Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 182

I might not be spotting it anywhere in the MOS or at Wikipedia:Piped link, but which is preferred: [[Single-stock futures|SSF]]s or [[Single-stock futures|SSFs]] ? I never received a response at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Linking. ɱ (talk) · vbm · coi) 16:16, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

I think when you're already piping the link, the former is preferable (spell-checking, mostly). --Izno (talk) 17:28, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

@Izno: Can we note this in the MOS please? ɱ (talk) · vbm · coi) 18:15, 21 June 2016 (UTC)

Is there a reason you think that it is necessary? --Izno (talk) 18:43, 21 June 2016 (UTC)

The two forms render identically, so it's not an MOS issue at all, I think. Pburka (talk) 22:23, 21 June 2016 (UTC)

There are JavaScripts that change it to the latter when they do other Common Fixes. Cheers! {{u|

Talk

} 23:48, 22 June 2016 (UTC)

John hit Bill, and Bill screamed. But not: John, and Bill screamed. And not: John jumped, and screamed. Compound subjects & predicates are not separated internally by a comma. Should these rules be added to the list? Also it appears that editors have the useless habit of setting off prepositional phrases with commas. Should there be a rule about not separating prepositional phrases with commas unless there is some other rule which demands it? (PeacePeace (talk) 20:46, 22 June 2016 (UTC))

We don't prescribe grammatical rules, these can vary like

WP:ENGVAR. But I suggest that everybody should read Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss. --Redrose64 (talk

) 23:26, 22 June 2016 (UTC)

That book looks like a fun read. Thanks for telling me about it. (PeacePeace (talk) 20:19, 23 June 2016 (UTC))

What formatting should be used for recurring features within other packages (TV shows, magazines, newspaper inserts)? Italics, quotemarks, captialization, other? Curly Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 21:39, 17 June 2016 (UTC)

Rationale

This came up at

• The recurring Saturday Night Live sketch Weekend Update is italicized
• The recurring Elmo's World is quotemarked
• The recurring Point/Counterpoint segment of 60 Minutes is both italicized and quotemarked haphazardly

Some things to keep in mind:

• Whether a feature occurs within another package or not is incidental, as such feature can and are repackaged:
  • TV segments can be lifted from their original shows and used as filler between other shows
  • The Japanese comics series Ranma ½ was a recurring feature in the comics magazine Weekly Shōnen Sunday in Japan, but the content was repackaged as an independent comic book in the US.

In the above cases, should we flip-flop between quotemarks and italics for identical content depending on publication format?

• Context: this came up over a disagreement over the title formatting of the comic strip Little Annie Fanny.

Discussion

We should use italics for recurring features in all cases—the physical packaging should be irrelevant, as it is often treated so. Anything else is

instruction creep

and would bring up endless corner cases to argue about. There is no advantage to

• The "CT opens an RFC" episode of "Curly Turkey's Endless Griping" in issue No. 45 of WikipediMOS

over

• The "CT opens an RFC" episode of Curly Turkey's Endless Griping in issue No. 45 of WikipediMOS

while in the latter, we don't have to keep in mind whether Curly Turkey's Endless Griping appears within or without something (the answer to which may be "both"). Curly Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 21:39, 17 June 2016 (UTC)

• There are already established practices, see
  WP:WHO/MOS#General. --Redrose64 (talk
  ) 22:44, 17 June 2016 (UTC)

  If it is, it's far from obvious. Curly Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 23:22, 17 June 2016 (UTC)

  Redrose64: As we're having trouble seeing the answer, could you tell us? Curly Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 00:00, 22 June 2016 (UTC)

  WP:MOS#Italics-Titles. --Redrose64 (talk

  ) 07:17, 22 June 2016 (UTC)

  Redrose64: I can promise you I was familiar with that before I opened this RfC. I do not see a clear answer, and we continue to dispute it at MOS:COMICS. It would be helpful if you could give us your interpretation of how it applies to the above examples. Curly Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 08:33, 22 June 2016 (UTC)

  The guideline is clear that a series is italicized and an episode is quotemarked. I suppose there are different possible interpretations:

1. Like a series name, the name of a repeating feature names a whole series of contributions rather than an individual contribution on a particular day, so it should be treated like a series (i.e. italicized).
2. Like an episode name, the name of a repeating feature names something hierarchically below a series, so it should be treated like an episode (i.e. quotemarked).

Formatting like a series (italicized) would have the advantage of allowing a consistent rule for formatting the name of a particular day's / issue's instance of the repeating feature (quotemarked).

--Boson (talk) 13:00, 23 June 2016 (UTC)

Finally some recognition that the guidance isn't clear. Curly Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 22:30, 23 June 2016 (UTC)

• Is a section in a newspaper ("Sports") a recurring feature? That, I believe, is always quote-marked. --Izno (talk) 00:09, 18 June 2016 (UTC)
  • I think a section in a newspaper is more akin to a chapter. A better newspaper analogy might be a syndicated column, as those typically appear in several papers and may be published in other formats. Examples might include Dear Abby, Savage Love, or "The Straight Dope" (each formatted here as they appear in their main articles). Pburka (talk) 00:04, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

Hi SMcCandlish, that section has always been problematic because it's based on a narrow view of what a pull quote is and how it should be used (or, if you prefer, the section narrows itself to pull quotes). I see it violated all the time, including by me, so it can't be said to have consensus. That's why I removed "and variants" because it extended the section to unnamed templates that people might be using quite happily. SarahSV ^(talk) 21:51, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

For "number" (No.), does it need to be written as No. as the example says in

To answer the second part of the question, I take it to mean always "No. 1" not "no. 1". Primergrey (talk) 23:28, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

If a video game has a “Game of the Year Edition,” or an album has a “Collector’s Edition,” or a movie has a “Director’s Cut” release, should the edition name be italicized as well (per

• Call of Duty 2 does not italicize “Special Edition” or “Game of the Year Edition,” and doesn’t even capitalize “a collector’s edition” or “the mobile version”.
• The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind italicizes “Game of the Year Edition” both with the game title (with and without a preceding colon) and on its own, but not “Special Edition Soundtrack.”
• Batman: Arkham Asylum has “Game of the Year edition” roman with a small E, but italicizes “a Collector’s Edition.”

