Knowledge talk:Manual of Style/Archive 162

4845:

historians and others as a unit, an era in which major shifts in societal agreements were looked at and acted upon by a small group of people (the core of the movement was really about 20 people or less - pulling that number out of my hat but it seems about right, with the top-tier of the movement actually ending up to be two people), which created a national dialogue, and that dialogue (brought about by concise and well-planned use of Gandhian-principals and nonviolent technology) then changed agreements which had been in place for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. This was done, or at least finally accomplished, from 1960 to 1966, by people who had the know-how to do it. It is as important an era, an event, in world history as the American Revolution, or French Revolution. When things reach that level, I and many others see them, experience them, as proper names. Maybe what constitutes a proper name is when a large percentage of a population, or a large percentage of academics and historians, see the topic as such. For those of us who, for example, see the 'Pullman Strike' as a single-event (although made up of hundreds of other events), the capitalization seems not only appropriate but essential. It all comes down to, as everything does, viewpoint, and sometimes accepting that other viewpoints are valid, especially on pages here which have had the same names since their inception, is as easy as just letting them alone. If my experience with disagreements like this check-out, Dicklyon and I may become buds at some point, and take turns buying each other real or virtual beers (or buds). Right now there is a point of view difference, I've been called a zealot because of that (huh?), and am having my Zorro cape and mask darned (actually I used to have a Zorro cape and mask as a kid, wish I'd kept them). Thanks for being polite.

4778:- all of which have become proper names used by labor historians, historical societies, and universities. I opposed those changes, as I've done the attempt (on a week when many people are on holiday or otherwise occupied) on the CRM pages, which have been consistent and correctly titled since their inception. Methinks the term 'zealot' may be being used here as a mirror effect. In my limited viewpoint of this issue, and this is a personal viewpoint from coming in in the middle (or is it the endgame? See how personal viewpoints work...) of what I'm becoming aware is a long-term effort, what I see is an editor looking to de-emphasize, on Knowledge, the major labor and social movements of the 20th Century. I may have come upon this late, and do not know what has occurred before these attempts, but I do know that the capitalization of the proper names of the civil rights movement pages is very common, very sensible, has clear concise arguments why they should remain as they are, and if trying to protect Knowledge's legacy in this field is being a zealot then I'll borrow a childhood favorite's sword and cut a large 'Z' on my clothes (or is it applied as a scarlet letter on this go-around?). Bottom line, this site has the best civil rights movement pages on the web, imnho, and they can only continue to improve as more data is added and refined. 5410:

Game to your list, and ignoring actual information about it. As I wrote above, which maybe you didn't see, if you watched the game yesterday the capitalization was all over the broadcast. It's the legal name of the event. How can you just ignore and discount that? I'm all for voting on its common name being "Rose Bowl", but the proposal you put forward is to decapitalize "Rose Bowl Game" to "Rose Bowl game" which seems, given the data, inaccurate. As for calling people who point things out to you a "Fan base", kind of a condescending way to describe fellow editors who care about these pages, no? Editors who have presented as much, if not more, evidence as you that those names are rightfully proper names, rightfully capitalized, and have been since their articles were first created on Knowledge. In the case of the African-American Civil Rights Movement pages, lower-case redirects did not even exist until recently, showing that people coming to or editing Knowledge have never thought about it enough to do even that. Sometimes a rose is just a Rose, and sometimes capitalization is appropriate, sometimes it isn't (one fan base I'm a glad member of consists of basers who appreciate Anne Hathaway's amazing performance in

8863:

unacceptable. If discussion cannot determine which style to use in an article, defer to the style used by the first major contributor". You ignore this. The changes from capitalised titles to lowercase titles and vice-versa for no real reason other than to enforce "MoS compliance" is plain disruptive. There is nothing unacceptable about either "Cuban Missile Crisis" or "Cuban missile crisis". If there are sources that use both styles, and the appropriate information is conveyed, it makes no difference to the reader, other than from an aesthetic perspective. From an aesthetic perspective, titles look better and more distinguishable when capitalised, which is why they usually are. Sentence case for titles looks sloppy, like something a primary schooler would write up. That's why I think we should just adopt title case for article titles, as any good publication would do. It is aesthetically better, and more standardised. It eliminates all absurd capitalisation debates.

6691:", even though it is not necessarily capitalized. Imagine that we had two moons, as Mars does. The sentence "The cow jumped over the moon" would still make sense, but would imply that which moon was being referred to was obvious from the context (e.g. by virtue of being visible or previously selected, while the other wasn't). Similarly, we could have had a binary primary: two suns, and would still have used "the sun" when context dictated which sun was being referred to. The determination of whether the intended interpretation is of a common noun or a proper name is quite subtle, but I would suggest that if preceded by an article, unless there is clear reason to regard it as a label used to specifically distinguish it from other objects of the same class (resp. suns, earths and moons), "sun", "earth" and "moon" should always be treated as common noun. — 6629: 1272:, but that's not a MOS page, so I don't know to what extent style is taken into consideration there. I can see no discussion going back to mid-2011 at the talk page of MOS/Text formatting. I haven't seen bolding for this purpose ever at FAC, and it concerns me. (I saw something similar today, and decided to investigate.) It seems to me that either you believe that readers will take note of that bolding and decide it means something, or you don't. If you do, then you're violating the principle of least surprise for the 99.99% (usually) of readers that didn't arrive at that spot via the particular redirect you have in mind. If you don't, then the bolding doesn't accomplish the function you're aiming for, and choosing a suitable subsection heading or topic sentence would be preferable to bolding. Thoughts? - Dank ( 4394: 3899:"There were 30,123 households, out of which 9,144 (30.4%) had children under the age of 18 living in them, 13,440 (44.6%) were opposite-sex married couples living together, 3,623 (12.0%) had a female householder with no husband present, 1,228 (4.1%) had a male householder with no wife present. There were 1,681 (5.6%) unmarried opposite-sex partnerships, and 459 (1.5%) same-sex married couples or same-sex partnerships. 9,347 households (31.0%) were made up of individuals and 2,874 (9.5%) had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.40. There were 18,291 families (60.7% of all households); the average family size was 3.06." 5127:, one of two in the NFL. Just because that is the case, and newspapers and other writers may use the non-proper-noun descriptor version ("NFC championship game") in use does not make it any less of a proper noun. Just that they're getting it wrong. And proper nouns are capitalized in English. It's not about importance, promotion or any other such assumption of bad faith it's factually correct. Hate to tell you this, but newspapers and magazines, the principle source of sports writing and sports writers aren't exactly the most careful when it comes to grammatical rules because of the deadlines they work under (and yes it bleeds into their books too). 4551:, and a variety of other junk. I'm not going to support a junk title. I hope people see the light and support my proposal, which is better for the encylopaedia. I hope you understand that the bot sending notices to Wikiprojects that have tagged an article is acceptable, but you canvassing support from "people who care about style guidance" is not. That's a form of advocacy, and I don't see why you can't understand that. As far as the particulars of !votes with no substance, the closer is supposed to strike those, as I'm sure you know. By the way, you pinged Calidum, so I don't know why you're bringing up this canard in this instance. 2630:

do. When capitalisation is necessary to maintain the encyclopaedic register, it is necessary, and therefore not "unnecessary". I'm not opposed to lowercase titles, and I've mentioned the articles I agree should be decapitalised at the bulk move, as capitalisation is not supported by encyclopaedic sources or any sources at all in those instances. I find it queer that you refer to a "capitalisation campaign" when these articles were already capitalised and stable for years until you fellows started messing with them. No one has suggesting "capitalising" any new articles, as far as I can see. If I can present another argument,

7873:.″ Following the link to this manual I now find that the slanted quotation marks supplied by Knowledge are not even mentioned here. What is the sense of that? If there are quotation marks provided by Knowledge to everyone who does edits, then it does not seem very helpful to me if a Style Manual hidden within the bowels of WP decides on a different standard. I would propose to either use the slanted marks as a standard, or if the vertical ones are to be used, then the punctuation marks below the edit box should be changed first. The status quo is the worst solution of all. -- 6130:: My bad, I actually meant the overall capitalization concept has issues depending on what style is consulted. We can certainly make whatever improvements we need so that it will make more sense when presented here. I hit an edit conflict (twice today) and see I missed re-signing my comments. Anyway, we do need to reconcile to conflicting areas as best we can. You didn't mention issues with what I stated and I don't argue with needed improvements you mentioned. Either someone else needs to chime in or just boldly fix it and we can deal with anyone that gets ruffled feathers. 3283: 2102:? Do we need to amend it to indicate that we capitalize things that people want to show respect for, or to capitalize all titles that refer to events even when sources mostly don't, or what? Or go the other way and amend to specifically say that random events, riots, massacres, incidents, etc. are covered by the general principle of avoiding unnecessary capitalization, as repeated there several times? Or give up and let these categories of things remain rather inconsistent, rather than continue to work on cleaning them up? 9103:

are backed up by many sources. The majority of the books you listed there were new printings of old - some very old - textbooks, which don't get totally edited on reissue. So, some names which you see as violating policy are names seen by millions of people and many many sources as proper names. Some others aren't, such as many of the 'riots' you lower-cased (except for the Watts Riot, which has 'earned' upper-casing because of its prominence - again, common sense applies). I know you must realize and, as the old-kids say, '

2537:

contest. And of course if people argue that 2:1 capital to lower meets the threshold for "consistently capitalized in sources", that will be a mess. Or if they argue that historians get precedence over general writers, that will be a mess. It's not clear to me what these lists are supposed to show, if the clear evidence of majority lower case use in books is not even enough to overcome the opposition. RGloucenter has consistently refused to consider such evidence as meaningful, so how are lists going to help him?

6978:, we prefer to avoid unnecessary capitalization, and if sources don't capitalize these names, then it is not necessary for us to treat them as proper names. People who think of these as proper names of celestial bodies seem also to be forgetting that when we refer to the sun being out, or the moon being bright, we're not talking about the celestial or astronomical entity so much as we are their light, their affect, their appearance, or something quite independent of a Copernican understanding of celestial bodies. 2740:: "Where there is uncertainty as to whether a term is generally accepted, consensus should be reached on the talk page". The articles I'm referring to are not "deviating" from the MoS. The problem is that different people interpret the MoS differently. How it is applied to individual articles is determined through talk page consensus in areas of uncertainty. I'm not going to engage in nitpicking that will be used to weasel out of the common and generally accepted meaning of the phrase "proper name". 31: 5970:

Earth (or Sun) as a proper noun is capitalized. Common nouns are generally not especially when following an article such as the earth, a sun, or a planet. A "specific" astronomical body would be a proper noun. Using earth or sun in reference to a surface or stratum would not be capitalized like "the surface of the earth", "the surface of the sun", "...hotter than the surface of the sun", However, "The Sun is very hot" would be capitalized. Following the above it would seem that

4307:"Several" connotes more than a few --and denotes more than a few in American English as I learned it-- where "a number of" covers both few and several. The full article identifies more than a few respects in which this rendition was first among Rose Bowls, so the writer who digested the full article for Today's feature (several days ago) might well have used "several"; should have used it, in my opinion; and the revision by User:John is "copyediting towards clarity" per John. 1966:, I don't want to anger the IP editor nor discourage them from editing or reading Knowledge, but because they are essentially pushing a POV in how to write/not write the Judeo-Christian name of "God" (they have been changing it to G_d which is the correct honorific spelling for certain sects of Judaism). It seems to me that because Knowledge is not a religious-based encyclopedia that spelling it G_d would be POV to a certain degree. Any thoughts, suggestions? -- 4858: 2155:

survey of all the reliable sources for all the articles, they are unlikely to reach an unanimous agreement on what is reflected in all of the sources for each page. Therefore it is extremely unlikely that an informed consensus based on the AT policy will be reached for such a list. It would be much better to tackle such a list one item at a time on the talk pages of the individual articles, basing the request not on the MOS guidelines but on the AT policy. --

589:(curly) or "... And Ladies of the Club" (straight), with the ellipsis and quote marks. The article had originally been created with a punctuation-free form of the title, and I moved it to the curly quote form, and I fixed the half-dozen or so links. Now I'm thinking I should move it again to the straight quote form. The argument for the curly quotes is that they are not really serving as punctuation so much but as decoration. (Unlike say an apostrophe in 3562:

confused with English", or any such similar nonsense. The note about "Jew" is an example, not a special note dealing with usage of the word "Jew". Why does this particular case, which doesn't seem that confusing at all, have its own special bullet in MOS:IDENTITY? What does it even have to do with "identity"? Regardless, if we must have a note on the "variant forms" you mention, it does not make sense to exclude one of those variant forms, i.e. "Arabian".

2399:

participation, or very little, and requiring multiple re-listings. He has done this to claim "re-affirmations" of a position that is not backed by a broader consensus. That's why I insisted on a broadly-advertised centralised discussion, where a large slice of the Knowledge community could voice an opinion. It is necessary, or he will continue to game the system by making large amounts of small changes to claim "consistency" with guidelines. That type of

2555:. Even if I stipulate that there has been a shift since the 1980s and now a slight majority of books using upper case, and even if we enumerated all those, how would that shifting style in the outside world affect our decision of whether to pay attention to our own style guide? It is abundant evidence that capitalization is not consistent in sources, so we should use lowercase. Why is this even being discussed? Please take a look and let me know. 2123:(AT) page . I think this shows that you do not fully understand the relationship between the MOS and AT policy. It has never been the consensus on the AT talk page that the MOS guidelines applies to article titles. The policy revolves around what is common usage in reliable sources, not the dictates of the Knowledge style guide. The Article titles policy has its own guidance on such things in guidelines that are called naming conventions. For example 3896:"The 2010 United States Census reported that Alameda had a population of 73,812. The population density was 3,214.9 people per square mile (1,241.3/km²). The racial makeup of Alameda was 37,460 (50.8%) White, 4,759 (6.4%) African American, 426 (0.6%) Native American, 23,058 (31.2%) Asian, 381 (0.5%) Pacific Islander, 2,463 (3.3%) from other races, and 5,265 (7.1%) from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 8,092 persons (11.0%)." 2774:

do. How can it "not relate to style"? It is about article titles. If reliable sources are capitalising a title one way, UCN demands that we follow their capitalisation. UCN also tells us to write in the encyclopaedic register, and to view fellow encyclopaedias as more valuable for these purposes than every other news article. It being a policy means that it is higher ranked than guidelines in the roster of Knowledge conventions.

