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Quotation marks in article titles using <q> tag, redux_tag,_redux-2014-07-14T12:36:00.000Z">

Now that the <q>...</q> tag is whitelisted, it is possible to add quotes around any text anywhere without having to change the content. This includes the article title, see here for an example. The MOS does not (yet) handle this situation, but it states that Use italics when italics would be used in running text. Should we have a similar rule for applying quotes? -- ] {{talk}} 12:36, 14 July 2014 (UTC)_tag,_redux"> _tag,_redux">

• I’d say yes. But I wonder, why use <q>...</q> in the displaytitle instead of quotation marks directly? —174.141.182.82 (talk) 17:05, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

• Because DISPLAYTITLE: does not allow changing the text, so adding regular quotes does not work. Using <q>...</q>, the quotes are added by the browser, so the content is not actually changed. -- ] {{talk}} 19:25, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

• Finally! Yes. This is a great idea.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  22:08, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

• Interesting... I just tested the technique of using <q>...</q> tags with {{DISPLAYTITLE:}} in this article, and it worked! So, does this mean that the title of every article about a song, short story, etc., will need to be updated this way, in order to maintain stylistic consistency? That's an awful lot of articles; is it worth the trouble? Perhaps the process could be automated with a bot. One way to identify song articles, of course, would be to look for title "(disambiguators)" containing "song"; another would be to key on Category tags within each article. — Jaydiem (talk) 00:30, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

• Is this really a good idea? I used two browsers to copy the article title and each includes the quotes (Firefox gave straight quotes and IE gave curlies). Looking at the page, I have no way of knowing what the title of the article is (although I can infer its title from the browser's address bar—assuming I haven't arrived at the page from a redirect). It's one thing to use a trick to show the title in italics, but it's quite another to change the title—that means we get to fight about the title of the page, and the display title, and the title used in the text (why curly quotes in the display title but straight quotes in the article?). Many editors are used to the beautiful simplicity of the fact that the title shown on the page is the title of the page. Many are also used to "use straight quotes"—is the turmoil from introducing doubt on both those worthwhile? Johnuniq (talk) 01:06, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

• That's a good question. Perhaps we might compare this to the careful use of en dashes and em dashes in article titles. I don't know if that was done from Misplaced Pages's inception, but in any case, there is some similarity in that en- and em dashes are distinct characters from hyphens, which means complications for URLs, and the necessity of redirects. But that's been handled so well that I think we all take it for granted. I don't see "fight about . . . the display title" as a big problem; it should be pretty uncontentious whether or not something is a song title (or other type of name that the Manual of Style says belongs in quote marks). As for the appearance of quote marks added by <q>...</q> tags, maybe it's possible for a user preference to be set up to allow users to choose whether they display as straight or curly? — Jaydiem (talk) 01:46, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

• The type of quotes is easily controlled by CSS. -- ] {{talk}} 07:00, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

• The quotes displayed with the <q> tag are unhighlightable, and thus can't be copied and pasted. Is this a good thing? Curly Turkey ⚞¡gobble!⚟ 03:45, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

• @Curly Turkey: I just tried this, and had no problem partially highlighting text rendered between <q>...</q> tags, whether in an article title or the body text. For testing purposes: Here's a sentence enclosed in <q>...</q> tags. Do you still find that you can't highlight any part of it? — Jaydiem (talk) 05:36, 17 July 2014 (UTC)
  • The text is highlightable, but the quotemarks themselves are not. Is this the desired behaviour? Wouldn't this be a terrible thing to happen in the body of the text? For example, My favourite Beefheart track is My Human Gets me Blues, from Trout Mask Replica. If I copy-&-pasted this, I'd lose the quote marks, and the sky would fall. Curly Turkey ⚞¡gobble!⚟ 06:06, 17 July 2014 (UTC)
    • Never mind—the quotemarks don't appear to get highlighted, but when the text is actually pasted the quotemarks appear (and become straight-up-and-down quotemarks). Curly Turkey ⚞¡gobble!⚟ 06:08, 17 July 2014 (UTC)
      • Apparently there's more to it. The history of Deep Breath (Doctor Who) (ugh! I had to manually delete the quotes to make that link!) includes this diff with "the quotes are not copied" in the edit summary. In my comment above I mentioned that one browser I tried copies the quotes as straight, while another copies them as curly, and Edokter is apparently using a browser that does not copy them. Johnuniq (talk) 06:48, 17 July 2014 (UTC)
        • I use Chrome. I don't consider "copy-pastability" to be that important, there are so many elements and templates that do not allow copying that it should not be the defining factor. If removing two quote marks is all the only downside, we gain a lot in terms of aesthetics. -- ] {{talk}} 07:00, 17 July 2014 (UTC)
          • Yikes! I can't agree with that—I do an awful lot of copy-pasting when editing, both at WP and at work. Not being able to copy-paste the title of an article you're trying to link to is a particularly grievous problem, I would think. Curly Turkey ⚞¡gobble!⚟ 07:59, 17 July 2014 (UTC)
          • People are used to copying the page title. Many would be stunned to see that a copied title gave a red link (because they did not know they had to remove certain characters). Johnuniq (talk) 11:07, 17 July 2014 (UTC)
            • Redirects can help here (and are allowed) so you would never copy an invalid link. -- ] {{talk}} 09:12, 21 July 2014 (UTC)
              • That would mean a lot of redirects - which I don't really think is a good idea. It would almost be easier just to move all the articles to titles which include the quotes. G S Palmer (talk • contribs) 14:12, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

• I just realized (another reason) why this is a bad idea. How would this work for articles whose titles already contain quotes? For instance, the David Bowie song “‘Heroes’” on the same-named album. Would that be rendered as "Heroes" (David Bowie song)? {{DISPLAYTITLE}} doesn’t let you change double marks to single, which would be necessary here. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 06:40, 18 July 2014 (UTC)
  • That is a special case, where the quotes are part of the title. In this case, I think the song is misnamed; it should be 'Heroes' (single quotes), which currently redirects to the album: "Heroes". Scrap that... someone decided to invent a special rule to enclose title that contain quotes in additional quotes. That is quite redundant. Title with quotes don't need additional quotes. -- ] {{talk}} 08:38, 18 July 2014 (UTC)
    • That is how quotation marks work… it’s a rule of standard written English, no more or less invented than all the rest. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 13:20, 18 July 2014 (UTC)
• Since it displays curly quotes, it's a bad idea so long as MOS:QUOTEMARKS says that curly quote marks are not recommended. Peter coxhead (talk) 13:43, 18 July 2014 (UTC)
  • That's just the default. As I said above; easily changed with CSS. -- ] {{talk}} 15:16, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

Sure, but this shouldn't be necessary. The default should be the recommended style. Peter coxhead (talk) 16:34, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

It will be, when the CSS is put in Common.css. For now, I'm just polling if this has potential of becoming acceptable practice before I put it in. -- ] {{talk}} 17:20, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

The redux part_tag,_redux-2014-11-28T23:21:00.000Z">

So, I'd like some more discussion. Some of the comments above are due to some technical misunderstandings.

1. With regards to copy/pastability, all browsers (with the possible exception of IE, of which I can only test 8) do not regard the <q />-generated quotes as part of the title, so they are not copied. 99.9% of articles that may have quotes title, repeat the title as the first phrase of the article anyway. So that is moot.
2. Common.css now forces applies straight quotes for <q>...</q> tags.
3. I think the MOS should copy the same rule that goes for italics (Use italics when italics would be used in running text) to state (Use <q>...</q> when quotes would be used in running text).
4. If the quotes are part of the title proper, real quotes should be used (ie. "Heroes").

For testing, all episode linked from Doctor Who (series 8) now use <q>...</q> in their titles. -- ] {{talk}} 23:21, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

WP:TITLEFORMAT explicitly states Do not enclose titles in quotes. It was many years ago that it was decided that TV series and multi-episode stories would get italics and single episodes would get quote marks. As I remember it at the time everything got italics and this was a way to distinguish episodes from their shows. The one thing that was not a part of that discussion was putting article titles in quotes. This did extend beyond TV shows as short films, songs, poems etc are also put into quotes but, again, their article are not using them in the title. As there has not been a discussion to rewrite the specific section of the MOS any articles using quotes in their title should have them removed until a consensus to start using them has finished. MarnetteD|Talk 00:37, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

But the titles are not "enclosed" in quotes; they are added by CSS, and threfor not part of the title. This is not strictly related to TV episodes either, but concerns titles in general. One of my points above is to apply the same rule that governs italics in titles. Why should this be different? This is me being bold doing a small-scale test; don't just throw the "consensus first" argument just because you don't like it. I haven't seen any argument adressing any real objection. -- ] {{talk}} 01:01, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

My apologies E as I know how valuable to the entire Misplaced Pages project (not just the Doctor Who wikiproject) so I know that the following will offend you, but this reads as sophistry. To any reader the title is enclosed in quotes. As to being bold you could do the same thing in a sandbox or draft space to show people how it works. It has also had the effect of other editors applying it to articles beyond the scope of your test. There is no reason to have one set of articles violating policy at this time. By all means get a RFC going and it the consensus is to put quotes in article titles that will be fine. Again my apologies for any offense caused - that is not my intention. MarnetteD|Talk 01:22, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

Agian, your only argument is to hold this idea against the current rules. That is not what this discussion is about. Can you put those aside for a moment and comment on the actual merit of the idea? Because this is going nowhere. -- ] {{talk}} 08:46, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

Commenting on the merit of the idea should be in the context of a properly advertised RfC. If you want to change policy, start one. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:31, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

You know what? No! I want to discuss the idea first, then change the policy accordingly. -- ] {{talk}} 11:02, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

But the point of an RfC is to have a wide discussion. Where's the value in a few editors discussing it in this thread? Peter coxhead (talk) 11:35, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

Just want to point out… discussing the idea of changing policy, then changing policy, is exactly the point of an RFC. And that is exactly what you were discussing here. Don’t know why you wouldn’t want to be. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 05:11, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

I think my earlier concern from the previous discussion still holds: If <q>...</q> titles are adopted project-wide, then what about titles that contain their own quotation marks? We’d end up with two sets of double quotes in the title, which is not the project-wide style for nested quotes. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 20:33, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Can you provide an example where this would be an issue? This would be an edge case; all MOS rules have at least one of those... -- ] {{talk}} 21:38, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

If you recall, the last time I gave an example, you made a bold edit to it and then claimed WP:STATUSQUO… but anyway, how could those edge cases be handled? We can’t change " to ' in DISPLAYTITLE. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 16:58, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

If you are referring to "Heroes" (David Bowie song), then the matter is handled. As I said above, <q> should not be used where (surrounding) quotes are already part of the title proper. -- ] {{talk}} 17:34, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

I see no benefit in being inconsistent in that manner. So I strongly disagree with that point. If quotes should be added to minor work titles, then they should be added to all minor work titles, or not at all. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 17:44, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

RFC: Quotation marks in displayed article titles_tag,_redux-2014-12-16T17:39:00.000Z">

