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Welcome to the MOS pit[Humor]


    Style discussions elsewhere

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    Add a link to new discussions at top of list and indicate what kind of discussion it is (move request, RfC, open discussion, deletion discussion, etc.). Follow the links to participate, if interested. Move to Concluded when decided, and summarize conclusion. Please keep this section at the top of the page.

    Current

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    (newest on top)

    Pretty stale but not "concluded":

    Capitalization-specific:

    This section is an excerpt from Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters § Current.[edit]

    Move requests:

    Other discussions:

    Pretty stale but not "concluded":

    Concluded

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    Extended content
    This section is an excerpt from Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters § Concluded.[edit]
    Capitalization-specific:

    MOS feedback needed on FA Dementia with Lewy bodies

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    See discussion on talk. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:07, 19 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    The linked discussion has converged on the following consensus: I'd also support spelling out on first mention in each section (with brackets: so "Alzheimer's Disease (AD)") on first mention in each section, and then abbreviating thereafter.
    I think the suggestion to re-introduce abbreviations in each section of longer articles (on a case-by-case basis) would be a good addition to MOS:1STABBR. Lots of articles would get easier to follow that way.
    Joe vom Titan (talk) 20:01, 29 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I would also second this – readers often go to one section of the article without reading the others, especially for longer articles. GnocchiFan (talk) 18:51, 29 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Proposal to clarify which MOS guidelines apply to citations

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    Presently guidance that clearly applies to citations is scattered among "Citing sources", "Manual of Style", subpages of "Manual of Style", and a host of guidance that might or might not apply to citations. When I think of any printed style guide I've ever seen, including "APA Style" and The Chicago Manual of Style, the table of contents makes clear it that there are separate parts, or chapters, to address citation style; the style used for everything but citations is addressed in different parts or chapters. I believe Wikipedia should do the same, and designate "Citing sources" as the primary home for citation guidance. Other pages that contain citation guidance should be listed within "Citing sources".

    I also suggest that "Citing sources" be added to the "Manual of Style" (MoS) sidebar within the "Manual of Style".

    I suggest accomplishing this by adding the following section:

    Citations
    Ordinarily, information about placing and formatting citations, and the content of citations, is found in the "Citing sources" guideline, as well as information about tools to assist with citations. That guideline states that

    Wikipedia does not have a single house style, though citations within any given article should follow a consistent style. A number of citation styles exist, including those described in the Wikipedia articles for Citation, APA style, ASA style, MLA style, The Chicago Manual of Style, the Vancouver system and Bluebook. Wikipedia has also created its own Citation Style 1 and Citation Style 2.

    Editors expect to find information about citation format and style in "Citing sources" and should not be expected to be aware of citation guidance contained in this guideline, or in subpages of this guideline (for example, "Manual of Style/Legal"). Whenever guidance in this guideline or subpages of this guideline about citations exists, that page should be listed in the "Citation style" section of "Citing sources".