4157:. On Knowledge we are not being paid by the word or the syllable, and short simple phrases which convey the same meaning as stodgy pompous ones should always be favoured. Whether one calls this "petty" or "copyediting towards clarity" is I suppose a judgement call. I am pretty secure in my belief that "some" is better than "a number of". The regular requests I receive to do copyedits during FAC seem to bear out my belief. -- 2810:

not require that the event is (necessarily) correctly described by the common noun "massacre". If some sources represent the view that this event was a massacre, then those sources may justifiably (but non-neutrally) use the common noun "massacre" to describe the event from their point of view, while other sources may use an expression with a different common noun, such as "the unfortunate events in Boston". Perhaps

4473:

federal politics: " Ministry" (an area, incidentally, in which the main texts are riddled with vanity capping that look suspiciously like contributions from ministerial staffers). This is despite the fact that the articles on Australian state ministries tend to be downcased—a matter RGloucester seemed to pass over. RGloucester, please calm down and stop the zealotry, which at times can be a little aggressive.

3216:

Arabic)"? Perhaps the note itself is fine, but the parenthetical "(never to be confused with Muslim or Islamic)" is absolutely absurd. I wonder why we have a specific note on this matter at all, given that no other ethnicity is given this special treatment. I also wonder who would confuse "Muslim or Islamic" with "Arab". Are we writing for the lowest common denominator, here? This just seems downright odd.

2094:"I know what's right, and I'll make sure to do what I need to do as such. If you'd like me to stop cleaning up articles, I'd be happy to do so. Far from Mr Tony's arrogant claims, most of Knowledge is a mess of dismal and dingy prose or proseline that has no semblance of style. If he'd like to continue living in such a squalid mess, that's up to him. Me, on the other hand, I like to keep my house in order." 999:

The comment was an aside, as indicated by the phrase "by the way", thus indicating that it is tangential to the discussion at hand. I don't see why you need to highlight that it is tangential to the discussion at hand when that has already been clearly indicated in my original post. The net result of your intervention has been to create an irrelevant discussion, the very thing you are complaining about.

2330: 8838:(Edit conflict) I agree with Dicklyon that Knowledge should almost always use lowercase when the sources do. However, changing the MoS in the manner suggested is probably not our best bet. How about changing its wording to match the main MoS more closely? I'd suggest: "Avoid unnecessary capitalization. Use capitals for terms that are consistently treated as proper nouns by reliable sources. Example 2088:"I don't care what Knowledge style is. I care about what's right. It is right that proper names be capitalised, and this is a proper noun. That's that. Your tiny little consensus at those pages is hardly indicative of larger support. If I'd known of them, I'd have opposed with every fibre of my being. Good sources, such as the Britannica, capitalise this title. That's reason enough to maintain it." 7358:. Other paintings may not have such common English titles. For those, any single English translation would be inappropriate as a title because it wouldn't be truly common. Indeed, the most common title in sources is likely the original language title, so long as it is easily rendered in Latin script. In short, there's no hard and fast rule beyond COMMONNAME, which is a Knowledge-wide rationale. 2367:

of these were reverted after a long discussion, as they had no consensus. Likewise, your moves, a month later than those, have no consensus, and no basis in policy. Rightly, they were reverted. Now you can try and gain consensus for your position, which is antithetical to our article title policy. As you see, consensus is largely against it at this time. Therefore, your position is incorrect.

7014: 2334: 7831: 1716:

to add something to the MoS on this, as it's come up once or twice in GA reviews, in my experience. Any such addition, I suggest, should emphasise clarity above all other concerns. I mention that because, if we trumpet consistency as the prime objective throughout an article, it might create other problems – it's not always easy to adhere to the same approach each and every time.

6292:. Note that the advice at MOSCAPS has stated to use lowercase for general use since 2006 when it was ported from MOS. The advice here at MOS still maintains this, it is just poorly written. If you want to change the guidelines, you need to establish consensus. Otherwise, my correction here should be reinstated for the sake of clarity and consistency with MOSCAPS. 5336:

something new every day (or is it 'knew' every day, as in "I knew the name of the game is Rose Bowl and now I know it is 'Rose Bowl Game'"). Who gnu? So I guess the voters on the page were right, although if you go for a common name change I'd vote on that one (I wonder when people are going to try to add the corporate sponsors to the 'Common names' of bowl games).

5219:

statistics, why are they repeating that silly claim except to deceive? (It might not be clear, but this comment was posted here after just the first two responses there; the ones that invoked this known-false strawman; it was not intended to say that everyone there is emitting bullshit, just the first two. Though JonRidinger's point added later is also bullshit.)

8288:

don't think using British punctuation makes sense in this article for reasons X, Y, and Z" don't fly here. Add that this is Knowledge and almost anyone can come up with almost any excuse to disregard almost any rule, and treating the MoS as rules rather than a guideline is probably the better course, but we've got to acknowledge that that's what we're doing.

7395:. In that case they should be used in the form used by most art historians writing in English, regardless of whether this is actually correct by the standards of the other language. It is not necessary to give the original language version of titles of standard religious scenes or portraits, but for other titles this may be desirable, for example: 8012:(when doing longer edits), and as I have now learned from the manual I was not the first to notice this. When I found the ones below the edit box I assumed they were placed there to avoid such problems. I know better now, but I will not promise to undo the choices other peoples made in the articles they wrote. Thanks for the explanations! -- 1842:

ahead and add it. Where such a phrase is "idiomatic" within the group who knows it, it is still usually helpful to the general reader to have the clue for how to parse it. If others disagree, some discussion may be in order. I went ahead and moved back the one that had a consensus on record. And worked on unsourced one, too.

1050: 115:)? Requiring references to be after a full stop, when it only references the last clause of a sentence, is misleading readers by making them think the entire sentence is referenced. Surely indicating what parts of a sentence can be found in the source is more important than superficial things like punctuation aesthetics? -- 2064:"These massacres were given an uppercase letter in reliable sources, likely to establish their place in history, along with battles. This mass move would be taken as consensus to make the word lowercase. Go to the manual of style and get consensus rather than picking a set of articles and moving them to different titles." 4854: 2711:. No individual pages do not get to deviate from the MoS just because their editors think it's a good idea. If you think there's something special about these pages that means they need the extra capitals, then the place to discuss it is at the relevant MoS page so that an exception can be written into the rules. 8726:). Sources are unambiguously in favor of lowercase, but editors want to capitalize them anyway. I'm not sure what you mean by "that is not the argument being made"; I have not characterized the various arguments that they use to try to justify capitalization. And I am not "anti-capitalist"; but pro-MOS, yes. 5196:

who disagrees with you "bullshit". You're not some specially enlightened being we must all defer to. You're just another editor who is incorrect. Again. Happens. But most people can accept that when numerous other editors point I out to them. Instead you arrogantly insult everyone else. Utterly unacceptable.

8500:

There are many editors here who have (in good faith) tried to implement the various MOS provisions, only to be met with strong opposition at the article level. Some have handled that opposition badly. In the most contentious cases, the resulting disputes have even ended up with the style editor being

8011:

I am aware of minutes and seconds, but not that I had to distinguish them typographically from single and double quotation marks when editing WP. On my first edits I just noticed that quotation marks typed directly into the edit box were represented differently from those that I copied from documents

5630:

case, ArbCom ruled that editors seeking to do maintenance on articles had to defer to the preferences of the content creators. So it is up to the editors wanting to enforce the MOS to justify their stance, and seek a new consensus. If the content creators stick to their guns, then the editors seeking

5241:

Randy, you're just regurgitating their bullshit. Have you found a single instance of where "Rose Bowl game" refers to a game played in the Rose Bowl other than the bowl game? The proper way to disambiguate the stadium from the game is also under discussion; I'd prefer natural disambiguation, but I'm

5233:

I read the section, and if the full title 'Rose Bowl Game' is used then it's correct (there are many games played in Rose Bowl Stadium, but only one Rose Bowl Game), but I have no idea why the page isn't named 'Rose Bowl', the common name of this game. Like dogs barking up the wrong tree, that should

4844:

My comment in this section was more or less going on expressions like 'The Big Game', etc. (will 'Super Bowl' ever be 'Super bowl' - in effect, just another dish?). But with something like the African-American Civil Rights Movement pages, the proper name comes when a series of events are looked at by

4608:

It does, because this is not a project. It does not tag articles. You are outright saying that you want to come here and ask people that "care about style guidance" to influence move discussions that they would not otherwise be apart of, for the express purpose of supporting your position. As I said,

4009:: does anyone want to offer an opinion whether "a number of" and "several" have the same connotation? (I ask because there's a little evidence in AmEng dictionaries that they don't ... and if they don't, then the linked edit was probably the right call ... but it's not a call I want to make.) - Dank ( 3354:

In protracted arguments that I have seen, the sources are mixed, and in some cases seem to themselves be confused. It's very hard to know how to characterize people from distant history, in terms of the presumed religious, ethnic, and cultural situation of their time and place. Like the thing about

2822:

nouns used in names. There may occasionally be a case for using POV common nouns in article titles, but I don't think they should be regarded as the default, on the basis of policy. None of this, of course, means that a proper name cannot also be a correct and neutral description (for instance, the

2773:

Not "WP style", but the Manual of Style-documented style, firstly, and secondly, it says "unnecessary". If it is necessary, it cannot be unnecessary. Strictly speaking, no capitalisation is necessary. One can convey a point without any capitalisation whatsoever. That's not what the MoS is implying we

2366:

It would be nice if I didn't have to revert mass moves to decapitalise articles against consensus. There was no "maintenance" involved on your part. Another editor, in October, did the exact same thing as you, and made tons of page moves to lowercase titles, including most the articles you moved. All

2351:

You may be right that doing them individually would lead to more sensible input. But it would have been nice if RGloucester has not mass-reverted the maintenance moves; if he had only reverted ones for which a glance at sources indicated an uncertain result, that would have been easier to deal with.

1715:

I agree that both present and past are acceptable. I find that, for the sake of clarity, it's preferable to use present tense – to separate (past) events being discussed in an article from commentary or interpretation of those events. I'm glad that the issue's been raised here, and it could be useful

1315:

Does anyone want to object to this advice, at least in the general case ... that it's not a problem if something we write looks wrong enough that it's likely to catch a reader's attention? ... "the reader thinks for a bit, doesn't see an obvious answer and continues on without any drama. No harm real

9102:

What you describe as "fans of political events" are editors who see a particular event, like the Cuban Missile Crisis (where you added a comment after it was closed, btw), as a unit. Thus, to them, they are obviously proper names which fall under Knowledge common sense provisions and guidelines, and

8340:

Anyway, the upshot of the is-it-a-guideline-or-rules, the reason we argue about it, regards how careful we must be before putting something into the MoS. If it's just a guideline, then we don't need to be too careful. If it's rules, then we do. So if you find yourself in one of those discussions,

8336:

that exceptions are allowed, but that's not how things actually work. I'll give you an example: I did some editing that wasn't consistent with the MoS a few years ago. I had a good rationale that was based on both Knowledge's core values and on reliable sources. There were no edit wars associated

8228:

I haven't really seen dash issues coming up since the big powwow in 2011. That area seems pretty stable and settled. And yes, the MOS is a guideline; nobody is required to follow it. But since it's a guideline, it's accepted practice, that therefore it's not a good idea to fight those who work to

7485:

I find it offputting when the primary definition (primary bold name or term) in the opening sentence is not exactly the same as the article title. Generally speaking, I think the two should be identical, and then alternative or longer names should be mentioned subsequently after "also known as", "in

7464:

The above example might not be a good one. The guidance talks only about article titles but, while we generally use the COMMONNAME for an article title, the full English name (if one exists) is used in the opening para, even if this is not the name most commonly used in sources. So it may be that we

6845:

You're simply repeating yourself. Firstly, you are implicitly sticking to your axiom that it is a name, and FormerIP has asserted the contrary. Any further argument requires checking with outside sources. I have also challenged your assertion that "we" would keep calling it "the Moon", even if your

6736:

I'm in full agreement with FormerIP here. Sometimes triviality confounds our initial impulses. Trovatore seem to be insisting that a set with one element suddenly implies that the description of the set necessarily becomes an identifier for the solitary element. In this instance, we are dealing with

6703:

On the other hand, "the Moon" is a name, not a description, like "Luna" in Latin or "Selene" in Greek. Yes, if we had two moons, then you could indeed say "the cow jumped over the moon", and you might not be sure without further context which moon was being referred to. But in that case they would

5439:

Few people have accused me of lying, because I try not to, and do so to a fault. I said that the titles provided in the references which include the words 'Pullman Strike' capitalize it. Every one does. The titles of the sources use capitalization. What kind of stretch did you put on this to call it

5409:

Sir, there have been many logical reasons put forward on all of those pages by quite a few different people which detail why they see and use them as proper names, and they present data which shows a large percentage of source material data lists them as proper names. Now you're are adding Rose Bowl

5195:

This comment is exceedingly asinine. Personal attacks, assumption if bad faith, canvassing and authoritarianistic tendencies all rolled into one. Instead of actually, just maybe accepting that you're wrong about the facts or the interpretation of guidelines you immediately call the opinion of anyone

4909:

The problem is that an RM discussion will probably attract mostly football fans, and they'll want to capitalize what's important to them, as Randy does with what's important to him. To me, these things are all important; I have nothing against football championship games, or civil rights movements,

4875:

That's quite a selective reading of my comment. That's what you saw in it, what you took from it? Okay. As for the Super Bowl, that was a satiric comment, of course nobody would attempt to change an obvious name (I heard that someone actually tried to change Monroe Doctrine to Monroe doctrine once).

