Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 67

message: See . --NE2 16:09, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Not through web browsers, imo. That one wasn't even enlarged a great deal, nor does it have captions to warrant the need. Personally, I would either leave it as it is, or if it has to be done, enlarge it in an image editing program and run filters through it to clean it up. The best option is to find the same picture with a better resolution. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 19:12, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

text: No, it looks bad and unprofessional to have pixelated images. Strad 22:56, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Is there ever a reason to enlarge an image beyond its actual size?

message: Pgan002 06:25, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: “He saw Nile” is not idiomatic English. Neither is “Our planet revolves around Sun.” Both sentences require a definite article. I can’t think of any rivers that don’t take a definite article. Even when “River” comes before the name, we say, for example, “the Rio Grande” and “the River Thames.” We say “Lake Victoria” and “Lake Michigan,” but “the Great Salt Lake.” All the oceans take the definite article. So do all the mountain ranges I can think of, such as “the Alps” and “the Sierra Madre.” Individual mountains tend not to: “Mount Everest” and “Mount Hood,” but “the Matterhorn.” I don’t know of any rule to help you. Use what sounds right. If you can’t decide what sounds right, then ask for help, or look at what others have chosen. --Rob Kennedy 21:35, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Definite article in geographical names 

message: Should topics closely related to the article's subject be bolded as well? Take selection for example. Many words are bolded like selective pressure etc. I see this done a bit and I assume it's frowned upon, but the policy doesn't explicitly say anything about it. Richard001 08:43, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Alternative terms for the title should definitely be bolded. — Omegatron 16:26, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Related terms

message: Fairly recently the quotation mark section gained the caveat "However, insisting on changing to this usage, especially in articles written in American English, is deprecated; there are better and less divisive uses of time."  The rationale for this is (apparently) to avoid revert wars, but it basically reads like an "opt out" of have clear style guidance on this matter at all.  And since it's fairly common to see people "correcting" 'logical' to 'aesthetic' quotations -- whether on U.S. topics, UK ones, or anything else -- I doubt it'll work as claimed, anyway.  Surely having a clear style preference is in the long run the better recipe for avoiding unnecessary to-and-fro:  otherwise we end up with people doing so anyway, with whatever rationale they happen to find handy.  (National 'ownership' of topic;  style of original author;  various other flavours of "I've changed this, no-one else dare change it back!")  "Don't revert war" is good advice in general, but I question the wisdom of the particularisation of the principle to this instance over all others.  Alai 09:27, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I've removed the language. I can't find any indication that this was ever discussed, and it sounds, just as you suggest, like an "opt out" clause. Bad idea, in my opinion. — Brian (talk) 03:43, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Hear! Hear! Jimp 01:10, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Quotation mark caveat added 

message: Right now there is an edit war going on at Wikipedia:Manual of Style (lists of works).  Which format (viewable from the edit history) should be used? Pugno di dollari 21:33, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  List of works 

message: This page says that when images are aligned left and would normally be placed directly under a section heading, they should instead be placed above the section heading. Wikipedia:Accessibility says that images should not be placed above the section heading. I'd tend to take the accessibility argument over the prettiness argument, but they both have merit. Which ought to be followed? --Sopoforic 00:16, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I recently got bit by this disagreement between the guidelines myself. I reworded the guideline here so that it doesn't conflict with the accessibility guideline, since accessibility trumps beauty. However, the rewording also suggests the older, prettier placement when the image relates to both sections (e.g., it acts as a bridge). Eubulides 21:29, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Left-aligned images 

message: Hello, I am enclosing the policy page in <noinclude> tags due to recent server-thrashing vandalism , and I need to know if the page is transcluded anywhere.  The vandalism is done by appending either  or  thirty or so times to the same page, resulting in something that takes forever to load.  Regards, Tuxide 03:44, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Wouldn't the vandal just choose another long page to transclude? Jimp 01:16, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes.  Since I've made my post, he's chosen to transclude pages like Wikipedia:Village pump (all), which is a discussion page.  <noinclude> tags do not work well on those types of pages.  Tuxide 01:24, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  &lt;noinclude&gt; (is [[WP:MOS]] transcluded anywhere?) 

message: I don't see anything in the Wikipedia manual of style about this, but it seems to me that it is common practice in RL that if a sentence begins with a number, then the number is written out in letters.  A sentence might look like this:  "Twenty-four percent of the people agreed completely, while only 21% strongly disagreed."  This makes it easier to read by allowing a capital letter to appear at the beginning of the sentence, so the eye can more easily find the beginning of the sentence.  An alternative is to reword the sentence so a numeral doesn't come at the beginning:  "Complete agreement was indicated by 24% of the people, while only 21% strongly disagreed." 
See for example section 9. "Number Beginning a Sentence, Title, or Heading" at  .  I particularly like this approach:  While we would generally rather avoid beginning a sentence with a mathematical expression, we would tolerate it if avoiding it created awkwardness or ambiguity. at .  A Google search for "beginning sentence numeral" brings up many pages with instructions to spell out numerals at the beginnings of sentences.
I'm wondering whether it's good practice to try to have Wikipedia conform to this style, whether this is already addressed in a Wikipedia style manual, if not whether it should be added, and whether it should apply to symbols such as "ω-3" in the second paragraph of Eicosanoid.  --Coppertwig 12:54, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: This is already mentioned in the fifth item of Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) in the section " Numbers in words". It says "It is considered awkward for a numeral to be the first word of a sentence: recast the sentence or spell the number out." Graham87 03:52, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Beginning a sentence with a numeral or symbol?