Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style--Archive2

Table of contents 1 Citations 2 Numbers 3 Units 3.1 Dimensions 4 Formulas 4.1 Mathematics an Physics 5 Pronunciation 6 Names & Acronyms 7 Further Reading 8 Stylish irony 9 Title style 10 References 10.1 Print references 10.2 Online references 11 Further reading 11.1 Print reading 11.2 Online reading 12 Header markup 13 Which looks better? 14 Or does this look better? 15 American and British spelling

Citations

I'd like to see some sort of standard set forth for citation signals, legal citations[?], and style manuals[?] in general. To wit, whether citation signals should be italicized, what signals are used in what situations, and what style manual[?] should obtain in a particular situation. As far as legal style manuals go, the Harvard Bluebook is used by most law reviews and federal courts, but state courts typically have their own style manuals and do not follow the Bluebook's guidelines. The same sorts of conflicts in re proper style probably exist in various other areas of writing, such as newspaper journalism, medical and scientific publishing, and technical writing, but I am not familiar enough with these areas to offer intelligent commentary. --NetEsq

I hope that as it stands this article will do for general writing of the average article. We do suggest UofChgo Manual of Style, college handbooks, and Fowler, which should be enough for anyone.

As for medical, scientific, or legal styles, perhaps those should be referenced from here to their own pages so as not to intimidate new writers who are guided here. Ortolan88 09:50 Aug 24, 2002 (PDT)

When I was trying to create something like this page on Meta, I wrote an introduction to the effect that "good content is more important that presentation -- a style guide is not an imperative, rather a reference for Wikipedia's many copyeditors". Feel free to grab that from there for here. :-) -- Tarquin 09:53 Aug 24, 2002 (PDT)

Numbers

Large numbers: is it fair to say large number should be written thus: 1,234,000 when not using exponential notation? -- Tarquin

One disadvantages of using commas is that some people are used to seeing these in place of decimal points. One disadvantage of using spaces instead is that browsers might wrap a number over two lines, which is really nasty. -- Matthew Woodcraft

One solution is to use " ", but the drawback to this is that it looks ugly in the wiki markup (which is why I've stopped using it in mathematical formulas). — Toby 10:57 Nov 11, 2002 (UTC)

Units

See Wikipedia:Measurements Debate for lengthy discussion of the superiority of metric (granted), the depravity of American measurements (granted) and the need to communicate with depraved Americans (grudgingly granted).

2.3 km (1.4 mi) seems to be the method of choice for lengths.Sebastian 07:21 Jan 23, 2003 (UTC)

Dimensions

I can't find any mention of a Wikipedia-preferred format for dimensions. Here are several formats for the example of metres per second, ranked in order of my particular preference:

• m.s^-1

Pros: can easily tell the difference between each unit as they are separated by full stops (periods).

Cons: not that common outside of Europe, afaict.

• ms^-1

Pros: saves typing

Cons: can lead to confusion, e.g. this could read as "inverse milli-seconds"

• m/s

Pros: seems to be more universally common outside of scientific publishing

Cons: is by some believed old fashioned and not standard scientific format

charlieF 18:06 Mar 14, 2003 (UTC)

Difficult....

• http://www.bipm.fr/enus/3_SI/si-derived uses the dot
• http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/checklist says all 3 are ok

--

Not the least bit difficult:

• m.s^-1 [sic] is wrong (the dot should be raised like this: m·s^-1), and even if written correctly does not make sense to anyone but scientists, and is not common in Europe either.
• ms^-1 [sic] is completely useless, since it is 1/ms.
• m/s is commonly understood by everyone, commonly used, exact, scientific as far as I know, and cannot be misinterpreted.

But by all means, km² should be written thus, and not sqkm.

Finally, there is a typographical/aesthetical problem when used in running text, in that "-1" as a superscript causes excessive line spacing, but superscript "2" is available within the character set and does not have this problem.

-- Egil 07:38 Mar 15, 2003 (UTC)

OK, you're right about the raised dot for the first form, but the third form can be equivocated when you have more complex units, e.g. thermal conductivity:

• W/mK looks like either Watts per metre Kelvin (correct) or Watts per milliKelvin (incorrect)

whereas W·m^-1·K^-1 is unequivocal.

or take metres per second per kilogram squared

• m/skg² looks 'orrible, whereas m·s^-1·kg², to my eye, looks much better.