4765:

A 'zealot' for the civil rights articles, am I? Thank god for that, someone has to step in at some point. I came to be a zealot because Dicklyon changed all the titles of the CRM pages to lower-case, and I reverted. He then gave me the Dick-lyon treatment on my talk page. I found, through looking at

4381:

call for lowercase in these situations, yet the "fist shaking" (as SMcCandlish puts it) of the zealots, and the general apathy of most editors about matters of style, sometimes make it hard to get the obvious outcome if these are taken to Requested Move discussion. And even when the consensus seems

4372:

Every now and then I run into a cluster of articles titled with caps, and riddled with over-capitalization internally. I used to just fix them, and usually got no comments when doing so. But it seems that more often I'm finding a few zealots who want their stuff capitalized as "proper names", even

4355:

Thanks P64. The digest-writer would be me, for articles appearing starting this month ... but that's more of an accident than a plan, I'm happy to accept any help writing them, as long as the community of writers has some kind of cohesion. People don't generally pay attention to these TFA paragraphs

3684:

RG, English-speaking people in general often confuse "Arab" with "Muslim"/"Islamic." It's a common mistake made by nonprofessional writers. English-speaking people in general and nonprofessional writers are Knowledge's editors and the MoS's audience, so a pre-emptive correction is offered (not even

3502:

My opinion is that it should be eliminated all together. Unless we are going to provide a breakdown for all ethnicities, there is no reason why we should give special treatment in the MoS to "Arab" and "Arabic". This is instruction creep. If we're going to include this little note, then we should be

2426:

before, and don't see how it can be relevant here. I have a long history of constructive editing, cleanups, sourcing, etc., doing my best to follow and implement policies and guidelines. I don't look at how many watchers an article has, and I haven't seen multiple relistings, nor any cabal helping

2218:

Of course we look at sources, as I said and showed; and I said "Nobody has shown a good source-based reason to consider these to be proper names." That means that when they look they do not find sources consistently capitalizing those words. If there's no consistency, there's no necessity, and WP

1684:

still depends on the overall context of what is being described. It mentions a non-fiction example in passing, and it suggests using the past tense. (The fiction example is explained in more detail). There's not much difference between "stated" and "said". You probably won't go wrong using either or

998:

is considered an obscenity in most English-speaking regions and is thus counted as swearing. In the link I provided, the OP has made a self-imposed "non-swearing vow", an issue which has seen him the subject of an ANI thread in the past. I was merely gently reminding him of his inadvertent lapse.

8773:

The proper-name argument is usually the key one. You need to address it rather than dismissing it. I do think that the "unnecessary" bit should be edited to clarify that it means "don't overdo caps when there's no good reason for them", not "always pick the least-capitalized style that any decent

8287:

set of suggestions for best practices. A user may deviate from a guideline without fear of punishment so long as he or she exercises good judgment. That's not the case with the MoS. "I decided to capitalize the word 'the' mid-sentence to distinguish between 'the doom' and 'The Doom of Men'" or "I

7864:

Both for single and double quotation marks I have always used the standard quotation marks supplied by Knowledge: ′single′, ″double″. These are to be found directly below the edit box, next to the ′Insert′ tab. I did this under the assumpton that standardized quotation marks are better for searches

6686:

I see a confusion creeping in in the last couple of posts. Try substitution of other objects and compare. "The cow jumped over the moon" refers to a specific cow and a specific moon by virtue of the article "the", yet the linguistic use is of a common noun, not a proper name: we do not capitalize

5682:

i believe "sun" should never be capitalized unless it is the first word in a sentence, or other extenuating circumstances. Although the sun presently refers to a specific star to us, that was not known at the time the word came into being. And, if, let's say, what if you speak English but live on a

5553:

Blueboar, when "most" editors of an article want to breach our style guidelines, it's up to them to present special justification. This is sometimes quite possible—has been done in the past and will be in the future. But there's no open slather on the matter, not on such a densely populated site as

5478:

You actually said "It looks like almost all if not all the references which include the words 'Pullman Strike' in their titles capitalize the phrase." It would have been more correct to say "It looks like almost all if not all the references which include the words 'Pullman Strike' in their titles

5065:

defines proper names, since he's made his case depend on it. Still waiting to hear from him on this. "Secretary of state" should definitely be downcased if not attached to a specific secretary of state. The fact that you're elderly (I am almost that) is no explanation or justification for rigidity.

5022:

the problem with "consistently capitalized in sources" is that in many problematic cases there isn't consistency, so people pick their sources (e.g. if you want the English names of species in lower case, you disregard all "specialized" sources; for other capitalization cases you choose your ENGVAR

4628:

Right, we at MOS do not tag articles, since our guidance, and our concerns, span all articles. So we can't get AAlertBot to make automatic announcements for us. So, is there some other way to keep informed about relevant workflow items? And yes I expect that they would likely support my position

4472:

RGloucester is no doubt chief zeolot, who presents not-very-convincing yet loud challenges to evidence of clear majority downcasing from ngrams; I think a number of editors are becoming sick of this negative input. Just recently, he reverted my downcasing of several titles in the area of Australian

3716:

No, I don't think "Arabs" and "Muslims" are the same, and no one else does either. No one confuses "Arab" with "Muslim". Please cite some sources that show that people are so idiotic as to confuse ethnic/national identity with religion. No one says "Irish" when they mean "Catholic", nor does anyone

3535:

If it's instruction creep, it's a very slow creep – it's been there for a decade! "Arab"/"Arabic" is a special case because it has variant forms (and presumably it has been a source of confusion) so an explanation is justified to guide editors on proper usage. Same goes for the note on preferring

2306:

Dicklyon's main objection seems to be that people are capitalizing things that are not typically capitalized in sources and that the MoS says not to capitalize them. PBS's response is that they are capitalized because they are capitalized in reliable sources and that the MoS doesn't apply. Unless

1856:

Indeed. In-groups, particularly engineering and scientific specialties, become loose about the typography that helps non-expert comprehension—since those specialties see the compounds every day and often address their texts only to those within their cloister. Here, we write for a wider readership.

1514:

Is it appropriate to include backround information in the style of print news" For example, I've seen politicians identified with a parenthetical tag . I'm just wondering if this is even necessary given that anyone reading the article can just click on the link to find out information about another

1045: 211:

I'm afraid I have to disagree. When a section of text (sentence or paragraph) contains information from different sources bundled cites at the end don't make the source of the information clear. Even if initially the cites were in some kind of order, other editors may change the order (e.g. so that

8925:

Why? As Knowledge's way of defining what a "proper name" is so far from how people usually think of the concept, it isn't getting us very far to hold onto it anyway. Recommend universal lowercase in the text, why not? If we can recommend such an absurd definition of "proper name", we might as well

7134:

Not to be picky, but is "Nationality = United States", actually wrong? I agree that the demonym is "American", but it isn't clear to me that it the template actually requires the demonym. To give a different example, if he had been French, it isn't obvious to me whether "Nationality = France" or

5447:

If your statements are not lies, they are just confusion. I accept that your sources capitalize "Pullman Strike" in their titles, and maybe that was all you were saying. That is hardly the point, though, when it comes to looking at whether they treat it as a proper name. If in the text they use

5042:

was the odd corner case where the more consistent caps in British English conflicted with our stated rules, but even if that's what you're getting at, that's a one-in-a-thousand problem. I'm talking about the everyday overcapitalization of things like riots, strikes, movements, games, and so many

5037:

I've seen that problem only a little. In the case of species common names, the specialist sources are a minority anyway, so excluding them doesn't change the picture. Changing ENGVAR seldom makes much difference, and seldom comes up, but if it did and it was shown that caps are consistent in the

3892:

The example paragraphs below happen to be from the page for Alameda, California, but the same style seems to be followed everywhere in Knowledge. Presentation of simple data in narrative (paragraph) format is awfully hard to read. I suggest that all such data, on every relevant Wiki page, would be

3145:

you wrote "PBS's response is that they are capitalized because they are capitalized in reliable sources and that the MoS doesn't apply." No that is not what I wrote what I wrote was "The policy revolves around what is common usage in reliable sources, not the dictates of the Knowledge style guide.

2809:

noun implies. Writing "the Boston massacre" (uncapitalized) uses the common noun "masssacre" in Knowledge's voice, implying that "massacre" is a correct description of the event. Writing "the Boston Massacre" uses a proper name, which implies that this is the established name of the event but does

2714:

I get that you think you're being clear, but Tony has asked you a serious question about a relevant point (by which I mean that Tony does not appear to be messing with you; he asks this kind of question a lot). There's no harm in coming out in saying either, "What I mean by proper noun is XYZ" or

2629:

is a policy, and makes clear that we should take questions of encyclopaedic register into account, weighing sources to determine what is more appropriate for this encylopaedia. I have provided encyclopaedic sources in cases where I oppose capitalisation, such as the Britannica, just as UCN says to

1440:

as an alternative to italicising long quotes. This seems to be an internal inconsistency; at TfD, we'd like to fix the templates to match the Manual if possible, but we can't do this without consensus as to what the correct quoting behaviour should be (or whether it should be left up to individual

8380:

You do realize that's just one case. "Should" and "can be" don't mean as much as "does" and "were." Anyway, I doubt we're going to agree on this, but have we gotten to the point where you do understand the contention now? You can see where "the MoS is a guideline in name only and rules in fact"

6779:

Huh? No, not at all. The common-noun meaning of "moon" is "natural satellite". But when we talk about the Moon, we mean the natural satellite of the Earth, which is a named entity. If we were having this discussion on Mars, "the Moon" would still mean Earth's natural satellite, not one of the

6404:

Thus, MOS already says that the use of "sun", "earth" and "moon" are lowercase in everyday context (e.g., "The sun was setting") but not in an astronomical context (e.g., "They re-entered Earth's orbit"). I only seek to clarify the wording as this seems to be a source of confusion. What you are

5335:

I never knew this, but it does seem the real name of the game (although I'd say "Rose Bowl" would be its common name) is 'Rose Bowl Game' with the capital 'G'. It was all over the television presentation of the game yesterday, and was used in other forms. As the old football saying goes, "I learn

4973:

in both "The Prime Minister spoke to the press today" (meaning the current British Prime Minister) and in "Many Commonwealth countries have a Prime Minister", whereas other people would decapitalize either the second or both. All we can hope for in Knowledge is some measure of consistency (so why

3940:

Sometimes prose is better than a table; sometimes a table is better than prose. For example, to list out the population of the three major countries on the North American continent, I'd do that in prose. To do all 200-some countries in the world, I'd want a table. It really depends on the data to

3561:

Merely because it has been there doesn't mean it should be. "Presumably it has been a source of confusion" is an odd thing to say. There has been plenty of confusion about "British/Scottish/English/Irish/Welsh, &c.", as mentioned by Mr Lyon, but I don't see a note saying "British, never to be

2154:

wrote in that requested move "Far too many things being proposed for change here;", as very few people are going to look through the whole list and agree that all of them or none of them should be moved having done a survey of all the reliable sources for all the articles. Even is some editors do

1472:

to make the Manual consistent? Or are there people who feel that they should be allowed? As this page is a guideline and I haven't been following its talk page in the past, I'd like to make sure I'm not doing something that's been debated to death hundreds of times already before making a change.

8805:

The proper name argument is very well refuted in the discussions, by looking at stats on usage in better sources (books, typically). As MOS says, "Knowledge relies on sources to determine what is a proper name; words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in sources are treated as proper

5969:

It really can not be improved because it can be confusing in instructional use everywhere. According to some instructions: Correct; "I live on earth.", "I live on Earth that is warmed by the Sun" (used with other capitalized celestial bodies). "The Earth we live on is warmed by the Sun." (same).