One of the goals of the Manual of Style is to encourage consistency across WIkipedia. To that end, should

• Here’s my own answer: Personally, I’d advise against treating any “edition” label as a part of the work title proper unless there isn’t any doubt that it is a separate creative work: the Payday 2 demo, Doom Game of the Year edition, but Dead Island Definitive Edition or Blade Runner: The Final Cut. Also, lone edition names should not be treated as proper names unless they’re being used non-generically to refer to a distinct creative work: the collector’s edition comes with a plush Cyberdemon, and a director’s cut was released the next year, but the Director’s Cut changes the whole tone of the film.
  I’m not going to push this position; I’ll be more than happy with any reasoned approach. —67.14.236.50 (talk) 23:10, 2 June 2016 (UTC)
• Does this need clarification? Titles are italicized and if the phrase is part of the title, it is similarly italicized. Usually it's best to avoid long awkward titles, in which case I would reference it as the "Game of the Year" edition (without italics). Depends how you're using the phrase. The above examples make sense prima facie, save for the Batman collector's edition example, which shouldn't be italicized.  czar 23:18, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

  @

  Czar: How is it determined what is or isn’t part of the work title? If a phrase is added on to the end of the title, does that become part of it regardless of whether the work is changed? —67.14.236.50 (talk

  ) 23:27, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

  As with all titles, we follow the lead of our secondary sources. If they are italicizing "Game of the Year" as a subtitle, we do too. If there is confusion as to whether it's part of the title, local consensus on the talk page should figure it out, and

  WT:VG is a good subsequent forum. czar

  23:45, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

  I think 67.14.236.50 said it absolutely correctly. Walter Görlitz (talk) 04:43, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

  @Walter Görlitz: Thanks! But are you referring to my proposed solution, or my reply to Czar? —67.14.236.50 (talk) 04:44, 4 June 2016 (UTC)

  Pretty much everything you wrote was spot on. Walter Görlitz (talk) 05:10, 4 June 2016 (UTC)

• Eliminate all coverage of video games by deleting the articles, because debates over trivia like titles of special editions and genres takes up huge amounts of editor time, including at ANI, for no reason. EEng 05:08, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

  @EEng: Frustrated joking aside, what do you think we could do for a genuine solution to that problem? —67.14.236.50 (talk) 01:35, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

  OK, I apologize for making light of an issue that's truly causing trouble for you. I don't have an answer. Sorry. EEng 02:45, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

  From your comment, I’d assumed it was causing trouble for you. But now I’m confused as to why you posted at all. —67.14.236.50 (talk) 05:16, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

  No direct problem for me, but I've seen huge amounts of time wasted dealing with genre and title warrior at ANI. EEng 20:49, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

• If we don’t get more responses here, I’ll try making a bold edit to
  MOS:T#Major works in the next few days, something along the lines of my earlier suggestion. —67.14.236.50 (talk
  ) 03:19, 14 June 2016 (UTC)

  RFCs customarily run for 30 days. Given the lack of response, that would indicate a "no consensus", and where dealing with a guideline, usually means "no consensus to enact a change". You should probably also advertise this RFC at

  WT:Manual of Style/Titles. --Izno (talk

  ) 11:00, 14 June 2016 (UTC)

  Good point; done. But as far as I’m aware, a lack of consensus also means it’s open to

  WP:BRD to attempt to find a consensus. —67.14.236.50 (talk

  ) 00:00, 15 June 2016 (UTC)

  "No consensus" means that there is no change—do as we have been doing. It's not a license for a free-for-all. czar 04:48, 15 June 2016 (UTC)

  @

  WP:BRD is, either. There hasn’t been enough discussion or activity about this to make any kind of final determination about consensus, other than that we don’t have one yet. And I want to emphasize that: We don’t have one yet. So let’s find one. How do you propose we do that? I’m open to suggestions. —67.14.236.50 (talk

  ) 22:23, 15 June 2016 (UTC)

  As I said above, I don't think the MoS needs to be clarified—these cases are fine as currently presented (save for what appears to be a mistake in the Batman article, but writing a MoS statement to fix that would be taking a bulldozer to an anthill) czar 22:31, 15 June 2016 (UTC)

  Three articles formatting the same text three different ways (italicized or roman, capitalized or lowercase) doesn’t strike you as inconsistent? And you don’t think a bit of guidance on that would be beneficial? —67.14.236.50 (talk) 22:39, 15 June 2016 (UTC)

  Nope—editions are not consistently common nouns or proper nouns or independent creative works. For example, see the last paragraph of

  Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Biographies titles, and to italicize separate creative works. I can't see how standardizing would help here—it's more about how it's used in the sentence... czar

  06:43, 22 June 2016 (UTC)

  @

  MOS:T, or for WP editors to distinguish between major works and minor works—we’d let the sources decide whether to put a given book title in quotes, or to italicize a song title. But I don’t think we do that, since MOS:T is still around. —67.14.236.50 (talk

  ) 22:58, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

"Clarify" here looks a lot like "typify". You could do the same thing for books known as "second editions" or albums with "remastered" in their subtitles—it will wholly depend on what they're called in the sources and not on a top-down MoS solution. Also mind that our own manual of style is derived from other manuals of style and it's not like our conventions came apropos of nothing. I fear I'll be repeating myself if there is no new evidence to consider, so this is where I'll bow out czar 23:28, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

@

Czar: Then I shall genuinely thank you for sharing your considered opinion, even if I disagree with parts of it. —67.14.236.50 (talk

) 23:47, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Below is a copy of a notice, and my response to it, posted at

This is just a notice that members of the

MOS, headed up by myself. Nothing is happening until August 2016, but there is a discussion regarding interest in the endeavor which you can find here, and add your signature if you would like to be a part of the effort. - Favre1fan93 (talk

) 01:14, 23 June 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads-up, but please note that

MOS:NUM, etc..  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢

 ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  04:21, 30 June 2016 (UTC)

 — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  04:33, 30 June 2016 (UTC)

"see if a rewrite can make the issue moot" – is this an American usage? In English usage a moot point is a point that is or can be mooted – i.e. debatable, but the word is used as though it means the opposite on the MoS page. Best find another word if it means one thing on one side of the Atlantic and the reverse on the other. Tim riley talk 09:48, 27 June 2016 (UTC)

Indeed. Martinevans123 (talk) 09:54, 27 June 2016 (UTC)

