Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 88

Archive 85

Archive 86

Archive 87

Archive 88

Archive 89

Archive 90

→

Archive 95

Default image size question - 180px

I've been removing forced pixel counts from a number of articles per the MOS recommendation. It points out that the default size is 180px unless otherwise specified. This seems a little small. Is there are reason for this? Can it be changed? It seems many editors (let alone readers) don't realise they can change viewing preferences and this is the reason, i presume, they specify pixel counts. Perhaps if the default was bigger they would not feel the need to specify pixels. Any thoughts? Am I asking in the correct place? Merbabu 12:07, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

180px is ridiculously small, especially for horizontal images, which should be approaching twice that width. DreamGuy 21:41, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

I agree it's too small for horizontal pictures. Ideally, the software should be modified to give editors some control over big an image should be without specifying pixels. E.g. instead of saying "image:xxx|thumb|250px" you should be able to get an equivalent result by saying, "image:xxx|thumb|larger". The place to discuss it is probably Wikipedia:Village pump (technical). Kla’quot (talk | contribs) 15:57, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

You might want to check out this archived discussion which debated the issue at some length. A claim of consensus for a revised size guideline was disputed; a number of pro-change arguments attracted dissenting views. I'm still of the opinion that the proliferation of larger, higher-resolution monitors means a thumb size increase is desirable, despite the possibility that this might mean some system-level changes. The last time it was taken to the pump, it fizzled out and disappeared.. mikaul^talk 00:09, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Revised opening

I've copy-edited the template at the top, without substantive change in meaning. However, there was still tension between "should be followed in Wikipedia articles" and the second paragraph of the lead, which went wobbly at the knees by seeming to say "Don't take it too seriously, ignore it if you please." The second para appears to undermine the whole reason for having the MOS.

Furthermore, the guidelines proper didn't start until the third section, “Article titles”. The first two sections—“Which style to use” and “Disputes over style issues”—seemed to concern more general things that sit better in the lead.

So I've been bold in subsuming the first two sections into the lead and dumping the problematic second para. If there are reasonable objections, I'll revert it. Tony 13:27, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

• Relationship between this manual and the submanuals. It's unsupervised and has led to discrepancies. The animal names look to be a current instance of tension between this page and the submanual. Therefore, I propose that we add (to the lead, I guess):

• Where a discrepancy arises between the text of this manual and that of a submanual, the former will prevail.

At the very least, this will encourage better coordination.

Comments? Tony 02:54, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Agree, the main WP:MOS should have primacy, because more people will come here looking for answers. It may be worth adding notes to this effect (or an infobox?) on the sub articles to encourage authors to approve here, before changing sub-pages. Owain.davies 11:04, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

The use–mention distinction: apparent formatting inconsistency in MOS

Can someone clear up my confusion on this issue. The MOS appears to use variously quotes and italics to mention words, yet explicitly states in the section on Italics:

Words as words

Italics are used when citing a word or letter (see use–mention distinction). For example, “The term panning is derived from panorama, a word coined in 1787.” “The most commonly used letter in English is e.”

The linked-to use–mention ariticle (which appears to use quotes wrongly in the first occurrence of cheese), starts as follows:

The use–mention distinction is the distinction between using a word (or phrase, etc.) and mentioning it. In written language, mentioned words or phrases often appear between quotation marks or in italics; some authorities insist that mentioned words or phrases always be made visually distinct in this manner. Used words or phrases (more common than mentioned ones) do not bear any typographic distinction.

For example, the following two sentences illustrate use and mention of the word "cheese":

• Cheese is derived from milk.
• Cheese is derived from a word in Old English.

The first sentence is a statement about the substance cheese. It uses the word cheese to describe its referent. The second is a statement about the word cheese. It mentions the word without using it.

