Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 43

message: << The discussion "ALL CAPITAL LETTERS" continues from Archive 42
===Proposed rules===
* reduce newspaper headlines and other titles from all caps to the title case: "War Begins Today"
* reduce court decisons from all caps to the title case: "Richard Arthur Norton v. William Allen Simpson"
* reduce emphasis from all caps to italics
The only dissent is whether italics or bold should be used for emphasis. If we decide on bold, then the rules under italics need to be reworded. My personal preference is reserving bold for: 1) the title of the article 2) the name of the person in the biography, and the varations of the name as in E. E. Cummings. 3) headings and subheadings. What do you think? --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) 01:38, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  No.  The MoS does not "[let] a person know everything"; not for italics, not for anything else.  It specifies common cases in which there is liable to be disagreement and a consistency across the project is desired.  We do not, for instance, specify in the MoS that you should use the usual dictionary spelling of words raðer ðan a meðod of your own devising.  The fact that I just used a method of my own devising doesn't mean that, before correcting it, you now need to add a rule to the MoS first specifying that we prefer dictionary spellings to spellings made up on the fly.  Just fix it; the MoS is not a playbook that has to cover every case of editing for non-content-related purposes.  Now, if you can show that these cases of capitals-misuse you want to include in the MoS are widespread and disputed, we'll have something to talk about; but thus far, you haven't done that.  Imagining that it might be a case of dispute sometime in the future is insufficient reason to add it to the MoS now.  --TreyHarris 00:44, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There have only been three actual articles referenced in this thread up to now: IBM, AT&T, and E.E. Cummings.  None of these are on-point to the rules you are proposing.  All I'm asking is that you produce actual examples of disputes in progress that your rules will help to resolve.  The MoS is essentially a dispute-resolution and consensus-saving tool, not a manual of style to rival Strunk & White or Chicago in covering all cases. Where there is general agreement about a point of style, or when a point has not actually risen to being disputed in the article space, this MoS can and should remain silent about the point. --TreyHarris 01:59, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I tend to agree with Trey, certainly on the first two proposals.   On the third, I think it highly unlikely that anyone who uses all caps for emphasis should ever be quoted, but if it should happen we should not change his usage.  We should of course not use all caps or bold for emphasis ourselves, but again I've never come across someone attempting to do so. Markyour words 20:50, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: As has been pointed out before, use of all caps is pretty rare and, MoS or no, most careful users will probably lowercase it unless there is a compelling use for it. Therefore, I would suggest keeping the rule simple: "Avoid using all caps unless there is a compelling reason to do so." We don't need to go into detail about corporate logos, headlines, typographic exercises, or the like; trying to come up with a list of times when all caps is acceptable is probably a bit futile, and is probably decided on a case-by-case basis. You could add to this the corollary "Never use bold." ProhibitOnions 21:55, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

text: I personally think direct quotations should reflect the source directly - after all, we don't correct spelling or grammar errors, so why should we correct capitalization? Titles of Wikipedia articles, however, should follow our standard conventions. Paraphrases you can capitalise however you like. Deco 05:57, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: ALL CAPITAL LETTERS (continued)

message: * reduce newspaper headlines and other titles from all caps to the title case: "War Begins Today"
* reduce court decisons from all caps to the title case: "Richard Arthur Norton v. William Allen Simpson"
* reduce emphasis from all caps to italics
The only dissent is whether italics or bold should be used for emphasis. If we decide on bold, then the rules under italics need to be reworded. My personal preference is reserving bold for: 1) the title of the article 2) the name of the person in the biography, and the varations of the name as in E. E. Cummings. 3) headings and subheadings. What do you think? --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) 01:38, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  No.  The MoS does not "[let] a person know everything"; not for italics, not for anything else.  It specifies common cases in which there is liable to be disagreement and a consistency across the project is desired.  We do not, for instance, specify in the MoS that you should use the usual dictionary spelling of words raðer ðan a meðod of your own devising.  The fact that I just used a method of my own devising doesn't mean that, before correcting it, you now need to add a rule to the MoS first specifying that we prefer dictionary spellings to spellings made up on the fly.  Just fix it; the MoS is not a playbook that has to cover every case of editing for non-content-related purposes.  Now, if you can show that these cases of capitals-misuse you want to include in the MoS are widespread and disputed, we'll have something to talk about; but thus far, you haven't done that.  Imagining that it might be a case of dispute sometime in the future is insufficient reason to add it to the MoS now.  --TreyHarris 00:44, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There have only been three actual articles referenced in this thread up to now: IBM, AT&T, and E.E. Cummings.  None of these are on-point to the rules you are proposing.  All I'm asking is that you produce actual examples of disputes in progress that your rules will help to resolve.  The MoS is essentially a dispute-resolution and consensus-saving tool, not a manual of style to rival Strunk & White or Chicago in covering all cases. Where there is general agreement about a point of style, or when a point has not actually risen to being disputed in the article space, this MoS can and should remain silent about the point. --TreyHarris 01:59, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I tend to agree with Trey, certainly on the first two proposals.   On the third, I think it highly unlikely that anyone who uses all caps for emphasis should ever be quoted, but if it should happen we should not change his usage.  We should of course not use all caps or bold for emphasis ourselves, but again I've never come across someone attempting to do so. Markyour words 20:50, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: As has been pointed out before, use of all caps is pretty rare and, MoS or no, most careful users will probably lowercase it unless there is a compelling use for it. Therefore, I would suggest keeping the rule simple: "Avoid using all caps unless there is a compelling reason to do so." We don't need to go into detail about corporate logos, headlines, typographic exercises, or the like; trying to come up with a list of times when all caps is acceptable is probably a bit futile, and is probably decided on a case-by-case basis. You could add to this the corollary "Never use bold." ProhibitOnions 21:55, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

