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    Style discussions elsewhere

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    Add a link to new discussions at top of list and indicate what kind of discussion it is (move request, RfC, open discussion, deletion discussion, etc.). Follow the links to participate, if interested. Move to Concluded when decided, and summarize conclusion. Please keep this section at the top of the page.

    Current

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    Capitalization-specific:

    This section is an excerpt from Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters § Current.[edit]

    Move requests:

    Other discussions:

    Pretty stale but not "concluded":

    Concluded

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    Extended content
    This section is an excerpt from Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters § Concluded.[edit]
    Capitalization-specific:
    2023
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    RfC: Use of verbs in biographical descriptions

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    The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
    There is consensus that ‘serve’, ‘served as’, etc. is acceptable in many contexts without concern for neutrality, and while in other contexts it may be bad writing or poor phrasing, these questions are superseded by the overwhelming consensus that the MOS should not have a rule on this language. — HTGS (talk) 03:35, 17 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]


    In many articles about living persons, and particularly about persons in positions of authority, e.g. member of parliament, corporation CEO, city councilor, etc, the lead paragraph often uses the verb "to serve" in denoting the person's work." E.g. "Ms Smith serves/has been serving/has served as member of the XYZ Board of Directors." In this related discussion, the issue was raised about the potential for meaningless excess in that term's use. (Here's a useful essay on that.) This, of course, applies to biographies about persons no longer living.

    Comments are invited on the following options:

    • A Use any simple form of "to be," e.g. "Smith is Acme Ltd auditor."
    • B Continue to use "serve" in biographies, e.g. "Smith serves as Acme Ltd auditor."

