Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 31

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I can't find any discussion to settle a question that arose on United States of Europe and occurs elsewhere. Is there a policy on the use of German eszet (AKA ß, AKA szlig) in English Wikipedia? I understand that many Latin characters with diacritics are used in English texts, but the use of eszet seems gratuitous. It's my understanding that it's not used in all forms of German. I've never seen it in an English text except where eszet itself is being explained. English users will not use it to search for Strauss, for example, and how many native English speakers know how to pronounce it? 2%, maybe? The capper is the opening of Franz Josef Strauß: "Dr. h.c. Franz Josef Strauß (spelled Strauss in English)..." This is English. --Tysto 21:37, 2005 August 22 (UTC)

I say use the dominant name for that person, and link the ß. There's precedent for this, isn't there? ~~ N (t/c) 22:02, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

No accented characters in en: without a damn good reason. — Xiong熊talk* 22:53, 2005 August 22 (UTC)

ß is not an accented character. I'm very much for using ß and redirecting from the ss version of the name, simply because it's *wrong* to write words with ss instead of ß. Regarding "It's my understanding that it's not used in all forms of German.": Granted, the Swiss Germans don't use it, but that's their choice, and frankly - there's just a lot more Germans and Austrians than Swiss Germans, anyway. ;) — ナイトスタリオン _ㇳ–ㇰ — 06:40, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

So Swiss who speak German would never use eszet, but we English speakers are obliged to? --Tysto 18:38, 2005 August 23 (UTC)

There is an easier rule: Swiss names are spelt with double s, German names with ß (where that is correct). The Bavarian Franz Josef certainly is a Strauß and should be spelt that way.

Johann Strauß used an ß. So should we. Arbor

07:02, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

We should use English names in the English Wikipedia. Johann Strauss is the spelling used in English - therefore the English Wikipedia should use that spelling. Otherwise we'll get to the absurdity that all Greeks, Russians, Arabs, Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, etc. have their articles at places that are meaningless squiggles to an English-reader, jguk 07:42, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

The current official spelling rules in Germany do not longer use ß. It is replaced by ss. −Woodstone 07:45:55, 2005-08-23 (UTC)

That's simply wrong. Read

German spelling reform of 1996 for more information. Arbor

09:03, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

If it doesn't have an ß, does that mean it's mißpelled? --Wetman 08:31, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

My perſonal preference would be to uſe long S's wherever þey belong, in Engliſh text or in German. On þe oþer hænd, until ſuch time as þey cæn be ædded directly from a ſtændard keyboard, þey probably ought not to be made compulſory in þe Engliſh Wikipedia. I generally favour unæccented characters over æccented ones and Engliſh over foreign ſpellings, and find þe impoſition of foreign names ænd ſpellings ræþer annoying. -- Smerdis of Tlön 19:22, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

ß proposal

Based on these comments, virtually none of which called me dirty names, I propose this as a standard:

When referring to German words that use the eszet (

Franz Josef Strauß, but Levi Strauss), so be sure of your usage. Where such a word appears in the title of the article, use the English form (ss) for the main page and create a redirect

from the German form (Franz Josef Strauß --> Franz Josef Strauss).

First, a tweak: We could just follow the shorter style used at (say)

Franz Josef Strauß, and we should be happy that there are editors who care about such things. Arbor

07:33, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

ß is not a latin character, it is a modified latin character not used in english, the language of this encyclopedia. My opinion is that it does not belong in the primary title of a page, or anywhere on the page except when referencing the original german spelling. Redirects are OK, since we use them to improve accessibility (increase the odds that when someone searches a variant, they end up at the right page.) Chuck 16:25, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

I agree with Chuck. To a vast majority of English readers, ß is just a meaningless squiggle. See my proposal at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (use English). As for in the text itself, the German name should be given in the first paragraph, but the English name should be used throughout the text. This is in line with the convention used for names in non-Latin writing systems, and seems applicable here, as the concern about non-Latin writing systems being inscrutable to most English readers also applies to ß. Nohat 20:51, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

