both variants, AFAIK there's no pedantically fixed standard, and use or non-use of the semcolon varies between writers. The article on the semicolon has some opinions on its use. Here's a New Yorker article: Semicolons; So Tricky. Here's a fairly standard note on British usage from the university of Leicester (England): Using the semi-colon and colon^{[dead link]}.
IMHO there's no encyplopedic reason to insist on any particular usage or to correct an article's usage of semicolons; however, ((Use xxx English)) tags should always be respected. — Stanning (talk) 20:20, 22 May 2018 (UTC)

Except that comma and semicolon usage in various articles here is often wrong by all "standards". If you think you're going to get some moratorium on cleanup of their abuse, think again.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:33, 23 May 2018 (UTC)

Just a question that came up while training- you have to check before you give too forceful an answer! ClemRutter (talk) 22:50, 23 May 2018 (UTC) ;}

Sure. I was responding to Stanning's serious misstatement, "there's no encyplopedic reason to insist on any particular usage or to correct an article's usage of semicolons", which is just flat-out wrong in both parts. Otherwise MoS would have nothing on semicolons, nor would off-WP major style guides, but of course they do, because there are actual norms of use, most of which are cross-dialect.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:21, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

I made an edit to change the wording "in particular" to "usually" to more accurately reflect the content of the § Article titles guideline, which state, "Capitalize the title's initial letter (except in rare cases, such as eBay), but otherwise follow sentence case[b] (Funding of UNESCO projects) not title case (Funding of UNESCO Projects). This does not apply where the title would be title case in ordinary prose". I summarize this that usually, not always, section headings should use sentence case, not title case. Dicklyon previously made an addition to the guideline, stating that "In particular, they should use sentence case, not title case (capitalize only the first word and proper names in headings)". This wording implies that in all cases the section heading should use sentence case, ignoring the exceptions mentioned in the article titles guideline. Therefore I changed "in particular" for "usually". Thinker78 (talk) 06:14, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

I saw that one, and pondered on which was right, concluding that neither reflected the meaning. Have you considered just using the humble colon to connect the two independent but closely related sentences. --ClemRutter (talk) 09:48, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

The only thing at title that's particularly relevant to headings is the capitalization; the "usually" or colon doesn't really connect this remark as intended. So I went back to "In particular" and noted that there are exceptions. See if that's more satisfying now. Dicklyon (talk) 14:16, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

Saw those edits... I like how it is with the "in particular" but then mentioning there are rare exceptions. I was wondering though... other than eBay, iPad, etc... are there any other exceptions? It says "except when the title would be title case in ordinary prose" but I'm having a hard time thinking up an example of that. Does it simply mean when the title of a work, for instance, is included in a section or article title, say "Imagery in A Clockwork Orange"? Or am I missing some other weird case? —Joeyconnick (talk) 18:13, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

I don't know. If and when exceptions are needed, I'd expect them to be obvious. Dicklyon (talk) 21:21, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

And it's not rational to assume that if one statement is simple, and another details some rare exceptions, that the exceptions don't apply because the other section didn't mention them. Much of the main MoS page is a glossing over of details and exceptions, the goal at this page being to lay out generalities. This is even true of material in one section that defers to material in another section of the same page with more detail on whatever that little side matter is. I have no objection to rewording either or both bits, as long as the intended meaning isn't changed.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:26, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

Someone added a list of symbol definitions for equations in the Lateral earth pressure article. All the definitions are correct, and they will help reading the equations in the article. My question is whether this table should be its own section, whether it should be a table or a list, and other stylistic questions about its placement. It's not whether the information belongs in the article, it's how the information should be presented. The presentation is a very textbook sort of presentation, and textbook is one of those things which Wikipedia is not. So what say you style mavens? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Argyriou (talk • contribs) 00:06, 23 May 2018 (UTC)

Containing one element of a textbook, does not make it a textbook article. I expect symbols to be identified in a mathematical article. In articles on films, I expect the characters in the plot summary to be identified in a list or table. --RAN (talk) 02:53, 23 May 2018 (UTC)

@Argyriou: Presumably you refer to this edit; since it is a list of definitions, mark it up as a definition list, like this. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:55, 23 May 2018 (UTC)

Agreed that's the right markup. We even have a nice template system for it, covered in detail at MOS:GLOSSARIES.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:54, 27 May 2018 (UTC)

If it's not something we made up and it might be useful for other articles, maybe it should be its own article. We have many glossaries and other lists.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:27, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

Comments welcome at Talk:Bruce McArthur#>>>Swearwords. The source reads I'm tired of these f---ing f---ots but that supports and verifies that the (alleged) statement was I'm tired of these fucking faggots. By the letter of the MOS we should reproduce the bowdlerised version, but by its spirit I think we should reproduce the quotation exactly as (allegedly) said. Andrewa (talk) 16:20, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

I notified WT:Citing sources and WT:Verifiability about this thread, since it's more about sourcing than style.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:49, 27 May 2018 (UTC)

• Use attribution would be my solution: 'According to Title of Source, McArthur said: "I'm tired of these f---ing f---ots".' Or use something more specific, e.g. 'According to an article by I. M. Whoever, ...'.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:49, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
  • That would solve the problem, but it's a bit wordy and seems unnecessarily so to me... Surely, if I.M Whoever is a reliable source and states McArthur said: "I'm tired of these f---ing f---ots" in writing, we have verified by this source that McArthur in fact said "I'm tired of these fucking faggots"? But yes, it does overcome the more serious problem... McArthur did not say "I'm tired of these f---ing f---ots", and to cite this source as verifying that he did say this, rather than that he said I'm tired of these fucking faggots, is f---ing ridiculous. But a legalistic reading of the MOS did, in this example, lead to our article saying exactly that. Andrewa (talk) 09:18, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
    • "McArthur is quoted by Whoever as saying..."? This establishes that this isn't directly what McArthur said, just how the source quotes them. Ian.thomson (talk) 17:25, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
• The "style" question – the question of writing – is whether this quotation is actually necessary at all. That paragraph feels a bit too blow-by-blow for me: Some (apparently random) guy describes a ten-minute temper tantrum that has no direct connection to the "plot". Encyclopedias do more "telling" than "showing". If the person telling the story is just some random acquaintance, it should be omitted altogether; if it isn't, then the connection should be explained (e.g., "father of one of the murder victims" or "brother of the accused") and the content should be summarized concisely: "He had an explosive temper". WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:42, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
  • That's another issue that may apply to this particular example, but ISTM it's a content issue. Andrewa (talk) 09:18, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
• Unless there is an alternative source, we do not know for certain what McArthur did say. He might have said those "flaming flibbertigibbots". Unlikely, I know, but SMcC's suggestion avoids (mis)interpretation. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 17:21, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Strongly disagree. While I agree we do not know for certain what McArthur did say, that's splitting hairs. We know what the source says, and when we say they're reliable we assume that they're not deliberately misleading us! And to say that he said I'm tired of these f---ing f---ots when in fact he said flaming flibbertigibbots would be so misleading, it would be reasonable to call it deliberate. So it's not a guess (as the edit summary of that last post claims) that according to the source he said fucking faggots. It is the only sensible reading of the source. Andrewa (talk) 18:39, 27 May 2018 (UTC)