    Jc3s5h (talk) 13:11, 22 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    I don't think the last proposed paragraph is needed. If citation guidance is going to be centralized in one page (which can branch out to others), then any contravening guidance should be removed from other locations. Backlinks from other pages to the central page can be added. isaacl (talk) 17:20, 22 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Without the last paragraph, there isn't a clear statement that the guidance is centralized. Can you suggest alternative wording? Jc3s5h (talk) 19:56, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    For context, see also Wikipedia talk:Citing sources#Conforming citations to Wikipedia style. I have suggested there that a definitive and comprehensive list is not feasible.
    That discussion was prompted by Wikipedia talk:Citing sources#RFC on consistent styles and capitalization of titles (please join), which in turn was prompted by Wikipedia talk:Citing sources#Capitalization styles of work titles, in which an editor claims that mismatched capitalization is fine within a single article, because some cited sources use Title Case and some use sentence case and some use unusual style choices, and therefore this revert from title case to leading case (i.e., even capitalizing little words like "Of") is justified, even though none of the other cited sources in that Featured List use leading case. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:24, 23 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    To respond more specifically to the proposal above:
    "Ordinarily", editors expect to find citation-specific content in WP:CITE and some general, widely applicable style advice (e.g., "avoid all-numeric date formats other than YYYY-MM-DD"). "Ordinarily", editors do not expect to find detailed information about style questions (e.g., MOS:FRAC, which rarely comes up in a citation, but which still applies if it does.)
    It is generally true that editors "should not be expected to be aware of" just about anything in the MOS, but that doesn't mean that the MOS doesn't exist or doesn't apply. About three-quarter million registered editors make 1+ edits each year. WP:MOS gets about a quarter million page views each year. Ergo, an actual majority of editors aren't reading WP:MOS. But "should not be expected to be aware of" doesn't mean that you're exempt from it; if you do your best to communicate about the source, and someone else invokes "OBSCURESTYLERULE § EXTREMELYRARE" and fixes it for you, then that's fine. There shouldn't be any sort of games about whether the MOS page says that it applies to citations, or if the WP:CITE page officially lists that MOS page in a designated section. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:33, 23 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I agree with WhatamIdoing; their list of examples of MOS guidelines that apply to citations without specifically mentioning citations pointed out that a huge portion (maybe most?) of the MOS would need to be mentioned as applying to citations. I think it is enough to just point out that the MOS as a whole exists and should be followed in citations to the degree applicable, as we now do. Yeah, our pages are organized differently than other style manuals, but they are not crowdsourcing their rules from a worldwide community of volunteers.
    I have definitely found some places where cross-references are needed between specific guidelines that conflict or need to be kept in sync, and added them. There's probably room for improvement, though I know too much about the MOS to figure out what confuses newcomers the most. (Suggestions welcome.)
    I also agree it's fine and historically nearly ubiquitous that editors ignorant of the MOS make additions to articles and other editors come by and tidy it into compliance. I actually work a lot on automating this process as well as spell check, and I think we are improving our quality as time goes on. Simply the act of bringing existing contributions into compliance can also help a lot; most people just copy the style of what they see already written, and if that's already MOS-compliant they don't need to do a lot of MOS research to know what to do in most cases. (That's probably an argument for adopting a single house citation style.) -- Beland (talk) 01:21, 24 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Any tool that makes compliance easier will increase the likelihood of compliance. That is especially true of templates, since you can update them to accomodate changes in policy. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 13:37, 24 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    The status quo is good enough: At Wikipedia:Citing Sources#Citation style we find the text: "citations within any given article should follow a consistent style, and applicable Wikipedia style guidelines should be followed." This implies that the entire style guide applies, notwithstanding obvious exceptions. Adding a long list of links to sections of the style guide will only serve to confuse, create more conflict and keep editors busy updating that list. A comprehensive list will cover like half the style guide, as WhatamIdoing illustrated here. In principle it might be sensible to link to particularly relevant sections of the style guide but IMHO the one link to MOS:ALLCAPS in Wikipedia:Citing Sources#Citation style is sufficient. I do not buy the argument that people who edit citations don't need to check the style guide. After all, people who edit citations typically also edit the prose which should ideally adhere to the style guide. An extra set of style rules for citations is the last thing we need. Joe vom Titan (talk) 18:58, 29 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    My take: 99% of the time, no one will object (or care) if you edit an article to comply with an MOS. However, that leaves the 1% where someone does. When someone objects, my advice is to back off a bit … find out why they are objecting, and discuss it with them. Remember that all of our MOS pages start with a disclaimer that says “occasional exceptions may apply”. Blueboar (talk) 13:56, 24 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    I notice that several of you have not joined Wikipedia talk:Citing sources#RFC on consistent styles and capitalization of titles yet. Please do so. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:41, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Dates and times on Spaceflight articles

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    Hello, I was looking to get some clarity on how we should handle dates and times on Spaceflight pages.

    The style guide for WikiProject Spaceflight states: Since space is not within any Earth-bound time zone, and to avoid regional bias, the WP:WikiProject Spaceflight community has established a consensus (discussed here) to use UTC.