Good catch. I changed it to "see if a rewrite can settle the issue" which is what I think the American usage means; as noted above the original wording means "see if a rewrite can make the issue debatable" in British English, which doesn't make sense here. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:58, 27 June 2016 (UTC)

The revision is welcome. Even in Am Eng usage the sense was not clear. A moot point is something that is debatable, but doing so leads to no effective resolution. I.e., it is seen as an academic exercise or as a pasttime for those with nothing better to do. older ≠ wiser 10:13, 27 June 2016 (UTC)

It's just a hill you don't want to die on. Martinevans123 (talk) 10:36, 27 June 2016 (UTC)

• A lot of people think moot means irrelevant because of some intervening development. EEng 15:19, 27 June 2016 (UTC)

@

pastime" has one "t", not two - it's a contraction of "pass time", something that passes the time in between real tasks. --Redrose64 (talk

) 18:35, 27 June 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, I do know that. I was typing on my phone and the autocorrect changed it to something entirely different and in my haste to correct it I mispelled it myself. older ≠ wiser 18:37, 27 June 2016 (UTC)

As if anyone would ever want to pass the time in between "real tasks". Martinevans123 (talk) 18:43, 27 June 2016 (UTC)

From American Heritage: "A debatable question, an issue open to argument; also, an irrelevant question, a matter of no importance." So we have two almost opposite meanings. I just avoid the word altogether as it just confuses half the audience I'm communicating to. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 22:58, 27 June 2016 (UTC)

FWIW now, this is not a US v UK distinction: the dual, and arguably contradictory, meanings apply in British English just as they appear to in US English. See here and here for online evidence. "Moot" can in fact refer to a point or debate that has become irrelevant or redundant because of some intervening event or revelation in the UK too. Kind of like this one. N-HH talk/edits 09:51, 2 July 2016 (UTC)

Well maybe, in terms of the dictionary. It's just that I've never heard it used in British English that way. Martinevans123 (talk) 16:14, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

Just as a follow-up, I looked in the OED too, whose more detailed entry does include that second meaning, but also suggests it is indeed primarily a North American usage. As for experience, I've always had the opposite, or maybe a half-way house: when I hear people use it, I assume they mean it's a point that, yes, is up for debate but with at least the possible implication that any debate would ultimately be academic and of no practical value. N-HH talk/edits 08:54, 5 July 2016 (UTC)

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere; involves long-running capitalization vs. hyphenation disputes.

The present name of the article (on a general topic, professional video-gaming competition) coincides with a commercial trademark (in that market sector).

Over the last year, there have been 6 or so requested moves and other renaming discussions at what is presently

I've opened a multi-option, RfC-style requested move at:
     

It presents four potential names, all with some rationale outlines provided.

Input is sought from the community to help arrive at a long-term stable name for this article, based on actual policy and guideline wording, and on treatment in

Hello all- Looking for input in a discussion regarding the best way to pluralize the German word Stolperstein in that term's article; whether to simply add "s" or use the German plural form Stolpersteine. Discussion here: Talk:Stolperstein#Correct_plural. Thanks in advance for any helpful comments. Eric ^talk 18:35, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

If an article uses American English, should it also use Imperial units?   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  21:24, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

@Dunkleosteus77: Short answer: no, because the U.S. has never used Imperial units.

Imperial units were introduced by the UK after American independence, to replace the King James units previously used, and which the U.S. continued to use, although they are now known as U.S. Customary Units. There are several differences, mainly concerning measures of capacity or volume - for instance, the Imperial system has 20 fluid ounces to the pint, U.S. customary has 16 - and the fluid ounce isn't the same size either (the U.S. fl. oz. is about 4% larger than the Imperial).

See

MOS:UNITS. --Redrose64 (talk

) 22:28, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

The article should include both American units and SI units in such a case, making use of the convert template to give both values. Even though it may be an article written in American English, that doesn't mean it should not be readily accessible to readers of other varieties of English. The primary units involved in any case should be those named in the cited source material. Rhialto (talk) 08:30, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

Not if it's a scientific article. And no, there's no more than a tendency for US English to be accompanied by US units (and date formats). Variety of English, date format, and US vs international units all have different criteria, I'm afraid. Slightly messy, but overall an excellent outcome years ago by en.WP editors, solving a complicated set of international circumstances. Tony (talk) 08:54, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

Rhialto, the choice of primary units should be consistent throughout the article and not based on the individual sources. {{Convert}} has a way of using the number from the source as its input but also allowing us to choose which number is displayed first using the |order= parameter. Broadly speaking, articles tied to a country should use the units of that country (eg New York should use imperial units and Volkswagen should use metric) and other articles can choose either but must be internally consistent.  Stepho  talk  09:18, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

@

U.S. customary units, which are not the same as Imperial, see my comment above. --Redrose64 (talk

) 09:36, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

You are quite correct. New York definitely should use US customary as the primary units. Apologies for my lapse.  Stepho  talk  13:14, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

Concur with Stepho-wrs (as corrected by Redrose64 :-); we have excellent templates for this. Also concur with Tony1: some vague national tie is not an excuse to go on a style rampage against the metric system, as there are contexts in which metric, not US customary, is used even in the US. Sometimes these are even micro-contexts within a larger context that otherwise avoids metric (e.g., pool cue tips are always measured in mm, even though all other cue sports measurements are in US customary in the US, and a mixture of Imperial and metric in the UK, etc.).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  21:46, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

Is there any MOS guidelines at all about Outlines? At least one person has suggested that outlines aren't even articles at all so maybe it wouldn't be subject to the MOS at all. I made a suggestion at the Outlines project for various qualities of outlines but I soon realized that there may be no rules about how outlines should be organized (other than people's personal opinions) so I have no idea how would determine a "Featured outline" (if that exists). Wikipedia:Outlines is just an information page which seems odd. There have been a few discussions about outlines in which the following rules at least apply:

1. Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Draft:Historical outline of France - there are no such things as "Historical" outlines as those are just prose and outlines should not have prose in them.
2. There is a discrepancy about whether or not one can create outlines if the mainspace version does not exist. Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:WikiProject Outlines/Drafts/Outline of accounting law was almost all delete while Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:WikiProject Outlines/Drafts/Outline of forest hydrology seems to be going the opposite way.
3. There is an ongoing debate about Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:WikiProject Outlines/Drafts/Outline of teaching since teaching redirects to education. Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Outlines/Drafts/Outline of biological engineering was a move based on the redirect for the mainspace version.