Just to clarify, I'm not suggesting that we ever guess what the source means. But I am suggesting that when a reliable source is clear and explicit as to what was really said, but employs bowdlerisation because of the source's own style and content policies, and when the bowdlerisation has only one reasonable interpretation (as in the example), then we should read the source as verifying the unbowdlerised version. Because that is the only reasonable reading of the source.

If, on the other hand, we publish the bowdlerised version while knowing full well what the source means, we are ourselves guilty of bowdlerisation. Which is of course contrary to policy, and surely the MOS should reflect this policy? Andrewa (talk) 18:51, 27 May 2018 (UTC)

See WP:BOWDLERIZE on precisely this point "However, when quoting relevant material, rendering a quotation as it appears in the source cited trumps this style guideline". WP is not bowdlerising, the original source is. If you are worried, use the format suggested above and add ((sic)) to clarify: 'According to Title of Source, McArthur said: "I'm tired of these f---ing f---ots [sic]".' See MOS:SIC for guidance. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 19:16, 27 May 2018 (UTC)

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Trademarks#Minor clarification to avoid interpretational conflict between MOS:TM and WP:TITLETM
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:59, 28 May 2018 (UTC)

Please see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Film#To be or not to be a subsection, on whether the use of a single ===Subsection=== (rather than two or more) within a ==Section== is compatible with good writing style. Please comment over there, not here. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:33, 28 May 2018 (UTC)

I've started a draft Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Portals, which would formalise the applicability of the MOS to portals, with just a few exceptions. Your feedback would be appreciated – discussion is taking place at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Portals § To what extent does the MOS apply to portals? (please respond there, not here). Thanks, Evad37 [talk] 16:35, 27 May 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for doing that. Looking good so far. Dicklyon (talk) 17:00, 27 May 2018 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Portals#RfC: Adopt as a MoS guideline

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Portals#RfC: Adopt as a MoS guideline . - Evad37 [talk] 03:00, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see Talk:Gender neutrality in languages with grammatical gender#Major update needed for Romance languages
People who edit here may be interested in it. The gist: there's a pattern of using the single character x as a stand-in for "a or e/i/o depending on your gender", and it's increasingly coming up in the proper names of organizations, forums, etc. So, we might want to address (in a footnote?) either here or at WP:GNL that good markup for this sort of thing is, for example, usuari<var>x</var>s or the equivalent usuari((var|x))s (rendered: usuarixs) as the shorthand for "usuarios/usuarias" or "usuari[a|o]s" or whatever. This will alert editors that the x is not a typo but a metasyntactic variable. This mark-it-up approach is consistent with various advised uses of ((sic|hide=y)) or ((notatypo)).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:13, 2 June 2018 (UTC)

Is it standard to render the x in a different font than the rest of the text, the way your markup does? That formatting looks ugly, because fonts are not designed to mix in the middle of words like that so the kerning is wrong. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:07, 2 June 2018 (UTC)

Please centralize the discussion at the thread pointed to. Avoding talkforks is why we make pointers from one page to a thread at another.  :-)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:42, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

An RfC concerning the categorization of biracial people has been opened at Wikipedia talk:Categorization/Ethnicity, gender, religion and sexuality#RfC on categorizing biracial people. StAnselm (talk) 04:31, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

It does touch on MOS:IDENTITY but seems mostly to be a WP:NOR dispute (including about the term biracial and when to apply it, though it's mostly actually about African[-]American in the context of Meghan Markle).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:43, 9 June 2018 (UTC)

It's somewhat unfortunate that the section on Possessives includes "Jesus" as an example (Jesus's teachings). Whereas it's fine to add apostrophe+s on names ending in -s the most well-known exception to this in many style manuals is Jesus, which adds only the apostrophe: Jesus' teachings. I'm not saying that MOS needs to adhere to what most style manuals do, I'm only saying that we shouldn't pick as our example to illustrate the general -s rule, the most famous example which is an exception to that rule in many style guides; we can pick something else. Here is Bryan Garner:

To form a singular possessive, add -'s to most singular nouns—even those ending in -s and -x (hence witness's, Vitex's, Jones's, Nichols's). ... There are three exceptions to this rule. The first is the standard one: Biblical and classical names ending in -s take only an apostrophe:, hence Jesus' suffering, Moses' discovery, Aristophanes' plays, Grotius' writings. (No extra syllable is added in sounding the possessive form.) The second exception is words formed from the plural. Thus General Motors should make General Motors'—e.g.: "A merger by General Motors will excite great interest in an enforcement agency simply because of General Motors's [read General Motors' ] size."

HTH, Mathglot (talk) 09:07, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

Consider, perhaps, that it was chosen because some style guides make such an exception, others don't, and the intent here is to dissuade insistence on that variance because "my style guide at work says so". Also, as of the edition put out last year, The Chicago Manual of Style (which has much more buy-in than Garner's Modern English Usage, a.k.a. Garner's Modern American Usage until its latest version) has shifted strongly away from such exception-making, for the first time in generations (though it observes that some do use such exceptions; the Hafiz' and Beatrix' variants are also fairly common). The relevant material in CMoS – the whole set of chapters on grammar, punctuation, and spelling, actually – were actually written by Garner under contract. So, either his own position is shifting, or he gives conflicting advice in different books on purpose, but a purpose we can't, of course, psychically determine. And Garner isn't a linguist, he's an attorney. Many of the things he says about language are demonstrably wrong (e.g. "No extra syllable is added in sounding the possessive form" is only true in some regional dialects, and not a majority of them).

