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Opinions Needed - Boldfacing Character Names in Non-List Article

I realize this isn't the appropriate place for this conversation, but I had an inquiry about boldfacing that no editors in the pertinent area have addressed yet. I would appreciate any opinions. Thanks! Doniago (talk) 16:18, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

The guideline at MOSFILM should be generalised. Simply put, bold should not be used as a matter of course to emphasis anything in prose except for the title in the lead sentence. The formatting of a list structure does more than enough to emphasise character names as it is. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) - talk 11:50, 11 July 2011 (UTC)
That was my understanding. Thank you! Doniago (talk) 19:39, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

Ambiguity in MOS:BOLD

MOS:BOLD#Other uses says "Use boldface in the remainder of the article only in a few special cases:", followed by a list. This is ambiguous: it could mean either "Use boldface in the remainder of the article only in the following special cases:" or "Use boldface in the remainder of the article only in a few special cases, such as:". Removal of this ambiguity would render some discussions of other special cases, such as are found here and in the archives, unnecessary.

The special case that interests me is the bolding of the topic of each item in an embedded list. The main MOS page does this several times, for example here, and I don't see why any part of the MOS would want to proscribe something that its authors themselves find useful. But I ubderstand from reading past threads here that some projects do proscribe it, and that some editors would like this generalised. I don't really care what the decision is, but it would be good to remove the ambiguity MOS-wide rather than project by project and issue by issue. --Stfg (talk) 11:15, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

There is no ambiguity, the list show those cases where it can be used; to include "such as" would certainly be introducing ambiguity.
I appreciate that you think there is a need to put boldface into child lists, but as I said on the embedded lists talk page, until MoS is changed to show "child lists" as an acceptable place to use boldface it should not be used there - hence my removing it. It has little to do with my edits being against consensus, as you have insinuated on the embedded lists talk page, but more with the fact that it is not included in the list of appropriate uses on the MoS page - editing in line with MoS would surely be unlikely to be seen as against established consensus?
There is also the matter of boldface being used on that page to highlight, as it is in the previous sections where boldface is used on both sides of normal prose and list, as you know boldface is not used within prose and so it can only be either a hang-over from a time when such use was acceptable, or is being used for emphasis.
It is certainly not useful to have boldface in the middle of prose, and I think it would be unwise to begin opening a floodgate to massive amounts of boldface being used all over pages where editors think something should be highlighted. Chaosdruid (talk) 16:24, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
I thought I had explained the ambiguity, and am not sure how to do so further. In the case of embedded lists, I thought I had also explained that, while I personally think one approach more consistent (with the MOS main page) than another, I don't really mind about it. If nobody objects to replacing "only in a few special cases" with "only in the following special cases", to make it clear that the list excludes all other cases, then that would reflect your position as I understand it, and would give the clarity I seek. How about it?
I am in full agreement with your last two paragraphs. --Stfg (talk) 19:42, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

Papal encyclicals

Do papal encyclicals take italics? Are they more like books (which do) or essays and papers (which don't), or is style established somewhere? I tend to think they do, but usage is mixed. To take random examples, they appear split: Ecclesiam Suam, Etsi Nos, Providentissimus Deus, Mirari Vos, Mysterium Fidei (encyclical), Dilectissima Nobis, Qui Pluribus. Should we add papal encyclical to either the do or don't list for consistency? Station1 (talk) 21:40, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

Colors and neutrality

I'm just wondering, should it be mentioned that the use of colors in an article should not be used in order to portray a certain point of view? ViperSnake151  Talk  14:52, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

What exactly do you mean by that? I don't think it's an issue for the Manual of Style. It is not a style issue so much as a neutrality issue. I would think it is already implicitly covered by NPOV. MsBatfish (talk) 08:51, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Italics for names of spacecraft

I've started a discussion here on whether italics should be used for names of spacecraft (cf/ those for ships), and if so whether this should be explicitly mentioned in the MoS - any input there would be appreciated. Thanks, Shimgray | talk | 21:07, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

"Scare quoted" words/phrases

I noticed two different passages concerning the use of "scare quotes" in the Manual of Style:

To me, reading the latter when one hasn't read the former would seem to imply that scare quotes are an acceptable use of quotation marks in articles. Which is it? Do we need more clarity? I know it's not exactly a direct contradiction, but it isn't clear and people reading the latter section could easily assume (as I did) that use of scare quotes is fine. Personally, I think that the use of scare quotes should be accepted in articles, when necessary. I have seen many articles where they are used and where I think their use is beneficial, for example to signify that the word or phrase does not have its usual, literal or conventional meaning, or is only applicable in that context.
So, what is our stance on scare quotes and can we change the wording in the MOS to reflect that more clearly? Thanks. -MsBatfish (talk) 08:45, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

The later statement is just defining the scope of the discussion. It doesn't take any stance on whether scare quotes are appropriate or not. As I understand it, scare quotes are acceptable, but discouraged. In other words, there are certain contexts in which their use is appropriate, but those contexts are few and far between. Scare quotes are one of those things (like flag icons) that tend to proliferate like the plague unless you explicitly discourage them. Kaldari (talk) 22:38, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Font Size

What is the standard font size of Wikipedia for normal text in the aricle?--76.31.238.174 (talk) 02:29, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

are titles of masses italicized?

Are titles of masses supposed to be italicized? Some articles italicize them, but others do not. This seems pretty inconsistent to me. --Ixfd64 (talk) 19:52, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

The titles should be in italics if they refer to the name of a mass, e.g. Verdi's Messa da Requiem, Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, but works like Mozart's Requiem or Bach's Mass in B minor are not. Can you give an example of the inconsistency you observed? -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 06:13, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
Missa brevis Sancti Joannis de Deo by Franz Haydn would be one example. Most articles that link to it do not have it italicized. --Ixfd64 (talk) 17:56, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
That article title is not italicised and I think correctly so. Its title is more in the category of Mass in B minor than Missa Solemnis. It's different when this Haydn mass is called Little Organ Mass or when referring to his Missa in tempore belli or Missa in angustiis (where the article title is erroneously capitalised).
PS: I think the word "mass" should not be capitalised, as it is in this section's header and its 1st sentence. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 05:00, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
Yeah, I agree that it probably shouldn't be capitalized. If nobody minds, I'm going to change all instances of the word to lowercase in mass (music). --Ixfd64 (talk) 01:11, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Italicization of English as if it were a foreign language

FYI
 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Template talk:Lang-en#Remove italicization from Template:Lang-en may be of interest, for its connection to MOS:ITALICS. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 12:41, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Proposal to require no-diacritics names

You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tennis/Tennis names#RfC: Can a wikiproject require no-diacritics names, based on an organisation's rule or commonness in English press?. This has also been raised at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (people)#See Talk:Sasa Tuksar. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 18:35, 19 March 2012 (UTC) — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 18:35, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

More opinions required

Can you all have a look at Template_talk:University_of_Pittsburgh#Removed_colours . Thanks Gnevin (talk) 08:40, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

Bold airport codes

Does {{Airport codes}} follow MOS:BOLD#Boldface? For example, for Glasgow International Airport we get (IATA: GLA, ICAO: EGPF) Perhaps the answer is "yes" because that template is designed for use in an airport article's lead sentence? 67.101.5.138 (talk) 01:19, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

All websites in italics?