5218:

The claims that "Rose Bowl game" might frequently mean something other than the Rose Bowl Game is demonstrably false, and was invoked here in a misleading and disingenuous way, in my opinion. If nobody has been able to find a single example of what they are claiming to be skewing the book usage

5084:

Tony, re rigidity, I agree, but equally I'm as entitled to my preferences as anyone else is to theirs, and the truth is that a lot of the argument about capitalization and other style issues is ultimately just a matter of preference. If you want to apply the "consistently capitalized in sources"

3304:

I don't see how it is unclear. They are not mutually exclusive. "Muslim" is not an ethnic identifier, and never has been. Regardless, perhaps that is how it arose, but that's not at all reason for a blurb in the MoS. I can easily name much more complicated ethnic/national identities that are not

3215:

Can someone explain the origin of this bizarre note "The adjective Arab (never to be confused with Muslim or Islamic) refers to people and things of ethnic Arab origin. The term Arabic refers to the Arabic language or writing system, and related concepts (Not all Arab people write or converse in

3006:

I still maintain that "massacre" should not be part of NDESC titles. The only reason I was not pushing for significant change here was to avoid making more of a mess than we already have. If you agree with me on this matter, perhaps we can work out a solution. Would you support either a deletion

2449:

as a red link in the heading. The way that he went about this thread was so absurd that I thought that I should create the link, to remember the absurdity of the behaviour of certain editors who attempt to make a point that isn't much of a point at all. This absurdity even escalates to the point

1841:

There are numerous instances in WP of almost every compound used as an adjective without hyphens. Many of these are unclear, giving readers little or no clue about how to parse or interpret the meaning. Nothing special about "open source" in this respect. Where the hyphen helps the reader, go

1632:

was not helpful). When quoting or paraphrasing a published work of any kind, is it proper to say that the author "states" or "says," or is it proper to say that they "stated" or "said" whatever it is they did in fact say? Obviously, if the statement is prefaced by "In the book," then the present

380:

where only states the moon is not as big as the sun, but doesn't state that the sun is pretty big? With the ref outside the full stop, it looks like both clauses are referenced. If it was inside the full stop it would be clearer that only the clause before the ref is sourced. Should I now add a

8355:

Being brought up at ANI is not necessarily a sign that you did anything wrong. I don't know the details of your particular situation, but some people can be trigger happy. Perhaps you are trying to say that MOS might be more of a lightning rod than some of the other guidelines. In the end, it

7113:

One note: In Spanish, this is not the case. "Americano" means what AmE speakers would call "New World"/"from the Americas" and "estadounidense" means "American." This can also be a very touchy political issue in Spanish-speaking countries because many people see the use of the name "America" as

3044:

There's the rub, though, Mr Lyon. We're using a NDESC title, not a common name. That one source you provided did not refer to this incident as the "Carnation massacre". It editorialised with the word "massacre" in a sentence describing the events. The title we're using is constructed, a neutral

2731:

None of these are "required rules". The MoS is a generally accepted documentation of good practice, not a straitjacket that is applied to all articles uniformly. MoS compliance isn't even mandated for GA status. The "capitals" are not "extra". Mr Lyon unilaterally moved articles away from their

2586:

Second, RGloucester and one or two others have taken it on themselves to raise a flag for capitalisation, but never respond when asked to explain what they mean by "proper name". MOSCAPS says: "Knowledge avoids unnecessary capitalization. Most capitalization is for proper names or for acronyms.

6721:

I think it is easy to disprove though. Names conventionally start with a capital letter. If "moon" was a name, you would always see it with capital letter and style guides would not advise against using one. It's not a moon called Moon, it's just the moon. Except in specific contexts (where an

3483:? The current wording has barely changed since July 2005. You were querying the "(never to be confused with Muslim or Islamic)" remark which is now gone. If you want to propose another change, do so, but is there any indication that further clarification on proper usage is suddenly needed? 2962:

Personally, I'm of the opinion that the "Carnation massacre" is not a massacre, and should not be at that title anyway. In fact, I'm not sure it is notable at all. None of the cited sources seem to support calling it a massacre, though. Six people dead does not make a massacre. I'd much prefer

2536:

Well, with 30 articles being considered, it's still a lot of work. Especially for those with hundreds or thousands of sources, where it would make more sense to do something like pick the first N pages of Google Books hits that have previews, or something like that, rather than have a stamina

2398:

By the way, the reason this discussion must be centralised is because the above editor and his decapitalisation cabal have been taking advantage of the fact that many of these pages are not watched by many editors. He has been using that to his advantage, having RM "discussions" with either no

8598:

LQ and dash stuff, then. The capitalization of common names of species has also come up repeatedly, but that's less an MoS issue than a "should we listen to the MoS or to Wikiproject-specific rules" issue. But "among/amongst" and referring to ships as "she" have both come up more than once.

5382:

articles. The only thing special that I can see about these is their fan base that is perfectly willing the ignore the preponderance of lowercase usage in books, or make up flaky theories for why that might be, and/or perfectly happy to proposed new reasons to capitalize that are contrary to

4491:

Cease with the personal attacks. I'm no "zealot" (I've agreed with the vast majority of the changes, but disagreed with the procedure), and said that I would support a decapitalisation of those articles if done in bulk at an RM to avoid inconsistency in the category. You've not opened the RM.

1651:

When the MoS doesn't say something, default to general English rules. (This way the MoS doesn't get overloaded with redundant solutions to non-problems.) A good place to start looking is the style guides cited by the MoS as sources. If there's a conflict with that (different style guides say

5365:

The question is really about how to make progress. I felt it was useful to work toward consistency with guidelines, but nowadays that is made difficult by editors who are unwilling or unable to look at the evidence from sources, unwilling to treat guidelines as important, and zealous about

1140:

Sounds like an idea at least worth discussing. Since this is a discussion about the entire skin, I think it could better be discussed centrally (phabricator/mediawiki Vector talk page/design mailing list), but I could be convinced of only doing this locally if there are reasonable arguments.

8862:

The MoS does not claim to be a gospel. Taking it as such, as you tend to do, is contrary to its purpose. As it says, "Where more than one style is acceptable, editors should not change an article from one of those styles to another without a good reason. Edit warring over optional styles is

7109:

The IP editor is flat-out wrong. In American English, "America" means "the United States." In other varieties, it has two meanings. It can mean either "the United States" or "the Americas"/"North and South America" in some contexts. However, there is no English-language demonym other than

8682:, instead of "Knowledge avoids unnecessary capitalization", it might be more accurate to say "Knowledge lets editors capitalize anything they think is important, especially if there's an article about it", as that would be more in line with how recent Requested Move discussions are going. 2649:

You say: "I think the phrase "proper name" is obvious to anyone that has a basic level of English comprehension, Tony." More hedging. Yet again, could you enlighten us to what your definition is, please? Without your proposed definition, we're at a loss to even start judging your argument.

6632:

is mostly lower case even in cases that would be interpreted as referring specifically to the Earth's sun, as in "The sun", "our sun", "rising sun", "setting sun", etc. There must be some more specific context in which capitalization is considered to be appropriate, or required. Perhaps

2051:"you might want to begin by updating MOS:CAPS so that it actually addresses historical events ... If the issue is not addressed clearly in MOS:CAPS, then I am inclined to oppose the whole list because of poor documentation of the guideline and questionable tactics for its implementation." 131:

for example) that always put the reference before the full stop. Neither style makes precisely clear the exact scope of the text supported by the reference. If only part of a multipart sentence is supported by a reference, then surely the best course of action is to rewrite the sentence?

1823:

without discussion in early 2014 by a single editor whose stated rationale was that the phrase is "idiomatic". It seems to me that the inconsistency of hyphenation of the term calls for a Manual of Style consensus to be established, with article titles and text to be edited accordingly.

895:

It's not the fault of the navbox that there is no MoS page specific to football. It is correctly reflecting the fact that no such information exists. Whether or not there should be, and why snooker should be singled out by the MoS, are separate questions. Perhaps you were looking for

938:

Which part of my post do you suppose to be not relevant? And what do you suppose it is not relevant to? I replied to another editor's post and my comments are certainly relevant to the problem he raised. If you mean there is nothing actionable for the MoS page then I agree with you.

1991:, does not suggest that he's serious. It's possible that he hasn't figured out that he is being reverted, so he keeps trying. And hasn't figured out from notifications that he has a talk page. Keep trying... Not much point worrying what MOS says if you can't get a discussion going. 165:, "Bundling is also useful if the sources each support a different portion of the preceding text ... Bundling has several advantages: It avoids the visual clutter of multiple clickable footnotes inside a sentence or paragraph". This would seem to imply that the inclusion of citations 4969:(in each case referring to one unique entity) are not easy to recognize by grammatical tests. Their capitalization is a convention which has changed over time and is still changing, and which differs somewhat between variants of English. Thus as an elderly Briton, I would capitalize 4629:

if they care about style issues and the guidance of MOS, but they might not support me if my position is wrong. More generally, many others propose RMs with style issues; sometimes they will be supported by those who believe in the guidance of MOS, and sometimes they will not be.

3717:

say "Arab" when they mean "Muslim". That's the most outrageous neo-colonial outlook I've ever heard. It seems that your definition of "people in general" is the lowest common denominator of idiots in western countries who are so parochial as to not understand a basic distinction.

2247:

Oh PBS. No. Nobody is arguing that the titles of these articles should be capitalized differently from how they're titled (except for the first character), are they? Why do you keep bringing this up? Would you please stop? It's fine to talk about things in WP:MOS at WT:MOS.

7093:

People and things from the United States of America are called "American". "American" refers to a country in English-language usage, where there is no such debate or ambiguity. Foreign languages have no relevance on what we do here. Americans are called American. That's simple.

6665:

But I would argue that it's quite clear in the cases at hand. The Sun is a particular hot ball of gas. Other hot balls of gas are poetically "suns", but the more common common-noun use of "sun" is in the sense of "sunlight". It's perfectly clear which of these to treat as a

4910:

or riots and massacres, but I tend to agree that WP looks more professional as we work to implement the style guidelines. There don't seem to be enough people who agree with me anymore though, so maybe I'll give it up; at least until I retire and have nothing better to do...

4818:

Maybe by....leaving them alone? Championship Game seems like something which would be a proper name, when applied to games with teams I like. When it's teams I don't like, even if other people do, then change them to lower-case! That'll teach 'em. Am I playing the game right?

3023: 1055: 7934:

I have edited the guideline to point out this potential source of confusion. I think many editors have never subdivided a degree into minutes and seconds in their lives, so the placement of ′ and ″ next to ° will not be a sufficient clue to what these symbols really are.

2191:

Here's why we have to look at the sources... If the sources capitalize the word "Riot" when referring to the event, then we know that the word is considered part of the proper name of the event ... its similar to the way the word "Massacre" is part of the proper name in

2510:

the relevant sources yourself, Dicklyon. Just start two lists, add the sources you've been using to one of them, and invite others to contribute. If the opposition to your proposal is as vehement as you say, then you'll have all the help you need filling up the other

6760:

Suggesting that they should never be in lower case? Ever? That to refer to the moons of Jupiter is incorrect English, and that we should be saying "the satellites of Jupiter", and that we should say that extrasolar planets orbit their own stars, never their own suns?

5719:

I think experts in the field would riot at the idea of downcasing the Sun, that is, "Sol", to give it its titular name. But your example of "the two suns" is perfectly correct—I suppose it's "the two stars" in a local solar-system context (just not our solar system).

343:

Ok, you're right that it works when detailed explanations are given in the footnote – which I now understand is what you meant by "correctly". However (a) few if any real examples I've seen of bundled cites go into this detail (b) if the reader wants to check a fact,

8822:(ec) I'm not getting in the middle of your current disputes. Heck, I might even be on your side, in the ones you've mentioned. But I suggest you address the arguments that are actually proffered, rather than an ulterior motive of which you have no real evidence. -- 4591:

is the zealot for the civil rights movements articles; he didn't come via a project either; but some of those supporting him likely did. RG says this kind of project advertising is OK, but if we do advertising here, that would be canvassing. Does that make sense?

8203:

Changing or removing WP:LQ comes up about once a year, so that probably puts it in the top ten. The usual suggestion is to convert it to an ENGVAR-based rule but allowing both British and American punctuation independently of the article's spelling has also been

7637:) has ample coverage of proper use of quotation marks (" ") and placement of punctuation inside/outside quotation marks, but does not actually discuss punctuation that should appear before a quotation. It seems this is the appropriate place for it, so I propose: 3685:

pre-emptive if people were making this mistake in the article space years ago). In contrast, people don't generally say "Irish" when they really mean "Catholic" or "Baptist" when they really mean "Texan," so there's no need to offer any instruction on the matter

6992:

Dick, did you read what I said? I agree that "the moon is bright" can reasonably be construed as meaning the moonlight, not the named entity (which is actually not very bright; supposedly has about the albedo of old asphalt or something like that). But when it

5122:

The problem is cases where the proper name of a game, or anything for that matter, is identical, except for the capitalization, to a simple descriptive phrase. For example, the "NFC Championship Game" is just what it says on the tin, the championship game of the

5538:

OK, good point. When most editors of an article want to ignore all rules, and make up bullshit reasons to do so, I should just move on. I will. Not ready to give up on Pullman strike yet, but certainly not going to sweat the football fans at Rose Bowl Game.

1530:

Those abbreviations are completely opaque to people who don’t read U.S. newspapers, so they should not be used. If the information is critical to understanding the sentence, spell it out instead of abbreviating. If not critical, let the hyperlink do it its job.

5085:

test, by the way, according to Google ngrams, "a Prime Minister" is marginally more common in British English than "a Prime Minister" and "a Secretary of State" more common in US English than "a secretary of state", so both should be capitalized on this test.

6499:

in an astronomical context. The context is communications. It's very possible that it would appear in an article that is not remotely "astronomy"; say, one about television stations. For the "tribal people" example, yes, I suppose that would be a change.

7532:

regarding capitalization of shortened forms of full or formal names including geographical names, geopolitical names, institutions, and titles of people. As it would also impact this page, I'd like to bring it to the attention of those watching this page.

3660:

The present guidance is actually wrong, in that it says that "Arab" as an adjective refers to things of "ethnic Arab origin". "Arab" refers to a wider linguistic and cultural identity that is not based on ethnic origin, and includes many arabised peoples.

7145:

doesn't seem to give any guidance. If the demonym is definitely preferred in cases like this, then that should probably be documented somewhere and there are literally thousands of examples of "Nationality = United States" that would need to be fixed.

