Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 196

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Bold revision of "US and U.S." section

Latest comment: 7 years ago87 comments19 people in discussion

I've been WP:BOLD and updated that section [1] (earlier draft, [2]) to better reflect actual WP editing practice, and 2017 real-world facts. The short version:

We're clearly defaulting to use of "US", site-wide. Even most American editors are doing this.
People shouldn't editwar against "U.S." in articles that already have been using it consistently.
There are good reasons to change to "US" sometimes, especially avoidance of "between the U.S. and the UK" inconsistency.
The claim that "U.S." is the dominant spelling in North American publishing hasn't been true in years; replace this with an observation that the "U.S." spelling remains common.
Even news publications use "U.S." mostly in all-caps headlines; an increasing number of them abandon the dots in running prose and do not use them in title-case or sentence-case headlines (though some use it in body copy for consistency with headlines; this is more true of traditionalist publications, though we needn't get into that in MoS). Put gist of this in a footnote.
Even news publications are wildly inconsistent on this; there is no ENGVAR matter in favor of "U.S.", because the "U.S." style is not consistently used in North American English the way "colour" (vs. "color") is consistently used in Commonwealth English. There is, however, an ENGVAR cases against "U.S." in articles not written in North American English.

What we're missing is an instruction (not just about "US" in particular) to use the abbreviated form only as an adjective, in a parenthetical, and in tabular data – and generally only after the full name has already been given once (other than an infobox might still use an acronym). This is consistent with what many off-WP style guides advise. Some of this is implicit in MOS:ABBR rules, but the adjective part is not. This should be added somewhere, and will markedly improve our writing over time. We far too frequently have lead sentences with things like "and is based in the UK" or "was born in the US".
— SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ< 21:32, 6 October 2017 (UTC), revised 03:03, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

Sensible. Tony (talk) 08:59, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

There are lots of unsupported claims in the above. The following claim needs little support: The English language includes no words "uk" or "ussr", but it does include "us". That said, I don't see anything in this change that will prevent me from doing what I've always done - within an article, change the minority to match the majority. If I created an article, it wouldn't prevent me from choosing to use U.S. because it makes more sense and seems more natural to me.
I would object to a change re noun usage without a prior RfC consensus for it. In my experience there is nothing at all uncommon about usage such as "emigrated to the U.S." (or US), and guidance against that usage would seem undue and pedantic to me. Someone might ask the former Beatles if, given the alleged current trend in style guides, they would release a song titled "Back in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics". ―Mandruss ☎ 09:22, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

Speaking of emigration... E Eng 05:17, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

This isn't an article and we don't cite sources in it. I'm happy to do something of a source dump for discussion purposes, and have started that below. It backs up the revision quite well so far. I took care not to write in do/do not language (other than I made a pre-existing rule against doing "U.S.A.F." more emphatic, because we really do never want that). What people use in vernacular speech and writing is irrelevant, or we'd have lots of "isn't" and "dunno" in our articles. Well-accepted style guides of all sorts have the noun/adjective rule in some form, and I haven't even imposed one, just a suggestion. I do agree an RfC may be needed to get this to "stick", though it could also firm the noun/adjective usage distinction into an actual rule, so be careful what you ask for. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ< 01:54, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

Sounds all right to me but then, I don't have a parochial interest in the ~~U.S.~~ US. Regards, Cinderella157 (talk) 10:12, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

Probably worth running an RfC on US v U.S., if only for consistency with other countries (UK, UAE, etc), as you say. I do not agree with you saying that the initialised forms of country names should be treated only as adjectives. This comes back to the issue of WP being reflective of real usage—not only do most people write US/UK ('in the UK' ...), but they say it. (I cannot speck for the US, obviously, but the UK-norm is not to say 'United Kingdom'. It sounds pretentious and snobbish to do so.) Initialisms, acronyms and abbreviations should generally be avoided, but not if they are the WP:COMMONNAME for something, as 'UK' is. –Sb2001 ^{talk page} 13:29, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

@Sb2001: if you look again, SMcCandlish wasn't talking about initialized forms of names as adjectives, but abbreviated names, i.e. "US" (or "U.S.") should only be used "as an adjective, in a parenthetical, and in tabular data – and generally only after the full name has already been given once". Peter coxhead (talk) 14:58, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

That was probably me being unclear. I understand that (well, I think I do: do not write things like 'in the UK', but do write 'UK-based' or 'UK companies'), and my response is that we should not be restricting use of UK, since it is the common name for the United Kingdom. Is the objection with using initialised names at first mention, or anywhere in the article? –Sb2001 ^{talk page} 15:05, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

I don't think there is support for the idea that were are "clearly defaulting to use of 'US'" - I think usage is divided and that's perfectly fine. Neutrality^talk 17:05, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

Why is everybody talking about US? The name is right there on the cover. :) --Guy Macon (talk) 17:47, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

Argh! Us likes celebrities. You is a singer. People runs trivia. We is depressing. When will it end? I give up. --A D Monroe III^(talk) 19:07, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

I tried googling "contact us" to ask the editors of the magazine a question, and got all kinds of irrelevant results... --Guy Macon (talk) 19:49, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

You ask "when will it end?" The running time appears to be 2 hours and 15 minutes. --Guy Macon (talk) 19:54, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

BTW, what does Argh! have to do with anything? --Guy Macon (talk) 19:58, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

If the MoS is going to say: "In American and Canadian English ... US has become the dominant abbreviation for United States," it needs to cite style guides. So far as I can see, U.S. is still the dominant form. The only style guide I know of that says otherwise is Chicago. SarahSV ^(talk) 21:15, 7 October 2017 (UTC)
Yes, we reference the name of the relevant text, but we do not have in-line citations in the same way as articles. Adding {{cn}} templates is—therefore—unhelpful. You are probably right in saying that it needs to be referenced, as it is quite a large assertion to make. Style guides are perhaps not the right sort of reference, given that it it talking about actual usage, rather than what they advise. –Sb2001 ^{talk page} 00:56, 8 October 2017 (UTC)
I think I've provided enough source material below, but I really don't care about that wording. No assertion about usage actually needs to be present in MoS at all, if people are going to complain about it or engage in denialism or whatever. The important part is what we want done or not done (default to "US", don't pick fights changing "U.S." to "US" for not reason, don't pick fights by resisting a change to "US" when there is a reason; don't use either abbreviation when it's unhelpful or just crappy writing). — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ< 02:49, 8 October 2017 (UTC)
Done [3]. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ< 03:03, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

I'm reverting that immediately. Please review Wikipedia's civility guidelines and Wikipedia policy Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not. --Coolcaesar (talk) 00:36, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

No idea who or what that's in reference to. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ< 02:49, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

You ... [4] –Sb2001 ^{talk page} 11:16, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

None of the P&G Coolcaesar refers to are implicated in any way by the material. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ< 20:56, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

Coolcaesar: you have not posted this in the correct section. Feel free to move it (and my comment) to #Bold revision of "US and U.S." section. I do not think that reverting everything was helpful. Coming along all-guns-blazing is going to infuriate editors who have put a lot of time into modifying wording. By all means, join in with the discussion about whether you think the revisions were appropriate, but do not simply revert them when editors are trying to work collaboratively to find the best solution. SMcCandlish knows WP policy very well, especially WP:NOT. I am not sure that that particular piece of policy is the right one to choose. That is exactly the sort of content we need to be including in the MoS. –Sb2001 ^{talk page} 00:53, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

To expand on the point I was trying to make above: This is a major change for which it is necessary to develop consensus first, including repeated posts on the village pump to make sure all interested editors have a chance to opine on the issue.

I write for a living. I skim dozens of newspaper and magazine articles as well as portions of several books every week. It is ludicrous to assert that "the claim that 'U.S. is the dominant spelling in North American publishing hasn't been true in years." The only North American publications where I see U.K. punctuation style regularly are the ones that run Reuters newswire stories without first cleaning them up.

From the perspective of many U.S. intellectuals, myself included, the trend in the U.K. towards dropping punctuation reflects a longstanding trend in British education towards tolerance of sloppy writing. (I have monitored U.K. publications at least monthly for over 20 years, read Chaucer my senior year of high school with a teacher who was a British expat and graduate of Cambridge, and have worked with several British colleagues over the years.) In contrast, most top-tier U.S. research universities maintain grueling first-year English composition courses where freshman students who excelled in the subject in high school are horrified to have their first paper come back with red marks all over it. The same is also true of many U.S. graduate schools. The result is that American English style evolves at a glacial pace, as each generation of intellectuals is rigorously drilled in the style of the previous one. That is not Wikipedia's problem to solve. It is inappropriate to use Wikipedia as a vehicle towards pushing American English towards more rapid stylistic evolution. Wikipedia policy (as crystallized in WP:NOR, WP:V, and WP:NOT) is to follow. We never lead. --Coolcaesar (talk) 01:02, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

If only you knew how strained sound your claims of expertise, what with the Chaucer and the Cantab and the skimming and the grueling. And lots of us write for our livings. E Eng 03:16, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, "I'm an expert on British style and intellectualism because I knew a couple of Brits." Haw. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ< 04:13, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

User:Coolcaesar—It's not often that editors announce so baldly that they're an intellectual. Why don't you write like one? I know my own posts here are sometimes sloppy, but I'm not claiming to be an intellectual. Let's have a look:

"long-standing"—US and UK style guides insist on the hyphen.

"towards ... towards tolerance of sloppy writing"

"freshman students"—but not female students.

"The same is ~~also~~ true of many U.S. graduate schools."

Third and fourth runs for "towards", and the grammar doesn't work: "It is inappropriate to use Wikipedia as a vehicle towards pushing American English towards ..."—"a vehicle to push" might be OK.

And do you have a copy of Chicago MOS 17th edition yet? At the moment they're doing a deal for hard-copy shipped plus a year's online subscription. Tony (talk) 06:36, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

Demmit! I bought mine at a local bookstore (which is nice and supportive of local bookstores), but given the price, this direct deal would have been way better. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ< 20:56, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

Tony1, you're just being mean to CC because he's a Chaucerian lawyer. You better watch out or you might find yourself on the wrong end of a legal thereat. E Eng 10:47, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

This has nothing to do with British dot-dropping, a habit found primarily in British journalism not other British writing, and affecting classes of things from which others do not drop dots (e.g. changing "e.g." to "eg"). The trend away from using dots in acronyms/initialisms has been world-wide and across languages, and is firmly entrenched in the US and Canada; it did not "rub off" on North Americans from the British. Also, if you're going to come here and start attacking British intellect and education you're likely to be interpreted as a troll. No one is "pushing" AmEng to change here; we only contemplate stuff like this (as at MOS:JR, MOS:IDENTITY, etc.), when the AmEng style guides themselves are reflecting a real-world shift in AmEng usage. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ< 02:49, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

Sourcing

I'll get this started, using the stack of style guides closest to my desk (leaves out some stuff like Scientific Style and Format):

