User talk:SMcCandlish/Archive 163
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June 2020
Hyphen after a multi-word phrase
Does the hyphen usage in "Severe acute respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus" look correct to you? It doesn't seem correct to me – I would use "SARS-related coronavirus". I don't see an answer to this question in MOS:HYPHEN. —BarrelProof (talk) 17:18, 17 March 2020 (UTC)
- @BarrelProof: Different style guides treat this differently, and I don't think we've ever gotten consensus on it. One common-sense position would be to do exactly as you suggest, as simply better writing (concise, and no room for confusion). Another common-sense position is that separating out "related" with a hyphen, at bare minimum, makes is clear that a compound adjective is in play, and that readers can probably work the longer phrase out on their own. Some might suggest that the hyphen alone implies that the material in front of that word that could be interpreted as forming a complete thought necessarily is one (i.e., that "severe acute respiratory syndrome" is a unit). Thus, they would argue, forcibly hyphenating the entire thing is probably unnecessary. Some would rebut, on the basis that a non-expert reader might think that the unit is "acute respiratory syndrome", being randomly modified by "severe" (i.e. that one could replace that word at editorial whim with, e.g., "major" or "life-threatening"); or that the unit is "respiratory syndrome" modified by "severe" and "acute"; or even that the unit is just "syndrome" and the three words before it are misc. adjectives. That is, someone might suppose there there's a "syndrome-related corona virus", and this one happens to be a respiratory virus, and an severely acute one. These concerns are not entirely idle (especially given that many of our readers are kids, half-educated, or non-native English speakers, something that the privileged, degree-holding, urban, WASP techies who make up the majority of our stable editorial base conveniently forget). I would thus would normally actually either hyphenate the entire phrase, or (as you would do, and much more practically) just rewrite it, especially since linking "severe acute respiratory syndrome" itself is not an option at that spot. Various style guides that say to avoid excessively long multi-hyphen compound modifiers are not wrong to do so; but that doesn't actually equate to "just delete the hyphens", not in WP's kind of writing. Various medical and other specialized styles would not hyphenate any of this at all (even "related"), because they are hostile to hyphenation of jargon terms that doctors (etc.) already understand. But that rationale doesn't apply here. Rewriting to avoid is the better solution.
In this particular case, I think our readers are actually familiar with the exact phrase "severe acute respiratory syndrome" simply accidentally, due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and non-stop news about it. So, in this exact instance I don't think any of this matters, but I would also go with SARS-related coronavirus simply for concision.
PS: There's actually an additional argument complication: most if not all style guides say not to hyphenate inside a proper name or proper-noun phrase, and they tend to commingle those concepts (fairly, since from a English linguistics perspective they overlap so much as to be indistinguishable). The rule boils down to writing "South Korea-based" not "South-Korea-based", and they're thinking of capitalized multi-word names. But there's a discipline distinction between proper name (linguistics) AKA proper noun, versus proper name (philosophy). While philosophy is divided on the matter, and still actively publishing debates on it in phil. journals, the general gist is that a proper name does not have to be capitalized to be one, in their sense, and under some common phil. definitions "severe acute respiratory syndrome" does qualify as one, ergo some would never want to hyphenate it. This is actually a fallacy of equivocation, in which they are improperly substituting a phil. sense of "proper name" for a linguistics one, in a specifically ling. not phil. context; but it is nevertheless a common error and one that is difficult to root out of a mind in which it has taken hold. It's one of the main drivers of interminable capitalization-related rehash on Wikipedia, because the phil. sense of "proper name" sometimes filters down to broader public [mis]understanding of how to write (generally in an inarticulable way, a subjective sense of "rightness" that was probably absorbed somewhere between 5th grade and sophomore year at university/college and which may invoke near-buried traumatic memories of a particular instructor. >;-).
— SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 03:18, 18 March 2020 (UTC)- Thank you for the thoughtful and informative reply. As your response seems to indicate that the current title is not clearly incorrect, I won't consider this a clear call for action. Incidentally, would you consider "Severe acute respiratory syndrome" to be a proper noun? —BarrelProof (talk) 19:25, 18 March 2020 (UTC)
- @BarrelProof: In the Wikipedia/MoS sense (that is, the linguistic and stylistic "Should this be capitalized?" sense), absolutely not. It does qualify as as a "proper name" under some definitions offered by philosophy, but that actually has no implications for such style questions, since it is not a proper-noun phrase. That is the confusion that affects so many editors (and so many specialized sources that rampantly over-capitalize along "use upper case for Important Things in This Field" lines). — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 19:22, 19 March 2020 (UTC)
- Thank you again. I still don't understand the syndrome proper noun issue, but I trust your judgment and will try to learn the reasoning. —BarrelProof (talk) 18:24, 20 March 2020 (UTC)
- The super-simplified version is that there's a philosophy argument that any appellation that is not entirely simply descriptive is a proper name, and another (not necessarily related) argument that any appellation that is used without full understanding of its literal meaning is also a proper name. And other such propositions; entire volumes have been published about this stuff (including recently, and it's getting very cross-disciplinary, with half-baked attempts to merge philosophy, linguistics, cognitive-science, and other approaches to the questions: [1], [2], [3], [4], etc.). In the end, capitalization is largely a matter of custom, and in the linguistics of English there's a class we usually apply it to: proper nouns (which aren't the same as proper names, quite, since the latter has divergent definitions), most modifiers derive from proper nouns [most other languages don't], plus some other things like most acronyms/initialisms even when they stand for things that are not proper nouns. It's best to just stick with Proper noun (or off-site, writing-oriented material on that subject) unless you want a bad headache. The article still has issues; a linguist would significantly rewrite it, e.g. to address noun phrases not the subset nouns per se.
But even the article's general gist can be a bit of a conceptual hassle. E.g. if "[a] proper noun is a noun that identifies a single entity and is used to refer to that entity ... as distinguished from a common noun, which is a noun that refers to a class of entities", then how is, say, Americans a proper noun? The answer is that "entity" has a loose definition for this purpose and includes a class treated as an entity itself, while "cars" and "trees" are classes that are not so treated. You can probably see how this immediately starts to run into cognitive dissonance with the philosophy angles: isn't "severe acute respiratory syndrome" an entity in a sense, and that term used to identify and refer exclusively to it? Isn't it also evocatively/subjectively labeling, with terms like "severe", thus not limited to objectively describing? Isn't it also used by the average person without full understanding of the meaning of its constituent terms? And so on. Reach for the aspirin. And why isn't that Aspirin?
It really comes down to this as a practical matter: there's just a Gestalt in English about what qualifies as a proper noun[-phrase] and qualifies for capitalization. It does warp a bit on contact with specialist audiences/writers, who are apt to apply capitalization as a form of signification of contextually important concepts/terms (cf. the 8-year-long and ultimately failed battle to force capitalization of common names of species on Wikipedia, as in "Bald Eagle", "Mountain Lion"), a habit that is quite old more generally in the history of English (skim something like the US Declaration of Independence for example), but which has been progressively eroding since the late 19th century (formerly "Century"). Style guides that focus on academic writing, however, are remarkably consistent in what to capitalize and what not to (which is probably by MOS:CAPS can even exist). In the end, it is probably better to read things other than our own articles and guidelines on this subject, such as Chicago Manual of Style, Fowler's Modern English, etc. Some of the comprehensive (non-ESL) grammars of English, e.g. from Oxford U. Pr., probably also get into this in clearer terms than our rather palimpsestuous mess of an article at Proper noun and less messy but still flawed MoS pages, which have been cobbled together by successive waves of editors who often have no real background in the material but who aim to push as WP:TRUTH something they were taught by a schoolmarm in 1987 or whenever.
— SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 19:21, 20 March 2020 (UTC)
- The super-simplified version is that there's a philosophy argument that any appellation that is not entirely simply descriptive is a proper name, and another (not necessarily related) argument that any appellation that is used without full understanding of its literal meaning is also a proper name. And other such propositions; entire volumes have been published about this stuff (including recently, and it's getting very cross-disciplinary, with half-baked attempts to merge philosophy, linguistics, cognitive-science, and other approaches to the questions: [1], [2], [3], [4], etc.). In the end, capitalization is largely a matter of custom, and in the linguistics of English there's a class we usually apply it to: proper nouns (which aren't the same as proper names, quite, since the latter has divergent definitions), most modifiers derive from proper nouns [most other languages don't], plus some other things like most acronyms/initialisms even when they stand for things that are not proper nouns. It's best to just stick with Proper noun (or off-site, writing-oriented material on that subject) unless you want a bad headache. The article still has issues; a linguist would significantly rewrite it, e.g. to address noun phrases not the subset nouns per se.