593:.) Titles are titles, often meant to be eye-catching, so to speak, not true English. But this argument is quite weak, and indeed the publisher (Putnam) on the book's inner dust jacket flap (but not the outside cover) used a font with straight quotes. 3921:

I disagree. People come here to read an encyclopedia, and paragraph form is standard for this type of information in encyclopedias. If someone were to make a really great table that used space efficiently, there wouldn't be much reason not to include

3644:

Why is Knowledge "better" for it? What exactly does it accomplish? Nothing. It doesn't make any sense. It is an oddly specific note. No one has demonstrated what purpose it actually serves in the MoS. In this, it reminds me of the British milk rule at

6700:"The cow" is a description, not a name. We are referring to a specific cow, yes, but she is not named "Cow". At least she probably is not. All that we are saying is that we have a specific individual in mind, who satisfies the predicate "is a cow". 4852:

I'm glad you admit the parallels between the different things that people hold dear and want to honor by capitalizing. But that is not WP's style. I don't think you have to worry about "Super Bowl", as it is consistently treated as a proper name in

8409:

Yes I was. The only change I'd make to the wording (regarding this issue) is to stop referring to it as a guideline, but it is even more important to stop making edits to it on the assumption that its content will be treated as if it were optional.

4587:, I'm not really referring to RGloucester, as much as to the fact that each area or wikiproject is likely to have one or a few zealots of this sort. He was the zealot for riots and massacres, but not due to a wikiproject as far as I know. And 503:

It's called that because the rules are based on the semantics (i.e. logic) of the content of the quotation. This doesn't, of course, mean that the alternative style is necessarily "illogical", just that it prioritizes appearance over semantics.

5038:

variety that the article is written in, that would seem like an OK argument at least. I certainly agree on the need for more clear rules; we have that written down already for some things, like job titles, and that helps a bit. Perhaps the

1326:

Generally I find bold in the main text to be disruptive to the flow of reading, and ungainly to view synoptically. I've learned to put up with it at the very opening, but I can't see the functionality in allowing yet more bolding in the text.

8941:

Oh, thanks for clarifying that you're playing the idiot on purpose. At first I thought you were serious, in spite of the idiocy of it, as you have said things about that idiotic before. Excuse me for not always recognizing the difference;

7913:(′) and double prime (″), not quotation marks. These shortcuts are provided to make them easier to enter because they are not on standard keyboards. Straight quotation marks (") found on your keyboard should be used for general purposes. 3536:"Jew" over "Jewish people". It doesn't mean other ethnicities or religions need mentioning for the sake or balance or completeness. Do you have any specific proposals on what to say about "Arabian" – or do you just have a vague sense that 2583:

of article titles—as though the article text should be subject to different rules to the titles. WP:AT doesn't concern styling, and it's not tenable to encourage the notion that there are two sets of rules. This was resolved many many years

4431:

all RM discussions that invoke MOS style issues? Many wikiprojects seem to list related RMs automatically, bringing out their specialists thereby. Would it be bad form for people who care about style guidance to have such a scheme, too?

2922:

titles that we construct ourselves, it is unacceptable. The difference between "massacre" and "Massacre" is that "Massacre" implies a commonly accepted name for an event, whereas "massacre" merely implies editorial description, per Boson.

3653:, i.e. the Arabian Peninsula. Not all Arabs are Arabian, and they are never 'Arabic'. 'Arabic' refers solely to the Arabic language, writing system, and related concepts. The adjective 'Arab' can refer to people or things from across the 7888:

The vertical single and double quotation marks are even easier to find. So much easier, in fact, that most people use them automatically, unaware of how to find the slanted quotation marks, let alone the various curly quotation marks.

5470:

I said titles, I meant titles. It was an observation I made upon having a quick look at the reference section. Please, if people disagree with you on Knowledge, assume good faith. In this case that assumption would have been correct.

2892:, we take that to mean that capitalization is necessary. If they don't, we don't. It's not that complicated. If sources have other terms they use, we can choose that instead, as long as we agree that it's at least as good, per the 2703:

a guideline but what it really is is changeable but required set of rules. In practice, people who add new material aren't penalized for not following the MoS but people who change text from MoS-compliant to non-MoS-compliant can be

5023:

carefully). This quickly becomes circular: "X isn't a reliable source because it does/doesn't capitalize." Clear rules for categories of noun phrase, like job titles, are easier for everyone to follow and ensure greater consistency.

8291:

Generally, the guideline-vs-rules argument comes up when someone says, "Well we don't HAVE to do the work of making sure that the MoS conforms with actual English/contains fact-based information/goes the full mile/etc. because it's

6248:

which, in my view, causes confusion in cases where the names of celestial bodies are used generally. The reference to "astronomical context" should be restored to clarify this distinction and maintain consistency with MOSCAPS.

9087:

I'm not beating anyone with a stick. Just pointing out that the MOS seems to have carried no weight there, where fans of political events prefer to capitalize what's important to them, in spite of most sources not doing so.

3069:

in the years following its occurrence. It doesn't seem to meet the event notability criteria. Regardless, if you won't support deletion I shan't push for it. Let's instead focus on giving it a neutral title, as I said above.

7186:

That's fine. The problem I have is with an IP editor (maybe the same one the OP is talking about) that is not just changing infoboxes but replacing all instances of "American" with "U.S." or "United States." See for example

6477:

which mistakenly confused "an astronomical context when referring to specific celestial bodies" with "properly-capitalized astronomical bodies" (which is ambiguous anyway). It's time this error of confusion was corrected.

7957:

I have made some further edits to tidy this up and keep it concise. Note that the prime and double-prime characters are also shown to IP users who do not have preferences to show/hide gadgets, so I simplified the wording.

2442: 7353:

title, as the painting was completed and first exhibited in Berlin; this sometimes throws off those who know Munch was Norwegian by birth, and think it's a grammatically incorrect translation of the common Norwegian name

8456:

I do not favor more regulation; but sometimes simpler suggestions are good, like on the discussion about commas before and after "Jr.". No more complexilty until we get better at practicing what we already recommend.

6409:

the rule to say that "the Sun", "the Earth" and "the Moon" should always be capitalised (e.g., "The Sun was setting") which would be a substantive change to both MOS and MOSCAPS, and therefore would require consensus.

5578:

to reflect the consensus of the community... if "most" editors want to "breach" our style guidelines, then I would say that the breach has consensus and not the style guideline. Perhaps we need to be more willing to

5511:

Dick... you are probably not going to like my advice on how to proceed, but I will give it anyway: If you are finding that consensus is to not follow the MOS in certain articles... just accept it. Think of them as

5234:

be the discussion on that page, not the other. But yeah, Dicklyon, you are a little harsh in your comment here about that perfectly reasonable talk in progress. Still, it seems they're talking about the wrong thing.

3334:

What is the issue? Follow reliable sources. Otherwise, if someone is "Arab" and "Muslim", one can call that person "an Arab Muslim". I don't understand what is hard about this. That's what the article you mentioned,

8754:

I'm not saying they are making that argument; but the arguments they make are less sensible than that; mostly unsupported claims of "it's a proper name", so I was being generous. I'm just saying that our current

7996:. Not saying it's right... only that this is what we will do. It's up to those who do know (and care) about minutia like this to follow along and substitute in the "correct" marks. (please do so with courtesy). 5366:

protecting the capitalization of things important to them. We got past this on birds, and on lots of small pockets of over-capitalization that I hesitate to mention, but now we're hung up on a few oddities like

6309:

This has been the rule here for years, and lots of the MOS regulars always insist that in cases of conflict, the main MOS takes precedence. I think you're the one who needs to establish consensus for a change.

4063:"a number of" and "several" mean the same thing (or close enough that it makes no difference). The change was very petty. However, since it really does not make any difference to the meaning, it would be even 3786:

it says- "It is suggested that you notify editors active at "Knowledge:Manual of Style (biographies)" of discussions on this essay taking place here by leaving a message at that guideline's talk page." So I am.

1781: 8213:

As Dicklyon brings up, the issue of whether the MoS mandates things/contains rules or merely suggests things/is a guideline is also discussed pretty often here, but that's not exactly a suggested improvement.

8168:

That's fightin' talk. Everyone knows it's changing "English" to "British", or vice versa. Or maybe it's avoiding the supervacuus usage of Latin. Or avoiding the use of "usage" when the usage of "use" will do.

6431:

It says "names an astronomical body", not "in an astronomical context". I think this is important. If it's the named body in question, then it should be capitalized, whether we're talking about astronomy or

5683:

planet in another solar system? Wouldn't the star your planet orbits be "the sun"? In English-language sci-fi literature and film, usually stars with planets orbiting them are referred to as "suns," as in the

1040: 146:

Jeandré, that system doesn't actually mislead readers. It's just a bit annoying to people who prefer it the other way. As for aesthetics, people usually tend to prefer whichever system they're more used to.

7033:

Well it's been this way since 2004. If you want to lobby for change, start an RfC and test the waters. Either way, it's no reason to block my revision to make the current wording clearer in the meantime.

3440:

as the advice is otherwise useful and has been fairly stable for almost a decade. The above discussion was mainly about the "Muslim or Islamic" remark rather than the "Arab" vs "Arabic" advice as a whole.

8341:

be prepared to consider, "I don't think the MoS is a set of rules, but in this case we should be careful anyway" or "I don't think the MoS is just a guideline but that doesn't mean we can't insert this."

4314:

Zero is a number, as John said in edit summary. So is one. But "a number of plurals" and "some plurals" both connote more than one and it's reasonable to pay attention to connotations as well as stricter

7441:

It probably becomes more tricky with art since 1900, where lots of English writers use the English titles, and lots don't. The Matisse assortment might be fully following the MOS, or completely random.

4318:

I prefer "some" to "a number of", where "several" is not accurate, and in the course of other editing I routinely replace "a number of" with some where the context does not support either "several" or "

2465:

OK, then I object to that shortcut link; it is not meaningful. It appears that you made it up just to make some odd point yourself. Please remove it. Make an essay about bulldozering if you need to.

6944:

should be capitalised when used as the names respectively for the sun of our Solar System, the planet we inhabit and the moon that orbits us. It is not unlike style guides that would use lowercase for

6855:

Look at mid-20th century sci-fi for example — they always use it that way, when they use it. It's true that some authors prefer "Luna", but the ones that say "the Moon" always mean the one near Earth.

5703:

had a red sun and Earth had a yellow sun that give him his powers. It simply doesn't make sense that all of a sudden the capitalization of a word would change. And NO, I don't want to call it 'Sol'. --

8806:

names and capitalized in Knowledge." In most cases, it's easy to show that caps are in a minority, yet they insist. Other, like RGloucester, suggest simply ignoring the MOS and capitalizing anyway.

8501:

hauled before ANI for being disruptive. Many of the regulars to this page have learned valuable lessons from such disputes... and their experience is something that other editors could benefit from.

4322:

The digest-writer selected one among several firsts identified in the full article for identification in Today's feature. I agree with that judgment but would go further; reword something like these:

2598:

they are using to drive this capitalisation campaign. They have not done so, but instead have used a wall of pretty unconvincing comments, including those quoted by Dick at the top of this thread.

2594:

Given this clear wording at the top of the MOS, I rather think the onus is on them to (i) demonstrate consistent capitalisation in sources for each example, and (ii) provide whatever definition of

9107:' this point on some level, so why can't you just change the ones which are noncontroversial and not change the names which are seen, as I said, by millions of people as proper and common names? 6707:

If you are saying that you think that that English phrase is using "moon" as a description rather than a name, then I'm afraid I just think you're wrong. I admit I'm not sure how to prove it. --

5343:

Not clear what you mean by "real name". The "official name" is given in the article, but it's too long to use. The common names are "Rose Bowl" and "Rose Bowl game", according to usage stats.

701:

On this talk page, yes. It's been suggested (and upheld) that headers should be descriptive and specific to make it easier to find things in archives. Or were you talking about the MoS itself?

5258:

To throw oil on troubled water (and light it), these are time-varying proper nouns, and probably shouldn't be used at all in an encyclopedia, except with the year, which would make them proper

4424:, a member of that wikiproject, shows up to oppose the capitalization fix, giving no reason except "forgive me for not wanting to rehash every argument presented by those opposing the move". 2522:

to the page's name was later shut down with "you can challenge it if you want but reliable sources prefer this spelling 2:1." I've also tried this the last two times that WP:LQ was challenged.

6746:

No, I'm not insisting that, not at all. Something can be a description even if there is only one object that answers to the description. However, "Sun", "Earth", and "Moon" are all names. --

1835: 3267:

I think you'll agree with me that the idea of confusing "Arab" with "Islamic" or "Muslim" is absurd, no? This strikes me as instruction creep, and downright absurd instruction creep at that.

1789:

clearly states that a phrase used as a compound adjective should be hyphenated. Nevertheless, there are numerous instances in Knowledge of the term "open source" used as a compound adjective

1159:

Question: Can anyone point to an article in which headings this deep (and difficulty distinguishing them from body text) are an issue? It doesn't seem unlikely, but let's see one in action.

8846:" and a few alternatives. Then call an RfC and invite people from those debates so we can work it out (or at least notify people that they're not supposed to be using title case so widely). 8183:

I don't know what supervacuus means, but I'd be in favor of discouraging Latin abbrev (e.g., i.e.), just because so many readers and editors have no idea what they mean or how to use them.

2196:. If, on the other hand, they do not capitalize the word "riot" when referring to the event, then we know the sources do not consider that word to be part of a proper name, but are merely 7705:

Thus, there would be a central place to refer on this point. For example, I just added a colon before a couple of quotations (where a dash had previously used) but I had to refer to both

3053:

title, we must construct one that neutrally describes the events. The only neutral description is as "killings" or "murders", which describe what took place, rather than editorialise with

2625:

has its own definition. By the way, as I told you before, the MoS is only a guideline. It is not a straitjacket that is applied uniformly everywhere. It is subject to talk page consensus.