There are many quote marks used around examples in the Manual. Does this mean that they should all be in italics? Critically, does the rule apply to single items only, or to whole sentences as well? Tony 11:16, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

No one seems interested. So should I go ahead and change all of the quote marks around single items throughout the manual? Should I leave whole-sentence examples in quotes? Tony 05:28, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Action: bit by bit, I'm changing the quoted single items to italics as per the "Words as words" guidelines; I'm not touching the quotes around whole phrases, clauses and sentences. It's nominal groups only, as I understand it (= nouns and noun phrases), that should be italicised rather than in quotes. Tony 03:33, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

One could differentiate between mention (italics) and quote (marks), but in reality most people don’t, won’t or can’t follow that convention. Some style guides recommend single quote marks for mentions instead of italic formatting, which they reserve for emphasis or something else, and double quote marks, which they reserve for quotations. In linguistics, however, italics are the standard for indicating words and phrases spoken about. Christoph Päper

See also #Proposed "Words as words" change; the change proposed, barely discussed, and then implemented here is disputed.

Alphabetization

Question about alphabetization. Is there any guideline about alphabetizing titles that begin with numbers? To my knowledge, in any encyclopedia, or in a library, numbers go in their alphabetical location (64th Street: A Detective Story would be under S for Sixty-fourth). I don't think I've seen a volume 0-9 of an encyclopedia. Putting numbers first is only common because that's what a computer automatically does, but it seems pretty common on Wikipedia. ~ JohnnyMrNinja _{talk} 22:22, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Or if you can mention a better place to ask, I'll go there. ~ JohnnyMrNinja _{talk} 07:39, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Capitalisation of titles

The 'Titles' section under 'Capitals' is currently self-contradictory:

When used generically, such items are in lower case: “De Gaulle was the French president” and “Louis XVI was the French king”. Similarly, “Three prime ministers attended the conference”, but “The British Prime Minister is Gordon Brown”. (A rule of thumb is this: when the modifier is the specific article the, we use Prime Minister; when the non-specific a applies, we use prime minister).

The 'rule of thumb' in brackets sets a different standard to the rule it comes after - if the deciding matter was 'the' or 'a' it would be “De Gaulle was the French President” and “Louis XVI was the French King”.

Which is correct?

Looking at previous versions of the page (e.g. [1]) it looks like the 'rule of thumb' was originally intended to only apply to the title 'prime minister'; but this seems somewhat bizarre as well - I don't see why this title wouldn't obey the rules that others do. TSP 12:53, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Can you fix it? Tony 13:26, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Only if I know what we want to fix it to :-) I'd be inclined to just remove the 'rule of thumb' and leave the rest as it is, but I wanted to know what other people thought.

Actually, I'll do that - there's no sense leaving it as it is - and if people think the rule should be more like the rule of thumb and less like the rest of it, it can go back. TSP

I like the rule of thumb better than the rest of it; I'd use the capitals only when the title modifies a proper name. "As of this month, Prime Minister Brown is the British prime minister; in the G8, he joins President George Bush, the American president, and six other presidents and prime ministers." --Trovatore 16:42, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Actually, that isn't the rule of thumb, now that I re-read it. In fact the whole thing is confusing. Why does it say "the British Prime Minister" but "the French president"? If this difference is specific to the title or the country, it should say so.

I'd amend my formulation slightly: capitals only when the title modifies a proper name or is used as a form of address ("Mr. President, would you come with me?" "Yes, Prime Minister") --Trovatore 16:46, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Mmm. But that seems to end you with such things as "Elizabeth II is queen of the United Kingdom and the other Commonwealth Realms", which definitely looks wrong, to me at least. I think the distinction it's trying to make is between official titles - "President of France" and descriptions - "French president" - but I agree it doesn't do it very well, and doesn't seem to provide a way of establishing what is the formal title, particularly for foreign-language titles.

On a slight tangent, 'Prime Minister Brown' is a construction I don't often hear in the UK; I think it's mostly a usage that's come from the US by analogy with 'President Bush'. We'd usually refer to him just as 'the prime minister' (or 'the Prime Minister'?) or just 'Gordon Brown'. TSP 00:12, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Well I would definitely prefer to say that President Sarkozy is the president of France, not the President of France. If you wanted to carve out a special exception for HM the Q, I wouldn't object; we Yanks understand that y'all aren't completely rational about her :-).

