Wikipedia talk:Using nicknames

Toward a MOS:NICKNAME

I drafted this as an essay, but I think it can and should be adapted into a section at MOS:BIO instead of being an essay, though it may need some additional input before such a proposal.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  03:08, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Quotation marks

Is not inserting a nickname in the middle of a name verboten in most style guides? I ask because it's overwhelmingly the most common way to present it (no stats but I'd bet my next paycheck on it). Also, I disagree about quotation marks being minconstrued in this context; when I copyedit I always put quotes around anything preceded by called, known as, named etc. I've never considered they might be taken the wrong way. Primergrey (talk) 04:27, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

"People keep doing it" applies to innumerable poor style choices, from "ain't" and "alot", to "Yes, really!!!!!!" and "15 items or less". No reason for us to not avoid unhelpful choices in encyclopedic writing. Style guides disagree on how to approach this (primarily based on whether they are journalism guides or not). No other style guides but WP's are written with encyclopedic leads in mind, so the question is effectively moot. We need to determine what is best for our own readership's needs. The insertion of obvious short forms (William Jefferson (Bill) Clinton or William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton or William (Bill) Jefferson Clinton, etc.) is not terribly common, since it's redundant. When it's done, the implication seems to be "usually called Bill", but this is better spelled out, in an encyclopedia, with a statement to that effect. This implication, however, is not actually consistent, and some publisher do it any time the short form is attested at all. This inconsistency (along with that of exactly how to format it) is confusing and unhelpful.

The quoted insertion of actual nicknames as in Charles "Lucky" Luciano is primarily a news and investigative journalism style used for compression/expediency. The present draft suggests it can be used in running prose (and mentions that we do so in particular for figures like that one), but it's still unhelpful for readers if we do it in the lead. One problem with doing it habitually is that many people have multiple nicknames (especially sports figures – some snooker player have half a dozen or more). Another is that many do not lend themselves to insertion because of their grammatical structure (e.g. they may be puns on the name and do not work when inserted into the name, but only before or after it, or not with it in juxtaposition at all). Others are multi-word and make it harder to parse the name. Others are only used in certain contexts. Others are not really nicknames, but press appellations that the subject does not use and may object to. Others are anachronistic and were not used in the lifetime of the subject. I can keep going if you like. :-)

As to the second matter (the tone/implication issue): Born Winona Hororowiz, she acts under the name "Winona Ryder" has a strong implication of mockery or disapproval to many readers. See scare quotes. This effect is less perceptible to people who infrequently use scare-quoting themselves to present such an implication, but the inference is difficult to avoid for anyone who does, which is a very large number of people. Scare quoting an actual name is logically incorrect.

"I always put quotes around anything preceded by ..." – please don't. The current US president is named Donald Trump, he is not 'named "Donald Trump"'. David J. Farber was named [in a different use of that word, meaning "appointed" or "honored as"] the Alfred Fitler Moore Professor of Telecommunications at the University of Pennsylvania. One would not write 'was named the "Alfred Fitler Moore Professor ..."' unless one was trying to cast doubt on the endowment professorship as having any real-world meaning, as in 'SMcCandlish is "Rev. Dr. McCandlish" according to an "honorary doctorate" issued by the Universal Life Church, but anyone can get one for $75, and these pseudo-degrees are intended only for amusement purposes.' It's also incorrect in most cases to use quotation marks with something after "called", unless one is making a point that the appellation is an error. An abbreviated-tail cat breed from the Isle of Man is called the Manx cat; it is not 'called the "Manx cat"'. But this could be correct: 'The horned lizard is frequently mislabeled a "horny toad" by those unaware it is a reptile not an amphibian".

See Use–mention distinction and MOS:WAW (words as words). We can use quotation marks or italics when we are addressing a word or name as a linguistic unit being analyzed (italics is more conventional): 'The name William is French in origin, going back to earlier Germanic roots, and is cognate with German Wilhelm.' It's also used this way in philosophical analysis ('What is it, really, to be?' Sartre and Socrates contradict each other on the nature of being versus doing.') That is preferable to the 19th-century habit of using capitalization for this ('Being versus Doing'). Neither the linguistic nor philosophical analysis is being done when we write something like 'The cougar is colloquially called a panther in Florida, and a mountain lion in much of the western United States, though it is closely related to neither the black panther (a form of leopard, Panthera pardus), nor the lion (Panthera leo). All we're doing here is giving regional names for something. There is no need to put quotation marks around "panther" or "mountain lion", and doing so implies mockery of them. Italicizing them is a poor idea in the construction, because we're already necessarily using italics for scientific binomials. Using either form of markup for panther and mountain lion serves no purpose in the sentence. An illustration of why it's not correct to quote or italicize these names is easy; just substitute a person: 'Elizabeth II is styled Her Majesty Queen of the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand; Head of the Commonwealth of Nations; and Duke of Normandy, Lord of Mann, and Duke of Lancaster, among many other styles, offices, and titles'. Or 'Donald Trump currently holds the electoral title President of the United States, and the business positions of chairman and president of the Trump Organization, though it is actively managed by his sons." In neither construction would any of those titles have quotation marks around them or be italicized, despite lead-in phrases preceding them. There's nothing unusual or special about the lead-in phrases "called", "named", "known as", nor other variants like "nicknamed", "also known as", "often referred to", "using the stage name of", etc., etc. They're all the same language structure, syntactically and semantically.
 — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  06:22, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

"'People keep doing it' applies to innumerable poor style choices (etc)" contrasts with the first recommendation ("Do what our other articles do, especially (etc)") – which begs the question: have featured articles and good articles (and their talk pages) been checked w.r.t. these uses of quotation marks?