1553: 6822:

A name such as "the Moon" would be unsuitable, since it would be too easily confused with "the moon". We'd have to name it suitably, perhaps as SF writers have done: "Luna". No "the". —

1959:

in regard to religion, etc., I'm not finding anything specific in the way of what's acceptable and what's not when referring to religious figureheads/deities. Please refer to this edit

2011:

My routine style adjustment work seems to have brought out some weird and wonderful new ideas about what WP style ought to be for capitalization. In spite of recent re-affirmations of

6435:

I might give you "the sun was setting", because the Sun does not really set. You could maybe stretch a point to claim that it's the sun, in the sense of sunlight, that's disappearing.

2031:. The centralized discussion listing of this discussion has brought out these interesting proposals for why various titles about riots and massacres and murders should be capitalized 1086: 8395:

I assume you were responding to me (not clear from the indents)? I somewhat see where you are coming from. Is there a specific improvement in the wording of MOS that you are seeking?—

8247:

follow the "guideline" can be brought up on ANI whether they've done anything else against the rules or not. That means it's a guideline in name only and a set of rules in practice.

6871: 6040:

Moon – and it's contradicted by MOSCAPS. The guidance at MOSCAPS is clear and we'd be better off just copy-pasting it here. At the very least, it should be amended along the lines:

5295:

Other humorously stupid (stupidly humorous?) comments against decapitalization come from people who don't bother reading what the question is about, or what the evidence says, like

1131: 9025:

Explain? Example? Whatever the reasons are, I'd like to understand how caps can be "necessary" yet most sources use lowercase. What, for example, makes it necessary to capitalize

8565:, why are you asking? By top ten are you referring to how often, how important, desired by how many people? What's the purpose of this thread? Do you have any plans? If they're 1933: 7013:

Yeah, I picked a bad example; probably "The moon is up" would have been better. It's the entity, but not in terms of celestrial bodies or astronomy so much as in everyday terms.

7343:. Some paintings are well known by an English title, which may be a full or partial translation of a title in another language, and maybe not always the obvious one. For example, 6662:. Granted, there are fuzzy cases, where you have a description that only one object satisfies, and it's not entirely clear whether it's being used as a description, or as a name. 5483:

capitalize the phrase when they use it in a sentence." or "It looks like almost all if not all the references which include the words 'Pullman Strike' in their titles treat it as

1294:

If the occasional word (usually a noun) is unexpectedly bold then the reader thinks for a bit, doesn't see an obvious answer and continues on without any drama. No harm real done.

1356: 4091:

I would agree with John that "several" conveys the point more fluidly than "a number of", which sounds more artificial and vague, even though it means the same thing normally.

2441:

It is quite relevant here. In fact, if you'd like to know its origin, I can inform you. It is rather humorous. One editor, who I'm not likely to agree with on anything, started

1900: 7544: 4826:

Exactly how do you define "proper name", Randy? This is a critical question that the capping brigade just ... will ... not ... answer. Could you break the impasse, then, here?

1540: 2450:

where usual words like "bulldozing" must be replaced with the bombastic "BULLDOZERING". You are taking your own interpretation of the guidelines as gospel, when they are not.

1735: 8790:

MoS is not gospel, and needn't be applied. Application, when there is a dispute, is based on the consensus of editors at a particular article. That's simply the way it goes.

6028:

do not take capitals" is at odds with "when the term names a specific astronomical body" which implies that "Sun", "Earth" and "Moon" should be capitalised when referring to

2382:

I am not aware that any of these had been moved before or discussed, or considered potentially controversial. Which ones? Can you supply pointers to relevant discussions?

1925: 1756: 2515: 7259:

where the sense it not German language. In the last couple years I learned that those links are systematically deleted by some editors, so I do not routinely provide them.

5298:: " are necessary to show that they are proper names and not names of a generic phenomenon ("Let's have a pullman strike this week.") or a descriptive (Who struck which " 3926:

in the article. That's more or less why we have infoboxes in so many. Go ahead and start adding them if you want, but I wouldn't support a rule preferring them to text.

3796: 3783: 8896:

Yes, it would eliminate the issue, because if we recommend title case for article titles, we could also recommend user lowercase style for prose, eliminating the debate.

1524: 7491: 3986: 3732:

Your request for sources showing that confusing "Arab" and "Muslim" is a common mistake is more than reasonable. I found these in a brief Google search: See first line

2668:

Would you prefer if I call you "tony" because I cannot find any reliable sources that refer to you as "Tony"? Perhaps I should start a requested move on your user page.

4002: 2272:

behavior by some here on the MOS talk page whenever editors raise the issue of conflicts between the MOS pages and various policies and guidelines. Denying that there

1297:

But if a redirect takes you to a different article name than what you thought you were going to, then you have a very confused reader who doesn't know why he is there.

7523: 7329: 7114:

symbolic of American hegemony and imperialism (historical note: while the hegemony part has a basis in fact, the name was picked out long before the Monroe Doctrine).

3146:

The Article titles policy has its own guidance on such things in guidelines that are called naming conventions. ..." and went on to describe what some of them are. --

1569: 1546: 371: 357: 221: 206: 192: 3990: 3914: 8506:

Encourage compliance, don't insist on it - MOS compliance should approached in terms of encouraging "best practice", and not approached in terms of enforcing "rules"

4522: 4413: 3910: 2865:

I agree entirely with what you just said, Boson, and that's one of the reasons I argued against decapitalisation for massacres. We should not be using "massacre" in

1945: 1316:

done."? (I'm quoting because that's a good description of one approach to writing and copyediting, an approach that does carry some weight in some circles.) - Dank (

7301: 1675: 1168: 498: 335: 178: 8447: 3226: 2423: 2352:

I might even skip a few (like the Lager Beer Riot, which is lowercase only rarely) that would be marginal on the "consistently capitalized in sources" question.

1710: 7898: 2518:. The issue was whether to change "New York Theater District" to "New York Theatre District." Two or three editors put the lists together in a day or two, and a 716: 8159: 7509: 7495: 7451: 7367: 3935: 2759:

make no sense, as that bit does not relate to style (and the fact that it's part of a policy page has no particular significance, either). Start making sense.

1661: 672: 658: 513: 156: 141: 8466: 8096: 7480: 6167:

I don't see consensus sufficient to reverse the longstanding practice here. "The Sun", when referring to Sol, is a proper name, astronomical context or not. --

5166: 3671: 3530: 3244: 1277: 1150: 710: 649:

Were we to go by the styling on the cover, it would be “... AND LADIES OF THE CLUB”; we choose to straight-quote it much as we choose the Title Case version. --

8873: 8608: 8593: 8223: 7529: 7155: 7123: 5052: 5032: 5010: 3761: 3727: 3709: 3693:. This is comparable to telling people how to use apostrophes in possessives of words that end in S. People often mess it up; the MoS provides clarification. 3407: 2750: 2724: 8800: 8480: 8178: 8056: 6471:. This clearly refers to the astronomical body called Earth, but it is not in an astronomical context, so it is not capitalised. This anomaly crept in from 5283: 5269: 2531: 2361: 1857:

This is a good example of why we should not always regard specialist usage as ideal for our circumstances; and it's why serious publishers have house styles.

1725: 644: 626: 443: 8955: 8936: 8920: 8906: 8891: 8517: 8139: 8125: 8110: 8021: 7214: 7204: 7175: 6888:

I tend to agree that it is probably how most books use it. I'm saying they're using it wrong. They're not taking into account the fact that it's a name. --

4715: 4698: 4684: 4669: 4655: 4638: 4623: 4575: 4561: 4467: 3818: 3777: 3364: 3349: 3329: 3315: 3295: 3277: 3262: 3080: 3035: 3017: 2999: 2977: 2955: 2933: 2909: 2784: 2768: 2475: 2460: 2436: 2413: 2391: 2377: 1916: 1024: 1010: 989: 972: 950: 933: 919: 8855: 8642: 8569:

changes (rather than actual) then by definition they're either pending or not implemented. Do you want us to also list past suggestions that were adopted?

8531: 8390: 8256: 8238: 7104: 6965:

are not capitalised in general use even when referring to those named bodies, in examples such as "The sun rose", and it has apparently been this way since

5713: 5157:

of whether it is capitalized or not. This is exceedingly difficult to do, so it's not a helpful rule to say that "proper nouns are capitalized in English".

5112: 5094: 5079: 2963:"Carnation killings". However, I didn't want to rock the boat too much. If I did, I'd propose it for deletion. It really doesn't seem encyclopaedic at all. 2869:

titles. That's definitely editorialising, and entirely inappropriate. If we are constructing titles for events, the word "massacre" should not be included.

2564: 2546: 2346: 2320: 2285: 1256:, says "Use boldface in the remainder of the article only in a few special cases: ... at the beginning of a section of an article, which are the targets of 1105: 728: 531: 8911:

Why would you say something so idiotic? Surely you must understand that we would not want to use lowercase in text for proper names? Or maybe you don't?

8831: 8815: 8783: 8768: 8749: 8735: 8709: 8700:

However, in the past, you and some of the other "anti-capitalists" here have characterized arguments that way, when that is not the argument being made. --

8419: 8404: 8365: 8350: 8327: 8305: 8278: 7890: 7289: 7229: 7026: 7006: 6897: 6883: 6817: 6803: 6731: 6681: 5228: 5205: 2732:

titles as supported by policy and the MoS. He did make some moves that were correct, too. Regardless, in most cases, the majuscule letters are mandated by

826: 808: 664: 636: 594: 473: 9038: 9020: 8296:. Let's just put our own whims and preferences in!" To which my response is, yes we do have to because people don't treat it like it's only a guideline. 8192: 7795: 6987: 6865: 6850: 6840: 6826: 6789: 6774: 6765: 6755: 6716: 6695: 5548: 5529: 5496: 5465: 5434: 5352: 5251: 4919: 4892: 4502: 4486: 2879: 2678: 2663: 2644: 2228: 2213: 2000: 1228: 9097: 9082: 8549: 8315: 8080: 7925: 7339:

Definitely seems to be inconsistent. Which seems to mean, to me at least, that there is no standard rule, other than to call each painting by what it is

6741: 5814: 5749: 5733: 5658: 4991: 4006: 3953: 3617: 3572: 3552: 3513: 3495: 3474: 1884: 1851: 1244: 1186: 889: 545: 212:

the reference numbers are in ascending order). I would only use them when the information is so thoroughly integrated that separate citing doesn't work.

8578: 7333: 6621: 4925: 4247: 4046: 4036: 3972: 3453: 1775: 1321: 1310: 9056: 8697:

I don't know which discussion specifically you're referring to. I suppose I could look in your history and figure it out, but I'm not that interested.

8013: 7874: 7271: 7046: 6509: 6490: 6451: 6422: 6319: 6304: 6283: 6261: 6233: 6210: 6176: 5640: 5619: 5567: 4870: 4839: 4601: 4538: 4441: 4293: 3520:

By the way, I think someone should take a look at the "Ethiopian"/"African" example, as that seems to be positing some kind of colonial point of view.

2836: 2611: 2263: 1870: 1642: 784: 7812: 7777: 7763: 7746: 6642: 6266:

I disagree. MOSCAPS should be changed to capitalize all the proper-noun instances; that is, all the cases where "Sun" or "Moon" is being used as the

5963: 5925:

are capitalized (as proper names) when used in an astronomical context to refer to a specific celestial body (our Sun, Earth, Moon and Solar System):

5899: 4275: 4166: 4100: 4080: 3981:

I agree with 76.90.232.246. This kind of information is very laborious to read and assimilate in this prose form. A formatted layout would be better.

3253:

where editors argue over whether to characterize them as Arab, Islamic, Arabic, or something else. I expect it arose out of some of those disputes.

2736:, a policy, and by MOSCAPS. To be clear, talk page consensus explicitly is used to determine how to apply the MoS to specific pages. For example, see 2057:"Accepted full names of wars, battles, revolts, revolutions, rebellions, mutinies, skirmishes, risings, campaigns, fronts, raids, actions, operations 857: 757: 5772: 5140: 2186: 2164: 1617: 1263: 1214: 695: 7970: 7944: 6603: 6536:

How would you re-phrase MOS to avoid the anomaly between "When used generally" and "when the term names a specific astronomical body"? For example:

6162: 6139: 5329: 5311: 5189: 3881: 2169:

There's no dispute about titles, only about styling. We style text and titles the same way, don't we? And there's certainly no conflict here with

602: 6808:

You doubt that we would still call Earth's natural satellite "the Moon", if we were on Mars? Really? What do you think we would call it, then? --

5180:. I didn't expect much better, based on last time, but I didn't expect to attract two new parroters of the theory that didn't pan out last time. 3887: 3870: 2884:

Massacre is a common noun, defined as "an indiscriminate and brutal slaughter of people". If sources commonly call something a massacre, then per

1340: 867:

Came here to look for something on football. Clicked through the links on the right hand side. Clicked on "Sports" and all I find is Snooker. WTF?

226:

IMO, if a reader is confused by the following system, it's likely because the reader lacks comprehension skills, not that the system lacks clarity:

8740:"What they think is important" has not in the past been the argument being made, but you and McCandlish have tried to characterize it that way. -- 7854: 7729: 7320:

Should the title of an article about a painting be in the original language, or should it be translated into English? For example, if you look at

6112: 4794: 4613:. If you want to "bring titles into accord with guidelines", you are still subject to the same processes as everyone else. File a requested move. 3204: 689:

Forgive me if I missed it. But should section names be accurate and not only point out one part of the section when it discusses multiple things?

