Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers/Archive 29

message: The same issue came up in this discussion: Currency Style Dismbiguation. Surely this is a Style question rather than a naming convention? (i.e. it refers to the formatting within articles rather than how they are named). There should definitely be some kind of style guideline for currency. NPOV makes frequent reference to the international nature of Wikipedia (see especially Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view#Anglo-American_focus), and yet despite twenty three countries using the dollar there are several articles in which it is implicitly used solely for the U. S. dollar. In many articles of a specifically national nature this is not an issue (that it is US$ is obvious from the U. S. context of the whole article), but there is a clear NPOV bias in comments like this from 2004: "The People's Republic of China to invest $20 billion dollars in Argentina, a deal signed days before the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum to be held in the City of Santiago in Chile."
Where more specific terms are used there are several styles throughout Wikipedia, so it needs to be standardised.
Of the major style guides, the APA and the MLA say nothing, and the Chicago Manual of Style discusses it briefly but only mentions one example: "In Canada the current quotation was $2.69 (U.S. $2.47) a pound." The MHRA Style Guide recommends using an appropriate abbreviation before the symbol (C$/Can$, A$/Aus$, NZ$).
International newspapers tend to display the same Americentric bias:
Guardian "abbreviate dollars like this: $50 (US dollars); A$50 (Australian dollars); HK$50 (Hong Kong dollars)"
Times
"with figures use $5 (when American), A$5 (Australian), C$5 (Canadian), S$5 (Singapore) and so on"
The World Bank style guide World Bank (pdf) uses "U.S. dollars or US$"
In Wikipedia, most articles already use some variation of the style suggested in the international papers, MHRA, and World Bank, for example:
* Montr%C3%A9al-Mirabel International Airport "were rumored to cost one million Canadian dollars apiece"
* Bretton Woods system "U. S. dollars"
But some pages with an international focus need to be standardized:
* Purchasing power parity
"For example, GDP per capita in China is ca. 1,400 U.S. Dollars, while on a PPP basis, it is ca. 6,200 US$. At the other extreme, Japan's nominal GDP per capita is ca. 37,600 US$, but its PPP figure is only 31,400 US$"
* Educational Testing Service
"The Educational Testing Service (or ETS) is the world's largest private educational testing and measurement organization, operating on a annual budget of approximately $900 million. ETS develops various standardized examinations primarily in the United States, but they also administer tests such as TOEFL in most nations. "
* Bank of Credit and Commerce International
"The Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) was a major international bank founded in Pakistan in 1972. At its peak, it operated in 78 countries, had over 400 branches, and claimed assets of $25 billion."
I would suggest a few things:
# use the convention "US$100", "A$2000", "U. S. dollars", "Australian dollars", never "$200 (US)" "$US200".
# Keep the ISO 4217 link in the articles on the currency only, and if necessary (it's overkill to link every single currency symbol used) link to the appropriate currency.
# write it into the Style Guide Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)
# establish a policy on when to use $ (i.e. in strictly national articles in which there is no possibility of monetary ambiguity?).
Ziggurat 02:11, 28 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Style not naming convention?