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Figured having an RFC on the issue would be more beneficial than not having one. MOS:TITLEQUOTES tells us to enclose the titles of certain works in quotation marks. We avoid doing this in the titles of their articles. But should we do it in the displayed article titles with {{DISPLAYTITLE:<q>...</q>}}? Example:

{{DISPLAYTITLE:<q>A Touch of Class</q> (''Fawlty Towers'')}}

—174.141.182.82 (talk) 17:39, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

• My primary concern about this is consistency. If it’s going to be done, it should be done consistently. But can it be done if a quote mark " in the title needs to be converted to a single quote ' per MOS:QUOTEMARKS? If a title is "Foo" Bar, can it be displayed as "'Foo' Bar"? —174.141.182.82 (talk) 05:20, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
  • Perhaps I should rephrase. Say we have an article titled "Foo" Bar. To properly display this title, we should use "'Foo' Bar". But using <q> would result in ""Foo" Bar". Is there a workaround? —174.141.182.82 (talk) 10:29, 20 December 2014 (UTC)
• Worried – the discussion above suggests various problems and inconsistencies between browsers. I do often copy titles, and if the quote marks sometimes get copied and sometimes don't, depending on which browser I'm using, then that could be a problem. Dicklyon (talk) 06:13, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

  Again, consistency. Major roadblock. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 07:12, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

  • The only inconsistency is possible copy behaviour, and then only IE seems to misbehave. Display is consistently using straight quotes by way of CSS. -- ] {{talk}} 09:57, 20 December 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose. Yeah, I did argue that WP:AT and MOS should be in harmony, but this one is a step too far and should remain an exception. The fact is, wherever we do follow MOS:TITLEQUOTES in the running text, we don't put the actual article title in quotes. Maybe we should, but then we would have to put DISPLAYTITLE on hundreds of thousands of articles. (And we're seriously lagging with {{italic title}}s already). Do we really have to open this particular can of worms? I don't see a clear benefit. No such user (talk) 21:10, 20 December 2014 (UTC)
• Question: Can't the problem that 174.141.182.82 outlines be worked around by using HTML character entities like ' (renders as: ')? If so, then I'd support. The concern that it'll take a long time to implement is a questionable one; innumerable things on WP take a long time to implement, but we do them anyway, and they're all severable; there is no connection between this suggestion and {{Italic title}} implementation, or adding infoboxes to articles, or whatever. Lastly, the fact that this displays properly across all (major?) browsers is sufficient; we don't need to concern ourselves with a copy-paste vagary in one browser. If we cared about that, we would abandon a lot of other markup. In this regard, I'll note that with most browsers, if you copy-paste a standard HTML list, ordered or unordered, the numbers or bullets (respectively) for the items is lost. But even this depends on what one is copy-pasting into (what forms of rich text formatting it accepts and in what form), and further this varies by operating system, as different OSes have different clipboard functionality. We cannot really hope to compensate for this sort of variable user-side platform variation, and it's a moving target anyway, as OSes and applications are changing all the time.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  03:33, 21 December 2014 (UTC)
  • To your first question: Nope. I just previewed a test edit. If DISPLAYTITLE doesn’t include the quote characters, whether or not they’re replaced with apostrophes or ' or <q>...</q>, DISPLAYTITLE has no effect. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 04:23, 21 December 2014 (UTC)
  • The content of displaytitle must match the actual title, otherwise it is ignored. As for titles that alrready have quotes... they remain an edge case. I have yet to come across one other then "Heroes" (David Bowie song). -- ] {{talk}} 09:38, 21 December 2014 (UTC)
    • "Are 'Friends' Electric?" which was mentioned on the "'Heroes'" Talk. If there were a way to search for the character in article titles, I’d offer more examples. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 19:32, 21 December 2014 (UTC)
• If this only relates to one or two articles, there is no need to change the policy or guideline to allow them... those one or two titles can be considered exceptions to the rule, allowable under WP:IAR. Blueboar (talk) 14:54, 21 December 2014 (UTC)
  • 99.9% consistency is a fair point. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 19:34, 21 December 2014 (UTC)
• Support if titles which contain quotation marks can be handled appropriately, or if the consensus is that these titles are few enough that their inconsistency is not a concern. But WP policy should address the question either way. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 08:20, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

Stylization of the "common name"

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Per such guidance as MOS:TM and WP:AT (including WP:TITLETM) and MOS:CAPS (including MOS:CT), my understanding is that when we refer to trying to use the "common name" (per WP:UCN) for an article title, this does not necessarily refer to using the most common stylization of the name (e.g., regarding the capitalization of the name or the use of unusual typographical formatting like macys, skate., , Se7en, Alien, Toys Я Us, and Invader ZIM). In some recent requested move discussions, some editors seem to disagree with that interpretation – saying that using the "common name" refers to using whatever typographical stylization is found most commonly in sources. In a recent discussion at Misplaced Pages talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters#Composition titles, it was suggested (by Dekimasu) that it may be helpful to have additional clarifying commentary about this here in WP:AT. The suggestion was editing the fourth paragraph of WP:COMMONNAME to read:

Although official, scientific, birth, original, or trademarked names are often used for article titles, the term or name most typically used in reliable sources is generally preferred. Other encyclopedias are among the sources that may be helpful in deciding what titles are in an encyclopedic register, as well as what names are most frequently used. Note that the preference for common names does not indicate that titles should necessarily be styled as they are found in other sources. For the proper stylization of the common name, please refer to the Manual of Style.
(using italics here to highlight the key aspects; we would not need to actually use the italics).

Would that be a helpful clarification?

—BarrelProof (talk) 21:03, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

Discussion

• Oppose – Capitalisation on Misplaced Pages is determined by reliable sources, except in cases of WP:NDESC titles. It mirrors exactly the process for deciding what to title an article. Everything that applies to AT also applies to capitalisation, as AT is a policy, whereas MOSCAPS is just a guideline. We always go by what's the most common name in reliable sources. That includes what capitalisation to use. A guideline cannot trump policy RGloucester — ☎ 22:07, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

  The above comment is a very good illustration of my statement that "some editors seem to disagree with that interpretation", which I think helps demonstrate the desirability of some clarification about this issue. —BarrelProof (talk) 22:13, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

  Comment: I read that "capitalisation is determined by reliable sources", and would like it but so far see that it's determined by house style. What did I miss? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 22:32, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

  (EC) Yes, the converse of my suggestion is also true. If we only rely upon outside sources for capitalization, that should go in WP:NCCAPS so that people aren't requesting to overrule outside sources in order to, for instance, decapitalize the prepositions in titles based on the guidance of WP:MOSCAPS. But it would also need to go in almost all other naming conventions as well; it would change how we use WP:FAUNA#Capitalisation and italicisation, eliminate WP:NCROY as far as I can tell (insofar as "we always go by what's the most common name in reliable sources"), eliminate WP:NCPLACE#Specific topics as far as that deals with proper nouns, and remove any instructions to refer to the guidance of particular sources over others as at WP:NCOPERA. And it basically rules out WP:CONSISTENCY; naming on Misplaced Pages would be exactly as random as implied by taking the median of all naming conventions on any given topic outside of Misplaced Pages. Dekimasuよ! 22:37, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

  We don't rely "only" on anything, and there are always exceptions subject to talk page consensus. However, the general rule, as far as I can tell, is "Misplaced Pages relies on sources to determine what is a proper name; words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in sources are treated as proper names and capitalized in Misplaced Pages". RGloucester — ☎ 00:20, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

  To be clear, I proposed both versions in the linked discussion: "One solution would seem to be adding an explicit statement in WP:MOSCAPS that common name does not imply common style, and that the MOS should be used to determine style (including capitalization) in article titles. The other solution would seem to be adding an explicit direction that the style guide is only to be used for titles in cases in which the most common stylization of the title is unclear, which would be closer to the way we negotiate WP:PRIMARYTOPIC." Dekimasuよ! 02:49, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

  I support your second proposal, which is a more accurate representation of how we apply our policies and guidelines, and one that makes more sense. RGloucester — ☎ 03:45, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

  And again, the original context of the discussion that prompted this suggestion was not the current disagreements over whether something is a common noun or proper noun that seem to be informing much of the discussion below–it was the more mundane topic of repeated arguments over the style guide telling us to decap prepositions with less than five letters while a large number of article titles cap "Like" or "From" or "Into" in clear proper nouns. If your opposition is based on the proper noun/common noun issue that's currently causing heat, at least with the change described by Barrelproof we would know where to discuss the issue–by clarifying or cleaning up WP:MOSCAPS and WP:NCCAPS–rather than engaging in protracted discussion over whether general policy (as policy) or specific guidance (informed by particular circumstances) has precedence when it comes to typography. Dekimasuよ! 20:10, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

• Support – I think it's a good attempt to clear up the kind of confusion exhibited by RGloucenter above. And he seems to endorse it, where he notes that our general rule in the MOS does already suggest looking at sources to help decide styling. Dicklyon (talk) 01:24, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

  I strongly disagree with the idea that a guideline like the MoS should overwrite the policy that is WP:UCN. RGloucester — ☎ 01:50, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

  I agree that the MOS does not and should not override any policy. I support clarifying that. Dicklyon (talk) 02:02, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

  WP:AT is a policy. The addition of this new sentence will imply that the MoS can override WP:AT. RGloucester — ☎ 02:06, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

  The question here is precisely "Does common name imply common style?" If the style is not an essential component of the common name–that is, if WP:UCN tells us which name to use, but not how to write it–then there is no overriding of WP:AT or WP:UCN involved. This is exactly why clarification is needed. Dekimasuよ! 02:41, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

  Yes. I believe WP:AT already largely refers the reader to the MoS for such matters, which I believe are basically delegated to the MoS to be handled there (without intending WP:AT to express any conflict with the MoS), but some clarification would be helpful. If the stylization guidelines in the MoS are intended to mostly just be ignored and replaced by searches or to only apply to unsourced articles, we should probably just remove all that guidance or add heavy caveats to it, because all that's just confusing if what we're really supposed to do is survey sources instead. One way or another, I think it would be helpful to have some clarification. —BarrelProof (talk) 03:02, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

• From previous discussions, my stance is that AT is about whether we use "Kesha Rose Sebert" or "Kesha", ignoring any style issues, and then having MOS:TM deal with the style of using "Kesha" vs "Ke$ha". Importantly this would have this applying equally across both title and body, minimizing reader disruptions. That said, both AT and MOS:TM should also carefully use existing sources to establish the style (aka the deadmau5 situation) that is preferred. As long as AT and MOS:TM do not work in tandem, we will keep coming back to this issue. --MASEM (t) 03:10, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

  I think I agree with that. AT primarily considers whether we should use "Cuban green woodpecker" or "Xiphidiopicus percussus", and the MoS primarily considers whether we should use whether we should use "Cuban green woodpecker" or "Cuban Green Woodpecker". —BarrelProof (talk) 04:05, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