My vote is for ss in the title, correct spelling given as soon as possible in the text. We are trying to write an encyclopaedia for English-speaking non-specialists: we aim to be accurate (object=encyclopaedia), but we are not necessarily normative (audience=non-specialists). The information we convey is in the article text and images, not the title. Let us expend proportionate amounts of work per word on article text and title! Physchim62 02:44, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

I agree with Chuck, Nohat, and Physchim62 -- do not use ß in article titles -- do provie the speeling using ß (where appropraite) promptly near the start of the article. Possibly provide redirects from the fom using ß. DES ^(talk) 00:07, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

I seem to be in the minority here (no big deal). Some comments: (1) The rule shouldn't be specific to article titles—it should appeal to body text as well. So the rule should be to “Transliterate ß to ss. Where this concerns an article title, provide the German spelling near the start of the page.” (2) I would still much prefer to see this solved by Mediawiki. Serving up all ß as ss for English clients by default is easy, but those who care can switch it off. (3) Playing around with google's search engine indicates that it changes Gauß to Gauss tacitly (lots of pattern matching packages can do that automatically). Does Mediawiki do this as well, or can it easily be coerced into this behavior? (There aren't enough Wikipedia pages to test this on, so I don't know.) This would avoid the need for redirects (and a MOS entry to that effect). Arbor 06:02, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

I don't think we want to do this. For example, we should be able to have an article

SS. Bad enough that we are stuck with all initial letters becoming capitals, let's not do something that makes even more titles impossible. -- Jmabel | Talk

06:53, August 29, 2005 (UTC)

To sum up (and ignoring my own dissenting voice, which seems to be singular), we just need to be precise about what a letter in the roman alphabet is, and what a diacritic is (the current discussions at

Erdos), this does not apply to ß

, which we transliterate to ss (but suggest redirection and correct spelling of proper names which are article titles in the first paragraph, as with all other transliterations). While mulling this over, at staying with the Strauß example, a minor point about pronunciation struck me as well. I think the following is proper:

I quite like this. (It really doesn't have much to do with ß… sorry) Arbor 09:23, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

FWIW, Merriam-Webster gives /ʃtraʊs/ first (including an audio pronunciation), followed by /straʊs/. OED doesn't have Strauss, but gives Strausian as /straʊsɪən/. I can't find any English dictionaries that give /strɔ:s/. But the point in general is valid, and English pronunciations should, in general, be given separately from native pronunciations. A particularly alarming trend is the inclusion of audio files of a native pronunciation of various words names, with the implied assumption that English speakers should attempt to imitate this. Nohat 17:07, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

Pronunciation guides aside, I think we do have consensus on the use of "ss" in titles and articles, followed by the German in parentheses (with Arbor's tweak. I'll add it to the MoS. --Tysto 07:04, 2005 August 30 (UTC)

Interesting detail: have a look at Strauss, a disambiguation page. I would assume that here, the various ßs serve a good purpose, don't they? (There is an explanatory first paragraph noting that -ss is the common English spelling.) I don't think we want to transliterate those. Well frankly, I am confused as to what to think. Arbor 08:34, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

An anonymous user and AxSkov have now twice changed the ß on the disambiguation page for Strauss to ss. Look at the ss version and the ß version. As I explained in the previous paragraph, I have no strong feelings about this, but I assume that for disambiguation purposes the variant spellings contain useful information that oughtn't be removed. For example, I always disambiguate between the two famous Strauss and Strauß composers using their spelling, not their first names (or their birthdays). I know that Strauss wrote Salome and Strauß wrote An der schönen blauen Donau, but I don't always remember which of them is Johann (actually, there are two Johanns...). Others may use other methods of disambiguation, but since the page is supposed to be a navigational aid, I cannot see what we win by removing information that would be valid for the task. (Moreover, the introductory paragraph makes it clear that the original spelling is given “to facilitate disambiguation”) Anyway, I would be happy to see some opinions on this. Clearly, some pages need the ß, like ß itself, and I am unsure about Strauss. Arbor 07:40, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

(Copied from User talk:AxSkov#Strauss reversion)

I've been discussing this issue on

Proper names my changes adhere to those rules mentioned in that article. I also made those changes due to the fact that many of the Strauss article names listed use 'ss' rather than 'ß' in their titles. (Note: I have also made some other minor changes to the Strauss

article.)