This edit suggests that the names of all websites ought to be in italics. I can't see why e.g. twitter.com should be italicised. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 08:34, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

University of Chicago Press (2010). The Chicago manual of style, p.753. ISBN 9780226104201. suggests blog titles should be italicized. One source suggests websites should be italicized when being referenced: Hudson, Robert (2010). The Christian Writer's Manual of Style, p.279. ISBN 9780310861362. in a manner compatible with the Modern Language Association and the Chicago Manual of Style. Hyacinth (talk) 08:59, 19 March 2012 (UTC)
They should be italicized as works like any other work. Being online doesn't make them magically special. Our own {{Cite web}} does so: McNutt, Harry (2012). "Some Article". Example.com. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |url= (help). Where a discrete work title is discernible (e.g. in the banner or the HTML <title>...</title>), use that instead of or as a subtitle for the site name. See, e.g., {{AzB player}}. This is especially important when Web server at a domain name and website in the conceptual sense are not the same thing (many sites like eBay consist of multiple third-level domain name servers, while various others, especially colleges and universities, host numerous discrete publications and databases and sites on the same server. Anyway, not italicizing here is basically a matter of conventional laziness, like failure to italicize video game names and software releases (Mass Effect, Microsoft Office 2011). The title of an electronic publication is still the title of a publication. I'm not sure why so many people's brains seem to short circuit on this, though my first guess would be because our keyboards don't have an "ITAL" key that puts stuff in italics, so over the last several decades we've simply gotten used to non-italicized titles of online stuff when we're writing online. That doesn't mean that more formal style is inapplicable in formal writing, as in an encyclopedia.
When referring to an site as a service or company ("She tried to make a living selling ACEOs on eBay", "they met on Facebook", "Bezos founded Amazon.com Inc."), many prefer not to italicize, and perhaps this should be tolerated in the guidelines. An offline equivalent analogue is "Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.", which is not italicized even in part despite obviously containing the name of a work that, as a work, would always be italicized.
But a site's title should always be italicized when the site is being mentioned as a publication, source (formally or informally), or overall work containing sub-works (by analogy to a newspaper containing articles): "Salon.com and boingboing.net are two of the longer-running e-magazines", "listing prices on eBay for pristine copies have reached over US$10,000" [eBay is being used informally as the source of a figure; contrast this with the "selling on eBay" service reference above], "CREWE is a Facebook-based forum and multi-party blog of sorts, critical of Wikipedia's handling of PR professionals" [Facebook is a larger work containing a smaller one]. Databases are generally treated as publications and italicized in all modern style guides like Chicago, MLA, etc. And virtually all sites these days are databases, even when they don't look like it.
Side note: One can refer to software more generically than discrete, published titles: "Microsoft Windows [note no italics] has become a more stable operating system with the release of Windows 7 [note italics]". Our articles on software, including games, are wildly inconsistent on this, so MOS should address this. With the development of Web applications, the distinction between website and software is increasingly blurred, too. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 17:16, 19 March 2012 (UTC)
Other discussions about using italics for web sites:
I thought I should point out that this text formatting MOS page says the creative-works-in-italics rule does not apply to names of software (other than games). Vadmium (talk, contribs) 02:28, 20 March 2012 (UTC).
Thank you very much for those links. None of those discussions seems to have concluded that the use of italics for all websites is appropriate (why should macdonalds.com be italicised?). As to the purported behaviour of {{Cite web}}: the shown output only renders italics because the parameter |work= was chosen; it would not be in italics with |publisher= which I think is more fitting. As for the term "works": not all works are italicised, e.g short stories, songs, TV episodes are not. I think the current instructions about the italicisation of website names are consistent with previous discussions. If the proposed wording gets adopted, it will have to be implementd at {{Infobox website}}, which will have wide-ranging effect, not the least of which is the article Wikipedia – popcorn time. As to sources: they are irrelevant for Wikipedia style issues; they are ambiguous and contradictory (UCP does not use italics for their own blogs), so Wikipedia sets its own style guides based on encyclopedic principles. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 03:49, 20 March 2012 (UTC)
I'm very much against italicizing the names of web sites except (sometimes and optionally) when they replicate the contents of something else that would also be italicized in its native language, e.g. an encyclopedia, dictionary, newspaper or magazine. Sometimes it's better to keep the .com or .org at the end of an unitalicized website to distinguish it from an italicized analogue (often a printed one), e.g. Fortune.com contrasted with the magazine Fortune. By analogy, an argument could be made that sites that act like printed sources, but in fact have no printed form, such as Slate, Salon and Politico, could reasonably be italicized. The printed and digital Yahoo! Style Guide, composed specifically as a guide for Internet usage, as opposed to print usage, also disfavors italicizing web sites. See Website Names and Addresses But there were a significant number of arguments made in good faith the other way in earlier discussions. —— Shakescene (talk) 08:58, 10 June 2012 (UTC)

Italicize named exhibitions?

The MOS currently recommends italicizing the names of "Art exhibitions". Should this be generalized to named special exhibitions of types such as historical, scientific, educational, cultural, literary, and such? Examples would include:

  • The World of Franklin and Jefferson
  • A Computer Perspective: Background to the Computer Age
  • Earthquake: Life on a Dynamic Planet
  • Traveling the Silk Road: Ancient Pathway to the Modern World
  • Sydney Elders
  • The Raven in the Frog Pond: Edgar Allan Poe and the City of Boston

It's not easy to pigeonhole some of these examples into a single category, which illustrates the point that trying to restrict italicization only to art exhibitions is somewhat artificial and arbitrary, especially since most of these exhibitions have an artistic and esthetic content as well.

No special treatment would be given to unnamed or generic exhibits, such as "A high school exhibit on dental care which was opened with a special reception on Friday", only specifically named or titled exhibitions.

Note that this style already seems to be used widely in Wikipedia, but not consistently, due to lack of clear guidance in MOS. Apologies if this has already been discussed here; I don't know how to search the Archived discussions effectively. --Reify-tech (talk) 03:21, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

This seems an entirely logical extrapolation of the current guideline. The suggestion to extend it to "named special exhibitions" seems sensible. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 04:12, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

E.g. or e.g.,

User:Noetica has removed commas from instances of "e.g.," in the MOS. He considers these commas to be inessential and says that they lack justification. He bases their removal on the fact that the MOS contains some instances of "e.g." and "i.e." in which the comma has not been added. And so, to achieve a "simple and consistent style" he thinks that such commas ought to be removed from wherever they appear.

I have tried to restore these commas, but Noetica has reverted my edits.

Noetica has scorned my citation of Garner's Modern American Usage (3rd edition) as a mere external guide, and says that such guides disagree among themselves. If he or anyone else knows of a style guide that recommends the omission of these commas, I should be glad to hear of it.

The fact of the matter is that the absence of these commas in various places in the MOS and elsewhere is a simple mistake or oversight, and they should be restored as soon as possible. "E.g." and "i.e." are parenthetic expressions and must always be enclosed in commas. I'll quote from Strunk and White's The Elements of Style (4th edition), section I, 3, which is titled "Enclose parenthetic expressions between commas."

"The abbreviations etc., i.e., and e.g. ... are parenthetic and should be punctuated accordingly.

           Letters, packages, etc., should go here."