Regardless, the CMoS shift is an indication that "Jesus'" isn't a rule in a sense we should care about here, but a subjective preference of some American writers and editors primarily (it's neither exclusive to them nor consistent among them), and is slipping in acceptance because it's confusing and illogical (it seems to've been picked from the Elizabethan-era [pre-orthography-standardization] King James Bible, used by many American Protestant sects, and retained in the 20th century because it coincides with a particular, blurred pronunciation in some variants of US Midwestern English (and some other dialects, e.g. in parts of Texas [that's /ˈtɛksəz/ !], though CMoS wouldn't care). But it isn't actually dominant across the language or even in the US. Our own conversations on this page show it; every time the issue comes up, editors from around the English speaking world and the US more narrowly tell us that they pronounce "Jesus" and "Jesus'[s]" differently, with a distinct syllable added to the possessive (the suprasegmental length is apt to vary, and might be rather short; it is for me).

There is no escaping a simple fact: for every single point of English usage on which different self-styled authorities disagree, there will always be some subset of readers and editors who don't like the version we pick. So, MoS works best when it detects and defuses "style-guide thumping" that's likely to recurrently arise. E.g., we've done the same thing with capitalization of prepositions in titles of works, something that style guides disagree on even in the same field, like journalism, and which is often laden with style-guide-specific exceptions. We just swept away the exceptions as inconsistent and troublesome, and went with neither of the more extreme approaches.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:05, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

So there! Any more questions? EEng 14:06, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

[sigh] The intent isn't to WP:WIN, it's cover what the rationale is for the MoS wording, and why a "Garner says ..." observation isn't particularly meaningful as an isolated point, without both comparison to other style guides and awareness that Garner writes more than one of them (at least 4 to date), often inconsistently. (Aside: As far as I can tell, Garner has carved this niche simply by having been one of the editors of Black's Law Dictionary; it's what got his foot in the door to put out A Dictionary of Modern American Usage in 1998, when OUP figured there was a market for an American counter to the very British Fowler's (and of course wanted to publish both of them).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:36, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

Actually, that example is there simply to illustrate what "rearrange the wording" means with a practical example. It is carefully worded so as not to give the impression that it is an example of a possessive that is difficult to pronounce, or indeed the reverse (hence my revert of yesterday's bold edit, which changed the phrasing so as to make it such an example). We sidestepped the question of whether Jesus's is or is not "difficult to pronounce" and simply offered the two alternative phrasings to illustrate the preceding provision in the MoS. MapReader (talk)

That's a reason it's there. I'm pretty sure I wrote the wording in question.  :-)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:04, 12 June 2018 (UTC)

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see Wikipedia:Move review#List of Presidents of the United States. Some comments at WT:MOSCAPS has suggested there could be insufficient input so far to reach a clear consensus. Depending on how it turns out, MOS:JOBTITLES might require substantial revision, which could in turn affect the wording at the main MoS guideline. (That might or might not be a good idea, but people who watch this page should be aware of it either way.)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:12, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Biographies#Merge MOS:JOBTITLES to this MoS page.

The proposal is to merge WP:Manual of Style/Capital letters#Titles of people (a.k.a. MOS:JOBTITLES) to WP:Manual of Style/Biographies, where the rest of the material about human titles is (academic, post-nominal, honorific, regnal, etc.). A short summary and hatnote pointer would be left behind in MOS:CAPS (about the same as those presently at found at MOS:CAPS#Occupational titles pointing to MOS:CAPS#Titles of people; the relationship would simply be reversed).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:50, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

FYI

 – Pointers to relevant discussions elsewhere.

Please see:

• Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2018 June 7#MOS:NOTES – possible retargeting
• Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2018 June 5#MOS:AMEN – possible deletion
• Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2018 June 5#MOS:BRIT – possible deletion
• Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2018 June 4#Mos: – possible deletion (of "Mos:" not "MOS:")
• Wikipedia:Redirects_for_discussion/Log/2018 June_3#MoS: – possible deletion (of "MoS:" not "MOS:")
• Wikipedia:Redirects_for_discussion/Log/2018 June 3#Wikipedia:MOS: – possible deletion (of double-namespace version)

The "NOTES" one proposes that "MOS:" shortcuts should point to non-Manual of Style pages. The AMEN and BRIT ones are about ambiguity. The pseudo-namespace ones boil down to this: "MOS:" is a pseudo-namespace created, after a consensus discussion, to point to WP's Manual of Style and sections and subpages thereof, to deal with the decreasing availability of meaningful and memorable "WP:"-namespace shortcuts, and because there's often an MoS page and a content, naming, or other page about the same thing. However, pseudo-namespaces are actually in mainspace (articlespace). Some editors thus do not want to see a profusion of "typo redirects" like "MoS:CAPS", "mos:CAPS", "Wikipedia:MOS:CAPS", etc., while others are convinced that all redirects are necessarily "cheap" and always should be permitted even if only used by a handful of editors and of no use to readers.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:42, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

• There's some follow-up discussion relating to the now-closed RfDs about the pseudo-pseudo-namespace ones, at User talk:Amorymeltzer#mos:, MoS:, WP:MOS: junk redirects.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:06, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

Quick question... In a statement such as: “The media’s attitude toward(s) the military shifted during the war”, should we use “toward” or “towards”. Blueboar (talk) 17:42, 3 June 2018 (UTC) Blueboar (talk) 17:42, 3 June 2018 (UTC)

I believe "toward" is preferred for American English, and "towards" for British English. The same style generally applies to other directional words as well (e.g. forward/forwards). - adamstom97 (talk) 21:46, 3 June 2018 (UTC)

Isn't this a better question for the Refdesk? Primergrey (talk) 21:48, 3 June 2018 (UTC)

Yeah... but I knew I would get a quicker answer here. Thanks. Blueboar (talk) 13:44, 4 June 2018 (UTC)

Bryan Garner is my go-to guy for this, and he agrees with adamstom97 on AE/BE distinction. However, this may be the wrong word entirely in this situation. As Garner says, Misused for to. Toward implies movement. It shoudln't be used when the sentence would be served by to or against—e.g.,... followed by three bulleted examples. The examples include expressions like "objections toward" (use to), or "prejudice toward" (use against). Attitude isn't movement, so my guess would be that you should probably not be using toward here, maybe about? However a quick check of other online grammar resources seems to indicate a preference for toward/s with attitude. Ngrams shows the top ten prepositions after attitude, but doesn't include multi-word expressions like with respect to or vis-a-vis. Mathglot (talk) 04:06, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

An additional way we approach this, especially on WP, is MOS:COMMONALITY, which is more important than the argument to authority inherit in relying on a favorite style book. There is no intelligibility problem with toward, in any dialect, so it's preferable for concision. However, towards isn't an unencyclopedic colloquialism, even in American English, so MOS:RETAIN would suggest not going around changing it to toward just for the heck of it (especially not as a trivial edit unto itself), since the potential editorial kvetching would probably not be worth saving a character here or there. If I were writing a new article, or substantively overhauling an extant one, I would use toward (if it weren't better replaced by to, etc., as Mathglot says). Same goes for similar words like forward[s], amid[st], etc.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:41, 9 June 2018 (UTC)