"10.4", "10.33". The Chicago Manual of Style (16th ed.). University of Chicago. 2010. pp. 489–490, 500:. 10.4: Periods with abbreviations. ... Use no periods with abbreviations that appear in full capitals, whether two letters or more, and even if lowercase letters appear within the abbreviation: VP, CEO, MA, MD, PhD, UK, US, NY, IL .... 10.33: "US" versus United States. In running text, spell out United States as a noun; reserve US for the adjective form only (in which position the abbreviation is generally preferred). See also 10.4. US dollars, US involvement in China, but China's involvement in the United States.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link) It has a side rule to use "U.S." in publications that use "traditional" US state abbreviations like "Ill." and "Calif.", but WP is not one of these, and CMoS recommends against the practice anyway. This edition's material on this is a reversal from the 15th ed. which still favored "U.S." Notably, MoS began when CMoS 15th was current, and has seen extensive revision over time to match the 16th (as it has also been being updated to match post-2010 editions of New Hart's Rules / Oxford Style Manual and Fowler's, etc., as the rest of the world does.
"10.31", "10.32". The Chicago Manual of Style (16th ed.). University of Chicago. 2017. pp. 573–574, 585–586:. 10.4: Periods with abbreviations. ... Ues no periods with abbreviations that include two or more capital letters, even if the abbreviation also includes lowercase letters: VP, CEO, MA, MD, PhD, UK, US, NY, IL. [Also has the previous edition's rule to prefer "U.S." with "Ill." abbreviations.] 10.31: Abbreviating country names. Names of countries are usually spelled out in text but may be abbreviated in tabular matter, lists, and the like. [Recommendation to consult dictionaries for abbreviations rather than making up new ones.] ... Certain initialisms, on the other hand, may be appropriate in regular text, especially after the full form has been established .... 10.32: "US" versus "United States." Where necessary, initialisms for country names can be used in running text according to the guidelines set forth [in previous sections about overuse of abbreviations, etc.] Note that, as a matter of editorial tradition, this manual has long advised spelling out United States as a noun, reserving US for the adjective form only (where it is preferred) and for tabular matter and the like. In a departure, Chicago now permits the use of US as a noun, subject to editorial discretion and provided the meaning is clear from context. US dollars, US involvement in China, China's involvement in the United States or China's involvement in the US.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link) Brand new edition; hasn't had much real-world impact yet. CMoS has clearly softened on its stance about nouns.
Burchfield, R. W., ed. (2004). "acronym". Fowler's Modern English Usage (Revised 3rd ed.). Oxford University Press. pp. 17–18. Gives no explicit rule, but uses "US", "UK", "USSR" style throughout, and says of things like "U.N.E.S.C.O." that this is an intermediary stage in adoption of an acronym. This material is a bit dated; we don't actually do it that way any longer; a newly introduced acronym will appear as SNRKL not "S.N.R.K.L." in most publications. Burchfield also favors the confusing practice of writing some true acronyms as if words and capitalizing their first letter even if they're not proper names, e.g. "Aids" for AIDS; this practice seems not to have caught on except among some British/Commonwealth news publishers, and I think one or another of the stylistically weirder American publications (New Yorker, maybe? New York Times, but not consistently).]
Butterfield, Jeremy, ed. (2015). "acronym". Fowler's Dictionary of Modern English Usage (4th ed.). Oxford University Press. p. 16. Uses essentially the same wording as Burchfield's edition.
"1.6: Abbreviations". MLA Handbook (8th ed.). Modern Language Association. 2016. p. 95. Use neither periods after letters nor spaces between letters for abbrevaitions made up predominantly of capital letters: BC, DVD, NJ, PhD, US. Has no noun/adjective rules but urges (on the same page cited here) reserving abbreviations for tabular data, citations, and other compressed material.
"8.3: Geographic Names". MLA Style Manual and Guide to Scholarly Writing (3rd ed.). Modern Language Association. 2008. pp. 264, 269. [S]pell out in the text the names of countries, with a few exceptions (e.g. USSR). In documentation, however, abbreviate the names of states, provinces , countries, and continents. [List of abbreviations begins] ... US, USA: United States, United States of America Does not include "U.S.", nor a noun/adjective rule.
"7: Shortened forms". Style Manual of Authors, Editors and Printers (5th ed.). Australian Government Publishing Service. 1994. pp. 107, 116–117. 7.5 Abbreviations that consist of more than one capital letter or of capital letters only are written without full stops: ACT, RSPCA, PhD, GPO, IBRD, USA. ... 7.7: Acronyms ... Acronyms are written without full stops. 7.67: The names of countries, except for the former Soviet Union, which is usually designated USSR, should be spelt out in general text. For example: The United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, New Zealand and Japan have agreed ... not The UK, the USA, Australia, NZ and Japan have agreed .... For text, this rule should be waived only in heavily statistical or greatly condensed scientific work. 7.68: In text that uses many shortened forms, the standard abbreviations for name of countries may be used adjectivally: UK tariffs have ...; In her study of NZ foreign policy ..... 7.69: Standard abbreviations for names of countries are used in tables, figures, notes, references and bibliographies, where space considerations are important: UK, USA, Statistics Act 1975 (NZ), s 37. There may be a newer edition out now; last time I looked it was still in production, but that was a few years ago.
Hull, Christine A.; Huckin, Thomas N. (2008). The New Century Handbook (4th ed.). Longman / Pearson Education. pp. 810, 872. 48d: Avoid common misuses of periods. ... Do not use periods with acronyms and other all uppercase abbreviations. [Emphasis in original.] The recent trend is not to use periods with common abbreviations for states, countries, organizations, computer programs, famous eople, and other entities: CA, NOW, MIT ... USA, MS-DOS, JFK ... HTML, AAA .... 56e: Avoid most other abbreviations in formal writing. Place names, including the names of states, countries, provinces, continents, and other locations, should not be abbreviated except in addresses and occasionally when usd as adjectives (for example, in US government). Uses dot-free acronyms throughout, except for latinisms (e.g., p.m., i.e.). Specifically illustrates
Waddingham, Anne, ed. (2014). "10.2.4. All-capital abbreviations". New Hart's Rules (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press. p. 174. Acronyms and initialisms of more than one capital letter take no full points in British and technical usage and are closed up: TUC, MA, EU .... In some US styles certain initialisms may have full points (US/U.S.). There isn't an adjective/noun usage distinction maintained in New Hart's.
Ritter, R. M., ed. (2005). "10.2.4. All-capital abbreviations". New Hart's Rules (1st ed.). Oxford University Press. p. 170–171. Acronyms and initialisms of more than one capital letter take no full points in British and technical usage and are closed up: TUC, MA, EU .... US English uses points in such contexts: U.S., L.A.P.D., R.E.M. This was wrong even when it was published; the two leading US style guides (CMoS for academic writing, and Associated Press Stylebook for journalism) were already condemning this, and dominant usage of "LAPD" is provable in seconds [5] by an N-gram constrained to US English and the decade leading up to publication of Ritter's book. Ritter's comment appears to be material left over from the 1980s Hart's Rules, when it might have been closer to accurate. "REM" in the sleep sense has been absolutely dominant without periods for decades [6], and in the case of the band name, it's a proper name (also from the '80s) styled however the band likes (the band consistently used the dots, but the press did not [7]).
Garner, Bryan A. "U.S.; U.S.A". Garner's Modern English Usage (4th ed.). Oxford University Press. As shortened forms for United States, these terms retain their periods, despite the modern trend to drop the periods in most initialisms. ... U.S. is best reserved for use as an adjective <U.S. foreign policy> although its use as a noun in headlines is common. In abbreviations incorporating U.S., the periods are typically dropped <USPS>, <USAF>, <USNA>. Garner seems (at first; see next entry) the primary hold-out in the style-guide world for "U.S.", and does not even acknowledge the usage shift, or that non-US usage might differ. This is weird because the current edition is taking pains to be more descriptive (even extensively using N-gram data) with hundreds of entries updated with usage-shift info; this entry was not updated. Whether this represents Garner not getting around to it or studiously avoiding it is anyone's guess. Despite being published by Oxford, this is a thoroughly American work, and Garner is not a linguist but a lawyer, steeped in legal writing (he's the editor or author of various works on legal writing); it's a register that in the US always uses U.S. except in longer acronyms like USAF. See next entry, however.
Garner, Bryan A. (2016). The Chicago Guide to Grammar, Usage, and Punctuation. Chicago University Press. p. 388. 537. Use a period to indicate an abbreviated name or title. (The salutary trend, though, is to omit periods with acronyms and initialisms—hence BBC ...) I looked at every page the index said had anything to do with abbreviations, acronyms, initialisms, the period, proper names, and proper nouns. There's nothing about "U.S.", nor did I see it used in the prose while skimming, and he uses "UNESCO"-style throughout. This may be evidence that the entry in GMEU, above, simply didn't get updated since the last edition, or it may reflect editorial changes made by someone at the respective publishers; no way to really know.
Williams, Malcolm (1997). Bucens, Vitalijs (ed.). The Canadian Style: A Guide to Writing and Editing (Revised and Expanded ed.). Public Works and Government Services Canada Translation Bureau / Dundurn Press. pp. 20, 25, 30, 55. 103: Periods. In recent years there has been a trend toward omission of periods in abbreviations. This is particularly true of scientific and technical writing, but the practice has been spreading in general writing as well. a) Do not use periods with the following: [Emphasis in original.] ... abbreviations or acronyms consisting exclusively of upper-case letters or ending in an upper-case letter (except those for personal names, legal references and most place names), e.g.: NAFTA, PhD, YWCA, UN, GST, MiG, CTV. (b) Use periods with geographical abbreviations, e.g. B.C., P.E.I., but not for the two-character symbols recommended by Canada Post. This appears to be self-contradictory, since the CP two-letter symbol for British Columbia is in fact BC. This seems to imply using U.K., U.S., etc., but US is used on p. 30, then U.S.A. on p. 55. So, I give up on what they really want. Regardless, it doesn't actually appear to reflect typical, current Canadian style (it is 20 years old); I lived there in 2005–2006, and did not regularly encounter "U.K." and "U.S.A."
"Chapter 4. Abbreviations". Editing Canadian English (2nd ed.). Editors' Association of Canada. 2000. pp. 51–52. Geographical designations: ... 4.19. Abbreviations for names of countries can be used in special circumstances (tables, charts, lists). In text copy, names are usually spelled out. ECE provides no rule against using dots, and illustrates US/U.S. and UK/U.K., even USSR/U.S.S.R.. However, in the preceding sections on acronyms (§4.8) and initialisms (§4.9) it uniformly illustrates all of them without dots, a clear preference. It has no noun/adjective rule.
Hacker, Diana (2006). "38a. The period". The Bedford Handbook (7th ed.). Bedford / St. Martin's. p. 423. In abbreviations: ... A period is not used with US Postal Service abbreviates for states .... Current usage is to omit the period in abbreviations of organization names, academic degrees, and designations for eras. So, doesn't state a country rule, but illustrates use of US.
AMA Manual of Style: A Guide for Authors and Editors (10th ed.). American Medical Association / Oxford University Press. 2007. pp. 334, 451. 'When not to use a period: ... [D]o not use periods with honorifics (courtesy titles), scientific terms, and abbreviations .... JAMA, NIH ... 14.5: Cities, States, Counties, Territories, Possessions; Provinces; Countries. At first mention the name of a state ... or country should be spelled out when it follows the name of a city. [Elided long note that JAMA doesn't do it with "United States" after US places only because its readership is largely American.] ... Names of cities ... and countries should be spelled out in full when they stand alone. ... Abbreviations such as US and UK may be used as modifiers (ie, only when they directly precede the word they modify) but should be expanded in all other contexts. The authors surveyed representative samples of urban populations in the United States and United Kingdom according to US and UK census data. Uses "US" throughout. [Aside: This passage is, incidentally, proof of use of ie for i.e. in a US style guide; along with frequent use of i.e. in British publications that aren't newspapers, that kills the bogus ENGVAR argument for ie that we were seeing here about a month ago.]
"4. Abbreviations". MHRA Style Guide (Third [corrected] ed.). Modern Humanities Research Association. 2015 [2013]. p. 31. 4.4: Use of full stop ... Full stops are omitted in capitalized abbreviations or acronyms for: ... (b) Countries, institutions, societies, and organizations (none of them italicized): UK, USA, BL, BM, UNAM .... [Aside: This publication is proof of use of Oxford spelling ("the Oxfrod -ize") in British publications besides those of Oxford University Press. It also calls for Latinisms to retain dots when abbreviated: i.e., e.g., and so on]
Style Guide for Business and Technical Communication (5th ed.). Franklin Covey. 2012. Self-inconsistent and confusing. The chapter on abbreviations gives all acronyms and initialisms in RAM and GNP style, but in an abbreviation list wants to not only use U.S. but to use U.S.A. to mean United States of America versus USA to mean United States Army; that's a "diff-caps" approach that is far too assumptive of the reader being in lock-step with the writer's intent for us to use it here.
American style guides dating to the 1990s and earlier are more apt to use (and sometimes have a rule in favor of) U.S., e.g. the ACS Style Guide from that era.
In academic American style guides this appears to be rare now; the only semi-recent one I can find so far in favor of U.S. is Publication Manual of the APA (5th ed.). American Psychological Association. 2001.. It otherwise uses UMI-style acronyms/initialisms throughout (it gives U.S. as a special exception). It also has the adjective rule for it. No idea what the more recent edition says; the 6th dates to 2009, and I have one around somewhere.
US legal style guides use U.S. consistently, because this is the style required by most of the courts that have issued style requirements for legal filings, and is also the preference of the US Government Printing Office's manual, which means that regulatory agencies (which whom lawyers often have to communicate) also use it.
I found one 2005 work, The Cooper Hill Stylebook, 2nd ed., still advocating dots in all acronyms and initialisms.
Strauss, J.; et al. (2014). The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation (11th ed.). {{cite book}}: Explicit use of et al. in: |author2= (help), doesn't appear to address the matter, though it seems to give acronyms and initialisms throughout in no-dots, all-caps, no-spaces style.
The AMA Handbook of Business Writing'. American Marketing Association. 2010., appears to be agnostic on dots with initialisms and acronyms, and doesn't address country names in particular.
American journalistic style is all over the place, and contradictory. (British/Commonwealth is not; it's all "US" or "USA".) Many news publishers (especially those who employ all-caps headlines) use U.S. in headlines but not in running text; others use U.S. all the time; others don't use it at all, including most non-North American news publishers.
- "U.S.". Associated Press Stylebook (2015 ed.). (arranged alphabetically by entry, which is more specific than page numbering; 2015 is the most recent edition I have) strangely recommends to use U.S. in body copy but US in headlines (probably because it recommends against all-caps headlines but for maximal headline compression).
- United Press International Stylebook (4th ed.). 2004. (which no one follows but UPI)
- The Wall Street Journal Essential Guide to Business Style and Usage. 2002., says to always use U.S. and never give United States, except "in quotes or for special effect". That's obviously not an encyclopedic writing style.
- The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage (5th ed.). 2015. (arranged alphabetically by entry, which is more specific than page numbering), which says "U.S. for United States, but only in headlines, summaries, tables and charts, and when unavoidable in picture captions." Seems like AP Stylebook, right? But then it insists on URL but U.S.A.I.D., U.S.S.R., V.A.; then VC and VCR; but a surprise dodge to Unicef and Unesco, yet U.N.; and finally has a total meltdown: "U.N.AIDS (no spaces) for the United Nations program on H.I.V. and AIDS." Wow. There's just no rhyme or reason to this at all. Pretty much no one else in the world would contemplate writing "U.N.AIDS", much less "H.I.V. and AIDS", or "U.N." then "Unesco".
- "Reuters Handbook of Journalism". Reuters. 2017. abbreviations. Retrieved 8 October 2017. Generally, omit full stops or periods in acronyms unless the result would spell an unrelated word. Most abbreviations of more than two letters do not take periods. But use periods in most two-letter abbreviations: U.S., U.N. (Exceptions include: EU, UK). That's an idiosyncratic house style.
- "BBC News Style Guide". 2017. Grammar, spelling and punctuation section. Retrieved 8 October 2017.. Uses "US President James Tucker"; advises "UN, Nato, IRA, BBC"; this is consistent with typical British press usage ("US" not "U.S.", but treat pronounceable "word acronyms" in Aids and Unesco style), which can be verified with online style guides from The Guardian, The Economist, London Times, etc.; I'm not going to include them all individually.
News search: Just doing a Google News search clearly demonstrates a preference for "US" even in American publications, though as noted above particulars vary all over the place, with "U.S." sometimes used in main text but not headlines, or vice versa, or not at all, or in both. Google Ngrams can't be used for this to check out book usage, unfortunately, as they processed "U.S." and "US" as synonymous and merged them.
I recall from previous digging that some business-English guides other than that of the Am. Mktg. Assn. also favor "U.S." Marketing ones, which are otherwise similar on many points, tend not to, because they deal with a lot of fancy logo typography, and know that dots in abbreviations in signage and ads impair quick reading when they're superfluous.
Sabin, William A. (2005). "When to Use Abbreviations". Gregg Reference Manual (10th ed.). McGraw-Hill. p. 146. Has no explicit rules that are relevant here. Illustrates and consistently uses no-dots upper case for most acronyms and initialisms: IBM, ZIP, AIDS, CT or CAT scan, URL, CST and EDT, NAACP, SEC. Makes conventionalized exceptions for a few things: Ph.D., laser, a.m./p.m., A.D./B.C.; wants dots after Co., Inc., Ltd. However, does use "U.S." in several examples (at least some of them quoted material).
Faigley, Lester (2012). "50b. Acronyms". The Penguin Handbook (4th ed.). Boston: Longman / Pearson. pp. 680–682. Punctuation of abbreviations and acronyms: The trend now is away from using periods with many abbreviations. In formal writing you can still use periods, with certain exceptions. Do not use periods with: 1. Acronyms and initial-letter abbreviations: AFL-CIO, AMA, HMO, NAFTA, NFL, OPEC. 2. Two-letter mailing abbreviations: AZ (Arizona) .... 3. Compass points: NE (northeast) .... 4.) Technical abbreviations: kph (kilometers per hour), SS (sum of squares), SD (standard deviation). Entire section illustrates all acronyms and initialisms in AIDS, NASA, etc. style (except for assimilated-as-words acronyms like laser, and Latinisms like i.e.). Doesn't make an exception for US, or address it directly.
Faigley, Lester (2015). "47b. Acronyms". The Brief Penguin Handbook (5th ed.). Boston: Longman / Pearson. pp. 519–521. Exact same text on this material as in the larger previous edition.

