UESPWiki:Archive/CP 's

's
I've got a bit of a community wide question to raise. I've been working on correcting spelling, mostly in Lore pages (and yes, I know what not to touch, and what to edit), and lately I've noticed that, during a sentence, I come across something like Guar's. 

Now, I personally edit it to be Guar's, but what I want to know, before doing a UESP-wide spelling sweep, is...which does UESP prefer? The " 's " after the brackets, or in the brackets? I've seen both used, but I'm just hoping to clear it up before I do my sweep. I just wanna know if there's a big issue with having something like Vivec's link to the Vivec page, or if it should be Vivec's. Those are just examples, but you get the idea. Daedryon  05:40, 31 December 2008 (EST)

: I would treat the links as parentheses, encompassing the relevant word. "Guar's" looks good.    Lukish    05:55, 31 December 2008 (EST)

:: Personally I think plurals should be part of the link, but possessives shouldn't. E.g. There are five Guars, but ''The Guar's saddle''. To be honest, this is one of those things, like the Quoting and Punctuation Format we use where, even if we come up with a policy, it'll be widely ignored anyway. I certainly wouldn't start changing lots of links to use a particular style. –Rpeh  06:28, 31 December 2008 (EST)

:::I agree with Rpeh. Links shouldn't be broken in the middle of a word, that's why it can be done with a possessives, as the ' seperates it nicely. --Timenn  &lt;   &gt;   06:51, 31 December 2008 (EST)

:::That's exactly the example off of which I was running. I stopped using traditional quotes in 6th grade, when I started programming. It's not natural for me to punctuate inside quotes, parentheses or double-brackets. I was extending this logic to contractions. The word "o'clock" shouldn't be linked  , should it?     Lukish    09:59, 31 December 2008 (EST)

:::: That's a contraction, as is Fo'c's'le, but possessives aren't. Contractions form new words; possessives don't. That's the difference. –Rpeh  10:34, 31 December 2008 (EST)

:::::Oh, I see. So properly we would link it "the  's potato" and "the  "? It still looks weird, but consistent style is important.    Lukish    10:41, 31 December 2008 (EST)

:::::What about words with apostrophes, and no "s", such as "the guards' barracks"? (Wiki language puts that inside the bold.)    Lukish    10:46, 31 December 2008 (EST)

:::::: This really isn't important. I'm just going to keep doing whatever I feel is right at the time. If you want to see what Wikipedia does, read this. –Rpeh  10:55, 31 December 2008 (EST)

::::::: I don't think that existing links should be modified just to change the location of a trailing "s" or "'s".  It's not a spelling mistake.  In most cases, it makes absolutely no difference to readers: the entire word, including trailing and preceding letters is turned into a link and is displayed in a blue font -- with the (significant) exception of when punctuation, such as an apostrophe, is introduced.  The upshot is that it's normally a difference that's only noticeable to editors, and therefore nearly irrelevant.
::::::: As for which is better, neither is better.  If you're entering a link, typing in     is far easier than    .  (Note that following behind-the-scenes magical expansion, the two links are much more similar:     versus    .  Also, Lukish's   example wouldn't work -- it would be a redlink. It needs to be  .)  So why should we tell editors to waste their time (and more than double the chance of introducing typos -- given that typos in the link are always detected because the link becomes a redlink; not so in the label) by using the second form?  Followup edits to "fix" the location of the "s" (whichever way around you're moving it) just seem unnecessary: they imply the first editor made a mistake; they take up time on the second editor's part; the move needs to be patrolled.  And unnecessary edits, in my opinion, just increase the chance of new errors getting introduced.
::::::: Obviously, I just don't get it. --Nephele  21:11, 3 January 2009 (EST)

