Talk:Reference mark

Inconsistencies

I have often seen this character in older texts of the Latin tradition. The article states footnotes are not placed at the bottom, but the image does show footnotes at the bottom. 2A02:A44A:104F:1:B8BE:DCEA:ADC6:3AB (talk) 08:55, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

Requested move 22 June 2018

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Moved as proposed. There is consensus in favor of the move, and it is reasonably well-argued that the proposed target is the primary English name for a term that has not been assimilated into the English language. bd2412 T 13:23, 29 July 2018 (UTC)

Komejirushi → Reference mark – Per WP:COMMONAME, WP:NPOV, and WP:USEENGLISH. This has a common name in English. Meanwhile, komejirushi is just the Japanese term, but this also has names in other language where it is used frequently such as Korean: 참고표 chamgopyo 'reference mark', or (informally) 당구장표 danggujang-pyo 'billiard-table mark'. Last I looked, this isn't JapaneseOverKoreanPedia.
PS: Reference mark is presently a redirect to Note (typography), for no apparent reason; the string "reference mark" doesn't appear anywhere in that article. If there's a source that connects them somehow, a hatnote can be used to disambiguate, at the top of the article presently at Komejirushi.
Additional rationale: WP:CONSISTENCY: when in doubt, we default to the Unicode name of a glyph (sometimes with/without natural disambiguation like "sign", "symbol", "point", or "mark" added after the name, or occasionally with a leading one, at at Japanese postal mark – which we do not give as Japanese yūbin kigō!). Some examples: Section sign, Wave dash, Ordinal indicator, Therefore sign, Per mille, etc. We tend not to deviate from this unless another term is either a) much more common in English, or b) our article is on particular notable use/meaning of the glyph rather than the character itself per se (as at Basis point). — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:49, 22 June 2018 (UTC); revised:  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:20, 1 July 2018 (UTC) --Relisting. bd2412 T 15:29, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

• Support Rreagan007 (talk) 18:24, 22 June 2018 (UTC)
• Hmm, my understanding is that the symbol comes from Japan (and is derived from the Chinese character/Japanese kanji for rice, doesn't just "look like it"), so I don't know that this has anything to do with privileging Japan. Of course there are Korean names for many typographic symbols that appear in Unicode, whether they are frequently used in Korean or not (¿, for example). But maybe it's more common there than I thought; maybe it was spread during the first half of the 1900s. As long as this has a common name in English, then fine, support. Also, Note (typography) does make reference to the symbol, stating "In Japanese, the corresponding symbol is ※ (U+203B)" without reference to Korean. There are, of course, many ways to show footnotes in Japanese so breaking the redirect to Note (typography) shouldn't be an issue. Dekimasuよ! 19:15, 22 June 2018 (UTC)
  • It's privileging Japan because it's a feature of both written Japanese and written Korean, but is at the Japanese name. This is a tiny side matter, though. The common name in English is reference mark by probably more than 10:1 ratio (even after accounting for false positives) over komejirushi. PS: Whether it's actually derived from the ultimately Chinese ideogram for 'rice' is irrelevant to the RM; whether the article should say that depends on whether someone can find a reliable source. PPS: The fact that the Note (typography) article is missing the Korean info doesn't affect this RM either; nor does the fact that the character appears in that article; it's not the main article on reference mark. I'm not sure if that really addresses any point you intend to make (given your support !vote); I just don't want the RM to get clouded by peripheral matters.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:40, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

• Yes, "reference mark" is a more common term, but I'm not sure that the term usually refers to this symbol (even if that is its Unicode name). Merriam-Webster says "Definition of reference mark: a conventional mark (such as *, †, or ‡) placed in written or printed text to direct the reader's attention especially to a footnote." It doesn't say anything about this particular mark.