There was also an argument about the location of outline drafts at

I would assume that the guidance on stand-alone lists would apply, as the outline page makes it clear that that's what they are. Or am I missing a larger-scope? Primergrey (talk) 13:10, 5 July 2016 (UTC)

• I'll look into the bigger outline questions; thanks for all those links. They are
  WP:CS1!" vs. "get rid of the MoS!" grand-standing and false-dichotomy.] — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢
   ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  22:00, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

An edit of mine to remove an ellipsis at the start of a quotation was reverted. My original edit summary was "rm unnecessary leading ellipsis"; that of the revert was "Unnecessary change: the ellipsis shows the sentence is incomplete". Here's my opinion about ellipses:

• They are ugly, and should be avoided unless they're necessary (or present in the original).
• The fact that it's a quotation already implies it's an incomplete extract from the source, unless supporting text indicates that it's complete (or a paraphrase, etc.). Therefore, an ellipsis at the start of a quotation is never necessary (interpreting "never" with
  the usual pinch of salt
  ).
• Therefore, a leading ellipsis should always (modulo salt) be removed.

Relevant to this case, the "usual pinch of salt" (i.e. common sense) suggests a leading ellipse where it would be needed to indicate an incomplete sentence. In this case, the fact that the quotation begins with a lower case letter implies an incomplete sentence, so it's still not necessary.

I've reverted the revert, but in the meantime, what do others think of leading ellipses? Hairy Dude (talk) 19:23, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

MOS:ELLIPSIS does give an example that shows a leading ellipsis. Note that the use of   is recommended to prevent improper line breaks. Jay Jor (talk

) 21:00, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

The ellipsis was correctly used to indicate that part of the sentence has been omitted (in this case, the leading "But"). I'm not familiar with any style guides which omit the leading ellipsis and instead recommend lower case letters to indicate incomplete sentences. Pburka (talk) 03:27, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

I agree. I think the use of an ellipsis in this case clearly indicates that the sentence quoted is incomplete, and avoids the oddness of a passage of text beginning with a lowercase letter. —

talk

) 09:40, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

The ellipsis should be retained. In fact, because the quotation forms a new sentence, the first letter should be capitalised (... [I]t has to be expressed ...). Even if this were not the case because the quotation already began with a capital letter (e.g., a proper noun), the ellipsis would provide the vital indication that the quotation does not begin at the start of the sentence. —sroc 💬 22:53, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

I share your opinion on this, Hairy Dude, as you've outlined it. I think the ellipsis is quite unnecessary. I'd agree that the quote should begin with "[I]t", though. JG66 (talk) 23:11, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Capitalise it if you must, but please don't put those square brackets in. They denote a phrase, word or letter that is not present in the original quotation but which has been added by way of clarification, as in "... they [the Government] resolved to act". If all that has been done is to flip the case of a letter, there is no change in meaning, so there should be no need for clarification, and so no need for the brackets. --Redrose64 (talk) 23:16, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

"They are ugly" is a

non-rationale; this is about accuracy not designerly asethetics. If the original is "I know my dog's foot is sore", this can be quoted entirely, or as "...my dog's foot is sore" (if not starting a new sentence), or "[M]y dog's foot is sore" (if starting a new sentence), or "...[M]y dog's foot is sore" (if starting a new sentence and it's important to stress that leading material has been elided, which it obviously is not in this case). If the letter case is changed, the square brackets are not optional, because its omission falsifies the quotation and misleads the reader. It is not true at all that the square brackets indicate only an insertion of additional material; they indicate any kind of editorial change, including often a shortening, e.g. of "My mean, cheap, bitter so-called superior has put me on a make-work project" -> "My [boss] has put me on a make-work project". Finally, the idea that "[t]he fact that it's a quotation already implies it's an incomplete extract from the source ... [means] an ellipsis at the start of a quotation is never necessary" is misparsing the contextual meaning of "incomplete" here. This interpretation could not possibly be correct, or the ellipsis convention would never have arisen in the first place, yet you will find it in all style guides. They only differ on the fine points, with some journalistic guides permitting the kinds changes Redrose64 advocates, and some high-academic ones being super-persnicketty and demanding square brackets around the ellipses themselves, which farther than MoS will go.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢

 ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  22:16, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

Hi, a question has come up at the Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/Hyacinth Graf Strachwitz/1 discussion on how to treat foreign names of the various awards:

• Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds (German
  : Ritterkreuz des Eisernen Kreuzes mit Eichenlaub, Schwertern und Brillanten)
• ... was second only to the Grand Cross of the Iron Cross ([Großkreuz des Eisernen Kreuzes] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help)), which was...
• ...surpassed on 29 December 1944 by the
  Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Golden Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds ([Ritterkreuz des Eisernen Kreuzes mit Goldenem Eichenlaub, Schwertern und Brillanten] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help
  ))...
• ...while imprisoned by the French he was awarded the Iron Cross ([Eisernes Kreuz] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help)) Second and First Class.^[1].... Etc.
• ...nominated for the Clasp to the Iron Cross ([Spange zum Eisernen Kreuz] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help)) 2nd Class for his organizational achievements,.^[1].

Is there a guideline that would be applicable here? K.e.coffman (talk) 01:04, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

• There may be no guideline on when the foreign name should not be given, in addition to the English name. No consensus may be applicable. Jay Jor (talk) 20:22, 3 July 2016 (UTC)
• Not really an MoS matter, more of a
  WP:NOT#INDISCRIMINATE one. It's superfluous on en.wiki to provide the German equivalent of the English name of every award received by the biographical article subject, especially since they're linked to articles on the awards that provide the German names. If we provided the German (or whatever) original for every military and other term, article length would bloat dramatically. Imagine if every military title, division name, etc., were given in multiple languages at an article like World War II; it would be practically unreadable. When to provide a translation/transliteration and original at the same time is a judgement call. If this article were to retain both, it would probably be in German first, as the proper name, then an English gloss, and done on the basis that the RS (in English) about these medals usually use the German. If that's not the case, just use the English.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢
   ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  12:31, 9 July 2016 (UTC)

Is the use of number sign okay, as in "#3 Stanford" in the template, at 2015 Stanford Cardinal football team? The infobox directly above has No. 3. This creates an inconsistency in the Wikipedia article.