Interested editors should comment on the dispute here. Wahrmund (talk) 19:35, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

CMOS agrees with you. New Hart's Rules (2005) agrees with Noetica: "To avoid double punctuation, do not use a comma after i.e. and e.g." The other two guides I have handy say to avoid such Latin abbrevs when possible; they give no rules or examples bearing on the comma. The rest of my guides are at work, so maybe I'll look tomorrow. Dicklyon (talk) 21:05, 5 August 2012 (UTC)
Why stop with just these two? List of Latin abbreviations, which see. Perhaps there is a need for a MOS guideline that clearly states how Latin terms are to be used—if one doesn't already exist...
—Trappist the monk (talk) 21:56, 5 August 2012 (UTC)
These are the two that get used a lot and that lead to the double-punctuation controversy. In general, the less we use Latin abbrevs the more accessible the text will be; and the less we say about exactly how to use them, the less we'll have to fight about it. Dicklyon (talk) 22:18, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

Wahrmund, thank you for raising the matter in talk as I had suggested; and thank you for alerting me at my own talkpage. Now, we used to have guidance on punctuation following "e.g." and "i.e.", but it was summarily and unilaterally reversed by admin User:JHunterJ, and a dispute ensued. See history of WP:ABBR, 8 June 2012 – present. I have removed any trace of such recommendations until there is a properly conducted discussion of the matter, with respect and wide consultation on all sides.
Wahrmund, I caution you and everyone else concerned to be scrupulous in avoiding misrepresentations, just as you have so far avoided incivility. I do not "scorn" external guides: I collect them and read them as part of a sustained program of research.
I remind participants that all MOS talkpages are under an ArbCom order enabling discretionary sanctions against users, for behavioural or procedural lapses.
I propose that no further discussion be conducted here on this style issue. It belongs at this section of the talkpage for WP:ABBR. I will take part there when order is duly restored; alternatively, I will come there and propose a better location for the discussion.
☺
NoeticaTea? 04:56, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

Noetica, I have reverted several of your recent edits. Please do not attempt to bias the discussion regarding commas following "e.g." and "i.e." by removing the trailing commas wherever you may find them within the MOS. There is no consensus on point, and your removal of them throughout the MOS, consistent with your personal preferences, is contrary to your own repeated admonitions to other editors not to implement MOS changes without prior talk page discussion and consensus. Thank you. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 00:50, 7 August 2012 (UTC)
And I've reverted back to the July 27 and earlier long-standing status quo on this one. On MOS:NUM, it's very mixed but has increased from 45 in June to 49 with commas more recently and with your latest edit, out of 74 or so. Noetica was moving toward consistency, within and between MOS pages, which seems like a good thing. I check a few more guides today; two said nothing at all about commas in their discussion of i.e. and e.g. and gave no relevant examples, and one said use the comma when using them in a parenthetical, and don't use them otherwise. But I don't have many Briish guides, and I'm perfectly happy if we decide to dispense with the obnoxious "double punctuation" like they do. Dicklyon (talk) 01:07, 7 August 2012 (UTC)
Never mind, I see it was 2 and 2 on July 27. Still, this sucks. Dicklyon (talk) 01:11, 7 August 2012 (UTC)
Actually, 1 of those 4 is not relevant; it was 2 without and 1 with comma, since this diff of July 27, 2011 (I was off by a year). So it should go back to without to be consistent with how it started. But I don't want to be accused of revert warring the dirt lawyer, so I'll let someone else fix it. Dicklyon (talk) 01:39, 7 August 2012 (UTC)
Restored to last stable version; please discuss per WP:BRD.
Allow me to note here that several edits have referred to "ie" and "eg" as Latin abbreviations. To be sure, at one time they were Latin abbreviations for id est and exempli gratia, and as a foreign language required italics, or on a manual typewriter, underlining. But not now. They are now considered to have entered the English language. I have been unable to find even one style guide that still recommends italics or underlining, although it is recommended for foreign words.
There will always be some who cling to a hundred-year-old writing essay given to them in high school, or some arbitrarily chosen style guide meant for dead-tree formats, but English does move forward in spite of anything we may do. MOS should reflect both best practice and current practice. And electronic media practice.
There is one trend current in the U.S. to try to get rid of "ie" and "eg" altogether and replace them with phrases, eg "such as", "that is", "in other words", or "for example". Ironically, discussions advocating such usage make liberal use of the "ie" and "eg" forms, their spontaneous production of the language in blissful ignorance of the very usage they are trying to dictate.
Another trend, mostly in New Zealand and Australia, does away with "points" (or is it "full points"?) altogether (this must mean "periods"). Again, this form typically appears in ad hoc language and style discussions. But it does appear very prominently and formally here [1], in the Australian Broadcasting Corporation online style guide.
Neotarf (talk) 11:06, 7 August 2012 (UTC)
I apologize, Neotarf, but I have reverted your reinstatment of Noetica's July attempt to impose "consistent" usage by removing the trailing commas with "e.g." and "i.e." on this page. There is no consensus for or against such trailing comments. As others have been quick to demand over the past year, please do not make changes to MOS pages without discussing them first on the talk page and gaining a consensus for such changes . . . and, please, let's be consistent in how we apply that principle. Moreover, this is not the proper page for a discussion of this usage, where it is merely incidental to the page's primary subject material; please take to the proper venue, the talk page for WP:ABBR. Thanks. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 14:38, 7 August 2012 (UTC)
If you were serious about "don't make changes" you would not have put back the commas, 2/3 of which are new and started this argument on July 27, and other is somewhat new, too, as I pointed out just above. I've reverted you. You've had your 3; please stop now. Dicklyon (talk) 14:42, 7 August 2012 (UTC)
Dick, the edit history is confused beyond recognition. It was not and is not my intention to force my preferred outcome without discussion. If you are serious about not making changes without prior discussion and consensus, I respectfully ask that you restore the last inconsistent version before the July round of imposed "consistency" edits were made. I am hopeful that you will honor the rationale that you and others have so often cited in your own edit summaries. To do otherwise would be, well, rather inconsistent. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 15:04, 7 August 2012 (UTC)
If someone (not you) decides that the inconsistent recent version of July this year would be more appropriate for now, I will not argue. Dicklyon (talk) 16:05, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

List of Valencian monarchs

The List of Valencian monarchs has

and many other entries in the list with bold text. Should the dates and names of these monarchs be in bold, or not? I think not, but I would welcome a more expert opinion. --DThomsen8 (talk) 21:56, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

In the Category:Lists of monarchs, the only list I can find in a format like that of the Valencian monarchs is the List of monarchs of Finland, and that does not have bold text for the dates and names. There is an incredible variety of list formats, some in tables, some not. --DThomsen8 (talk) 22:07, 16 August 2012 (UTC)
The article dates are now unlinked, so I changed this section to conform to the current article.--DThomsen8 (talk) 23:42, 16 August 2012 (UTC)
Another editor removed all the emphasis. --DThomsen8 (talk) 01:28, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

'Wikipedia' is not in italics

There is a discussion at Talk:Wikipedia#Italic title referencing this guideline. The last paragraph of Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Text formatting#Italic face should be updated to reflect the non-italic status of Wikipedia, Citizendium, Conservapedia, Nupedia, and probably others, within the project and uniformly across reliable and scholarly sources. I am also unable to find any third-party references to Scholarpedia which uses italics, so I think that's wrong. 71.212.250.193 (talk) 00:46, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

MOS-violating emboldening removed: Template for Subscription required

I removed the MOS-violating emboldening from the template

(subscription required),

which looked like this

(subscription required).

Sincerely, Kiefer.Wolfowitz 22:10, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Use of italics for e.g. "(see below)" and so on

on this I seek enlightenmen, O Master of MOS

O Masters of MOS, again I summon thee, and this time notice I put the topic in the section heading so on one need change it this time. Please opine on the correct formatting (including whether and how to italicize) of the italicized text below. I can't find anything in MOS already on these points.