- Thank you again. I still don't understand the syndrome proper noun issue, but I trust your judgment and will try to learn the reasoning. —BarrelProof (talk) 18:24, 20 March 2020 (UTC)
- @BarrelProof: In the Wikipedia/MoS sense (that is, the linguistic and stylistic "Should this be capitalized?" sense), absolutely not. It does qualify as as a "proper name" under some definitions offered by philosophy, but that actually has no implications for such style questions, since it is not a proper-noun phrase. That is the confusion that affects so many editors (and so many specialized sources that rampantly over-capitalize along "use upper case for Important Things in This Field" lines). — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 19:22, 19 March 2020 (UTC)
- FYI, I submitted an RM at Talk:Severe acute respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus. —BarrelProof (talk) 20:06, 24 April 2020 (UTC)
- That RM failed. Meanwhile, I was just informed about MOS:SUFFIXDASH, which seems to favor "Severe acute respiratory syndrome–related coronavirus" over "Severe acute respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus". Is that correct? —BarrelProof (talk) 17:17, 2 June 2020 (UTC)
- @BarrelProof: I'm not even sure what it should be at this point; there's so much more coverage now that it probably needs to be reassessed. As for the hyphen vs. en-dash thing, that's been a moving target. We used to just use a hyphen, but I think there was move to use an en dash if either side of the punctuation was "complex" (multi-word, had its own hyphens, etc.). I have not looked into what the current version says since I became active again (nor why it says what it does, or for how long). — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 18:05, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
- FYI, I just started an RM about that at Talk:Severe acute respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus. —BarrelProof (talk) 01:39, 5 June 2020 (UTC)
- Incidentally, for a person who cares about punctuation marks, I'm surprised you seem to use a font on your User talk page that makes a hyphen and an en-dash indistinguishable. —BarrelProof (talk) 01:42, 5 June 2020 (UTC)
- @BarrelProof: I'll take a look at the RM, though I'm not sure how much to invest in this particular question. I'm not immune to the argument that a term-of-art phrase may not need hyphens when it is, by most readers, interpreted as a single unit. That sort of argument is not good when it's only specialists who recognize it as a unit, but in this case no one who did not just wake from a long coma hasn't already encountered this phrase many times over the last few months. On the font: I hadn't thought about it. Demo: - – − — (hyphen, en dash, minus, em dash). Hmm. I can can see a difference in all these characters, though only barely between en dash and mathematical minus (which isn't a real problem, since the latter serves term-juxtaposition and grammatical functions and the other is used with numbers and variables, so they can't be contextually confused). I am using a font stack, so you may not be getting my first-choice font, which is Trebuchet MS; you might instead be getting Tahoma, Verdana, or whatever your system's default sans-serif font is. If you do have Trebuchet MS, it might be a different version. I think some systems are also capable of swapping something in on-the-fly if there's a close match (e.g. a different variant of Trebuchet, if Microsoft's one is not installed). I'm looking at this in macOS 10.13.6; not sure what it'll look like in Windows or Linux even with "nominally the same" fonts installed. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 08:25, 5 June 2020 (UTC)
- You're right. I see a difference too when they are placed side-by-side like that, but the difference is harder to discern than the difference when using the default that appears on Wikipages without any custom selection. And when surrounded by letters, as in the conversation above, the difference is even harder to see. —BarrelProof (talk) 19:02, 5 June 2020 (UTC)
- @BarrelProof: I'll take a look at the RM, though I'm not sure how much to invest in this particular question. I'm not immune to the argument that a term-of-art phrase may not need hyphens when it is, by most readers, interpreted as a single unit. That sort of argument is not good when it's only specialists who recognize it as a unit, but in this case no one who did not just wake from a long coma hasn't already encountered this phrase many times over the last few months. On the font: I hadn't thought about it. Demo: - – − — (hyphen, en dash, minus, em dash). Hmm. I can can see a difference in all these characters, though only barely between en dash and mathematical minus (which isn't a real problem, since the latter serves term-juxtaposition and grammatical functions and the other is used with numbers and variables, so they can't be contextually confused). I am using a font stack, so you may not be getting my first-choice font, which is Trebuchet MS; you might instead be getting Tahoma, Verdana, or whatever your system's default sans-serif font is. If you do have Trebuchet MS, it might be a different version. I think some systems are also capable of swapping something in on-the-fly if there's a close match (e.g. a different variant of Trebuchet, if Microsoft's one is not installed). I'm looking at this in macOS 10.13.6; not sure what it'll look like in Windows or Linux even with "nominally the same" fonts installed. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 08:25, 5 June 2020 (UTC)
- @BarrelProof: I'm not even sure what it should be at this point; there's so much more coverage now that it probably needs to be reassessed. As for the hyphen vs. en-dash thing, that's been a moving target. We used to just use a hyphen, but I think there was move to use an en dash if either side of the punctuation was "complex" (multi-word, had its own hyphens, etc.). I have not looked into what the current version says since I became active again (nor why it says what it does, or for how long). — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 18:05, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
- That RM failed. Meanwhile, I was just informed about MOS:SUFFIXDASH, which seems to favor "Severe acute respiratory syndrome–related coronavirus" over "Severe acute respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus". Is that correct? —BarrelProof (talk) 17:17, 2 June 2020 (UTC)
- Thank you for the thoughtful and informative reply. As your response seems to indicate that the current title is not clearly incorrect, I won't consider this a clear call for action. Incidentally, would you consider "Severe acute respiratory syndrome" to be a proper noun? —BarrelProof (talk) 19:25, 18 March 2020 (UTC)
"A mighty fortress is our God"
- Regarding the mighty fortress: I believe that the first sentence is nonsense: "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God" is one of the best known hymns by the reformer Martin Luther. No, it isn't, I guess he didn't even speak English. How could that be rephrased? "A Mighty Fortress" is also not in category 16th-century hymn, because it came into existence later. Help? - Almost all operas are by now original titles, DYK? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:41, 4 June 2020 (UTC)
- @Gerda Arendt: Hmm. On the rephrasing, maybe something like "is an English adaptation of one of the best known ..."? I don't know the entire history of the piece, so I'm not sure what to say about categorization. On operas, I'm not sure if you mean that they've been moved to article titles that reflect what they were originally titled, or they've been moved to article titles that are later (original) inventions of translators (nor whether you prefer the status quo or some other result). Anyway, this kind of music isn't my forte; I was just commenting that we have MOS:INCIPIT for a reason, and it's not some nit-pick invented by WP:MOS, it's standard advice in most major style guides for use of a quotation, from an untitled (or lost-title) work, as a conventionalized pseudo-title for that work: give it in sentence case. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 22:26, 4 June 2020 (UTC)
- Opera is easier. They - at least most - have the titles their composer gave them, so you can say Verdi composed La traviata and La forza del destino. You can't say he composed The Power of Fate, you can't say The Power of Fate was premiered (unless you speak about the first performance in English). - But for some reason, they think that for hymns they can do it, throughout the article. Your sentence is good, only: it covers the story from when the translation appeared. On the talk page (+ its archive) there are some of the longest discussions, a move request to German, and a request to split the article in two, one covering the German, another for the English, because - while other of Luther's hymns are not even common in English - this one is, and the translations have their own history. I'm tired of the topic but pretty unhappy with the present condition. I am thankful for our authors of featured articles Rossini and Wagner that they use piped links to the two operas that are still in English The Barber of Seville and The Flying Dutchman. Rossini composed Il barbiere di Siviglia, and Wagner wrote Der fliegende Holländer (even the book for it, and not in English), and same thing: all other operas by Rossini, and all other stage works by Wagner have the original titles for article titles. Just the most famous ones ... - can't find a decent expression for how unfair and even misleading that seems to me. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:23, 5 June 2020 (UTC)
- Yeah, it does seem misleading. When it comes to this one, I would oppose a split; the translation and its history belong in a section. We wouldn't do a separate article on Der Herr der Ringe despite it being one of the most-read translations (German in this case, of course) of The Lord of the Rings; it should be covered at a translations section at the main article on the work. This is true despite controversy and re-translation, and there being a distinct history to LotR in German. It's simply not a encyclopedically stand-alone history. It's difficult to imagine a translation of anything that would be, aside from the Bible, Q'ran, etc. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 08:13, 5 June 2020 (UTC)
- I disagree. There seems to be "a lot" about this English hymn, or why don't we just move, as the others? If we don't, how do you suggest to repair the wrong sentences, referring to "A mighty fortress" in the 16th to 19th centuries, when it didn't yet exist? - A fortress isn't even a Burg which would be castle. Nothing wrong with translating freely for rhyme's and metre's sake, but saying it IS the original, - I don't understand!! (But I seem to be only one, per all the former discussions.) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:00, 5 June 2020 (UTC)
- @Gerda Arendt: To clarify, I don't mean that our article should focus on the English version, and shove the original work into a section, but the other way around. Treat the original work as the main subject, and cover the English version in a section, even if it's a long section. If you really think a split is warranted, it's not something I would fight, it's just not my default approach to such matters. When things are this closely connected, it's a better reader experience to cover them in the same place, for a more complete overview of the subject. But, of course, we split articles all the time, either when the article gets too long, or when some subtopic of it is demonstrably independently notable. If there are lots and lots of works treating "A mighty fortress is our God" independently as a work unto itself, without much of any reference to the original, then that's probably a good enough split rationale. As as aside: Some may want it at the English-language title anyway (WP:USEENGLISH), and treat the versions as "equal", as it were, though with correct choronology. A good and rather parallel example of this is "Silent Night". — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 09:53, 5 June 2020 (UTC)
- I agree that "Stille Nacht" is a good example. It doesn't say once that Gruber wrote "Silent night". However, I found "A Mighty Fortress" so hopelessly misleading that it seemed easier to write a new article ;) - only that wasn't welcome. Flaws that I see:
- It doesn't even come with a history section, but gets to Battle hymn right away, unsourced, followed by speculations, all under the English name.
- The compositions listed are based on the German, or just the tune, - I see no vocal music there setting an English text.
- I gave up. But if we are stuck with it, something should change. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 10:29, 5 June 2020 (UTC)
- I agree that "Stille Nacht" is a good example. It doesn't say once that Gruber wrote "Silent night". However, I found "A Mighty Fortress" so hopelessly misleading that it seemed easier to write a new article ;) - only that wasn't welcome. Flaws that I see:
- @Gerda Arendt: To clarify, I don't mean that our article should focus on the English version, and shove the original work into a section, but the other way around. Treat the original work as the main subject, and cover the English version in a section, even if it's a long section. If you really think a split is warranted, it's not something I would fight, it's just not my default approach to such matters. When things are this closely connected, it's a better reader experience to cover them in the same place, for a more complete overview of the subject. But, of course, we split articles all the time, either when the article gets too long, or when some subtopic of it is demonstrably independently notable. If there are lots and lots of works treating "A mighty fortress is our God" independently as a work unto itself, without much of any reference to the original, then that's probably a good enough split rationale. As as aside: Some may want it at the English-language title anyway (WP:USEENGLISH), and treat the versions as "equal", as it were, though with correct choronology. A good and rather parallel example of this is "Silent Night". — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 09:53, 5 June 2020 (UTC)
- I disagree. There seems to be "a lot" about this English hymn, or why don't we just move, as the others? If we don't, how do you suggest to repair the wrong sentences, referring to "A mighty fortress" in the 16th to 19th centuries, when it didn't yet exist? - A fortress isn't even a Burg which would be castle. Nothing wrong with translating freely for rhyme's and metre's sake, but saying it IS the original, - I don't understand!! (But I seem to be only one, per all the former discussions.) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:00, 5 June 2020 (UTC)
- Yeah, it does seem misleading. When it comes to this one, I would oppose a split; the translation and its history belong in a section. We wouldn't do a separate article on Der Herr der Ringe despite it being one of the most-read translations (German in this case, of course) of The Lord of the Rings; it should be covered at a translations section at the main article on the work. This is true despite controversy and re-translation, and there being a distinct history to LotR in German. It's simply not a encyclopedically stand-alone history. It's difficult to imagine a translation of anything that would be, aside from the Bible, Q'ran, etc. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 08:13, 5 June 2020 (UTC)
- Opera is easier. They - at least most - have the titles their composer gave them, so you can say Verdi composed La traviata and La forza del destino. You can't say he composed The Power of Fate, you can't say The Power of Fate was premiered (unless you speak about the first performance in English). - But for some reason, they think that for hymns they can do it, throughout the article. Your sentence is good, only: it covers the story from when the translation appeared. On the talk page (+ its archive) there are some of the longest discussions, a move request to German, and a request to split the article in two, one covering the German, another for the English, because - while other of Luther's hymns are not even common in English - this one is, and the translations have their own history. I'm tired of the topic but pretty unhappy with the present condition. I am thankful for our authors of featured articles Rossini and Wagner that they use piped links to the two operas that are still in English The Barber of Seville and The Flying Dutchman. Rossini composed Il barbiere di Siviglia, and Wagner wrote Der fliegende Holländer (even the book for it, and not in English), and same thing: all other operas by Rossini, and all other stage works by Wagner have the original titles for article titles. Just the most famous ones ... - can't find a decent expression for how unfair and even misleading that seems to me. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:23, 5 June 2020 (UTC)
- @Gerda Arendt: Hmm. On the rephrasing, maybe something like "is an English adaptation of one of the best known ..."? I don't know the entire history of the piece, so I'm not sure what to say about categorization. On operas, I'm not sure if you mean that they've been moved to article titles that reflect what they were originally titled, or they've been moved to article titles that are later (original) inventions of translators (nor whether you prefer the status quo or some other result). Anyway, this kind of music isn't my forte; I was just commenting that we have MOS:INCIPIT for a reason, and it's not some nit-pick invented by WP:MOS, it's standard advice in most major style guides for use of a quotation, from an untitled (or lost-title) work, as a conventionalized pseudo-title for that work: give it in sentence case. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 22:26, 4 June 2020 (UTC)
- Comment: I'm largely an outsider to this discussion, but there does seem to be considerable muddle over what counts as a "title". The title of a book, as printed on the cover and title page, seems to be the prime exemplar of a "title", and should be presented in title case and italics. If the incipit of a hymn, poem or the like is really a "title" in the same sense as a book title, then it should also be in title case and italics. Many (if not most) relevant articles of any length appear to be inconsistent. Thus in I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, which seems to me quite comparable to A Mighty Fortress Is Our God, at present you can find both title and sentence case as well as italics and roman. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:31, 5 June 2020 (UTC)
- @Peter coxhead: As I said at the other thread, I don't think the guidelines are unclear (if they are, then I'm not sure where/how they are unclear); they're just not always consistently applied in topics like this, because the subject matter is fairly obscure, and some of the articles are old and rarely updated. Yes, it can be hard to nail down exactly what constitutes a "title", but we have a rule about incipits, that distinguishes them from titles proper, so at least that part should be clear enough. PS: For short works like hymns, they should be in quotation marks, not italics, anyway. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 09:53, 5 June 2020 (UTC)
- Can we perhaps say the title is "A Mighty Fortress" and the incipit "A mighty fortress is our God"? ,,, if incipit is the right word for the just the beginning, - I know it as with music, such as here. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 10:29, 5 June 2020 (UTC)
- @Gerda Arendt: it's important not to confuse the name with the referent, whether the name is a title or an incipit. You wrote
"A Mighty Fortress Is Our God" is one of the best known hymns by the reformer Martin Luther. No, it isn't, I guess he didn't even speak English.
But the referent is the hymn, which can have multiple names, four being "A mighty fortress is our God", "A mighty fortress", "Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott" and "Ein feste Burg". Regardless of the name used to refer to the hymn, the statement as to its author remains correct, just as it would if I replaced "Martin Luther" by "Luther". Peter coxhead (talk) 10:52, 5 June 2020 (UTC)- Leaning, perhaps. English is not my first language, and "referent" is a new word for me, and I wouldn't even know how to say it in German. A hymn can have multiple names, like a person, such as Fanny Hensel vs. Fanny Mendelssohn. I still think it would be wrong to refer to her (in the article) as Hensel at age 7, while she married Mr. Hensel much later, but equally wrong to refer to her as Mendelssohn after she married. (So that's another article with a title I think is sort of wrong. No hope as long as titling articles goes by Commonname.) I feel in a similar way that the hymns should not be referred to (in the article) in English for facts happening before it even was translated. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 12:00, 5 June 2020 (UTC)
- @Gerda Arendt: it's important not to confuse the name with the referent, whether the name is a title or an incipit. You wrote
- Can we perhaps say the title is "A Mighty Fortress" and the incipit "A mighty fortress is our God"? ,,, if incipit is the right word for the just the beginning, - I know it as with music, such as here. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 10:29, 5 June 2020 (UTC)
- @Peter coxhead: As I said at the other thread, I don't think the guidelines are unclear (if they are, then I'm not sure where/how they are unclear); they're just not always consistently applied in topics like this, because the subject matter is fairly obscure, and some of the articles are old and rarely updated. Yes, it can be hard to nail down exactly what constitutes a "title", but we have a rule about incipits, that distinguishes them from titles proper, so at least that part should be clear enough. PS: For short works like hymns, they should be in quotation marks, not italics, anyway. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 09:53, 5 June 2020 (UTC)
Upcoming FAC nomination for WikiProject Role-Playing Games (Hyborian War, Conan)
Hi SMcCandlish. I saw that you're a member of Wikiproject Role Playing Games. I'm about to bring the article Hyborian War up for its second FAC nom in about a week. It's a play-by-mail game set in Conan's Hyborian Age. It's being peer reviewed now after I made some needed improvements. But I'm a bit concerned that it will sit unreviewed given that it's a niche topic. Would greatly appreciate your review if you have time. Thanks for your time. Airborne84 (talk) 07:08, 31 May 2020 (UTC)
- Hi SMcCandlish. I've renominated the article Hyborian War after fixes and a peer review. The new nomination is here. If you get time in the next week or two, would greatly appreciate your review. Thanks for your time. Airborne84 (talk) 02:27, 14 June 2020 (UTC)
Princess Johanna of Hesse and by Rhine
Seen this Wikipedia article on a toddler from a deposed grand ducal house? PAustin4thApril1980 (talk) 11:28, 31 May 2020 (UTC)
- @PAustin4thApril1980: Good WP:AFD candidate. Looks like no children or other descendants of Ernest Louis, Grand Duke of Hesse should be using titles, or even mentioning any except as "what if" stuff and with a source, since that nobility was disestablished at the end of WWI during Ernest Louis's lifetime. As that article says, they converted titles to surnames after that, so Georg Donatus, Hereditary Grand Duke of Hesse should probably move to Georg Donatus von Hessen-Darmstadt (the de.wp article title) or even just Georg von Hessen-Darmstadt (following en.wp's rules about not including middle names in most cases). If kept, his short-lived daughter's article would probably be at Johanna von Hessen-Darmstadt. Ernest Louis, Grand Duke of Hesse, could presumably remain at that title, since it's better know to sources for his long life as a royal rather than his final couple of years as a private citizen. That said, I'm wondering why it's not simply Ernest Louis of Hesse, to be WP:CONSISTENT with George III of the United Kingdom, etc., etc. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 17:58, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
- There are so many articles about members of deposed royal families from Germany that take their last name, translate it to their phony "title" and put a comma after their first name. I made an effort to move some of them years back to their legal untranslated names but there are editors who will fight any such move tooth and nail.Smeat75 (talk) 12:29, 5 June 2020 (UTC)
- @Smeat75: Well, we have essentially unanimous consensus at the WP:NPOVN thread. And I cite that in every relevant RM. If we continue to meet with push-back from the wikiproject on royalty, this should be taken up as an RfC at WP:VPPOL that basically re-asks what was asked at NPOVN, to a broader audience. I have absolute certainty what the result will be. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 17:02, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
- There was an AfD for Sophie, Princess of Prussia which was closed as "keep" but the closer noted "consensus is that GNG is met, but that it should be renamed" [5] as Guy and I had said in the discussion, ludicrous to label a living person a Prince or Princess of Prussia, German royal titles abolished 1918, Prussia dissolved 1947. I am not going to try to move the article, I learnt not to attempt such things single handedly but would certainly support it. I don't know if this sets a precedent for dealing with her husband's article Georg Friedrich, Prince of Prussia the same way or the many many other similar ones about members of deposed German "fake royal families". I left a similar note at JxG's talk page.Smeat75 (talk) 19:19, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
- @Smeat75: Well, we have essentially unanimous consensus at the WP:NPOVN thread. And I cite that in every relevant RM. If we continue to meet with push-back from the wikiproject on royalty, this should be taken up as an RfC at WP:VPPOL that basically re-asks what was asked at NPOVN, to a broader audience. I have absolute certainty what the result will be. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 17:02, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
- There are so many articles about members of deposed royal families from Germany that take their last name, translate it to their phony "title" and put a comma after their first name. I made an effort to move some of them years back to their legal untranslated names but there are editors who will fight any such move tooth and nail.Smeat75 (talk) 12:29, 5 June 2020 (UTC)
Friendly reminder
ResolvedThis is a friendly reminder that posting links that contain reveal non-public information (yes, I know this particular user's name was already out, but not the facebook & linkedin links, workplace information, or potential family connections) is not appropriate. If you have concerns about this material and need someone to review it, WP:ARBCOM is the proper venue. Please, do not repost this information. -- Amanda (aka DQ) 18:11, 31 May 2020 (UTC)
- I sent it to ArbCom, and they have confirmed receipt of it; what happens henceforth is up to them. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 08:25, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
- @Atsme and DeltaQuad:: Just FYI. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 09:57, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
Revert request
Please self-revert your comments made here. As per WP:APPNOTE, notifications should be neutral, and your comments added under the notification make it decidedly not. Keep the discussion in one place (the RM itself), rather than poisoning the well under a neutral notification. -- Netoholic @ 13:20, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
- Nope. Your post was a WP:APPNOTE. My followup, at the guideline talk page, is a proposal to adjust the text of the guideline to prevent similar misunderstandings in the future. (I.e., it is using the talk page of the guideline to talk about the guideline). If you want to see an APPNOTE from me about the RM that inspired this proposal, there is one here. I am not alone at the article talk page in telling you that you do not understand WP:FRINGE. The RM in question was a total WP:SNOW before I arrived, so no well is or could be poisoned at this point (some kind of move is possible, but it certainly will not be to "List of haunted places"). My attempt to disengage from further circular argumentation with you at the RM was not an invitation to escalate in userspace. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 13:37, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
- Then simply make it a new section header and word it as a proposal for a change. Don't poison the APPNOTE. -- Netoholic @ 13:48, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
- Word your proposal in a new talk page section. An APPNOTE section is an inappropriate place to initiate a guideline change discussion. -- Netoholic @ 14:06, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
Essay on races and ethnicity
I really liked the essay. Thanks for writing it, —PaleoNeonate – 16:10, 4 June 2020 (UTC)
- Glad someone actually read it. :-) — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 21:42, 4 June 2020 (UTC)
One can never be mock-alarmist enough!
But I did let out an audible Ha! at the thought of a breakroom ghost. In my foggy old pressnook, there hung a sign reading, "Those who don't believe in life after death should be here at quitting time". Thought it was just barely funny then, but looking back, it now seems rather funny (that's two degrees higher), so thanks! InedibleHulk (talk) 02:40, 5 June 2020 (UTC)
- @InedibleHulk: It actually reminded me of something real-world (though trivial, except to style geeks). The New Yorker is known for a lot of style quirks, some of which are Briticisms while others are simply "deliberately conservative", like preservation of the pronunciation diaeresis (zoölogy). They say that they actually receive more letters from readers objecting to some of these things than they do about any other topic. In a self-referential piece [6] in 2019, a New Yorker copyeditor concedes, "Many eccentricities of New Yorker style are so old and ingrained that there is no longer anyone alive who remembers the reason for them." In an older such article, she wrote that their house-style guide was being revised in 1978 by style editor Hobie Weekes (at the New Yorker for fifty years!), and then he suddenly died. "No one has had the nerve to raise the subject since." [7] In effect, it's a journalistic haunting. That was written in 2012, and eight years later I still detect no change of any kind in their output. I don't expect that I will by 2025, either. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 08:06, 5 June 2020 (UTC)
Books & Bytes – Issue 39, May – June 2020
The Wikipedia Library
Books & Bytes
Issue 39, May – June 2020
- Library Card Platform
- New partnerships
- ProQuest
- Springer Nature
- BioOne
- CEEOL
- IWA Publishing
- ICE Publishing
- Bytes in brief
On behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 06:13, 11 June 2020 (UTC)
Editing news 2020 #2 – Quick updates
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This edition of the Editing newsletter includes information the Wikipedia:Talk pages project, an effort to help contributors communicate on wiki more easily. The central project page is on MediaWiki.org.
- Reply tool: This is available as a Beta Feature at the four partner wikis (Arabic, Dutch, French, and Hungarian Wikipedias). The Beta Feature will get new features soon. The new features include writing comments in a new visual editing mode and pinging other users by typing
@. You can test the new features on the Beta Cluster. Some other wikis will have a chance to try the Beta Feature in the coming months. - New requirements for user signatures: Soon, users will not be able to save invalid custom signatures in Special:Preferences. This will reduce signature spoofing, prevent page corruption, and make new talk page tools more reliable. Most editors will not be affected.
- New discussion tool: The Editing team is beginning work on a simpler process for starting new discussions. You can see the initial design on the project page.
- Research on the use of talk pages: The Editing team worked with the Wikimedia research team to study how talk pages help editors improve articles. We learned that new editors who use talk pages make more edits to the main namespace than new editors who don't use talk pages.
– Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:11, 15 June 2020 (UTC)
Feedback request: Wikipedia style and naming request for comment
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Feedback request: Wikipedia style and naming request for comment
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Feedback request: Social sciences and society Good Article nomination
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Feedback request: Wikipedia style and naming request for comment
Done
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New Page Reviewer newsletter June 2020
Hello SMcCandlish,
- Your help can make a difference
NPP Sorting can be a great way to find pages needing new page patrolling that match your strengths and interests. Using ORES, it divides articles into topics such as Literature or Chemistry and on Geography. Take a look and see if you can find time to patrol a couple pages a day. With over 10,000 pages in the queue, the highest it's been since ACPERM, your help could really make a difference.
- Google Adds New Languages to Google Translate
In late February, Google added 5 new languages to Google Translate: Kinyarwanda, Odia (Oriya), Tatar, Turkmen and Uyghur. This expands our ability to find and evaluate sources in those languages.
- Discussions and Resources
- A discussion on handling new article creation by paid editors is ongoing at the Village Pump.
- Also at the Village Pump is a discussion about limiting participation at Articles for Deletion discussion.
- A proposed new speedy deletion criteria for certain kinds of redirects ended with no consensus.
- Also ending with no change was a proposal to change how we handle certain kinds of vector images.
Six Month Queue Data: Today – 10271 Low – 4991 High – 10271
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Feedback request: Economy, trade, and companies request for comment
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June
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Vespro della Beata Vergine |
Thank you for improving articles in June. I can proudly present a FA, quite a gift after a year without, and a FL is in the making, comments welcome. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 12:46, 21 June 2020 (UTC)
Feedback request: Language and literature Good Article nomination
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"Template:R from subspecies to species" listed at Redirects for discussion
DoneA discussion is taking place to address the redirect Template:R from subspecies to species. The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2020 June 29#Template:R from subspecies to species until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. 1234qwer1234qwer4 (talk) 18:46, 29 June 2020 (UTC)