Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Alpha Archive 1

message: At Talk:Ampersand, User:66.32.255.51 wrote:
:Has anyone talked about when to use  and  and when to use  &  in Wikipedia??
I replied:
:I think, in general, "and" should be used unless the ampersand is part of a work's proper name (for example, Dungeons & Dragons or Beyond Good & Evil (video game)).  I've brought the question up at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style.
Is there any previous discussion on when or if ampersands should be used instead of "and" in article text or titles?  -Sean Curtin 02:09, Dec 5, 2004 (UTC)
:::I don't recall seeing such a discussion in the archives. And I agree with your usage. Maurreen 02:16, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ampersand 

message: Is there a way to remove underlining from links?  The reason I want to do this is because the underlining can be confused as part of a Chinese character if the character appears in a link.  See Chinese family name.  ☞spencer195 00:02, 29 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Check your preferences Dysprosia 02:30, 29 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Anyway to remove underlining?

message: I am looking for a input to help resolve a dispute about the article on style guides. The question is this: Was the article better before or after the rewrite? Thanks. Maurreen 15:30, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: No, that's not the question in dispute. The question is should it be clearly mentioned that style guides may be descriptive and/or prescriptive or should the article be restricted to a discussion of prescriptive style guides with no reference to descriptive ones. jguk 15:44, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: What would be the point of a descriptive style guide? Hyacinth 03:07, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Or, the question is: Are style guides prescriptive by definition? Maurreen 03:34, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I would say not. A "guide" is often something that shows you around an area, so I see no reason why a style guide couldn't be a map rather than a set of rules. I can't see what use this would be of (outside of in the development of future style guides, maybe a synthesis of guides). Hyacinth 04:05, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

text: The latest version of the best known British English style guide, Fowler's Modern English Usage (3rd Edition), is a mostly descriptive style guide. An interesting read, if you're into that kind of thing, though there are other style guides out there that are even more descriptive. . Birchfield's rewrite of Fowler into a far less prescriptive (and thereforE into a descriptive) form was not universally popular.  See in particular the first reviewer's comments. As far as the point of them: well, they are not suitable for publishers and newspapers as they don't impose consistency. They are suitable for users interested in how language is used and help the user decide what form of words, spelling, etc to choose for the particular audience the user is addressing. jguk 07:24, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)
replies: text:  While a style guide could be descriptive, most style guides are not. I know of none that I would call mostly descriptive that also has a title indicating it is a style guide or style manual. A truly descriptive style guide would be one of those linguistic books about New England dialects, a guide to different styles of usage. I am not aware of a book of that kind being called a style guide, though such a book could in theory be called something like A Guide to Styles of English Midland Language. Birchfield's rewrite of Fowler was more descriptive than the two previous versions of Fowler's work. But it was a far cry from being only an informed and dispassionate study on the current state of the English language. The Chicago Manual of Style is also increasingly descriptive in recent editions, providing alternative ways of doing things, though still purportedly mainly for use as the style guide for the University of Chicago Press. That limitation provides freedom. One can prescribe firmly and absolutely without also making any claim that one's preferred way of doing things is the only correct way.  One would, I think, be better to refer to Birchfield's work as "more descriptive" rather than simply "descriptive". But almost all guides of that kind for the general public must be so today. Jallan 23:44, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: This dispute has been settled. Maurreen 08:49, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Article on style guides

message: I tried to find some good advice on structuring articles in wikipedia namespaces. All I found were some pages in the Style and How-to Directory, some pages in the Wikipedia:Manual of Style, and some links on template:FAPath. They mostly deal with the issue from a general stylistic and aesthetic viewpoint, and only touch on the underlying reasons for giving a logical and fairly standardized structure to encyclopedia articles.
I've therefore written up a draft guideline for writing articles in a "pyramid structure". Being mostly based on common sense, it is in part a description of what we already do, but its goal is also to explain why structuring articles in this way is good. It's at User:Zocky/Pyramid structure. Please feel free to improve and comment. 
I'm not sure how to proceed. Proper structure should obviously be a FA requirement, and this should probably also be in the how-to series. But since structure is a fundamental editorial issue which heavily affects both quality and NPOV, it could also be a part of the Manual of Style. Zocky 19:45, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article structuring