This wound up being an issue at prime minister of Italy -- there was a move debate that settled on the lowercase "m", then someone got around to moving it to "President of the Council of Ministers of Italy", which (without the "of Italy" part) is the actual official title, but one almost never used in English, and only in rather restricted contexts even in Italian. Personally I think it was better at "prime minister", with the minuscule "m". --Trovatore 00:22, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Talk here, don't edit war

There's an edit-war brewing, I see, concerning the removal of advice on how to make external links visually neater.

Storm surfer, please explain here why you're so adamant that this advice be removed. External links are a lighter blue than internal links, so are already identifiable. Who cares all that much, anyway? What I do like is not having to put up with that lumpy arrow thing that, by default, accompanies external links.

You're the one who wants to change the status quo, so you should justify the change before edit warring over it. Tony 05:26, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

DreamGuy has been edit-warring on multiple guideline pages. For example, WP:LAYOUT. I suspect it will soon be time for a User WP:RfC. He hasn't been discussing on the talk page there either. Just so everyone is aware. IPSOS (talk) 07:00, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

That's nothing but a personal attack. I'm not surprised you'd stoop to such tactics based upon the harassing and deceptive comments you've left on my talk page. No edit warring is going on here, it's just you objecting to the edits of multiple editors and trying to create a guideline to meet your own person whims. I think you need to just lay off and try to stick to the actual issue... oh, wait, but if you do that everyone can see that you are completely wrong. Gotchya. DreamGuy 07:17, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, no. Multiple editors are objecting to your edits. I'm aware for the Arbitration case that was filed against you, which was not accepted because the step of filing a user RfC had never been taken. The issue is, that you are attempting to change the order of the appendices which have been fixed and accepted for some time, and that if I'm not mistaken, this is not the first time you've tried to do so unilaterally w/o discussion on the talk page. IPSOS (talk) 07:21, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

It's not the status quo, the status quo is not to screw with the code for external links. Sometimes people sneak nonsense into guideline pages that simply have no reason to be there, and that's certainly one of them. If there is an edit war it's only if you insist on putting that nonsense back after multiple editors have removed it. I don't particularly care if *you* like not having to "put up" with the standard code for external links, it's how everyone always does it here, and it's absolutely insane to claim that people can just up and decide to do it completely differently if they get it into their head that they want to.

And your recent edit to try to claim that this page overrules the submanuals is nonsense. In fact if a statement clarifying what to do over conflicts is necessary, common sense says the submanual, where people more into the specific topic discuss it in greater detail, should overrule this page. But instead of specifying one or the other we need to let Wikipedia editors handle these things through the normal process.

You have real WP:OWNership issues, and I think you should tone done your attitude here and start editing in good faith. DreamGuy 06:58, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

If you objected, why didn't you respond when I raised the matter on this page? That was a courtesy that you haven't extended everyone here over the current issue. I don't like your aggressive attitude, talking of the need to "tone down".

Now, to take your substantive issue, by example, at the start of this MOS, you'd rather stop peopple from turning this (as it was a while ago):

Chicago provides an online guide, The Chicago Manual of Style Online. The The Guardian Styleguide, the Mayfield Electronic Handbook of Technical & Scientific Writing and the CMS Crib Sheet are among online style guides that are accessible gratis.

into this:

Chicago provides an online guide, The Chicago Manual of Style Online. The The Guardian Styleguide, the Mayfield Electronic Handbook of Technical & Scientific Writing' and the CMS Crib Sheet are among online style guides that are accessible gratis.

I don't see why people should be stopped from removing the arrow thing when the text looks more attractive and reads more smoothly without, and the fact that the links are external is obvious. Tony 07:23, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Now that I don't agree with. All external links should be made obvious. IPSOS (talk) 07:25, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't mind if you remove the extra code that removes the arrow, as long as no one objects. Tony 07:29, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

You are quite gracious. That's how I thought these discussions were supposed to work. I'll wait for more input. No hurry. IPSOS (talk) 07:38, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Can I say that the difference between light blue and a lighter blue isn't that great to a lot of people with vision impairment?

Also, most people probably won't even think to look for a difference, and won't notice it unless an internal link and an external link are right next to each other. And it requires people to have their own prior knowledge of what the difference is between two slightly different colors of links. They have to click on this kind of link to find out that it is an external link, which is just as bad as easter eggs.