As far as the other issue, the question is whether the symbol is actually a common feature of written Korean. For the purposes of the RM I am willing to believe you that it is. My point was simply that the fact the symbol has a Korean name is not an indication that we would be privileging the Japanese by using the Japanese term. Sushi has a Korean name, too, but we are not privileging Japan by using that title. I have seen this called "komejirushi" in English, but I have never seen it called "danggujang-pyo". Dekimasuよ! 20:00, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

The fact that terms can have multiple definitions and that some dictionaries don't include all of them is irrelevant. We have disambiguation for a reason.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:47, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

Note (typography) is currently performing that disambiguation, since it has prominent links to *, †, ‡, §, ‖, ¶, #, Δ, ◊, ↓, and ※. The question is still whether ※ is usually called "reference mark" in English. Dekimasuよ! 16:20, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

How on earth could it not be, since that's the Unicode name in plain English, almost all English-speaker familiarity with the glyph is via Unicode, and only a tiny fraction of English speakers know Japanese and would have encountered komejirushi? Given WP:USEENGLISH, the burden of proof is strongly on the side of those wanting to use the non-English name.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:24, 1 July 2018 (UTC)

I do not see any evidence that English-speaker familiarity with the character is via Unicode. There have been references to "komejirushi" in English for over 100 years. To the extent that relevant Google hits for the proposed title are all in relation to Unicode, this seems to be a case in which the number of hits is skewed to the content (performing an internet search on internet/computer coding will always yield a large number of hits because of the medium, which is mostly unrelated to usage in WP:RS in this sort of case). We have Radical 9, not Ideographic Annotation Man Mark or CJK Radical Person or CJK Ideograph "人". For that matter, we have ㄹ and not Hangul Choseong Rieul or even "rieul". Why would we think anyone is primarily familiar with those through Unicode? Dekimasuよ! 19:15, 1 July 2018 (UTC)

I did not see the "additional rationale" (and self-relisting?) before writing this reply, but again, I do not see any indication that we "default to the Unicode name of a glyph". We default to the common name of the character, which sometimes but not always coincides with Unicode's choice. Dekimasuよ! 19:36, 1 July 2018 (UTC)

• Support move as a clearer and more common English name. This isn't exclusively a Japanese concept. ONR (talk) 22:48, 22 June 2018 (UTC)
• Sorry, strong Oppose this mark isn't used in English so to talk of an English name is meaningless. See "reference mark is" which refers to half a dozen other things but not a mark in Japanese typography. The current title is perfectly okay as anyone English-speaker interested in Asiatic typography who has heard of this in Korean, where it used much less, will know it by the Japanese name also. In ictu oculi (talk) 07:37, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

@Dekimasu: with what you've cited from Merriam-Webster about *, †, or ‡, you have also to oppose this move. @Rreagan007: @Old Naval Rooftops: please review. In ictu oculi (talk) 07:41, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

As I wrote orginally, my support is contingent upon the idea that the proposed title is the common name for the mark in English. I do have doubts about this, but SMcCandlish has not yet responded to the objections, so I will wait for now. Dekimasuよ! 15:47, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

That rationale doesn't have anything to do with our naming practices. What matters is whether sources in English use an English-language term. An obvious example of the difference: Our article is at Munich, not München, even though no one natively from the place calls it Munich. There is no "exonyms are forbidden" principle at Wikipedia.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:40, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose It is a predominately Japanese symbol so we should use the Japanese name as the title. "Reference mark" could mean anything in English, while using the Japanese ensures accuracy. doktorb _words^deeds 15:22, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

  See above.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:43, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

Well how is Munich remotely comparable to a Japanese Komejirushi??? In ictu oculi (talk) 16:24, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

I think you mean München, for the comparison to work. And the answer would be: as a word used in English, with an English alternative, remarkably similar. Whether the things being described by the words are similar is irrelevant; this is about how our titles use language not whether we want to make up a magically special rule out of nowhere just for a Japanese thing (which isn't really a Japanese thing but at bare minimum a Japanese and Korean thing that we shouldn't be treating as proprietarily Japanese).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:52, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

• Plain Reference mark is ambiguous :: there are many sorts of reference marks used in many countries and circumstances. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 16:53, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

  But that doesn't matter, even if someone can prove it, since none of them are notable. If one or more were, then we go to disambiguation. This would still be the primary topic. If it some how weren't then we'd use something like "Reference mark (Asian character)", to continue using English instead of picking a Japanese name, unfamiliar to almost all of our readers, for a Korean-and-Japanese character.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:53, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