  Exactly. WP:AT has us consider such titles as Chicago race riot of 1919, 1919 Chicago riot, etc., while WP:MOS leads us to prefer lowercase on "race riot", as was recently affirmed at Talk:Chicago race riot of 1919, in spite of RGloucester's attempt to say that we should let Britannica determine the styling there. Dicklyon (talk) 05:17, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

  Now, now – no gloating please. I'm not too sure the deadmau5 example is the best myself. Some titles are going to still be difficult to decide, no matter what we do. —BarrelProof (talk) 05:41, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

  Well, yes, I didn't get my preference on deadmaus, but that's OK. There are still open RMs (Talk:Houston_Riot_(1917)#Requested_move_14_December_2014 and Talk:Pottawatomie_Massacre#Requested_move) where RGloucester wants to let Britannica decide the style, which is why you opened this discussion. People should be aware of that back story. If he was OK with a majority of reliable sources, the question wouldn't even have come up in these, but he insists that Britannica should trump most other sources, which is what makes his position particularly odd. By insisting the WP:UCN gives him permission to go with Britannica, he can conveniently ignore WP's style. The clarification cuts off that excuse, which is why he opposes it. Dicklyon (talk) 06:08, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

  In other words, then, you're trying to change Misplaced Pages policy to give yourself an advantage in ongoing move discussions. That's nice and WP:POINTy, don't you think? No matter what, we always evaluate sources on quality. We distinguish between RS and non-RS, between journalistic and scholarly, between primary and tertiary. That's how things are done here. I do not believe that Misplaced Pages has a "style". If it did, of course, it would mandate one standard to apply to all cases. It does not do that. It says to go with whatever is used consistently in sources, and also asks us to evaluate those sources to ensure that we maintain the encyclopaedic register. In other words, in matters what is most common in good quality sources, not what's common in blogs. If you want Misplaced Pages to have a "style", you ought make a proposal for one. Please, if you like, create a proposal. RGloucester — ☎ 06:18, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

  WP's style is set out in many guidelines and policies. We might take into account the "quality" of sources, but since sources nearly always vary among themselvs (and even within publications), relying only on sources doesn't work. This "encyclopedic register" is an ill-defined concept that you've invented to promote your agenda. Tony (talk) 06:32, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

  How can I have invented it if it is in our policy? Do you not like our "house policy"? I have no agenda. If I had an agenda, I'd be going around making mass-unilateral moves to a certain style. I haven't done, and have never done. RGloucester — ☎ 06:34, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

  If Misplaced Pages did not have a “style,” then we would not have WIkipedia:Manual of Style. It applies equally to titles and content. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 07:37, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

  RG, at Talk:Watts Riots#Requested moves, were you not among those who insisted on getting clarification at WP:MOS and/or WP:TITLE before deciding? Or was your statement "That's why God has sent me here, to protect these articles from the ugly candour of minuscule letters" a better summary of your position there? Dicklyon (talk) 07:50, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

  Ahem… —174.141.182.82 (talk) 07:58, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

  "As a rule, editors engaging in 'POINTy' behavior are making edits with which they do not actually agree, for the deliberate purpose of drawing attention and provoking opposition in the hopes of making other editors see their 'point'." Please explain how that describes the actions of anyone participating in this discussion. —David Levy 13:12, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

  Mr Levy, don't start being testy. I have no time for such affairs. As far as your words are concerned, My Lyon, I did not request any "clarification" as far as I remember. God did send me there, but you'll notice that I haven't opposed decapitalisation schemes that are supported by good sources. I merely oppose those that are not. I don't think any clarification is needed. WP:AT is our article title policy, and the MoS is just a secondary guide in the matter of deciding what an article title is. It is useful in certain standardised circumstances, but not the Gospel of Lyon, certainly. RGloucester — ☎ 16:39, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

  You seem to have little but time for such affairs, and generate far too many of them.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  19:48, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

  I'm not expressing irritation. I'm asking you to clarify your assertion that this proposal (or someone's support thereof) is an attempt to disrupt Misplaced Pages to illustrate a point. —David Levy 17:19, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

  @RGloucester: If the title is not a proper name, then it doesn’t matter who capitalized what. It’s wholly a matter of house style. It’s up to the editors of each publication. In WP’s case, it’s up to us, and our style is to use sentence case. This discussion is not about when a name should be considered a proper name, and it’s not about whether we should stop using sentence case, though those may be discussions worth having. Please do not take this one off topic. Thank you. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 19:00, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

I'm well aware of that. However, the problem is determining what is a proper name, not whether to capitalise proper names. According to both AT and MOSCAPS, whether something is a proper name is determined by how reliable sources capitalise that thing. RGloucester — ☎ 19:26, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

This was not the original question here, however; see above. Dekimasuよ! 20:19, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

It wasn't the original question, but it is one the problems that any change of this sort would cause. AT must trump the MoS. AT offers its own advice on stylisation, and the MoS must remain subordinate to AT. Otherwise, we shall have a situation whereby the MoS is used to overwrite AT, and that simply isn't acceptable in any way. There are cases of stylisation whereby the MoS provides its own dictates, such as when to use units. Those are questions purely based on Misplaced Pages's own "style". However, in cases of capitalisation, where AT is explicitly the policy that should apply, the MoS has nothing to do with it. RGloucester — ☎ 20:40, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

I think you are assuming a transparent equivalence between written text and the common name that may not exist. You seem to be arguing that the style used by reliable sources is an integral part of the common name, perhaps because we are asked to use reliable sources to confirm that name, but nowhere does WP:AT state that this is the case. Written evidence of the common name is evidence of the term's usage, not the sole arbiter of how it is used. WP:UE works better for your argument, because it already says that "established systematic transliterations... are preferred. However, if there is a common English-language form of the name, then use it, even if it is unsystematic." Here too, though, it says nothing explicit about the stylization of the transliterations. Dekimasuよ! 21:02, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

AT doesn’t “trump” the MOS. They should not contradict. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 20:49, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

They do not presently contradict each other. AT says to capitalise proper names, and so does MOSCAPS. Proper names are said to be established by use in reliable sources. What's so hard to understand about this? RGloucester — ☎ 22:04, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

• Support either way, whether we leave capitalization and other styling up to sources or to our MOS. Anything that reduces any perceived conflict between naming policy and MOS is a Good Thing. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 05:48, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

  But leaving styling up to sources won't solve RGlouceter's underlying problem of "encyclopedic register" where he wants to let Britannica set our style. Dicklyon (talk) 06:08, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

  But it would end the debates over what the policy really means. For the record, I believe that any proper name that isn’t in simple title case should be rendered here as per common usage in the most reliable sources (and non proper names should use sentence case). But if the consensus is for something completely different, I’d be happy with having anything plainly laid out. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 07:23, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

• Support Content != Style. Seems like a useful clarification even though there are other places that also clearly call out the MoS for covering style of article titles. Having a consistent style is useful to readers. PaleAqua (talk) 07:59, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
  • Note I strongly prefer the wording change suggested below replacing For proper styling with For styling guidance. Consider this a weak oppose to the original proposed wording. PaleAqua (talk) 17:57, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
    • And to be clear this is about proper vs guidance, not style, or styling, vs stylization, etc. PaleAqua (talk) 02:28, 19 December 2014 (UTC)
• Support. I agree with the above explanations (by Masem, BarrelProof and Dicklyon) regarding the distinction between content and style. As Tony1 noted, styles can vary wildly among reliable sources (and even within a particular reliable source). I don't know why RGloucester places so much weight on Britannica's house style or why he thinks that Misplaced Pages policy mandates this. His preferred course of action would essentially nullify the Manual of Style's relevance to article titles (and given his statement that he " not believe that Misplaced Pages has a 'style'", this appears to be his goal). Misplaced Pages's house style reflects those of reliable sources, but isn't supplanted by them (let alone one in particular). —David Levy 13:12, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
• Opposed... There seems to be a basic misunderstanding of COMMONNAME involved in the premiss of this proposal. Stylized names such as macys, skate., , Se7en, Alien, and Toys Я Us (the examples given) are not actually the COMMONNAMEs for these subjects (I am less sure about Invader ZIM). I suppose one could argue that the stylized version form the WP:Official names of the topics (being how the the name is presented in advertizing and packaging), but most reliable sources (especially those that are independent of the subject) don't actually write the names with the stylization when discussing them. Compare this with a subject like Deadmous5, where an overwhelming number of reliable and independent music industry sources routinely include the stylized "5" at the end. My point being, we should not change the policy based on a poor premiss... we need to keep in mind the distinction between OFFICIALNAMEs and COMMONNAMEs. We need to look at sources that are independent of the topic and see how they present the name. Most of the time, they won't include stylization when discussing the topic... but, when the reliable independent sources do include stylization, then we need to pay attention to that fact... we can know that the stylization is accepted as being an integral part of the topic's name, and we should follow the sources. Blueboar (talk) 14:10, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

  I agree with most of what you wrote, but my impression is that BarrelProof simply copied those examples in reference to the broader concept of maintaining a house style. The above discussion focuses on disagreements wherein neither of the conflicting styles is unusual or favored mainly by trademark owners. —David Levy 15:02, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

  The deadmau5 case had nothing to do with MOS vs TITLE; it was entirely about MOS:TM and some legitimate disagreements over whether the threshold test there was met. Dicklyon (talk) 17:59, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

  Wasn’t COMMONNAME frequently invoked as well? I thought the argument was (various interpretations each of) a small part of AT vs a small part of MOS. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 18:53, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose the Article titles policy has its own guidance on such things in guidelines that are called naming conventions. For example WP:AT has its own information on how to capitalise ( AT § Article title format ¶ Use lowercase, except for proper names and its own guideline WP:naming conventions (capitalization)). Unlike the MOS which is stand alone and prescriptive, the AT policy is based on usage in reliable sources. Before that principle was established on this page, usage used to be based on a survey of all sources both reliable and unreliable, so many of the naming conventions were prescriptive to try to mirror usage in reliable sources, and while they were successful most of the time, such rule based naming produced inaccurate article titles for the rest. I see this as a retrograde step back to prescriptive naming, for example how does this proposal help in deciding the best capitalisation for the Boston Massacre or whether Comet Hale–Bopp should or should not use a dash or an ndash? I say "Let the sources be with you" rather than "let force be with you". -- PBS (talk) 15:35, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
  • As long as we keep this attitude , that AT and MOS:TM are two very separate things with no harmony, we will continue to argue on naming schemes like this. The two pages need to work in tandem, but this also means that MOS:TM should not be as prescriptive, and AT should not be as subservient to RSes when there's clear style problems for WP. There are some naming issues that have to be discussed with the idea of what the prose will use to keep the title and prose versions consistent, for people to find the article to start with , and the like. --MASEM (t) 17:00, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
  • The question of hyphen or en/em dash, a question of style, would be delegated to the MOS. As would the question of whether to capitalize proper names (which “Boston Massacre” is). But if this change is made, we may need to add guidance on determining whether a name is a proper name. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 19:18, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
    • " en/em dash, a question of style" who says it is a question of style does not not depend on whether the words are part of a name? Or do you always use ndash for the component parts of a name? As to whether "a name is a proper name" or not how does one do that without examining reliable sources? -- PBS (talk) 00:21, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
      • The en dash question is pretty well explained already at MOS:DASH. Absolutely agree on improving the MOS guidance on determining whether a name is a proper name. The current guidance is MOS:CAPS is weak ("Misplaced Pages relies on sources to determine what is a proper name; words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in sources are treated as proper names and capitalized in Misplaced Pages."), but it's what we have. Incorporating more linguistic knowledge as discussed at Proper name would improve it. Still, the current scheme works pretty well, until people like RGloucester argue that the Britannica trumps almost all other books (and he couches this in his misdirecting language about "blogs"). Dicklyon (talk) 00:33, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
  • As far as WP:NCCAPS, it also says things like "For details, see Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style (capital letters)#Composition titles" and "For French, see for instance Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style/France and French-related#Works of art." Those parts of the MOS don't say "refer to reliable sources to determine how to capitalize." As long as these sorts of things are scattered throughout the naming conventions, we can't just say that the naming conventions and WP:AT are independent of the MOS. Dekimasuよ! 21:25, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
• Comment what does "For the proper stylization" mean? -- PBS (talk) 16:50, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