I personally cannot stand external links within articles, except in the External links section, as I have to disable CSS for my Treo to be able to use Wikipedia, and that makes all links look the same to me. ~ JohnnyMrNinja _{talk} 05:34, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

I agree with most of what DreamGuy said about the status quo. External links should look like external links. If you want to change the way external links look (which seems to be your goal), you should do so at the source, not by suggesting that people include HTML code that is confusing to readers and editors. — The Storm Surfer 21:10, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

This discussion has changed my view somewhat. I wonder whether the raft of external links in the lead should be removed or relocated to a less prominent position in MOS. I'm sensing that people want to reinstate the arrow icons wherever these links end up. Tony 03:03, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Isn't the standard practice in situations like this to link to the Wikipedia article about the publication, with the idea that readers can go to the external link from there? Not that I'm sure that's what we should do, but I thought it was what is typically done. — The Storm Surfer 01:46, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

MOS central prevails over daughter articles

Now, as for this storm over the "MOS central prevails over daughter articles" clause, which no one bothered to respond to when I discussed it here earlier, can the parties who object to it say here why they feel that it should be impossible to tell what WP's real policy is on an issue when two MOS pages declare different policies? Is that not an unsatisfactory situation? The plea for a structural environment for discussion that I see in the edit comments means nothing to me. Why should that discussion not happen here if there's a discrepancy?

My reason for initiating this change, apparently without objection at the time, was that there is insufficient coordination between MOS central and the submanuals. The additional clause functions to ensure that a policy prevails at all times, and to encourage discussion and coordination between the pages. Not enough of that happening, IMO. Tony 15:15, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

I've acutally been wondering the same thing myself. People go in and unilaterally change a lesser watched page. It gets missed and stays there for a few days, weeks or even longer, then the editor pretends it was like that all along. There needs to be better monitoring of these changes, and IMO anyone who edits policy or guideline pages w/o even posting on the talk page should simply be reverted. IPSOS (talk) 15:43, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

The MOS is not a policy document it is a guideline. This guideline does not take precedence over other guidelines. You should seek a broad consensus with the editors of the other MOS guidelines before implementing such a radical shift from consensus to prescription. Today at least two editors have reverted the suggested change so until the change has been widely advertised and a broad Wikipedia:consensus emerges this should not be implemented.

IPSOS you wrote above "then the editor pretends it was like that all along". Yet when I reverted an edit that changed a section called "Submanuals" you reverted to the new text with the comment "revert revision 145914551 by Philip Baird Shearer (talk) - no post or discussion on talk page prior to change)". So now that I have posted this here I hope you will wait until a consensus emerges before reverting my change to the status quo again. --Philip Baird Shearer 17:18, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Or you could be more gracious and allow the change to stay while it is discussed. So far there is no consensus either way, but at least the topic was brought up on the talk page in advance. IPSOS (talk) 17:40, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

The problem with this page, and it's been like this ever since I started editing, is that it's edited by too many people, many of whom add their own ideas without having any background in the subject. The result is that the page has veered from the sublime to the ridiculous and back again (I'm thinking of issues like Maltese English). I see that Tony and others seem to be getting a grip on it, so perhaps in future it'll be stable and more sensible. Until we see that stability, we can't give the MoS, itself just a guideline, authority over any other guideline. You could argue that it only wants authority over its own subpages, but we'd first have to give the subpages a chance to declare their independence, as it were, and I'm guessing many of the editors on those pages would rather hoist their own flags than be subject to a huge MoS that's difficult to follow, unstable, and sometimes nonsensical. SlimVirgin ^{(talk)(contribs)} 17:58, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Actually, Tony is one of the ones CAUSING the ridiculous nonsense, by adding new bits of info that completely go against common sense and suggesting people just adopt Britishisms as the default. We can't give one guideline any authority over any other guideline, and we certainly cannot give a couple of editors who are not working at all within how the encyclopedia as a whole has been operating for years as a sane consensus way of handling things a blank check to change whatever they want. DreamGuy 04:03, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

