Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (plurals)

message: ==== Example of articles compliant with this rule ====
* gallons per watt-hour
* kilometres per hour
* miles per hour
* passenger miles per gallon
* pounds per square inch
* standard cubic feet per minute
* actual cubic feet per minute
* grains per gallon
and
* actions per minute
* counts per minute
* dots per centimetre
* dots per inch
* flashes per minute
* instructions per second 
* lines per inch
* queries per second
* revolutions per minute
* samples per inch
* tracks per inch
==== Example of articles not compliant with this rule ====
===== Quotients =====
* candela per square metre
* cubic metre per kilogram
* cubic metre per mole
* cubic metre per second
* cycle per second
* foot per second
* foot per second squared
* gram per cubic centimetre
* gram per litre
* inch per second
* joule per kelvin
* joule per kelvin mole
* joule per kilogram
* joule per kilogram kelvin
* joule per mole
* kilocalorie per mole
* kilogram per cubic metre
* kilogram per square metre
* kilogram-force per square centimetre
* metre per hour
* metre per quartic second
* metre per second
* metre per second cubed
* metre squared per second
* metre per second squared
* mole per cubic metre
* newton per second
* pound per hour
* radian per second
* radian per second squared
* standard litre per minute
* watt-hour per kilogram
===== Products =====
* ampere hour
* foot-pound (energy)
* foot-poundal
* horsepower-hour
* joule-second
* kilowatt hour
* lumen second
* lux second
* newton-meter
* pascal second
* pound-foot (torque)
etc etc etc
====Similar cases====
These six articles describe units of pressure formed by multiplying a unit of length by a substance's density and acceleration due to gravity. Each unit is known by many different names and we have redirects of several, not yet including the "foot head" (twelve inches of water). There are several different inconsistencies in our article naming, one of which can't be fixed without breaching WP:ENGVAR.
* inch of water
* millimeters, water gauge
* centimetre of water
* inch of mercury
* millimeter of mercury
* metre sea water 79.73.240.200 (talk) 22:11, 12 June 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Examples of compliant and non-compliant articles 

message: These six articles describe units of pressure formed by multiplying a unit of length by a substance's density and acceleration due to gravity. Each unit is known by many different names and we have redirects of several, not yet including the "foot head" (twelve inches of water). There are several different inconsistencies in our article naming, one of which can't be fixed without breaching WP:ENGVAR.
* inch of water
* millimeters, water gauge
* centimetre of water
* inch of mercury
* millimeter of mercury
* metre sea water 79.73.240.200 (talk) 22:11, 12 June 2017 (UTC)
thread_title: Similar cases

message: * It seems to me that having any formulation of "foo per bar" implies that "foo" will be a multiple. For example, inch per second only makes sense as a title if we are talking about a relationship where something is moving exactly one inch per second. bd2412 T 13:03, 12 June 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: I added some entries to the lists above, consolidating from the discussion at Talk:Pounds per square inch.  Feel free to revert if you like.  I have not yet heard any arguments that make sense for retaining the plural in cases such as "miles per hour" and "pounds per square inch".  Rracecarr (talk) 14:46, 12 June 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed. With units of measurement, we see the plural more often than the singular because our measurements rarely come out as one foo. That doesn't mean the unit is called "foos". The familarity of measurements in miles per gallon and pounds per square inch seems to have misled some editors into conceiving of this rule, an error which hasn't occurred when naming articles about the more technical and less familiar units. 79.73.240.200 (talk) 22:33, 12 June 2017 (UTC)

text: The singular, such as mile per hour, seems to me to refer to the derived unit, while the plural, miles per hour, is about the measurement. We seldom talk about units, but we often discuss measurements, so the plural is far more common and sounds more natural. A quick look at the articles shows that they are primarily about the units so the singular seems like where we should have our article titles.  SchreiberBike | ⌨  23:52, 12 June 2017 (UTC)