I have seen Wikipedia:Ignore all rules, but I have seen long term Wikipedia editors invoke Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Number signs as if it were completely rigid. In reading it, it sounds completely rigid, except for the one example given otherwise. Thanks, Jay Jor (talk) 00:14, 3 July 2016 (UTC).

Oh, I have also seen somewhere, but can't remember where, something about deviating from guidelines in tables to save room. Jay Jor (talk) 00:42, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

Use No. instead of a number sign. Infobox style exceptions are for space issues which isn't much of an issue at all in this case. Primergrey (talk) 01:13, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

@

MOS:NUMERO is not completely rigid, but basically, about the only time that the # sign is acceptable is in issue numbers of comic books. --Redrose64 (talk

) 10:25, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

I see some clear guidance at

MOS:NUMERO on chart singles and albums: number, Number, No., or #. But # seems to be used very widely indeed for chart records especially, dare I suggest it, for US records. Martinevans123 (talk

) 11:24, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

I see it a lot on NASCAR-related pages as well but when I mentioned on that project page that I was changing it whenever I came across it no one voiced any disagreement. Primergrey (talk) 15:18, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the additional info. Interestingly, an internet search for:"#1" "#2" "#3" rank, compared to:"No. 1" "No. 2" "No. 3" rank, on Wikipedia produced about 6,740 results for use of # and 3,440 for No., nearly two to one.^[1][2] The same internet searches on the Harvard University website produced about 7,840 results for # and 2,470 for No., greater than three to one.^[3][4] There is some effort to change # to No. on Wikipedia. I'm not sure about at Harvard. Jay Jor (talk) 16:14, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, general usage outside of Wikipedia (especially for sports) seems to be "#" instead of "No.", does anyone know why we do it this way? ansh666 18:46, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

In the USA, perhaps; but not in the UK. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:41, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

"In the USA, perhaps"? I have not seen a major U.S. university with 4,000 to 20,000 internet search results, as specified above, that isn't three to one or more in favor of #. Is that the explanation, U.K. usage takes precedence over U.S. usage on Wikipedia? Jay Jor (talk) 01:06, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

For topics that are not USA-specific, USA practice should not dictate the style. This is

MOS:ENGVAR. Until Twitter, many people had never heard of the # symbol, or they had seen it on their telephones but did not know what it meant or was called; there are still telephone services in the UK which advise customers to "key in the account number and then press the square key" - by "the square key" they mean #. By contrast, "No." is widely understood in many English-speaking countries. --Redrose64 (talk

) 08:24, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

Even "topics that are not USA-specific" may still be in American English, if that's the established variety at that article. This strikes me as not exactly an ENGVAR issue, though, since # versus No. is not a question of either spelling or word choice, in the usual sense.

Still, I'm a bit taken aback by the idea that the # sign should not be used in ranking teams. "No." really looks very strange to me in that context. "No. 3 Alabama". No what? What are you saying no to? Maybe we should find some other notation, say the bare number in parentheses? --Trovatore (talk) 08:40, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

U.S. college sports rankings, NASCAR (auto racing) driver rankings, etc., seem very "USA specific", yet some still insist on the use of "No." There can also be rankings, jersery numbers and car numbers, leading to something like, "John Q. Public, No. 23 on the #4 Tigers team ..." Jay Jor (talk) 11:40, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

And per the MOS, it should be "No." anyway, so people will see "Number" on hover.

talk

) 08:27, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

Likewise, # would show "number" on hover. Jay Jor (talk) 11:40, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

In general, use the Revised Romanization system for articles with topics about South Korea and topics about Korea before the division. Use McCune–Reischauer (not the DPRK's official variant) for topics about North Korea.

Should this be replaced with

In general, use the Revised Romanization system for articles with topics about South Korea. Use McCune–Reischauer (not the DPRK's official variant) for topics about North Korea and topics about Korea before the division.

?
06:17, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

Comments on romanization

• Support per
  WP:RS. Historical topics are addressed in scholarly sources, which prefer MR. It doesn't really matter that "the South Korean government, and ... modern South Korean English-language newspapers, travel guides, etc." prefer RR. Koreans themselves and probably most immigrants there are familiar with both systems; WP articles about historical Korea are not written for South Koreans in particular. The RM process for affected articles, as noted, will also auto-fix lots of missing redirects, and the articles themselves will present the variant spellings (and the real Korean). I'm not swayed by the "some people will omit the diacritics" thing; that's true of every language in which there are diacritics, but we still use them.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢
   ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  18:36, 6 July 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose. If I understand this proposal correctly, there was a city called "Pusan" before 1945, at which point it became "Busan." No RS uses a cutoff date like this. MR without diacritics doesn't measure up to the level of accuracy one expects in an encyclopedia. The MR diacritics are used by academics, but few of our readers are familiar with breves and the other odd marks that this system uses. My main concern is less about the merits of one system over the other than that we should have a consistent system of some kind. There must be thousands of articles that would have to be moved to conform with this proposal. First show me you can move a high profile article like Joseon or Goryeo. We don't want an MOS that's out of step with almost every single Korea-related article that we have. Gulangyu (talk) 08:34, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

  Threaded discussion about this comment has been refactored to the #Threaded discussion section below.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  21:32, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

• I'm not entirely sure how all this works/will work, but on the grounds others have mentioned (almost everything I've seen uses MR), I'd also add my support to using MR for pre-1945 subjects... 2Q (talk) 19:16, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

Threaded discussion

Previous relevant discussions are here, here and here.