This is just a start, though it took several hours and I'd rather not do more unless really necessary.

Conclusion so far:: "US" is dominant in English generally. "U.S." is still present aplenty in North American writing, but its usage is wildly inconsistent in American news publishing (even opposite from publication to publication as to whether it's used in headlines vs. body copy), now eschewed in academic publishing (what MoS is almost entirely based on), though found consistently in US legal writing. There's no recent style guide evidence that the dot-bearing spelling is preferred in Canada (the stuff that favors it is also from the '90s); the 2000 Canadian source doesn't favor "U.S." The rule to abbreviate adjectival but not noun use is common but not universal, and may be eroding (CMoS thinks so); however, various guides that do not have this rule instead do not want country names abbreviated at all except in tables, citations, etc. Some just do not really care, though. [Side observation: All these sources in favor of acronyms and initialisms in the form UN and FBI are also in favor of no dots in PhD and other degrees and titles. A semi-recent RfC on that closed without consensus as I recall, because no one did the style-guide research. If it comes up again, the sources in the above list can be used to ensure a closure with consensus for dropping the extraneous dots.]
— SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ< 01:54, 8 October 2017 (UTC); updated 08:41, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

@SMcCandlish: Regarding "now eschewed in academic publishing", consider the recent book titles "Reasserting America in the 1970s: U.S. public diplomacy and the rebuilding of America's image abroad" (Oxford Univ. Press, 2016), "The Crisis and Renewal of U.S. Capitalism: A Civilizational Approach to Modern American Political Economy" (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2015), "In Our Hands: The Struggle for U.S. Child Care Policy" (NYU Press, 2017). It is true that Chicago Press has come out against periods in "U.S." but the claim that the periods are "eschewed in academic publishing" is much too strong to sustain. (Note that Cambridge and Oxford are, historically at least, non-U.S. presses!) — Carl (CBM · talk) 16:55, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

And? No one made a case that "U.S." is no longer in use. Pick any MoS rule, and I can find you a book title that doesn't follow it. We have no control over whether a particular publisher bucks the CMoS and has its own house style on some minor thing; probably most major publishers have several. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ< 00:33, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

Your list mixes up different nationalities, and includes style guides that don't say what you're claiming. Can you post below three or four American or Canadian style guides, with page numbers, that advocate US over U.S.?

For example, I'd like to see the advice from the Canadian Press Stylebook and Associated Press Stylebook, which are used by lots of publishers, not only newspapers. I have these, and they don't say what you claim, but I don't own the latest editions, so perhaps they have changed. The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage doesn't advocate US. I notice that the Globe and Mail in Canada still uses U.S. (in articles not only in headlines). SarahSV ^(talk) 02:08, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

The lead-in wording in the MoS edit that you questioned doesn't even exist any longer so this may be moot. Anyway, my source list doesn't "mix up" anything; it includes material to get a fuller picture, on multiple issues: 1) whether a special exception for "U.S." is being maintained in sources (and which ones if so); 2) whether a claim is being made that American English favors dots generally (if so, where it is coming from); 3) whether an adjective-versus-noun or other restriction on use of the abbreviated form is being advocated; and others. One of these is a question for which US-focused style guides are more relevant, but the others are not. If all I did is list style guides that agreed with me, I would obviously be WP:CHERRYPICKING, which would not be very informative or good-faith, would it? I already have AP Stylebook in the list. Same with NYT, including an illustration of how radically inconsistent it is from entry to entry. I don't have a current (only late '90s) Canadian Press Stylebook; since you do, please quote the relevant material from it. Odds are it will favor "U.S." either in headlines or body copy, perhaps both, but probably not neither, since statistically that's a common loose pattern across all North American journalism (i.e., "U.S." is often in there somewhere, but which publisher does what with it varies from paper to paper). It appears to be another journalism versus academic register matter, though it is rapidly disintegrating; what used to be markedly consistent use of "U.S." in journalism has completely splintered. No one suggested that any particular individual newspapers like Globe and Mail have completely abandoned "U.S.", so I'm not sure why you mention that one in particular. I provided a Google News search that shows that every usage combination you can think of is in play in news. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ< 04:38, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

Can you post below a few North American style guides, apart from Chicago, that advocate US? No commentary, please, just the titles and page numbers, so that I can look them up. SarahSV ^(talk) 05:02, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

Do we really need to go around looking for sources to back up this smal change of losing a few full-stops that aren't ambiguous in the vast majority of cases? Some of us keep on wanting to refer to external style guides, but what really matters is that we are creating a coherent style guide our own. Some of the comments above indicate the contributors' insecurity with defining our own style, and we'd be chasing our tails forever if we continue in this way. All we need is to agree on a line to take, and then take it, or we might as well abandon our style guide and go with one or other of the external ones and be done with it. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 10:25, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

Well, yes, if someone wants to make claims that seem at odds with the actual experience of people who live in North America and see "U.S." on a daily basis, that person is going to need to point to some actual evidence that "US" is now "dominant" (as the M.O.S. claims at present). Particularly when the M.O.S. section goes on to explain how "U.S." is actually still quite commonly used. It looks to me like this is possibly just the personal preferences of a few M.O.S. regulars. In any case, I don't see a reason to unilaterally change "U.S." to "US" in existing articles that use "U.S." consistently. — Carl (CBM · talk) 16:44, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

Wording no longer appears, so the point is moot. However, see confirmation bias. If you live in the US as I do, and don't care that much about the matter, you'll also notice lots and lots and lots of "US". — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ< 01:13, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

FWIW, if it isn't already clear by now, I totally support the abolition of the full-stops within constructions such as U.S.A.F., U.S. Marines, U.K.I.P. and the like from within Wikipedia. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 10:28, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

No, I'm not going to re-post below what I've already posted above, specially arranged for a single editor; I don't entertain any "you have to do special stuff for me to get my vote" demands. I also don't accept the implication, that we're going to hold talk page discussions about internal WP:P&G material to stricter standards of sourcing than we actually do articles. Source runs like the above are already a text-wall and a lot of work, though sometimes a necessary one (and hopefully reusable; I formatted most of it in cite templates for a reason). The substantive matters raised appear to have been addressed already, anyway. A post below outlines some of the US sources in favor of "US", though this list will grow as more sources are added. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ< 21:49, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

It isn't reasonable to expect people to wade through thousands of words looking for the sources. Please do what any other editor would do in this situation and post here a few North American sources that support your position, with page numbers, so that I can look them up. SarahSV ^(talk) 23:45, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

It's entirely reasonable when it's a bullet list of sources and direct quotations from them, properly formatted, and followed only by short notes (which you're free to ignore). Every single person here is entirely comfortable with doing that, and I don't believe for a second that you can't handle it. I refer you to Wikipedia:Gaming the system#Gaming the consensus-building process, points 1 and 2. Anyway, if you're just having a bad day with a lack of focus, open the section in source mode and do ctrl-f (Mac: cmd-f) and search for the string {{cite and you'll step through the material cite by cite. Almost all of them provide titles and page numbers, which is what you requested below anyway. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ< 01:11, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

Indeed, I'm with Ohconfucius and SMcCandlish on this. Time to update. And it doesn't mean that the dots shouldn't be replicated for US agencies and departments that still persist with it. Tony (talk) 11:25, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

I don't see a reason to unilaterally change "U.S." to "US" in existing articles that use "U.S." consistently. Neither is genuinely better than the other, and the version with periods is very commonly used. — Carl (CBM · talk) 16:44, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

"retain U.S. in American or Canadian English articles in which it is already established, unless there is a good reason to change it." That's the same standard applied to all ENGVAR, DATEVAR, CITEVAR, TITLEVAR matters. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ< 21:49, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

I must raise the question of initials in names, eg 'H. G. Wells': why would we continue to write this instead of 'HG Wells'/'H G Wells' when things like 'U.S.' are losing their points? It seems like an issue of consistency. I always support the dropping of points for initials (including latin ones—am, pm, eg, ie and certainly etc), but recognise that these will be rejected because they are lower case. Name initials are caps, so surely the same rules should apply as country names. –Sb2001 ^{talk page} 17:06, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

Although I agree with CBM "personal preferences of a few M.O.S. regulars"......both  SMcCandlish and Tony have been guiding us all very well in writing the MoS for a decade......if they believe this will solve some minor format/debate issue......I support them and their effort.--Moxy (talk) 17:19, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

Personal initials are an unrelated matter. They're not defined as acronyms, and style guides that recommend "US" and "IMF" style almost all recommend dots after human initials (even the academic British guides, though they recognize the existence of the dot-less style; it's primarily used in British/Commonwealth English journalism, and to a lesser extent Canadian). Avoiding confusion of the not-dots-for-initialisms rule for a no-dots-for-initials rule is why so many of the sources quoted above have wording about initialisms of more than one letter. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ< 21:49, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

I am completely in favour of asking for 'US', but do not support the justification that changes should go ahead because they have been raised by certain editors. That begins to look like somewhat of a dictatorship. CBM is right to question/scrutinise every detail of the proposition, and all of us should be doing that. Plenty of people support the idea of 'US' being favoured over 'U.S.', if not only for convenience: UK must be written as 'UK', and if that is present, 'U.S.' is not allowed. It seems foolish to have something allowed in certain situations, but not others, when there is a perfectly good substitute which is always acceptable. The assertion that this is about a few regulars pushing their own opinions is not entirely true—there is a lot of support for this, and the verdicts of style guides have been listed. –Sb2001 ^{talk page} 17:29, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

"It was my idea" certainly has nothing to do with my reasoning. It's not my idea. It's where the sources and real-world usage are leading us. Please keep in mind that MoS is based almost entirely on CMoS and New Hart's, (plus, for technical material, Scientific Style and Format). Neither CMoS nor NH currently recommend "U.S." Most importantly, the American one, CMoS, hasn't done so for two editions, not since the early 2000s (15th ed.). That by itself is enough to make the change probably, but given backup from MLA Style Manual and [medical] AMA Manual of Style (for academic publishing), MLA Handbook and Penguin Handbook (for university students), The New Century Handbook and (by example, without an explicit rule) The Bedford Handbook (both for general and business writing), etc., we have more than enough. Style guides strongly in favor of "U.S." are almost all legal and journalism (and journalism applies no consistent rule, but just wants to use U.S. sometimes, in conflicting ways. I've also agreed with the idea we can RfC it, nor have I re-reverted anyone. Other editors who agree with the change have reverted attempts to remove it, and I've reworded it to resolve concerns addressed, which seems entirely normal editing to me. This discussion effectively is an RfC, so I don't see the point of opening a new one. We could add an RfC tag and a summary, but so much compromise editing has already happened, I don't really see the point. It would be more practical to post notice of this discussion at Village Pump, and I'll go do that. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ< 21:49, 8 October 2017 (UTC), updated 08:41, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

Let's look at the recent history of this matter on the most authoritative general style guide in the US: CMOS. I refer specifically to the 15th edition (2003), the 16th edition (2010), and the 17th edition (2017).
The 2003 edition explicitly "bows to tradition", and endorses "U.S." as an exception to its general principle of no points with all-capped abbreviations.
The 2010 edition—that's seven years ago, people—reversed that ruling. I quote using numbering from the 2017 edition, but the text is virtually the same in the 2010 edition (a friend checked it for me):
"10.32: “US” versus “United States”
Note that, as a matter of editorial tradition, this manual has long advised spelling out United States as a noun, reserving US for the adjective form only (where it is preferred) and for tabular matter and the like. In a departure, Chicago now permits the use of US as a noun, subject to editorial discretion and provided the meaning is clear from context. [Examples are provided:] US dollars, US involvement in China, China’s involvement in the United States or China’s involvement in the US."
In both 2010 and 2017, the exception is now the other way around, and even then only partial: "In publications using traditional state abbreviations, use periods to abbreviate United States and its states and territories: U.S., N.Y., Ill. Note, however, that Chicago recommends using the two-letter postal codes (and therefore US) wherever abbreviations are used. [My highlighting]
So their preference is generally for the undotted version. Tony (talk) 08:54, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

Page protection?

Does anyone support the idea of requesting temporary protection, to stop people adding cn templates, etc, whilst this discussion is on-going? I am sick of people adding content, removing content, re-adding it, asking for refs ... I do not care which revision stays, so long as one does, with none of this pointless tampering. I have just reverted another editor who placed a cn tag on the MoS, which is wholly inappropriate for this kind of page. Some editors want to have the final say, and will keep changing the wording until this is the case. –Sb2001 ^{talk page} 17:14, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

Well, I put on the cn tag in case someone did want to justify the term "dominant", but since you removed the cn tag, I just reworded the sentence to something more neutrally worded. The request here [8] still seems to be unaddressed, and addressing that might well address the concerns that motivated the cn tags. — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:17, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

I think SMcCandlish addressed the request for style guide support in more than sufficient detail. A long summary of what different sources recommend was provided. It is the job of the objecting user to find fault with this, and provide counter-sources, not pass their workload onto others. My suggestion of protection remains. It is inappropriate for change to be effected mid-discussion. –Sb2001 ^{talk page} 17:23, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

But the long list of sources includes many that recommend using the periods. DrKay (talk) 17:33, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

Any editor who has a problem is perfectly capable of going through the list and checking which of the sources provided ask for points and which do not. There are a fair number of each. If SMcCandlish wants to do yet more of the work for other editors, I am sure he will. –Sb2001 ^{talk page} 17:35, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

It isn't reasonable to expect editors to search through those long posts for sources. In any event, if the issue is so clear cut, why not simply post the sources so that there is clarity? SarahSV ^(talk) 23:49, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

You have been given the information. Make the effort yourself. –Sb2001 ^{talk page} 23:59, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

Aye. It's entirely reasonable to expect editors who demanded sources to look through a single list of sources for the sources they personally care about for the detail they want to verify. Anyone who can't deal with that is at the wrong project, since it's pretty much what we do at Wikipedia all day every day (other than, of course, adding new material with new sources). — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ< 00:29, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

