Wikipedia:WikiProject The Beatles/Style

British English

The WikiProject's advice: Articles within the scope of WikiProject The Beatles should be written in British English.

This advice specifically interprets the more general Wikipedia guidelines, including the WP:Manual of Style. In particular, at WP:ENGVAR, it notes:

• "An article on a topic that has strong ties to a particular English-speaking nation should use the English of that nation."
• "When an English variety's consistent usage has been established in an article, maintain it in the absence of consensus to the contrary. With few exceptions (e.g., when a topic has strong national ties or a term/spelling carries less ambiguity), there is no valid reason for such a change."
• "When no English variety has been established and discussion cannot resolve the issue, the variety used in the first non-stub revision is considered the default."

The WikiProject thus recommends British English, because it is assumed that (with possible exceptions, as noted below) articles about the Beatles have a "strong national tie" to the dialect of the United Kingdom, since the subject itself does. This is not a claim of national "ownership" of Beatles-related articles, but a consistent approach to treating the topic for our readers' benefit (and secondarily for reduction of editorial conflict).

Exceptions: It is possible that there will be a small number of exceptions to this rule. Examples might include Beatle-related people from countries other than UK, or records not released in the UK. In such cases, the dialect of the article creator may be retained. Exceptions should be noted on the article's talk page and listed in the section below (such additions can be discussed on the talk page).

List of exceptions

1. [Place here]

"The Beatles" or "the Beatles"

Due to lack of agreement, the WikiProject no longer provides its own advice on this issue, and defers to the Manual of Style:

• "Mid-sentence, per the MoS, the word 'the' should in general not be capitalized in continuous prose, e.g.: Wings featured Paul McCartney from the Beatles and Denny Laine from the Moody Blues." WP:Manual of Style/Music#Names (definite article).

The main MoS, at WP:Manual of Style#Capitalization of "The", and the page on capitalization, at WP:Manual of Style/Capital letters#Capitalization of "The" are all consistent on this point.

This debate about this has been had many times at various pages, and much more broadly than just [t|T]he Beatles, most frequently at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters and Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Music; their talk page archives contain many such discussions. See also Wikipedia talk:Requests for mediation/The Beatles.

Citations

In accordance with Wikipedia policy, facts and assertions should be attributed to verifiable, reliable sources wherever possible (see WP:V and WP:RS).

The Project's preferred method for this is inline citations using the <ref> tag.

Usage is very simple. Examples:

Citing a book: <ref>Author, Book, ISBN, page number</ref>

Citing a book multiple times: Lewisohn, Mark, "Beatles Book", ISBN 73737373 (2000), Hamyln, London

<ref>Lewisohn, p23</ref>

Reusing a reference:

<ref name="somewebsite">[http://www.web.com/ Some Website]</ref> Second use<ref name="somewebsite"/>

References

The citations are displayed by placing a {{reflist}} tag at the bottom of the article.

Further reading

• Wikipedia:Footnotes - More details about the ref tag and footnotes
• Wikipedia:Citing sources - A more general overview

About the relationship of this advice page to WP:POLICY

WikiProject The Beatles advice material is created through discussion and consensus. As noted above, it interprets the WP:Manual of Style (including WP:ENGVAR) as applicable to this topic. Artist-specific WikiProjects also co-ordinate with more general projects such as WP:WikiProject Albums, WP:WikiProject Songs, and WP:WikiProject United Kingdom; per several WP:ARBCOM decisions, WikiProjects must refrain from editwarring over matters such as infoboxes; we're all on the same encyclopedia-improvement team. What this advice page recommends remains the WikiProject's consensus unless and until it is changed by new consensus, or unless it is contradicted by wider consensus in the Wikipedia community (per WP:LOCALCONSENSUS policy).