Put simply, a previous RFC without much participation resulted in the wording being altered, a follow-up RM saw significantly greater opposition, and after the RM closed User:Gulangyu unilaterally reverted the change to MOS. Further discussion (primarily between myself and User:SMcCandlish) came to the conclusion that a new RFC, at a more prominent venue, with a lot more WikiProjects being notified, would be required to establish a clearer consensus one way or the other.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 06:17, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

I don't understand why we re-open the same question which was at Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Korea-related_articles#RfC: Which romanization system should be used for pre-division Korean topics?. I think we may continue the discussion at the spot unless it gets a broader attention here. But I don't think so. --Cheol (talk) 06:49, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

Despite your edit summary, this is not forum-shopping. The only previous discussion of the matter ended in my favour, so I have no motivation to engage in forum-shopping. This is to establish a firmer consensus, and was already agreed to by several other users. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 07:02, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, when there's back-and-forth with "consensus changing" willy-nilly depending on which handful of the same people showed up this time, it's necessary to use a higher-profile venue, and draw more attention to the question (see, e.g., the thread below thing one – same issue exactly).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  18:36, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

Hijiri 88 and Gulangyu discussion about Gulangyu's !vote

Why then are you not saying we should remove RR entirely and use MR across the board, because this is what most English-language RSs do? Of the "thousands" of articles that would need to be moved, the vast majority also need to have virtually their entire texts rewritten to remove the OR, poor grammar and misspellings of plain English words. Simply saying that a lot of articles currently conform to the current wording of MOS is not enough, because the vast majority of those articles don't conform to any other aspects of MOS, or any or PAGs for that matter. Moreover, you have already been called out for turning this on its head -- you opposed the Baekje RM because it was away from the status quo, and now you are saying that we need to move "high profile" articles (which oddly enough have pretty low hit counts) before we amend the MOS accordingly. The logic simply isn't there -- such RMs would fail, because MOS currently favours "Goryeo" and "Joseon", even though outside of Wikipedia the majority of sources favour "Koryŏ" and "Chosŏn", but when someone recommends changing the MOS according to common English usage, you say that RMs need to come first. If you really believed this, you wouldn't have taken the opposite position last time such an RM took place. You really need to understand that unless MOS is amended, all such RMs are doomed to failure because other people will do what you did on the Baekje RM and claim that RMs can't be used to overrule the status quo, and to realize that what you are saying doesn't make any sense. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 12:05, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

And your characterization of the proposal makes equally little sense. By the same logic, under the current wording, until 1945 there was a city called "Pyeongyang" and in 1945 its name changed to "P'yŏngyang". The problem with the proposed wording is still there in the version you unilaterally restored after the last RFC. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 12:11, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

When I wrote the diff you are linking to, I didn't realize you had revised the MOS. At the time of the Baekje RM, the MOS was phrased as you wanted it. But you couldn't move the article anyway. I have nothing against doing the RFC first. I simply notice that we have already been down this road. Since it doesn't seem to lead anywhere, I suggest an alternative. The MOS should reflect consensus in the project. How the articles are currently titled is a big part of that. Gulangyu (talk) 13:57, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

You are dodging the question. You made a completely bizarre and irrational point that, if made in a more prominent place that (like Korean topics and MOS) was subject to discretionary sanctions, would leave you open to a potential ban, and I called you out on it. How do you justify saying If I understand this proposal correctly, there was a city called "Pusan" before 1945, at which point it became "Busan." No RS uses a cutoff date like this. to attack my preferred MOS wording, when your version has exactly the same problem when it comes to articles on "North Korean" topics that existed before 1945? Both versions of the wording have "a cutoff date like this", so it is clear that you are not actually interested in what RSs have to say. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 11:43, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

I was just looking at

They all seem like pronouns to me. But I suppose linguistic categorizations can vary. This page says "Possessive pronouns include my, mine, our, ours, its, his, her, hers, their, theirs, your and yours", which makes sense to me. Dicklyon (talk) 04:44, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

They are traditionally called "possessive pronouns" in English. But there are a lot of uses that strike me as clearly adjectival. In "my car", the word my does not substitute a noun, but modifies one, which is what adjectives do. Even in "the car is mine", it is still acting as an adjective, this time in the

predicate adjective

position.

On the other hand, in "I don't like your car; let's take mine", the word mine is finally substituting for a noun, so it makes sense to call it a pronoun.

I think it's largely a matter of tradition. In some other languages, these words are usually called "possessive adjectives" (or rather the translation in that language), and this makes more sense to me generally, though as I say some less common uses are most easily understood as pronominal. --Trovatore (talk) 04:55, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

(e.c.) They don't function like adjectives. Not at all. They're deictics, like "my father's" and "whose", and of a slightly different type, "the", "a", and "this", etc. They qualify the thing in terms of speaker-now, a point of reference in relation to the speaker/writer in the present. Since word-classes are very fuzzy in all languages, it would be safer to minimise the use of terms standing for supposed classes: they risk misleading simplistically rather than clarifying. Tony (talk) 05:00, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

So the deixis article is interesting; thanks for the pointer. Still, I don't see how this makes the words not adjectives. Sure, their semantics is relative to the speaker, but they still modify nouns, which is what adjectives do, and the sentences transform pretty much the way sentences with adjectives do (with "my" changing to "mine" in the "tonic position" or whatever it's called). --Trovatore (talk) 05:04, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

Yes, they are adjectives, or at least function as adjectives (It's a matter of subtle semantics which description is correct). Most parts of speech can function as other parts of speech. "House" is a noun and "buying" a verb, but in the phrase "house buying", "house" functions as an adjective and "buying" as a noun. Possessives are cases of nouns, so "John's" is a noun, which functions as an adjective in "John's umbrella". "My" is to "me" exactly as "John's" is to "John", so in the same way as "John's" is a noun, "my" is a pronoun. Bryan Henderson (giraffedata) (talk) 06:01, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

Hmm, I'm not too convinced. "House buying" is what I would call apposition rather than an adjectival use of "house" (note that you can't make it a predicate adjective; *the buying is house doesn't work at all).

In many languages, these words decline as adjectives, agreeing with gender and number, which is not true for genitives of nouns. So to the extent that you like your categories to work cross-linguistically, that's another point in favor of seeing the words as possessive adjectives. Admittedly it doesn't apply if you consider English in isolation. --Trovatore (talk) 06:20, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

I can't see any similarity between "house buying" and appositions. In an apposition, the two phrases refer to the same thing; you could leave one out and the sentence still means essentially the same thing. "house" and "buying" don't relate to each other that way. Rather, "house" modifies "buying". What kind of buying are we doing? House buying. (btw, I used "buying" to make a stronger point about role-switching words, but the point of an adjectival noun is perhaps more clear with "house painter".

That's an interesting observation about nouns not being usable as predicate adjectives. But it doesn't seem to stop them from modifying nouns directly.

