Talk:A Dictionary of the Chinese Language

Sources for future article expansion

• Chien, David; et al. (1986), "A Brief History of Chinese Bilingual Lexicography", 'The History of Lexicography: Papers from the Dictionary Research Centre Seminar at Exeter, March 1986, pp. 35–47.

was listed in the bibliography for the article but currently unused. Kindly restore it once it is being used to verify some statement or other in the running text. — LlywelynII 03:26, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

Linked. There's also more in Wu &c. which is now linked. — LlywelynII 23:29, 23 July 2016 (UTC)

• Reed, Christopher Alexander (2004), Gutenberg in Shanghai: Chinese Print Capitalism, 1876–1937, Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press.

from around here discusses some other aspects of its printing, including the italic type having been stolen off of the ship delivering it. — LlywelynII 01:00, 24 July 2016 (UTC)

WP:CITEVAR

Hi LlywelynII. Thank for all your edits that improved content and readability. However, I wish you hadn't converted the existing parenthetical to <ref> tags. I'm having computer problems (motherboard died) and don’t have time to revert the reformatting, but in the future, please follow WP:CITEVAR. Best wishes, Keahapana (talk) 22:18, 23 July 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for your work and not just starting an edit war. Thank you oh so much for not just reverting...

That said, this isn't a print article and there is no need to clutter it with the references; to remove the ability to treat identical references at a single location; or to remove the ability to link quickly from the reference to the cited work. The (Year) Title formatting is particularly obnoxious (and if you were curious is what set me off), since Year Title works just fine in any reference system. If you already have those policies on speed-dial, you might consider simply accepting that that system is perfectly appropriate for printed works and not as helpful for the online reader as tagged references. Similarly, you might consider taking the view that it's easier and more convenient for you to write the citations inline and just let it alone when another editor improves readability and functionality by doing the coding and formatting for you.

You're very polite but, this being the internet, I won't hold my breath for those. Since you have a policy justifying revision, let me apologize for having wasted both our time. I'll just ask that you—as per Wiki's brand of parenthetical citation, which you already cited—kindly not (restore) needless/misplaced parentheses before the titles here or elsewhere: place the parenthetical date after the title or just leave the date itself. WP:PAREN also has an editing banner that you might consider adding to your articles to warn off editors like me from your articles, if you prefer that they not be switched over. — LlywelynII 23:29, 23 July 2016 (UTC)

Just to throw in my tuppence, I'd like to thank both LlywelynII and Keahapana for their good work and good temper. I don't have a canine in this clash, but I do have an experienced preference for the footnote format over the parenthetical. To be sure, it took me a little while to get used to it, but it soon became as natural as any other crazy Wikipedia convention. I'd second Llywelyn's thoughts and add that my impression is that more articles in this area use the ref format, that it makes it easier to insert links to online references, and that having the footnotes together in the Notes section makes it easier to judge the quality of the sources.ch (talk) 17:33, 24 July 2016 (UTC)

Sorry to be slow replying, but my computer problems are finally resolved and I'm back to Wikipedia again. LlywelynII, thanks for your suggestion not to parenthesize dates before the titles, which I now see can be confusing. And thanks for pointing out the Parenthetical referencing editnotice. I reread this article to see how much work would be involved in reverting the cite.php format, but don't want to delete all your busy hours of work wikifying format, and thought of a possible compromise. Is it feasible to convert the endnote ref=sfnp to parenthetical ref=harv citation? I have limited experience using these templates, but it apparently requires this references segregator tool. Would you be able to make this conversion? After that's worked out, I have a list of corrections and suggestions. Best wishes, Keahapana (talk) 22:24, 31 July 2016 (UTC)

Questions

I'm clueless about authormask but do know that et al. means "and others", minimum 3 authors. "Wu & al." should be Wu and [or even &] Zhang 2009 and "Yong & al." should be Yong and Peng 2008. How can this be fixed?

One problem that I haven't yet changed back is the present version giving English meanings before Chinese words instead of the MOS:CHINESE standard format of (necessary) pinyin, (optional) characters, and (optional) translation equivalent. For instance, reversing the original "Fenyun 分韻 "Divisions of Rhymes"" to "Divisions of Rhymes (分韻, Fenyun)" is misleading to readers. The title is Fenyun because "Divisions of Rhymes" is a nonce word translation and not a commonly used English title (Google finds 6 ghits, and this WP article is the only example of it as a title). I'm OK with using parentheses as in Fenyun (分韻 "Divisions of Rhymes"). Any opinions? Keahapana (talk) 01:26, 4 November 2016 (UTC)