    -The Gnome (talk) 17:37, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    • I would go with B, which does continue to reflect both formal proper, and common, usage, particularly in fields like politics and public office. But both forms are of course perfectly correct and acceptable. MapReader (talk) 19:56, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • I remember a previous discussion long ago where an argument was made that "served" is a euphemism. Curbon7 (talk) 21:20, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • Neither. This is not something that needs a broad rule. Either form is acceptable, as are other options. My most common experience is that people use "serve" to capitalize a title while complying with MOS:JOBTITLE, going for "served as President of Aybeeceedia" instead of "was the president of Aybeeceedia", which seems like a silly workaround but whatever. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 22:51, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • A is/was reflects everyday speech. To my ears 'served as' always sounds either pompous or somewhat euphemismistic, he "served as President of Aybeeceedia", but wasn't really 'up to scratch'!Pincrete (talk) 07:00, 13 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • Neither per FFF, the euphemism angle is understandable in some cases but this also seems within the bounds of quite common language variation. CMD (talk) 07:12, 13 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • Neither – is should be fine most of the time, but synonyms are not forbidden, and the occasional usage of serve, even if maybe a bit pompous and not strictly needed, does no harm. Gawaon (talk) 07:20, 13 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • A is preferable in almost all cases; "serve" is appropriate for military personnel and the like (and also for waiters and tennis players!), but is empty WP:PEACOCKery in other cases. Better to stick to plain English (but hoping this is not something we're going to embody or enforce in yet another MOS rule). Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 08:16, 13 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • Pinging participants in related discussion, minus ones already present and accounted for: @Necrothesp, Doniago, AlsoWukai, EEng, Popcornfud, SMcCandlish, WhatamIdoing, and Roger 8 Roger: -The Gnome (talk) 11:58, 13 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • Neither - both are acceptable. Also, it isn’t a dualistic choice… consider that there are other verbs besides “served” and “was” that might be appropriate. Don’t be formulaic when writing. Blueboar (talk) 12:18, 13 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • Neither as this is instruction creep. But if we must have one, I would choose A over B. DonIago (talk) 12:40, 13 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • Either. Both are perfectly good English. Neither should be encouraged nor deprecated. -- Necrothesp (talk) 14:00, 13 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • A since any variant of "serve" denotes a positive attribute, which goes against WP:NPOV. It's not a neutral verb no matter how many clothes we try to dress it with. The opening paragraph of WP:WTW is explicit: "Certain expressions should be used with caution because they may introduce bias. Strive to eliminate expressions that are flattering, vague, or endorsing of a particular viewpoint." -The Gnome (talk) 14:14, 13 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • Neither because we don't need any more WP:CREEPY rules. He served as president, he was the president, he held the position of president, he worked as president, he became president, he was elected/appointed as president, he took office as president... Any of these will do under most situations. The idea of Public service being a form of service (as in servants, as in the opposite of powerful people seeking their own aggrandizement) is not a form of peacocking, nor is it a euphemism. It may be aspirational (the rest of us hope that the politician will serve the country instead of his own interests), but there's nothing inherently or egregiously non-neutral about it, especially when applied to people who didn't exploit their roles to harm others. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:47, 13 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      Agreed. AlsoWukai (talk) 19:53, 13 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • No rule needed. Here, there is more than one way to say something, and variety can still make for good, and interesting writing (also, 'serve' is not hard to understand in the example given, rather the NPOV or related arguments are much too strained, when not baffling). As an aside, we should probably not usually write, 'someone is job', rather than, 'someone is broad occupation', followed by where they have served in that occupation. Alanscottwalker (talk) 18:07, 13 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • No rule, please. Either one could be at least annoying to too many editors and possibly disruptive if applied to existing text. There are figures in history of whom I wouldn't use "serve" – Caligula served as emperor from AD 37? – but we wouldn't need a MOS rule for that. NebY (talk) 18:16, 13 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • Neither, as both are appropriate for many articles and editors can use their heads—even if this freedom results in the occasional awkward lead sentence. As my troublesome nitpick, I actually do think serve has a vaguely positive connotation compared to the bare copula—but I don't think it matters enough, as every word has a web of connotations and none is truly neutral in every situation. Doesn't register as a WP:W2W in any case.
      Remsense诉 18:21, 13 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • Neither --- WP:LOCATIONLOCATIONLOCATION, which The Gnome linked in his OP, is my essay, and I'm flattered. However, we don't need a rule on this. My objection to served as is that it's usually surplusage; but it has its uses now and then, and I don't see any kind of flattery or peacock-iness in it. But I will say that, applied to Hilter, it does take some of the edge off to say he "served". That's for sure the wrong word to use for him. EEng 19:38, 13 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      This needs to be said: The term "to serve" is being pronounced neutral in this discussion by sundry contributors. Is it really? Because if an ostensibly neutral term cannot be used at the extremes, it cannot be used anywhere. The Hitler example trumps all arguments to the contrary. It cannot be made more clear. -The Gnome (talk) 19:59, 13 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      That sounds a bit extreme. Remsense said it well: no word is truly neutral in every situation. So if that's the thing to aim for, we may as well shut down this website and all go home. Gawaon (talk) 20:03, 13 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      ...but...but...this site is one of the few things keeping me from falling asleep at my desk during downtime at work...  :| DonIago (talk) 20:08, 13 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      Which is exactly why we should not make a rule… we need things to argue about during downtimes at work! Blueboar (talk) 20:22, 13 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      Wikipedia serves a valuable purpose, if perhaps not the purpose it was originally intended for... DonIago (talk) 20:33, 13 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      I think us editors are particularly vulnerable to logocentric fallacies—i.e. we're liable to treat the lexical word as the predominant or even only issuer of meaning, while affording phrases, sentences, and other composites no credence to really influence what connotations individual words must themselves possess. Remsense诉 20:48, 13 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      Please, please, don't go Wittgensteinian on me. This is the last thing this discussion needs. -The Gnome (talk) 14:36, 14 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      I have trouble saying these things in an intelligent way sometimes—in other words I need to try sounding more like pseudo-Kripkenstein than pseudo-Wittgenstein. Remsense 诉 19:10, 14 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      But subjectivity is objective. EEng 21:26, 13 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      And I've said that many times. Remsense诉 21:40, 13 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      if an ostensibly neutral term cannot be used at the extremes, it cannot be used anywhere.[RFC needed] NebY (talk) 20:11, 13 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • Neither I have no problem with Richard Nixon saying that he served as the 37th president of the United States from 1969 to 1974. That's not euphemistic and is normal English, even though most presidential historians rank him poorly. Cullen328 (talk) 20:19, 13 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      That’s because some of us are imputing some sense of merit or sacrifice into the term “serve”, which isn’t really there. Serve can mean simply fulfilling a purpose, or function, and there is plenty of common usage where no merit is implicit, such as “serving as a bad example”. MapReader (talk) 04:28, 14 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    So, me saying to someone Thank you for your service, for example to a veteran soldier, denotes nothing positive whatsoever; it is an abject expression of thanks for wearing a uniform, and nothing more. And, logically, I could express the same thankful sentiment to a traitor soldier. -The Gnome (talk) 14:41, 14 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    A traitor would supposedly not be thanked. How is this relevant for this discussion, though? Gawaon (talk) 15:21, 14 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Really you are making my point for me. Your quoted phrase does, but not because it includes the word “service”. It is positive because of the “thank you”. Had you said “I confirm your service” or “I note your service”, your comment wouldn’t have been received as positive despite the word ‘service’. Whereas, had you said “Thank you for your time in the army” or “Thank you for your work”, that would be received as a positive comment without any need to refer to serving. MapReader (talk) 17:12, 14 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • Either, see wikt:serve#Verb, particularly entries 1.2, 1.4, 8, 12. There are contexts where the word "serve" is non-neutral, such as smiling politely whilst putting meals in front of customers in restaurants despite a torrent of verbal abuse, but the original post gives "Ms Smith serves/has been serving/has served as member of the XYZ Board of Directors." as an example, and that is different from plate-juggling. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:06, 13 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • Neither Both are acceptable Roger 8 Roger (talk) 22:20, 13 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • A or some other neutral alternative that suits the context. "Serves/served/serving" is a WP:NPOV failure, in being promotional and (positively) judgmental language. An argument could possibly be made to retain those terms for military and maybe even governmental functions, but even those uses have their long-term opponents. It's entirely inappropriate for corporate and other misc. organizational (school, team/squad, nonprofit/NGO, etc.) roles. PS: The fact that we have a bunch of articles doing this just means we have a bunch of articles to clean up. Cf. WP:FAITACCOMPLI and WP:NOWORK.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:18, 14 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • Comment Sorry to say, but this is yet another RfC out of the blue, with no discussion on how to frame it. There certainly should have been an option C -- a new rule saying either A or B is OK, and D -- meaning nothing new added to MOS at all. This RfC is already a complete mess out of which nothing useful can possibly come. EEng 20:20, 14 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • A Is there a specific case where anyone feels that "served as" is better, not just as good? Is it the case that "served as" has WP:NPOV problems in some people's idiolects, but not others? If so, does that mean that it has WP:NPOV problems? McYeee (talk) 01:15, 15 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      That's what consensus is for in the abstract, and the examples proffered to illustrate why served should be generally proscribed have not really attracted consensus. Remsense ‥ 诉 01:18, 15 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      I might just be out of my depth here, and I might not have been clear, but I just don't really understand any argument in favor of the usage of "served". I think my preconceived definition of the word is just less neutral than yours. I'll bow out for now. McYeee (talk) 01:32, 15 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      Aye, it's worth making explicit—no one is really saying it's superior in any or as good in all situations, but the MOS is meant to be as frugal as possible. We try to allow editors flexibility in things like word choice as much as possible, and we don't want to tell them what not to do unless it's almost always wrong (roughly, if it's more work to fix than it's good for to allow). See WP:CREEP. Remsense ‥ 诉 01:38, 15 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • Neither. I agree with the many comments above that there's no reason to ban either form; with Remsense about WP:CREEP; and with EEng that this is not a useful RfC. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 02:06, 15 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • No rule needed. Both are acceptable depending on context, but this is not the sort of wording choice that the MOS should be forcing on editors. See also WP:CREEP. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:22, 15 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • No rule needed. The claim that "served" is pov in general has no basis. Argue specific cases on the respective talk page, but don't impose a general rule where none is needed. Zerotalk 07:54, 15 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