1. though he resigned within one year (see below) he was nonethless reelected.
2. [or should the above be] (see below)
3. in an early photo (see head of article) he appeared naked.
4. [an image caption] Smith holding his widget. click to enlarge

Also, are section-to-section links as seen in (1) even appropriate? EEng (talk) 04:22, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

Ðou haſt miſuſed ðe pronoun; "ðee" is ſingular. "Click to enlarge" definitely should not be used at all; one should be definitely wary of WP:SELF when making such links. And "below" is not a good link description either. As for italics, I think they are not usually used when linking to other articles, so I wouldn't use them in section links either. Personally, I think mid-sentence links in parentheses are a bit distracting, and adding italics distracts even more. But I do not object to intra-article links in general. Keφr (talk) 06:31, 25 August 2012 (UTC)
  • Thankest thouest forest theeest adviceest onest useest ofest thee, thou, thine, and thow on. I appreciate your thoughts, which at least make sense unlike some (see below).
  • I share your dislike of eastereggs -- in general link text should give a clear idea of where you'll be going if you click. However, once we decide to have a See below, then surely a See below behind which is a link taking you to the section containing the referenced material is preferable to just saying See below and leaving the reader find the material on his own -- so in this case it seems to me [[#sectionanchor|(see below)]] makes sense (still leaving aside the question of italics vs roman etc.).
  • Templates such as {{main}}, {{see also}} etc. are rendered in italics so why not use italics here?
  • I was hoping you'd point me to something I'd missed somewhere in MOS, though it looks like you don't know where MOS touches on this either, correct?
EEng (talk) 08:23, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

"See below" and other orders to the reader violate WP:MOS for encyclopedia tone, NOT a textbook, etc. It is better to reword a "see below for ..." as "... is described below".
Please avoid such long headers for sections, which make it difficult to read the substance of comments, especially for readers with poor vision or bad computers. Kiefer.Wolfowitz 11:10, 25 August 2012 (UTC)
How is See below for... less of an "order" than is See...? If protecting the reader's fragile sense of autonomy is indeed an issue, wouldn't See, if you care to and feel it's worth your time in your personal judgement according to your goals in visiting this article in the first place, below for... be better? Should we not use the {{see also}} template because it's an "order to the reader"? What does any of this have to do with not being a textbook? How did you think this would be a useful comment?
EEng (talk) 08:23, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

Using boldface in annotated list items?

User:Stfg touched on this last year but there wasn't much discussion. I couldn't find any other previous discussion on the issue.

The only use of boldface in lists currently allowed by WP:MOSBOLD is in definition lists (aka glossaries). However, I think boldfaced items would also be useful for annotated lists, especially those which contain a substantial description of each item. Having the item in bold would visually aid the reader in identifying what the item is, clearly separating it from the annotation. For example, compare these two possibilities from List of Thai royal residences:

I know the red link is even uglier in bold, but I think the benefit outweighs this aesthetic failing. Since parts of the annotations are linked, and not all the item subjects are, the blue appearance of links cannot be relied on to help the reader visually identify each subject the way they do in disambiguation pages. Use of boldface in this matter isn't much different from in definition lists, so I'm not seeing obvious reasons not to allow it. --Paul_012 (talk) 16:33, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

The use of bold font with bullet points is double emphasis. One or the other, not both. I think that your example is a definition list so bold font is acceptable—but lose the bullets (they're overused in Wikipedia anyway).
—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:37, 13 September 2012 (UTC)
I just saw that Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lists mentions "Description (definition, association) lists", which my example does indeed seem to fall into. Perhaps we should update the wording on this page to reflect that then.

Beatles RfC

You are invited to participate in an RfC at Wikipedia talk:Requests for mediation/The Beatles on the issue of capitalising the definite article when mentioning that band's name in running prose. This long-standing dispute is the subject of an open mediation case and we are requesting your help with determining the current community consensus. Thank you for your time. For the mediators. ~ GabeMc (talk|contribs) 21:36, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Book series style

Which style should be used for the name of a series of books? Clearly an individual book in the series should be in italics as stated, but it's not clear whether the title of a series should also be in italics or plain (or something else). There's not a lot of consistency - for example The Forsyte Saga mostly uses italics, while Aubrey–Maturin series uses unformatted text. --David Edgar (talk) 11:28, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

I too, have had this question.
My simpleminded gut reaction is that a series of books should be treated much like a class of ships. In ship classes, the class name is italicized when the class is named for a member of the class: the Valiant-class tugboat of tugboats gets its name from the tugboat USS Valiant (YT-802). All other class names are unadorned. Following this simple reasoning, neither The Forsyte Saga nor Aubrey–Maturin series article titles should be italicized. There are book-series articles in Wikipedia that are named for a book in the series – I've seen them, but at the moment, I can't think of any.
–Trappist the monk (talk) 13:51, 7 October 2012 (UTC)
I suppose one such example would be the Foundation series, named after Foundation.
This is certainly a possible solution, but I'm not sure it answers the question raised by works such as In Search of Lost Time or The Lord of the Rings, both of which are commonly regarded as novels themselves, even though their component volumes could also be viewed (and are sometimes published) as individual works. --David Edgar (talk) 16:32, 8 October 2012 (UTC)
There is a difference between a series of books and a multi-volume novel.
I guess I don't see the problem with In Search of Lost Time or The Lord of the Rings – both are very long novels published in multiple volumes. In these examples, each volume may be printed as a separate physical book and given a distinct name. My copy of another rather long book, Les Misérables, was published as two physical books but these were not given distinct names except to identify which volumes (I–III and IV–V) each book contained.
As I understand it, Wikipedia styling is to a large extent guided by styling in the real world. How does the real world deal with this issue? If it's like other style issues, there is some general consensus but always outlying differences of opinion so the answer to that question may be of no help.
It occurs to me that this place might not be the proper location for the discussion of this question. Ultimately, the question is about book series titles. Shouldn't this conversation be moved to the WP:MOSTITLE talk page? In the far dim past, there was a brief and inconclusive discussion in Archive #1. There doesn't seem to be much help there.
If that trend continues, which looks likely given the limited participation in this conversation, perhaps you and/or I should simply craft a new guideline, add it to MOS:TITLE, and see what happens then. Someone who is bold and does that almost always gets a reaction from those who could not be bothered to join the conversation before the change was made.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:09, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

Underline

The <u>...</u> element was reintroduced in HTML5, and redefined: "represents a span of text offset from its surrounding content without conveying any extra emphasis or importance, and for which the conventional typographic presentation is underlining; for example, a span of text in Chinese that is a proper name (a Chinese proper name mark), or span of text that is known to be misspelled."

The only guideline for underlines is currently at MOS:BADEMPHASIS, which basically state not to use if for emphasis. Should we take another look at this? --— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 18:40, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

I don't see any contradiction there. BADEMPHASIS says "don't underline things", not "don't use <u>...</u> tags". Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 13:36, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
I meant, there is no other guidance on underline. --— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 02:01, 4 January 2013 (UTC)
Well, <u>...</u> isn't supposed to be used simply to stick lines under things if I'm following things correctly, so there's no contradiction there. The guideline is still "don't underline things": I suppose a corollary could be added to the effect that "the <u>...</u> element can be used to note that text should be offset, as underlining would be used in a book, but don't expect for the text to actually be underlined in user agents"? Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 12:09, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Novelette

Hello,

you should note that short fiction and novelettes should be put in quotes. Regards.--Tomcat (7) 13:47, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

RfC at Talk:Wikipedia

There is an Rfc at Talk:Wikipedia#RfC: Wikipedia in italics? that may interest you. Please come and read the summary, then include your !vote if you would like to do so. Thank you in advance for your consideration. – PAINE ELLSWORTH CLIMAX! 18:36, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia

I know this has probably been discussed before, but it's come up again, and CCC and all that. What are your opinions on italicisation of "Wikipedia"? drewmunn talk 11:42, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