• I am still happy to support the move if it can be shown that "reference mark" is the common name for the symbol in English, but I have not been convinced of that in the above discussion, so I am striking my original support for now. SMcCandlish writes that "The common name in English is reference mark by probably more than 10:1 ratio (even after accounting for false positives) over komejirushi," but I am not sure where there is any evidence of this. "Komejirushi" has been in use in English since the 1800s. The only support I see for "reference mark" so far is the Unicode name for the character, and other sources making reference to Unicode. Unicode says that script names are usually based on common English usage, but it also states that "Script, block, and character names are used by Unicode solely as identifiers; that is, their purpose is to distinguish entities and not to describe them.... The use of a particular name as an identifier for a script in the Unicode Standard does not imply an endorsement of that name as the best alternative for general use. The Unicode Consortium does not make recommendations on how to refer to scripts in other contexts" ([1]). Unicode also makes specific note of "Japanese kome" in reference to this character (and no reference to Korean, but interestingly a reference to Urdu) here. When excluding Unicode, I got zero discussion of this mark in the first 150 Google hits. Outside of Unicode, where is this called "reference mark"? Dekimasuよ! 19:50, 27 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Just Google it smartly, and weed the most common false positive: [2] versus [3]. The English name doesn't lead by a huge margin, until you consider that almost all the returns are in English, while a tremendous number of those for komejirusi are not. That's enough to overcome random false positives like "attach the GPS/GNSS antenna to the reference mark (tripod, etc.)".
    The rationale (to paraphrase) "There are things called 'reference mark' that aren't this thing" isn't a valid objection: 1) they aren't notable, and 2) even if one or another did turn out to be, disambiguation exists for a reason. So does WP:USEENGLISH.
     — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:20, 1 July 2018 (UTC)
    • First, I'm somewhat confused that you included "Japanese" in your search, since I thought it was part of the rationale that this mark is not particularly Japanese. However, the hits in your recommended Google search do not generally refer to this mark in a reliable way either. The first hit is for Requirements for Japanese text layout, but the "reference marks" referred to on that page are not this character (but you can see a lot of other symbols, Japanese and otherwise, referred to as reference marks there). Hits 2-4 and 7 and 10 are for Unicode, which I discussed above. Hit 3 is Japan Reference (not a RS, but anyway) which calls the mark itself "kome or komejirushi" and describes it as a "symbol used in notes as a reference mark." Hits 6 and 8-9 are false positives for Motor Trend magazine talking about Japanese and Korean automakers. Hit 11 is a false hit for "Incidental Take of Dall Porpoise by the Japanese Salmon Fishery", hit 12 is a false hit for The Painter's Handbook: A Complete Reference by Mark David Gottsegen (picking up on "reference" and "mark" in succession), hit 13 is a false hit in The Journal of Korean Studies for someone trying to "reference Mark Caprio." I stopped there but the hits below that did not get much better. 5/13 referred to Unicode, and nothing but Unicode referred to this character. Maybe you are getting different results.
    • So at this point my reply remains that "komejirushi appears to be the established WP:COMMONNAME in English name for this mark, and is thus in accord with WP:USEENGLISH; it is also clearly WP:PRECISE and WP:RECOGNIZABLE in a way that the proposed title is not." As far as disambiguation is concerned, you wrote that the other things called "reference mark" aren't notable, but we have articles on all of the characters called "reference mark" that I listed above. As far as I can tell, "reference mark" barely ever refers to this character; the fact that those symbols are at other titles does not indicate that this is the primary topic of the search term "reference mark." This is not a case of preemptive disambiguation. Dekimasuよ! 19:15, 1 July 2018 (UTC)
      • I did forget to include OR Korean, but doing so doesn't have any real impact. Anyone writing about the char. in English isn't very likely to be writing about only Korean use of it, and if they did and were not using the English term they'd use the Korean one not the Japanese one.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:58, 5 July 2018 (UTC)
• Support – after reviewing the evidence and the arguments, I agree that the English name for this mark is more common in English-language sources. Dicklyon (talk) 16:31, 2 July 2018 (UTC)
• Support. This is a difficult one, some readers will find the current title more recognisable, but it seems to me that the general reader will find this English phrase more recognisable. And as Dicklyon points out, it seems to be more common, which also supports the idea that it's more recognisable. Andrewa (talk) 11:34, 9 July 2018 (UTC)
• Support Very split on which term is commonname. Very split on which term is most recognisable. This leaves the preference to use English. — Frayæ (Talk/Spjall) 08:48, 13 July 2018 (UTC)
• Support I see a lot of disagreement on which name is more common, but even if the Japanese one is more common, WP:NPOV is one of five pillars, "common name" isn't. --Ptko (talk) 06:44, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
  • This looks relatively settled, but the idea that using a name that comes from a particular language represents POV editing because there is a name in another language would make it impossible to title any articles. We don't rename Karaoke to Singing booth because people go to Noraebang in Korea. We don't redirect Sashimi to Raw fish because Carpaccio exists in Italian. The question is not whether "the Japanese one" is more common, but what this is usually called in English. The idea that using English words of particular Asian origin represents a particular POV while we use English words originating in various European languages every day is itself problematic. The late support here seems to indicate that "reference mark" is somehow a more English title for this character than "komejirushi". It is not. Dekimasuよ! 17:46, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
    • @Dekimasu: I don't think the word komejirushi has the same status as "karaoke" or "sashimi", which are well accepted words known to most English-speaking people. Also carpaccio and sashimi aren't the same. Crudo, hoe, kuai, and sashimi are raw fish/meat in different cuisines and I don't think I would say "Crudo is Italian sashimi." or vice versa. --Ptko (talk) 15:51, 23 July 2018 (UTC)
    • They're just completely not comparable cases. Karaoke is a fully assimilated Japanese loanword into English, and there is no other English word for it. Sushi and carpaccio are different topics with their own articles; having a raw fish bases doesn't make them the same, any more than a chihuahua and wolf are the same topic just by both being Canis lupus. There is only one subject and one article here, and neither Asian name for it has been assimilated into English.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:31, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Relation to NB (nota bene)