This American finds the usage of "toward" in that construction to be extremely jarring. The point about movement sums up the usage I am familiar with. --Khajidha (talk) 04:13, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

If this isn't a suggestion to include some sort of guidance on this particular point to the MOS, then this entire discussion ought to be at the refdesk or a user's talkpage...no? Primergrey (talk) 00:13, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

Agreed, this is not WP:RDL. But (to me) it isn't clear that the OP does not propose an MOS change. ―Mandruss ☎ 00:20, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

My bad, per I knew I would get a quicker answer here. Make that: This is not WP:RDL, speed of answer irrelevant. ―Mandruss ☎ 00:22, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see Talk:Ellipsis#"Save As..." style.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:14, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

Additional input requested. This has turned completely circular in WP:IDHT fashion.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:32, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

Why is this page titled Wikipedia:Manual of Style, not Wikipedia:Manual of style? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:06, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

This should be a good one. EEng 07:19, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

I imagined it was based upon the ancient Manual of Stylos, the Greek etymology of the village being 'column' or 'pillar', with the MoS being the pillar that supports all good editing? But I am sure that other views are available... MapReader (talk) 09:58, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

Indeed. It was brought unto us by the ancients, passed down generation-to-generation by the Secret Order of Stylos (now a subsidiary of Brotherhood of the Cruciform Sword).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:07, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

There was a discussion about it way back when. The gist is that it's intended as a work, of sorts. It was also observed that various other project pages, like a lot of wikiprojects, use title case. I'm not sure anyone feels strongly about it these days. My only qualm would be that lowercasing these pages would produce an enormous redirect cleanup job, which might have to be done manually. The recent move of WP:Manual of Style/Biographies to WP:Manual of Style/Biography had the double-redirect-fixing bot actually fail to do its job. Just fixing shortcuts to that page alone took me about two hours. I don't know who'd volunteer to fix several thousand redirs to all the MoS pages. Also, we typically abbreviate it "MoS", which would no longer make sense if it was down-cased to "style". In short, I don't think a lower-case tweak would be worth the effort. We're going to have a consistency issue no matter what: either it's not consistent with our mainspace article titles, or it's not consistent with its own advice on how to style the titles of works like The Chicago Manual of Style. So, I think we should choose the path of least agony and leave it as-is.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:07, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

Should Singapore English be included for Singapore-related articles? --occono (talk) 17:58, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

Stand by for a tongue-lashing (so to speak) (so to speak). EEng 18:07, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

We should not list anything that doesn't exist in a codified, formal written register with its own style guides, distinct from British/Commonwealth English in general (Canadian and Australian English do, and I think I saw one for New Zealand, and maybe South African). In virtually all other former countries of the British Empire where English is still used as a first language by a notable percentage of the population, they refer to British style guides like New Hart's Rules, New Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors (combined as New Oxford Style Manual), Fowler's Dictionary of Modern English Usage, The Cambridge Guide to English Usage, etc. Even most of the journalism and lower-register professional writing (business, marketing) follows the same shared conventions as BBC News (a dominant news provider in most of them), The Guardian, The Times, The Economist, etc.

I've been looking for years, and I cannot find any "produced for public use" style guides for places like Malta, Pakistan, Kenya, Grenada, Singapore, Belize, etc., etc. These dialects exist almost entirely as spoken dialects and informal writing based on it, but WP isn't written in informal English, so it's not an ENGVAR matter. Formal writing from such places is generally indistinguishable from British, aside from some locally specific vocabulary words (just as you'll find in Wales or Scotland). Editors branding "their" articles as being written in such dialects is a) nonsense and b) a recipe for insertion of unencyclopedic colloquialisms. There's a good reason we don't have templates for "This article is written in Texan English" and "This article is written in Cockney". There's more difference between Texan and Manhattan English, and between Cockney and Shetland English as dialects than there is between written formal Singaporean or Maltese English and written formal British English. Basically, WP isn't written in bar/pub talk, and we mustn't pretend otherwise just because a handful of editors want to slap huge flag-waving banner templates in articles' editnotices for territorialism and national-pride reasons.

PS: Listing Irish English is basically an "avoid an ethno-political shitshow" concession; at the formal written level it also follows British norms (and I have yet to see an Irish English style guide), but people might quite literally threaten each other over putting "Use British English" templates on Ireland-related articles.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:41, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

((Use Commonwealth English)) and ((Commonwealth English)) and related templates and categories now exist. We should consider nominating templates we don't need for merger with and redirection to the Commonwealth versions.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:17, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

In sourcing for most contemporary entertainment, sources generally omit italics or the like to format the name of the work being discussed in the title of their articles. So it seems that most of our citations/references generally end up presented these citation titles without italics/etc. for named works. Should MOS:CONFORM apply to citation titles, considering that these are technically quotations ? I do know we frequently removal allcaps and other unreadible aspects of titles in citations, so it would seem logical to apply appropriate MOS-elements like italics where they can apply. --Masem (t) 13:21, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

Yes. Any given written source will do any of at least 10 different things in presenting the title of a major published work inside the title one of that source's articles (e.g. giving a movie title in the title of a review of the movie): 1) italics, 2) double quotes, 3) single quotes, 4) bold-face, 5) ALL-CAPS [1], 6) SMALL-CAPS (rarely), 7) underline (rarely), 8) some other font tweaking (rarely), 9) some combination of more than one of these, 10) no markup at all. This is just farcically messy, and trying to mimic the other publication's style, under their stylesheet, in our citations is "reader-hateful" and just not what we would do in any other circumstance (e.g. we do not mimic logo stylization per MOS:TM, we do not over-capitalize job titles and do other "specialized-style fallacy" mimicry of other organization's house style quirks). We already routinely down-case any SCREAMING ALL-CAPS HEADLINES to title case (or to sentence case, if the citation style in question demands that for article titles), and do other font normalization in our citations (e.g., if a title looks boldface in the original publication, we do not ape that stylization here). This isn't any different. For over 12 years, I've been doing cleanup of this sort, especially italicizing the names of books and films in review articles' titles (per MOS:TITLES), and italicizing genus and species scientific names in biology journal article citations (per MOS:LIFE), and as far as I can tell not one single person has ever reverted me on it. It's completely normal do this sort of MOS:CONFORM tweaking.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:22, 17 June 2018 (UTC)

This clearly makes sense, but it should be qualified somewhere, as I ask from seeing a recent dispute on a video game article. (assuming this is the consensus). --Masem (t) 15:21, 17 June 2018 (UTC)

Meh. We should generally avoid adding redundant line-items that simply re-state what can already be intuited from the existing ones and from actual overall editorial behavior. At an infrequent and weird dispute at an article talk page, maybe just point people to this thread (here now, or later at its eventual archive location). If we kept adding "rules" we don't strictly need (i.e., ones that do not address an actually frequent dispute type), we'd have thousands more lines in MoS, a major WP:CREEP problem.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:14, 17 June 2018 (UTC)

@Masem: Maybe this could be addressed in a footnote, if we can come up with a concise one. And/or maybe address it at MOS:TITLES instead of the main MoS page. Length is less of a concern in a topical MoS subpage.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:22, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

Resolved

 – The request was rejected by ArbCom.

