Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 33

message: There is discussion at the above page which seeks a consensus on what term to use when describing the nationality of people from the United States of America in category titles which use the format nationality foo. Please participate. --Hiding  talk 10:48, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (categories)/Usage of American]] 

message: I would like to find the appropriate place for discussion of whether all style articles should have the same style template -- two wikipedians deleted it from WP:Manual_of_Style_(mathematics) (I admit to being one of them), as the sidebar looks clumsy in that article.  Perhaps there should be a separate "style 2" template which only has a pointer to this manual? --Arthur Rubin (talk) 15:56, 23 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The thing is, there isn't really a place... I once asked about  but no-one seemed to notice.  But I say that, because they're all part of one big document, the same sidebar should be on each.  --Neonumbers 07:30, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I find that sidebar useful, and think it should remain on all the MoS pages.  Gene Nygaard 14:28, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  <nowiki>{{style}}</nowiki> style 

message: Oughtn't there be some guidance on this page as to transliteration?  For instance, we should say that Greek names ought to be Latinized - Herodotus, not Herodotos; Menelaus, not Menelaos; and so on.  Given that this is almost always the more common English name, this is somewhat self-evident, but I think it should be instantiated as a rule.  It'd be nice if we had some guidelines for translating, say, Arabic names, as well. --john k 04:29, 25 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The guidelines are far from clear. For instance, the practice for Chinese people is almost always to use the most up to date transliterations- except in really famous cases like Confucius.  Other languages differ still more. I think a lot of it has not been worked out yet, so any such document would be a bit premature. --Maru  (talk) Contribs 22:39, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Transliteration 

message: There is a section titled Loan words but which is about non-English or foreign words, rather than loan words as described in the loan words article. I suggest this section of MoS should be titled Non-English words rather than Loan words. I was going to suggest Foreign words but that is not always accurate for English-speaking countries that also have native languages (i.e. non-English but not foreign.) Nurg 23:35, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Loan words vs non-English words 

message: I have a bot fixing various mistakes in the "see also" and "external links" sections, while is going it could easily turn "related topics" into "see also", as it seems a bit strange to me that we have 2 names for the same thing, especially as "related topics" isn't used that much anyway (at a guess I would say 90% of articles use "see also"). what do you think? Martin 17:58, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Go for it! --Maru  (talk) Contribs 22:26, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: From my experience there are not many "Related topics" left. I think it is time to get rid of them as well as to update the respective section in the Manual of style (Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#"See also" and "Related topics" sections). Cacycle 00:23, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Great! I am glad to see somebody doing all this. Bobblewik 13:45, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Ok, I've been bold and removed "related topics", my bot will take a while to finish, but soon everything should be nice and tidy. Martin 14:57, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

text: The reference to bolding "cross-references" is immediately below (like the next sentence), so the phrase "see below" is a little misleading. But this use of bold text isn't applied extensively in WP; more often,  is used, or something like Circumcision is illegal in many countries; see Legal status of circumcision. So I propose we dump the reference to bolding completely. —Wahoofive (talk) 16:13, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, I have never seen it used. Martin 16:22, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  "See also" and "Related topics" sections 

message: I went to this page (the project page, not this talk page) to see if it offered any advice on whether or not I should use spaces before and after mdashes and ndashes. It didn't address the topic, but I saw that the page actually follows both practices. For example, in the section on "Punctuation", it has:
* Though not a rigid rule, we use the "double quotes" for most quotations—they are easier to read on the screen—and use 'single quotes' for "quotations 'within' quotations".
* Therefore, avoid excessive use of contractions — such as don't, can't, won't, would've, they'd, and so on — unless they occur in a quotation.
I have a preference for spacing before and after, but it's not a strong preference. Obviously a space before but not after is wrong, as is a space after and not before. I sometimes come across errors these on Wikipedia, but if I'm correcting them, I'm not sure whether I should remove the space on one side or add it on the other. Is there a standard policy on Wikipedia? I'd like to be consistent.
Also, I've read comments on talk pages about when to use mdashes and when to use ndashes. I've also read about it in Hart's Rules There seem to be different opinions, and again, I'd like to follow the official policy, if there is one. Can anyone locate me to a page that would help me? Thanks. Ann Heneghan (talk) 11:11, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: See the supplementary manual Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dashes). (Available only through the navbox to the right. Shouldn't the main text at least mention it?) Femto 11:52, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Femto's cmt sounds sensible and noncontroversial; one-liner duly added to "punctuation". –Hajor 14:29, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Obviously Ann Heneghan had already seen that page; it's no help for the question she asked.  The answer is, you can just go with your own preferences if you correct one with spaces on one side and not the other, either add a space on the other side or delete the one that's there.  I don't see any great need for a more specific rule, to always or never use the spaces, or to use them only for particular purposes.  Gene Nygaard 15:24, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Just some things to consider: No spaces is more common but makes it more likely to confuse a dash for a hyphen, and sometimes an unspaced dash looks like it's touching the letters, which I don't think it should. I started using spaces around dashes on my website after I noticed that dashes aren't spaced farther from the text when text is justified with CSS, even if the words get more spread out. This makes dashes look even more like hyphens.  Barry  01:12, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Spaces before and after mdash?