text: Right, the quoted text in the section heading looked fine to me; I couldn't see what the problem was — until I noticed that we were talking about article titles, and specifically where the article is about the unit itself.For that case, I agree, the singular is better.  Most of the time when we're talking about anything other than the unit qua unit, though, the plural is going to be better.  I would suggest that any replacement guideline should be clear about that; we don't want people writing things like  just because they misunderstood the scope of this guideline. --Trovatore (talk) 07:10, 13 June 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: The unit itself should always be singular, i.e. the metre - units are actually defined that way.  However,  "Miles per hour" or "pounds per square inch" are NOT units, they are equations indicating how much one unit varies against a fixed unit. We need to know which is the fixed unit to make sense of it. The fixed unity is always unity (singular) the variable unit is a multiple (plural).  If we make both units in the equation unity that removes vital information about how the equation is constructed. Theoretically, "mile per hour" could mean the time it takes to go one mile, only common usage says otherwise.  We could have a convention that we all understand that the first unit is the variable and the second is unity, which is almost the case but it's one helluva lot simpler to just write "miles per hour", which happens to coincide with the common usage. If there WAS such a thing as a unit called "mile per hour" I would endorse the singular, but there isn't, and what would that unit mean anyway?  Ex nihil (talk) 22:52, 13 June 2017 (UTC)
replies: text:  No, that's not true.  See dimensional analysis.  When you multiply or divide a unit by a unit, you get another unit.  The mile per hour is indeed a unit of speed, and I think it's clear what it means. --Trovatore (talk) 23:00, 13 June 2017 (UTC)
replies: text:  The mile per hour, pound-force per square inch  and the rest are derived units, just like the watt, volt, ohm, newton, pascal and many more. This is particularly clearly documented for the SI system in our own articles; there are just seven SI base units and a vast number of SI derived units. United States customary units have a similar structure. 79.73.240.200 (talk) 17:07, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

text: I'm not sure how to formulate the exception under discussion below, but I do agree that we should strive for consistency and stick with the singular for most such articles. V2Blast (talk) 10:36, 17 June 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Discussion

message: Reverted as it is not good etiquette to make a change when the topic is still under discussion and this result is by no means indicated. Let it settle. Ex nihil (talk) 07:27, 18 June 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: The purpose of my edit was partly to start a discussion (in this I was successful) and partly to remove a ridiculous guideline that (fortunately!) is only rarely followed.  Would you like to explain in what sense your revert improves the article? Dondervogel 2 (talk) 08:03, 18 June 2017 (UTC)
replies: text:  Pre-empted the discussion already underway, which didn't look like it was heading towards that conclusion anyway. Ex nihil (talk) 22:27, 19 June 2017 (UTC)
replies: text:  My question was in what way the article is improved by re-inserting the guideline under discussion.  You have not answered that question so let me phrase it in a different way:  Do you think we should we move metre per second and kilogram per cubic metre to metres per second and kilograms per cubic metre? And if not, why not? Dondervogel 2 (talk) 08:54, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
replies: text:  Sorry, Dondervogel 2, it's taken two years to answer your question. Yes, I think we should indeed move metre per second and kilogram per cubic metre to metres per second and kilograms per cubic metre and the same for all X per Y compund units. The reason being is that all such units are rates with a variable rate X set against a unitary Y. So metres per second would be an entirely different unit to seconds per metre , both of which might be useful measures. One unit must be fixed at 1, the other must be in multiples or we don't have a useful unit. And X per Y is quite different from Y per X. One unit MUST = 1, other unit MUST = +/- 1, best expressed as a plural. Ex nihil (talk) : Ex nihil (talk) 12:31, 4 October 2019 (UTC)
thread_title: Discussion of application of BRD 

message: You can place  at the top of affected articles to inform people of this discussion. Maybe get a bot to do this quickly? —Guanaco 09:21, 18 June 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Talk notice template 

message: It says "Snicker redirects to Snickers, which is about the chocolate bar." Snicker now redirects to laughter. What's the best way to change this in the article?
Duckden (talk) 12:48, 2 June 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Snicker Inaccuracy 

