Barefoot Banana

Linguistic conventions advice

Hello to whomever reads this. I am new to editing wikipedia with an account, and I tried looking for an answer to this question but couldn't find it.

I am a linguist and will be making mostly minor edits to pages related to linguistics. One of the things that I noticed is that there are at least three ways in use to indicate the meaning of a linguistic sign.

voorbeeld 1 "example 1"

voorbeeld 2 'example 2'

voorbeeld 3 ‘example 3’

I have been taught that the proper way to do it is as in example 3, with single apostrophes, and this is also often what I see in papers. I also see double apostrophes in published works, but less frequently, and I consider it sloppy because it's used for other things as well. As far as I am concerned, single straight apostrophes (or whatever they are called) as in example 2 are incorrect.

Is there an established practice on wikipedia? And if I have other questions relating to linguistic conventions, where is the guide with all the answers? I assume there is one...

Many thanks in advance. Barefoot Banana (talk) 13:20, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

On the English Wikipedia, linguistic glosses are styled with single quotation marks. You might find these resources helpful:

• Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Quotation_marks
• Gloss_(annotation)#In_linguistics

Scottyoak2 (talk) 14:20, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

Thank you, that's very helpful!

The ones as in 'example 2' seem to be favoured, but I now realise that it must be an issue of how my desktop renders that symbol on Wikipedia. It appears as straight on Wikipedia for me, but as slightly curly in Word -and that's the way I am familiar with it.

If I see "meaning" or ‘meaning’, I will from now on confidently correct it to the standard 'meaning'. Barefoot Banana (talk) 16:02, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

(edit conflict)

The Manual of Style has this about quotation marks: Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Quotation marks. Maybe it doesn't appear to address your question directly and I'm not aware of any other documentation that would apply. It disagrees with you about the use of 'straight' vs 'curly' quotes, coming down decidedly in favor of using straight quotes.

Individual editors are allowed to set a precedent for an article they are creating and another editor may not override that choice based merely on their own opinion of what is 'proper'. While there is a desire for consistency within an article, consistency between articles is not driven all that hard unless there has been a stylistic convention agreed to by consensus and documented somewhere. As a slightly different example, a particular article may be marked for using American or British spelling conventions (color vs colour). Within an article we expect just a single convention to be used by between separate articles, the guidance is weaker: articles about British subject would be expected to use British English conventions while articles about American subjects use American English.

I you find an article that is internally inconsistent, your responsibility as an editor would be to try to figure out which convention came first in the history of the article and conform the other uses to be consistent.

When in doubt, you can always start a discussion on the talk page of an article. It's possible that by engaging in some discussions, you will find editors who can point to past discussions where a consensus approach was found – finding that out and following the agreed-upon approach will be your best bet.

If this is really a big thing for you, you could start an RFC discussion about it. It's possible that an RFC would result in an addition or modification to the Manual of Style. Wikipedia is not entirely rigid and changes can still be made. — jmcgnh^{(talk) (contribs)} 14:43, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for your advice, it's clear to me now! Barefoot Banana (talk) 16:02, 28 August 2023 (UTC)