    We and first-person pronouns

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    While first-person pronouns are considered poor writing for an encyclopedia, MOS:WE currently allows exceptions for the figurative we in history and science articles. A brief search in this page's archives didn't turn up any recent discussions on this, so I'd like to see whether it's still supported by the community. I believe this is outdated now that Wikipedia's voice has developed and it's not good practice for writing in an encyclopedic tone, even if it's often used in this fashion in primary and secondary sources. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 00:24, 16 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    My gut feeling is that outside of quotes we (ha!) shouldn't be using first-person pronouns in article space. Certainly as a general rule, including in history and science (this is already the case in maths articles - Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Mathematics#Writing style in mathematics). Thryduulf (talk) 00:39, 16 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I would only keep we in a quote if I were quoting a full statement; otherwise, a we statement can otherwise be summarized or quoted in part and changing we to they. voorts (talk/contributions) 01:45, 16 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Using the portion of a quote with "we" in it is going to be essential to the meaning in some cases, clearly inappropriate in some others and somewhere between the two in the majority. Thryduulf (talk) 03:27, 16 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I think that there's a difference between "encyclopedic" and "stiff", and insistence on stiffness does not suit the project. "We now know that Venus is a planet" is fine, and more comfortable than "It is now known that Venus is a planet." -- Nat Gertler (talk) 01:01, 16 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I don't have a violent objection to We now know that Venus is a planet, but between that and Venus is now known to be a planet, I'd probably pick the latter. I don't think it's stiff, just slightly less chatty, and chatty is kind of bad for an encyclopedia. --Trovatore (talk) 01:37, 16 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    The construction We used to believe X, but now we know Y is vague and informal. Our goal is to summarize what reliable sources say, not dissertate in asides to the reader. To use your Venus example, an article should instead say: The scientist Carl Sagan discovered that Venus is a planet in 2040. voorts (talk/contributions) 01:43, 16 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I find the we constructions to be stiff-sounding. Maybe I'm associating it with the "Royal We". Also, not to get hung up on an example, but presumably the first sentence of the article would be "Venus is a planet..." so there wouldn't be a need to craft the big surprise part way through. Primergrey (talk) 01:47, 16 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm certainly not expecting this to be in the lede of the entry on Venus; more along the lines of "While we now know that Venus is a planet, in Shakespeare's day it was commonly assumed to be a star, and thus his references to..." -- Nat Gertler (talk) 04:15, 16 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    The opening clause is extraneous and this can be rephrased more formally: Shakespeare, like his contemporaries, believed Venus was a star, and thus he referred to ...
    I'm not seeing a circumstance where "wee see X" couldn't be rephrased to something more encyclopedic. voorts (talk/contributions) 12:53, 16 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    To my reading, "we" is common and suitably formal in mathematics articles. I see it in a lot of FA-class articles, but I don't have a sense of new vs. old work. I'm a non-expert, but I would suggest consulting the WikiProject before moving ahead with a broad change. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 02:58, 16 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    As @Thryduulf noted, MOS:MATH already prohibits use of we. voorts (talk/contributions) 03:10, 16 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    That's not how I'd interpret the guidance, which reads "While opinions vary on the most edifying style, authors should generally strike a balance between bare lists of facts and formulae, and relying too much on addressing the reader directly and referring to "we". Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 03:46, 16 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    You beat me to it. I don't think anything more prescriptive than a recommendation should be adopted in general either. It just isn't possible to cover all the circumstances which may arise. Zerotalk 03:49, 16 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Fair, but it does strongly discourage it. voorts (talk/contributions) 14:47, 16 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Strongly discouraged but not prohibited is I think what we should be aiming for across the board. Thryduulf (talk) 15:16, 16 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Was your use of first-person plural intentional, or merely an example of how this grammatical form is so natural that one doesn't even notice when one is using it?
    I don't see a strong reason for discouraging it, but as doing so has been adopted for years as a house style within Wikipedia (including in mathematics articles as discussed above) I also don't see a strong reason for lifting that discouragement. I don't think it should be forbidden. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:46, 24 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    (This isn't mainspace, so even if we know we're using it to designate WP it's authorized. And yes, I know, I intentionally used it to show.) — Alien333 ( what I did
    why I did it wrong     ) 00:38, 25 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm not particularly fond of the Venus construction given earlier, but completely prohibiting such things would be counterproductive IMO. At the end of the day it's rare in enwp and doesn't hurt anyone, and as Firefangledfeathers points out mathematicians are accustomed to such verbiage. ― novov (t c) 10:40, 16 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    "We now know" begs questions – who are "we" – and isn't in our usual Wikivoice. I'd rather we described it as acceptable but best avoided in scientific writing, rather than simply acceptable. But yes, we have worse: Afterwards, we pass a car retail company and a petrol station on our left, with some allotments and Market Harborough cemetery on our right. ... We also now have to say goodbye to Kelmarsh, and hello to Maidwell... (A508 road). NebY (talk) 11:38, 16 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @NebY that's the preferred style for the SABRE wiki so you'll find a few examples of it in our articles about British roads, unfortunately. Thryduulf (talk) 11:45, 16 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Oh dear. NebY (talk) 11:56, 16 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Although there are not many cases where it's useful, I don't know if it's really worth explicitly forbidding it, as it's already quite rare and most unjustified uses of it already fall under another interdiction (e.g. We know Venus is a planet is as much a WEASEL as Some have said that Venus is a planet.) — Alien333 (what I did & why I did it wrong) 14:19, 16 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    strongly discouraged may be enough. But to achieve a FA rating first person should be removed, otherwise it is a style fail. Certainly for science articles, where I mostly work on, "we" or "our" or "us" is inappropriate. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 02:15, 18 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    As far as I can tell, there's broad interest in such a change. Is it time to create the RfC proposing the removal of But some of these words are acceptable in certain figurative uses. and the corresponding examples from the MoS? Thebiguglyalien (talk) 16:59, 24 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    As David Eppstein said above, the status quo (it's discouraged but not altogether forbidden) seems fine enough. I too see no good reason to forbid it altogether, so I don't think an RfC is called for. Gawaon (talk) 04:54, 25 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I think the proposal is to make it discouraged across the board, rather than accepted (but not encouraged) in a couple of areas and discouraged everywhere else. I would support such a change. Thryduulf (talk) 11:07, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    "Looking towards the text"