Please see Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Clarification and Amendment#Amendment request: Article titles and capitalisation.

Multiple arbitrators have requested additional input from regular editors here about whether the WP:ARBATC#Discretionary sanctions should be lifted from this and related pages.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:44, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

Well, one anyway  :) —SerialNumber54129 ^{paranoia /cheap sh*t room} 08:16, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

BU Rob13's opening statement, followed by Newyorkbrad's.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:57, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Biography#The lead date-range vs. full dates thing
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:39, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

I just noticed an editor going through and 'fixing' split infinitives on multiple articles, but I can't find any reference to such an issue in the MOS. Is there a consensus on the topic? Just wondering... WesT (talk) 22:58, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

WP:SISTERMARYCATHERINE. EEng 00:00, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

To WP:BOLDly split infinitives that no man had split before paraphrasing Douglas Adams,^[1] who himself paraphrased Gene Roddenberry. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 13:26, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

A more serious response is WP:RETAIN. I personally feel that split infinitives should generally be avoided, but also there are times when it seems justifiable. As such, I think it's not really fodder for an MoS to issue definitive guidance on the writing style. Sławomir Biały (talk) 15:37, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, and the first rule of MoS: rewrite to avoid conflict; there are few such constructions that can't be reworded in other ways, if it comes down to some kind of nasty fight about it at any given page (which would be WP:LAME). I would let it alone, except where the tweaks by this "clean-up artist" produce awkward, stilted results. While all linguists and most modern style guides agree that a "rule" to not split infinitives (or terminate sentences with prepositions) is prescriptive nonsense made up by a handful of Victorian pundits, most of them also agree that the punditry has actually been influential on perception of what's best in formal writing. This view has slacked a bit in the last 25 years or so, toward a preference for doing whatever reads best in the circumstance at hand; while generally leaning away from either informal practice in formal writing, it's fine to veer happily back to it if the result of the more prescriptive style would sound pretentious ("It is something up with which we should not put.")

If MoS ever advised anything on this, it should be long these lines: "Split infinitives and sentences ending with prepositions should be avoided by default, but used any time the alternative is confusing or stilted. The somewhat formal tone of encyclopedic writing is neither obtuse nor pompous." And, yes, that's a little joke.. Maybe with a footnote that it's not "bad grammar", but rather a matter of register (sociolinguistics). But I don't know whether this comes up enough we need an MoS line item about it.
— Preceding unsigned comment added by SMcCandlish (talk • contribs) 21:25, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

I see SMcCandlish has stopped signing his posts since they're instantly recognizable as his any day of the week. EEng 21:30, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters#Implementing the WP:GAMECAPS RfC (about over-capitalization of traditional sports and games).

Gist: The RfC at WP:GAMECAPS produced a clear result, but nothing was implemented. So I implemented a new MOS:SPORTCAPS section; a merger of the sports/games stuff, and the identical dance-related stuff from another MOS:CAPS section.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:23, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant post elsewhere.

WT:Manual of Style/Biography#Consolidation of MOS:BIO – a bullet list of recent merge and cleanup activity (one major to-do item remains).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:08, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

There's been a minor flare-up about this at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Lead section#On wholesale changes; it seem to mostly be predicated on the idea that there wasn't discussion/consensus for the merge, rather than any particular content-related objections; but there was actually a consensus discussion.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:25, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

Ever since the introduction of <syntaxhighlight> (and templates that use it, like ((code)) and ((syntaxhighlight))), we've been having the problem that people are trying to expand its use, not just to mark up blocks of code (what it's actually for) but every single inline mention of a code fragment. This result is strange "outbursts" of color in mid-sentence, and which I think are apt to be confusing, because WP uses color in prose for a very limited number of pre-determined things, like indicating a link and whether it goes to a real article. It's even producing oddly conflicting code markup in the same sentence (because the highlighter only recognizes and colorizes some kinds of code). Example: "Lists with <ul><li> ... are %block elements ...". The syntax highlighter is also buggy and sometimes produces misleading output.

When I've tried to address this, I get responses like "I am not aware of any policy, guideline, or essay that discourages such syntax highlighting usage", as if the fact that all of MoS is against all extraneous over-stylization weren't enough. The state of articles like HTML element (from which the above example comes) strongly suggest that lack of an MoS item about this actually is a gap we need to fill, perhaps at MOS:COLOR.

I think we should advise to not use <syntaxhighlight> except:

• in a separate block of code;
• or in an lengthy inline code example, if the highlighting actually helps distinguish between multiple discrete items within the code;
• but in neither case without checking that the output is accurate not misleading due to syntax highlighter bugs.

It should not be used an alternative to <code>...</code> in simple cases like "the <span> element".

