Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 09:12, 27 August 2002

I've just set up a bunch of targets. Fire away. Organization, content, examples, everything is up for grabs. As I say on the page, let's keep it simple here and farm out the complexities to other articles. Ortolan88 22:35 Aug 23, 2002 (PDT)

Do you think there should be a section like this:

Don't get fancy

It's easier for you and whoever follows you if you don't try to get too fancy with your markup. Even with markup as suggested here, you shouldn't assume that any markup you put in here guarantees a certain appearance when it is displayed.

It is easier to display the Misplaced Pages, easier to edit or add to its articles, if we don't make the markup any more complex than is necessary to display the information in a useful and comprehensible way. That is the first goal, but ease of editing and maintenance is right behind it. Ortolan88

Very nice. Me like. Me add to later. --mav

Moving it now. Add to it there. Ortolan88

I think it's standard in print media to italicize birth and death dates in short biographical entries. Is this the case or am I mistaken? (I ask because I've just changed the page to reflect that convention). --KQ 22:43 Aug 23, 2002 (PDT)

It's a new one on me. I just checked a few print encyclopedias -- Columbia Viking, Cambridge, plus a few college grammars and the U of Chicago Style Guide -- and I don't find it. I won't change it back now, so if you should turn out to be right on this one, you should edit the style rule to reflect that usage. Ortolan88 22:52 Aug 23, 2002 (PDT)

Huh. Well, I don't know where I picked that up from. I guess I'll have to put it back down.  ;-) --KQ

I'd like to see some sort of standard set forth for citation signals, legal citations, and style manuals in general. To wit, whether citation signals should be italicized, what signals are used in what situations, and what style manual should obtain in a particular situation. As far as legal style manuals go, the Harvard Bluebook is used by most law reviews and federal courts, but state courts typically have their own style manuals and do not follow the Bluebook's guidelines. The same sorts of conflicts in re proper style probably exist in various other areas of writing, such as newspaper journalism, medical and scientific publishing, and technical writing, but I am not familiar enough with these areas to offer intelligent commentary. --NetEsq

I hope that as it stands this article will do for general writing of the average article. We do suggest UofChgo Manual of Style, college handbooks, and Fowler, which should be enough for anyone.

As for medical, scientific, or legal styles, perhaps those should be referenced from here to their own pages so as not to intimidate new writers who are guided here. Ortolan88 09:50 Aug 24, 2002 (PDT)

When I was trying to create something like this page on Meta, I wrote an introduction to the effect that "good content is more important that presentation -- a style guide is not an imperative, rather a reference for Misplaced Pages's many copyeditors". Feel free to grab that from there for here. :-) -- Tarquin 09:53 Aug 24, 2002 (PDT)

I'd like to make a comment in favour of phrasing like "Name (born Month date, year, died Month date, year)", rather than "Name (Month date, year - Month date, year)". There are several reasons, of which the last is the big one:

1. It looks nicer if meaning is put into words instead of symbols.
2. The hyphen is too short to look good, and is technically wrong in favour of the en dash ("–"), but the en dash doesn't appear so well in all browsers.
3. There are no arguments over whether to put spaces around the dash.
4. If we establish using "born" and "died", then nobody will write "Jacques Chirac (November 29, 1932 - )" again; it will clearly be "Jacques Chirac (born November 29, 1932)", as we want.

— Toby 13:22 Aug 24, 2002 (PDT)

It makes sense to me. And, as someone (you?) pointed out, these are guidelines that copy editors can use to fix up articles much more than they are for original authors and the birth and death stuff is all over the map in existing articles and could be consolidated. Even when I was putting the first examples together I had some twinges about deleting the words born and died. I should have obeyed the twinges, but I didn't have this clear an idea what to do. Ortolan88

Proposal on web stuff. I wasn't sure about future features and exactly how to put the discouragement of run-in web references. Ortolan88 10:51 Aug 25, 2002 (PDT)

URL and World Wide Web Style

Misplaced Pages is not a link collection and an article with only links is actively discouraged, but it is appropriate to reference more detailed material from the World Wide Web. This is particularly the case when you have used a web site as an important source of information.

The syntax of referencing a URL is simple, just enclose it in single brackets, . The URL must begin with http:// or other form, such as ftp://. Most URLs are ugly and uninformative, so it is better to hide them. Future enhancements planned include displaying the URL in printed form while concealing it online.

Without the optional text, such an external reference takes the form of a footnote:

If followed by a space and text, the text replaces the URL:

• an open-source encyclopedia

This form can be used to include a run-in URL reference within text when necessary, as:

• One good example of a cooperative online community is the Misplaced Pages, an open-source encyclopedia.
  • One good example of a cooperative online community is the .

In most cases, however, it is clearer to keep the URL separate at the bottom of the article under a heading like this:

• External Links
  • '''External Links'''

Note: At present, without brackets, URLs are presented as is:

• http://www.wikipedia.org

But this feature may disappear in a future release and in cases where you wish to display the URL because it is intrinsically valuable information, it is better to use the short form of the URL as the optional text:

• www.wikipedia.org

Numbers

Large numbers: is it fair to say large number should be written thus: 1,234,000 when not using exponential notation? -- Tarquin