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    OK, I boldly changed the unsupported assertion that "it is often preferable to place images of people so that they 'look' towards the text", to an acknowledgement that some people do prefer this, but the more important part of the bullet point is that you shouldn't reverse images to achieve this.

    Mandruss reverted me, so let's talk about it.

    Why is it "often preferable"? Frankly I think this is just a superstition, or an aesthetic preference that some people do have but which has no actual value for the encyclopedia, beyond not triggering a reaction in the people that have that preference.

    Of course a lot of things come down to aesthetic preferences, so if enough people really do have it, then that is an answer in itself. The eye, one might say, wants what it wants. But do enough eyes really want this to justify this (in my opinion irrational) guidance? --Trovatore (talk) 05:56, 21 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    It's because the gaze of the reader will track the gaze in the portrait. So, readers are directed into the text by the faces looking inward. DrKay (talk) 07:06, 21 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I mean, I understand the theory. I just think it's nonsense. I can recognize a face whichever way it's pointing, and read the text just fine. --Trovatore (talk) 07:10, 21 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    A majority of the community either supports the concept or it doesn't. As I understand it, guidelines are for keeping us all on the same page, all moving in a common direction. Not for accommodating the personal preferences of all editors or even all significant subsets of editors—on relatively inconsequential issues. I think we do too much of that. When a guideline has been watered down to the point of complete impotence, it's time to retire it per CREEP.
    This was the very meta reason for my revert. While I don't have a strong opinion on this specific issue, it does seem to "feel" better to me when the image subject faces the text. I can't really explain why; it could be because I've lived with this guideline for ten years and it has become imbedded in my DNA; I don't know. If you think the guideline is nonsense, it seems to me the proper action is to seek community consensus to remove it. Or boldly remove it, for that matter, but I doubt that would be accepted. ―Mandruss ☎ 07:34, 21 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Well, the default position of the MoS on any given issue should be no position. I like the way EEng put it, something like "if the MoS does not need a rule, then the MoS needs to not have a rule" -- I forget the exact wording. Articles do not all have to be the same.
    So why do we need a rule on this?
    I do agree that, whatever the outcome, we should keep the guidance about not reversing pictures, as that is actively misleading. But we could do that by itself, something straightforward like "do not reverse pictures of persons just to make them 'look' towards the text". --Trovatore (talk) 07:41, 21 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Articles do not all have to be the same. I would agree with that, but the raison d'être of any style manual is consistency, and any deviation needs to have a better reason than somebody's personal preference. The encyclopedia is more important than any individual's sensitivities—we're not here to please editors—but for some reason we seem to disregard that because people aren't being paid, as if there would be a mass exodus if editors were asked to be team players (there would not). I just smh. ―Mandruss ☎ 08:05, 21 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    To be frank I don't value "consistency" as highly as some do in this context. Would it really detract from Wikipedia to have some photos facing one way and some facing another? I don't think so.
    What the MoS does do well is head off unproductive disputes. Would we have them without this guidance? --Trovatore (talk) 16:27, 21 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Since 2007[1], portraits looking to the centre has been part of Wikipedia's house style. Even if it's merely an arbitrary aesthetic choice, it's served in that and in quelling potential disputes. There's no point in weakening it with a "some prefer (but do as you please)" explanation. In 2008 we briefly had because the reader's eye will tend to follow their direction[2] but after some to-and-fro that was dropped in favour of the simple It is often preferable to place images of faces so that the face or eyes look toward the text.[3] Justifications in the MOS are often more trouble than they're worth, so if "it is often preferable" is being read as one, it might be better to phrase it as more of an injunction (to normally/generally place etc) than an observation. Has that been an issue since 2008? NebY (talk) 11:43, 21 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    "[I]t's served in that and in quelling potential disputes". What's "that"? Being an arbitrary aesthetic choice? Are arbitrary aesthetic choices good? Really?
    As for potential disputes — would people really be fighting about this? --Trovatore (talk) 16:27, 21 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Sure - aesthetic choices are all around, from the choice of newspaper fonts to brick colours to logo design, and consistency in their application matters.
    EEng's common and sensible response when someone seeks a MOS change is to ask where the status quo is resulting in a problem in our articles or their editing. What problems is this longstanding MOS guidance causing? NebY (talk) 16:40, 21 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    EEng's formulation is not about the status quo; it's about whether we need a rule. If there's no active justification for a rule, that rule should be removed.
    My feeling is that you should ordinarily not reverse photos, and you should put them wherever they look best, not artificially put them in a different place just because of this arbitrary shibboleth. --Trovatore (talk) 16:54, 21 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    If you're concerned that people may be reversing photos to make them fit this style guide direction, the MOS does say Do not achieve this by reversing the image. Belbury (talk) 17:44, 21 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    The whole point of manuals of style is to make a decision once about a design style matter, so even if the decision is arbitrary, editors don't have to spend any time on it again. This lets them focus on content. Now it's certainly possible that this specific design choice ought to be revisited in our current world with a large range of viewing widths. Readers might be better served by placing all images on the right, for example, when there is sufficient available viewing space, and centred when there is not, in order to better support flexible layout design that is responsive to the viewing width. isaacl (talk) 17:26, 21 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    In fact, I'd go one step farther than @Isaacl and say that the entire purpose of a style manual is to codify especially the arbitrary stylistic choices that go into collaboratively producing something.
    There are plenty of design, editorial, artistic, literary, etc. questions which come down to there being N pretty-much-equally valid options, and you can either pick one/some for the sake of consistency, or decide not to decide and just let anarchy reign. When you pick a lane, that decision goes into the style manual. The other times don't, because it's not helpful to dictate a non-choice as a point of style — which I think is the real crux of @EEng's point about the necessity of non-rules.
    The Manual of Style is meant to dictate the choices made for editors, not to legislate the areas where they have the freedom to choose for themselves. There's room for that sort of discussion, and for its documentation, but it shouldn't be cluttering up the MoS. FeRDNYC (talk) 13:34, 23 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    If the entire purpose of our style manual were to codify arbitrary stylistic choices, we would have a much simpler guide for citations, and probably a more complete guide for colours and other arbitrary details. — HTGS (talk) 20:01, 23 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • TLDR but this has been discussed many times, and the policy upheld. This is a basic principle of picture placement, which we should follow (and generally have done, for 20+ years). Johnbod (talk) 14:41, 23 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      For what it’s worth, I don’t have strong opinions on whether portraits should face text, but if we do collectively believe that, then we should probably use the word “should”. That would probably resolve Trovatore’s (and my) issue with “it is preferable”. — HTGS (talk) 20:02, 23 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      We need an MOS for policies and guidelines. Something along the lines of use must or should, as appropriate, but otherwise don't worry about constantly softening guidance, as WP:IAR exceptions are always presumed to be possible. —Bagumba (talk) 03:50, 24 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • For those in search of enlightenment, my Pulitzer-winning essay is Wikipedia:If MOS doesn't need a rule on something, then it needs to not have a rule on that thing. EEng 21:36, 23 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      I agree that this guideline, MOS:IM and MOS:PORTRAIT, has been in place for every long time and is widely followed (and, IMO, it's substantially sound). Discussions about language, 'often preferable" vs. 'should', approaches "how many angels" territory – a waste of time. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 02:40, 24 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      The distinction is whether the MOS actually recommends the first part, or whether it’s saying the first part is just a thing people do, because the MOS has a stance on the second part. If we only care to guide editors on the second, then we may as well remove the first. If we actually care that editors do the first, then we should say so. I don’t care if it’s “Images of people should "look" toward the text” or “Under normal conditions, where other concerns are not raised, images of people should be placed so that they "look" toward the text”, but the current wording sounds like: “Some people like peanut butter; those people who like peanut butter must use the knife that’s designated for peanut butter.” — HTGS (talk) 05:31, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      How about "It is often preferable to place images of people so they "look" toward the text." Hawkeye7 (discuss) 10:51, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      Sounds good to me. And very nice that it's already the current wording! Gawaon (talk) 12:54, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      I just disagree that this is preferable. I think it's nonsense. But I have to concede that I haven't seen a lot of people jumping in to agree with me, so not worth pursuing at this time. --Trovatore (talk) 20:33, 3 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      @Hawkeye7 How is that any different to the “Some editors prefer” that started this all? Per EEng, we either need the rule, or we don't. — HTGS (talk) 07:14, 5 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      I think "some editors prefer" is weasel-ly, especially since "some editors" doesn't mean much usually. In this case, what is meant is that some editors have a sense of aesthetics and a feel for article layout and others have none. We do however have a guideline of not reversing images just so they face the right way. (A common practice in some newspapers and magazines.) Hawkeye7 (discuss) 08:48, 5 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Talk:Cobra_Crack#MOS:ITAL

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    Is Cobra Crack reasonable italics? If you have an opinion, please join. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 20:16, 24 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Discussion has moved on to Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Climbing#Suggesting_a_change_of_WP:WikiProject_Climbing/Article_recommendations. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 10:14, 31 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Flagicon in the article

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    Are the flagicon and honour decoration in the Acryl Sani Abdullah Sani#Honours should be removed or not? Stvbastian (talk) 15:11, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Planning to initiate another RFC in a few weeks to challenge a 2018 RFC initiated without adequate notice

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    I just noticed this edit by User:Nikkimaria on 8 October 2023, which linked to a 2018 RFC I had never heard of.

    Then I traced the talk page archive for this article and saw why: because User:SMcCandlish initiated a RFC on the village pump on 6 July 2018 and then linked to it on this talk page from a subheader under an earlier heading initiated by User:Netoholic. As User:Netoholic correctly pointed out at the time, this was highly improper. User:Netoholic had merely proposed planning for a RfC, not initiating one immediately.

    Even worse, the subheading was worded in a cryptic fashion, "RfC opened at WP:VPPOL". Because this talk page gets so much traffic, it would have been very difficult for WP editors who do not read through every post to this talk page on a daily basis to immediately recognize the importance of what that subheading meant.

    It would have been much more fair to all interested editors to give notice of the 2018 RfC under a new heading that clearly and expressly advised that User:SMcCandlish was trying to alter the community consensus on such a hot-button issue, such as "Request for Comment opened on U.S./US debate at village pump". But from the circumstances under which it was initiated, I suspect that developing a true community consensus was not the purpose of the 2018 RfC.