Likewise, the treatment of the equivalent words in other languages to English so-called possessive pronouns is food for thought. Bryan Henderson (giraffedata) (talk) 03:10, 9 July 2016 (UTC)

I think our

alt.usage.english, which has a lot of smart people on it but they're not always right. Still, I don't consider the first noun to be an adjective. --Trovatore (talk

) 04:13, 9 July 2016 (UTC)

Trovatore: you want to look at noun adjunct (though the article's not very good). Curly Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 23:43, 9 July 2016 (UTC)

Ah, thanks, that does look useful. --Trovatore (talk) 00:33, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

I did once start writing a terminological footnote about the different terms used by different grammarians, but I don't think I ever got round to adding it to any of the articles, because it got too long and complicated. I think words like my are now generally treated as the genitive/possessive case of the personal pronoun. I believe older grammars sometimes called them possessive adjectives, and some may have called them determiners (determinatives); like (other) determiners, they precede any adjectives. --Boson (talk) 06:04, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

Good my friend, art thou certain? --Trovatore (talk) 06:07, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

Bliss be upon you!--Boson (talk) 06:23, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

PS: Quirk et al. (A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language) talk about the genitive of the personal pronoun, calling my the determinative genitive and mine the independent genitive. Huddleston and Pullum (The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language) talk of the dependent and independent genitive of the personal pronoun. Huddleston and Payne (Chapter 5 of The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language) say this:

• "The dependent and independent genitives are often analysed in traditional grammar as 'possessive adjectives' and 'possessive pronouns', respectively, but we find this an unsatisfactory way of handling the difference between the two sets of forms. Both are genitive forms of the personal pronouns, and my and mine are both pronouns, just as I and me are. As pronouns they are heads of NPs: my and mine are genitive NPs, like such expressions as Kim's or the doctor's, which can replace them. ... in Type II [the subject of a gerund-participial, as in 'No one objected to my joining the party'] an adjective analysis makes no sense at all."

--Boson (talk) 06:47, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

Very interesting... I agree with Bryan Henderson that "Most parts of speech can function as other parts of speech", which makes English an interesting and flexible language. I read a book (can't remember the title now) in which the author argued that English was gradually approaching the kind of language that Chinese is – with no verb tenses, words that can function in several ways, etc. I found quite interesting Trovatore's argument that in "The car is mine", "mine" seems to function as a predicate adjective. I had never thought of it that way. I had always thought of "mine" as exclusively a pronoun. I had always thought of these words in terms of what they replace, and since "mine" replaces a noun or noun phrase such as "my car", it makes "mine" a pronoun, and since "her" cannot stand alone, always modifies a noun, is similar to other adjectives ("big car", "blue car", "expensive car"), and can only replace something like "Mary's", and I thought of "Mary's" as adjectival, it followed that "her" was adjectival, but Bryan's pointing out that "most parts of speech can function as other parts of speech", I can see the validity of his statement,

Possessives are cases of nouns, so "John's" is a noun, which functions as an adjective in "John's umbrella".

But one could argue that while this statement is correct, since "his" replaces "John's" when "John's" is functioning as an adjective and not when it is functioning as a possessive noun, in the sentence "That's his umbrella", "his" is adjectival (i.e., an adjective). When "his" replaces "John's" when "John's is functioning as a pronoun, as in "Whose umbrella is that? It's John's." – , "his" is a pronoun ("Whose umbrella is that? It's his."). I thought a distinguishing characteristic was that words like my, your, his, her, our and their cannot stand alone, while mine, yours, his, hers, ours and theirs can stand alone – because they are quasi-nouns.

I was puzzled by two things in the Cambridge Grammar quoted by Boson:

1) "As pronouns they are heads of NPs". I think that's a strange thing to say. In the sentence "Mine is the green one", "Mine" is the noun phrase. I think saying it heads the noun phrase is weird. In the sentence "My notebook is the green one", O.K., you could say my "heads" the noun phrase "my notebook", but it certainly cannot stand alone. You can't say "My is the green one".

2) The other thing I found strange is this:

"...in Type II [the subject of a gerund-participial, as in 'No one objected to my joining the party'] an adjective analysis makes no sense at all."

I thought the reason "my" is used (instead of the object prounoun "me") is because "joining" is a gerund – the participle of the verb functioning as a noun – so it makes perfect sense to use an adjective – "my" –  to modify the gerund (or, actually, the gerund phrase "joining the party"). Could someone please explain "an adjectival analysis makes no sense at all"? (I'm assuming that "an adjectival analysis" is referring to "my"; if it isn't, then I don't understand the sentence.)

I can understand calling "my", etc., as determinative or dependent [because they cannot stand alone and must precede a noun] pronouns and "mine", etc., the independent pronouns. So (sigh) I guess I have to let go the phrase "possessive adjectives" and start calling my, your, etc., "determinative (or dependent) pronouns". But I just realized that that phrase does not give any indication of possessiveness. Hmm.  – Corinne (talk) 16:54, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

(1) Head is a linguistic term meaning the main word in a phrase, the obligatory part that can in some cases be modified by other parts of the phrase. John's and mine, being heads, can potentially be used alone, whereas my cannot. The head usually controls agreement, etc. (so you say "our notebook is"). When Huddleston uses the word head, (AIUI) he is saying that mine can replace John's in "This is John's", but not in "This is John's notebook" (in contemporary English).

(2) I can't really speak for Huddleston, but I think he would analyse "my joining the party" as a non-finite clause; joining has an object and it can be modified by an adverb, rather than an adjective ("my recently joining the party"); if you interpret joining as a "noun" modified by an adjective, you would presumably arrive at "my recent joining of the party" (which is a different construction). I am, of course, guessing what Huddleston's explanation would be, and ignoring the possibly more intuitive "me recently joining the party".

(3) The indication of possessiveness is in the genitive case, just as "the king" has no indication of possessiveness, but the genitive in "the king's" does.

--Boson (talk) 20:11, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

Fantastic material, but almost wasted here. This kind of stuff and the sources behind it should be integrated into our mostly terrible articles about the English language (where we even have them). A large number of grammar and linguistics articles have a short section on English, which might be

WP:SUMMARY, and some don't even have that, just a few comments on English in there. Still others are incorrectly written entirely with reference to English and need to be moved to an "...in English" title, with a general linguistics article written about the topic in their place.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢

 ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  21:25, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

• The discussion above shows just how misleading it is to stick to traditional word categories. They might be ok at the early stages of learning a foreign language, but after that they become incapable of showing people how to analyse text, or of helping them to write/speak better.