 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:51, 25 June 2018 (UTC); revised 17:38, 29 June 2018 (UTC)

Most of those advisings seem reasonable (there's a MOS for comp sci/computing lying around--advise to put it there rather than in accessibility land). However, I think the third bullet might reasonably be tempered, since "inaccurate because the colors don't render" vice "inaccurate because the colors render wrongly" are slightly different issues--the former is fine because it just inherits the <code>...</code> CSS; the latter is still questionably fine because the idea is to separate elements, not necessary for all elements to be styled consistently. --Izno (talk) 13:23, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, I notified WT:MOSCS and WT:MOSCOMP of this discussion (though WP:MOSCOMP was deprecated and slated for partial merge into WP:MOSCS in an RfC about a year ago; no one's gotten around to it yet). I see what you mean on the precision point, and we could wordsmith it to be more detailed if necessary. What got me onto that point was observing that it does not correctly parse things like a CSS value of -0.5em; it mistakes this for a "-0" (which isn't a real thing) in one color, followed by a ".5em" which it highlights as an alphanum input in another color. Just pretty ucked fup. I've filed Phabricator bug report T198095 about it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:59, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

The example provided is to HTML element. But it seems to me that the color and font of the tags appearing inline should match both the color and font of the tags as they appear in the separate blocks of code. If we are to recommend something here, perhaps it should be to use syntax highlighting sparingly, even in separate code blocks. Otherwise, parts of HTML element would be styled one way and other parts another, which I think would detract from its readability. In any case, I think consistency is the most important thing, not specifically use of color in this context. Sławomir Biały (talk) 13:34, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

The purpose of syntax highlighting is distinguishing this particular code item from the next (different) kind of code item right next to it, in a block of code. It is not for "establishing" in the reader's mind that, for example, an HTML element is green, and that an HTML attribute is orange (or whatever). The coloration a) serves no purpose in running text, and b) badly interferes with our use of color in running text for very specific and sharply limited purposes – some of which are going to directly conflict with colors chosen by the highlighter, such as blue and red. This is remarkably similar to the MOS:ICONS stuff. We permit flags and other icons for some specific purposes in specific contexts, but the ca. 2006 "do whatever" approach we had, before that guideline existed (I would know; I wrote most of its key provisions [6] :-), resulted in WP being festooned with pointless color-spots all over the place, and that's precisely what's happening with <syntaxhighlight>. A new version of an old problem.

I covered this stuff in considerably more detail at User talk:Nøkkenbuer#Misuse of syntax highlighting. A key bit: any time one is trying to impose a "consistency" with style, there's likely to be a conflict with another consistency. WP has very long-established and important consistencies in our encyclopedic prose, and when a tangential new consistency that's a trivial, largely decorative add-on collides with it, the latter loses.

All that said, I'm not totally opposed to the idea that we shouldn't use syntax highlighting in mainspace at all, but as a coder I find it actually helpful (when it's not bugged – see above) in actual code blocks. I seems a throw-the-baby-out-with-the-bathwater solution to discourage or eliminate it even in block, just to avoid the problem of inline, not block, syntax highlighting making a mess of things. It's much simpler to just advise against inline highlighting except of complex code examples. Even then, we could actually advise instead to move them into discrete blocks, and "ban" syntaxhighlight inline, completely. I'm trying to be agnostic on that kind of stuff. Just want to deal with the "The purpose of the <span> element is ..." over-stylization problem.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:59, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

I think you miss my point. The article you pointed to should be internally consistent. In that specific article, it would be needlessly confusing to style things one way if they appear inline, and a different way if they appear in a code block. In fact, I don't think the way things are currently styled is a big issue there that warrants separate identification in the MoS, especially if that's the only article suffering from this alleged problem. It seems to me like a reasonable stylistic choice. Sławomir Biały (talk) 11:17, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

I'm not even slightly missing your point. The syntax highlighting in a block of code has nothing whatsoever to do with how to format a single word of code in a running sentence. By way of direct analogy, the formatting of an interlinear gloss is completely different from that of an inline one (as in Spanish perro, 'dog'); the single quotes are standard linguistic markup style in prose, but never used for the exact same gloss in interlinear format – including on the same page. Similarly, our typical format in a list is [bullet or number] [Capital letter]more text ... [no terminal puncutation unless it's a full sentence], and we use this same format (sans the bullet or numeral) for headings, table headers, image captions, infobox entries, etc., etc. This format is not used in running prose, which we write in proper sentences not fragments. Another example: In a reference citation, the bibliographic information is presented in a specific order, punctuation style, etc. (which varies by citation style, sometimes radically). The citations form discrete blocks of content, exactly like a code block, or a list, or a table, or an interlinear gloss, but we would never in a million years write in a running sentence, "The next year, Jones, Chris (2017). The Snorkelweasels of Yondermere. London: Foobar Publishing. ISBN 1608604632., was released, to mostly positive reviews".

More to the general point, we have many kinds of consistencies to deal with, and some of them are directly conflicting, and some of them are not applicable at all to particular contexts. The important consistency wins over the decorative one, especially when the latter is intended for a very narrow context (blocks of code).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:28, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

All I'm saying is that the code inline should look the same as the code in code blocks at HTML element. If that's compatible with your point of view, great! Even better, if you have some other articles to look at for style issues, you can post them here for community input. But with a sample of one article, I don't see that this is a widespread problem. Have you tried resolving this at Talk:HTML element? Sławomir Biały (talk) 23:35, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

All you're saying is you did not absorb a single thing in this thread, all of which directly refutes the idea that inline code should look the same as the code in code blocks (aside from, I would grant, that a long, multi-part example of complex code inline should have syntax highlighting ... but also should not be inline and should be put in a code block). Re: Talk:HTML element – that's where the discussion started, but it is not about that article, it's about a particular editor's desire to wrap every example of inline code in syntax highlighting markup site-wide, so we are at the correct venue now.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:43, 29 June 2018 (UTC)

For the record, discussion of this topic has been occurring at my talk page (permanent link) and at the HTML element talk page (permanent link). My rationale and perspective are fully detailed in a series of lengthy replies therein, including responses to the above claims. At this point, explaining any further would amount to repetition, so I will refrain unless clarification is requested. Additionally, whatever decision occurs here will likely have implications for other articles and documentation whose syntax is similarly highlighted, such as HTML (permanent link) and Template:Quote/doc (permanent link), both of whose highlighting I also largely added for the same rationale as I did for the HTML element article. The HTML article's syntax highlighting is incomplete, but I will not be adding any further syntax highlighting of any kind until these discussions are through and unless the result permits my doing so.