    I have reviewed the archived discussion from July 2018. I fully concur with User:Pyxis Solitary's accurate analysis of the situation in response to User:SMcCandlish: "You are trying to push your position down everyone's throat".

    As I have argued elsewhere, the Chicago Manual of Style's adoption of the irritating British English tendency to drop periods in abbreviations makes zero sense as a matter of style or policy (which is why other American style guides continue to resist it). I have long suspected that the sloppy tendency of British writers to drop periods arose from the UK's egregious mismanagement of primary and secondary education, perhaps because it wasted too much money on idiotic things like nationalizing healthcare and railways. So there weren't enough resources to go around to adequately train and hire enough teachers to teach British children how to punctuate properly.

    California is full of British expats fleeing their nation's decaying educational system in search of greener pastures. American parents are happy to pay a premium to put their kids through college prep schools where they can read Chaucer with a Cambridge alum (as I did as an adolescent).

    The RfC discussion is full of dubious statements such as, "half the people I argue with have the style guide". No, they don't. Most people own, learn, and use the style guides appropriate to their occupational fields.

    There are over 1.33 million lawyers in the United States. They are drilled in law school on the Bluebook or the ALWD Guide to Legal Citation, which both adhere to the traditional American preference for U.S. over US. As far as I am aware, only three states omit periods in abbreviations in their state court citation styles: Michigan, New York, and Oregon. The rest of the states, the territories, and the federal courts consider those three states to have gone insane on that issue.

    The vast majority of American lawyers continue to use U.S. in their personal and professional writing and expect others who work for or with them to do the same. In turn, U.S. continues to be used extensively in American English, because of how lawyers tend to dominate the management ranks of government agencies and also some corporations.

    None of these points were raised in the 2018 RfC. I would have definitely raised them immediately, if I had known of the RfC at the time.

    In the next two months, I plan to visit a public library to consult a variety of style guides to assess the current style situation in other fields, then initiate an RFC to switch MOS:US back to the pre-2017 version. --Coolcaesar (talk) 17:14, 3 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    • To compare major English-language legal style guides: Bluebook uses full stops for every abbrev. term and acronym, including looong ones, as a matter of style. By contrast, the UK's OSCOLA uses no stops for any abbrev or acronyms (and uses commas instead of stops to separate elements of citations). Open-access legal style guides in the US (which see more acceptance now) will either copy an old version of BlueBook (The Indigo Book) or emulate their university publisher style (Maroonbook). For the rest of the Anglosphere (except Canada iirc), it either looks very much like OSCOLA (e.g. AGLC) or a hybrid with some mix of stops.
    Fwiw, I learned "U.S." in my school newspaper's MOS because we voted every 2 years on a what newspaper's MOS to use. (A now-ancient version of AP, which has the similar inconsistencies of "U.S. and UK"; the sole reason is "US" looks like the uppercase word "us".) Bluebook and OSCOLA by contrast aim largely for consistency with stops: yes vs no. But note that nobody outside of the respective legal communities uses either style, even though they have extensive style guides for general citations and prose. By contrast, AP, NYT, Chicago, Harvard, MLA, APA, etc all see wide general adoption in the US -- whether by inertia or no, general audience publishers continue to use it or adopt house variants based closely around it. SamuelRiv (talk) 17:41, 3 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    My tldr is that for the millions of lawyers in the U.S. who put stops on everything, there's an equal (or greater?) millions of lawyers in the Commonwealth who put stops on nothing. I sympathize with feeling blindsided by the RfC, but if having ignored the BlueBook is your primary argument, then I can't see how it's not neutralized. SamuelRiv (talk) 17:46, 3 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • I was tempted to quit reading this rambling wall of text at the point where you tied punctuation to health-care policy and railways; but I soldiered on! Then when you said that some US (or U.S.) states judge other states' sanity based on period non-usage, I again was tempted to quit. But I read on to the end. Final analysis: I should have never started, since there's little more here than your personal musings. EEng 18:15, 3 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      Thanks for saving me the time. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:05, 3 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      This promised RfC should really be something. EEng 20:39, 3 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      Yeah, and while we're about it, let's switch to writing R.F.C. and V.P.:P.O.L. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:24, 3 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      We should also change all of the wiki shortcuts like WP:BRD and WP:MOS to WP:B.R.D. and WP:M.O.S.... or should that be W.P.:B.R.D.? FeRDNYC (talk) 10:54, 5 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      Why we should focus so much on lawyers? "Law" appears not at all nor "legal" more than three or four times in the RFC, so I know it isn't a reprise of a major subject from that debate. English legal writings today remain full of fossilized languages that goes back pratically to the French. UK barristers even still wear wigs in court. Not the best role models for us in matters of style, in my opinion. Largoplazo (talk) 23:02, 3 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      Some soldiers, yesterday, expressing their opinion about the suggestion that they update their uniforms
      Barristers wigs are really a kind of hat. You wouldn't expect a soldier, police officer or McDonalds crew to work bareheaded. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:19, 3 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      Yes, but if for some reason anyone proposed that any of those people start wearing wigs, the withering response would be, "Huh? Come join us in the 21st century, please." Which is kind of the point here. EEng 23:52, 3 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      Those all serve practical purposes. A McDonald's crew member's hat keeps hair out of other people's food. A soldier's helmet protects from head trauma. Even a policeman's cap provides a visor to shade the eyes. And I do often see police officers without any headgear. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 15:18, 9 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      But many of these people's uniforms are updated every so often. No soldiers or police officers are dressed like their 1900 counterparts. Not sure how often McDonalds updates its outfits but in that case the headwear is designed to keep their hair out of the food. I'm not seeing what purpose a hat on a barrister serves other than to make them a target for mockery. (Which I suppose some might think they deserve.) Largoplazo (talk) 16:41, 9 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      US lawyers prefer implants.
      Is it time to hat this yet? NebY (talk) 19:27, 9 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      Now that's my kind of joke -- good and cheap. EEng 19:41, 9 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Have you been hiding under a rock? For over five years I have seen article after article making sure we use US over USA or U.S. and this is just now being contested? Sports articles have been complying on a slow but steady basis. Not sure why we would want to change back even though the original RfC was shady. Fyunck(click) (talk) 22:37, 3 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Indeed. Skipping over the OP’s obvious expertise in winning friends and influencing people, McCandlish et al are right that the tide of change is slowly moving towards not punctuating acronyms. You don’t see such horrors as ‘U.N.E.S.C.O.’ very often nowadays. CNN is an example of a widely-read media source - both within the US and beyond - that now doesn’t use punctuation even for shorter acronyms like ‘US’. But we should note that the current consensus doesn’t outlaw or deprecate ‘U.S.’, but simply requires consistent non-punctuation when there are always-unpunctuated acronyms, like UK or EU, in the same article. Which seems very sensible to me. MapReader (talk) 23:22, 3 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    This post really made my day brighter. Thank you. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 00:49, 4 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I feel like we have sidetracked here, towards heroic engineers and away from ranting about punctuation and healthcare.  Mr.choppers | ✎  04:29, 5 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    So, right-tracked, really? FeRDNYC (talk) 10:56, 5 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I just noticed this edit by User:Nikkimaria on 8 October 2023, which linked to a 2018 RFC I had never heard of. ...So, if you're trying to sell us on why this is an emergent crisis requiring swift and decisive action, you're really whiffing it. Explain again how this 11-month-old action, based on a 6-year-old decision by the WP:CABAL, was the product of a deliberate conspiracy to sneak in rushed changes without having to obtain your personal seal of approval? FeRDNYC (talk) 11:09, 5 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • So, how did Chaucer abbreviate United States of America? Alanscottwalker (talk) 21:33, 5 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      I think for him it would just be sondry londes. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:41, 5 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • Not sure why about 80% of the OP is devoted to personally bashing me. Some people seem to have too much time on their hands and a bad habit of personalizing style disputes. Instead of blathering on and on about "intent" to open an RfC, just open an RfC. Sheesh.<To get to the meat of the matter, WP style (per MOS:ABBR) is to not use dots in initialisms or acronyms.