Furthermore, anything with a superscript that is not 2, such as internal heat generation (Watts per metre cubed), renders in the third form as

• W/m³ , which causes just as much excessive line spacing as
• W·m³

So there's no way of avoiding unsightly line spaces if you want to use a standard system throughout Wikipedia.

Lastly, there should really be some standard symbol table, i.e. if anyone, anywhere, mentions thermal conductivity then they should use the same symbol (e.g. k). Does this already exist?

charlieF 11:17 Mar 15, 2003 (UTC)

I think we probably should pause, and try to look up what SI has to say on the matter first (on-line SI refs should be treated with caution). W/m³ works just fine. In terms of m/s, then as long as that is fine with SI, then that is what I would prefer since everyone would instantly know what it means (which is a good point, admit it). More exotic units that probably would appear on a total of two Wikipedia pages, I'm not so concerned about. -- Egil 12:00 Mar 15, 2003 (UTC)

This looks like the page of choice [1] (http://physics.nist.gov/Pubs/SP811/sec06). See sections 6.1.5 onwards.... charlieF 12:38 Mar 15, 2003 (UTC)

Formulas

Mathematics an Physics

I found the following in inertial mass:

m_i×a_i1 = m₁×a_1i,

My question is: Should we really use the × (×) symbol for multiplication? To me this looks rather like a vector product.

Sebastian 23:42 Jan 24, 2003 (UTC)

Can't you tell by context? If m_i is a scalar then it can't be a vector product, can it? cferrero 09:52 Mar 7, 2003 (UTC)

Pronunciation

Moved unresolved discussion to Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (pronounciation).

Summary: handmade pronunciation (LAH tin for "Latin") doesn't work, SAMPA is obscure, IPA requires too much markup.

Names & Acronyms

• The first time you introduce a person, use the person's most common complete name. Thereafter, use their family name. For example, say Ronald Reagan the first time, then Reagan thereafter. Or , say Vicente de la Fox the first time, then Fox thereafter. It is unneccessary to say Vicente Fox Quezada except for in the article on Fox himself, as that is not the common form of his name.
• The first time you introduce an acronym, spell out the acronym in full, followed by the acronym in parentheses. For example, Central Processing Unit (CPU). Thereafter, you may use the acronym.

What about situations where the acronym is more common than the full term? Should we do CPU (Central Processing Unit) and IBM (International Business Machines)? To me, using the acronym first and expanding it in parentheses makes it apparent that the writer isn't just abbreviating a long-winded term. Mrwojo 05:50 Dec 14, 2002 (UTC)

A commonly-used acronym should have an article to itself anyway (or rather, a redirect to an article). I think it's fine to write only "CPU" as long as the first instance is linked "CPU". So I would say either link the first acronym, or explain it: "IBM (International Business Machines)" (bad example, since that one in particular should be IBM but I can't think of another acronym...) Tarquin 13:18 Dec 14, 2002 (UTC)

There are also "disappeared acronyms and initialisms", like SAT which has been declared meaningless by its owner, YMCA, which no longer expands to Young Men's Christian Association, or JayCee, which no longer expands to Junior Chamber of Commerce. In those cases, the article should note the origin of the acronym or initialism, but not use the expansion as the title.

In all other cases, it makes sense, and is the most common publishing practice, to say "International Business Machines (IBM)". (My father called computers "IB Machines" in the 50s!") I think it would be pretty rare for an acornym or initialism to deserve an article of its own in addition to the article about the expanded form., except for redirects, of course.

BTW, while we're on the subject:

• Acronym -- pronounceable word formed from the letters or syllables of a phrase, such as radar or InterPol[?].
• Initialism -- unpronounceable collection of initials, such as CIA or FBI.Ortolan88 17:04 Dec 14, 2002 (UTC)

I've been caught out. I hereby ban from Pedants' Corner for a period of one week. *hangs head in shame*. My basic point was that given a commonly-used acronym or initialism, we should be able to turn it into a link which the reader can follow for an explanation. (what the name of that explanation page is has probably been discussed and decided on Naming Conventions) -- Tarquin 17:11 Dec 14, 2002 (UTC)

Further Reading

Many articles also end with a list of books that are either important to the topic, or just provide a more in-depth treatment of the topic (see Evolution). Should the author's name be included with the title?