    However in creating Template:Launch time, User:Redraiderengineer has opposed using UTC has the primary time zone, saying:

    Launches and landings are events that take place in a time zone on Earth, and MOS:TIMEZONE gives "priority to the place at which the event had its most significant effects." Previous editors have suggested using local time for Earth-based events (e.g., launches and landings) and UTC for events in space, which is aligned with the MoS.
    The Manual of Style has precedence, and "participants in a WikiProject cannot decide that some generally accepted policy or guideline does not apply to articles within its scope."

    I was hoping that some more experienced editors can give some clarity on how we should handle this issue. Thank you in advance for your responses. -- RickyCourtney (talk) 22:47, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    To provide additional context, my understanding of MOS:TIMEZONE for Earth-based events (e.g., launches and landings) is to prioritize where the event took place with the local time zone and add UTC for dates and times in the infobox and/or first use in the article.
    Effectively, the difference in interpretations is the local time zone first or second. For example:
    • June 4, 2022, 9:25:02 am EDT (13:25:02 UTC); or
    • June 4, 2022 (2022-06-04), 13:25:02 UTC (9:25:02 am EDT)
    If a launch occurred in the Eastern Time Zone, the straightforward approach is to prioritize ET while including UTC to allow for a reference to events that occurred in space. This use existed on some spaceflight articles before the template and is currently used on articles such as Blue Origin NS-16, Starship flight test 8, Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster, and Blue Ghost Mission 1.
    The mention of precedence was based on my understanding that the WikiProject cannot override the MoS based on local consensus, which is an additional reason I addressed this.
    Thanks, Redraiderengineer (talk) 00:51, 29 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    While it’s true that a few articles are listed with launch local time first, the majority are listed with UTC first. That includes all the Apollo mission articles (most of which passed the rigorous Featured Article review process), all Soyuz mission articles (which don’t even list local time), and the majority of the Space Shuttle mission articles (many of which took off in one time zone and landed in another, further complicating what is “local time”). -- RickyCourtney (talk) 01:46, 29 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    There is WP:OTHERCONTENT with UTC listed first, but that alone is not a reason to prefer it especially when this matter didn't reach broad, explicit consensus in the past (plus after further examination WP:CCC). The other content does indicate that editors have determined a local time zone, and the MoS guideline is to prioritize it.
    I don't think local time is that complicated. If launch and landing have a different local time zone, they are both used for their respective event along with UTC. Space Shuttle mission articles, such as STS-40 and STS-48 (two random picks), and Artemis I are examples of articles that take this approach. Redraiderengineer (talk) 02:47, 29 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I'd support adding an exception to the global style manual for spaceflight launches and landings: These should give UTC first and local time in parantheses. UTC is the most sensible when thinking about a space mission of which launch is only one part. However, local time is also relevant (e.g. night/day), so it should be given in parantheses. Perhaps an RfC is in order? Joe vom Titan (talk) 19:31, 29 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    If an exception is desired, I agree that an RfC is the next step. Redraiderengineer (talk) 15:40, 22 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Proposal: expand the scope of ELNO to include "Further reading"

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    FYI, I have opened a preliminary discussion at Wikipedia talk:External links#Proposal: expand the scope of ELNO to include "Further reading". Comments and advice welcome there in the first instance, please. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 10:22, 5 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ships/Guidelines about use of definite article

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    I'm not trying to canvass here, I was hoping that people more familiar with the ins and out of English grammar could weigh in on use of the definite article before ship names on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ships/Guidelines. It may be common use, but is it good grammar? Llammakey (talk) 14:39, 6 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Bold in headings

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    MOS:HEADINGS does not specifically say that bold text in headings is evil. Should it say something and maybe link to MOS:BOLDBOLD? Should it also say that italic text in a heading is OK? — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 11:11, 10 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Do you count bold via ''' as markup? Which would violate "Not be wrapped in markup, which may break their display and cause other accessibility issues."  Stepho  talk  12:03, 10 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    It is markup (both wiki markup and HTML markup), but we do allow italics. Strictly, comments are markup and we often see things like CO2 in headings – which is markup added via a template! The sentence that you quote would make more sense without having the comma. Not all markup in headings causes problems. However, bolded text is a rather specific problem, so I feel we should add something explicit that covers it — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 12:58, 10 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Consider keeping romanizations in running text confirmation

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    From the recent § Should we generally prefer romanizations over non-Latin script in running text? discussion I started, and then let get archived.