Lastly, I am sorry if these edits have been inappropriate. Although I am definitely not the first to be adding syntax highlighting (including inline syntax highlighting) in this way, I have definitely been a significant contributor to its recent expansion. It was, and remains, my understanding that doing so is a constructive improvement to the encyclopedia. Others obviously disagree, however, and it turns out these edits are more controversial than I expected. Regardless of what decision is made, I will abide by the consensus. Thank you all for your time and I look forward to further input from others. —Nøkkenbuer (talk • contribs) 02:16, 28 June 2018 (UTC)

Look at the article Gender role. Look at the "Model A" and "Model B" table inside it talking about the difference between 2 extreme views of gender stereotypes. I would like to know if anyone can make a similar table except that it deals with language rather than roles. That is, the "Model A" column should be about language that reflects male superiority and the "Model B" column should be about gender-neutral language. Also, read the text below the table saying that the model followed in practice falls in between these poles. I guess this is also true of language. WP has a mention of using GNL in this project page, but it appears that in practice the rule that most Wikipedians prefer is that either GNL or GML (this stands for generic male language) is acceptable and unless there's a real reason not to the variant in the first nonstub version of an article should be kept, just like AE and BE (these stand for American English and British English.) (The source of this information is the section of this talk page just 2 sections above this one for clarification, I suggest anyone who comments on this section should study what's going on in that section.) Georgia guy (talk) 11:54, 1 July 2018 (UTC)

I would advise caution. While Wikipedia:Pro and con lists is an essay, it's pretty sensible and grounded in WP:NPOV and WP:NOR policy. We really don't do pro and con lists. In that one case, and a few others here and there, we're using a table to present an attributed notable pro/con model that is well-sourced, and not presenting it as fact. So, we'd need to find reliable sources for such a model as applied to GNL, from an academic or organization that really matters. But that's more of a content-guideline issue than an MoS one. If you just mean you think MoS itself should contain such a list/table, based on consensus-argued points, it would be unusual and might be prone to editwarring and PoV pushing. It'd be safer done as an essay page. Sounds like a good essay, since there really is widespread dispute about this stuff on- and off-site, and people should not only think about it more, they should be more aware of a broader range of rationales on both sides. But that also makes it seem like poor guideline matter. It's not MoS's job to "teach the controversy", but to settle disputes firmly and give our readers prose that doesn't look like random half-literate bloggers on crack churned it out. >;-)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:16, 2 July 2018 (UTC)

There has been an extensive discussion taking place at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Film#To be or not to be a subsection that has covered multiple issues regarding what actually counts as a subsection and whether it is incorrect to have only one. From that discussion, as well as one at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Accessibility#Question on subsections, it has become clear that there is no technical issue (either in terms of accessibility or general logic) with having a "single subsection" in cases where a section is divided into general content and a more specific sub-section that both fit under the same general heading. For example:

==Development==
General development information.
 
===Writing===
Specific writing information.

This format is common in film articles that are structured based on the phases of filmmaking (as laid out in MOS:FILM), where we can end up with a whole lot of different information fitting under one phase (such as "Development") with a significant chunk also fitting under a more specific heading (such as "Writing") and being easier to read that way. To repeat, this is both common and easier for the reader than having all of the content mixed together. Now, the reason this has become an issue at all is Bignole has noted that many external style guides specifically state to avoid having only a single subsection and some of that wording has been carried over to places in Wikipedia. Myself and several other editors at the MOS:FILM discussion agree that though this is something good to aim for in terms of professional styling, it should not be a hard-and-fast rule. So in the above situation, if there was an obvious subheading that we could use to cover the non-writing content (such as "Casting" or something along those lines) then we would want to recommend that this be used, otherwise it does not make sense to manufacture a subheading such as "General", which is just unnecessary, only because we want to satisfy this rule.

I am suggesting that any wording that insists Wikipedia not include single subsections be replaced with some more general guidelines making it clear that a second subheading is recommended, but is not required if there is no natural heading apparent. If anyone else is in support of this, or has any comments to add, please go ahead. Thoughts on how this could be worded are especially welcome. If there are any questions, I will do my best to better explain/elaborate and I am sure the other editors involved in the previous discussions will join in here as well. - adamstom97 (talk) 08:43, 1 July 2018 (UTC)

What rationale do these external style guides give for avoiding this sort of thing? I've done this on occasion—in certain situations it helps avoid certain problems. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 22:44, 1 July 2018 (UTC)

It is unclear what the rationale for avoiding single subsections is other than it being more "professional" because that is what has been done in the past, which is a big reason why I think it should not be a strict rule. - adamstom97 (talk) 22:50, 1 July 2018 (UTC)

If it solves a problem, that should take precedence over vague aesthetics. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 23:02, 1 July 2018 (UTC)

I'll go over this again, but in bullet form this time since the original discussion was a trainwreck:

1. We use single subsections in sections for good reasons. Some very obvious ones:
   • The point Adamston.97 makes above about breaking up huge blocks of text for easier digestion.
   • Reader navigation. If a significant subtopic of an article is reached at the article by a redirect, readers should be able to jump right to it. Even if they show up at the top of the page and suspect this is the right one, they should find their subtopic quickly and easily in the table of contents, not have to wonder where it might be and wade through 37 paragraphs of material to find what they're looking for.
   • Avoiding permanent bias, and inspiring breadth of coverage: If you create, say, a geographical section and start it with information on your home country (most often the US, by dint of the number of American editors), if this section has no ===In the United States=== subsection heading, it gives a very strong impression that the subject is intrinsic to or dominated by the US. But if you do create that section, it is a key signal to later editors that more such sections should be added ASAP.
2. WP:NOT#PAPER: Not only does WP not follow external style guides (the first discussion was utterly mired in bible-thumping about The Chicago Manual of Style). We have our own. WP is not a paper publication, nor does it work like one.
3. To wit: the idea of never having a single subsection by itself under a section is a layout idea for finished documents. No articles at Wikipedia are finished (though FAs change only slowly being pretty close to finished). It makes some sense in many completed works (especially journalism and essays) because if no more content is ever going to be added to the section, a single subsection doesn't serve much of a purpose. That just isn't true here. A new subsection can be added at any time.
4. Even in paper works, the pseudo-rule against single subections, as found in some, not all paper style guides, is regularly ignored, most especially in formalized, programmatic material like statutes and regulations, instruction manuals, taxonomic catalogues of creatures/plants, and other material that – like Wikipedia – has a formulaic approach to content presentation.
5. WP:NOT#BUREAUCRACY is a policy for a reason. MoS should have no line-item suggesting or demanding that people create a second subheading just because, i.e. simply because there's a "rule", or people will create ones that do not make sense simply to be in robotic compliance. No heading, subheading, subsubheading, etc. should exist that doesn't make sense in the context and genuinely help organize material for readers.
6. MoS does not address matters that are not important to presenting quality content to the readership and forestalling disruptive style fights amongst the editorship. Otherwise it would be an order of magnitude longer and no one would read or remember any of it. One user in 17+ years who is doggedly insistent on imposing someone's external subsection "rule" on us doesn't amount to a controversy, just yet another momentary waste of editorial time.
   