For example The Beak of the Finch, by Jonathan Weiner

-adam

It wouldn't hurt. I personally would take it a step further and add dates as well. Oh, and don't forget that book titles are italicized. Mrwojo 05:50 Dec 14, 2002 (UTC)

A number of entries use ==Further Reading==. Remember that including an ISBN gives an automatic link to a bookfinder. The style guide should probably have a section on referencing books anyway. Ortolan88 17:04 Dec 14, 2002 (UTC)

I feel that the recommendation of "Further Reading" has the potential to develop into a problem. I've seen things recommended as "Further reading" which are badly-written and poorly-researched, but are referenced because they happen to reinforce the POV of the contributor. Personally, I've tried to avoid referencing anything but standard biographies and "official" web sites. Are there any guidelines on this subject? Deb 22:16 Jan 30, 2003 (UTC)

---

1. Is there a consensus on "editable length"? If so, it should be mentioned in the Manual of Style. People are so keen to break off tiny little chunklets, but some articles are still mighty long.
2. Since so many articles are biographies, maybe there should be a rudimentary section on biographies on the main page with a link to the rest.
3. Separate sections should all have (Manual of Style) in the title.
4. We really need much more about scientific style.
5. A separate section on tables would also be good.

Ortolan88 16:20 Jan 26, 2003 (UTC)

---

I got rid of the example for the "External links" section - it looked too much like an actual section. Now that part doesn't follow the pattern of the rest of the examples, but I think people will get it. --GG

The convention I had been following was to have the "real" headlines in each section include the word Style so they wouldn't be confused. In this case, instead of ==External Links== it read ==URL and World Wide Web Style==. I find the failure to follow the pattern more confusing than the heading, but I think if I change the heading to ==External Link Style== then we can follow the pattern of presentation followed by encoding. Ortolan88

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Why is the standard "External links" and not "External Links"? It looks out of place, since most people capitalize the worlds in headings (the headings in the style guide itself are all mixed up however, some are all capitalized and some are not).

For the sake of consistency might it not be a good idea to change it to "External Links"? (Related Topics is already capitalized). - stewacide 10:05 Mar 1, 2003 (UTC)

I would rather change the all-capital headings, and add a rule not to capitalize all words of a heading. The capital S in Manual of Style is okay, though, it is a proper name. - Patrick 12:05 Mar 1, 2003 (UTC)

In fact, we have already Wikipedia:Naming conventions (capitalization) for article names. It would be good if headings within an article follow the same rule. - Patrick 12:27 Mar 1, 2003 (UTC)

That convention is for page titles - it doesn't make much sense to extend that to other headings esp since we discourage wiki links in headings. If we we not a wiki then our H1's would be capitalized far more often. But I do see some logic in keeping all headings consistant so I should be an easy person to convince. --mav 19:58 Mar 1, 2003 (UTC)

It makes sense because we generally use a "down style" (nothing but first word and proper nouns capitalized) anyway. Already added to MOS. When in doubt, don't capitalize, and while you're at it, don't italicize either if in doubt. Ortolan88

I agree with using the "down style" for headings within articles, if we're doing it for article titles, as it makes things look more consistent. So can I change the headings in this page? :) -- Oliver P. 04:23 Mar 6, 2003 (UTC)

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Stylish irony

The most entertaining thing about those who reject careful style markup in favor of "crafting away in the throes of creativity" (or whatever that guy said) is that carefully marked up articles are much less likely to be edited by us perfectionists than poorly marked up articles.

If we find a song title in italics instead of quotes, or an article title not bolded, we just pop in there and change it. And, once there, we may decide to rearrange and rewrite elsewhere in the article. After all, copy editing is by definition one of our things.