(For the history of the MOS issues associated with the italicization of online encyclopedias, I've laid out a history at the Wikipedia talk page section linked above.)--Bbb23 (talk) 13:18, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
  • Support. Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia that italicizes the names of other online/book encyclopedias. It might not only go counter to this guideline not to italicize Wikipedia, it may also go against the NPOV policy, in that non-italicization lends undue weight – it sets Wikipedia apart from other encyclopedias and makes it seem like we, as Wikipedians, feel that all other reference works are on a different level from Wikipedia. Personally, that's exactly how I feel; however, what any of us feel does not necessarily lead to unbiased treatment of article titles. The title of the Wikipedia article should be italicized in accordance with this Manual of Style. – PAINE ELLSWORTH CLIMAX! 14:10, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose. I don't really understand why but it does not appear that "Wikipedia" is commonly italicized throughout the Internet. It's very easy to confirm this by Googling. So, the best course of action seems to me to just note "Wikipedia" and some other online encyclopedias such as "Citizendium" are exceptions to the "italic title" rules. -- Taku (talk) 20:21, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
    (edit conflict) Strongly oppose: An exception should not be made for Wikipedia unless there is a very good reason to do so. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and its title should be italicized in the same manner as Britannica, Americana or any other major reference work. – PAINE ELLSWORTH CLIMAX! 22:27, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
  • Support italicization where the reference is to the encyclopaedia per se—as a publication that happens to use the Internet, rather than ink on paper, for a medium. Oppose italicization for the project or community in its character as an organization, and in ambiguous cases where both referents are equally applicable. (I suppose the organization proper is actually the WMF, of which en.WP and the other communities are divisions or organs, but “Wikipedia” is commonly used in a kind of metonymy.)—Odysseus1479 (talk) 22:23, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose – The thought has actually never crossed my mind. Ditto for Encarta. The printed Wikipedia 1.0, Encarta Africana or Encarta Dictionary are other matters entirely, especially when compared to an (unitalicized) on-line analogue. The Eiffel Tower, the Library of Congress, the Swiss Guard and the City of London (when in English and not a ship or aircraft) exist perfectly well without italics or quotation marks; so do Wikipedia, Snopes.com, Polling Report.com, the BBC and the Internet Movie Data Base. A slightly more difficult choice (for me) is presented by Dave Leip's Atlas of United States Presidential Elections, which is a web site and not a book of maps. Also, should one treat the venerable Statistical Abstract of the United States differently for its printed and on-line versions? —— Shakescene (talk) 13:50, 11 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Strongest possible oppose - We need to make clear that italics should not be used. Wikipedia is primarily a project not an encyclopedia you can buy.Teapeat (talk) 18:55, 17 May 2013 (UTC)
    Your "strongest possible oppose" will carry no more weight than an "oppose" !vote, Teapeat. It's your rationale that carries weight, and your rationale, that Wikipedia is "primarily a project not an encyclopedia you can buy" is more than just a little faulty. If you have an argument that gives good reason to ignore the policy and the guideline, to ignore the many discussions that have led to community consensus, then let's hear it. – PAINE ELLSWORTH CLIMAX! 20:19, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

Should website names be italicized?

According to the CMOS (16th edition, pp.752–753 14.244–5): "Titles of websites are generally set in Roman without quotation marks and capitalized headline-style ... Specific titles of blogs—which are analogous to periodicals—should be set in italics". Headline-style would not be italicized, so why does the current MOS state:

"Website titles may or may not be italicized depending on the type of site and what kind of content it features. Online magazines, newspapers, and news sites with original content should generally be italicized (Salon.com or The Huffington Post). Online encyclopedias and dictionaries should also be italicized (Scholarpedia or Merriam-Webster Online). Other types of websites should be decided on a case-by-case basis." (emphasis added)

Any thoughts? GabeMc (talk|contribs) 23:38, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

  • A reminder: while the Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS) may serve as a good cultural reference as to norms observed in portions of society at large and may be well worth considering when establishing Wikipedia guidelines it is not inherently authoritative here. Wikipedia (the community) is free to establish it's own guidelines and is in no way categorically bound by the existing conventions of the University of Chicago Press. --Kevjonesin (talk) 16:04, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Comment. The general rule is that the names of publications, such as books, journals, magazines, newspapers, and encyclopedias should be italicized; publications of short length, such as articles within a journal, magazine, newspaper or encyclopedia, short stories, and pamphlets should be set off with quote marks. The typographical issue here is what to do with the names of websites, if anything. I would suggest that if the website is the online analog of a hard-copy publication, such as a book, journal, magazine, newspaper, or encyclopedia, then it should be italicized; if the website is not the online analog of a hard-copy publication, then no typographical device should be used. In the latter case, it is just a proper name, and should be capitalized as such. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 01:58, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