It strikes me that the use of ※ is pretty close to nota bene (NB) in English. Is that correct?

If so, we could

• mention in this page and the nota bene page that they are (roughly?) equivalent, and/or
• remove this page and make it a section in the nota bene page (something like: "In CJK, ※ is used ...") – incidentally this would avoid the whole what should this page be called debate too

I'm not a linguist or an expert on CJK, so I hesitate to make even the more conservative change. — Stephen.G.McAteer (talk) 22:02, 21 October 2018 (UTC)

Effort required

What a se※y symbol! The opening paragraph says:

"The reference mark or reference symbol (※) is a punctuation mark used in Chinese, Japanese and Korean (CJK) writing."

However, it seems that nearly all my variable English (Windows) fonts recognize it, including some sketchy imports; —over 40. That would make the opening paragraph incomplete if not wrong, no?

I also notice in the side box, it's under typography, not punctuation. Shouldn't that contradiction be explained? Cheers!
--2602:306:CFCE:1EE0:79CE:87BD:9995:331E (talk) 19:47, 14 December 2018 (UTC)Doug Bashford

Many system fonts have a wide repertoire, there is nothing surprising about them having CJ&K glyphs as well as Latin, Greek and Cyrillic. What would be surprising is if they had glyphs for languages with less than a million native speakers. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 01:01, 27 December 2019 (UTC)

Not really a punctuation mark?

I see that somebody 'solved' the challenge above by replacing the typography sidebar with the punctuation sidebar. But is this really a punctuation mark? Would it ever be seen outside typography or other markup? --01:01, 27 December 2019 (UTC)

For comparison, the articles Asterisk and Dagger (typography), which are functionally equivalent, say that they are typographic marks. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 01:15, 27 December 2019 (UTC)

As there have been no objections, I have replaced the punctuation infobox with a generic symbol infobox and replaced the lead words "punctuation mark" with "typographic symbol". --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 20:50, 29 December 2019 (UTC)