I've not looked at Tony's edits, but he's an extremely good editor, and one of a small number of users I'd trust to get this page in order. This guideline has been one of the most problematic on Wikipedia, because everyone thinks they understand style issues, plus people have their favorite ways of doing things, and they firmly believe this page can only benefit from hearing about them. As a result, we've had the Thirty Years' War over whether the serial comma should be called the Oxford comma, and otherwise sensible editors manning the barricades in defence of Maltese English, which no one was ever able to give an example of. That's not to mention the lives lost over whether to write U.S. or US. I take my hat off to Tony for trying to put an end to it. SlimVirgin ^{(talk)(contribs)} 05:00, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

I see your point, but in my experience the daughter articles are just as unstable and prone to the same issues you bring up, probably more so. Are we going to simply be stuck with shifting sand? Case in point, one editor keeps trying to change the order of the standard appendices in WP:LAYOUT. The great majority of article comform to the current order. People don't seem to consider the huge amount of work they would create by making such a major change. And their reasons seem to boil down to "I think it would be so obviously better that no one could possibly disagree with me." I'm not sure how to counter such an attitude. Any suggestions? IPSOS (talk) 18:25, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

I agree with you in principle, and if this page ever becomes stable (and gets rid of some of its sillier advice), I'd strongly support having it as a main page with its subpages deriving their authority from it, rather than standing as independent guidelines.

I can help you out at WP:LAYOUT (though I've not looked at it yet), but in general the only advice I can give is to work hard to get this page fixed up and stabilized. Easier said than done, I know. SlimVirgin ^{(talk)(contribs)} 18:31, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

I've protected LAYOUT and left a note on talk. One thing we should do is reinforce the idea that policy and guideline pages must not be changed without discussion, unless they're nonsensical or inconsistent with other key policies and guidelines, but neither seems to be the case with LAYOUT. SlimVirgin ^{(talk)(contribs)} 18:39, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I very strongly agree with your last statements. When something is long established and changes would require that many article be changed, the reason had better be good enough to convince a consensus of editors that it is such an improvement as to outweigh the makework it produces. That's not the case with the undiscussed changes which were being made at WP:LAYOUT. IPSOS (talk) 19:17, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

SV, thanks for your input. You appear to agree in principle with the idea that MOS central should prevail, but only after it becomes stable. My argument for explicitly giving MOS central priority over the daughter articles, as I expressed it originally, is a way of dealing with instability. That is, the daughter articles exist primarily to set out the guidelines in greater detail, not to be an alternative little empires. Thus, whenever a significant change is proposed at a daughter article, it needs to be checked with this page, and if it would lead to inconsistency with it, should be argued out here. This process should occur now, but often doesn't, which is a recipe for chaos. The recent abolition to the ban on using en dashes in article titles is a point in case. There, the proponents had a good grip on what this article said (nothing), and the issue was thrashed out and voted on in isolation at the now-defunct MOSDASH. The result would normally not have been communicated to this page. Under the codified relationship between this page and its daughters, the arguments and voting should probably have occurred here. Tony 02:28, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I do agree in principle, and I appreciate the predicament. It's a question of trying to work out which is the cart and which the horse. I think the daughter articles become their own little empires for the same reason that the MoS in general is such a mess (or was when I last checked), and that's too many editors writing about issues they're not really familiar with, or adding their own idiosyncracies, or whatever they were taught in school, on the grounds that if it was good enough for Mrs. Palmer in Grade 3, the rest of the world ought to fall in line and stop whining.

The ideal thing would be if a small group of knowledgeable people (preferably professional editors) took hold of the page, got it in shape, then focused on keeping it stable. I don't know how likely that is to happen. You're doing a magnificent job, but you'd need more people behind you to fend off unwelcome changes.