If someone makes another change without seeking (and gaining) consensus, I shall be registering a request for page protection. Please stop it. Wait until we finish the discussion. –Sb2001 ^{talk page} 23:59, 8 October 2017 (UTC)
Yes; the entire point is laying out the current state of what style guides other than our own are saying, so editors here can see it all and judge for themselves. No one, least of all me, made any case that no one uses "U.S."; it's simply not the preference in mainstream US style guides, and it's not used consistently in US journalism, and non-US writers don't use it at all, so MOS:COMMONALITY tells us to use "US", while not picking fights about old "U.S."-using pages. The fact that two editors have now complained that I didn't cherry-pick my favorite sources that only agree with me, to make a one-sided case, is pretty mind-boggling. Impassioned advocacy of particular style quirks is not what this page is for (neither the guideline page nor its talk page). Anyway, the editwarring appears to have stopped, and the material's been revised to address concerns raised above, so a WP:RFPP request would be turned down anyway. I'm frankly disappointed that it turned in an editwarring and bad-faith-accusational direction, over trivia that was easily resolved with some copyediting. But whatever; this page always attracts a certain amount of drama-mongering. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ< 00:23, 9 October 2017 (UTC)
"non-US writers don't use it at all" - I showed you [9] two examples of recent books by Cambridge press and Oxford press that do use "U.S." in their title. We cannot seriously argue that this was a mistake - professional presses do not make mistakes in the titles of their books. So even (historically) non-US presses do use the periods in some cases. My point is that we need to avoid making overly broad claims. What seems to be true is that both "U.S." and "US" are commonly used, and that there are some style guides that favor US, while others favor U.S. or some hybrid. — Carl (CBM · talk) 16:01, 9 October 2017 (UTC)
@CBM: if you look more carefully at these books, you'll see that although nominally published by UK publishers, they use at least some US spelling. The chapters in The Crisis and Renewal of American Capitalism for example, include the spellings "civilizational", "globalization" (the "z" is ok for British Oxford style but not used by CUP in British spelling) and "labor". I'm old enough to be tempted by the stops, but "U.S." is indeed rare in the UK now in my experience. SMcCandlish may have slightly exaggerated by saying non-US writers don't use it at all, but his general point is correct. Peter coxhead (talk) 16:20, 9 October 2017 (UTC)
@Peter: I agree completely with your general impression of the books. What I am pointing out is exactly the "slight exaggeration" that seems to be a repeating feature of this discussion. Claim have been made that "US" is "dominant" over "U.S.", that it is "now eschewed in academic publishing", that "non-US writers don't use it". Here we have professional, non-U.S., academic presses which do use "U.S." - so perhaps we should not be so quick to assert its demise. Claims that are exaggerated enough to clearly be incorrect don't further a position, they weaken it. It is not clear to me why the M.O.S. needs to take any position on this issue. — Carl (CBM · talk) 18:48, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

Peter, he didn't "slightly exaggerate". U.S. is used in North America, and not only in journalism. And given that almost half our readers are from North America, [10] and that North America supplies the largest percentage of editors, [11] this is another example of the MoS ghettoizing itself. SarahSV ^(talk) 20:30, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

No wording about usage frequency remains in the material in question, so this is moot. But fine; try "virtually no non-US writers use it at all". Any other wikilawyerly commentary? >;-) And, yes, Oxford and Cambridge UPs publish lots of stuff by US authors, and maintain offices in the United States (and India, and ...). Hell, most editions of Garner's Modern American Usage were published by Oxford UP. They've become major world publishers, and they generally run with the "ENGVAR" of the writer; I see no evidence whatsoever that Oxford, for example, forces British style norms of any kind on American writers that it publishes – not "colour" spelling, nor 'Quote then "quoted quote" punctuation', nor anything else. I read quite a lot of OUP's output. By contrast, see the online style guides of British newspapers. From what I can tell they are unanimous on "US" or "USA", never with dots, and they use exactly the same style from article to article no matter who wrote it (plenty of BBC correspondents are Americans; BBC News is also a global enterprise at this point).
But all of this is beside the point. The actual point is that usage has shifted. There is no claim being made anywhere that no one uses "U.S." any more. The facts are that 1) most of the world does not use "U.S."; 2) North American publications used to be almost entirely consistent on "U.S." but are now frequently using "US"; 3) those that still use "U.S." do not do it consistently from house style to house style; and 4) major US style guides now recommend "US", which was not true from the early 2000s on back. All this focus on "ah ha! I found an isolated exception" is a meaningless distraction. There is no longer a tenable ENGVAR case for "U.S.", but there's an overwhelming COMMONALITY case for "US". — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ< 20:44, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

Break

Which North American style guides, other than the Chicago Manual of Style, recommend US? SarahSV ^(talk) 22:29, 9 October 2017 (UTC)
Already answered this. Please do not WP:BADGER people in discussions you're not even bothering to read. This is at least the third time you've demanded sources that have already been provided, a FUD technique. I refer you again to WP:FILIBUSTER item 2. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ< 01:42, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
You gave a list of stylebooks supporting your position that mixed up American and non-American sources indiscriminately, and then separately as if by afterthought a list of stylebooks not supporting your position larded up with editorialization about why we shouldn't take them seriously. That does not seem like an appropriately neutral response to this question. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:49, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
Been over that twice already [12],[13], too. See WP:SATISFY. I'm under no obligation on a talk page to present sources in any particular order, to present them without my opinion, to present only ones that agree with me (as demanded by two others above), or to present those that don't agree with me first, as you seem to retroactively want (or to present sources at all; we could just have argued about it longwindedly without sources, as we usually do about guideline wording). Whether the style guide in question is British or American is obvious from the title or publisher in almost all cases (in most cases one, the other, or both also have their own article here, and most people who participate in MoS discussions are already familiar with them). — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ< 21:30, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
It seems to me that the tenable ENGVAR case is that U.S. is still commonly used by many authors and publications - including journalism, which is a major source of published text but which you seem willing to ignore entirely because the way they use periods is not neat enough or does not match the recommendation you'd like to make. It is not clear to me that actual usage has shifted, even if the CMOS has very recently begun to recommend US instead of U.S. I just looked at a story on the front page of Harper's online, [14], which also uses U.S. - similarly the New Yorker [15] - in what is undoubtedly highly edited and highly educated prose. There are so many exceptions to the claimed shift in practice that it does not actually look like a shift, at least not at this point. — Carl (CBM · talk) 11:03, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
ENGVAR doesn't work that way. It works on the basis of a clear and nearly universal and consistently applied national split, like color/neighbor/flavor vs. colour/neighbour/flavour or trunk/hood/fender/curb vs boot/bonnet/wing/kerb. WP isn't written in news style per WP:NOT#NEWS, and MoS takes almost nothing from journalism style guides, because journalistic writing is the wrong register for encyclopedic writing. Journalism is also not consistent in what it does with "U.S." Two editions of Chicago back to back having the same rule for "US" isn't "very recently" for our purposes. You seem to making an argument that a shift in usage has to be something adopted by every single person, and no linguist in the world would agree with that. As noted above at least three times, no one claimed that zero publishers still use "U.S.", and the source pile directly links to a Google search that shows mixed usage; we already know, so providing two random examples of magazines using "U.S." is meaningless. We've covered all of this before multiple times, in this discussion and previous ones. (Especially the idea that "I can find it some American sources" = "I have an ENGVAR case even though it's not consistently used in American sources". I can find "10 October 2017" dates in lots of American sources, too. Shall we declare DMY dates American now?) — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ< 21:30, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

SMcCandlish, please say which North American style guides, other than the Chicago Manual of Style, recommend "US". I've looked and can't find any, and I haven't noticed a change. Some 2017 examples of "U.S.": New York University Press: "refugees who moved to the U.S."; Yale University Press: "departed the U.S. mainland"; Harvard University Press: "male bonding in the U.S. novel"; New Yorker: "second U.S. civil war". SarahSV ^(talk) 22:03, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

Already answered this, repeatedly. Please stop playing this WP:ICANTHEARYOU game. And none of your links go to style guides or other reliable sources on English usage (American or otherwise); all they tell us are that some books used "U.S." That some would do so hasn't been challenged by anyone anyway. They don't even tell us whether it was the author's choice and an editor didn't care, was the opposite of the author's choice and an editor changed it, or what. The New Yorker has its own house style which is widely divergent from even other journalism publishers (the most comparable is probably The New York Times; both of them have an intentionally (almost fiercely) traditionalist style more in keeping with mid-20th-century writing; it's part of their branding strategy. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ< 22:12, 10 October 2017 (UTC), revised 04:31, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

I'm confused by your claim that this is not an ENGVAR situation. The text of the MOS in this section directly says to keep using "U.S." in articles using American English that already use "U.S." - which is itself just a restatement of ENGVAR. More generally, the difference in usage seems to be very much a variation of American vs. other usage. Nobody claims that every American writer needs to use "U.S." in order for us to recognize that "U.S." is still a very common usage in the U.S., which should be respected when already established. Even if the C.M.O.S. recommends "US", it is still the case that "U.S." is a hallmark of U.S. writing. Similarly not every author in the U.K. needs to use "UK" in order to recognize that the use of "UK" is a hallmark of U.K. writing, which should be respected in articles that have established it. — Carl (CBM · talk) 23:57, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

It's not a restatement of MOS:ENGVAR, but of MOS:STYLEVAR. They are not the same thing. STYLEVAR is about article stability against trivial changes to optional style, which tends to irritate other editors without improving article quality enough to justify it. ENGVAR is a narrow subset of STYLEVAR, pertaining to and only to matters of consistent national usage distinct from different patterns of consistent national usage elsewhere (changing away from which has a tendency to generate a lot of drama, and negatively impact readers by mismatching dialect and topic). "U.S." with dots hasn't been a pattern of consistent national usage for at least 20 years, or longer depending on what your tolerance range for "consistent" is; the dot-less style was already pretty common in US print by the 1980s if not earlier. The only reason I included the nod to STYLEVAR at all is that I figured people would vent about it if I didn't. If folks are going to complain that it's redundant to include it, just remove it. I think the result would be people changing "U.S."-laden articles to use "US". One could see that as a consistency-increasing boon, but the probable amount of drama about it would probably not be worth it.

"U.S." isn't a "hallmark" of American writing, but a shibboleth. "Usually not found outside American writing" and "Usually found in American writing to the exclusion of US" are not the same thing, and we already know the latter isn't true, though it was when I was little. ENGVAR only cares about the latter kind of case. E.g., ENGVAR doesn't make it okay to use "gobsmacked" on Wikipedia just because it's almost only found in British and Commonwealth English; exclusivity to a dialect or dialect continuum is insufficient. It is not the almost-exclusive way in British or Commonwealth English to express the concept, just as "U.S." is not the only way to abbreviate "United States" commonly seen in North American writing. By contrast, "neighbour" and "kerb" are essentially unknown in American writing, in which "neighbor" and "curb" are universal, thus are an ENGVAR matter. I don't think this can be explained any more clearly. PS: "UK" is not a hallmark or a shibboleth of British writing, but the norm across all English-language usage, including in the US. Even the declining number of American style guides that prefer "U.S." as a special case say to use UK, USSR, PRC, etc.; the sole exception I could find was The Cooper Hill Stylebook, which would even write "U.N.E.S.C.O."
— SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ< 03:50, 11 October 2017 (UTC), revised 04:31, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

WP:CREEP reduction: Please keep in mind that the no. 1 complaint about MoS boils down to "too many fiddly and nit-picky rules".
- What we had until a couple of days ago (based apparently on CMoS 15th edition) was a rule structure of do A except ( (do B if X applies and if (Y1 or Y2 applies)) or (do C if Z applies) ) – don't use dots with initialisms, except there's a special rule for abbreviating "United States": use "U.S." in North American English, if the page is already using it, or if you want to and you're making the first major contribution; but use "US" if the article is in British or some other ENGVAR.
- What it has now is do A but (permit B if Y1) – don't use dots with initialisms, except leave "U.S." alone in North American English articles that already have it.
- The "unless there's a good reason to impose a U.S. to US change" caveat applied in both versions, e.g. to avoid mixing "U.S." and "UK" style.
- Arguably just do A (don't use dots in initialisms, at all) would be even better, but the middle-ground approach seemed a good compromise, based on real-world sources not being 100% against "U.S." (yet), and based on the propensity toward drama when MoS aims for commonality that some editors resist out of traditionalism.

An example of that last point is that the result of the MOS:JR RfC (a very similar shift-in-American-usage matter) was stiffly resisted by half a dozen editors at RM after RM for about a year; having an RfC doesn't actually do much to prevent short-term traditionalist or nationalist recalcitrance against a change in favor of commonality over American exceptionalism.

We know from our quotation marks rules (in favor of accurate and unambiguous quoting, over conflicting North American and other styles), that editors in the aggregate really don't care much, and will generally either learn and follow MoS (if they're that kind of person), or ignore it and write however they are used to but without any resistance to WP:GNOMEs cleaning it up later. It's always just a handful of editors who resist and resist until blue in the face, and it really doesn't seem to matter what particular line-item sets them off. I.e., there's nothing special about this case.

— SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ< 05:29, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

Re: "too many fiddly and nit-picky rules". I could clarify ... Too many exceptions to accommodate whatever and appease a vocal minority - "... but it only applies if you are making an edit while standing on your head or if you are making an edit on the night of a full-moon but not both, in which case ...". Totally rediculous. This is our style-guide. We can do whatever we choose to do - just as any other style guide does and for whatever reason, arbitrary or not (that we or they choose). We could even choose to have purple borders with yellow and green polka-dots randomly dispersed throughout. (Heaven hep us.) This proposal is very specifically not about instigating widespread disruptive edits to WP. This is not about denying that U.S. is still used (to a degree) in the US. (How many full stops should I have here?) This proposal is about us taking control of our own stlye guide - even if we are guided by other guides in making our choices. SMacC has provided a broad range of sources (without bias or prejudice that would cherrypick) for us to consider. It is our duty to consider the proposition - not his duty to meet our "due diligence" in making our decision. Acknowledging an impediment to contributing effectively to the discussion is laudable. Expecting others to "make up" for this is not. Small rant over. I have not intended to be uncivil to anybody (either specifically or generally) and hope that my "frankness" is not interpreted as same. Cinderella157 (talk) 10:12, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

Well said indeed, Cinderella157. As I also said above, it's our style guide, and all we need is some form of consensus (not unanimity) to put various styles in place. WP already has a very accommodating style, which makes us unique, but it's unnecessarily complicated in having the mish-mash tolerated under WP:ENGVAR which leaves the average reader perplexed. To return to the main point, a whole bunch of other style references have already been posted by the proposer, and I see no interest for anyone to continue to badger him, any other editor or group of editors for a source "other than the CMOS" because it seems like pig-headed obstructionism and WP:I DON'T LIKE IT. With that, why would anyone support our MOS instead of arguing that we should merely follow AP instead of having tp bother? -- Ohc ^¡digame! 18:51, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

WP:Common-style fallacy essay covers the Associated Press style issue in detail; some people are under the impression that because they see something in a newspaper or the AP Stylebook that this is how WP must write, when of course that's nonsense. WP doesn't use news style; it's completely inappropriate for encyclopedic writing. The only thing I can think of that we've taken from journalism style guides are some aspects of MOS:IDENTITY because the academic style guides had not addressed transgender pronoun issues yet. Now that some of them have, they're doing so consisteny with AP and other journalism; it's a special case of happy convergence. Where academic and journalistic style directly conflict on something; we virtually always side with academic; when we don't, we compromise (as we did on capitalization of prepositions in titles of works). — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ< 20:33, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

That's my point exactly, my irony got lost, it seems. Each journal has its readership, which explains why each publication will have a style guide (or will have chosen from another suitable style guide). It justifies having our own, and it's quite right that we can choose any style we think fits with that readership. We don't need to be a Meta-style guide, or require a plethora of sources to support any given style item that represents majority usage around the world. For example, we can decide to have upper case for all surnames in namespace if we bellieve it's meaningful to our readers, without regard to whatever the external practices are. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 20:49, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

It doesnt need to reflect "majority usage around the world", it just needs to work for us - at soooo many levels (and sometimes, majority usage will be one level). A camel was a horse designed by a committee but I would rather ride a horse. Regards, Cinderella157 (talk) 08:42, 13 October 2017 (UTC)

I do think this is a change for the better, albeit very minor. Much simpler, and more consistent. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 23:10, 16 October 2017 (UTC).

