This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Naming conventions (U.S. state and territory highways) page.

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The established state highway naming conventions were established through previous debates (see WP:SRNC) and any proposals to change such conventions would be contentious (see also the Arbitration Committee Highways case).

There was a discussion back in October 2017 about the usage of "U.S." vs. "US" in the MOS section (MOS:US) in terms of what the MOS recommends. The Chicago Manual of Style (16th ed.) has recommended dropping the periods for eight years now, and based on the survey of other major style guides given as a part of the discussion, our MOS was updated to encourage "US" as the default over "U.S." for commonality reasons, while allowing the continuing usage of the latter.

Should we update this naming convention for article titles to drop the periods, moving U.S. Route 66 to US Route 66, et al.? We need not worry at this time about any technical issues with moving pages; we can enlist bots, etc. to assist with the actual work. Imzadi 1979 → 15:58, 18 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Honestly I don't care whether or not we use periods in "U.S." If we are gonna change the article titles, while the bots can do all the moving of pages we are also gonna need to drop the periods from prose mentions and I'm not sure a bot can do that. My concern is that we may need a lot of human work to change instances of "U.S." to "US" in articles. Dough4872 17:48, 18 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

In many articles, the abbreviated form is already "US #" while the full name spelled out is "U.S. Highway/Route X", and it wouldn't actually be that hard for a bot to change all instances of "U.S." to "US" within the text of an article. Again, let's not dwell on technical issues as there are bots that can handle all of this. Imzadi 1979 → 18:06, 18 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

If that's the case, I don't care about what we do. We can keep the status quo or we can drop the periods from the article titles and prose mentions, I'll be fine with either option. Dough4872 18:25, 18 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

There should be no issue with a find and replace of "U.S." to "US". The only human check would be for when the dotted abbreviation is also the end of a sentence. - Floydian ^τ _¢ 20:18, 18 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Is that MOS discussion fairly settled now? It seems like it started by one editor being BOLD. --Rschen7754 19:12, 18 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The change was made to the MOS page in October, and that change has been left in place at MOS:US. Imzadi 1979 → 19:46, 18 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Support - I've found this to be one of the worst inconsistencies both in US articles as well as Canadian connecting articles. Dotting abbreviations in general seems to be something that's dropped away, so... to use one, we should do this ASAP, and not A.S.A.P. - Floydian ^τ _¢ 20:18, 18 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose. I would say this is a case where the U.S. nomenclature is established, which is fine per MOS:US. It just seems like a lot of work, even as performed by bots, just for something that's essentially a cosmetic change. If this were 2005 when USRD was starting up, I'd support moving everything to US, but not today. –Fredddie™ 22:24, 18 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Support because I think that we should be consistent with MOS, and I don't think it would be too difficult to move the pages (post-SRNC was much worse). With that being said, I would request that this discussion remain open for at least 30 days as this could be a contentious change, and possibly consider adding a RFC tag for increased visibility. --Rschen7754 02:32, 19 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Neutral - If we wanna change the abbreviations to match, that's fine. But I'm fine if we do nothing and leave it as is. Dough4872 03:04, 19 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Comment—the issue of dots vs. no dots messed with U.S. Route 25 in Michigan during its TFA appearance today. (See Wikipedia:Main_Page/Errors for more.) The text was changed, abbreviations and all, to the dotted form (so, yes, "U.S. 25" appeared throughout the article text) for a while on the logic that because the article title itself used the dots that the text had to as well.

@Fredddie, Floydian, Rschen7754, and Dough4872:, can we circle back to this discussion? I'm reposting at WT:USRD to generate some additional input, but it would be nice to close this discussion. Imzadi 1979 → 22:23, 26 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose - MOS:US seems to have been adjusted again. There is no recommendation to use one or the other, beyond stating that "U.S." should not be intermixed with other non-period-separated country abbreviations (such as UK). I suspect that there are few, if any, instances of that within this project, so it seems like a large undertaking for no real benefit. (However, I must admit a certain bias in that I find "U.S. Route 66" more aesthetically pleasing than "US Route 66".) --Sable232 (talk) 22:56, 26 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

  @Sable232: what of the current inconsistency between "U.S. Route 66" and its abbreviation, "US 66"? As for the "large undertaking", there are bots for that, so there would be little actual effort needed to make the change once a bot or two are set up to handle everything. Imzadi 1979 → 23:07, 26 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

  Since it's abbreviated to keep it concise for junction lists, I think that's fine. A quick spot-check of some articles finds that in prose, the name is shortened to "U.S. X" at least as often as "US X", if not more so, so I think any existing inconsistency is irrespective of which option is selected. --Sable232 (talk) 23:39, 26 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose - I maintain my original position. –Fredddie™ 23:21, 26 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

  I just want to put on record that I personally think the CMOS argument is a red herring. Wikipedia is not beholden to the CMOS, so citing it to push through this change just isn't convincing me. –Fredddie™ 23:31, 26 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• I understand the concern, but if they don't like the periods, they're really not gonna like the rest of USSH and just about every state highway FA except Michigan. --Rschen7754 00:21, 27 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • I forgot that I actually supported this several months ago. I am okay with moving the articles and don't think the workload should prohibit us from doing it... however, I apparently don't feel very strongly on this either way if other editors aren't okay with the change. --Rschen7754 21:41, 13 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment - consider my vote to be a vote for consistency, whichever form it may take. - Floydian ^τ _¢ 17:17, 10 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Neutral - Again, I do not care what we do about the periods. Either change them or keep the status quo, neither one will bother me. Dough4872 03:42, 11 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Neutral - For some reason U.S. Route 66 but US 66 seems normal to me, even before I started editing on Wikipedia. But regardless of what convention we pick someone won't like it. I think any edit wars over this subject are worthy of WP:LAME.Dave (talk) 15:34, 11 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Neutral - I can honestly go either way on this. I agree with Dave and Imzadi on the aesthetically pleasing nature of U.S. Route 66 over US Route 66, and US 66 over U.S. 66 (but it could be bias in that I've gotten used to these forms in reading/editing Wikipedia). So if you twisted my arm to choose, I'd lean towards Oppose... LJ ↗ 18:06, 13 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]