    Given I saw only mild apprehension at ensuring we don't accidentally incite sprees of rabid gnoming, and not concerns over the substance of my suggestion as I had it in my head, I'll courtesy ping folks and maybe splice this in if there's still no objection. Courtesy ping @David Eppstein, NebY, Michael Aurel, and Chipmunkdavis:

    Be mindful that text in non-Latin scripts can interrupt the flow for readers who are unable to decipher it. When provided in running text, consider keeping non-Latin terms inside parentheses, while allowing the associated romanization or translation outside the parentheses to be read as a natural part of the surrounding sentence.

    Still clunky and abstruse, is my worry. Remsense ‥ 论 13:41, 11 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Sorry, also pinging @Kusma, DeCausa, Herostratus, and Seefooddiet: I always worry about annoying with pings, so I only initially pinged those I saw as having expressed concern or critique. My bad, thanks NebY. Remsense ‥ 论 14:43, 11 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    As a general rule for any kind of guidance on specific cases like this, I wonder if there is a conventional order, as in, do we do guidance first followed by justification, or justification first as you have it above? Adding an example sentence to the mix, I seem to think it is often 'G, E [,J]' (with J often left out) but I may be mistaken. If so, we might have:

    When including text in non-Latin script in running text, consider keeping it inside parentheses just after the romanized equivalent:

    The English word epic comes from [...] the Ancient Greek adjective epikos (ἐπικός), from epos (ἔπος), 'word, story, poem'.

    This allows the reader to read the English text outside the parentheses in a natural way.

    No doubt the wording could be further improved, but this is easier to grasp for me, as when reading a guideline, I want to consider what it is telling me, then I want an example to see what they are talking about, and at that point, I start to wonder why, and then comes the justification, feeling just like the coda on a musical piece and sewing it all together. Or, maybe I am dreaming, but that's how it feels to me. (As a further, albeit quite minor point, this allows the explanation to end at the original indent position, which seems to provide a more orderly transition to whatever topic the next paragraph is about if there is no section heading above it.) Mathglot (talk) 18:56, 18 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    The trio is? The trio are? noun-verb agreement

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    Talk:Remember Monday#IS or ARE debate is probably a problem for multiple bands' pages, and Wikipedia's Manual Of Style should address it somewhere, but if it's already there, i don't know how to find it. A trio performs as Remember Monday, a British band. One edit summary i found claims that British English would say Remember Monday are a girl group rather than Remember Monday is a girl group, to which i say: [citation needed].

    (Funny thing: "A trio performs", "The trio performs", and "The trio perform" all seem all right to my American English ears, but "A trio perform" seems wrong. Logic protests.)

    Wishing everyone safe, happy, productive editing. --70.22.1.45 (talk) 20:58, 18 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Remember Monday are a girl group. It's called notional agreement. DuncanHill (talk) 21:34, 18 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    It has been my impression that British English (BrE) uses are here and American English (AmE) uses is. Garner's Modern English Usage largely confirms this but does complicate the matter. You can read the full entry on this here with a Wikipedia Library login. Garner notes that BrE is more likely to use 'the plural (are, in this case) here and AmE is more likely to use the singular (is) but neither is universal and there are cases where AmE will use the plural to emphasize the members of a group. Garner calls for consistency within a piece of writing but notes that even edited, published sources are not always consistent. Here is an excerpt:

    Apart from the desire for consistency, there is little “right” and “wrong” on this subject: collective nouns sometimes take a singular verb and sometimes a plural one. The trend in AmE is to regard the collective noun as expressing a unit; hence, the singular is the usual form. When the individuals in the collection or group receive the emphasis, the plural verb is acceptable <the Freudian school were not wholly in error>. But generally in AmE, collective nounstake singular verbs, as in the jury finds, the panel is, the committee believes, the board has decided, etc.