  Probably "For styling guidance" is a better way to express what he obviously meant. Dicklyon (talk) 17:44, 17 December 2014 (UTC

  This came up at the linked discussion as well, but I still believe "stylization" is the more precise term to use here. Wiktionary: "stylization (plural stylizations) The process or result of designing or presenting in accordance with a style" and "styling (plural stylings) Any particular form of decoration." Maybe "For guidance on stylization" would work, although changing "proper" (i.e. "correct within the context") to "guidance" could result in reinscribing the problem of references to WP:AT policy trumping explicit guidance in the MOS (or individual naming conventions). Dekimasuよ! 20:19, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

  if "he obviously meant" it why write what was written? So Dekimasu you think that there is a "proper" way to do style something, tell me under your "proper" style which is correct "Boston Massacre" or "Boston massacre" and how do you come to the conclusion that you do? -- PBS (talk) 00:21, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

  So you were asking about "proper" and not "styling"? In that case, the answer would be that by "proper" I meant "whatever the style guide says to do." That is, following the style guide is proper procedure/best practice. I am certainly not trying to say that there is any inherently "proper" way to style something. Dekimasuよ! 00:34, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

  Indeed, the overloaded term "proper" is not so great here. The MOS is not about saying what is "proper" or "improper", or "right" or "wrong", but rather what accords better with our house style, where unnecessary capitalization is avoided, even in titles. The general idea is that when you see a wikignome making edits to make things accord better with house style, you should understand that that's progress. Nobody gets punished for creating articles with titles in title case, which might be normal, proper, or preferred in other styles; we simply move it to improve. Take a glance at new article feed and you'll often find some where you can help. Dicklyon (talk) 00:48, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

  @Dekimasu thank you for your reply but you did not answer my question what is the "proper" capitalisation for Boston Massacre and how do you come to the conclusion that you do? -- PBS (talk) 15:03, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

  Boston Massacre is pretty clearly accepted as a proper name, and capitalized per the lead at MOS:CAPS, as supported by stats on usage in books. Nobody has ever suggested otherwise. Dicklyon (talk) 16:42, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

  I did answer your question: as I said, there is no inherently "proper" capitalization. (I spend half my time in a language that gets by fine without uppercase and lowercase.) I have said that by "proper" I meant "appropriate in a given context," and you have not given your question a context. I never presented my original phrasing as exactly what would have to be added to WP:AT, and in fact did not create this discussion, and if the word "proper" is changed to something that everyone can agree on as a result of discussion here, all the better. I have explained the intended meaning several times now, but you have not suggested any changes to the wording. (Both the MOS and the common name tell us to use Boston Massacre on Misplaced Pages. In this general discussion, I do not see the utility in asking for one editor's opinion. If you do, perhaps you can reply to my comment about naming conventions delegating to the MOS on your general oppose statement above.) Dekimasuよ! 19:53, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

  As suggested by others, I think "For styling guidance" / "For stylization guidance" / "For guidance on styling" / "For guidance on stylization" might be better than "For the proper stylization", by avoiding the notion that other stylization is improper (versus just not necessarily fitting the house style). I'm also neutral on whether to use the word "styling" rather than "stylization". But I think the fine-tuning of the wording is not as critical as establishing the fundamental notion that clarification is desirable and that WP:AT is not intended to prescribe stylization in a manner that conflicts with or overrides the MoS. —BarrelProof (talk) 02:11, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

  @Dekimasu you write "but you have not suggested any changes to the wording" that is because I am opposed to the wording for the reasons I gave in my opposition statement. You write "I do not see the utility in asking for one editor's opinion" it is because you are making statements of fact such as "Both the MOS and the common name tell us to use Boston Massacre on Misplaced Pages", Where does the MOS do that, and how do you tell that "Boston Massacre" ought to be capitalised from the guidance in the MOS? You also write "perhaps you can reply to my comment about naming conventions" you made a statement, you did not ask a question. Ask a question of me and I will answer it, I hope you will do me the same courtesy. -- PBS (talk) 15:52, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

  I have been extending you this courtesy. The reason this line of questioning befuddles me is that I nowhere made any "statement of fact" about what the MOS says until you asked me several times to make one. The question and answer are both tangential in a conversation about what the policies and guidelines should be telling us to do.

  Further up the thread I specifically noted that in the original discussion I had tried to explain both possible clarifications: "One solution would seem to be adding an explicit statement in WP:AT that common name does not imply common style, and that the MOS should be used to determine style (including capitalization) in article titles. The other solution would seem to be adding an explicit direction that the style guide is only to be used for titles in cases in which the most common stylization of the title is unclear, which would be closer to the way we negotiate WP:PRIMARYTOPIC." This is pretty clear, never uses "proper," and does not show support for either position. (I have not added any "support" or "oppose" in this thread.)

  The original discussion was focused on debates over the capitalization of prepositions in composition titles; adding this text would not change how we case proper nouns. WP:MOSCAPS already points back to "standard usage" to determine whether something is a proper noun; after adding this text, 1) WP:AT would say "don't necessarily use style in sources, see MOS"→2) the MOS says use sources to determine if it's a proper noun→3) use sources. Meanwhile, WP:NCCAPS says things like "For details, see Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style (capital letters)#Composition titles" and "For French, see for instance Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style/France and French-related#Works of art." Those parts of the MOS don't say anything about referring to "standard usage." As long as these sorts of things are scattered throughout the naming conventions, we can't just say that the naming conventions and WP:AT are independent of the MOS. The question I was asking is clear: Would you like to remove the parts of naming conventions that refer us to the MOS for more specific guidance? Dekimasuよ! 20:27, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

• Support The styling of the title has to match the styling of the text (subject to position in a sentence). The MOS is clearly the place in which to set out policies and guidance on styling, not AT which only covers a very small part of an article. As others have noted above, AT is used to select the wording, MOS to select the styling of that wording. Previous debates (e.g. capitalization of bird names, hyphens vs. en-dashes) have consistently upheld this position. Peter coxhead (talk) 18:27, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

  I fully agree that the styling used in the text should match the styling used in the title... However, I think both the title and the text should follow how independent reliable sources present the name. The basic concept that evolved into COMMONNAME needs to be expanded into a COMMONSTYLE guideline. In other words... instead of amending WP:AT, we should be amending the various MOS guidelines. Blueboar (talk) 19:07, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

  @Blueboar: well, this is an old discussion. I started off being more sympathetic to the notion of COMMONSTYLE, and remain somewhat hostile to attempts to make the MOS over-prescriptive as to style. In practice, however, COMMONSTYLE runs into serious problems. One is that that styles vary with ENGVAR (e.g. capitalization varies significantly) so COMMONSTYLE leads to distracting nationalist disputes. Another is that it's hard to check styles in reliable sources since search results don't always maintain them. But the main reason is the desirability of at least some level of "house style". Peter coxhead (talk) 10:22, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

  But surly that is what redirects/pipes are for. One can use any styling one likes for anything but the article title, this means for anything when it is not the subject of a page it can be styled as the MOS "dictates" . So I agree with Blueboar. -- PBS (talk) 15:03, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

  I respectfully disagree. We should not style a name one way in one article and a different way in another article. We shouldn’t, for instance, talk about da Vinci in the article about the man and Da Vinci elsewhere, or Ke$ha in her article and Kesha in an article on pop music, or treat the same text as a proper name in one place and a descriptive name in another, etc. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 18:29, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

• Support the proposed clarification would be a helpful clarification to the page, and result in increased harmony with MOS:TM. This encyclopedia is an edited product and random chasing after MOS trends in whichever publishers publish on whichever Google Book hit isn't a productive or meaningful endeavour. In ictu oculi (talk) 19:04, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

  If that's the case, you must take issue with MOS:CAPS and WP:AT, because both of these ask us to do exactly that. RGloucester — ☎ 19:06, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

• Support—So ... "saying that using the "common name" refers to using whatever typographical stylization is found most commonly in sources"—those editors would insist on the source's font and font-size being used, too? Come on ... And it is typical for sources, even so-called "reliable sources" to be inconsistent with each other and within themselves. That is why publishers have a house style. Tony (talk) 01:34, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

  Well... IF a given name was consistently presented in diverse sources using a consistent font and font-size, then I would say yes... Misplaced Pages should pay attention to that fact and follow the common style. However... the reality is that finding commonality in sources with regard to font and font-size would be an extremely rare occurrence. So, I don't think we need to worry about fonts and font-sizes. We are really talking about other forms of stylization. Blueboar (talk) 02:54, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

  But don't sections like MOS:TM and MOS:CAPS already acknowledge that when sources are consistent, we do as they do? Trying to follow "most common" would be chaos, but when they're consistent nobody argues. You would not want to see "it appears in sources more often with serifs than without, so we need to use a font with serifs"; yes we see things like "the Britannica capitalizes it, so we should, too", with WP:UCN cited as justification; nobody buys this, yet they you seem reluctant to shut it down. It's weird. Dicklyon (talk) 03:32, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

  Bluboar, so that's a "no we don't in practice follow the font and font-size in a source". Where is the boundary, then? Curly vs straight quotes and apostrophes have to adhere to "sources"? French angle-quotes? German insistence on hyphenating street names (where in English they're typically not hyphenated)? Slavish reproduction of dense forests of Vietnamese diacritics? I'm deliberately plumbing these issues to illustrate a point: that slavish adherence to sources is unsustainable and in manty cases not even logical.

  We have a house-style to minimise arguments on article talkpages; those who argue for adherence to sources are setting us up for lots and lots of arguments, diverting us from working to improve the project. Simplicity, please. Tony (talk) 03:42, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

  Not quite, Tony... As I said, it would be rare for the font and font-size to be consistent in sources, but IF the sources are consistent when it comes to a specific topic, then we would (and should) follow the sources. That means we can not form a generalized "rule" (an "in practice") about this. Each name has to be examined on an individual basis. You ask "where is the boundry?"... I am not sure you can (or should) draw one. Each case is unique unto itself, and every "in practice" guideline has lots of exceptions.

