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Imperial vs Metric Body Measurements (UK)
As a young person in the UK, i find it strange that this guide recommends for imperial units to be used in British contexts. I don't know anyone, barring grandparents and over-60s, who still resort to imperial measurements for height and weight. This is an archaic and backwards viewpoint. I believe we should amend this to recommend metric measurements. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A00:23C8:7500:B901:6DAD:76AB:66BB:D4C9 (talk) 10:59, 3 April 2020 (UTC)
I suggest you re-read your comment and consider how you think about your seniors. In particular calling them "archaic and backwards" borders on the offensive. If you are lucky one day you will reach 60, most people these days expect to live into their 80s, so you are dismissing upwards of 20 million people as "backwards". You might care to check your grammar. "I", not "i" and "recommends for imperial units to be used" sounds more American, perhaps "recommends that imperial units be used" would be more natural English"? (Please remember to sign your posts on talk pages by typing four keyboard tildes like this: ~~~~. Or, you can use the button, which automatically signs posts.) Martin of Sheffield (talk) 11:41, 3 April 2020 (UTC)
Ignoring the grammatical lessons and moral viewpoints, I agree that this should change. Everyone I've interacted with has quoted their height and weight in metres and kilograms, respectively. Even British publications seldom use stone/pounds anymore, especially not ones which could be considered reliable. Getsnoopy (talk) 20:51, 4 April 2020 (UTC)
We always give imperial/US Customary and also metric. The only question is which comes first and which follows in parens. It's the most stupid issue to spend time on. Please let's not. EEng21:04, 4 April 2020 (UTC)
Actually we don't. Most personal weights of non-British people are converted between pounds and kilograms, ignoring stones completely. If an American or a metric-user looks at Peyton Manning, they will know how much he weighs. A Brit who uses stones won't have much clue unless they're particularly good at dividing by either 14 or 6.3. Kahastoktalk21:27, 4 April 2020 (UTC)
If it's never done in practice, this implies there's little to no demand for it in practice. A lesson worth learning? Any reader who cared could either a) add the flag to the convert template or b) learn how to use the metric system like an adult, if it bothered them that much. Past a certain point, the clutter of too many archaic units makes the article less accessible to everybody. Archon 2488 (talk) 16:31, 14 April 2020 (UTC)
The advice is based on the style guide of the UK's newspaper of record, chosen because it is trying to do what this advice does - reflect modern British usage across the board in a reasonably coherent manner. Proper documentation is a far more appropriate basis for our judgement of what is or is not common usage than some random Wikipedian's echo chamber.
The BBC style guide was not used because at the time it was not easily available. Now it is, and it too recommends imperial-first in UK-related contexts, and explicitly gives examples of personal weights in stones and pounds.
My own experience is quite the opposite of yours and the IP's. In my experience, stones and pounds and feet and inches remain the more common standard even among people who are both reasonably young and scientifically literate. They're not universal, but more common nonetheless.
Both local oncology units record weights and heights in both. The equipment has dual scales so it is trivial to read off both metric and imperial. I assume this is to accommodate all those backwards people! Martin of Sheffield (talk) 09:02, 5 April 2020 (UTC)
FWIW this is incorrect; standard practice in UK medicine is to use metric for virtually everything. Some (mostly older) analogue devices will show both metric and imperial measurements, but no correct clinical workflow will direct practitioners to record any patient measurements in imperial. Any such work instruction would be in contravention of NHS guidance on best practice and would need to be updated. Archon 2488 (talk) 11:25, 14 April 2020 (UTC)
I have absolutely no idea what workflows direct or what work instructions there are. All that happened was that the nurse read off the measurements in imperial and then metric. Something along the lines of "five foot 11 ... one point eight metres* ... fifteen stone ... ninety-five kilos*" followed by an admonition not to loose weight whilst on chemo (I'd lost half a stone). So, you may be correct in that the system only records metric, but the nurses certainly take note of both scales. (*IIRC, I didn't pay much attention to the metric versions) Martin of Sheffield (talk) 15:43, 14 April 2020 (UTC)
At the risk of contributing to the prolongation of this pointless thread: since the nurse wanted to encourage you to keep your weight up, it makes sense she'd tell you your current weight in both modes, to be sure you caught one or the other. That doesn't mean she put both in the record. As others have mentioned, that's almost inconceivable. As the adage goes, "A man with one watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never sure." EEng16:51, 14 April 2020 (UTC)
