Talk:St Neots

message: not St. Neots?
:No. English place names with "St" in them do not generally use a full-stop (period). This is the same for Dr and Mr and Mrs in most cases in the UK (note not U.K.) Mintguy
So the convention is different than in the U.S. (where US would be incorrect)? --Jiang
:Yes. Note St Albans, Bury St Edmunds, St Paul's Cathedral, St Ives etc..
::Interestingly, I think UK usage has changed quite recently. Thirty years ago, and certainly fifty years ago, a full-stop would have been correct for almost any abbreviation - or so I seem to remember from childhood.
::My memory isn't positive enough to say this with certainty, but I think I'm right. (It might make an interesting historical study for someone - but not me!) Chris Jefferies
:::I'm no expert. But a quick google tells me that the general rule is that contractions that include the last letter of a word shouldn't have a full-stop. So for Reverend both Revd and Rev. are correct whilst Revd. and Rev are incorrect. Mintguy 11:08, 6 Oct 2003 (UTC)
replies: text:  This is often asserted, but if it is an indication of actual usage (as opposed to "This is a rule I was taught in school X years ago") it is not supported very widely. A simple look through your twitter feed will confirm this.Afterbrunel (talk) 08:08, 29 April 2021 (UTC)
thread_title: Abbreviation of 'saint'

message: Despite the increasing prevalence of "St" in British English, Royal Mail continue to use "St." in the canonical names of UK post towns. The full stop in the infobox post_town parameter reflects the official post town name. This is not intended to imply that the name is (or should be) punctuated for other purposes. Richardguk (talk) 09:37, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Post town punctuation

message: The article is becoming top-heavy with tabular detail so I've moved the geographical table and location map to the section on geography and brought the Market Square image up to the top. The river template seems unecessary in an article about a town. There is already a link from this article to the one on the River Great Ouse and readers wanting more information on the river will visit that page. Chris Jefferies 16:45, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I think there are a number of reasons why the infobox should be at the top. It's firstly a quick way of having all (ok, some of!) the vital information quickly conveyed to the reader as soon as they get to the page, all the other pages (bar one) I've seen so far had the infobox right at the top so it's really a de facto standard to have it there (also, if you look at some of the featured articles with infoboxes, they're always near the top), I think especially now the map is inside the infobox it would be much better to have it at the top -- Joolz 12:55, 20 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Tidying up templates

message: I've just made a small change to the way these roads are mentioned in the St Neots article. The A421 begins just south of the town and runs west towards Bedford and Milton Keynes. The A428 begins on the southern edge of the town and runs east towards Cambridge. The three-mile section known locally as the St Neots by-pass was originally designated part of the A45 when built. Any modern road map should make this clear. Chris Jefferies 08:33, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: A421 and A428

message: I've removed the repeated references to 'St Neots', or 'Local' as these are redundant, and I've removed the two church links and pointed instead to a single page that lists all the churches. We could replace this later with an article section on the town's church life, I'll try to make a start on this tonight. i also sorted the list alphabetically. Chris Jefferies 13:59, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tidy the external links section 

message: In my opinion User:Alexander Howard's change from
St Neots is a town of about 26,000 people on the River Great Ouse. It is the largest town in Cambridgeshire, England, (Cambridge and Peterborough are both regarded as cities). 
to
St Neots is a town of about 26,000 people on the River Great Ouse. It is the largest town in Huntingdonshire, England, though for local government purposes it is administered as part of Cambridgeshire (and is its largest town after Cambridge and Peterborough, both of which are cities).
has not improved the article. Quite the opposite is true. Surely there's no need to mention the district in the introduction as it is already covered in the information panel and the section on local geography. The new version is confusing as it may suggest to some readers that Huntingdonshire is an administrative county.
The additional text on the bones is also unhelpful in the intro, making it longer than necessary for little benefit. My preference is to revert this change, but for now I've edited it to include a mention of the district. Chris Jefferies 00:51, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Change to the introductory paragraph 

message: http://www.operatives.org.uk/   http://www.operatives.org.uk/index.php?option=com_easygallery&Itemid=18
The Worshipful Society of Free Masons, Rough Masons, Wallers, Slaters, Paviors, Plaisterers and Bricklayers
" The Operative Society " celebrated it's 100th year of existence in May 2013, and is open only to Freemasons who are in good standing with or are members of a Craft Lodge, a Royal Arch Chapter and a Mark Master Masons' Lodge : the ' Operative Masons ' are those who try to preserve the original Masonic rites before they then became overlaid with the elaborate practices of 18c ' Speculative Freemasons.'
It is situated at 166, Great North Road, The Green, Eaton Socon, St Neots Cambridgeshire PE19 8EH.DaiSaw (talk) 12:15, 12 May 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  the Operative Freemasons' headquarters are in Eaton Socon, St Neots 

message: I have just come to this article for the first time. May I make some constructive observations?
A difficulty with many Wiki articles is that they are not user-friendly. Wikipedia is "for" people seeking information, not "for" the gratification of editors. Anything that might deter a reader needs careful consideration.
Someone coming to this page is likely to want to start with a general description to get a feel for what the place is like. Instead they are hit with "civil parish" as the 7th and 8th words. My guess is that nine out of ten people don't really know what that means; if I'm right, either they ignore it, or they follow the wikilink to "civil parish". That is an enormous article. Do we really need to tell them that so early in the St Neots article?
The infobox, so beloved of many, has a wikilink to "England" and also "United Kingdom". The point of a wikilink is that someone who wants to know, in this case, what "England" means, can abort reading about St Neots and go to another page and read about England instead. Is this useful? To whom?
The "Transport" section mixes current and historical information; it's useful to know that the station footbridge links Love's Farm. The fact that it was a "new" footbridge and that it opened in February 2014 is a distraction in this section. Incidentally the section is rather lacking in cited sources.
Finally noting the (ten years ago) discussion about full stops, in the late 1960s the Government recommended a series of streamlining changes over punctuation, and these were adopted. St, Dr, and so on without full stops became common usage. Before that time you might even have seen "the B.B.C." or a reference to "H.M.S. Ark Royal". Those usages are no longer current and look cumbersome. Afterbrunel (talk) 14:06, 22 July 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Towards a friendly article 

message: Rightly or wrongly there is a separate article about the History of St Neots, which has more content than this one.
I propose to move some historical material from the St Neots article to the History of St Neots article, and to streamline the St Neots article. I would leave a few prominent facts (the Saint himself, early industry, assassination of Percival, housing expansion) but try to make the "modern" article more friendly, especially to people who might be thinking of moving here.Afterbrunel (talk) 10:55, 29 April 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  History is a separate article 

message: The actor Rula Lenska is shown (right at the end) as being "from" St Neots. She was actually born at the Polish Refugee camp at Diddington, where her parents were temporarily located. This can't really be considered as being from St Neots, and there is no record that she was brought here. I think she left Diddington while still a baby. I'll remove the reference. Afterbrunel (talk) 18:42, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rula Lenska shouldn't be here