  As for the "but we want to limit arguments" point... true... however there is a difference between argument and discussion. We actually encourage discussion on Misplaced Pages, and don't want to limit it. From my experience, most of the arguments arise when editors try to stop the discussion with a slavish adherence to "the rules". Shutting down discussion does not improve the project. Blueboar (talk) 13:37, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

  So, Tony, your idea is to follow sources when they support your position on capitalisation, and ignore them when they don't? That's contrary to what is written. I agree that we shouldn't be reproducing diacritics, following sources on the type of inverted commas we use, or any of that rubbish. One of the biggest travesties on Misplaced Pages is the naming of such railway station articles as Praha hlavní nádraží. I have no idea what the justification is for using entirely unreadable names. Regardless, capitalisation is clearly another matter, according to the current policy/guidelines. If you'd like to mandate a set capitalisation scheme, propose one. RGloucester — ☎ 04:10, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

  "So, Tony, your idea is to follow sources when they support your position on capitalisation, and ignore them when they don't?"

  No, what gave you that idea? Tony (talk) 04:40, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

  You said "those who argue for adherence to sources are setting us up for lots and lots of arguments, diverting us from working to improve the project", but when the sources don't support your position in an RM, you ask for more sources. RGloucester — ☎ 04:43, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

  There seems to be some critical missing information here to support your allegations, and anyway this seems like a personal attack. Regardless of whether it is or not, this discussion is not the place. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 06:19, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

  "Adherence" to sources would be an impossible mess, as sources vary so much. We must, and do, consult and respect sources, and rely on them to help understand usage and meaning, in order to decide what aspects of our styling guidance apply. When sources are consistent, we should have little question about what to do; see MOS:CAPS and MOS:TM, for example. Let's just keep on doing it better, and all will be good. Dicklyon (talk) 07:00, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose the proposed addition. The section is question is about recognizability. By definition, stylistic options will be equally recognizable, and adding the proposed text will serve to further confuse readers about the content of the section. Blueboar mentioned a similar reasoning earlier. VQuakr (talk) 08:09, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

  This only seems true of names which intentionally incorporate styling, like the capitalization of iPhone or the numeral in deadmau5, and not names in simple title case or descriptive names. And the MOS does handle such questions of style (as it still would if a COMMONSTYLE guideline were added to the MOS), so does it not make sense to send people there for that information? —174.141.182.82 (talk) 08:57, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

  We seem to be dealing with two overlapping issues...

  1. a debate about the presentation of intentionally stylized names (for that, perhaps what we need is a new WP:MOS/Stylized names guideline. This could incorporate relevant parts of the various MOS pages we currently have, with the addition of a COMMONSTYLE section)...
  2. a debate about the presentation of COMMON descriptive names (and I think the debate here centers on the question of how to know when a descriptive name has morphed into a "proper name" through common usage.)

  Since they do overlap, the question is whether we should deal with these separately, or at the same time. Blueboar (talk) 11:32, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

• Support. To quote myself from a recent debate: "WP:COMMONNAME does not imply WP:COMMONSTYLE (yes, redlink), and instead WP:HYPHEN (and MOS in general) takes precedence. Generally, we style our titles, including punctuation and capitalization, according to our own rules, not according to haphazard conventions of the external world, which vary by location, field of application and fashion of the day." No such user (talk) 12:09, 19 December 2014 (UTC)
• Support—if it's needed to clarify the obvious: we don't use different styling in titles versus running text in articles. Except for that first capital letter, there is nothing whatsoever to say about style that is different for titles than for running text. Is anyone seriously arguing otherwise? Given this, any guidance about styling should probably not be in a title-specific article like this one, and titles should use style guidance found in MOS/etc. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 17:07, 19 December 2014 (UTC)
  • Agreed. Style-wise, article titles are (generally) noun phrases with the first letter capitalized. WP:TITLEFORMAT. The end. Anything else is a matter for a manual of style. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 06:30, 20 December 2014 (UTC)
• Support: This has been actual, consistent practice at WP:RM for over a decade, and it should be properly documented. MOS:TM would be meaningless under the interpretation favored by RGloucester, which has never gained consensus here, any time this question has come up, in any venue. Also, the idea that WP:AT and WP:MOS are in conflict and that WP:AT "trumps" WP:MOS is a confused fantasy, as has been explained in about 100 previous discussions, here, at MOS, in myriad RMs, etc., etc. It's a misapprehension both of how they interrelate and how WP:POLICY works generally.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  19:48, 19 December 2014 (UTC)
• Support - I hope the proposed rule will not be overlooked in the future. This helps readers learn to respect existing guidelines and guidelines themselves be more effective than it has been. --George Ho (talk) 06:43, 24 December 2014 (UTC)
• Support. This has been a perennial source of confusion and the suggested language provides what's needed to clarify that the question of what the common name is, is distinct from the issue of what stylization to use for that common name. For what it's worth, a while back I attempted to catalogue past consensus on stylization of names–to find the common denominators where we varied stylization from the obvious, sort them into types, and to gather together a comprehensive list of illustrative examples where we had done so–and then deduce a set of rules that led to those common denominators and examples. See here.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 22:51, 26 December 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose. For the record, I generally agree with Blueboar's approach. For one thing, there is no sharp demarcation between style and content. There is a point at which the way that a word or phrase is presented conveys independent meaning - i.e., content. And a good way to determine whether that point has been reached for a given name is to have a look at how sources present that name. Now, because this can be a hybrid COMMONNAME/COMMONSTYLE issue, it's tough to decide where to put our guidance - here or at MOS. I would put something here, just because if a particular name has crossed the line where stylization becomes content, then it is more of a COMMONNAME issue than a MOS issue. At first glance, I like Blueboar's proposed wording as a starting point. Dohn joe (talk) 18:35, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

What about conflicts?

Where might MOS and TITLE come into conflict, and what would be the result? If we took style from a vote of sources, we'd see some more upper casing of a random selection of topics that are important to experts in their respective fields, and a somewhat more random use of en dashes in date ranges and connections between symmetric pairs, and more stylizing of trademarks, perhaps. Then the situation would be that if we referred to such things in the text of an article we'd style them according to the MOS, and if/when we made an article, or moved an article to new topic, we might than go let a vote of sources change to a different styling if TITLE said to take styling from sources. That would be quite a mess; it is much cleaner to specify style in one place, so that we can't have conflict. That's what the MOS is. Let's keep using it; let's change it if it's not doing what we want for titles. Dicklyon (talk) 21:23, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

A conflict I remember is A Boy was Born (published, and in most sources used for the article) vs. A Boy Was Born (MOS). --Gerda Arendt (talk) 13:59, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

First, while WP:AT is mostly focused on article titles, it is not completely limited to titles... and never has been. In fact, what is today WP:AT started out as WP:Names (which is why we still point to various project level NAMEING conventions). In other words, this policy does (and should) affect names in text as well as in titles.

The solution to conflicts is not to amend COMMONNAME... the solution is to adopt a COMMONSTYLE provision at MOS. I have repeatedly suggested that we should change the MOS to better account for stylized names. The various MOSs should say that we should follow the sources when a name is routinely stylized in the sources. I know the regular editors at MOS don't want to hear that suggestion... but I will continue to suggest it. The rational for it is the same as the rational for WP:COMMONNAME... only applied to style: If a significant majority of reliable sources (especially those that are independent of the subject) stylize a name in a given way, then that stylization is the verifiable, accepted, normal, standard way for that name to be written. It's how readers will expect the name to appear. It's how we should write the name in our articles. The MOS should acknowledge that fact. It's that simple. Blueboar (talk) 01:17, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

Subject to some debate about what "routinely" means, that's pretty close to what the MOS does already, in MOS:TM and MOS:CAPS. I agree that the place to work on amendments is at MOS, and that's what the current proposal clarifies. Dicklyon (talk) 01:21, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

Yes, please, let us respect sources

If people are at all familiar with my editing and my move requests, they know that I almost always present data from sources. See for example my open RMs where book evidence supports the move, but people ignore that while citing odd interpretations of TITLE: Talk:Long-period_variable#Requested_move_14_December_2014, Talk:Houston_Riot_(1917)#Requested_move_14_December_2014, Talk:Pottawatomie_Massacre#Requested_move. If people want data from sources to help with title decisions, they should clarify that some of these are styling issues and some are naming issues, and then jump in and help decide RMs according to guidelines and policies. How is it that RGloucester hasn't been laughed out of town yet with his God and Britannica theories? Why are people who want to follow sources not helping to make sensible decisions based on sources? Dicklyon (talk) 04:36, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

Well yes, indeed. Tony (talk) 04:42, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

One must weigh sources based on value, not edit ideologically. Our policies and guidelines demand it. RGloucester — ☎ 04:44, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

Agreed! Dicklyon (talk) 04:49, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

@RGloucester: Earlier in this discussion was a quote from you about letter case, a quote which you did not contest, that sounded extremely ideological. I would humbly ask you to examine that and consider your own advice. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 06:26, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

Better watch out; RGloucester seems to think that any anon who comments on these matters is part of a sock-puppet conspiracy. Ha ha!  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  19:48, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

Find something better to do than badger me, IP. I stand by my words. God wills each action I act out. Do you question my faith in the divine? You ought not. RGloucester — ☎ 06:29, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

I was not intending to badger you. As for questioning faith, at this point I question your good faith, as this comment rather smacks of trolling. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 06:31, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

It isn't my fault that people these days are godless. God has driven man from his first day, and shall continue to do so until his last day. Regardless, I hope you can find something better to do. RGloucester — ☎ 06:35, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

Of course that isn’t your fault. But this encyclopedia is a secular work, and imposing any deity’s will on it goes against NPOV by introducing a heavy ideological bias. This is why the community insists on rational debate and finds proclamations of God’s will unfavorable—not because they’re godless heathens, but because this is not a religious work. I hope these explanations make sense and help. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 06:51, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

Last I looked, no god decreed anything about English language writing style. Why are we even entertaining this WP:HOLYWAR business?  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  19:48, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

*Shrug* Just in case the guy sincerely believed what he was saying. WP:AGF and all that. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 05:39, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

I'm not questioning good faith, just relevance to WP's purpose and scope. We're not here to entertain much less promote theologically-based ideas about how to write and what may motivate people to write the way they (we) do. Assuming that we don't write the way RGloucester wants us to because we're "godless" is pretty much the ultimate in assumption of bad faith. It's an assumption that we're either hopeless, lost souls in a state of fallen grace, ignorant of God's perfect design, or outright evil. Well, to Hell with that (pun intended).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  03:43, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

This is an issue that predated any recent "event" move requests and was unrelated to these specific arguments (or RGloucester or anyone else discussing them); I hope we can try to keep discussion of particular editors out of it. (In the interest of keeping the discussion on track, might we be able to merge this subsection back into the last?) Dekimasuよ! 05:01, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

No, this is a slightly tangential appeal, to those who claim to respect sources, to back it up with action. I realize the issue is old, but it was RGloucester's recent revert of a bunch of moves supported by sources, and subsequent bizarre arguments in RM discussions, that prompted BarrelProof to bring it up again at this time. There were several explicit calls in Talk:Watts Riots#Requested moves to clarify the policy and guidelines (as you well recall). That's why we're here. Let us decide. Dicklyon (talk) 05:10, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

"Moves supported by sources"? Unilateral moves against consensus. You didn't even take the time to compile the sources before you made the moves, which we know because even you admitted that a few slipped through that should not've been decapitalised. What a bunch of rubbish. If you can't take responsibility for you own poor actions, please don't even bother speaking about my "bizarre arguments", which are not bizarre at all. RGloucester — ☎ 06:17, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

No, I did not admit such a thing. One, I admit, is close enough to "consistently capitalized in sources" that I'm going to back away from it, so that we only have to talk about the ones that are clear. So far, no RM has closed with a consensus against any of my moves. In favor of decapitalization, these have closed, suggesting a consensus against your theories of God and Britannica: Talk:Chicago_race_riot_of_1919#Requested_move_2, Talk:Potato_riots, Talk:Rock_Springs_massacre#Requested_moves. Dicklyon (talk) 06:48, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

I have already explained why those passed. I shan't start circular arguments with you. I cannot imagine that such a person as you exists in actuality. RGloucester — ☎ 06:54, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

STOP... the line between spirited debate and personal attack has been crossed. Take a break and come back when you can discuss this without making it personal. Blueboar (talk) 13:41, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

At User_talk:Dicklyon#Disengage, RGloucester says he is withdrawing from the capitalization-related issues (he seems to have more important things going on). So the theory that WP:UCN's mention of encyclopedias is a reason to override MOS:CAPS is off the table (nobody else went along with that, right?). I don't see any other theory of actual conflict between TITLE and MOS, so it should be easy enough for us to settle on language clarifying that, and then if there's still disagreement about whether things like WP:TM and WP:MOS say what we want, it will be clear to all where to work on amendments.

In the mean time, we still have a few open RMs about routine capitalization moves that RGloucester reverted (see links in top paragraph of this section), and even though he is "not opposed" on many of those, he has sown quite a bit of confusion that would be cleared up if people here that either support or oppose the current change would chime in. It seems that we are all in agreement that sources play an important role in deciding what is a proper name (see the Boston Massacre example discussed above), and the opposers at the open RMs could really mess that up if they hold up the current proposals that are so very clearly supported by evidence from books. If this is canvassing, so be it, but the previous attempt at Talk:Watts Riots was centrally listed to bring in wide participation, and the opposition there mostly said to clarify guidelines at MOS and TITLE first, such as at MOS:MILTERMS. (The general rule is that wherever a military term is an accepted proper name, as indicated by consistent capitalization in sources, it should be capitalized.) There is no uncertainty in these open cases that are mostly lowercase in sources. So why are people who are so interested in these questions here not helping to try to settle them there, too?

I find Blueboar's oppostion at the Talk:Houston_Riot_(1917)#Requested_move_14_December_2014 multi-RM particularly galling, saying that each one needs to be examined individually, when that is exactly what we are trying to do there already. There is no possible reason to split this again into 6 separate discussions; the evidence from sources is carefully laid out and linked, and further examination is invited. Methinks he is just being obstinate to thwart me or something, and people who generally agree with him are avoiding supported these moves just to give a hard time; or am I imagining things? Dicklyon (talk) 17:35, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

Don't take it personally. Blueboar (talk) 18:22, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

Fine; but I would feel better if you relabeled your oppose there for what it is: Decline to participate. Dicklyon (talk) 19:32, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

But I am participating... I respect that you don't like my opposition to mass moves, but it remains my opinion. Blueboar (talk) 14:04, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

A discussion about moving six "Riot" articles to "riot" is not "mass". Your opposition appears to be based on not wanting to look at 6 things; that's a 'decline to participate', as I expect a closer will realize. If you have reasons to oppose any in particular, let's discuss the reasons; since the move rationale is based in guidance, policy, and sources, and you profess to generally respect such thing, I'd think you would support if you participated. You did support the one you looked at (weakly) at least, for which I thank you. Dicklyon (talk) 01:38, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

Back to the original question

I would like to get back to the original question, with slightly refined wording per above. The current suggestion follows:

Although official, scientific, birth, original, or trademarked names are often used for article titles, the term or name most typically used in reliable sources is generally preferred. Other encyclopedias are among the sources that may be helpful in deciding what titles are in an encyclopedic register, as well as what names are most frequently used. Note that the preference for common names does not indicate that titles should necessarily be styled as they are found in other sources. For guidance on stylization of the common name, please refer to the Manual of Style.
(using italics and boldface here to highlight the key aspects; we would not actually do that on the page)

According to my current count, we have

• 13 14 expressions in favor (myself, Dekimasu, Dicklyon, 174.141.182.82, PaleAqua, David Levy, Masem, Peter coxhead, In ictu oculi, No such user, ErikHaugen, SMcCandlish, George Ho, Tony1)
• 5 4 expressing opposition (RGloucester, Blueboar, PBS, Tony1, VQuakr)

– along with various expressions of why these opinions are as they are, of course. I have not noticed anyone changing their mind. Is this sufficient to declare the suggestion to have consensus support for this change? I suggest that the answer is Yes.

—BarrelProof (talk) 17:57, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

I've been avoiding trying to call myself "in favor," but would tend to agree that we should try instituting the change based on the discussion above. It's clear that the revised wording would resolve a few of the concerns expressed above–in retrospect, "guidance" seems fair enough given that we are asking editors to consult "guidelines." Here's hoping this section won't turn into a recount. Dekimasuよ! 18:04, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

• I do not think that one can argue that there is a consensus (what is being done here is vote counting), and any changes of the suggested magnitude should not be implemented during a holiday season when a lot of people have better things to do than watch Wikiepdia pages. A discussion involving less than a score of editors is noway near enough to draw a conclusion of a representative sample for all the active editors on Misplaced Pages. One of the things that has not been discussed is this is a policy page, is that it is an extremely bad idea to link the MOS in all its myriads of pages (many of which are watched by few edits) in such a way that they affect a policy page such as this. -- PBS (talk) 18:13, 24 December 2014 (UTC)
  • It seems like a pretty clear consensus that this clarification helps, and describes what we already do. It's even more clear (14:4) if BarrelProof corrects his lists, moving Tony1 to the support side. I do agree with VQuakr (and to some extent Blueboar) that it would also be good to make it more clear that COMMONNAME is a strategy in support of recognizability, and that recognizability has little or nothing to do with how we style things like caps and dashes; so if they have an alternate way to make that clear, that help reduce the incidence of people citing the irrelevant WP:COMMONNAME in styling discussions, that would be good, too. It's not clear to me why they object to the current attempt to do that, but I am certainly open to any alternatives that they wish to propose. Dicklyon (talk) 18:18, 24 December 2014 (UTC)
  • You're back! I asked a question of you five days ago, and I think you promised to answer. Dekimasuよ! 18:27, 24 December 2014 (UTC)
  • Regarding the suggestion that having WP:AT reference the MoS for guidance would be undesirable, I notice that this page already contains about 9 such references. —BarrelProof (talk) 18:59, 24 December 2014 (UTC)
• Still opposed... for all the reasons I have stated before. Because stylization can be an integral part of a name, we can not always separate stylizations from the name itself. I would be much more likely to support if MOS had some sort of COMMONSTYLE guidance, but without that... I can not. Blueboar (talk) 19:08, 24 December 2014 (UTC)
  • The suggested addition to WP:AT, in my mind, is not intended to prescribe any particular outcome in regard to what stylization guidance the MoS should provide – only to clarify that the MoS is the place to look for that. If something in the MoS should be changed, its content should be discussed and improved. —BarrelProof (talk) 19:19, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

My objection is that it is premature to point to MOS for commonname/commonstyle concerns... since MOS does not address the issue. Improve MOS first... then we will have something concrete to point to in this policy. Blueboar (talk) 21:21, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

So in the meantime, we let the confusion continue with editors erroneously citing COMMONNAME for matters of capitalization and such? Pointing to the MOS (which despite its shortcomings does pertain to such matters) seems the better compromise. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 21:46, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

The confusion is the result of MOS not taking COMMONNAME into account... that is best fixed by amending MOS, not COMMONNAME. Blueboar (talk) 13:46, 25 December 2014 (UTC)

Blueboar, I haven't seen any proposals along the lines of what you're asking for. And frankly I'm having a hard time imagining what such a thing would look like. But the I think we mostly all agree that the MOS would be the place to take it up, since titles should not have their own style (other than saying use initial caps and sentence case) that would make them different from style elsewhere. Being in a title has no particular other concerns, does it? Dicklyon (talk) 23:11, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

I have suggested (but not formally proposed) it multiple times at various MOS pages... but the suggestion seems to fall on deaf ears. To make an initial stab at what it might look like... perhaps something along the lines of:

• "Stylized names: When a name is consistently stylized in a significant majority of reliable sources (especially those that are independent of the subject), Misplaced Pages should use the same stylization of the name in its articles. These can be seen as being exceptions to normal guidance."

A very rough stab... I am sure that we could come up with even better wording, but that gives you the gist of what I would like to see. Blueboar (talk) 13:46, 25 December 2014 (UTC)

Wouldn’t this conflict with MOS:TM? That explicitly says to use the form closest to standard English. Probably be best to look at revising that page first. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 16:49, 25 December 2014 (UTC)

Yes, it would conflict with the current guidance at MOS:TM... that would have to be amended as well. Blueboar (talk) 17:21, 25 December 2014 (UTC)

I would oppose such a broad override. We already have enough trouble with people wanting to use sources to decide whether to use a comma before "Jr.", when it would make so much more sense for us to have a consistent style rather than arguments over the numbers for such trivia that naturally vary in sources that use different styles. Dicklyon (talk) 17:00, 25 December 2014 (UTC)

And thus we come back to square one. Those of us who approach the conflicts from the standpoint of COMMONNAME, feel strongly that COMMONNAME does and should apply to certain style issues, and that MOS (and the various MOS subpages such as TM) guidance needs to be amended to take COMMONNAME into account... meanwhile, those of us who approach the conflicts from the standpoint of MOS feel that COMMONAME does not and should not apply to style issues, and that COMMONNAME needs to be amended to take MOS into account. Neither side want's "their" page to defer to the other's... and we are, once again, at a stand still. So... let me ask this... is there compromise position? How do we break the stalemate? Blueboar (talk) 17:21, 25 December 2014 (UTC)

Not really square one. It seems we have general consensus for a simple clarification about how we use sources and our MOS to make style decisions, in particular that something being a title does not override the normal considerations. I don't see this as a stalemate; the discussion can continue, much more sensibly, at MOS, untangliing COMMONNAME from style issues in the minds of a few editors. Dicklyon (talk) 17:55, 25 December 2014 (UTC)

Yes, this is years overdue. An enormous number of pointless and rancorous debates at WT:AT, WT:MOS and WP:RM all revolve around the misguided notion that AT and MOS are somehow in conflict and that AT "trumps" MOS. It's confused nonsense, and our policies and guidelines are not much use if they do not resolve such confusions and prevent such time-wasting, temper-raising circular disputes from arising.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  04:27, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

We should go ahead then. I respect Blueboar's right to continue to ask to modify the MOS to get something like his suggested When a name is consistently stylized in a significant majority of reliable sources (especially those that are independent of the subject), Misplaced Pages should use the same stylization of the name in its articles. There is nothing in that proposal about titles, or make styling titles differently from other text, so the current clarification only makes it more clear that we all agree that the MOS would be the place to work on such style questions. He seems to be asking to get his way at MOS before allowing the clarification at TITLE, which is not OK. So let's move forward. Dicklyon (talk) 06:26, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

I don't see any serious argument against the separation between AT for "wording" and MOS for "styling", so I agree with Dicklyon – Blueboar can't use his preference for a change in the MOS to support not making the proposed clarification. I support some changes in the MOS, but it's much better to discuss these in a single agreed forum than have inconsistent discussions in different places. It also helps prevents people from trying to game the system by moving from one forum to another. Peter coxhead (talk) 12:27, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

No... COMMONNAME is not separate from styling... and it is not just about titles. COMMONNAME was created back when this page was a general policy dealing with the presentation of NAMES in Misplaced Pages (which is why the shortcut WP:NAME points to this page)... and it as always applied to the presentation of names in general, not just how names appear "in titles".
When a significant majority of sources consistently present a name with a specific stylization (be it capitalization, non-standard characters, or some other form of stylization)... that stylization is an integral part of the COMMONNAME... and thus COMMONNAME does and should apply to Style... whether in the title or in the body of the text. I strongly oppose attempts to separate style issues from COMMONNAME issues. They are not separate. If MOS guidance is amended to reflect this fact, then I have no problem with pointing to MOS in this policy (because they will both say essentially the same thing)... however, COMMONNAME is a very strongly supported policy provision... and I do have a problem with carving out a huge exemption from it, simply because a COMMONNAME happens to be "stylized". Blueboar (talk) 17:34, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

A significant majority of sources have styles that use hyphen for en dash, and use title case for titles and headings, and style trademarks as their owners prefer, but WP style is different. Your proposal would deny us the ability to have a house style in these and all other areas. If there are more specific exceptions that you're thinking of, we could consider them, but basically saying to let sources vote on our styling is something that WP has always rejected strongly. Dicklyon (talk) 18:36, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

Red herring... It would be extremely rare to find a significant majority of sources that all present a hyphenated/dashed name the same way (far more likely that the sources will be mixed, with some using an en dash and others using a hyphen).... in other words, when it comes to hyphens and en-dashes, I think it would be highly unlikely that there would be a single consistent commonly used stylization - and so COMMONNAME would not apply In fact, lets find out... can you give us any examples where the majority of sources do use an en dash in stead of a hyphen, or vise versa?.

that said, in the abstract (pending any examples) if there are one or two very rare instances when there might be a common stylization over en dashes and hyphens, my answer is: yes... that hyphenation/dashing should be considered part of the subject's NAME, and Misplaced Pages should follow the sources and present the name the way the sources do. Misplaced Pages should not be the "odd man out". Also... remember that this is restricted to NAMES. Our guidance on dashes and hyphens for non-names would still hold. Blueboar (talk) 19:53, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

Do you mean proper names? Because that’s an important distinction; not all names are proper names. And I strongly disagree with this position unless it can be conclusively determined that the style choice is an intentional part of the name rather than a choice made independently by the given sources’ editors. And that’s not often an easy thing to determine. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 21:13, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

Nope... Trying to figure out the intent of the person (or entity) involved is actually irrelevant to a COMMONNAME discussion... I suppose you could say that knowing the intent could help determine whether a stylization should be considered part of the WP:Official name... but as this policy says, we don't necessarily use the Official name. What we really focus on when determining whether there is a COMMONNAME (and, if so, what that COMMONNAME is) is what sources that are independent of the subject use. If a significant majority of independent sources consistently present a name with the same consistent stylization, then we know that the stylization is commonly used, and should be considered part of the COMMONNAME. Blueboar (talk) 22:08, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

I don’t think COMMONNAME says anything about styling for there to be exemptions from. But anyway, two questions: Was the MOS around back then, and if so, why was presentation kept separate from it? Second, what if the sources capitalize a word like “Or”? (Maybe the subject’s obscure enough that the only sources covering it don’t pay copy-editors, I don’t know.) How do you determine whether such a style choice is part of the name or part of the source’s general style? —174.141.182.82 (talk) 18:48, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

If there is only one source that mentions a name... then COMMONNAME would not apply. You need multiple sources doing the same thing for that thing to be common. (also the subject is probably not notable enough for us to have an article about it, nor important enough to mention it in some other article). Blueboar (talk) 20:04, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

I said sources, plural. And you’re avoiding my second question, and haven’t addressed my first one. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 21:03, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

my bad... If (and that is a huge "if") a significant majority of sources consistently capitalize a word like "Or" in a name, then yes, I would consider that capitalization would be part of the COMMONNAME... and would argue that we should follow the sources. But like the whole dashes vs hyphens question... I think it is highly unlikely that this would ever actually occur... and would challenge you to give me an actual example of a situation where it does occur. Blueboar (talk) 22:08, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

As for your other questions: 1) yes MOS was around back then... sort of. It was in a very rudimentary form, and focused on very different things than it says today (look at the history of the page to see how it has shifted and changed through the years)... it did not address stylization in names until more recently. I would guess the reason was because we had WP:NAMES to deal with the issue and so there was no need for it to do so. 2) "How do you determine whether such a style choice is part of the name or part of the source’s general style?".... my answer is: It does not matter. It does not matter why any individual source stylizes a name (any more than it matters why an individual source uses "Bill" or "William" when talking President Clinton)... all we care about is that it does so... the usage in any individual source is simply one data point among the rest. What we we care about is seeing if there is a broader pattern that is formed by the aggregate of all sources taken together... that's what indicates a commonname. Blueboar (talk) 22:26, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

Then I would posit that the guidance on presentation simply never made the migration into the growing MOS. And I say it very much does matter whether a style choice is made based on general house style guidelines (or laziness) or based on a particular representation of a particular name. The first is incidental and can be discarded to adapt to any house style; the second is intrinsic to the name and relevant to your COMMONSTYLE concept. Curly vs straight apostrophes is one example that comes to mind: it’s an overall style choice, not a conscious decision about any given name. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 23:07, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

Um... can you give me an example of a name that includes either curly or straight quotes? Blueboar (talk) 02:33, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

No, because they don’t distinguish between curly and straight. That’s my point. It’s a style choice that’s entirely up to editors and not dependent on a name, and to my knowledge should never fall to COMMONSTYLE. If every single reliable source on Earth used a curly apostrophe to name MC Hammer’s “U Can’t Touch This” because they preferred to be typographically correct, we would—and should—still use a straight apostrophe (“U Can't Touch This”) per our manual of style. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 06:06, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

It looks like Blueboar may have to remain an outlier relative to the consensus, even though he claims I fully agree that the styling used in the text should match the styling used in the title. I suggest we go ahead with the change anyway. Dicklyon (talk) 06:33, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

I think I have made my position quite clear... so there is no point in my arguing it further. As for consensus... not quite... I accept I am out voted among the five or six of us who have been discussing this... but I would request that we obtain a much wider consensus before we enact it. From my perspective, the proposal is a significant change to COMMONNAME, and I think we need to find out what the broader community thinks before we can claim a consensus. We need to advertise the proposal (perhaps a formal RFC) and get the opinions of a lot more editors before we can say we really have a consensus. Blueboar (talk) 16:21, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

“From my perspective, the proposal is a significant change to COMMONNAME…” I don’t see that. COMMONNAME does not presently say anything about style, does not offer any guidance on stylization whatsoever, so the proposed addition seems like common sense made explicit: “Go to the page about X for guidance about X.” Though it probably should also point to WP:TITLEFORMAT on this same page (or perhaps TITLEFORMAT should be moved to the MOS? But that’s another discussion). No objections here to a broader consensus, but it doesn’t seem necessary. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 17:00, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

true... COMMONNAME does not talk about specifically about style... but that is because those of us who have crafted the WP:COMMONAME provision over the years didn't think that it was necessary to say: "Oh... by the way, COMMONNAME applies to stylized names as well as non-stylized names". We thought a name was a name. We may have been short sighted in not thinking it was necessary to say that... but until it started to become an issue over at MOS, I would have called it petty instruction creep to say explicitly it. We simply took it for granted that COMMONNAME would and should apply to stylized names as well as non-stylized names. Blueboar (talk) 17:31, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

Shouldn’t something like MOS:PN (proper names) or MOS:TM be the place to handle that? (PN doesn’t appear to do so, but shouldn’t it?) Whether or not to preserve stylization in a non-Misplaced Pages name seems more like a project-wide style question than something limited to how articles should be titled. If we would use a stylized name in running text, then of course we would use it in a title; that’s generally how our titles work. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 20:45, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

OK... wall of text time... Remember that I am speaking historically (trying to explain some of the history and intent behind WP:COMMONNAME - back when it was first written, and as it has developed over time). MOS:PN and MOS:TM didn't exist when the concept of COMMONNAME was being first developed (Hell, the main WP:MOS only existed in a very rudimentary form). We took it for granted that COMMONNAME applied to all names in all situations, because there was no other page that dealt with names. This was the first.

Now, eventually MOS grew... and TM and PN were written... and all I can say is this: if those of us who had crafted COMMONNAME had been involved in their writing, they would have been written very differently... but we were not. The MOS pages grew in isolation from COMMONAME. I'm not trying to blame anyone for that... or cast aspersions... I am simply stating it as a fact of what occured. There were very few (if any) editors who worked on both sets of pages. Those of us here at COMMONNAME continued to happily take it for granted that COMMONNAME applied to both titles and the names in text, while the editors at the MOS pages started to say something different.

For me, the first indication that there was even a difference of opinion on whetehr COMMONNAME should be applied to style issues was the great deadmou5 debate (about a year ago). This was the first time I saw the argument that COMMONNAME "only applies to names in the title of the article" (and that somehow it shouldn't apply to names in the body of the text). I rejected that argument then, and I reject it still... and (at least in that case) so did the majority of other editors (which is why that article is now styled as it is). Since then, there have been several attempts to amend WP:COMMONNAME so that it will "defer" to MOS guidance on issues of style. Each attempt has (so far) been rejected. Meanwhile... there have been several attempts to amend the various MOS pages so they will "defer" to COMMONNAME... and each of those attempts have been rejected as well. And so we stand stalemated. That is the history behind my opposition to the current proposal. Now, it is possible that my view is no longer in sync with that of the wider community... but I don't believe that is the case. Shall we find out? Shall we file an RFC that actually asks the broader community whether a) the MOS pages should be amended to "defer" to COMMONNAME, or b) COMMONNAME should be amended to "defer" to the MOS pages?" (OK...that probably is not the best wording for an RFC... but that is the essence of the question.) Blueboar (talk) 03:51, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Perhaps you're having a senior moment. Here you are over 3 years ago discussing the same question of MOS guidelines versus COMMONNAME. This didn't come up with deadmaus. You dismissed WP:JOBTITLES, a part of the MOS, because it obviously focused on how to capitalize in the body of the text, rather than in the article title. Or over 4.5 years ago, when you noted I don't see a conflict... the name without a hyphen (as per MOS) would still reflect the common name. in your edit in a section titled "Which takes precedence: Common name or Manual of Style?". So why did you seem to flip sides from that original position that MOS controlling style would not conflict with COMMONNAME? And why do you pretend it's a new issue with you? Amnesia? Dicklyon (talk) 04:14, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

A large discussion, held somewhere other than WP:AT and WP:MOS, to determine the consensus on our whole philosophy around (especially non-standard) names may be prudent. Not about which page should defer to which, but about what they all should be saying. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 04:50, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

• Bluboar—either your facts are wobbly or your logical connections are hard to fathom, or both. And may I note that in your posts there's a preponderance of the us-versus-them model for pitting one guidance/policy page against another. AT was never designed to rule on style, and it's nonsense to set up a situation where title and main-text styles clash. Think of the readers, please. Tony (talk) 05:50, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

OK... my memory may be flawed as far as when the issue first came up... but not when it comes to the original intent of COMMONNAME and what it would apply to. If you look at the two discussions that Dicklyon links to, they actually support my point.... you will see that I approach the issue from the view point of COMMONNAME. I am applying COMMONNAME to style. In the first discussion, I am noting that sources indicate that we should use capital letters... and in the second I am noting that a COMMONNAME examination did not answer the question of whether to use a dash or a hyphen - it rarely would... source usage is generally very mixed when it comes to the dash/hyphen issue. It would be extremely rare for a significant majority of sources to consistently use one or the other. When the sources are mixed, I have no problem with following our own internal house style. It's a very well reasoned "default mode". My concern is what to do when the sources are NOT mixed... when the sources indicate that we should make an exception to our normally excellent house style. I am not "Anti-MOS" - I am "Pro-COMMONNAME". Blueboar (talk) 14:40, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

But the MOS already does say to follow sources when they are not mixed, for things like trademarks (MOS:TM, which is what would affect deadmau5), and for capitalization (MOS:CAPS, MOS:MILHIST). If there are other places where it makes sense to say something like that, then MOS is the place; trying to override MOS via TITLE is not. Dicklyon (talk) 18:10, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

• Comments: I have read through this whole thing and have determined that on a large part 1)- it is all over the place and confusing, and 2)- I have to read it again, maybe a couple of times, to try to figure out who is actually on what base. Whatever I miss in this mess someone can let me know about it. Feel free to jump in between each.

  Harmony: Misplaced Pages:Naming conventions (geographic names) Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style/Trademarks, and all others including this policy are suppose to always be in harmony and any discrepancies should be solved as soon as they arise. This would actually give consistency and "might" help avoid conflicts. We need some "ground rules (if you will) but not complete coverage of everything. "IF" something is not covered concerning titles it can and should be discussed here. Otr500 (talk)

• Style: we NEED at least some sort of house styling to address things like Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style/Capital letters. Referring to (or pushing) Britannica as "the authority" on naming is NOT something we should entertain though it is not unreasonable to "include" as a "guide". Otr500 (talk)

No one is arguing that we should follow Britannica's style usage ... Britannica's usage is simply one data point among all the others. It's the total of all the data points that determines a) if there is a COMMONNAME, and b) what it is if there is one. COMMONNAME is based on conglomerate usage. Blueboar (talk) 19:14, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

• Capitalization: "IF" the word "or" is capitalized in common references (in sentences as titles vary widely) we should: "nay I say", must be able to have the common sense to be able to dictate by consensus that Misplaced Pages can differ from say, Britannica, if that be the case. To me it is absurd to consider capitalizing a word like "or" even if references "might" do this. This means AT does need to have clarification of style concerning titles. Otr500 (talk)

But... we should also have the common sense to say "Misplaced Pages should not be the odd man out". Again our choice is not dictated by Britannica alone... but is absurd for us to take a "we know better than all the other sources" attitude. MOS should not be a strait jacket preventing us from using common sense. Blueboar (talk) 19:14, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

• COMMONNAME: We need to consult all references and use the name as referred to in those: according, and in harmony with other Misplaced Pages policies and guidelines including MOS. This is very important and also prevents some naming convention or a few editors from trumping policy by local consensus. We do have consensus that the most commonly used name is preferable but we can adjust that (style) for various reasons. Otr500 (talk)
• Titles: Naming should also be according to what is found in "English" references following Misplaced Pages:Article titles#Use commonly recognizable names and Misplaced Pages:AT#English-language titles. There is Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style#Article titles that refers to this as a main page. We have writing styles Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Magazines/Writing guide#Title, Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Academic Journals/Writing guide#Title. We also have this "Article title policy". Lacking "English references" we are suppose to translate as close as possible to English. This could be used to prevent names like Praha hlavní nádraží. This by-the-way translates to Prague Main Railway Station. Hlavní nádraží (Prague Metro): "Hlavní nádraží" DOES NOT translate to "Prague Metro" but to "main station". So much for policy.
  • There is arguing and tons of verbiage over simple things while somehow very longstanding consensus and more than one policy has been trumped by some local desire (or some other reason) to give non-English names to articles. Apparently there is at least one administrator that does not believe there are any policies and guidelines that need to be followed. There was an attack at a train station in China, the 2014 Kunming attack, so someone here please logically explain to me how the lack of adherence to title naming policy does not now open the door for a possible article renaming to 2014年昆明攻击. I would like some REAL sensible arguments that the slippery slope does not open such a door. We have by defacto (don't have to capitalize titles any more per Article title format to capitalized by default) started merging the English Misplaced Pages with the Czech Misplaced Pages. It would be amusing to hear why (no, I don't speak Chinese) I can not get my well documented Chinese article name changed? The Czech can do it and are they any better? There are probably 20 editors there (2014 Kunming attack) and I know of at least one sympathetic admin. What about Warszawa Praga railway station to Warszawa Praga stacja kolejowa?

An answer could have been that this is the English Misplaced Pages and we have well established policies in regards to title naming. I believe I can argue that at this point (the above mentioned travesty) that there is no such "title naming" policy that can over-ride local consensus and I have proof. Otr500 (talk)

"ALL" naming conventions and projects should follow this policy or we might as well concede we don't need it and let chaos reign. Otr500 (talk)

• MOS: MOS should be in harmony with AT and any clarification of MOS concerning AT's would be cleared up here. The authority concerning "Article titles" is here and "style" of content should be there but they are not "separate". Trying to "totally" separate the two IS confusing and will only result in "battles" that can be avoided. There needs to be something on style here, even if brief, because this is a policy and not a guideline. Otr500 (talk)
• Browser compatibility We need to always be concerned about changes that will affect how a title is presented as well as ease of use to the average editor. I didn't see anything concerning mobile users. Otr500 (talk)
• Conclusion: Seriously! The editors here need to pick one topic, discuss it to a definitive agreement through consensus, that should include posting at various proper venues, and then move on (close one door then open another) to the next. Surely that would be an appropriate solution as apposed to the bouncing around we have. I would think that the proposal The suggestion was editing the fourth paragraph of WP:COMMONNAME, upon gaining consensus (I suppose that is what all the nods of "support" are still for), would be presented somewhere for more community consensus. If not then any amendments to policy would just reflect local consensus. My bad; I forgot that, according to the Czech named and soon to be Chinese articles, local trumps policy. Otr500 (talk) 16:22, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Policy wonks (like me) do need to remember that it is possible to have a "local consensus" on policy talk pages. When only a few editors are involved in a discussion ... any consensus they reach is a local consensus... it does not matter where the discussion takes place. No small group of people can say they speak for the entire community. I have seen numerous cases where as many as 20 policy wonk editors all reached consensus on a change to a policy page... and yet discovered that the broader community (who were not involved in the initial discussion) ultimately rejected the change. Blueboar (talk) 19:14, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 20 December 2014

See also: #RFC: Quotation marks in displayed article titles

This edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

Add the following to WP:TITLEFORMAT under “Do not enclose titles in quotes”:

However, a title can be made to appear in quotes by using <q>...</q> with the DISPLAYTITLE magic word.

Alternatively, please explain why <q>...</q> is supported by DISPLAYTITLE if this is not to be encouraged. 174.141.182.82 (talk) 06:56, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

Shall we wait for the RfC first? Not a good idea to start and RfC and an editrequest at the same time. -- ] {{talk}} 09:50, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

The discussion is inactive on a page with a lot of activity, and with really only me opposing (over resulting titles like ""Foo" Bar"), I think. So you or someone can probably go ahead and make the change, or else what’s the point of the tag being supported? —174.141.182.82 (talk) 10:18, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

Actually, I just commented in that discussion with a question; it's not a moribund thread yet. (Granted, it was a qualified "support", but I'd still like the technical question to be explored, since it may affect the instructions we give.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  04:36, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

Missed my answer? As far as I can tell, if DISPLAYTITLE does not include a " that is in the title, it has no effect. Can't be done, unless I'm missing some very clever trick. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 07:32, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

Accuracy and usage

Please see Talk:Sexually transmitted disease#WPAT discussion for some interesting opinions as to usage versus accuracy. Wider input appreciated, I think this provides some good examples of a widespread misinterpretation, and may help us to clarify the policy either way. Andrewa (talk) 19:46, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

A Boy was Born

A Boy was Born is my Christmas gift to the German Misplaced Pages. In English it is A Boy Was Born, but A Child is Born. Please explain. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 00:41, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

The explanation is simple... English is very flexible language, and there are exceptions to every rule. Blueboar (talk) 02:36, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

Can't a German name be used? --George Ho (talk) 22:51, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

In Germany, we take names as given. It's Messiah, and it's A Boy was Born, as the composers named them. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 23:50, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

I just checked that. A Child is Born (jazz standard) was just created a couple of days ago, apparently by someone not familiar with the Misplaced Pages MoS capitalization convention. I just moved it to A Child Is Born (jazz standard). Hopefully that will take care of it. —BarrelProof (talk) 03:09, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 27 December 2014

This edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

In the refnote at the end of the first paragraph of WP:COMMONNAME, the word “appears” should be “appear” per subject-verb agreement. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 07:25, 27 December 2014 (UTC) 174.141.182.82 (talk) 07:25, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

I removed the note instead, finding no possible use for explaining in a footnote what COMMONNAME means, as the paragraph it's attached to already explains it. If a note for "common name" is needed, it should be placed where it would be useful. Then the number agreement would be singular again. But I think it's more clear without this. Dicklyon (talk) 07:46, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

 Done --Francis Schonken (talk) 08:55, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

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