text: I personally think direct quotations should reflect the source directly - after all, we don't correct spelling or grammar errors, so why should we correct capitalization? Titles of Wikipedia articles, however, should follow our standard conventions. Paraphrases you can capitalise however you like. Deco 05:57, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Proposed rules

message: This change was good. We should keep the MoS short, else nobody will read it. There, we've discussed it now and it's pretty much consensual. Could you possibly stop reverting now sheriff? Thanks. PizzaMargherita 00:40, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Agree. Martin 10:59, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

text: Agree.  User:Noisy | Talk 11:11, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

text: Thanks,PizzaMargherita, I originally removed that sentence ("Commonwealth English uses capitals more widely than American English does," etc.) from the MOS, as it seemed both inaccurate and superfluous.  There was, furthermore, no discussion of the matter on the talk page (and thus no "consensus version"), so its immediate reversion without comment wasn't terribly helpful. While I would abstain in a vote that concerned only my own edit, I like your suggestion about turning the paragraph into a general one about capitalization, thus I Agree. ProhibitOnions 11:54, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  US vs UK Capitalization 

message: I removed the following sentence from the section about religions, deities, and etc: "Mormonism requires special care — see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Mormonism)."
If Wikipedia will maintain a NPOV in regard to religions, there is no need to single out Mormonism as a religion that needs special care when being referenced in a Wikipedia article. -- backburner001 00:16, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Sorry for the late reply.  If the wording can be changed to reflect a more NPOV, then I would not object to mentioning that guidelines currently exist about referencing Mormonism on Wikipedia. I would also try to find guidelines that exist for other religions (if they do exist) and make mention of those as well. -- backburner001 19:58, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

text: Fair enough.  However, I would've appreciated it if you would've noted that you did not only restore the reference, you edited it slightly (changing "special care" to "particular complications").  In any event, the current phrasing is better and strives toward my original point, which is that everything in Wikipedia (including this MoS) should maintain a NPOV.  When the initial reference stated that Mormonism requires "special care" - the implicit assumption is that other religions do not require that same care, which is a violation of the NPOV. -- backburner001 20:49, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, sorry about that. Actually, to get technical only articles require NPOV treatment. However, I do think that an appearance of partisanship in policy pages is best avoided when possible. I made the changes for clarity sake, since it's really just that Mormonism seems to have particularly confusing issues around names, and that's only a very specific kind of being "special". — Saxifrage ✎ 21:20, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That's okay, I didn't take offense to that.  As I said, your minor edit is more nuetral, which I think is an improvement.  I just wanted to make my reasons for removing the content initially clear.  As for NPOV technicalities, I'll take your word for it, but I do agree that partisanship in policy pages should be avoided. -- backburner001 21:23, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Special Care with Mormonism 

message: I have boldly went and mentioned the normal practice of putting alternative article titles in bold: this is particularly important when the alternatives link to an article by a redirect, but as the River Plate demonstrates it can also be appropriate when the link is by a disambiguation page....dave souza: talk 21:45, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Bold article titles

message: There is a discussion going on Template talk:Languageicon about what style the language indicator should be.  I suppose there may also be room to debate whether template is even desireable. -- Netoholic @ 22:53, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Language indicator for external links 

message: I have moved this from the WP:NOT page as I have come to realise it would be better suited to this policy.
I have come across a problem that occurs on a few articles and that is the quoting of multiple currencies in an example of a price. An example would be a previous incarnation of the Warhammer 40,000 article which at one point had USD, GBP and Euro listed for each price. Would it not be advantageous to have a section in this policy regarding this?
In my opinion, if a price must be quoted as an example, it should be in the currency that is most likely in line with the form of English (ie US English, USD. British English, GBP). There could be exceptions such as historical comparisons - ie people can include an old currency value and include a new currency value (as in present day an example being 1000GBP from 1900 being ~100,000GBP now (figures made up).-Localzuk (talk) 18:34, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I would suggest using local currency wherever possible. Jimp 16:15, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I have recently added the section to the article. -Localzuk (talk) 16:51, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Currency