That compresses a whole lot of material from the other threads.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:24, 2 July 2018 (UTC)

I tend to agree that hard and fast rules are not a good idea here. Not sure on the precise language, but editors should see this as a red flag that might indicate a problem, not a problem in and of itself. If an editor comes across a section with a single subsection, they should probably ask 1) "Do additional subsections need to be included?" and 2) "is the information in this subsection conceptually independent the parent section?". If the answer to both is "no", then it ain't broke. Nblund ^talk 17:26, 2 July 2018 (UTC)

The MLA, APA, CMOS and the other less common MOS for writing all indicate that single subsections are to be avoided (sans exceptions that are outlined in the MOS). My argument has always been that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and specifically strives for professionalism in their articles. All of the main MOSs (MLA, APA, CMOS) have this as a current rule to distinguish professional writings. Why does this rule exist, I don't personally know. I've also never seen us question the philosophy behind a writing rule from one of the major MOSs before either.

To quote CMOS who attempted to answer the reason why you should not typically have single subsections: "Say you want to divide something—a book, an article, or a chapter—into chapters, parts, or sections. Note that this is already a matter of plurality. One cannot have a book that contains a part 1 but no part 2 or a chapter 1 but no chapter 2. Subheads are often unnumbered, unlike parts or chapters, but why “divide” a chapter into just one subsection? Similarly, why introduce just one second-level subhead? If you do, you might want to think about inventing a second, complementary subhead. But if this principle of division is a rule, there are exceptions to it. For example, a unique subsection like “Notes” or “References” might be necessary for chapter-ending notes or references. And, especially at the B level or lower, a single subhead in a given section might turn out to make sense—especially if it corresponds to subheads of the same level in other sections within the same work. So, in general, follow the rule for the sake of logic; break it only when you can cite a superior logic."

To me, this rings true especially for Wikipedia, which aims to write professional documents about topics, even of those topics are fan based topics (films, comics, etc.). I am NOT saying that if you have a single subsection you MUST create a second when there isn't information to support it. To me, If you have a single subsection, and the rest of the information in not enough or not focused enough (i.e., covers various other topics and not one in particular to justify a second split), then you should take that single subsection and bump it up to its own section where it doesn't disturb the flow of the article. For the example that started this all, Deadpool 2, it was separating out 2 areas: Marketing from Release and then Writing from Development. I'll focus on the writing one. In this case, there was enough unique information solely about "Writing" to warrant separation under "Development", but not enough to separate anything else. Given that, and that the information left under "Development" has nothing to do with writing, but getting the film off the ground, it makes sense to make Writing its own section.

At the end of the day, it boils down to professional writing and article organization. If an external MOS says that professional documents typically do not have single subsections, then I would assume that as we strive for professionalism we would follow that basic principle. What should we do? I think we should clearly state (at the subsection guides) that as a general rule of thumb, you should avoid using single subsections. "When you determine that enough information should be separated out as a subsection first determine if there is other information that can be separated out in order to follow this general rule. If there is no logical' division of other content, then assess if the information you want to separate could stand as its own section, including assessing to see if what is left in the divided section can exist without the information being separated (e.g., Creating a single subsection of information that ultimately leaves 2 sentences behind in its division). Failing those situations, a single subsection may be warranted." --  BIGNOLE  (Contact me) 19:35, 2 July 2018 (UTC)

This is already addressed in the numbered points above. Not going to repeat it all again. Your personal notion of what's "professional" in some other context doesn't override all other concerns.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:18, 2 July 2018 (UTC)

This section currently has two very brief paragraphs, one of which exclusively addresses how to refer to ships (!!). Recent experience indicates that clearer guidelines might be helpful, but also that consensus might be difficult to achieve. Any thoughts? Clean Copy^talk 06:20, 3 July 2018 (UTC)

There is certainly more that could and should be said. The clear risk, to which you allude, is that discussion would spiral out of control (as you can see above, regarding just one word) given likely agendas, on all sides, and of course practice varies, not only around the world, but between sectors - common language in politics or the arts is likely different from that in business or sport. For these reasons I'd suggest WP would be sensible to stick very closely to guidance drawn from one of the leading English usage style guides; this would also help focus any debate. The biggest shift, made recently by Chicago, Oxford University and Associated Press, is the acceptance of "they" as a singular pronoun, as a resolution of the 'he v she' debate. MapReader (talk) 06:48, 3 July 2018 (UTC)

• There is a reason why we don’t have more (expanded) guidance... lack of consensus as to what we should say. What you see now is about all that we have been able reach consensus on... and even that little bit of consensus only emerged after a lot of discussion and debate. Blueboar (talk) 21:14, 3 July 2018 (UTC)

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see Talk:Milwaukee Bucks#RfC for team colors

This is really beyond the Milwaukee Bucks or even sports in particular, and relevant to coverage of organizations and their house styles generally. This touches on all of: MOS:CAPS, MOS:TM, WP:NOR, WP:NPOV, and WP:NOT#INDISCRIMINATE, in various aspects (see the more detailed discussion below the !vote section).
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:20, 4 July 2018 (UTC)

Things like the "team colors" RfC pointed to just above, and many other recurrent specialized-style fallacies at sports articles (see also recent WP:SPORTSCAPS RfC, among others), strongly suggest that we really need a MOS:SPORTS page.

We could probably start by merging MOS:CUE and MOS:SNOOKER into a single page; much of their advice is generalizable (on purpose; I wrote most of MOS:CUE and had it in mind to broaden it, though it hasn't seen substantive revision in years and a lot of it needs trimming).

What is actually particular-sport-specific could be compressed to a section on the particular sport. Lots of sports wikiprojects have style advice essays. Points from them, that people actually already follow in writing articles on that sport and which aren't directly in conflict with general MoS stuff, could be merged into new sections.

This really should have happened a decade ago. Back then, it looked like we'd end up with an MoS page for every major sport, but we ended up with just two, the one a subtopic of the other. That's not very practical.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:14, 4 July 2018 (UTC)

Merge some fiction stuff, too?

Along similar lines, I think a lot of redundant (and potentially conflicting) material at MOS:TV, MOS:FILM, MOS:ANIME, etc., could be merged into MOS:FICTION.

Have the medium-specific stuff be retained in the separate pages, but centralize the general stuff at the main FICTION page, and treat it in the medium-specific pages only in WP:SUMMARY style with cross-referenced with ((Main)) to the general, main version at MOS:FICTION.

This would help prevent any further "policy-forking" and inconsistent treatment of fictional material just based on it being a TV show versus a film (and what about a television movie?).
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:14, 4 July 2018 (UTC)

Pro wrestling too, since it's a fiction as well. EEng 21:52, 4 July 2018 (UTC)

Them's fightin' words. But then we'd have to agree on who's going to "win". I call dibs on heel.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:02, 4 July 2018 (UTC)