  Someone above is citing the Cambridge Grammar"—not a reliable source, in my view, unless the aim is to force traditional categories down our throats (and let's recall that anglophones have a long history of forcing Latin grammar down the throat of English, damaging our understanding of English).

  Trovatore: Just because a word modifies a noun doesn't subsume it into a one-size-fits-all class of "adjective". The obvious example is "the fast train": is it the train that travels at high speed (let's say, epithet, for want of a better term), or is it the no-stops train (classifier)? If it's the no-stops train, you can't call it "very fast": the grammar is different. A deictic element indicates whether or not some specific subset of the thing is intended; adjectives do not do that. Tony (talk) 08:46, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

Hmm, maybe, I'll have to think about that one. I still think it's relevant that other Western European languages decline these words like adjectives in terms of number/gender/case. Just because we don't have those sorts of declensions in English doesn't mean (I think, at least) that we shouldn't look at evidence from related languages, as illuminatory of the "deep structure" or something, not sure that's exactly the right term. --Trovatore (talk) 08:50, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

Tony, I don't recognise your characterization of the Cambridge Grammar at all. It definitely does not force traditional grammar down anybody's throats. A problem that some people may have with the Cambridge GEL is, perhaps, that it is more rigorous than most traditional grammars in distinguishing between word categories and the function of words and phrases in the sentence. --Boson (talk) 21:52, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

• Another view is that my, etc. in a noun phrase like "my old car" is a determiner. Singular common noun phrases in English normally require a determiner, which can be a, the, this, that, etc. or a possessive noun phrase, including a noun or pronoun. A major error being made above is to treat grammatical terminology as theory-free; it's not. Different word classes are used in different approaches.

Whatever my is, it's not sensibly treated as an adjective; adjectives as a class of word can be modified by words like very or by adverbs. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:19, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

Indeed. This is one of the problems I had with my draft of a footnote explaining the different terminology. I stopped when I had written about a page, because of the difficulty of (concisely) taking account of the the different conceptual frameworks. As I wrote above, The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language is fairly strict about not conflating functions and word categories. In this case, they distinguish between the lexical category determinatives (including words like a, the, this, that, all, both) and the determiner function, including not only the basic determiners (as in the tie) but also, for instance, genitive NPs (as in my tie). They write "Determinatives (or phrases headed by them) constitute the most basic kind of determiner, but not all determiners have this form, ... Conversely, most determinatives can occur in one or more functions besides that of determiner ...." I think the (traditional) conflation of lexical category and function comes out quite clearly in the above discussion. --Boson (talk) 11:16, 13 July 2016 (UTC) PS: As well as typically being gradable (greener, very green) and typically modified by adverbs ("my ideas are remarkably furious"), adjectives can typically be used attributively ("my green idea") and predicatively ("my idea is green"). And adjectives follow determiners ("a green idea", "my green ideas"). --Boson (talk) 14:49, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

Could those familiar with the history of discussion on the Manual of Style (MOS) help document the history of the discussion around US/U.S. and USA/United States? This is what I have found so far from the archives (plus a relatively recent village pump discussion):

• archive 1 (2003)
• Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive ("U.S." or "American") (2003-2007, some of this copies from other archives)
• Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive (abbreviations and acronyms) (2004)
• archive 21 (2005)
• Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive ("U.S." or "American") 2 (March to April 2006)
• archive 146 (2013)
• archive 164 (February 2015)
• archive 168 (August 2015)
• archive 181 (April 2016)
• VP (idea lab) archive 20 (April 2016)

There are probably more discussions about

I recognise the concept of an article being created in one version and then keeping it, but does it inherit ENGVAR solely because the creating editor usually works in a particular language version (but this time didn't use a specific word, or label it)? Andy Dingley (talk) 09:30, 29 July 2016 (UTC)

In such a situation, it is best to discuss the issue on the article's talk page, and see if there a consensus for adopting one language version (or another). Blueboar (talk) 10:53, 29 July 2016 (UTC)

I have little optimism then. It has already been labelled as #Y, and by an editor who has a long track record of intransigence. Andy Dingley (talk) 12:36, 29 July 2016 (UTC)

Which article are you concerned with in this case? oknazevad (talk) 12:55, 29 July 2016 (UTC)

Realise that the spirit of ENGVAR is to avoid any changing between varieties. If a variety has been stable for years, it should likely be left alone, barring any

WP:TIES. RGloucester — ☎

14:33, 29 July 2016 (UTC)

↑ this. If the article has been stable and consistent with version X for a long time, even if the original editor might have preferred Y, the stable version using X should be kept. — Carl (

CBM · talk

) 14:47, 29 July 2016 (UTC)

I would regard the long period of stability as implicit consensus for that language. Hence, as others pointed out, it should remain in that language - barring a new, explicit, consensus. But it should be consistent within itself.  Stepho  talk  10:09, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

The problem with that is defining how long a "long period of stability" has to be. The sensible solution in muddied cases is to have the discussion on the talk page with a view to finding a consensus among the participants - you can always call an RfC if there's deadlock. --RexxS (talk) 20:17, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

If we are talking about weeks or months then there is room for interpretation of "long period". But Andy said "some years", implying considerable more than one or two years - which surely counts as a long time.  Stepho  talk  02:02, 3 August 2016 (UTC)

The strict answer to the original question is that the article should be regularised to ENGVAR #X, not because of any period of stability, but because of "use the variety found in the first post-stub revision that introduced an identifiable variety" per

MOS:RETAIN. But if you want to start taking in account "periods of stability" of "some years", how would you reconcile an article that used ENGVAR #X for some years, then used ENGVAR #Y for some years? Do you pick the one with the longer "period of stability" or the one that was introduced first, even if its stability was shorter? That way lies chaos. --RexxS (talk

) 19:41, 3 August 2016 (UTC)

Concur with RGloucester and RexxS. If the article, in ancient stub state, had no clear ENGVAR, it does not matter at all what the supposed intent or expectation was of the original editor. See

WP:MERCILESS. Articles here do not have authors, they have a collective editorship of everyone on the project. If the subset of that editorial pool who have edited the article numbers only 1, that doesn't magically give that editor more editorial control.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢

 ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  13:30, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

• The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. — the show's credits use a comma before "Jr."
• J. W. Hampton, Jr., & Co. v. United States — if you look at the title that is printed in the United States Reports
  you will find that the official case title places a comma before and after the "Jr." in the name of the case