Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 12

message: A number of points spring to mind:
*Although this discussion is long, I think we are making progress - one final push may see us through to a good, workable solution.
*It is advantageous to have one official style - that's the whole purpose of a style guide. It also gives a useful point of reference to all WPians who care about style. I therefore suggest (post-amendments - see below) to refer to this page as "official style". The term would give this page proper authority, whilst at the same time not using the term "policy", which some people think would mean the ArbCom would get involved if people broke it.
*On the issue of usage, we need to be permissive - allow any standard form of English. Exceptions to this rule are damaging to this page (see above).
*"Official style" should be as short as possible - people do not like lots of complicated rules!
*This Manual of Style can and should be supplemented by a non-official page offering guidance on how to interpret it.
To this end, I have made a working draft proposal on Wikipedia:Manual of Style/proposal (the first edit to this page was the current policy, so going to history and looking at the diffs will show what changes are proposed). Please feel free either to edit this page, or to offer comments either here on on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/proposal. I have also made a draft additional guidance page on Wikipedia:Guidance on applying the Manual of Style and Wikipedia talk:Guidance on applying the Manual of Style. All comments would be welcome, jguk 22:00, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: A proposal to simplify all of this

message: I'm not wild about removal of parts of the guidelines ("quotes", vs "quotes,") simply due to their being under discussion.  Perhaps there should simply be an "under discussion" notice on the section.  And in any case, it ought to apply equally to the whole punctuation section, not just punctuation-in-quotes -- the serial comma rule and double quotes marks would equally be removed under the proposed revision.  Alai 05:06, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree. The removeal is not customary or needed. Maurreen 06:19, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removal of guidelines 

message: I just do want to remark: I am constantly amazed at the people who seem to have nothing better to do than to go through perfectly good, perfectly comprehensible articles, changing "-ise" to "-ize" or vice versa, or changing the forms of the dates back and forth. I've started just ignoring them. -- Jmabel | Talk 09:05, Mar 17, 2005 (UTC)
:I've just added the following to Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/proposal, basically saying we may need to address the point you make:
::"I wonder whether it might be worth adding a paragraph stressing the importance of being sensitive to other editors' work. I've seen the MoS being used as almost a weapon by some editors (a very small number). It would be good to say explicitly that style issues and issues of national preference should never take precedence over substantive content issues or good writing; and should not be used to start edit wars. I'm not sure how to phrase this, and would need to think about it some more. I feel that if the MoS is to be respected, it must work with editors, not against them, and we should perhaps make that explicit somewhere in the text." SlimVirgin 09:17, Mar 17, 2005 (UTC)
Why can you not just drop attacks on the "national preference"?  Articles which are perceived to be linked to a particular English speaking nation, will over time end up using that nation's English because many contributers tend to move articles that way. That the MoS recognize this tends to reduce conflict, all your suggestions which try get the Mos negate the use of specific national styles of English on articles perceived to be linked to a nation, will if adopted, encourage more edit wars not less and may well reduced the influence of the MoS. Philip Baird Shearer 13:36, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: But so often it's just silly

message: My understanding is that no one objected when Hajor stated an intention to reinsert into the style guide the material on splitting the difference for style on quotation marks. My understanding is also that there was no discussion to remove that material, either originally or recently.
Hajor's reinsertion was reverted. I am going to restore it. If anyone disagrees, I ask that you discuss it here and get consensus first. Maurreen 04:43, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Personally, I agree with it, and with the "compromise style" it rationalises.  Indeed, one might make a similar comment about the entire punctuation issue.  However right at the moment, re-introducing it might be seen as advocacy against Jguk's "vive la difference" proposal, so I'd personally be cautious about doing so unless there was some evidence of a consensus to do so.  Alai 23:54, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

text: I disagree with the current phrasing. As a foreigner I read "we split the difference between American and British usage" and had no clue what it meant. I had to read the discussion to understand. First, the fact: "Wikipedia uses the American quotation symbol (") and the British punctuation rules." Second, the rationale: "These are the best choices for reasons of symbol visibility and sentence logic." So finally the "split the difference" comment is not the fact, not the rationale, just a happy consequence. If you want it, then it should come third after the fact and rationale which are more important.--67.124.149.4 21:51, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

text: As I understand it, the actual rule was at no point deleted, at no point reinserted. What I was keen to see reinstated was the description of that rule as "splitting the difference" (which was deleted). Why? Basically, to head off further threads of the The manual recommends British-style punctuation on US topics??!?! kind. –Hajor 01:53, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Quotation marks, splitting the difference

message: I'm just noting there doesn't appear to be any discussion of gender neutrality in the Manual of Style. Shouldn't there be?
:There was discussion, no consensus. Maurreen 03:37, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  gender neutrality 

message: I'm a newbie testing the potential of Wikipedia, and a problem has come up concerning stylistic conventions. I find it difficult to locate clear guidelines about this sort of stuff in the Manual of Style, so maybe you guys can help me out.
Background: See the history page of Spartacus (movie) for an exchange of reverts.
Then follow the brief conversation at User talk:Cburnett under "Spartacus (movie) title row".
I mean, this is so very petty... Considering that Casablanca is the only film page that has reached featured article status, I think that a discussion of the stylistic conventions could very well get underway. 62.148.218.217 21:14, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: As mentioned at Cburnett's Talk page, the discussion has moved on to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Movies ("Intro format"). 62.148.218.217 21:22, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lead section conventions for films 

message: Is there a definitive guide that Wiki's using to define whether or not superscripted ordinals are to be used?
* Far as I can see we never use them. We write 4077th, not 4077th. -- Jmabel | Talk 05:05, Apr 9, 2005 (UTC)
** My opinion is that they shouldn't be used, but if you look at the pages on How to name numbers in English and superscript, they talk about how ordinals are "often" superscripted, yet those pages use both superscripted and non-superscripted. On most of the pages for U.S. states, superscripts are used very often. 
::I have been returning superscripted ordinals to non-superscripted on several pages, when I received this rather haughty and annonymous message:
::I believe you may be confusing style guidelines for typewritten manuscripts with typography rules. Because many typewriters and word processing programs did not support the proper display of ordinals, many schools developed guidelines requiring that none be used. In typography, superscripted ordinals are not only common, they are standard. Since html does not yet have standard character codes for displaying ordinals (as it does for some fractions; i.e. ¼, ½, ¾) the most common method is the  tag. Please consider fixing those you removed. Thank you. - 12.74.169.35 15:24, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I have over 1,000 books, which, I assume have been set by typographers, and only one uses superscripted ordinals (it's a rather old book, at that). Although many of the books use the fancy numbers that drop below the bottom like, which could make ordinal tags look superscripted, I don't get the feeling that superscripted ordinals are "standard," at all. Madmaxmarchhare 17:34, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: But, instead of being a punk, I would rather find out for sure.
*Articles in encyclopedia space merely document common English-language practice, not Wikipedia's own style. -- Jmabel | Talk 18:03, Apr 9, 2005 (UTC)
*That's "interesting," but I'm not sure if it gets us any closer to a solution here :-) Madmaxmarchhare 17:26, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Superscripted Ordinals