So, if you want to avoid being edited by a style maniac, your best bet is to follow the styles correctly. Ortolan88 17:36 Mar 5, 2003 (UTC)

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Title style

The article gives these examples:

• "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge", Rodin's "The Thinker", "Goober and Gomer Change a Tire", "Do's and Don'ts of Dating", "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening"
• "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" and "She's Leaving Home" appear on Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

- but does not (I think) make it explicit that Titles Of Songs And Things Should Have Lots Of Capitals. Should they? I'm told they should: I think it looks terrible, like a Victorian Concert Programme, but I'm Quite Happy To Go Along With It if it's what is agreed. Is an explicit line needed in the style guide to Deal With This? Thanks, Nevilley 07:39 Mar 6, 2003 (UTC)

Put in some examples that make your point. "Sgt. Pepper's lonely hearts club band" is not the name of the song. Ortolan88

Ortolan was just pointing out that the name of the song is always capitalized. I would further add that since it is a proper name it always should. --mav

OK, and thanks. Now, if the rule is that song (etc) titles should be in capitals, is there a line in the manual to say this? And if not, should there be one? All I am saying is that if I did not know there was such a rule, perhaps others did not too, and it might help to mention it. If this is already documented somewhere I'm sorry I missed it. Nevilley 08:35 Mar 7, 2003 (UTC)

Even though most albums will just be mentioned and not have their own articles, I think this is more of a naming convention issue than a style one. As such, this topic is already covered in Wikipedia:Naming conventions (capitalization). --mav

Ummm. Thanks. I have to be honest and say that I am now so confused about this issue that I have no idea where to discuss it. The Wikipedia:Naming conventions (capitalization) article does not cover it: it seems to me that it merely contains, in passing, what seems to be an assumption that all book title are capitalized.

Let me try and restate my problem. It seems to me that:

• Somewhere, maybe not here if you say so, the question of what gets capitalized in titles should made explicit.
• The current situation is unclear and that different approaches are being used in different users' own efforts to achieve consistency. I'd like to cite evidence of this, but not in here if it's the wrong place.
• It does sort of vaguely matter that we try to get things like this right, even though as you point out it is not akin to curing cancer or ending starvation worldwide.
• It may not just be a naming convention issue but also a use of sources issue, but I am not sure and need to discuss it with someone!
• If this is not the right place to discuss this then what is? I am quite happy to take the whole debate off somewhere else, try to explain my concern in more depth, and hope that people will join in, but I'd like to know where.
• Finally maybe this whole thing has already been discussed to death somewhere and a concensus reached. But where? By writing here I am demonstrating that at least one user - me - couldn't find the advice they needed.

Thanks, Nevilley 10:18 Mar 9, 2003 (UTC)

---

I think the preferred name for references that are external links should be "References" rather than "External Links". "External Links" should be used for pointing the user at other sources of information that were NOT used in formulating the article rather than actual references for the article. Reboot

I agree but all links are often thrown together into a ==References and external links== section which is usually consensed by copyeditors to just ==External links==. All references for the article should be listed under a ==References== section. The ==External links== section is really designed for further reading. So IMO articles that have a lot of online references, book references, online external links to further reading and print further reading entries should have this format:

References

Print references

• Print reference 1 (Anywhere; 9999), pages 0-1000 ISBN 123456789
• Print reference 2 (Anywhere; 9999), pages 0-1000 ISBN 123456789

Online references

• External reference 1 (http://weblink1.com)
• External reference 2 (http://weblink2.com)

Further reading

Print reading

• The uber guide to Axme 1 (Anywhere; 9999), pages 0-1000 ISBN 123456789
• The uber guide to Axme 2 (Anywhere; 9999), pages 0-1000 ISBN 123456789

Online reading

• External link 1 (http://weblink1.com)
• External link 2 (http://weblink1.com)

But I also see no reason not to continue supporting the much simpler ==External links==, ==References== and ==Further reading== sections in cases where there are not a large number of mixed entries like above. BTW I always put print references/further reading entries before online ones and references before both types of further reading in order to emphasize our content and how it was derived before giving readers the option of going someplace else. --mav 03:21 Mar 7, 2003 (UTC)

PS there is a related problem of mixed types; what if a reference is also a great entry for further reading? Do we list that entry twice? --mav

Too complicated. ==External links== for web links and ==Further reading== for hard copy books is clear and simple.Ortolan88

You are probably right. But what about references that happen to be external links? I guess we can mix the two no problem... ---mav 03:33 Mar 7, 2003 (UTC)