What about cites to Allmusic.com? GabeMc (talk|contribs) 02:01, 11 May 2013 (UTC)
Gabe, I had never heard of Allmusic.com before you cited it above. It appears to be an eclectic website touching on many different aspects of music, but does not appear to be an online analog to any of the usual kinds of hard-copy publications. If it were up to me, I would suggest that Allmusic.com should be capitalized in citations and leave it at that. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 02:05, 11 May 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for weighing-in DL1, and I tend to agree, but there appears to be a compelling argument that the website is an online encyclopedia, which per WP:ITALICS, should be set in italics, though if you look at the RfC referenced in the above thread, its strange that the community does not seem to support the italicization of "Wikipedia". Any thoughts? GabeMc (talk|contribs) 02:09, 11 May 2013 (UTC)
That discussion doesn’t necessarily address the general case, because quite a lot of it concerns whether the article Wikipedia is (or should be) about Wikipedia the encyclopedia and website or Wikipedia the organization and community. The discussion on this page, however, next above the section you mention, is not specific to the article.—Odysseus1479 (talk) 22:02, 11 May 2013 (UTC)
I would personally use italics for Allmusic under the current guideline; its scope and notability would justify it for me. (And there are some books with a similar aim, though naturally on a smaller scale.) --xensyriaT 20:36, 13 May 2013 (UTC)
  • New media/digital media blur the lines once held by traditional media. What causes me the most headaches is drawing the distinction between newspapers and news websites. I would tend to treat Allmusic and Wikipedia as reference works, and capitalise and italicise it too. -- Ohconfucius ping / poke 04:54, 11 May 2013 (UTC)
  • OC makes an excellent point about the blurred lines of the electronic "new media"; it can make it damn difficult to decide when to use italics or not regarding a particular eclectic website. I think the MOS should define a general rule, but should avoid specifying individual websites to be italicized. That should be left to the good sense interpretation of a well-written guideline of general application.
Whether we should italicize "Wikipedia" does raise interesting questions of stylistic consistency, Gabe. Is there any doubt that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia? I think not. The question arises, however, in what context would you italicize the name "Wikipedia?" As far as I know, Wikipedia is not considered a reliable source for purposes of citations and footnotes within Wikipedia articles, and should never be used in that capacity -- thus italicization in citations is a non-issue. Furthermore, just as newspapers don't italicize their names on their own mastheads, and magazine names and book titles are not italicized on their own covers, I see no reason why "Wikipedia" should be italicized on the Wikipedia main page, display sidebars, etc. What remains, then, are references to Wikipedia in Wikipedia articles about Wikipedia. To be consistent, I would think we should italicize "Wikipedia" in that context. I am, however, curious to hear the well-considered opinions of other editors on point. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 14:45, 11 May 2013 (UTC)
FWIW, we italicize Encyclopædia Britannica in the article title. GabeMc (talk|contribs) 21:08, 11 May 2013 (UTC)
  • I can see the argument for keeping the Wikipedia an exception, and I suppose there are times when it wouldn't be appropriate (e.g. when talking about the movement/organisation/community mentioned above), but wouldn't be fussed either way on that point tbh. I would support a guideline though, saying that, in general, website titles should be italic, which to my mind makes sense with subpages, posts, articles etc. having quotation marks; exceptions per individual discretion, especially when there's no title as such, just a web address (the dot com sort of gives away that it's a website), or the site is very small (e.g. just one page). That said, my reading of the current wording almost makes me think that sites must be justified as big/important/notable enough to merit it (which I'd say was inconsistent): from what I've noticed on the Wikipedia there seems to be no consensus in practice. --xensyriaT 20:29, 13 May 2013 (UTC)
I don’t think the size or importance of the website should have any bearing on how its name is styled: printed pamphlets and chapbooks are treated the same as ‘full-sized’ books for the purpose, and likewise the size & importance of the publisher is irrelevant.—Odysseus1479 (talk) 22:43, 13 May 2013 (UTC)
Exactly so, I agree, except that in certain cases a website might be best considered a short work, for example if it consisted of a single page. Even then, if the author intended to keep the distinction between the site as a whole and that one page (almost like an anthology with a single poem), then the website title should still be in italics. If no such convention was preserved I would probably classify it as a short work, and use quotation marks rather than italics; for this reason (and there will be other examples) I think the editor's discretion in the matter should be kept. --xensyriaT 11:46, 22 May 2013 (UTC)
  • I support the italicization of web site names, but not the web address (or URL). For example, with allmusic.com, I would not support italics, but I would support italics for the AllMusic website name. I would support italics for Wikipedia (the encyclopedia), but would not support italics when referring to the Wikimedia Foundation or the Wikipedia community. In the first case, the subject is a nonprofit organization, rather than a publication. In the second case, the subject is a group of people working toward a common goal, rather than a publication. While the Wikipedia community's goal is focused on advocacy for open source information and publication of a free-content encyclopedia, the Wikipedia community, as the subject, is not a publication itself. Cindy(talk) 12:55, 14 May 2013 (UTC)
    • I would also oppose italicising what are effectively domain names: italics for 'Salon (website)' are fine while 'Salon.com' is not; likewise OK for 'The Guardian' but not for 'guardian.co.uk'. But there are still grey areas. I tend see 'BBC News' in reference to the entire news apparatus (that includes the TV channel) and not the publication/website so I would put it in |publisher=BBC News and thus avoid italicising. On the other side, we have 'National Geographic', which I grew up with as a magazine and I'm happier with italcising it even though it's now an organisation probably much like BBC News. So I feel really weirdly inconsistent about it all. -- Ohc ¡digame!¿que pasa? 15:06, 16 May 2013 (UTC)
If you go to allmusic.com, guardian.co.uk, or Salon.com the titles you’ll see displayed have none of the ‘Webby’ bits on them (ignoring the typography, AllMusic, The Guardian, and Salon respectively), so I don‘t see why we should be referring to them by partial URLs at all. If the instance in an article is intended as a link, it should be a proper one, with the protocol and server prefixes, and if it’s a mention it should be the site’s actual name. If it’s in a quotation it should be as in the source, modulo style conventions.—Odysseus1479 01:54, 22 May 2013 (UTC)
  • I note that the ongoing RfC at Talk:Wikipedia seems to be producing a strong consensus against italicizing "Wikipedia". This may be partly because that article is considered to be about the community or organization rather than the work itself; however, there seems to be quite strong opinion against italicizing it whatever the context. For one thing, nobody in the real world seems to italicize it; and for another, for us to start doing it might appear to be over-dignifying our product. For all its marvels, Wikipedia is not really a published work - it's at best a work in progress (and will always be so). Victor Yus (talk) 10:26, 16 May 2013 (UTC)
I disagree; I’d rather say new editions are published every second. Most periodicals are never ‘finished’ either, but that doesn’t disqualify what they’ve published ‘so far’.—Odysseus1479 02:18, 22 May 2013 (UTC)
  • I rather like the existing "Other types of websites should be decided on a case-by-case basis" clause as it allows room for one to consider whether italicizing or not would contribute to readability for an 'average user' at a given point in a given article. To adapt to context. For instance if italics had already been used heavily throughout a paragraph I might digress from my normal defaults if it served to avoid misleading a reader into parsing an unintended association. For the term "Wikipedia" itself, I should think it depends initially upon which context one is using the term. Whether it's being referenced as an encyclopedia or as a community or — whatever. --Kevjonesin (talk) 15:44, 16 May 2013 (UTC)
  • We put creative works in italics not to dignify them, but simply so they'll be recognized by readers as books, films, albums, encyclopedias, and so forth. Italics is just a slightly different way of formatting that alerts readers to the fact that a creative work is included in the text. There are albums and songs by the same name, yet readers can readily tell The Comfort Zone theory from "The Comfort Zone" song from the The Comfort Zone album. This has been discussed for about five years, now, and we will probably continue to discuss it for another five years. That's the beauty of both Wikipedia and Wikipedia! So if a website is adjudged to be a creative work, no matter what its size or the notability of its publishers, then it should be formatted in a way that our readers can recognize it as a creative work. And yet... one contributor's "treasure" (creative work) may be another's "trash" (dud). – PAINE ELLSWORTH CLIMAX! 20:54, 17 May 2013 (UTC)
  • What kind of website (if any) do you think is not a creative work? My unease is perhaps due to the fact that I don't actually want to imply to readers that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia like Britannica is. The content of a site like Wikipedia is not controlled in the same way - at any given moment it just says whatever was typed in by the last person who pressed the edit button. It looks a bit ironic to say that, on a certain date, Wikipedia stated that J. Bloggs was a poo willy gay boy LOL. Victor Yus (talk) 09:53, 18 May 2013 (UTC)
What kind of website (if any) do you think is not a creative work?
Okay, you're right of course, on some level they're all creative works. If a website's notability qualifies it for an article, then we can't really use "notability" to discern those that should be italicized. Italics would have to be the result of "content". And here is where it might get a bit tricky. We should probably ask the question, "Would the title of this article be in italics if it were something other than a website?" Online encyclopedias would meet this standard, so Britannica online should be in italics just as Encyclopædia Britannica is. If we develop different and new criteria, then that would be okay, too, as long as the Wikipedia community agrees to it. But we should probably begin by using standards that are similar to those already in place.
You are not the first to express misgivings about Wikipedia that definitely separate it from other reference works that are not "free"ly edited by a larger segment of society that has little comparable training. Does that make "our" encyclopedia better? More and more college students seem to think so. Wikipedia's reliability, integrity and popularity grow some each and everyday. – PAINE ELLSWORTH CLIMAX! 16:14, 18 May 2013 (UTC)
It may also be worthwhile to point out that a website is not a webpage. (FWIW I would treat the latter as a ‘short work’, putting its title in quotation marks as we do with e.g. journal articles and song titles.) I haven’t checked the relevant guidelines, but IMO displaying raw URLs is poor form in the first place: if a link has no obvious page-title, a short description should be provided as hypertext.—Odysseus1479 01:15, 22 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Comment. - The impetus of this thread relates specifically to Allmusic.com. When using the standard citation template, it seems that we should enter "Allmusic" as the work and "Rovi" as the publisher, but this results in an italicized "Allmusic", which is the name of a website. Should Allmusic be italicized as a work regardless of the fact that it is the name of a website? Any thoughts? GabeMc (talk|contribs) 02:18, 22 May 2013 (UTC)
    • Yes, I would italicize it (in case that wasn’t evident from my other remarks), but note that their page titles capitalize the M: AllMusic.—Odysseus1479 02:27, 22 May 2013 (UTC)
    • I would also use italics. In my opinion, the above distinction between short work webpages and long work websites is a sensible guideline, and should be considered the default (though still allowing for exceptions at editors' discretion). The MOS is best when it promotes clear and consistent guidelines. --xensyriaT 11:28, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

Comment.  Chicago and the APA agree on italicizing Encyclopaedia Britannica Online, Wikipedia, and other online reference-work sites. They agree on romanizing nonreference sites that have names like NYTimes.com, Facebook, and IMDb. Otherwise they disagree: APA uses roman where Chicago uses italic.