The letter 'ß' is a meaningless character to an English speaker. Regarding the spelling of the two Strauss names Arbor mentioned, they are both always spelt with 'ss' in English, and hence English doesn't differentiate between the names by using 'ss' in one and 'ß' in the other. The article still mentions that some German speakers spell some of those names with 'ß'. If someone reverts the Strauss article without fixing the wikilinks, then all I'll do is fix those wikilinks until this issue is resolved (which it may never be). – AxSkov (☏) 09:09, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

Maybe we could do something like this: ”Johann Strauss I (German: Strauß) Senior, the Elder, Father (1804–1849)”. Thus we would inlude the original spelling for those who actually use it to disambiguate. Arbor 10:44, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

OK. This idea sounds good, so as far as I'm concerned go ahead and make the changes. – AxSkov (☏) 11:08, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

Extended ß proposal

Let's stir up the hornets' nest a bit more. The bit about the German eszett (currently in the « National varieties of English » topic, weirdly) should be extended to other ligatures. You see, the eszett isn't a letter per se, it is a ligature, a standard way of combining two letters (in this case two 's') in a single glyph. Whether ligatures are treated separately or not in lexicographic ordering seems to be a varying national preference. Some ligatures are universally considered to be purely typographical, such as "fi", "fl", "ffi", "ffl". But that is not so for others.

1. Breton has no "c" but has the ligatures "ch" and "c'h". The order is as quoted: « chug, c’hoar » (juice, sister). Oddly, there are no Unicode slots for those, it seems, which makes it a non-problem.
2. Croatian uses the DZ (DZ, Dz, dz), DŽ (DŽ, Dž, dž), LJ (LJ, Lj, lj) and NJ (NJ, Nj, nj) ligatures, which each come in three forms!
3. Danish and Norwegian use the AE ligature (Æ, æ). It is treated as a letter coming right after Z: "...Z, Æ, Ø, Å". Danish also uses the AE-acute (Ǽ, ǽ) and there is an AE-macron out there (Ǣ, ǣ). Since English also uses that ligature, it is a non-problem.
4. Dutch uses the "IJ" ligature (IJ, ij), but different dictionaries place it in various slots —almost never after the I, however. Proper case is « IJmuiden, IJpolder, IJmeer, IJssemeer ».
5. French uses the Æ and Œ ligatures, the latter much more frequently than the former. Lexicographic ordering breaks them down, so you have « caducée, cæcum, cafard » (caduceus, cæcum, cockroach). Proper case is, for example, « Œuvre ». Since English also uses those ligatures (although the œ is rare), they are a non-problem.
6. German, as already mentioned, uses the eszett to represent the "ss" ligature, which is particularly problematic in English because it doesn't even look like a double-s.
7. Several languages use the "AA" ligature (Å, å). Danish and Norwegian place "Aa" along with "Å" as the last letter in the alphabet. In Swedish, the sequence is "...Z, Å, Ä, Ö", where Ä serves as the Danish/Norwegian Æ.
8. Spanish, until the 1987 reform by the Real Academia Española, has the "ll", "ch" and "rr" ligatures. The alphabet runs "...C, CH, D...L, LL, M, N, Ñ, O..." —note that the rr ligature is not treated as a separate letter. Neither of the three ligatures warrants a Unicode slot, which makes them a non-problem.

So, to sum up, the German eszett bit should be broadened as follows:

• When referring to Latin-alphabet foreign words that use a non-English
  IJ or the German eszett (ß), render it in English as the un-ligatured form (e.g. "IJ", "ss") and follow the first time with the foreign form of the word: "IJmuiden (Dutch: IJmuiden)...", "Franz Josef Strauss
  (German: Strauß)...".
  • The English ligatures Æ and Œ are fine and should not be un-ligatured for the article title (e.g.
    fœtus
    ).
  • Note that the use of some ligatures is not universal (see
    Franz Josef Strauß, but Levi Strauss
    ), so be sure of your usage.
  • Be careful of case when the broken-down ligature leads a sentence or link; the Dutch IJmeer, for example, should be IJmeer and not Ijmeer (although a redirect from the latter is also needed).
  • Where such a word appears in the title of the article, use the English form (e.g. ß --> ss) for the main page and create a redirect from the foreign form(s) (Franz Josef Strauß --> Franz Josef Strauss).