This American editor would prefer a measure of standardization on "US" over "U.S." going forward. It would just be simpler to use one version of the abbreviation and deprecate the other, especially to eliminate the inconsistency we already have where "UK", "USAF", et al. are used, but we still us "U.S.". Another example: U.S. Route 66, et al. with dots are abbreviated "US 66", no dots. Imzadi 1979 → 05:27, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

Amusingly, one of the American style guides still in favor of "U.S." actually prescribed "U.S. 66", despite that not being what is typically used. Just more evidence that this defense of "U.S." is a stubborn, emotive traditionalism matter, not a logic-based one. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ< 01:33, 21 October 2017 (UTC)

Inline Wiktionary links

Latest comment: 7 years ago7 comments6 people in discussion

I've recently noticed a couple examples of terms which are linked to a corresponding wikt: page (I'm talking about normal inline links, not using {{wiktionary}}). These seem like a bit of a surprise to me; rather than getting an article about a subject, a user just gets a dictionary definition. But I've been unable to find much information about this situation, so I thought I'd ask here for further pointers/guidance. It seems like a decoration on a link (with a small icon, similar to what I've seen other wikis do when linking back to WP) would at least mitigate the surprise factor, but I don't know how technically feasible that is. Thanks! --Deacon Vorbis (talk) 15:05, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

These seem to be tolerated when it's a term that should be linked (not an everyday word), and we don't have an article or section to link to on WP; see second footnote at WP:EL. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ< 20:42, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

Okay, thanks. --Deacon Vorbis (talk) 21:47, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

I have done the same with "gubernatorial". A term common in the US but not elsewhere. The encyclopedic redirect is to govenor but the wictionary link is more useful (IMO), that it is the adjectival form. I have had a small stand-up with a US editor that thought the link superfluous and everybody else in the world was just ignorant. Some editors think it their duty to expand the vocabulary of the world. A link to wictionary can be useful if it is a matter of "meaning" but not "concept" like togs. Everybody knows what a swimsuit is(?) but not everybody knows what togs are. Sometimes, it is easier, more useful and less hassle to link to the definition. My experience FWIIW. Regards, Cinderella157 (talk) 08:33, 13 October 2017 (UTC)

To me, there seems to be a tendency for some editors to add wikilinks to terms such as "née" and "mononymous". There may be a percieved need to define such terms, but wikilinks may not be justified because they are not germane (ie very peripheral) to the subject. I find these wikilinks, in the vast majority of cases, do not form part of the useful information net in any given biography, and as such linking would create distractive linking. I'd prefer not to see any such blueness at all. But if some sort of glosing is absolutely necessary, I feel that wiktionary links are preferable. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 16:30, 13 October 2017 (UTC)

The MoS guideline about inline links to sister projects is this from MOS:ELLAYOUT (emphasis added):

"Links to Wikimedia sister projects and {{Spoken Wikipedia}} should generally appear in "External links", not under "See also". Two exceptions are Wiktionary and Wikisource links that may even be linked inline (e.g. to an unusual word or the text of a document being discussed)."

The bolded sentence also appears verbatim at WP:MOSSIS. Then there is this at MOS:UNDERLINK:

"An article is said to be underlinked if words are not linked and are needed to aid understanding of the article. In general, links should be created to:

...

Articles explaining words of technical terms, jargon or slang expressions/phrases—but you could also provide a concise definition instead of or in addition to a link. If there is no appropriate Wikipedia article, an interwikimedia link to Wiktionary could be used."

I have only used wiktionary inline links a handful of times. AHeneen (talk) 01:33, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

I think MOS:ELLAYOUT is not relevant to this question. It appears to describe only how to decide whether to place links in an external links section vs in a see-also section; I don't think it applies to inline links. For one thing, the context is that it's in a part of the MOS that describes those sections, not describing links in article text. For another, if you read it as applying to article text then it would ban interlanguage links, contradicting both actual practice and the encouragement in Wikipedia:Wikimedia sister projects, so I don't think that reading makes sense. —David Eppstein (talk) 02:27, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

Discussion at Talk:Democratic–Republican Party#Hyphen or Dash?

Latest comment: 7 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Democratic–Republican Party#Hyphen or Dash?. —GoldRingChip 13:03, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

Using different portraits for a person who appears twice in a list

Latest comment: 7 years ago5 comments5 people in discussion

Is there any specific guideline discouraging the usage of different portraits for the same list entry? I personally believe there should be one, but I was just wondering whether this is merely an unwritten rule. Quite a number of lists I've seen, such as List of Presidents of the United States, List of Prime Ministers of Italy, use the same portrait for list entries that appear more than once (such as Grover Cleveland for the former and Amintore Fanfani for the latter). Conversely there are lists that do use different portraits for repeated list entries, such as Leader of the Labour Party (UK) (which happens to use two different portraits for Harriet Harman, one for her 2010 stint and another for 2015). I myself would support a policy recommending that repeated list entries should use the same portrait.--Nevé –selbert 20:36, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

An argument for using different ones will be historical accuracy of the portrait at different time periods, but this will only apply when the portrait dates are known and correspond to the terms/reigns/whatever. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ< 22:44, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

I know of no guideline that either encourages or discourages... nor should there be. Such decisions can be left to the judgement of editors at the local article level. If local editors disagree they can resolve it by RFC. Blueboar (talk) 23:43, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

Very much agree with this. Editors should use their own discretion based on the relevant factors, new policies on this topic would only contribute to turning Wikipedia into a bureaucracy. ToastButterToast (talk) 08:01, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

A portrait should be the same unless they are from the period they represent. The Harriet Har-person example you present goes against this, as the images are from irrelevant years (2007 and 2017). The LotLP page should—therefore be amended to include either the same image, or one from 2010 and one from 2015. We should have guidelines to this effect. –Sb 2001 01:10, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

MOS:COMMA

Latest comment: 7 years ago15 comments5 people in discussion

The manual of style calls for commas after dates, however, it is being disputed that British format dates does not require said-comma. Does the MOS not apply to DD-MM-YYYY dates and only MM-DD-YYYY ones? livelikemusic talk! 12:52, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

Are you referring to DMY? DD-MM-YYYY should not be used in articles. –Sb 2001 13:46, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

Yes, that was what I referring to. Sorry for the confusion. I'm used to dealing with templates that automatically detail the DD/MM, etc. livelikemusic talk! 13:51, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

The example the MoS gives is for MDY. I do not think the intention of the editor who added this was to suggest that DMY should not take a succeeding comma. I know that some editors do not place the comma after the year even for MDY (EEng), but we must try to stick with the MoS wherever possible. I do not see any benefit to being pedantic about the specifics of the example, so would ask for a comma after the year for DMY. –Sb 2001 15:50, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

A vaguely relevant discussion occurred here: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers/Archive 156#Date ranges and commas in prose. –Sb 2001 15:59, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Thank you, Sb2001. I'll look at that in a moment.

Would someone be so kind as to point out exactly which part of the MoS this is in reference to? I generally do not put a comma after the year in DMY dates unless a parenthetical phrase or statement appears enclosed in a pair of commas right after it. Dates often appear in initial prepositional phrases, and the use of a comma after such an initial prepositional phrase is optional (just needs to be consistent within the article), and I generally do not think one is necessary, so I would not support encouraging its use with an example such as

On 28 September 2007,...

Other than mentioning that a comma usually is used after the year in the MDY format, which it is already, I don't see why a comma needs to be mentioned in connection with the DMY format at all. – Corinne (talk) 16:06, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

It is the fourth point at MOS:COMMA. It does mention only MDY. I think the example you give is an instance where a succeeding comma is required. That is where the pause would be in speech and reading. Why would we want to create a disagreement with MDY where there does not need to be one? –Sb 2001 16:15, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

Look, this is getting all confused. It's useless to talk about the following examples –

On the morning of September 11, 2001, Smith went ...
On the morning of 11 September 2001, Smith went ...

– because the comma is there for a reason having nothing to do with the date i.e. the same reason there's a comma in this:

On every Wednesday without rain, Smith went ...

Here are examples that matter, in the form MOS calls for:

Events of September 11, 2001, derailed their plans.
Events of 11 September 2001 derailed their plans.

Any suggestion that the second item should have a comma anywhere in it is nuts. (As someone noted, I personally rebel against the second comma in some constructions similar to the first bullet, but that's my private cross to bear – we're talking here about what MOS calls for. See MOS:DATEFORMAT.) E Eng 20:15, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

Fair enough; there are times where it should not be necessary, so we should probably leave it at the discretion of the editor, with decisions being made in relation with context. –Sb 2001 22:38, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

I agree entirely with EEng and with Sb2001's last comment. – Corinne (talk) 23:15, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

Concur with EEng. The habit of writing "On 11 September 2001 Jones moved to Brill" is a sloppy construction used frequently by certain publishers (especially ~~The Guardian~~ The Economist) in the punctuation-hostile British press. It is not common in other registers and publishing spheres. All introductory constructions of this sort take a comma: "However, ...", "Accordingly, ...", "In Pakistan, ...", "According to Garcia, ...", etc., etc. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ< 01:39, 21 October 2017 (UTC); corrected: 07:22, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

Utter tosh. I have just inspected every page of today's Guardian ... well, yesterday's (it is currently 2.59 am here). Not one punctuation error of the sort you mention. Lots of wonderful '9.10pm's, though! I was a little disturbed to come across a hyphen being used as a range indicator. Anyway, less of the anti-Guardian stuff. It is intended to be written in its own perfectly correct style. –Sb 2001 02:01, 21 October 2017 (UTC)

I simply cited the wrong British press style guide; I was thinking of that of The Economist [16]. The comma-elimination drive is definitely coming from the British press. The reason you see the hyphen used as a range indicator in The Guardian is because most news journalism does that; they've been trying to eliminate the en dash as anything but parenthesizing sentence punctuation (with the result that those that favor the unspaced em dash for this purpose do not use en dashes at all, for anything, only hyphens and em dashes). We've already been over "9.10" and "9pm" time-styling matters; they're not WP's style, but primarily British press style, and timetable style (sometimes even in the US). WP isn't a British newspaper, or a train schedule, and we have no need to pursue hyper-compression for its own sake, or a usage easily confused with decimal time notation or some other usage of . in numbers. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ< 07:22, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

We discussed time notation around six months ago. I shall respond briefly to what you are saying—collapsed, as I do not think that other editors will be especially interested:

Extended content

The assertion that use of the full point is 'primarily British press style' is unfounded. As we discovered—through dissection of style guides—the few which actually advise the colon to be used are not academic. NHR pushes for the point, but comes to the conclusion that both are 'acceptable' styles, if used consistently. Continuing, they are not 'timetable style', either. Instead, they are prevalent in British usage, in any form. Walk down any UK high street, and nine out of 10 of the 'opening hours' signs will use a full point. Of those that do not, c 50 per cent will use 24-hour time. Appointment letters from the NHS (at least in my area) say '10.30AM'. Television preview cards on the BBC miss out am/pm, instead just writing '9.00'. Emails I receive from colleagues, making me aware of meetings, use full points; the most recent example: 'Tuesday 24th October 2017 7.30pm'. My generation seems to be the cut-off point in terms of whether a colon or full point is used. The vast majority of the people I know who are older than me use a full point; at least 60 per cent of those younger use the colon. Those exactly my age are split 50–50. The majority of bus/rail timetables use 24-hour time, so a colon is applied by default.
It is not our duty to decide whether or not a particular style is understandable. We should consider the evidence, and review the associated advantages and disadvantages. One person in the previous discussion mentioned 'decimal time', something of which I have never heard. It is simply not in widespread usage, and few people will think that '1.25 pm' means '13:15'. The fact that most British people use a full point means that it is not a confusing notation style.

Overall, the point that I am making is that time notation is not an issue of news v academic. I mentioned '9.10pm' to 'push your buttons' after you made an unnecessary jibe at the Guardian. It happened to bring the issue back into the spotlight, and highlighted that your reasons for declining the proposal earlier in the year were perhaps misguided. I have given up on the idea of '9.10 pm' being an accepted style on WP ... for now ... I wanted to provide a little more details, though.