      We've been tolerating a sometimes-exception of "U.S." because of rather widespread use of it, but the only reason it has that use is that it looks like the word "us" in an ALL-CAPS HEADLINE. Wikipedia never uses those, so there is no real rationale for making a MOS:ABBR exception to avoid "US", which is increasingly common in external source material as well, since fewer and fewer publishers use all-caps headlines and headings. There's sometime an strange assumption that "U.S." is somehow "required" for references to the US government, but this clearly isn't reality; e.g. the US Air Force's official abbreviation is "USAF" not "U.S.A.F." But WP really doesn't care about "officialness" of spellings anyway.

      PS: This has nothing of any kind to do with British (and broader Commonwealth) English style of dropping the stops/periods from contraction abbreviations (those that begin and end with the same letters as the full word: Dr, St, Bt or Bart); the major British style guides, that are not house-style of particular news publishers, continue to recommend dots for truncation abbreviations: Prof., Fr., etc.; none of the recommend retaining dots in acronyms and initialisms. The pretense that "U.S." is an "American English" spelling is a silly red herring distraction.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:26, 10 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    page number ranges and year ranges

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    Hi, can't remember where the guidance is re page ranges (eg pp. 192–198 v pp. 192–98) and year ranges (eg 1972–1978 v 1972–78). Thank you Cinderella157 (talk) 23:32, 4 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Marvellously, MOS:PAGERANGE and MOS:YEARRANGE. :) NebY (talk) 23:40, 4 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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    How should we wikilink: Batman's or Batman's? Should it be Batmanesque or Batmanesque? Ponor (talk) 11:55, 6 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Never link part of a word, link the whole thing, including the possessive suffix. In fact, as I can tell from your examples that you've noticed, if you use the wikicode [[Batman]]s you'll get Batmans, and if you use [[Batman]]esque you'll get Batmanesque, precisely because linking a partial word wasn't wanted. (Though that technical trick doesn't work for apostrophe-s, but the style rule still applies.) Largoplazo (talk) 12:04, 6 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @Largoplazo, the apostrophe case is why I'm asking. The technical part of it could be fixed, but I want to make sure that's the right way to go. I've noticed the Batman's example at Help:Wikilinks, where 's is not wikilinked, though it says "This does the right thing for possessive". So what's the right thing? Ponor (talk) 12:12, 6 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Oh, OK, then I'm wrong, go by what the guideline says. So, since Help:Wikilinks makes it clear, I'm not sure what information you're looking for here. Largoplazo (talk) 12:20, 6 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Help:Wikilinks may be wrong. I believe it's wrong. Maybe [[Batman]]'s did produce Batman's when the help page was written. WP:MOS should tell us what's wrong or right, and whether it matters. Ponor (talk) 13:37, 6 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    The proper place to discuss this would be Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Linking and indeed, if you search those archives for "apostrophe" you'll see[4] that our guidance and practice has been discussed and reaffirmed repeatedly. NebY (talk) 13:56, 6 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    This is a result of a really really old WM bug. Probably 20+years old. But it only affects editors and readers, so … All the best: Rich Farmbrough 20:39, 9 September 2024 (UTC).[reply]

    Mobile skin and block quotations

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    On mobile, block quotations have a left bar (demonstration of Adolf Hitler#Dictatorship; mobile website, and if it doesn't display immediately there it's a subsection of "Rise to power").