    The usage note Choosing Agreeable Verbs for Collective Nouns from Christian Science Monitor also discusses the two approaches. I don't think our MOS should dictate a universal rule but I would mostly treat this as an ENGVAR issue and aim for consistency within a single article, while allowing for some flexibility in particular use cases. Curious what experienced style-guiders think. --MYCETEAE 🍄‍🟫—talk 21:52, 18 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks for the replies. i'm sure MOS:ENGVAR prevails, but apparently i didn't examine it closely enough: the Wikipedia:Manual of Style#National varieties of English section links to (and thus includes by implication) MOS:PLURALS, which does describe the grammatically acceptable use of notional agreement... without naming or linking to the notional agreement page, which maybe it should.
    Still wishing everyone safe, happy, productive editing. --70.22.1.45 (talk) 03:26, 21 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    edit request

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    Under MOS:PLURALS, please change

    See also: English plurals and Collective noun

    to

    See also: English plurals, Collective noun, and notional agreement.

    Wishing you all a lifetime of danger, misery, and failure. Ha! Kidding. Stay safe, happy, and productive, y'all. --70.22.1.45 (talk) 03:55, 21 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    New York-New York Hotel and Casino

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    This is an odd one. My initial instinct was that an en dash should be used, not a hyphen, but upon double-checking MOS:DASH, I'm not so sure. Although we normally use an en dash in compounds when the connection might otherwise be expressed with to, versus, and, or between, this is not connecting two place names like Minneapolis–Saint Paul but rather repeating the same place name twice (unless the second "New York" refers to the state, which would be an odd use of a hyphen or dash, but I couldn't find information on the origins of the name in the article or online). Use an en dash for the names of two or more entities in an attributive compound would seem to support the use of an en dash, but again, it is technically the same entity and I'm not confident this classifies as an "attributive compound". We could also easily shorten the name to New York-New York (and probably should, per WP:CONCISE and WP:COMMONNAME), in which case, we are advised to use a hyphen in compounded proper names of single entities. I guess it just looks strange to use a hyphen because we usually use an en dash when applying a prefix or suffix to a compound that itself includes a space, but this isn't a prefix. This reads like New / York-New / York rather than New York / – / New York, and "York" obviously doesn't modify "New". Thoughts? InfiniteNexus (talk) 21:53, 23 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    How do independent sources that discuss this hotel/casino present the name? Do they “correct” the dash, or consider it “part of the name” and leave it. I would especially be interested in exploring sources that we trust to usually get stylization right - to see if they make an exception in this case. Blueboar (talk) 22:40, 23 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Should we be looking to third-party sources for this? Many sources don't use en dashes at all in accordance with whatever style guide they follow (e.g. AP); we have our own style guide. So I don't think this is a matter of COMMONNAME. In any case, a cursory search on Google Books shows wild inconsistency, ranging from spaces to commas to slashes (and many false positives). InfiniteNexus (talk) 22:51, 23 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I think you have answered my question - since we don’t see other sources making an exception to their own style guides for it, then neither should we. Blueboar (talk) 00:24, 24 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    When I said "many sources don't use en dashes at all", I was not referring to this instance in particular, I meant in general. Some style guides do not use en dashes in any scenario, including cases where our style guide would call for them. InfiniteNexus (talk) 00:34, 24 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Never look to sources on style issues. Sources are for facts, not style. External style guides can influence our MoS, but they are only one of multiple factors to be considered. Any mention of style guides should be in the context of proposed changes to our MoS, not individual cases. ―Mandruss ☎ IMO. 00:38, 24 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    That said, damn the hotel owners for unnecessarily creating such a conundrum for Wikipedia's MoS wonks. "New York Hotel and Casino" would have done just fine, and readers could just deal with any ambiguity between that and Sydney's New York Hotel. I'd be inclined to use the hyphen and call it a day; it's just not that critical. ―Mandruss ☎ IMO. 01:01, 24 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    talk page order?

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    hello! i was wondering if there's a specified order for templates on the talk page? it seems a bit haphazard article-to-article and i can't find any reference to policy about it. is it safe to assume that since it doesn't tend to matter that much there's no interest in it?--Plifal (talk) 08:36, 27 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    See WP:TALKORDER, although you're thematically right that it's not the most critical of practices. CMD (talk) 09:44, 27 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    thanks!--Plifal (talk) 10:08, 27 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
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