–Sb 2001 18:03, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

Don't really see the point of bringing up time formatting again here. We covered this well enough in the prior MOS:NUM thread and at Date and time notation in the United Kingdom#English, including the fact that the "9pm" hyper-compressed style is primarily found in journalism. It's not like there's some lack of evidence that journalism opts for compressed text generally. Whether some style is "perfectly correct" or not is irrelevant; that's a prescriptive grammar notion that we just don't interface with here. As you said, we "review the associated advantages and disadvantages"; why you would also say "It is not our duty to decide whether or not a particular style is understandable" in the same breath is mysterious to me, since that's the primary means by which we review the [dis]advantages, and it is in fact what we do a lot of at the MoS talk pages. Ensuring WP's text is understandable is MoS's primary purpose (consistent presentation second, reduction of editorial disputes over style trivia third). — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ< 21:23, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

Using {{clear}} to prevent images bleeding into other sections

Latest comment: 7 years ago7 comments3 people in discussion

Does the MOS have any recommendation for or against using the {{clear}} template to prevent images from spilling into subsequent sections? It appears to be the main use of the template, according to its documentation, but I couldn't find any official guideline mention. Obviously, the best course would be not to use too many images, but this is not easy to achieve consistently across all displays. With today's huge display resolutions, an article that follows MOS:LAYIM's benchmark of not spilling over at 1024×768 might still break down on wider screens. --Paul_012 (talk) 09:03, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

It's mentioned at Wikipedia:Extended image syntax. DMacks (talk) 09:16, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. It's not really part of the MOS, though... --Paul_012 (talk) 14:49, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

Perhaps more specific recommendations could be made at MOS:IMGLOC and/or MOS:LAYIM? Something along the lines of "try not to have images spill into the next section, and optionally, use {{clear}} to prevent this happening on wider screens." --Paul_012 (talk) 14:49, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

I agree it should be mentioned in the layout MOS somewhere. I'm not sure simply spilling into later sections is a problem (the tradeoff is whitespace that interferes with flow of text). But if the later section(s) have images, there's an image-stacking problem that makes those other sections' images not located where their content is, and "put images where their content is" is a explicit MOS guideline (Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Images#Vertical placement. DMacks (talk) 16:43, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

Sorry, I think this is best left unsaid. If images are stacking (in windows of reasonable width – there's always going to be some nerd with a super-big monitor telling us that articles don't look good in super-wide windows) then resize them, juggle them to different sections, left-right alternate them, or whatever. You really shouldn't be using {clear} to solve that problem, because as already mentioned it substitutes one unattractive thing (excess vertical whitespace, which can REALLY look awful) for another. Pretty much the only time I use it is when there's an image near the end of the last section of the article, just before ==References== etc., and maybe on a wide screen the image will intrude into the references, distorting the column layout or whatever; plus I've used it in a few very well-considered situations in articles that are very stable, with a lot of images carefully laid out. (Open Phineas Gage for editing and search {clear}.) But this something best left to experienced editors, and it's best taught by their seeing it in actual use. If we start talking about {clear} in MOS some zealot will start running around adding it everywhere an image spills into the following section, and next thing you know there will be edit wars, angry words, and we'll all be at Arbcom. So let's just let this lie.

Wikipedia:Picture tutorial being burned by angry Wikipedians

BTW, I think I wrote the text at IMGLOC, An image should generally be placed in the most relevant article section; if this is not possible, try not to place an image "too early" i.e. far ahead of the point in the text discussing what the image illustrates, if this could puzzle the reader. Notice that it says an image shouldn't be too "early" – it doesn't talk about being too "late". I worded it that way consciously to avoid making editors feel every image must be neither too early nor too late, and must therefore be "just right" i.e. in the exact section. If an image of John Smith comes a paragraph later than where he's discussed in the text, that's not so bad, because the reader has presumably already read about him; but if the image comes before where he's discussed, then the reader may be puzzled.

Finally, Wikipedia:Picture tutorial is the most godawful hypertechnical overcomplicated help page we have, and should be ripped to shreds and the pieces ritually burned, if we could figure some way of doing that over the internet. It's useless – horrible. E Eng 02:27, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

Okay, fair points. I've also mostly used it to stop images breaking the references columns, but was kinda worried it might be regarded as an inappropriate lazy hack or something. I'll stop worrying. (Since you mentioned WP:Picture tutorial, might I add that I've never understood why there are so many image policy/guideline/instruction pages, nor been able to easily locate information in any of them?) --Paul_012 (talk) 17:43, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

RfC on quotations within links

Latest comment: 7 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

There is an RfC in progress at Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Linking#RfC_about_linking_in_quotations about MOS:LINKSTYLE & MOS:LWQ. NPalgan2 (talk) 18:17, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

Markup for math variables

Latest comment: 7 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

FYI

– Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Text formatting#Mathematics variables section is wrong and needs updating
— SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ< 05:41, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

Archaic -st words

Latest comment: 7 years ago6 comments4 people in discussion

Please see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Words to watch#Archaic 'st' words – it's more of a MOS:COMMONALITY vs. MOS:ENGVAR matter than a MOS:WTW one. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ< 10:12, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

The title of this section is biased. -- PBS (talk) 13:15, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

I just copy-pasted it from the original (and fixed the markup). This is just a pointer to the discussion; the place to object to the title is at the actual discussion. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ< 08:48, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

Regardless of the bias in the title (it could have been "Chiefly UK 'st' words") the subject still merits discussion. Sorry if you think the title is biased, but the fact remains that outside of the UK (particularly in America), those words are considered archaic. Various UK style guides seem to agree. ~Anachronist (talk) 20:47, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

The trouble is, if you are wanting to start an open RfC-style discussion about something, beginning by creating an impression that these words are archaic is not particularly good. You do not need to say anything about them. –Sb 2001 21:24, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

I renamed the original thread to "Are -st variants of words archaic?" (and preserved the old name as a valid link target, with {{anchor}}). Hopefully that will resolve the issue. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ< 04:55, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

Perplexing preposition problem

Latest comment: 7 years ago26 comments8 people in discussion

Recently I've run into problems with some editors who insist that the preposition at should not be used with respect to cities, but should always be changed to in, of, from, or some other word. Attempts to point out that at is perfectly appropriate and idiomatic in this context, and also expresses the intended meaning better than the alternatives, usually result in the same changes being made repeatedly. It looks as though a few editors are actively seeking out such phrases and changing them to their preferences, and resisting any attempt to convince them that at a city, town, or other geographical location is perfectly acceptable. I have asked for some authority supporting the claim that this usage is wrong or should be avoided, but haven't been shown any, and haven't found any on my own. Most grammar books and style guides are silent on the issue, or seem to support using at with cities and towns. The Oxford English Dictionary specifically says that this is one of the primary uses of at, and gives examples from the thirteenth century to the present (mostly limited to English cities such as Winchester and London, in my edition).

I'm not sure there's a Wikipedia policy that applies here. Is it simply an English variant? Or just personal preference? That's how I see it when people substitute other prepositions for the intended one. I've written a lot of articles about ancient Romans and Roman families, and over time I've come to prefer the phrase at Rome, because it conveys location without adding unintended or inaccurate meanings. In Rome implies "within the territorial boundaries", which is too specific and not necessarily accurate; of Rome and from Rome imply origin, which is often somewhere other than Rome, or at best uncertain. In any case, if at is perfectly appropriate, and more accurately expresses the intended meaning, is there any policy to point to when reverting changes to other prepositions based on another editor's preferences? Is it relevant if such a change is the only involvement that an editor has with certain articles? It's a little annoying when it appears that editors are simply searching for examples of phrases they dislike, in order to change them to ones they prefer, if they have no other interest in the articles, or understanding of the reason why one choice of words is preferable to another in a given instance. Or is even asking the question displaying "ownership behaviour"? The situation is becoming quite frustrating. P Aculeius (talk) 03:53, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

Some examples would help, but I think you're way off base here. Looking at your recent edits, I see for example "The gens Flavia was a plebeian family at Rome." (wikilinks omitted). This is horribly awkward; in or of would be a lot better here. --Deacon Vorbis (talk) 04:17, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

I don't see why you think it's "horribly awkward". Could you explain? In either case, in would be completely wrong, since it implies spatial relationships, rather than location, and therefore territorial limitation. The Flavii were a Roman family, no matter where individual members went or lived. While they were chiefly associated with Rome, they didn't have to live within the city limits, or cease to be part of the family when they went elsewhere. Of would be better than in, but it implies origin, which is not necessarily true of many Roman families. But your point seems to be that at should not be used of cities. I don't understand why anybody thinks this; it's flatly contradicted by the best authorities. The Oxford English Dictionary says, "2. With proper names of places: Particularly used of all towns . . ." with examples following: at Winchester, at London, at Jerusalem, at Edinburgh. It's not easy to search for specific prepositional phrases in literature, but I found a site to search Shakespeare, and found numerous examples: at Marseilles, at Rome, at Ephesus, at Antium, at London, at Harfleur, at York, at Venice, at Antioch, at Tyre, at Pentapolis, at Mantua, at Verona. On point, my copy of Reading Latin describes the locative case: "it is used to express 'at' with names of towns and one-town islands", with examples at Rome, at Corinth, at Athens, at Carthage, at Sardes. So what is the authority for this being incorrect? Is it just that some editors don't like it? And if that's all it is, then what's the relevant policy? P Aculeius (talk) 05:07, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

Maybe it's just me, but to me "at" is something you would use for an instantaneous action, while "in" implies a longer duration. So, "our train stopped at Rome", because stopping is a quick event, but "I stayed in Rome for a week last year" because staying is not. In the case of the gens Flavia, they were in Rome (that's where they lived), not at Rome (on their way through from somewhere else to somewhere else). This web site gives a different distinction, based on the size of the place (one that I'm not sure I agree with) but it ends up with the same result in this example. This other web site comes closer to the distinction in my mind: "at" is for specific points in space or time (time, as I explained it above) while "in" is for a broader location or time period. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:34, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

If you think for a second that The gens Flavia was a plebeian family at Rome is acceptable 21st-century English, you need to get your nose out of Gibbon. E Eng 05:58, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

Concur with Deacon Vorbis and David Eppstein. To answer P Aculeius's question, The gens Flavia was a plebeian family at Rome is horribly awkward, as Vorbis put it, because it's not idiomatic in formal English. It may be idiomatic in colloquial English somewhere, but WP isn't written in colloquial English. That "at [city name]" usage is virtually unseen in writing we'd find in sources we'd consider reliable, except for things like David's "the train stopped at Rome", which is still a construction most people would probably avoid. That kind of case is actually a shorthand for something more specific, either a particular station actually named "Rome", or one named something else and just serving Rome, but called "Rome" for short by insiders to that transit system. The station is not the city of Rome (present or past) or vice versa. By way of comparison, I might get off at a bus stop named Foo Street, at the corner of Foo and First, and say "I got off at Foo Street". But if I got in a car wreck on that street, I'd say it happened "on" (or maybe in British English, "in") Foo Street, not "at" it. The street and the station named after it are sharing a name, but are not the same thing or the same kind of thing, ergo different prepositions are liable to apply in such cases, and even to the same case in different contexts. The Flavian family did not live "at" Rome any more than I live "on" the city of Oakland, or I'm going "for" the grocery store, or your cousin grew up "of" Boston. (Yet a sign may point at Rome, a rain can fall on Oakland, I could work for a grocery store, and your cousin might be of Boston). — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ< 06:16, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

More on "on" vs "in" for streets —David Eppstein (talk) 06:26, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

Well, I clearly seem to be in the minority among Wikipedians, but at least I've been able to think clearly enough to check some reliable sources, which flatly contradict the argument that this is somehow wrong or archaic. My OED is from the 1970's, so I guess it's not a reliable source for language anymore; Merriam-Webster has for decades defined at first and foremost as "a function word indicating presence in, on, or near", which clearly covers this usage; and with respect to Rome in particular, I think the argument that "sources we'd consider reliably" would seldom or never use at Rome to indicate location, rather than spatial relationship or point of origin is clearly wrong. I found an abundance of what I would like to think everyone would acknowledge as reliable sources, in terms of Roman scholarship, formal English (whether American or British), and in the case of Mary Beard, the vernacular.

T. J. Cornell: The Beginnings of Rome (Routledge History of the Ancient World) (1995)

"This seems to have happened at Rome at the end of Phase IIB."
"What happened at Rome at the end of the sixth century . . ."
". . . to my mind the traditional accounts imply a change of precisely this kind at Rome."
"At least one chamber tomb has been identified at Rome itself . . ."
". . . the fall of the monarchy at Rome was part of this wider picture."
". . . the Esquiline necropolis at Rome . . ."
"The Tarquins were not the only outsiders to rule at Rome."
". . . the rule was already established that Roman citizens could not be enslaved at Rome."
". . . such luxuries as were to be found at Rome must have been imported . . ."
". . . may indeed have ruled at Rome."

Gary Forsythe, A Critical History of Early Rome: from Prehistory to the First Punic War, University of California (2005)

"These simple graffiti constitute some of the earliest samples of writing discovered at Rome."
"Furthermore, although examples of writing at Rome are quite rare for this period . . ."
". . . J. C. Meyer has combined both these concepts to explain the history of human habitation at Rome during the early Iron Age."
". . . public performances of some sort existed at Rome much earlier than is generally supposed . . ."
"Laws ameliorating the conditions of indebtedness were not forthcoming at Rome until the fourth century B.C."

The Roman Historical Tradition: Regal and Republican Rome, James H. Richardson & Federico Santangelo, eds, Oxford University Press (2014)

"This child, who had been left at Rome, was the seed of the Fabian race . . ."
". . .Timaios attributes the first coinage at Rome to Servius."
"What is far more perplexing to us is how a historian contemporary with the very first coinage at Rome. . ."
"However, with the credentials of the story of the Tarquins at Rome now restored . . ."
"Festus preserves the precious information that she changed her Etruscan name to Gaia Caecilia at Rome."
"The possible identification of Servius rex at Rome and the seruus rex at Aricia gives an obvious origin and a terminus post quem for the tradition . . ."
"According to one version, the child of the Fabii who owed his life to having been left at Rome had the praenomen Numerius."
". . . Claudius mentioned foreigners who had even attained the kingship at Rome."
". . . a time before the establishment of written historiography at Rome near the end of the third century . . ."
"It seems, therefore, that Marcellus had a decisive impact on the tradition of the spolia opima at Rome, starting in his own lifetime."
". . . the fact that they never had, except at Rome, a nomen gentilicium . . ."
". . . it implies a fertile and creative narrative tradition existing long before the introduction of literary historiography at Rome."
"On the Capitoline at Rome, then, there was an acropolis dedicated to the great deity of Olympus . . ."
". . . and his mother (unnamed) bore him in the palace at Rome."
". . . with interesting repercussions on the transition from monarchy to Republic at Rome."
"The record of their women as priestesses and queens certainly fits their aristocratic origins and position at Rome."
". . . developments at Rome were influenced by Rome's relationship with both the Greek world and Etruria."
"Even that single Fabius left at Rome, who later became the propagator of his race, has a parallel in the Greek story."
". . . they may be used as evidence by those who think the change at Rome from monarchy to Republic was more an evolutionary than a revolutionary process."
"By traditional dating, this change takes place fifty years earlier at Rome than at Athens.
". . . although the three elements of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy existed at Rome under the monarchy . . ."

Mary Beard, SPQR: a History of Ancient Rome, W. W. Norton (2015)

". . . after his detention at Rome and attempts at popular politics at home . . ."
". . . the snobbery that was another side of life at Rome . . ."
"In the first civil war at Rome since the brief conflict after the death of Nero in 68 CE . . ."
"Some of his rivals called him just a 'lodger' at Rome . . ."
". . . Polybius tries to shoehorn the political life that he witnessed at Rome into a Greek analytical model that does not entirely fit."
"It was never a rallying cry at Rome, even in its limited ancient sense . . ."
". . . who would never have dreamt of standing for election at Rome . . ."