message: I think as an additional part of the 2nd bullet point we should also note that readers and editors are likely to assume that a term like Parachutes will either lead to the singular titled article or a DAB page (as people noted with the incoming links to the Parachutes (album) redirect) as was noted here. Although the plural form doesn't appear in the article it does appear that that is a count noun (I definitely wouldn't support that move today) and even though I'm near to the hamlet a search for Armigers doesn't return any results for the hamlet apart from an infobox after the heraldry for the lake. Crouch, Swale (talk)  18:32, 24 June 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: OK, I've added it (also to the 1st point to) since no one has objected that provides arguments on both sides that both readers and editors being used to articles being at the singular (and thus usually searching/linking with the plural) and that readers and editors are used to plural to singular redirects (and thus would expect this). Crouch, Swale (talk)  19:44, 16 July 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Readers and editors used to 

message: The recent RM close at Talk:RGB_color_spaces#Requested_move_20_October_2021 strikes me as a bit absurd.  Yes the article covers multiple RGB color spaces, but so does Standard illuminant cover multiple standard illuminants (as I pointed out at the RM discussion, another color-related title), and at least thousands of others such singular titles are about multiple of the named things. This discussion was very thinly attended, with little support and even less opposition, so isn't going to be an important precedent, but seems like an outlier for which some wording correction in the guidelines might help.  Anyone up for helping figure out a good rephrasing to replace "Articles on groups or classes of specific things"?  This article is not really about the group or class, but about the specific things, unlike the examples given, but that didn't come through very clearly in the discussion. Or clarify that "Articles that actually distinguish among multiple distinct instances of related items can be sensibly given a plural title when the alternative would be to create an inappropriately large number of short articles, one on each instance" doesn't really apply when the that's not the alternative (there are already some articles on particular RGB color spaces, but nobody is proposing replacing the general article with separate article on all known variants, since on article on the generic one is really what's most useful).  Dicklyon (talk) 07:18, 26 November 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Can we clarify when plurals are appropriate? 

message: Some time ago the article RGB color space was renamed RGB color spaces, with the argument that the topic is not a specific entity such as "the" RGB color space, but the group of all color spaces that use the RGB color model. The discussion is here. Is this interpretation of the exception correct? It would seem to imply that the article Color space should be renamed Color spaces, since that article is not about a specific entity whose name is "color space", but about the group of all entities known as "color spaces".  --Lambiam 05:14, 10 October 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think we can formulate a clearcut, bright-line rule when a plural title is appropriate. It's more of a "know it when I see it" thing, with a lot of gray area, and subject of a case-by-case editorial consensus.Now, the RGB color spaces debate was long and thorough, and most editors agreed that the singular title implies that "RGB color space" is a single, well-defined thing rather than a broad concept (or a class) of (infinitely?) many specific spaces. I don't think that it "implies" much about Color space. Here, the qualifier "RGB" seems to imply that a "RGB color space" is a specific thing (and it's not); on the other hand "Color space" does not imply such a thing. Personally, I have problem clearly articulating the difference, let alone formulate it as a coherent guidance.Compare, for example, the RM at Talk:Hepatic veins (there are three such specific veins) -- it does not imply anything about the title Vein, which describes a conceptual thing rather than a closed set. But the difference between a "conceptual thing" and a "closed set" is not always clearcut. No such user (talk) 11:15, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

text: The RGB color spaces result was a weird outlier, and should not have happened. It goes against thousands of precedents, for unclear reasons. I think we've all known that WP:SINGULAR doesn't sit perfectly well with everyone, so perhaps we should expect a handful of "rebellions" from time to time, but they shouldn't stand indefinitely, since they just confuse the issue further.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:57, 10 October 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Interpretation of the exception for articles on groups of entities 

message: This guideline does clarify when plurals of the form "word(s)" should be used.
An article can use a word's singular or plural form or both forms, hence the need for dual form "word(s)". 
For example, most video game articles often use the singular form "player" to refer all players, even though the games may be multiplayer, online or offline. — CrafterNova [ TALK ] [ CONT ] 11:36, 21 January 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  word, words, or word(s)?