4812: 4361: 4262:

I wouldn't make a habit of changing text for your minor preferences. Others have other preferences, and as far as I know there's nothing in the

3210: 3026:

calls it a massacre. It's marginally notable, but I'd probably not delete an article on such an event. Surely there are news stories at least.

2325:

Listing them all would be a big project, but I've got pretty good summary stats and links for further inspection at the multi-move discussion at

2151: 1015:

You're right, I had not noticed that one ;-) . I was distracted by the nicer "This is not friendly" conclusion. Consider answered & closed. -

8115:

If you say so. "Prescribe the use of" will do. It will not require any more redirects than we already have. It will simply mandate title style.

5131:, so no reason we can't actually treat proper nouns as proper nouns, even if the non-proper version is a perfectly accurate descriptor as well. 1253: 8314:. Of course, there must be consensus for the exception. A few editors continuously reinserting edits against consensus should be reported to 6289: 5740:

Experts haven't been downgrading the sun, it's been the populous that has been upgrading it. Historically it has always been a common noun. --

2070:"Oppose for massacres. I'm neutral on the rest, but we rarely use that word massacre (in a non-figurative sense) unless it's in a proper noun." 7988:

editors don't know (or care) about the distinctions between various types of quote marks... we are simply going to use the quote marks on our

6647:

You may very well be right that that is the more popular usage in books. But this is a case, like logical punctuation, where we have had the

4937:

as I suspect you well know, Tony, there is no clear definition which applies to all proper names in English. "Prototypical proper names" like

2111: 7882: 5403: 3282:

I think it's unclear to a lot of people how to refer to someone from that region and era, when they were both Arab and Islamic. Look at the

2132: 3893:

better presented in simple, clear, easy to read tables, and that the style manual be revised accordingly. Thank you for your consideration.

1911: 460:

imply that supports the whole sentence. If this is not the case and you want to make this clear, then the only remedy is to re-write, e.g.

3185: 8491:

One improvement that I would suggest is to include a section on "Implementing MOS guidance". I see this as being more along the lines of

8005: 5360: 5216:

meaning 'nonsense', especially in a rebuking response to communication or actions viewed as deceiving, misleading, disingenuous, or false.

3700:

the same (in which case I can show you some evidence that might put your mind at ease) or do you just think the MoS shouldn't mention it?

2715:"I've just been using the regular definition of the term; can you be clearer about what it is that you need to know/why you're confused?" 1652:

different things; Wikieditors disagree about what's best), then raise the issue on this talk page and we'll all work out a rule together.

1583:

recent change? The examples that follow seem to illustrate the former content. I'm not sure what the new content is supposed to mean. --

1580: 575: 4953:, are easy to recognize using grammatical tests, and it seems that we all agree to capitalize them. "Non-prototypical proper names" like 3155: 2177:, nor with "Use lowercase, except for proper names." Nobody has shown a good source-based reason to consider these to be proper names. 1981: 102: 2805:

I think one point that should be addressed, and which makes reliance on sources somewhat problematic, is the issue of what the use of a

566:. Interested editors are encouraged to explain their opinions there (and not here, to keep the discussion all in one place). Thanks. 8691: 6217: 3806: 2621:

I think the phrase "proper name" is obvious to anyone that has a basic level of English comprehension, Tony. One should also note that

862: 94: 89: 84: 72: 67: 59: 7865:

and that they avoid edit wars, as opposed to if everyone just uses their own. I now had these quotation marks changed in one article (

7569: 5043:

other things, including many where caps are not even very common, and people still insist they're "necessary" in some made-up sense.

4014: 183:

There's a trade-off between making content visually pleasing and making it easily verifiable. I know which I think is more important.

8130:

I'll let someone else try to explain it to you. Your grasp of Knowledge title issues continues to be beyond my ability to address.

5674: 4349: 3649:. Regardless, if you want to write it properly, it must be as follows: "The adjective 'Arabian' refers to people and things from the 9062: 7383:

Foreign language titles are generally only to be used if they are used by most art historians or critics writing in English – e.g.

1814: 1509: 7085: 6669:

Similarly with Earth, a particular ball of rock, versus earth, which is dirt. There's earth on Mars, that good red Martian earth.

2755:

WP style is to avoid unnecessary capitalization, but you have stated "I don't care what Knowledge style is." Your comments about

2579:

Just to note first that two editors who have come in to comment here have continually taken an anti-MOS line when it comes to the

1491:

I've now made this change. If you disagree, feel free to revert with an explanation, and we can take things forward from there. --

1260:

to the article or section (e.g. sub-topics of the article's topic, rather than the synonyms as already boldfaced per the above). (

635:, which does not say "always", just highly recommends. As written, it is taken for granted that both styles are in fact around. 464:

Now it's clear that the second part of the sentence isn't sourced. Placement before or after full stops and commas is irrelevant.

8668: 8537: 8262: 4705:

To the pages in question. File an RM like everyone else in the world does when they want to change a longstanding article title.

3802: 3460:

If we're doing that, it seems odd that "Arabian" is not included. "Arabian" is used to refer to things from the Arabia, i.e. the

1592: 764: 736: 5379: 4367: 1557:

about whether expressions such as "Jr." and "Sr." should be followed by a comma in cases where they are also precedes by one.

5318:"Something has to be the most common word following "Rose Bowl". That doesn't mean that word should part of the proper name." 3172:" which is why when making such a move you should base your request on the AT policy not the MOS guidelines as you did in the 3049:

title. They are necessitated sometimes when there is no one unambiguous neutral common name. Given that we are constructing a

8882:

should illustrate, not to mention all the places where Randy Kryn won't let me fix "civil rights movement" in article text.

8878:

That's not at all the issue here; we're not talking about titles. Changing titles to title case doesn't help, as the RFC at

8210:

Maybe banning certain words, like inserting a rule to always use "among" instead of "amongst" or "while" instead of "whilst."

8066: 7591: 7574: 7487: 7373: 6794:

I doubt it. Following your logic, though, why do we not use capitals for "the sky", "the world", "the government" and so on?

3982: 5978:

that when sun is used as a synonym for star, Krypton is not in our Solar System, and both are following "a". Confused yet?`

3582:

The fact that its inclusion hasn't led to a plethora of notes on other ethnicities proves instruction creep isn't a concern.

8101:

The MOS does not mandate. And that change would require a whole ton of extra redirects, so probably not going to happen.

7325: 4566:

Good point on the ping! So, abstractly, does advertising at projects seems like a fair thing if we can't advertise here?

3824: 3745:; also, remember the time at one of McCain's 2008 presidential campaign speeches when the old lady called Obama an "A-rab"? 792: 586: 563: 7840: 7276:

Well those are things that should not normally be linked to anyway, as too well known (except possibly Irish), unlike say

6473: 6240: 6146: 4453:". Who exactly are "people who care about style guidance"? That sounds like the recipe for a cabal. You can try asking at 3436: 3430: 1600: 5177: 3906: 3788: 3355:

whether Maxwell is of Scottish nationality. Simple question, complicated arguments. Maybe you can straighten them out.

1520: 1468:

from the MoS, and the template itself from articlespace. Would anyone object to me removing backgrounded quotations from

6846:

premise were valid, with a specific reason. You have failed to advance a counterargument other than that you disagree. —

3752:

see this kind of mistake. That's why the MoS should provide guidance for Arab/Muslim but not for, say, Irish/Catholic.

3420: 3414: 2039:"These are historical events with proper names. There is no justification for decapitalisation in MOSCAPS or elsewhere." 2020: 8471:

The change to WP:LQ could be considered either less regulation or a zero-sum change depending on how one looks at it.

4800: 4398: 2552: 2307:

this is like species names, where there is a clear specialist-vs-generalist split on this issue, the answer is clear:

1068: 8438:

regulation, not less. But then this is the MOS talk page. I suspect other groups would be thinking of things to cut.

7737:

Having no punctuation before a quotation is also acceptable, so that should also be covered by any guidance we give.

7630: 7315: 6194: 5394:

So I'm open to advice about how to proceed. Mostly likely I'll just give it a pause, as I have a book to finish...

5153:

but this is where Tony's earlier challenge comes in – provide a clear definition of a "proper noun/noun phrase/name"

3390: 1623: 7076:

I disagree. What is Knowledge's stance on what to call an American in the infobox, and where is the policy stated?–

5422: 5317: 5296: 3740: 7074: 5487:

a proper name." You are throwing out BS as if it is evidence, when it really supports the opposite of your point.

2519: 2258: 741:

When editing an en-uk language article, I get a banner that says "This article is written in British English, ..."

684: 6831:

No, I don't agree. "The Moon" is its name. We would still call it that, no matter how far we were from Earth. --

5649:

which mentions "Seek consensus" and "Knowledge has policies and guidelines, but they are not carved in stone ..."—

1173:

Agree with Darkfrog: Greg, could you provide some linked examples to article contexts where it could work better?

5001:

suggests the test "consistently capitalized in sources"; where that's not the case, the caps are "unnecessary".

2016: 448:

Precisely. As per my point above, because there are publications that always place the ref inside the full stop,

8041: 1875:

You are correct, Jaydiem. Was there something you wanted to do about it or are you just here for confirmation?

8843: 8719: 7160: 4409: 2824: 2081: 1977: 1516: 580: 490:

Logical quotation is called that because the punctuation's placement varies in accordance with a set of rules,

47: 17: 8071:

I would like to know if anyone can reveal the top 10 suggested changes to the manual of style. Any thoughts??

7869:) with the editing remark, ″vertical quotation marks (") are preferred over diagonal quotation marks (″). See 7866: 7554: 7349:

is the very common English title of Munch's painting, but it's actually a partial translation of its original

6974:

I don't agree with Trovatore's approach that says "I'm right, and all those sources are using it wrong". Per

4521:

Actually, RGloucester has backed off on that, but finds other ways to throw wrenches into discussions, as at

4334:

Probably the short version, but I would accept the long one here (or "some other", or "several other", etc).

2006: 1071:

prominence and distinctiveness following level 2 headings. One option that might bring unification could be

905: 418: 9061:@Dicklyon: "What ... make it necessary" seems to have been the subject of the recently closed discussion at 7602: 7579: 6967: 4356:

after their TFA day, so I'd rather not spend time fixing those, for now, I've got fires to put out. - Dank (

4117:

examples of stodgy prose which deserve to be shot on sight. I think a certain kind of writer may think that

2268:

It is fine to talk about things in WP:MOS at WT:MOS... But PBS does have a valid point... I see a degree of

8033: 6100:

The words "When used generally" are also misplaced, since the exceptions fall outside the "general" uses.

5994: 5124: 4337:

These remarks pertain to the lead section and body of an article, same as to a digest and a full article.

2329:. This doesn't seem to affect the opinions of those who don't like WP style however. Look at for example 1613: 1502: 1484: 562:

I've started a discussion about the use of "As of" -- both the phrase and the corresponding template -- at

8653:

Should the word "Mustang"/"mustang" be capitalized in running text when referring to the horses? See this

4689:

OK, this page is for discussing changes to MOS. Where do we take discussions of application of MOS then?

2918:

You didn't hear me. For titles that are commonly used per UCN, it is fine to use "massacre". However, for

2027:), my latest batch of MOS-compliance moves was all reverted, so I opened another multi-move discussion at 394: 120: 8261:

I don't understand the contention that MOS is "a guideline in name only". All guidelines are subject to

4373:

though sources are very mixed, or in some cases even overwhelmingly lowercase. There's no question that

3853:

indented as on desktop site, and at a glance "Recommended..." looks like a subhead over the form that is

2076:"No where in the MOS does it say that capitalisation should not be used by default." (in an edit summary) 1960: 2042:"That's why God has sent me here, to protect these articles from the ugly candour of minuscule letters." 7391: 6198:

merely brought the summary at MOS in line with the specific guideline at MOSCAPS, as discussed above.

5513: 2269: 1671: 1146: 1115:

What's the use of differentiated sublevels if they have the same result? -10:26, 24 November 2014 (UTC)

367: 331: 202: 174: 38: 7188: 5870:

The instruction to capitalise "when the term names a specific astronomical body" suggest capitalising

4660:

Exactly. No members. This talk page is a central place for people who care about MOS style issues.

2309:

List all the reliable sources that use lowercase, list all the ones that use capitals and take a look.

585:

I would like feedback on the use of quote marks as part of the title of this novel, which is properly

7859: 5583:

our style guidelines to better reflect what the community desires. Then the "breach" will no longer

5039: 4645:

Who is "us"? There are no members of the MoS. It is not a project. Please use the existing channels.

4610: 4454: 4216: 3996: 3743: 3286:. I'm not saying it's a great comment, just letting you know why it probably came to be put there. 2170: 2024: 1894: 557: 7688:

Many editors prefer a colon in this position if the quotation forms one or more complete sentences:

7622:

Many editors prefer a colon in this position if the quotation forms one or more complete sentences:

2946:

that "These are all constructed WP:NDESC titles, and hence should not be treated as proper names."

1067:

I think that the depth of headings may be better utilised if there were not such a marked change in

1051:

in the type formats used for level 3, 4 and 5 headings as following the default heading format style

8443: 8266: 7447: 7285: 7151: 4766:

his recent contributions, that he was trying to decapitalize such long-standing event names as the

4196: 3173: 2708: 2326: 2139: 2045:"These requests should be done separately, or through something else besides a multi-move request." 2028: 1950: 1798: 1219:

These don't look that bad, actually. They're set off and clearly headers (not regular bold text).