CMOS (2010) says that a website title should be set in roman — unless the site (1) has the same name as an in-print publication or (2) is analogous to a book or periodical. And it says that blogs are analogous to periodicals.
Websites and web pages. General titles of websites … are normally set in roman. Some websites share the name of a printed counterpart, and others (such as Wikipedia) are analogous to one of the types of works discussed elsewhere [books and periodicals]; these titles should be styled accordingly:
“IMDb”; “NYTimes.com” (but “the New York Times online”); “Encyclopaedia Britannica Online”; “Wikipedia”
Blogs and blog entries. Titles of named blogs, like the titles of periodicals, should be italicized:
“Wasted Food”; “The Becker-Posner Blog”

The new APA Style Guide to Electronic References (2012) romanizes the names of websites and blogs:

“Facebook”; “the APA Style website”; “the APA Style Blog”

But it says that online reference works such as Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary and Wikipedia fall in the category of books, not websites.

Books … and Reference Books. This category also includes … reference works that are available online.
Entry in Wikipedia. Psychology. (n.d.). In Wikipedia. Retrieved May 17, 2011, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychology
Wikipedia is italicized because it is the name of a reference work.
Archived entry in Wikipedia. Psychology. (2011, February 15). In Wikipedia. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Psychology&oldid=413979409.

Your call: Chicago or APA?  --Dervorguilla (talk) 06:31, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

Advice needed for styling daggers reliably cross-browser

Hi, please see this discussion at WikiProject Military history. We wish to style the &dagger; symbol properly, in a way that looks more like the 2nd or 5th example in - the default sans-serif version (†) usually looks like the 1st example, which has caused problems and raised questions. Please reply there (to keep everything centralized), with suggestions on how to best implement this, and if it is possible to achieve high-percentage reliable styling. (I've not kept up-to-date with CSS over the last few years, but my tests can be seen a few replies down, in the thread). Much thanks. –Quiddity (talk) 20:23, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Are there technical reasons that we should avoid using the following code?
<span style="font-family:'Times New Roman', 'Old English Text MT', serif">&dagger;</span>
An editor has suggested that it does/may cause accessibility issues. A reply here, or at the main thread linked above, would be appreciated. (Read his comments in the thread, to accurately understand his exact concerns). Thanks. –Quiddity (talk) 03:18, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
see template:dagger and friends? Frietjes (talk) 16:35, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
@Frietjes: This is regarding {{KIA}} and its specific use as the "Killed in action" indicator, primarily used in infoboxes of battles. See the thread I linked, for full explanation, but basically many editors have indicated a preference for a "serif" styled dagger, but we're unsure whether it can/will cause technical problems, or accessibility problems, if we use the given code. (I did change the template to use that code a few days ago, and one editor is objecting to that change on technical grounds). –Quiddity (talk) 17:31, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
I don't know the exact details surrounding the creation of {{dagger}}, but it seems the idea was that by using an image with alt text that you would get something that was more accessible for screen readers. I can't really provide any more information. the editors who watch WT:ACCESS might be able to provide more useful feedback. Frietjes (talk) 18:05, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
Done. Thanks. –Quiddity (talk) 19:32, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Bills and Acts of Parliament - italic or not?

I generally remove italics from references to Bills and Acts of Parliament when I come across them, because I've not found anything in MOS advocating their use, but they seem to be commonly used in articles. Any legal experts with an opinion either way? [2] says "Court cases are italicized, but acts are not." Dave.Dunford (talk) 10:10, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

I've never seen acts (certainly not UK ones) routinely italicised outside of occasional uses on Wikipedia, and I remove those whenever I see them. Note that that guide is for the use in citations, rather than running text. Andrew Gray (talk) 22:53, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

Titles of Nobility

How is it that Baron King of Lothbury is not permissible in use but Baron Stirrup and Baron Walker of Aldringham is permissible in the main body of text in regards to the use of 'bolding'? Nford24 (Want to have a chat?) 16:28, 3 August 2013 (UTC)

Bold is only used to make it clear to the reader what the subject is in the lead paragraph. The two examples you gave shouldn't have been bold, and they've now been fixed. --xensyriaT 20:36, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
The two example are only the tip of the iceberg, nearlly every Life Peer's page I have seen contains the same 'bolding' of the title in the main body of the text.Nford24 (Want to have a chat?) 07:35, 4 August 2013 (UTC)
When you come across it please remove it (mention the MOS in the edit summary), and if your edit's reverted point them here. --xensyriaT 15:33, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

Advice please

Hi. After much editing in place articles I would like comment and guidance on aspects that I have been correcting based on my reading of Text formatting style, and if there is a consensus as to if what I am doing is correct.

I can often come across a person’s name in the body text (not lede) of an article that is bolded, something like: "the ecclesiastical parish incumbent is The Revd Derick Wormald", or it might be "the primary school head teacher is Mr D Wormald". Always these seem non-notable people with no independent references for personal notability. I have been de-bolding these (but not removing them) by what I am assuming is according to MOSBOLD guidelines. I would like an opinion on whether my de-bolding action here is reasonable, and if there are exceptions that might apply in these cases.

Also in place articles I find and remove italics that are often liberally sprinkled over an article's street and public house names, and religious references, something like "the local public houses are the Blue Ox and the Red Lion" or "the village shop is on the High Street next to the Primary School", or "Someville is part of The Ouse Group of the Deanery of Widnes". I know that italics apply to creative works and ships, and there can be exceptions for emphasis. But would such examples normally fall under the need for emphasis ? Many thanks. Acabashi (talk) 00:43, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

Regarding the boldface, absolutely; the only things that should be bold are synonyms for the article title, key mentions of terms that redirect to the article, and sundry headings for tables, lists, &c. As for the italics: place, street, and organizational names are normally capitalized but not italicized, and terms like “the primary school” and “the high street“ (unless that’s its name) shouldn’t even be capitalized. Pub names aren’t mentioned in the guide, and I’ve seen them printed in italics, in quotation marks, or unmarked (except by capitalization)—here that last is probably safest, but I wouldn’t undo another’s choice in that regard, as long as the article was consistent. Other than this, though, it seems your practice in this area is sound—but try and make a habit of ensuring that the non-notable Revd Wormald doesn’t have a page redirecting to the parish article, in case readers need help finding him when they’re unexpectedly parachuted in.—Odysseus1479 01:34, 2 June 2013 (UTC)
Many thanks Odysseus for giving me peace of mind. Acabashi (talk) 02:01, 2 June 2013 (UTC)
FWIW I also strenuously remove italics from pubs, street names, etc. I've sometimes pondered the apparent desire to over-italicise (and over-embolden) and can only put it down to a suspicion that (even after 25+ years of widespread word processing) the novelty still hasn't worn off for some people born in the typewriter age... Dave.Dunford (talk) 07:20, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

Need help with an article

Can someone remove the italics from the Phillip Phillips article? For some reason, even though that's a BLP article of a person, the title is italicized, when it shouldn't be, and I can't find the template in the article that's causing this. Nightscream (talk) 03:05, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

Should translated title be italicized?