And just by titles,

R. Develin, The Practice of Politics at Rome 366–167 B.C.", Ed. Latomus (1985)
Sandra R. Joshel, Work, Identity, and Legal Status at Rome: a Study of the Occupational Inscriptions, University of Oklahoma Press (1992)
Keith Bradley, Slavery and Society at Rome, Cambridge University Press (1994)
Denis Feeney, Literature and Religion at Rome: Cultures, Contexts, and Beliefs, Cambridge University Press (1998)
David Noy, Foreigners at Rome: Citizens and Strangers Duckworth, Classical Press of Wales (2000)
Francisco Pina Polo, The Consul at Rome: the Civil Functions of the Consuls in the Roman Republic, Cambridge University Press (2011)

I'm sure I could come up with many more examples if I spent hours searching for them. But I think my point must be adequately demonstrated by now. At with the names of towns and cities is perfectly acceptable English, whether formal or familiar, and even recommended in certain contexts, of which at Rome is a prime example. And in the particular example that's being cited repeatedly, it's the preferable alternative because I do not mean in with the connotation of "inside, within the boundaries of", nor do I mean of or from, suggesting point of origin, which is frequently unclear or known to have been some other place. Indeed, as some of the passages quoted above discuss, it was not only possible for a family to hail from one town or region or people and yet come to be regarded as "Roman" in subsequent times, but also that it held a markedly different social status at Rome. A family might have been part of the local aristocracy at Tusculum, Antium, Praeneste, but enrolled among the plebeians at Rome; or like the Claudii, distinguished only by wealth and influence at Regillum, but accorded patrician status at Rome.

My question, however, remains. If a word is correct, perhaps more correct than the alternatives in a given context, and another editor makes it a crusade to change it to his or her personal preference wherever that usage occurs, is there any particular Wikipedia policy that supports reverting the change? P Aculeius (talk) 15:02, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

Without commenting on the merits of "at" vs "in/of", I'll just say that it's generally considered ok to revert such a change and then discuss on the talk page, per WP:BRD. Kendall-K1 (talk) 15:22, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

(edit conflict)

P Aculeius I appreciate your question, your gracious tone, and the time you spent looking for sources to support your view. I agree with the others, above, that at with a city is unusual today. In the course of reading and copy-editing many articles on Wikipedia, though, I have to say that I have seen the preposition at used with cities, and places in general, more than I ever had before. I think it must be more a British English usage (and perhaps, as EEng said, a usage in only certain parts of England, and perhaps it is a usage that was more common in the past but is fading) than American English usage. Americans would never say "at Rome", or "at London", except for something like Our train stopped at Rome. Instead, they would use in Rome, of Rome, or from Rome, depending upon the intended meaning. In that particular example you cited, I think the sentence could be re-worded so that the connection between the family and the city of Rome were made clearer. "At Rome" doesn't really explain much. I would write something like:

The gens Flavia was a Roman plebeian family.
The gens Flavia was a plebeian family centered in Rome.
The gens Flavia was a plebeian family long connected with Rome. – Corinne (talk) 15:34, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

Perhaps an important detail missing from this discussion is that the example provided is from the lead sentence of the article. It's true that at Rome doesn't really explain much; but that's precisely the point; the alternatives are too specific. The article, and others like it, already provide more detail about origin, location, and time frame. The natural course of an article is to move from the general to the specific detail, beginning with the most general description in the lead. With respect to the alternatives you suggest, the third seems to be the least appropriate, since it implies that the family had some independent status as plebeians divorced from Rome or the Roman state; which it did not, as the distinction between patricians and plebeians is specifically Roman. The first alternative also stumbles here, as there were no non-Roman plebeians; but I also think the phrasing is awkward. Meanwhile, "centered in" combines the notion of territorial limitation that I'm trying to avoid with in, and adds the suggestion that the family diffused outward as one traveled away from the city, which may or may not be true, but which is certainly not the intended meaning of the sentence.

In this specific context, I chose at Rome because it was the simplest, most straightforward way of indicating location without describing territorial limitation, point of origin, duration in time, spatial relationship, concentration, dilution, organization, or other more specific meanings. It's a phrasing that's been used from Middle English up to the present time, and continues to be used in formal and academic writing, both British and American, as well as less formal sources such as SPQR, in ways that cannot be clearly distinguished from the case at issue. I think I have my answer now: there's no particular policy about arbitrary changes to language, but they can be reverted, and if necessary discussed on an article's talk page so that the reasons for or against a particular wording can be debated. Thank you for taking the time to answer me civilly, as I very much appreciate the courtesy, and your suggestions, even though I wasn't convinced that any of them were better than the original wording. It's much easier to discuss issues when you're not being told that your choices are wrong, that you're wrong to ask the question, wrong to present your reasons, to support your point with reliable sources, and that you've just been wasting everybody's time. P Aculeius (talk) 17:52, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

Aside from suggesting that he's got a bit too much invested in this, P Aculeius' list of examples is pointless. Yes, there are lots of places the phrase at [city] makes sense, but They were a family at Rome isn't one of them. Prepositions are funny that way. As usual, Corinne is infinitely patient, and her suggestions are good ones. This is not a MOS matter. E Eng 15:54, 30 October 2017 (UTC)
This is the gist of the entire thread right here: "there are lots of places the phrase at [city] makes sense, but They were a family at Rome isn't one of them." Things like "at Rome at the end of Phase IIB" and "possible identification of Servius rex at Rome and the seruus rex at Aricia" are references to an extended archaeological site and artifacts within it (e.g. inscriptions), not references to a city per se. Families are not artifacts or digs. The "in the palace at Rome" type of construction is different, and common for nested placenames ("University of Texas at Austin"). Families are not placenames. Similarly, "his detention at Rome" is the same kind of case as "The train stopped at Rome"; here "Rome" is referring to a facility (a governmental/military facility in the one case and a transit station in the other). Families are not facilities. And so on. The only kind-of-comparable case I'm seeing in that list (about names) is "she changed her Etruscan name to Gaia Caecilia at Rome." It's uncertain what the exact intent of the statement is without more context (given the legal nature of a name change among the Roman aristocracy, it probably refers to a institution not the entire city, and is thus another shorthand; compare "Alfred the Great died at Winchester"; this means at his royal facilities in Winchester, not "somewhere within the city"). But lets take it at face value and say that "at [city]" is at least attested in the sense that P Aculeius wants to use it, "The gens Flavia was a plebeian family at Rome." Is it the dominant usage? No. Is it common? No. Is it likely to be understood and interpreted as proper English by the average reader? No. Is it likely to result in later editors changing it, and thus in edit-warring over it? Yes (proven, since it already happened). — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ< 00:04, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but the distinction you're trying to make doesn't make any sense. The quotations given above cover a wide variety of circumstances including several referring to people. So you seem to be saying, "it's okay with respect to objects, buildings, institutions, and individual people, but not groups of people". And there's no basis for such a distinction other than that you think it sounds odd. Maybe several other people with similar backgrounds may think so too, but that doesn't make it bad English or in any way inappropriate if it happens to be the word that best conveys the intended meaning. I think your conclusion that "it's unlikley to be understood and interpreted as proper English by the average reader" is simply untrue. You've almost certainly passed over constructions of this type hundreds, if not thousands of times while reading various literature and not paid any attention to it because the meaning is perfectly transparent. And I'm even more certain that as an experienced editor in this field, you recognize that just because somebody, or lots of somebodies, prefer to say A rather than B, doesn't make it right, any more than the fact that edit wars get started over it. How many edit wars go on every single day due to people's personal preferences between different ways to say something that are both perfectly acceptable? The fact that one phrase is less common than another, or less common than it used to be, doesn't make it wrong, much less unintelligible. The question here was not whether this was good English, which I think the evidence clearly shows, even if you disagree. The question was how to respond to editors who make a crusade out of imposing one wording over another, if both are acceptable, but one may be preferred due to its meaning. And that question was answered already. P Aculeius (talk) 02:07, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

No distinction is necessary (though I doubt anyone else has any trouble understanding those distinctions, since they were clearly explained in plain English, with examples, and were self-evident anyway). The fact that it's not a common usage in English is entirely sufficient rationale to avoid it on Wikipedia, per WP:COMMONSENSE. Re: "how to respond to editors who make a crusade out of imposing one wording over another" – Obviously, stop being the one who fits that description, since "both are acceptable" doesn't apply here. No one at all here or at the article appears to accept your "at Rome" construction in such a context; see WP:1AM. If you want to write that a railway line stops at Rome, no one would be likely to object, since that's normal English for that context. "The family lived at Rome" is not, in any dialect. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ< 03:48, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

This is getting silly. It's apparent you're not a native speaker of English. And this isn't a MOS matter anyway, so work it out with the editors of the article. E Eng 02:33, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

That was my first instinct, but judging from the user page, P Aculeius does appear to be a native speaker – just one who wants to pursue advocacy of very obscure constructions for no clear reason and which no one else seems to agree are useful here. A bit WP:POINTy. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ< 03:48, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

His user page has {{user en-5}} not {{user en}}. E Eng 04:16, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

I'd say the book usage supports the idea that "at Rome" was once common and is now uncommon, compared to "in Rome". That's why it sounds odd or archaic to many: because it is. Dicklyon (talk) 04:11, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

Like I said, he needs to get his nose out of Gibbon. E Eng 04:16, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

Ah, yes, the usage rapidly and completely reversed from "at" to "in", right at about 1889. I don't think we need to entertain usage from the Victorian era, to-day. Now, my haw-haw toffs, let's be afternoonified about this, before someone with no return ticket wants to worry the dog, go off in an aromatic faint, or burst their stay-laces over this nonsensational jolly. We needn't have grass before breakfast due to cheek-ache about such gaff and gum, like a pack of kanurd and flummut shirksters and scurfs. Granny? (For the curious: [17], [18].) — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ< 04:43, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

Better get that keyboard looked at. E Eng 05:30, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

My God, that's another language! Did they really talk that way? Regarding this discussion, I'd like to add something. I think the graph Dicklyon provided is helpful in showing that in Rome is now more commonly used than at Rome. However, it also shows that at Rome is still acceptable, so on that point P Aculeius is correct. If both are acceptable, the question then is whether it is important to use the more common phrase. I believe, though I am not sure, that the participants in this discussion represent speakers of both American and British English, so if the speakers of British English say in Rome is definitely more common than at Rome, then we can agree it is not a question of a difference in variety of English. According to MOS:LEAD, The lead should be written in a clear, accessible style with a neutral point of view. "Accessible" means easily understood by the average Wikipedia reader. According to Checkingfax, "25% of our readers and editors are between the ages of 10 and 17; 50% between 17 and 35; 25% between 35 and 85." We need to keep our readers in mind as we edit articles. The most easily accessible language would, I think, normally contain the most common usage. So on that point alone, P Aculeius ought to concede. The other point is that, as several editors here have said, the particular usage in the example sentence given, "The gens Flavia was a plebeian family at Rome.", is even more unusual than the other uses, so unusual, in fact, that several editors have said it is non-colloquial, and that it is simply not used today. I agree. However, I think it would be more colloquial if a verb – probably a past or present participle – were used before the phrase at Rome. I suggested several examples. Another would be "The gens Flavia was a plebeian family residing at Rome." That, I think, would be considered acceptable for those who don't mind "at Rome" instead of "in Rome". P Aculeius, your point that an article should go from general in the lead to more specific in the body of the article does not mean that a sentence should be pared of the words necessary to make it colloquial. So, here are five possible wordings that could be used:

The gens Flavia was a Roman plebeian family.
The gens Flavia was a plebeian family centered in Rome.
The gens Flavia was a plebeian family long connected with Rome.
The gens Flavia was a plebeian family residing at Rome.
The gens Flavia was a plebeian family living in Rome.

Your example, "The gens Flavia was a plebeian family at Rome," does not sound colloquial to most of the participants in this discussion. So, if an editor finds a construction like this, I wouldn't fault them for changing it to something more colloquial. The specific wording to be used can be discussed on the article's talk page. Best regards, – Corinne (talk) 15:06, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

Many of us would still object to "residing at Rome". PS: I think "does not sound colloquial to most of the participants in this discussion" is meant to say "does not sound idiomatic to most of the participants in this discussion". It does sound colloquial (like something informal and probably in a localized dialect), but it's not what we'd call "idiomatic in English" (reflecting common usage and understanding) any longer. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ< 15:39, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

The graph does not say in what contexts "at Rome" remains acceptable. Some, but not as many as used to be. Where "in" is the modern choice, the graph does not show that "at" would be acceptable; perhaps it is, but the graph does not show that. Dicklyon (talk) 02:39, 1 November 2017 (UTC)

SMcCandlish, you are quite right. I apologize for using the wrong word. Dicklyon Good point. – Corinne (talk) 01:22, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

Broken MOS shortcut

Latest comment: 7 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Resolved

WP:Manual of Style/Captions#Credits has a shortcut WP:CREDITS next to it, but WP:CREDITS goes somewhere else. ☆ Bri (talk) 18:05, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

Fixed. Should have been MOS:CREDITS. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ< 18:06, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

Trivial, pointless changes to wikicode

Latest comment: 7 years ago7 comments4 people in discussion

Have we actually figured out what to do yet about trivial and pointless but controversial changes to wikicode, that don't affect the displayed output? This comes up periodically, but there never seems to be a clear answer other than "take it to ANI if it's disruptive". We've already banned bots from doing it (correction: unless they do it as part of a more substantive edit and the change isn't controversial). The main example that comes to mind is people removing double spaces between sentences; most editors seem to prefer the double spaces (the average well-developed article uses them), removing them impedes wikicode readability, and doing it triggers watchlists for no constructive reason. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ< 08:26, 4 November 2017 (UTC); corrected: 10:33, 5 November 2017 (UTC)

"the average well-developed article uses them" Umm, no. However, this is a great bikeshed issue with the perennial favorite/favourite sentence spacing thrown in. Re pointless changes, yes, that is irritating. What about changing spaces around "==" headers or inserting/deleting a blank line after headers. The latter is the most irritating because it can produce broken diffs. Johnuniq (talk) 09:27, 4 November 2017 (UTC)

It's not my experience that "the average well-developed article uses them", though I prefer them (makes the source easier to navigate). People removing them is a more-or-less daily exasperation on my watchlist and should be explicitly disallowed. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 10:35, 4 November 2017 (UTC)

I would definitely include the heading space changes stuff, too. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ< 12:44, 4 November 2017 (UTC)

They're acceptable on small scales, if there's disagreement, revert to the original style. On large scales, they can be covered by WP:MEATBOT. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 12:45, 4 November 2017 (UTC)

Agreed, providing something useful is done in the same edit. That's the best approach. Johnuniq (talk) 23:49, 4 November 2017 (UTC)

MOS:RETAIN covers this in the abstract, so it seems like the place to put something more specific. The issues I can see are basically threefold (even with WP:MEATBOT in mind):

Some trivial changes are arguably a minor improvement or worsening (e.g. making code easier or harder to parse; normalizing the spacing of citation template parameters to be consistent, which is expressly permitted by WP:CITEVAR) – should be permitted if positive, not permitted if detrimental (whether done as a stand-alone edit or not).
Some make no difference at all and no one is likely to care (e.g. changing the order of template parameters) – should be permitted only if done as part of a productive edit.
Some shouldn't make any difference at all, but people definitely do care (changing spacing around and within headings) - should not be done at all without consensus?

— SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ< 10:31, 5 November 2017 (UTC)

RfC: Inconsistent capitalization of eponym in same context

Latest comment: 7 years ago28 comments9 people in discussion

Should MoS clarify that capitalized eponyms do not lose their capitalization when used adjectivally? The test case for this is the very long-running dispute about using "Gram stain" but "gram-negative" (i.e. negative in a Gram stain test) when both of these are eponymous (of Hans Christian Gram) and refer to exactly the same dye-staining process in microscopy. (It has nothing to do with the metric unit gram/gramme.) The rationale offered for the inconsistency has been that some medical publishers/organizations (like the US CDC, and some medical dictionaries) like to lower-case eponyms in adjectival usage, a rule that WP's Manual of Style (and most other style guides) do not have. Doing that would require a special exemption to MOS:ARTCON, the overriding consistency guideline of MoS. Use of lower-case "gram-negative" style is not consistent in reliable sources in bacteriology, medicine, histology, microscopy, and related fields. It's purely a house style choice (as our own articles indicate, with sources).

This RfC does not address cases where an eponym's connection to its namesake has been effectively severed and the meaning has shifted (e.g., we would continue to capitalize in constructions like Platonic solid, Platonic love, and the Draconian constitution of Athens, but permit lowercase for figural usage like "His relationship with his roommate was platonic", "She said her parents' rules were draconian", though in encyclopedic writing we'd be better off avoiding such wording). Lower-case is also used in various other cases when virtually all sources agree on lower case (eustachian tube, caesarian or cesarean section), again due to loss of a clear connection to the namesake in the public mind (contrast degree Celsius and other units, Hodgkin's lymphoma and other diseases, Newtonian mechanics and other scientific principles, etc.)

— SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ< 00:12, 21 October 2017 (UTC)

Comments on the RfC

Support. Our central MOS:ARTCON guideline already indicates we should not mix-and-match these styles ("Gram stain", "gram-negative"). Wikipedia capitalizes eponyms and other proper names (except when off-WP usage consistently uses lower case, as with caesarean section), and has no special "do not capitalize if adjectival" rule; we don't care if CDC or AMA does have one, since their house styles are not ours. The most obvious problem with this mixed usage is that it can result in "gram-negative" and "Gram stain" in the same article, even the same sentence, which confuses readers as to whether these are even related concepts, and leads to long-term editwarring (since 2004!). In this particular case, an additional major rationale is that "gram-negative/positive" strongly but wrongly implies to non-expert readers that this has something to do with the metric gram unit. Attempts to impose spelling (especially capitalization) quirks from specialist sources are something WP routinely rejects; this is known as the WP:Specialized-style fallacy, the notion that sources reliable for technical facts about a topic are somehow transubstantiated into the most reliable sources for how to write plain English for a general audience any time that subject comes up. We've had numerous RfCs on this before (including this huge one), and it's a common theme at WP:RM, with consensus consistently siding with WP's style guide and with internal WP consistency. The habit of medical (especially American medical) people of down-casing eponyms used adjectivally because their journal publisher does it is understandable, but the attempt to force it on WP as a "standard" is a WP:CONLEVEL policy problem. Furthermore, carving out a special one-topic exception to ARTCON would be WP:CREEP and would do nothing useful, only inspire more demands for special topical exceptions to every rule someone in some field doesn't use in their writing for other publishers. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ< 00:16, 21 October 2017 (UTC)
Support in principle but what is the proposed wording? Usually I argue that when a term is not consistently capped in sources, it's not to be treated as a proper name in WP. But with Gram, clearly a person's name and clearly capped in the "Gram stain" context, though only capped about half the time in sources in "Gram-positive" and such, I think I'd agree that downcasing it randomly sometimes is a bad idea, especially given the ambiguous interpretation here that is both an explanation for and a bad effect of the downcasing. So I'm unsure whether there's a general principle here, but for WP capping the name Gram should be the clear preference, since we are about clarity, consistently using caps to signify proper names and not otherwise. Dicklyon (talk) 05:00, 21 October 2017 (UTC)
Oh, I didn't much care about specific wording. Even what I used above, "capitalized eponyms do not lose their capitalization when used adjectivally", ought to work. This wouldn't impose anything weird like "always capitalize eponyms even when sources do not: Caesarean section". — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ< 05:12, 21 October 2017 (UTC)
Oppose I cannot offer any argument against the use of Gram for the staining procedure - perhaps if the page was changed back to Gram stain that would work. I only know that most books that I refer to all use lower case when describing the bacteria and upper case when referring to the Gram stain. Lower case reads better, especially in pages with many references and I'm all for easier reading. A clearer guideline would probably be helpful.--Iztwoz (talk) 09:18, 21 October 2017 (UTC)
- But the page is at Gram staining, and consistently uses that spelling: "Gram staining or Gram stain, also called Gram's method, is a method of staining used to ...". We already know, absolutely, from previous discussions on this that the lower-casing of "gram-negative" and "gram-positive" is just something a few particular publishers' house styles do (following a general rule they have to lower-case eponyms is adjectives, a rule WP doesn't have and which is also not found in most other style guides; there's nothing special about Gram and bacteria in this). That the books you happen to read are from those publishers is just a WP:IKNOWIT coincidence. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ< 06:55, 23 October 2017 (UTC)
Oppose. This should be done on a case by case basis (does this topic use upper or lower case for this use of this name?) rather than trying to set the hard-and-fast rule that topics are required to be consistent in capitalization for different usages. Clearly, in some cases, the common usage is not consistently capitalized and Wikipedia should nevertheless follow that common usage rather than trying to become a trendsetter for consistency. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:37, 21 October 2017 (UTC)
- But this isn't about "different usages", it's about the same usage, the namesake "Gram" in bacteriology. Why on earth would we write "Gram stain" in one sentence then "gram-stained" in the next, in the same article, just because the second is adjectival? This is not a "rule" that MoS entertains anywhere for any case, so why would we do it in this one case? What's magically special about adjectives as used by people with microscopes? — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ< 06:50, 23 October 2017 (UTC)
  - But it's clearly not the same usage; they are different in other ways (like one is followed by the word stain and the other by the compound part -positive). As for why: because those are the ways they are commonly written (if that's true; I have no opinion on the specific case of "Gram", only on the general position that we should follow the scientific literature, even when we think it's inconsistent, rather than trying to impose our own consistency on it). —David Eppstein (talk) 20:51, 23 October 2017 (UTC)
    Already pointed this out, but will do so again: the style you're advocating would have "Gram stain" in one sentence and "gram-stained" in the very next one, simply because the latter is adjectival. We just don't do that on Wikipedia. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ< 21:25, 23 October 2017 (UTC)
    "We just don't do that" is correct, if by "that" you mean making up new capitalization conventions because we don't feel the commonly used ones obey a consistency rule that we are making up ourselves. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:07, 23 October 2017 (UTC)
Support: there seems to be no clear reason for inconsistency. –Sb 2001 18:06, 23 October 2017 (UTC)
Further consideration: See also Giemsa stain, Leishman stain, Papanicolaou stain, Wright's stain, Romanowsky stain, May–Grünwald stain. The "gram-negative" style (decapitalize eponym if used adjectivally) would result in "may–grünwald-negative", "papanicolaou-negative", "wright's-negative", etc. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ< 06:43, 27 October 2017 (UTC)
- None of the examples you have given would ever result in a positive or negative anything - they are staining techniques used to stain things to the optimal visual advantage. --Iztwoz (talk) 17:30, 3 November 2017 (UTC)
Dictionaries are inconsistent but favor uppercase: Uppercase in Oxford, Random House, and Collins; lowercase in Merriam Webster; both in American Heritage; not listed in Cambridge or Macmillan. Of these major online dictionary publishers, only a minority even provide the lower-case version at all, and only one rejects the capitalized one, while three reject the lower-case version. A more recent commercial site is WordWebOnline (also powers one of the most popular mobile-app dictionaries); it gives only the capitalized version [19]. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ< 07:17, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

Extended discussion of the RfC

Background material:

Dispute about this, especially "Gram-" vs. "gram-", on Wikipedia dates back to at least 2004 [20], and has never stopped, though with more editors in favor of consistently using "Gram-", and citing Wikipedia rationales for doing so, with a minority of editors insisting on "gram-" for the sole reason that CDC or some other entitity spells it that way. To use the history of Gram-positive bacteria as an example: consistent capitalization efforts for several years [21] [22] [23], followed by a sudden de-capping [24], later reverted [25]; reimposition of lower case [26], then upper [27], lower [28], upper [29], lower [30], upper (among other cleanup) [31], mass-revert back to lower [32]. For the last several years, this mixture of "Gram" and "gram-" has been "enforced" by a single editor, as the later diffs show.

Some time during this "slow editwar", editors began to use the article text itself as a battleground to falsely advance assertions that lowercase "gram-" is a scientific standard (which of course was challenged [33]). There's a similar history at Gram-positive bacteria and various articles on specific bacteria and other bacteriological subjects.

Previous inconclusive discussion has happened at:

The results of these discussions have been:

A helpful short section in the articles, on the conflicting orthography in off-WP sources; this removed the PoV/OR assertions in favor of "gram-" as some kind of standardized requirement.
A single user imposing "gram-" style on Wikipedia without consulting our own MOS [34] [35] [36], and without feedback from anyone; this was on the basis that some medical works prefer this style, but WP is not a medical work.
Reversion of "Gram-" at various bacteria articles, such as E. coli [37] (by the same editor present "enforcing" the "gram-" style at the main articles)
Recent revertwarring (same editor again) against "Gram-" on the basis of the above discussions (which are not about WP usage at all), even after MOS:ARTCON is cited both in talk and in edit summaries.

Despite the WP:POLICY position being obvious (from MOS:ARTCON to WP:CONLEVEL), an RfC seems warranted given the 13 years or so this dispute has been running.
— SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ< 00:12, 21 October 2017 (UTC)

I would just dispute the claims of this being a case of continued edit warring - since June 2014 with the addition of the orthographic note there has been an acceptance for this among the usual editors (myself included). On occasion someone has reverted the use without comment or just changed a few instances, and in line with ususal editing practices the previous version has simply been restored. This has happened on very few occasions since June 2014. Editors seem happy with using lower-case. --Iztwoz (talk) 09:02, 21 October 2017 (UTC)

I think using "Gram" in "Gram stain" and "gram" in "gram-positive" and "gram-negative" isn't a problem. The first is (if I understand this correctly) a procedure named after a person, and the latter two are adjectives describing bacteria and/or the results of a test using the procedure. I'm sure at some point in the past, before Wikipedia, there was a period when both "Caesarean section" and "caesarean section" were used. It was a transitional period with the changeover to lower-case. I think in English generally, the preference is for lower-case; I agree with Iztwoz that lower-case is easier to read. The fact that "gram" could suggest to non-experts that it has something to do with the weight unit I do not find persuasive. There are many homonyms in English; also, the real connection between "gram" and the person is just something that one needs to learn if one is interested in the topic. The only way I would support "Gram-positive" and "Gram-negative" would be if the great preponderance of sources spell them that way. – Corinne (talk) 17:45, 21 October 2017 (UTC)

They're both named after the same person. Lower-casing "gram-negative" is exactly the same thing as writing "Gram stain" then "gram-stained", or writing "newtonian mechanics", or "shakespearean theatre". While there are style guides in the world that call for this, WP's MoS is definitely not one of them. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ< 06:47, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

For whatever it might be worth, as a biology teacher I can tell you that upper case "Gram stain" for the process and lower case "gram-stained", "gram-positive", and "gram-negative" are what I am used to seeing in the texts we use. --Khajidha (talk) 14:41, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

We know that various (especially American) biology and medical publishers like to lower-case eponyms in adjectival constructions; that's explicit in the whole discussion. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ< 20:35, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

I've just seen an edit summary of yours on Escherichia coli. When making the same revert you state that it (Gram) is a ~~common name~~ proper name etc. and should be treated in the same way as Kelvin and Ohm - nobody ever uses these terms capitalised - there is the ohm and the kelvin. ? --Iztwoz (talk) 10:57, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

I was misremembering and misstating; the Kelvin scale is capitalized, but the unit is not; that also seems to be the case with ohms and amperes. Celsius and Fahrenheit get the caps. So, it's an inconsistent system. The rationale I gave was faulty; "Gram-negative" isn't a unit or unit symbol anyway. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ< 22:53, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

In mathematics, it is standard to capitalize the name Abel when it modifies another word as a noun adjunct ("Abel equation") but not when it is used adjectivally ("abelian group"). However, there are other names that remain capitalized even when used adjectivally (Euclidean, Eulerian, etc). It would be incorrect to change the capitalization in these cases. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:07, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

We just need to get entirely away from this idea that WP is going to mimic this mathematics publisher, and that medical style guide, and this train-spotting website, and that news publisher's stylesheet, when they don't even consistently apply their own "rules" (not within a field, and often not even within a publication). We don't have any issue with standardized ISO units being lower case even if often named after a person, but this "sometimes use lower case just because it's an adjective" is fiddly nonsense that inspires never-ending editwarring here, and it only exists off-WP in the house styles of particular publishers, so it has no place here. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ< 08:09, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

On unit capitalization: ISO's rule on the matter is "lowercase the first letter and capitalize anything else derived from a proper noun". In this case, your error is that the unit is not "Celsius" but instead "degree" with the modifier "Celsius"; the same with "Fahrenheit" and "degree Fahrenheit", and also the only-used-in-freedom-loving-country-while-engineering-units "degree Rankine" (though occasionally you'll hear or see "rankines"...). The unit "kelvin" is consistent with the general rule, as are amperes, ohms, and any other unit. Our own article covers this at International System of Units#Unit names. The NIST follows that particular rule. --Izno (talk) 13:34, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

Fair enough; my point is they remain "Celsius" and "Fahrenheit", despite technically being adjectival (they're modifiers of "degree[s]" in such constructions). — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ< 08:50, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

It seems to be that very common adjectives often take a lower case initial letter. Both abelian and gram fall into this category. Google ngrams suggests that the capital may well triumph for Gram. I'm reluctant to come down on either side of this argument. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 00:12, 7 November 2017 (UTC).