Urhixidur 17:11, 2005 August 31 (UTC)

I've got a better idea for a guideline: "Use English in the English-language Wikipedia", jguk 18:17, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

Yes! If we decide to be explicit and generalize the guidance for ß to include all non-English characters, then that's fine with me also. By the way, either Urhixidur or the Wikipedia is confused about the difference between letters and ligatures. According to the ß article, for example, it is not a ligature, although it is descended from a ligature. Also, the English Æ is not a ligature, it is an archaic letter (also descended from a ligature) no longer used in the language. We shouldn't use Old English in the wikipedia any more than we should use German. Chuck 19:41, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

The confusion over the ligature-ness of the German ß would be mine. Still, as far as Wikipedia titles go, it is treated like a ligature, is it not? We could rephrase the first bullet slightly to accommodate the point, I guess (« ...that use a non-English ligature or ligature-like character such as...  »). We have no choice to keep using English archaic characters such as the Æ since it is still in use (e.g. Encyclopædia Britannica), and stands for things that need entries, such as George William Russell's pen name. All that the MoS guidance does is help in the correct transcription of ligature-like characters, and in particular the non-obvious German eszett. Urhixidur 17:13, 2005 September 2 (UTC)

I have tried to collect some information about diacritics and other funny symbols (like ß) at

Wikipedia:Proper names. Please have a look at it. There is some clean-up left to do, since I cribbed the information from various places on Wikipedia-EN. As to “Use English”—it's really not such an easy rule as some of the contributors here suggest. Is Encyclopædia Britannica English? Is Ægir? I have several English maths text books and books about the history of maths that set Paul Erdős with the Hungarian double acute accent. Should Wikipedia do this as well? I don't say I know the answers to those questions, or that they are obvious. But they are fair questions, and the axiom “use English”, though helpful, doesn't resolve them. Arbor

06:01, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

Incidentally, and to keep with the

SPAM in all caps. (::starts humming::) Arbor

07:49, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

(By the way, I have three different IPA fonts installed, and I still can't read IPA pronunciations on WP.)

Meanwhile, this is not de:. — Xiong熊talk* 08:17, 2005 September 1 (UTC)

I strongly agree with Chuck and Xiong above, characters not in normal english use should not be used in article titles. This includes Æ, Œ, ß, and ő and most of the other non-standard-english glyphs discussed in this thread. DES ^(talk) 17:28, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

I'd like to point out that the proposed extended guideline matches pre-existing usage, as far as I can tell. Most of the responses seen here seem objections to the already-in-the-MoS guidelines concerning the eszett. What of the proposed extension to IJ, Æ, and Œ? Please respond by either a) spelling out the modified extended guideline, or b) stating your preference for the MoS remaining mum on the subject.

Urhixidur 16:33, 2005 September 5 (UTC)

I honestly can’t believe it! The (almost complete) lack of diacritics in modern English seems to make native speakers thereof quite ignorant. It’s a matter of politeness and respect to write proper names in their native form, if possible (that’s no problem with Unicode) and understandable (i.e. in the same script). A foreign name is not an English word. That means names in Latin script should remain unchanged and be used in that form for the article titles (redirects mandatory). Therefore it should read:

Franz Josef Strauß (/ʃtraʊs/, English: Strauss) …

Vladimir Putin (Russian: Владимир Путин) …

Eszett is hardly more a ligature than ä, ö and ü in German. The umlauts were vowels with small es on top originally and are still decomposed thusly. Therefore, if you used ss instead of ß, you would consequently also have to write e.g.