404: 362:

I'm glad that both styles are acceptable, and neither one is required or preferred over the other.

8337:

with these edits. I got brought up on AN/I. By your reasoning, that wouldn't happen, but it did.

5785:

can usually be interpreted as a common noun, but proper nouns should always be capitalized, as in

348:

is a lot simpler – just follow one of the reference links with nothing more to read and work out.

7894: 7539: 7139: 5162: 5090: 5028: 4987: 3792: 2943: 1638: 1536: 1005: 967: 945: 914: 668: 640: 598: 509: 469: 353: 217: 188: 137: 8522:

Blueboar, it sounds as if you want the MoS to be an actual guideline instead of a set of rules.

6654:

The common noun/proper noun distinction, in English, is the distinction between something being

3169: 2147: 2128: 390: 116: 9070: 8673: 8207:

Issues with dashes also come up pretty often. Tony1 or Noetica could tell you more about that.

8156: 7298: 5266: 3733: 3065:. There is no evidence that this event had a lasting impact, or that it has had persistent and 2631: 2446: 2419: 2400: 1806: 8654: 3849:". Reason: in mobile beta on narrow screen, each of these takes up exactly one line, which is 870:

Then I noticed that there is a Search box. Typed "football" in there. As my first hit, I got "

9066: 8933: 8903: 8870: 8797: 8589: 8122: 8093: 8076: 8017: 7878: 7549: 7403: 7101: 6016:

Well, it can and it must. The current guidance at MOS is confusing as "generally, the words

5882:

when referring to the Earth's moon, contradicting the first two examples (i.e., should it be

5646: 4712: 4681: 4652: 4620: 4558: 4499: 4464: 4387: 3724: 3668: 3579:

The advice on proper use of "Arab" vs "Arabic" is good and Knowledge is better for having it.

3569: 3527: 3510: 3471: 3346: 3312: 3274: 3241: 3223: 3077: 3062: 3014: 2974: 2930: 2876: 2781: 2747: 2675: 2641: 2457: 2410: 2374: 1667: 1142: 804: 363: 327: 198: 170: 6874:

use lowercase overwhelmingly; probably even sci-fi sources, though that's harder to check.

5452:; you cite these as evidence for the opposite of what they show. That kind of confusion is 2506:

Listing the sources isn't as much work as it sounds like. Remember, you don't have to list

9065:, which you were also involved in. Your most constructive options might be to take this to 9026: 8851: 8604: 8574: 8527: 8476: 8415: 8386: 8346: 8301: 8252: 8219: 7340: 7225: 7119: 6651:

rule, the more "logical" one, in place, and I would be very reluctant to backslide on that.

6617: 5982: 5745: 5709: 5679:

This has come up before, but It doesn't appear that a true, official consensus was formed.

5128: 4449:

That's canvassing, pure and simple. This "we know better than you" attitude reminds me of "

4305:"Does anyone want to offer an opinion ...?" I can't resist, so I regret visiting this page! 4243: 4032: 3931: 3902: 3837:. The change explanation I put in is too long and gets truncated, so I'm copying it here: 3757: 3705: 3397: 2720: 2587:

Knowledge relies on sources to determine what is a proper name; words and phrases that are

2527: 2316: 2254: 2174: 1907: 1880: 1810: 1802: 1794: 1657: 1305: 1224: 1164: 1100: 796: 706: 654: 631:(WP:QUOTEMARKS goes to the wrong place, and does not discuss straight-vs-curly) You meant 609: 541: 314:. Academic Press, 2005, p. 1. For the moon's size, see Brown, Rebecca. "Size of the Moon", 162: 152: 4280:

Slight preference for "several", but agree with Blueboar—unnecessary to change or revert.

1609: 848:

and template text will turn British English in that article. See template documentation. -

8: 8827: 8779: 8745: 8705: 8663: 8439: 8037: 7443: 7363: 7281: 7147: 7002: 6893: 6861: 6836: 6813: 6785: 6751: 6712: 6677: 6505: 6447: 6440:

Communications were disrupted by interference from charged particles coming from the Sun.

6315: 6279: 6172: 5201: 5136: 4450: 3959: 3688: 1929: 1918: 1745: 1574: 7164: 7071:"I replaced his nationality "American" because America is two continents, not a country" 6458:

Communications were disrupted by interference from charged particles coming from the Sun

9093: 9034: 9016: 8951: 8916: 8887: 8811: 8764: 8731: 8687: 8638: 8513: 8462: 8234: 8188: 8174: 8135: 8106: 8001: 7791: 7773: 7742: 7565: 7535: 7505: 7476: 7060: 7022: 6983: 6879: 6799: 6727: 6638: 5636: 5615: 5544: 5525: 5492: 5461: 5430: 5399: 5348: 5325: 5307: 5279: 5247: 5224: 5185: 5158: 5086: 5048: 5024: 5006: 4983: 4979: 4915: 4888: 4866: 4808: 4694: 4665: 4634: 4597: 4571: 4534: 4437: 4428: 4271: 4228: 4096: 4076: 3601:

too" would be a symptom of instruction creep that you were apparently concerned about.)

3360: 3325: 3291: 3258: 3031: 2995: 2951: 2905: 2900:, we don't use case to signal our opinions about whether the UCN is a good one or not. 2893: 2764: 2560: 2542: 2471: 2432: 2387: 2357: 2342: 2281: 2224: 2209: 2182: 2107: 1996: 1974: 1847: 1771: 1634: 1532: 1462: 1434: 1410: 1383: 1373: 1257: 1202: 1078: 1000: 962: 940: 909: 844:

for usage in templates. When build in a template, the article editor can set parameter

724: 505: 465: 349: 213: 184: 133: 8495:

guidance than substantive guidance over style... but I think it would be very helpful.

717:

Talk:Electronic_cigarette#Ultrafine_Particles.2C_the_name_of_the_section_is_inaccurate

9078: 8545: 8400: 8361: 8323: 8274: 8153: 7295: 7081: 6971:. If Trovatore wants to change that usage, a new consensus needs to be established. 6847: 6823: 6771: 6762: 6738: 6692: 6438:

But here's a non-astronomical context where I would really want to insist on "Sun":

5654: 5263: 5099:

Peter: "more common" and "marginally more common" don't equal "consistently" capped.

4548: 3829:

I'm editing on a smartphone, and I saw a confusing ambiguity due to screen width, in

3461: 3168:

Yes! but that is lower case style decision based on AT policy not the MOS guideline "

3058: 2964: 2811: 2418:

RM discussions are always advertised centrally for this reason. I've never seen the

2119:

It is telling that you have placed this comment here and not on the talk page of the

1941: 1831: 780: 690: 619: 8999:

capitalization. What the RMs indicate (at least to me) is that there may be issues

6722:

exception to the rule might apply), it doesn't need a name, so it doesn't have one.

5274:

I have no idea what you're talking about. But it's New Year's Eve, so light it up!

5172:

For a comical example of the bullshit that people will emit to avoid complying with

3941:

presented, how much, and the like. But there's very few hard and fast rules here. --

1926:

Knowledge talk:Manual of Style/Linking#Editor not seeing the benefit of WP:NOTBROKEN

1901:

Knowledge talk:Manual of Style/Biographies#RfC: Comma or no comma before Jr. and Sr.

742: 536:

You're assuming that other systems are based on appearance. Usually, they are not.

8927: 8897: 8864: 8791: 8585: 8560: 8116: 8087: 8072: 7940: 7431:

Prado, p. 141: "The third of May 1808 in Madrid; the shootings on Prince Pio hill".

7410:

El tres de mayo de 1808 en Madrid; Los fusilamientos de la montaña del Príncipe Pío

7277: 7095: 6135: 5990: 5974:(specific astronomical context and two used in the same sentence,) would be wrong 5768: 5700: 5384: 4771: 4706: 4675: 4646: 4614: 4552: 4493: 4458: 4374: 3866: 3814: 3718: 3662: 3563: 3521: 3504: 3465: 3425: 3340: 3306: 3268: 3235: 3217: 3071: 3057:

that is specifically frowned upon by the MoS. As far as deletion is concerned, see

3008: 2968: 2938:

True, I'm not hearing you. So how does your "We should not be using "massacre" in

2924: 2870: 2775: 2741: 2669: 2635: 2451: 2404: 2368: 1499: 1481: 1210: 1127: 1020: 985: 929: 901: 885: 853: 822: 800: 768: 753: 6573:) or when the term names a specific body in a scientific or astronomical context ( 5763:

For future reference, the word you want there is "populace", not its homophone. --

4543:

I've not thrown a single spanner in my life. It's a crap constructed title, fails

3234:

As no one seems to know why this note exists, I'm considering boldly removing it.

2073:"Britannica uses capitalisation, and so should we. We're not writing a rag paper." 1264:

Knowledge:Redirect § What needs to be done on pages that are targets of redirects?

9108: 9051: 8847: 8759:

does not reflect that way things are going, as anyone who looks at it will see.

8648: 8600: 8570: 8523: 8472: 8411: 8382: 8342: 8297: 8248: 8215: 7244: 7221: 7200: 7115: 6613: 5810: 5758: 5741: 5728: 5705: 5562: 5472: 5441: 5415: 5337: 5235: 5107: 5074: 4877: 4846: 4834: 4820: 4779: 4721: 4588: 4481: 4288: 4239: 4028: 3949: 3927: 3753: 3701: 3394: 3199: 3142: 3066: 3054: 3050: 3046: 2987: 2983: 2939: 2919: 2889: 2866: 2832: 2716: 2658: 2606: 2523: 2312: 2249: 2193: 1903: 1876: 1865: 1763: 1681: 1653: 1629: 1588: 1335: 1299: 1269: 1220: 1181: 1160: 1094: 1046:

as I think that there is a sudden drop in both the prominence and distinctiveness

994:

The OP used the phrase WTF in his post. WTF is an acronym for "what the fuck".

897: 838: 702: 650: 537: 526: 495: 148: 8621:

our style preferences are... but it does not always do a good job of explaining

7648:

A comma may also be included before a quotation embedded within a sentence (see

1350: 46:

If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the

8839: 8823: 8775: 8741: 8715: 8701: 8658: 8050: 7966: 7921: 7910: 7850: 7808: 7759: 7725: 7714: 7663:

Move the detailed guidance as follows to a new sub-section at MOS:QUOTEMARKS:

7634: 7614:

Before a quotation embedded within a sentence, the use of a comma is optional.

7417: 7359: 7248: 7042: 6998: 6889: 6857: 6832: 6809: 6781: 6747: 6708: 6687:"cow" when preceded by "the". Proper names sometimes include a pronoun, as in " 6673: 6599: 6501: 6486: 6443: 6418: 6311: 6300: 6275: 6257: 6229: 6206: 6183: 6168: 6158: 6108: 5959: 5375: 5371: 5197: 5148: 5132: 4975: 4767: 4405: 4357: 4162: 4042: 4021: 4010: 3966: 3877: 3830: 3613: 3548: 3491: 3449: 2815: 2591:

in sources are treated as proper names and capitalized in Knowledge." (my bold)

1962:

for a better idea of what I'm coming up against. Specifically, at the article

1721: 1702: 1565: 1452: 1420: 1403: 1393: 1363: 1317: 1273: 1194: 632: 439: 8356:

should come down to consensus, a policy that should always trump a guideline.—

7673:

The use of a comma before a quotation embedded within a sentence is optional:

5554:

en.WP, where our centralised style guidance minimises arguments on talkpages.

1819: 243:

The sun is pretty big, but the moon is not so big. The sun is also quite hot.

9089: 9030: 9012: 8947: 8912: 8883: 8807: 8760: 8727: 8683: 8634: 8509: 8458: 8311: 8230: 8184: 8170: 8131: 8102: 7997: 7787: 7769: 7738: 7561: 7501: 7472: 7267: 7018: 6979: 6875: 6795: 6723: 6634: 5632: 5611: 5602:, others to follow)... MOS should be viewed as guidance and not some sort of 5540: 5521: 5488: 5457: 5426: 5395: 5344: 5321: 5303: 5275: 5243: 5220: 5181: 5044: 5017: 5002: 4911: 4884: 4862: 4804: 4690: 4661: 4630: 4593: 4567: 4544: 4530: 4433: 4345: 4267: 4263: 4092: 4072: 3356: 3321: 3287: 3254: 3181: 3161: 3151: 3027: 2991: 2947: 2901: 2885: 2760: 2756: 2733: 2626: 2556: 2538: 2467: 2428: 2383: 2353: 2338: 2277: 2220: 2205: 2178: 2160: 2103: 1992: 1968: 1963: 1956: 1843: 1767: 1686: 1355:

We're currently considering merging some of the quotation templates, over at

1119: 1075: 720: 569: 346:

The sun is pretty big, but the moon is not so big. The sun is also quite hot.

5594:(great advice, but advice that has lots of exceptions... advice that we can 3320:

I don't think the unclarity is related to any issue of mutual exclusivity.

9074: 8879: 8541: 8396: 8357: 8319: 8270: 7557: 7252: 7077: 5650: 5448:"Pullman strike", without capitalizing "strike", then that's evidence that 4421: 4383: 4327:

It was the first Rose Bowl broadcast by radio, and first in other respects.

3657:. Not all Arabs speak or write Arabic, and most Arabs are not from Arabia. 2737: 2622: 2311:(If it were me, I'd do it on the talk page of the article(s) in question.) 2124: 2120: 2091:"We don't object to MOSCAPS, we object to your false interpretation of it." 1937: 1826: 1198: 776: 6567: