Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Toby Bartels (talk | contribs) at 13:22, 24 August 2002 (Dates of birth and death.). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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)