Gerhard Schroeder (German: Schröder) …

because otherwise clueless people would incorrectly write “Schroder”. (There are border cases like Händel.) Of course the Swiss don’t use ß anymore, but there a still proper Swiss names containing it.

One transliteration or rather transcription method has to be selected for each script other than the Latin, of course, where only transcriptions are also language-dependent. If you started to do so for Latin-script names you would open a can of worms for you would have to transcribe more than just diacritics, e.g. *“Shvartsenegger”, *“Ineshtine” or *“Novittski”, although the English orthography is quite etymological in general (the correct spelling is still “doppelgänger” AFAIK). In return the rest of us¹ keeps writing “Bush” instead of “Busch”, “Buch(e)”, “Busz” or “Buš”. Centuries ago it was common to use local variants of (latinised) names throughout Europe, though, which can still be seen with place names and the pope (e.g. Ioannes, Johannes, Joan, Jonas, János, Giovanni, John, Jean, Juan, Jan, Ivan, João, …).

¹ Actually there are some East European languages/countries where it is common to transcribe foreign names like “Džordž Buš”, which is probably due to a very phonemic use of the script—something that can’t be said about English. Christoph Päper 02:39, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

However, shouldn't we bear in mind how English newspapers present German names, which in German appear with ß ä ö and ü (or French words with accents, come to that)? What is the point of English readers trying to look up words such as these in dictionaries and encyclopaedias only to become confused if they find names similar but spelled differently with double esses or ae oe or ue combinations. Not all newspaper readers are adept at interpreting such discrepancies. Dieter Simon 00:54, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

I strongly disagree with Christoph. Using English in the English-language Wikipedia does not show, and will not be interpreted by any reasonable person as showing, disrespect for people and places with non-English names. Our articles should be at Rome and Florence, not Roma and Firenze - and I can't believe Italians feel belittled by this. Where someone has non-English letters in their name, of course we should transliterate. With diacritics, it's different - some diacritics get preserved by English writers, some don't - so it would be Dvorak, but Poincaré - we should just follow what other English writers tend to do, jguk 07:46, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

One of the most popular strawmen on English Wikipedia is the one who wants to move

Москва and make the use of diacritics mandatory in the words "rôle" and "naïve". :) - Haukur Þorgeirsson

09:42, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

As I said above, we are writing a wikipedia in English. However, for completeness we have many articles whose subject does not have a common name in English but where the local language uses the Latin alphabet. In these cases it is very common practice on Wikipedia to give the name in the local language. Just a few examples: Magna Carta (Latin), Weiß Kreuz (German), Jyväskylä (Finnish), Alliance française (French), Tromsø (Norwegean), the brothers Ó Siochfhradha (Irish), Gàidhealtachd (Scottish Gaelic), Antonín Dvořák (Czech), Łódź (Polish), Davíð Oddsson (Icelandic) and Höðr (Old Norse). This is also very useful information for the readers. The reader of an article about and Icelandic politician is likely quite interested in Iceland. The reader is therefore very unlikely to run away even if the name contains the letter ð, and we would be doing a disservice if we hid this fact. Now some people here like to use Google to "prove" that, let's say Jyväskylä is more commonly written Jyvaskyla in English texts. This may be true but I believe that this is mainly because the people who write these texts do not know how to write these symbols and do not have time to find out. I do not think that these people think that Jyvaskyla is more of an English word than Jyväskylä or that they would be offended if they saw an English text using the form Jyväskylä. The reason for why so many articles on the English wikipedia use these symbols is that the people who work on the articles know a lot about the subjects and want to give the name of the article as accurately as possible and would be annoyed if they had to use a form they felt was more inaccurate. This is for example the way I feel about having written an article about Weißenburg but be forced to refrain from using ß. I can imagine writers of articles using American English would feel the same if whenever they wrote something, somebody else would come along and change it in to British English. That's why we have rules to prevent that.

It is clear that none of the names given above are English and the don't become any more English if we drop the

Wikipedia welcomes your contributions and involvement, but you should talk, not get into revert wars, and you will be able to make your arguments more effectively if you get yourself an account. Susvolans ⇔ 16:30, 13 October 2005 (UTC)