Generally, for writing guidance: the reader of such guidance may assume that the guidance is in line with approved current practice... Writing guidance that invites the reader to deduct approaches from browsing a truckload of Good/Featured articles and their talk pages is not much help as guidance imho (comparing with what has been done before is what one would do if no guidance was offered).

I suppose I expect guidance (beyond the approach of an under construction essay) to give clear and compact recommendations, with some illustrative examples clarifying the principles. Personally (but that may be my deviation) I don't like hypothetical examples in guidelines: better quote some real examples from FAs or GAs with impeccable style approaches – if such examples can't be found I wouldn't bore readers/editors with issues that are either too rare to write guidance about, or too contentious where diverse stylistic approaches have been sanctioned by state of the art stylistic practice. --Francis Schonken (talk) 09:16, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the comprehensive reply. Outside of a blog or an opinion column, I would not expect to see scare quotes. Certainly not in an encyclopedia. Looking at your examples, I must say that I would expect to see quotes around many of them. I understand how some of them can be seen as "words as words", but I'm realizing from this that I have (perhaps overly) stringent use-mention criteria.
I kind of see being concerned over these quotation marks being mistaken for scare quotes as the same sort of populist error as using "alot" or "should of".Primergrey (talk) 12:23, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Also, to clarify, I wouldn't write 'the president is called "Donald Trump"', but would write 'Donald Trump was named "man of the year"', because in the former he is simply being identified, but in the latter there is an act of (re)naming. Primergrey (talk) 12:32, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Well, much of the issue here is that WP has not being giving any consistent advice about this (not in MOS, not in naming conventions, not otherwise), nor have editors been doing anything consistent. The "do what our best articles do" advice line in the essay (or guideline draft, or whatever this is) is intended for after we're actually doing something consistent. The immediate inspiration for this (though I'd been thinking of writing this up for several years) was a debate about Terry Pratchett in which it's become clear that there isn't any guidance, and people are approaching this from conflicting and inconsistent angles. Everyone can cite another article as an example of what they want, and it doesn't look like any progress is being made toward resolution.

What I see are trends in real-world writing subject to professional editorial control (i.e., not random schmoes' blogs, which is what I was getting at in the "lot of people do it isn't a real rationale" comment) are mostly the following:

1. obvious shortenings and diminutives are not explained, because explaining them is a waste of both writers' and readers' time, and is insulting to the intelligence of the reader;
2. actual nicknames ("Slippery Jimmy"), and nickname-like appellations ("the Boston Strangler", etc.) usually get quotation marks (whether inserted or explained after, e.g. with known as "the Boston Strangler", etc.), except when it's how everyone normally refers to the person (e.g. Magic Johnson not "Magic" Johnson);
3. abbreviated and diminutive names, when inserted, typically get parentheses (round brackets) not quotation marks, but no markup if given after the fact (if James Q. Xeres is later referred to as Jim it'll just be as Jim Xeres not "Jim" Xeres);
4. insertions of common parenthetical abbreviations/diminutives (as in James (Jim) Xeres) are primarily a journalism style (used for expediency and in lieu of a longer "better known as" kind of statement;
5. but it's done more universally with unusual ones, like the Ceecee example of someone whose initials are C. C., and likewise for someone named William Peter Flogiston who went by Willy-Pete (it would likely be given as William Peter (Willy-Pete) Flogiston);
6. nicknames/appellations that are put in quotes not also put in parentheses, which would be redundant.

I've tried to codify all that in what's drafted here, to provide a consistent approach, while also leaving as much to editorial discretion as is practical. What we don't want any more of is pointless RfCs or RMs about such minutiae. Just have a formula and follow it, and have a rule/advice that for matters not subject to the formula, avoid fighting over it.

To an extent, whether to use quotation marks or parentheses with abbreviations/diminutives might seem arbitrary to some. But the "scare quotes" feel of it, combined also with the "grocer's quotes" (the Apples on "Sale" Today Only error) feel of it, are good reasons to avoid the quote-marks style with those types of names. The eye-rolling implication of "so-called" that is conveyed by scare-quoting, however, is actually entirely appropriate and intentional for actual nicknames like "Hotlips" or "Boston Shorty" and for hyperbolic appellations like "the Wizard of Wall Street" or "the Night Stalker".
 — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  19:52, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

Examples

WP:PSEUDONYM has some long-standing article title examples, including Scotty Bowman and Dizzy Gillespie. The intros of these two examples start, respectively:

• William Scott "Scotty" Bowman, OC (born September 18, 1933) is a ...
• John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie (/ɡɪˈlɛspi/; October 21, 1917 – January 6, 1993) was ...

Neither is FA or GA, nonetheless: wouldn't it be a good idea if these same examples could be used at WP:MOSBIO#Pseudonyms, stage names, and common names, or in this new essay, for illustrating how a nickname (or other type of pseudonym) can be introduced in an article? --Francis Schonken (talk) 09:49, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

The John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie case makes sense in that format, because "Dizzy" is a nickname. The Bowman one would more conventionally be given as William Scott (Scotty) Bowman. As noted in the second of my longer responses in the thread above, our editors here are not being in any way consistent about any of this, so you can find many cases of non-nicknames (abbreviations or diminutives like Will or Betty) being put in "scare quotes" as if they're nicknames like "Ratface" or "Albuquerque Ace", and you can find many more case of parentheses, plus a few using both. The quotation marks style (much less both at once) is unnecessary, sends the wrong message about the nature of the name, and is sloppy/lazy style, much like always using a hyphen to represent every horizontal-line character.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  20:01, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

Positioning relative to lifespan

I came here looking to see whether the nickname at the beginning of the article lead should be before or after the lifespan. I didn't find an answer. Perhaps it could be added in the future. Sondra.kinsey (talk) 20:49, 19 July 2017 (UTC)