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This user sub-page is intended to hold Charles Gaudette's notes associated with editing Wikipedia. These notes will include: spelling, grammar, style, language differences, and code fragments. Charles wants to get at them no matter where he is: work, home, traveling, and so-on. If you are going to edit this page, please do him a favor — first comment on his Talk page. It is entirely possible that an "error" on this page is especially deliberate. It would be a mistake to consider this page: Charles' Wikipedia editing philosophy, but there is some of that discipline in here. More likely these notes are up for consideration in his philosophy.
Rights and citationseditRightseditCitationsedit
Numbersedit
Unitsedit
SpellingeditIs It "Its" or "It's"?editA seemingly simple pair of words that many people have trouble keeping straight is its and it's. Editorial types keep telling us not to use apostrophe "S" as a plural; it is always a possessive. So if we refer to Gary's pen, then the logical possessive of "it" is "it's," right? Actually not. "It's" isn't a possessive like Gary's, it's a contraction — like isn't.
Simple test: If you can replace "its" in your sentence with "it is" or "it has," then your word is "it's"; otherwise, your word is "its." And there is absolutely no such word as "its'." Another technique: "Its" is the neuter version of "his" or "her." Try plugging "his" or "her" into your sentence where you think "its" belongs. If it still works as a sentence grammatically (if not logically), then your word is "its." Grammaredit
Languageedit
StyleeditOne-offsedit
Accessible character?editIs the character accessible as <key> or <shift>-<key>? Yesedit
Noedit
Italics in tricky locationsedit
…David Bernath, "We're thrilled to have '<span style="font-style: italic;">Scrubs</span>' join the network…"
The dreaded ofeditThe possessive form (apostrophe s) is vastly preferred over syntactic constructions using the preposition of. of |əv| |ə| preposition
PHRASES ORIGIN Old English , of Germanic origin; related to Dutch af and German ab, from an Indo-European root shared by Latin ab and Greek apo. USAGE It is a mistake to use of instead of have in constructions such as: you should have asked (not | you should of asked). For more information, see usage at HAVE . New Oxford American Dictionary, 2nd Edition Standard appendiceseditSome heading titles have standard wording, and for these, the wording or capitalization must not be changed.
or, equally good:
Two equally acceptable sequences exist, as shown above, and the choice of one over the other depends on the system of references and notes being used in the article. Notes and references may also be combined into one Notes and references. Pronunciationedit
Eliminate Latin phraseseditWhy do articles (for years) 1700 to 2099 have Roman dates?editEvery article regarding years 1700 through 2099 in Wikipedia (English language) has the Arabic numerals immediately followed by the same as Roman numerals. Why? Is there a template that drops this into the article? If so, why? Is this some The Da Vinci Code Asian glyphseditKeep Chinese characters together? Well, the old Sample without tageditAnother very simple Chinese logograph is the character 〇 (líng), which simply refers to the number zero. For instance, the year 2000 would be 二〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇年. The logograph 〇 is a native Chinese character, and its earliest documented use is in 1247 AD during the Southern Song dynasty period, found in a mathematical text called 數術九章 (Shǔ Shù Jiǔ Zhāng "Mathematical Treatise in Nine Sections"). It is not directly derived from the Hindi-Arabic numeral "0".[1] Interestingly, being round, the character does not contain any traditional strokes. Sample with tageditAnother very simple Chinese logograph is the character 〇 (líng), which simply refers to the number zero. For instance, the year 2000 would be 二〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇年. The logograph 〇 is a native Chinese character, and its earliest documented use is in 1247 AD during the Southern Song dynasty period, found in a mathematical text called 數術九章 (Shǔ Shù Jiǔ Zhāng "Mathematical Treatise in Nine Sections"). It is not directly derived from the Hindi-Arabic numeral "0". CodeeditSucessful: Tablesedit
ImageseditLinkseditUsageedit[[Image:filename.ext|(frame, thumb)|(px)|(none, left, right)|(caption text)]]
At times it is nessessary to also force a clear line break. <br style="clear:both;" /> Media linkingeditLink to the picture without displaying it. [[Media:Wikipedesketch.png]] [[Media:Wikipedesketch.png|This is the wikipede]] This can be awkward if the image is high-resolution and larger than any reasonable display monitor. The following method avoids this problem. [[:Image:Wikipedesketch.png]] [[:Image:Wikipedesketch.png|This links directly to the Wikipede's image page]] This links directly to the wikipede's image page Font fileseditModern computers and UTF-8 web browsers provide for many alphabets, languages, and symbols. So far Charles has only had to install the following fonts:
Diplomatic debate toolseditCode fragments and miscellaneouseditCode fagmentsedit
About Wiki pipeseditLead section edit trickedit
Don't fix links to redirects that aren't brokeneditSome editors are tempted, upon finding links using a legitimate redirect target, to edit the page to "fix" the link so that it points "straight" at the "correct" page. Unless the link displays incorrectly — for instance, if the link is to a misspelling, or other unprintworthy redirects, or if the hint that appears when you hover over the link is misleading — there is no need to edit the link. The link may be deliberate, may consolidate related information in one place, or may indicate possible future articles. Most especially, there should never be a need to replace [[redirect]] with [[direct|redirect]]. Some editors are under the mistaken impression that fixing such links improves the capacity of the Wikipedia servers. Because editing a page is seemingly thousands of times more expensive for the servers than following a redirect, the opposite is true if anything. It's inadvisable to worry about performance. |
This is a Wikipedia user page.
This is not an encyclopedia article. If you find this page on any site other than Wikipedia, you are viewing a mirror site. Be aware that the page may be outdated and that the user this page belongs to may have no personal affiliation with any site other than Wikipedia itself. The original page is located at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Charles_Gaudette/Wikipedia_Notes. |
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- ^ Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, Volume III