Which are the daughter articles exactly? Are they the ones listed under "supplementary manuals," and is that a complete list? SlimVirgin ^{(talk)(contribs)} 20:22, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

User:IPSOS's edit comment when he reverted: " no post or discussion on talk page prior to change" is just nonsense, as there is discussion here, and the version he put in there was the new one that goes completely against the longstanding consensus on the page. If you're going to make that argument that it absolutely does not belong there and the revert did the exact opposite of what it should... but then that particular editor doesn;t really have an opinion, he's just playing his typical "I don't know what's going on, but DreamGuy wants it the other way so it must be wrong." thing. DreamGuy 04:03, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Oh, yeah, that's right, I forgot. DreamGuy is so important and always right that no one could possibly disagree with him except out of spite. Go read WP:NPA, or as you prefer to shove down other editor's throats, WP:DICK (see DG's edit history). IPSOS (talk) 00:39, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

When I initially saw the precedence comment, I thought it was a good idea. If two places say to do two different things, one of them should have priority over the other. But then I realized this is Wikipedia. If two places say to do two different things, we should decide what the correct option is (usually the third option in my experience) and change them both to say that. — The Storm Surfer 21:14, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

And just when does that happen? And where? And how long does it take? There have been (and no doubt still are) discrepancies for which there's insufficient motivation to reconcile. The "prevails" clause forces that issue, where it arises. It's not intended to be a mass takeover by this page of the whole concept of style guideline; rather, it's intended to encourage contributors of both MOS central and its daughter manuals to reach consensus about what's on their pages, probably here. I envisage that, as often as not, MOS central will change to reconcile its text with that of a submanual; after all, submanuals attract specialists. Tony 02:58, 22 July 2007 (UTC) PS Slim Virgin, yes, the submanuals are listed under the section of that name here. I presume that it's an accurate list. Tony 03:00, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Hyphens

The Manual of Style uses U+002D (-) for hyphens. This is Unicode's hyphen-minus character, which is there for compatibility with ASCII. Unicode also has a character for a hyphen, U+2010 (‐), which is preferred when legacy compatibility is unnecessary, and which i believe looks better. Would it be reasonable to change the MoS to encourage the Unicode hyphen, or is there good reason to continue using the ASCII hyphen? Foobaz·o< 01:25, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Is there a good reason to use the Unicode hyphen, aside from your assertion that it looks better? Investigating further, I found that only 69 of the fonts on my computer include this character, compared to over 300 for hyphen-minus. — The Storm Surfer 01:34, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

It unambiguously means hyphen, and never means a minus sign, en dash, or em dash. It's available in about 44 of 151 of the fonts on my computer. If the user's font doesn't have it, i believe most web browsers will fall back to a font that does have it. We should use it for typographical correctness, the same reason we use en dashes and em dashes. Foobaz·o< 12:45, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

I believe browsers do not fall back to another font in that case. (How would that work? Would it fall back for just that character? Or for all characters?) That said, I doubt all of those 151 or 300 fonts are relevant. It would be more interesting to know what support for this character exists in the few fonts that are likely to be used (Wikipedia's default fonts and other common fonts). --PEJL 13:22, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

You certainly have a point that a lot of my fonts may not be relevant. That said, Arial didn't seem to have it, which someone said was Wikipedia's default font once. Of course, it's possible I just have a lousy version of Arial (assuming there is some other kind). — The Storm Surfer 02:43, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Browsers actually do that sort of fallback all the time, except for Internet Explorer (at least until version 6), which is the reason for the existence of {{unicode}} etc.

Anyhow, I believe recommending the correct minus character (U+2212) and the dashes is enough, hyphen-minus will then mean hyphen. Also I’m not aware of a font that features different glyphs for U+002D and U+2010, but many feature a special glyph for U+2212 (which looks like + without the vertical stroke). Christoph Päper

Presumably we should encourage whichever is produced by the the hyphen character on the keyboard, since any improvement in looks is unlikely to be worth the extra effort. Christopher Parham (talk) 16:29, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Proposal to add to MOS a summary of MOSNUM

The draft of six new sections comprising guidelines on chronological items and numbers is now available and under discussion at MOSNUM talk.

The proposal is that these new sections will be inserted into MOS central and will, at the same, form the basis for improving the text in the related sections at MOSNUM itself.

Contributors to this page are welcome to scrutinise the proposal and to provide advice and feedback at MOSNUM talk during the next two weeks. Several improvements to the draft have already been made on the basis of feedback. Tony 07:43, 23 July 2007 (UTC)