:::::::: Ideally, of course, that "behind-the-scenes magical expansion" should be smart enough to recognize the 's as part of the word, and thus properly expand     into    .  But that would require some probably-not-insignificant modifications to the wiki software, which is really a lot more effort than this fairly minor issue deserves.  I agree with Nephele that there's no reason to go around changing all such links to include the 's.  But if you happen to be editing something else on the page, there's no harm in correcting these at the same time.  I just don't think we need to put any special effort into such a trivial little discrepancy.  --TheRealLurlock   23:05, 3 January 2009 (EST)

\=> I, in return, don't understand the emphasis on how we all shouldn't waste time on it. As I see it, the question was not whether all instances should be fixed, but what to do if you encounter one while editing. Better said, it was a simple style question, and not a request for change. --Timenn  &lt;   &gt;   05:38, 4 January 2009 (EST)

:Mhm, it was simply a style question. Also, I encountered the wiki-formatting thing when I kept typing   and it kept turning into  's . It was scaring the heck out of me every time I'd put something like that in, and it would automatically change..             10:46, 4 January 2009 (EST)

::The gist behind what rpeh, Neph, and Lurlock are saying is that it's really not a style question... the links you've noticed were not done that way because of "style".  The reason that there are links like that is that if the page text contains "'''Guar's'''" it's a lot easier to just highlight the portion that is the article name, "Guar", and then click the brackets in the box below the edit window to turn it into a link.  That's what I'd been doing as I went through adding a butt-load of links to Lore pages.  Doing that turns the word into "''' ", and then when you save the page it becomes " '''".  It's not a matter of style, it's a matter of the wiki software making it easier to edit pages and add links.
::So, essentially, if you're already editing the page and it bugs you that badly then go ahead and change it, but it's not a big deal.  Similarly, when you're editing a page, feel free to take the time to type out the longer link if you like.  However, if an editor went through making edits solely to change things like "''' " to " '''" it would likely be considered a nuisance by many patrollers, because it would not contribute to the quality of the article and would take time that could be spent checking other edits.  Links will continue to be added the way I have been adding them - leaving trailing "s"s and "'s"s outside the link brackets - not because it is an approved "style", but because it's easier to expand the page that way and does not at all detract from the "readability" of the article for readers.  --GuildKnight  23:31, 4 January 2009 (EST)
:::Once again, yes, it is a style question. As for a nuissance, and other edits, there's not much to do on this wiki. Most everything is complete except for the mobile games, and of course, Lore. I doubt the other editors would mind a series of edits.              23:41, 4 January 2009 (EST)
::::For a wiki with "not much to do", we still manage to consistently see over 500 edits on a slow day, so obviously some people are able to find things that still need work.  I'll repeat what was said before, though - I strongly recommend that you ''don't'' make it your personal mission to go around fixing these links.  As others have said, it does not noticeably improve articles, and it creates a lot of work, not just for whoever does the edits, but for whoever has to patrol them all later.  Yes, it is sort of a style issue, but an extremely minor one, and simply not worth the effort of fixing on a wide scale.  And even if it were, it'd probably be much more efficient to have a bot do the work (not that I'm suggesting that at this time).  At any rate, we've always favored a "content over style" philosophy on this site.  Adding information and correcting errors is always far more important than making sure it all looks pretty, particularly when it's something minor as these apostrophes.  Wasting the time of editors and patrollers for such an absurdly trivial issue is just ridiculous.  If you're looking for something to do, I'm sure we can find plenty of more productive means to occupy your time. --TheRealLurlock   00:56, 5 January 2009 (EST)
:::::I'm late to the party, but apostrophes should only be part of the link when they are part of the noun or phrase the article is named after. Mentally replace the possessive case by an "of the" or "belongng to the" construction, since semantically it's what it means, so that "the guar's potatoes" becomes "the potatoes belonging to the guar" -- would it make sense to have it be "the potatoes  "? Of course not. Likewise for contracted verbs -- "the guar's dead" for example -- but that point is moot since contracted forms of verbs shouldn't be used at all in articles, instead it should be "the guar is dead" in this example. --Gez 12:21, 23 February 2009 (EST)