    What do you think about removing it? That can be done in the same way as we do on Vector currently (phab:T265947 if you want to review that affair, but please stick to read-only). It would look something like this at the same resolution (my apologies for any back and forthing you may do where you are irritated by where the borders of the images are drawn, since I am imperfect in taking screenshots).

    Just looking at the differences in the two screenshots there, and knowing that the needs of blockquoting were originally written for works not intended to be presented on mobile resolutions, I'd say the bar might be necessary/desirable at small resolutions. We might feasibly be able to come up with some other solution, but I don't find that there's enough padding in the current styles to support a good look at a blockquote as a blockquote rather than as Just Another Paragraph in the story we're writing (rather than the story that someone else wrote). And adding more padding might be infeasible lest we be unable to fit any words in the quote on the page. ;) (That said, we set things up a long time ago for a bit more padding and now the desktop skin styles are overriding that unintentionally to be smaller than what we added, so that might also need adjustment.)

    The bar has also been there for a very long time. So our users aren't surprised by it these days. (They probably can't meaningfully distinguish a quotation and a pull quotation anyway.)

    There are other stylistic differences besides the left bar which may influence the question (particularly, the different fonts selected, but also the slightly increased font size), so you can bring those up, but that's not the most pertinent question.

    I can noodle with some other resolutions if we want to see if there's any point where we're happy with the horizontal visual separation of blockquotes from at least paragraphs, but just wanted to get that out there. Above images were taken around 380px width which is absurdly small for most smart phones these days, but we're catering not solely to smart phone users.

    (I know that this all sounds fairly positive a review of the bar, but I want to give it a fair shake moreso than a desire to keep it.​) Izno (talk) 04:03, 7 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    I thought we got rid of those unsightly bars four years ago, but I guess not. There is no good reason for blockquotes to have vertical bars and non-matching fonts. They should be plain-indented and use the same font as the body text. – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:12, 7 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    On Vector, we quickly reversed their addition. But they've been in mobile practically since the mobile website was rolled out, where I think there's sufficient room for debate about their use. Izno (talk) 22:22, 7 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Bibliography of Ulysses S. Grant

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    This looks like it should be called Bibliographies of Ulysses S. Grant, since it is not a biography of Grant but a list of biographical works about Grant - ie it is a case where we should be using the plural in the article title. Better still, Ulysses S. Grant biographies, since that places the primary search term first. Thoughts please. Cinderella157 (talk) 01:52, 13 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    The current title is bibliography, not biography - a bibliography is a list of works. Nikkimaria (talk) 01:58, 13 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Duh Cinderella157 (talk) 12:00, 13 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    If that's your response, then you still aren't getting it. The article contains a list of books—a bibliography—and not a list of bibliographies. Largoplazo (talk) 16:08, 13 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    What would Homer do? I acknowledge my error. Cinderella157 (talk) 22:08, 13 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Did you mean "D'oh"? That's Homer. Very different from "duh"! Largoplazo (talk) 23:06, 13 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Possessives and premodern figures

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    Please forgive me for broaching one of the subjects with dozens of previous discussions linked in the header, but this has been bugging me and it seems major enough to be a source of consistent confusion and discrepancy. Generally, articles about classical figures (or at least that's the most helpful scope I can ascertain) with Greco-Latin names ending in S like Archimedes seem to consciously diverge from MOS:'S. It seems to be a real problem, as these are among the most prominent examples of what the aforementioned guideline is meant to cover. As we seem rather unlikely to happen upon a well-defined exception for the MOS, what are we meant to do here? Remsense ‥ 论 12:15, 14 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    are you referring to adding an S after the apostrophe, or to using U+0027 ' APOSTROPHE rather than U+2019 ’ RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK? -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 15:15, 15 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    The former, sorry. Archimedes' versus Archimedes's. Remsense ‥ 论 02:09, 16 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Why should it have anything to do with the date of the subject? We do not change our language to classical Greek to talk about Archimedes; why should we change it in other ways?
    But now I'm wondering about a different issue. A possessive 's or s', at least the way I would speak it, is voiced, more like a z. So is the way I would normally pronounce the s at the end of the name Archimedes. If I were more stuffy about Greek pronunciation (remembering that scene from Bill and Ted) it might be different. But for some reason, some other names ending in vowel-s (including Moses and Jesus) end with an unvoiced s for me. If I spell the possessive "Moses' " and pronounce it "Mozəz", I am substituting the final consonant rather than merely dropping a repeated consonant. But if I spell it "Moses's", and pronounce it "Mozəsəz", it seems more logical to me because I am still pronouncing both the name and the possessive the way I would expect to.
    Which is to say that I think the use of s' vs s's could reasonably be based on pronounciation rather than orthography or chronology. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:17, 16 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    No trailing S seems the more common style in sources in those contexts, which has recently been gestured to on Archimedes' heat ray as to why it is conventional here. I don't agree with that at all, but it's an argument—one that seems to be directly contradicted by existing consensus, which is why I'm a bit flummoxed.
    I also disagree with the phonology argument, as that is surely something that varies by accent and likely cannot be clearly distinguished in many cases. Remsense ‥ 论 07:21, 16 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    There are two distinct issues.Correct grammar calls for dropping the S only after a plural ending in S. A singular ending in S has an 's possessive form.
    The other issue is what Wikipedia's policy is or should be. That, presumably, is driven by WP:RS. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 09:14, 16 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Not really, as citation or quotation isn't the same thing as transcription: we're fully capable of diverging in style from our sources (in many cases we are expected to) because it obviously doesn't affect the meaning of the claims. Remsense ‥ 论 09:16, 16 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    "MOS:NDASH: other uses" listed at Redirects for discussion

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    The redirect MOS:NDASH: other uses has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 September 15 § MOS:NDASH: other uses until a consensus is reached. Utopes (talk / cont) 13:46, 15 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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