Since the Wikipedia is (presumably) intended for serious use (one day) (maybe), I think it's important that we cite references more often. Mixing them in with the external links and further reading just makes it unclear what the actual references are. People often remove links to webpages that they don't like the look of, not realising that they were used as sources of information in the article. To avoid this happening in future, it would be best if all references were marked clearly as such. -- Oliver P. 03:52 Mar 7, 2003 (UTC)

Both are guides to further reading. The distinction is "click right here to read it" versus "it's a book,track it down (or click on this handy ISBN)". It is pretty rare that either one is irrelevant to further research. Ortolan88

I agree about encouraging references and marking them correctly so that they are not removed. But I have come across a big problem that I know others are also faced with; for example, in the elements articles (see lithium) the links I have listed under ==External links== are both for further reading and were used as references. Should they be repeated in two different sections or just placed in a ==References== section? Also, if I did create a ==References== section then there are other things I should also list there as well (see talk:lithium) which would dilute the 'further reading' value of the two links that are now in the ==External links== section (the reason is that the other references have almost no information in them that is not already in the corresponding element article). Right now I have all the references on the talk page and that was OK for me for a while but I'm having second thoughts. Thoughts? --mav

If it is really important that a source has been used as a reference, then use the footnote form of external link. [2] (http://www.wikikpedia.org) If the content is very similar, or overlaps, then we are morally bound to include that as an explicitly called out external link so people can see our sources. Sometimes I put further information on the talk page to help future people working on the same article, but in the article proper all we need to do is put in the further references and external links that help our reader do better, either by giving actual further information or by making clear what our sources were. I don't think the really big bad bibliography is expected in an encyclopedia article. Ortolan88

But a simple wikiref wouldn't do because the entire table, most of the ==Isotopes== section along with some of the ==History== and ==Occurances== sections also used the listed external links as references. --mav

Header markup

Someone has changed the header advice (and markup of the style guide) to state there should be no space between a ==Headline== and the following text. Since virtually all wikipedia articles are marked up otherwise, since there was no discussion here of this change, and since it changes the appearance of the articles in an fundamental way, let's discuss it now.

Which looks better? Text starting immediately below the headline?

Or does this look better?

With a blank line between the headline and the text.

Note that almost all newspaper headlines, crossheads in books and magazine articles, and the like are set off by white space. I prefer the appearance of the blank line between the headline and the text. Ortolan88

Actually Rambot didn't have the space seen in example two so there are at least 35,000 articles in that format. When I copyedit I use the dominant style already in the article but when I create articles myself I usually tend to not have the extra space. This is especially important in the WikiProject Countries articles like the United States where you need to have a "Main article" link right before the the heading and in the WikiProject Elements articles where vertical space is minimized. But in regular articles its fine to have the trailing space. So I usually base my choice on whether or not to have the trailing space on the particular needs of the article. In other words IMO we should leave this up to a case-by-case decision. ---mav

I prefer the one with the blank line, and I have often changed articles to fit that pattern, even though I expect it probably annoys some people. Sometimes other people change them back, and I don't have the courage to revert the change because it might lead to an edit war! (Or possibly just because I'm too lazy.) It would be nice if the version with the blank line was made a MoS guideline, so I could get my own way. :) Oh - just read mav's reply. Erm, well, we could make it standard for new "regular" articles, anyway... -- Oliver P. 03:52 Mar 7, 2003 (UTC)

But what should the Manual of Style say? Ram-man changed a couple of fundamental things about the Rambot when asked. I suspect he would space the headers however we thought they should be spaced. He's always running over his articles with his amazing machine and could change them if needed. But the issue is what looks better and what should we recommend. I think the headers followed by a space always looks better, more professional, etc, regardless of the topic, or mode of authorship. It would actually be better if the ==Headers== had a space after them by style sheet design. It is kind of amateurish for us to be either putting the space in or taking it out. According to any design I know about, the style sheet would put the space in. Ortolan88

That is the way it used to be but it was changed specifically for the WikiProjects so that they would stop using ugly HTML hacks to accomplish the same effect of a header with no trailing white space. IMO the leading white space should also be removed from the style-sheet so that we can, if and when needed, have paragraphs with a minimal amount of white space between them. This isn't an issue in regular articles because headings are few and far between within them but WikiProject articles are highly structured with many headings so having the extra leading and trailing space made them look real bad - then the common usage of HTML hacks before the style sheet was changed. --mav PS - there is no need for nowiki tags for == heading == when it is in running text.

Thanks, I was tired of typing that. If articles and WikiProjects have different styles, then the answer is (ta-da!) different style sheets. Ortolan88

Hm. That is a whole different can of worms that requires us to come up with another wiki syntax. -= heading =- perhaps? --mav

Um, we already went to a great deal of trouble to ensure that headers wouldn't be followed by whitespace if they weren't followed by a blank line in the source text. Has this ceased to work on some browsers? (Okay on Mozilla 1.3b.) Is the crummy HTML trick employed by the parser not standard enough (in which case we could improve it behind the scenes)? I see no need for a new syntax. --Brion 04:46 Mar 7, 2003 (UTC)

I would prefer us to keep the current syntax and let the user decide if leading and trailing whitespace is needed. --mav 04:52 Mar 7, 2003 (UTC)

Published books and professionally printed publications in general usually use an area of white space, but not a full extra line. Typesetters no doubt have developed an exact guideline for this, but a decent rough rule of thumb is to add one half of a line extra space between a subheading and the body text. (Can we do this in HTML without horrible kludges to the stylesheet? I'd have to look that up. Brion would probably know off the top of his head.)

This is why headings that have a blank line after them look somehow wrong, and yet when you get rid of the blank line they still don't look quite right: without realising it, we are all used to seeing the less-than-one-extra-line, more-than-no-extra-line layout that the professionals use. The half-line sets the heading off from the body text nicely, and yet (because it's a fraction closer to the para below than it is to the para above) it still visibly "belongs" to its text. Tannin 06:38 Mar 7, 2003 (UTC)

I think you are on to something. This may make the pro-space and anti-space people both happy. --mav

OK, I looked it up. You can do it in HTML, and it's really easy. I've made up an example page HERE (http://www.redhill.net.au/wiki/headlinetest). See what you think. Tannin 10:30 Mar 7, 2003 (UTC)

The only times I've used the anti-space format are when adding a "main article" style link - and in that case I think it's right that the main article link is closely tied to the header, and the anti-space format is perfect. But for normal writing, I like Tannin's 1/3 space.

NB, in the case of headers immediately followed by bulleted lists, you always get a full space, regardless of whether you include a newline. Don't know if this is correct/desirable... Martin

You don't even need a hack: CSS supports "relative units":

• em: the 'font-size' of the relevant font
• ex: the 'x-height' of the relevant font

Just set the space after the heading to 0.5 em. I think it would be better if the heading-para space were always the same, irrespective of whitespace in wiki markup. -- Tarquin 11:09 Mar 7, 2003 (UTC) (hmm, no wait, that'll mean the font size of the heading.... in that case, it's the space-before of H*+P you want to set -- the upper margin of a paragraph which immediately follows a heading.)

American and British spelling US + British spelling No names, no packdrill, no article references but I am very disappointed at how quickly a debate about spelling can degenerate into the stirrings of a transatlantic flame war. It only requires a small level of silliness and a couple of provocative comments for people to lose their sense of perspective and start deploying stupid national stereotypes about "Brits" and "Yanks". I have seen various internet communities have a pretty good go at tearing themselves apart over this stuff and I would hate to see it happen here; I do most sincerely wish that people would check the Manual of Style's comments on spelling, and then take several deep breaths and have a coffee, tea or other beverage of choice before doing anything, when there is a spelling debate in the offing. I really strongly believe that these things can be very damaging and should be avoided at almost all costs. Jimbo pops up from time to time reminding us that peace, love, tolerance etc go a long way in a project like this, and this is a very very good example of an area in which he is right. Please please please check and abide by the MoS, and if you need to discuss it don't drag out the hoary old stereotypes. We try not to do it to other ethnic and national groups, so why on Earth would it be OK to do it about Americans or British people? Nevilley 07:35 Mar 12, 2003 (UTC)

Does anybody else keep thinking people are appealing to the "Mail on Sunday" as a spelling reference? Just me? Okay, never mind ;-) - Khendon