Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers/Archive 89

message: As per the consensus at Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style#Units_of_measurement, I will be updating this guideline soon to match the new wording at the main MoS. If you have any comments on this change, please comment on the MoS talk page. Thank you. Tim Vickers 03:05, 29 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Nice work, Tim. Tony (talk) 03:27, 29 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Now updated. Tim Vickers 17:07, 29 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Units of measurement

message: I thought that there was a Wikipedia preference for a particular version of superscripts and times symbols. Certainly, I always prefer a version that looks wysiwyg in edit mode. Following a recent comment on my talk page, I looked for guidance and can't find any. Perhaps I just picked up the idea of a prefered version by seeing other editors changing the version. I am sure I have seen bots do it.
Can somebody explain what we are supposed to do with superscript, unicode and html characters? Lightmouse 15:09, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: In some cases, like changing × to a simple symbol, or α to α, the change is innocuous. But changing superscripts like 2 to ² isn't good for math articles. The font comes out different in many cases, so an equation like x²=y75 looks strange.  Moreover, when the internal TeX system creates HTML, it uses the  method:  x^2  is rendered as  x 2 by the Mediawiki TeX engine.  So it's better, in math articles, not to replace superscripts by Unicode characters. — Carl (CBM · talk) 16:59, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: There have also previously been complaints that using superscripted-characters instead of  often produces characters that are too small to read, which I have found to be generally true for IE.  ² is typically just readable, ³ is typically too small.  I would suggest sticking to .  Conversely of course,  screws up the line spacing a bit.  — Aluvus t/c 19:20, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: My practice is to use the superscript characters only for unit symbols, and  otherwise. There is also css code that can mitigate the line spacing issue, that could be added to user stylesheets or the site stylesheets if there is a consensus to do so —Random832 16:27, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd like to see this get fixed in the site-wide CSS, as it is not a numbers issue alone, but also affects any line with a superscripted inline template like . It would just be a fine adjustment of CSS line-height and would come at the cost of pages being slightly longer, due to using up marginally more whitespace per line. Many would find it more readable with that change anyway, though.  Oh, and I agree: Stick with , not the Unicode chars. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont]  ‹(-¿-)› 15:41, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: We already use plenty of line-height, we use -spacing. - what would fix it would be to reduce that for the  tag, so that the superscripted material occupies the space between lines.—Random832 21:09, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Superscript, unicode, html 

message: "Do not use an inappropriately high level of precision in coordinates. In latitude (or, longitude at the equator), one degree is about 110km, one minute 1.85km, and one second 30m. Longitude values are closer together further from the equator: at about 50 degrees latitude, one degree longitude is 72km, one minute is 1.2km, and one second is 20m."
I considered adding this in the section about coordinates, but figured i should get feedback on how to word this and where it should go. Also, maybe there should be additional guidance (large areas like countries, states, etc, should only be specified to degrees, cities only to minutes, but specific points of interest can be specified to seconds, or a fraction of a second, if known) —Random832 16:22, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It would need to be more general; this is not a problem with coordinates, its a problem with over-precision more generally.  I.e., don't give numbers like 23.349349293249 unless there is a really, really good reason to do so (as there is with pi, with molecular weights, etc., but not with the length of a bridge. Or with geographic coordinates except in some really unusual cases.) — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont]  ‹(-¿-)› 15:36, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Suggested addition