If we have an article on a magazine with a foreign title, we italicize that title and in the lead put the English translation behind it between parentheses (e.g. La Salamandre (English: The Salamander) is a nature magazine...). My question is, should the English translation be italicized or not? The guideline is not clear about that (or, at least, I couldn't find any clear guidance). Thanks. --Randykitty (talk) 08:46, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

The English title should only be italicized (and capitalized) if it is used as a title by that magazine or by other reputable sources; in this case, I would use La Salamandre (the salamander); there's no need to explain that the term in parentheses is English. On the other hand, the German title of its children magazine should be called Der Kleine Salamander because that's what the publishers call it (despite their dubious use of caps for the German adjective "kleine"). -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 10:17, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

PUA

Added a section on substituting PUA characters so the article can be edited by AWB, and tagging them for tracking. — kwami (talk) 02:55, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

Font size

I would like to add the following text under the Font size section:

The use of reduced fontsize should be used sparingly. In no case should the resulting fontsize drop below 11px (85% on systems using 96 dpi display setting) to avoid illegible text. A common mistake is the use of smaller fontsizes (using {{small}} or inline CSS) inside infoboxes and navboxes, which already use a smaller fontsize.

Comments? — Edokter (talk) — 18:20, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

Terms like 11px and 85% of 96 dpi are of no use to the editor. Say what to do or not do in the wiki source. Dicklyon (talk) 19:29, 4 January 2014 (UTC)
Continued at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Accessibility#Font size — Edokter (talk) — 20:06, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

Mixed right-to-left text

The examples of bad right-to-left formatting now display correctly. Are these work-arounds no longer necessary? Or is this maybe the effect of browser updates? — kwami (talk) 22:34, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

Kwamikagami, I looked at two of your changes to the guideline. Instead of, at this time, checking all of the changes you made to it, I have decided to ask you what are the changes you made to it and why? Keep in mind that, as the tag on Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Text formatting page states, changes made to that page should reflect WP:Consensus. Flyer22 (talk) 22:55, 18 January 2014 (UTC)
Mostly copy editing. I changed the section title to make it more explicit, and added anchors and shortcuts. I corrected an error in a font name (Gentium) and in the code range of the PUA, noted that either &#x...; or &#...; coding is acceptable, and changed the wording for substituting &#x...; values for raw PUA. (I don't know the jargon here, perhaps other wording would be preferable.) The only substantive changes were a link to the tracking category for articles with PUA and that I made it clearer that PUA and invisible characters should be removed when possible ("Such characters should be removed or replaced where possible.") Maybe "practical" would be better than "possible"; it's always possible to just delete s.t. I've seen people substitute PUA characters with &#x...; coding (what's the word for that?) when they should have replaced them with their Unicode equivalents instead, so I thought we should make that more explicit. Since I'm the one who's been taking care of most of the PUA characters on WP, and this topic receives very little attention, I figured my thoughts on this was as good as we're likely to get, but please improve anything you think could use it. I'd be happy for this to get more attention, so we get this addressed as well as possible. — kwami (talk) 23:13, 18 January 2014 (UTC)
Okay. Thanks for being careful with the changes (such as adding WP:Anchors) and for explaining. Flyer22 (talk) 23:22, 18 January 2014 (UTC)
I'm adding two more paragraphs. They're nothing new, so I don't think there should be any problem, but feel free to c.e., expand, or even delete as you see fit. One is to make it still clearer that we shouldn't blindly decimalize PUA characters just so AWB can edit the article, because that means CHECKWIKI won't pick up on them, and they're likely to remain in the article longer without being corrected. (The PUA category is getting populated enough that, now that the CHECKWIKI backlog has been taken care of, CHECKWIKI is more likely to get people's attention, but we can certainly change this way of doing things if people want.) The other is that when we do retain PUA, we should specify a supporting font. That's implicit from the example, and is stated in the template instructions, but for some reason I overlooked it here. It also reflects my experiences correcting 128 of the 132 articles that CHECKWIKI flagged in the last two runs for PUA, and seeing how others have tried dealing with them. — kwami (talk) 23:35, 18 January 2014 (UTC)
I think the bits about AWB belong in an AWB manual or help page, not here.—Odysseus1479 01:06, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

kwami I agree with Odysseus. The problem is not that AWB can't edit the article is that PUA characters show different in various systems and in most cases show nothing. This is the reason we fix them. The Manual of Style should remain independed of faulty software etc. -- Magioladitis (talk) 07:53, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

I created Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Pages skipped by default to move the paragraph you wrote there. -- Magioladitis (talk) 08:05, 19 January 2014 (UTC)
Okay. — kwami (talk) 08:22, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Bad example for MOS:BOLD#Other uses

Resolved
 – Poor example removed without dispute.

MOS:BOLD#Other uses includes this:

Use boldface ... in a few special cases:

...

In the first two cases, the appropriate markup automatically adds the boldface formatting; do not use the explicit triple-apostrophe markup.

However List of Australian inventions is a bad example - it does not use appropriate markup described in (Description (definition, association) lists - it uses the explicit triple-apostrophe markup expressly "forbidden" by MOS. Surely we can find a better example. Mitch Ames (talk) 14:26, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

In the absence of any feedback, I've removed "List of Australian inventions" as an example.

Forced mixed fonts?

At MOS:NUM, there is a discussion over whether we should force numbers to use mixed fonts when uncertainties are involved, to ensure that they line up exactly. Under 'Uncertainty', the MOS currently gives an example with default fonts, but then advises us to use a template that changes this to monospace, though for only part of the number. The question is whether the template should be changed to accommodate the MOS, or if the MOS should be changed to accommodate the template. Currently, there are only 33 articles that have monospace uncertainties, and over 800 that do not (they use a different template), but at least one editor is insisting that the MOS and the other 800+ articles be brought into line with the 33, and discussion has come to a standstill. — kwami (talk) 02:49, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

1234567890
0987654321
3762891045
9847611199

Most fonts already use the same width for numbers, with one notable exception: Georgia. Unfortunately, that font is used for example text on help pages. The best solution is to ditch Georgia in favor of a font with equal number widths. — Edokter (talk) — 14:27, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
I concur with Edokter, but be careful not to specify something that isn't likely to be on the average Windows, Mac, *n*x and Android system.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ⚞(Ʌⱷ҅̆⚲͜ⱷ^)≼  04:38, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

Bot-proof hyphens

On the MOS talk page, we're discussing bot-proof hyphens. I think this might be a good place to mention them. Maybe s.t. like the following?

Occasionally hyphens rather than dashes are the correct punctuation for the pages of a reference, for example when the source text labels chapter 2, page 4 as "page 2-4". Several bots will automatically change that to "pages 2–4", meaning pages 2 through 4 and breaking the reference. Manual oversight often fails to catch such mistakes. Therefore, when a hyphen is needed in a page reference, the template {{hyphen}} can be used:
page = 2{{hyphen}}4

— kwami (talk) 06:46, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

{{sic|2-4|hide=y}} should do it, too. Either way, you can include a note: {{sic|2-4|hide=y|reason=This is "chapter 2, page 4" not "pages 2-4".}} or 2{{hyphen|reason=This is "chapter 2, page 4" not "pages 2-4".}}4 if you think people may not understand what you're doing. Anyway, if there's a bot that is still incorrectly "fixing" these hyphens inside {{sic}}, it needs to be recoded to stop doing that. Nothing in {{sic}} should ever be altered by any bot.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ⚞(Ʌⱷ҅̆⚲͜ⱷ^)≼  04:47, 29 March 2014 (UTC)
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