Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Ortolan88 (talk | contribs) at 07:46, 29 August 2002 (proposal for expressing foot-pound units). 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

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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

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Numbers

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

What's the preferred style for units? In your example for numbers etc. you use both m (metre) and kilograms (kg). I'd say the abbreviations for SI units are quite well established (well, outside of the US anyway) and are hardly seen written in full, but I'm not sure about the imperial units, one sees 10 yard, 10 y, 10 yd, 10 yards, etc. Any rules for this? Jeronimo

I think we should prefer metric / SI over Imperial / US. -- Tarquin

I know, but they will be used in many article no doubt, if only as a secondary to the SI units. Jeronimo

Expressing inch-pound units: As in so many other cases, the metric is a clearer system -- m, cm, k, kg -- while there are many ways in the US system-- 1", 1 inch, 1 in -- and so forth. Since the main purpose here is consistency, how about in=inch, ft=foot, yd=yard, mi=mile, pd=pound, gal=gallon, pt=pint, qt=quart, etc--a regular set of two-letter abbreviations?

Value of inch-pound units in Misplaced Pages:Despite the superiority, on paper, of the metric system, the world's largest economy, with the great majority of internet users, uses the metric system only in limited ways. I tried to lay out some reasonable rules:

• For common weights and measures, animal sizes and the like, give both, but don't bother with going to decimal places on most conversions, unless precision is an issue, such as the area of Paris, Texas.
• For things that are always metric, give metric
• For things that are always inch-pound, give inch-pound

I am familar with the metric system and its merits (except for temperature, where I think for measurements in everyday life Fahrenheit rules), but I have a hard time making the conversions in my head (except, ironically, for temperature). Obviously, in the Misplaced Pages, if a writer doesn't put in the "other" measurement, someone else will probably come along and do it, but it would be irresponsible and a disservice to readers to state in the style guide "metric is always preferred".

And, anyway, one measurement is better than none. There are still lots of articles with no measurements given at all, Hummingbirds for instance, are famous for being small, but we give no dimensions at all. Ortolan88