You're perfectly correct that young people (and I'm in my 30s, so not exactly a teenager) are totally excluded by guidelines that are based, for reasons of absurd historical accident, on a style guide for a newspaper run by a guy who makes Mussolini now look a bit like a cuddly centrist. Basically, the people who have political power in the UK, including here on WP, do not care what younger generations want. They will wilfully spread lies, if need be, that younger people are as clueless about the metric system as they are, purely to derail any argument that the population will inevitably become less and less familiar with archaic units as time goes on. Since I first brought this up in 2013, an appreciable demographic change has inevitably occurred, purely due to seven years of older generations being replaced by younger ones. Nobody can deny this is happening, and plenty of people have pointed out the ridiculousness of deferring to a newspaper on the question of how an encyclopedia should measure things. But until the people responsible for maintaining this nonsensical status quo are no longer here to tell younger people what they think, it will not change. Give it another seven years. Then another. Archon 2488 (talk) 11:25, 14 April 2020 (UTC)
In my experience, almost every person I know (who's from the UK) measures themselves in feet and inches, too the majority also use stone and pounds. It's not as if I only associate with 'grandparents and over-60s', as op said, since I'm a 20‐year‐old currently studying at university. Genuinely, the only young people I've heard complain about that are international students, and then it's more of a jokey "oh, look at the small differences between our two cultures" sort of comment. Currently, the use of imperial measure is commonplace within the 'clueless' younger generations. But, even if that wasn't the case, Misplaced Pages should always follow the consensus of society as a whole, not just one sub‐section nor should it try to lead it. For good or ill, from casual conversation to broadcast news or even police search appeals, it’s the de facto standard (for body measure) here in the UK. Personly, I don't see that changing any time soon. ‐‐Voellotalk14:06, 14 April 2020 (UTC)
I entirely agree. As a Briton in early middle age (neither a grandparent nor over 60), I'm not sure I've ever heard any British person of any age use metric measurements for their height and weight. My stepson, in his mid-20s, certainly gives his height in feet and inches. When I was a police officer we didn't use metric measurements for suspects' heights either. -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:52, 14 April 2020 (UTC)
For formal works of reference, i.e. the context we are actually working in, metric is standard. It is trivial to buy British reference books which give measurements exclusively in standard metric units – has been since long before Misplaced Pages was a thing. None of the other contexts you have mentioned, which are mostly informal, are relevant to encyclopedic usage. It's entirely common for works of reference to use a more formal register and adhere more strictly to formal academic/international standards. Even plenty of American reference publications do it (because nobody outside America or the 19th century would have a clue what they meant otherwise), and they normally insist on pretending that their collection of pre-imperial English units is actually a "system" that competes with SI, despite the fact that every vaguely educated person on Earth knows that's scientifically illiterate nonsense. Archon 2488 (talk) 16:08, 14 April 2020 (UTC)
We always give imperial/US Customary and also metric. The only question is which comes first and which follows in parens. It's the most stupid issue to spend time on.
I suggest we heed his advice and put this pointless thread out of its misery now, unless someone wants to make an actual proposal for changing the guidelines. Really. EEng15:37, 14 April 2020 (UTC)
I'm not sure that there's a problem at the moment because, even though the recommendation is to give imperial first, the metric equivalent should also follow for those who prefer that. Currently though, as Kahastok says above, imperial is still the preferred primary system for leading British publications. Also before we consider changing our recommendations, we need to be sure exactly what the current British practice is, rather than go by Wiki editor's own opinions. A YouGov poll from 2015, showed that 61% of British citizens (across all age groups) did not know their weight in kilograms. -- DeFacto (talk). 16:11, 14 April 2020 (UTC)
If "leading publications" means the tabloid press, maybe. I'd suggest that newspapers should not be the arbiters of what units we use – that it is inappropriate to use them as such, leaving aside their basically unethical nature, because they are the wrong type of literature. Reputable reference publications, such as you might want WP to aspire to be (hint, modelling it on Rupert Murdoch's style guide is not the way to do that), are generally pretty happy to use modern, standard international units. Typically without conversion. If there is a legitimate historical reason to use deprecated units, they'll do so, often with conversion. For a number of reasons – I don't think many 20-year-olds could explain to us what "300 acres" means, exactly, or how you'd relate that to an area in square miles. This is revealing, I think. Archon 2488 (talk) 16:22, 14 April 2020 (UTC)
I think the same way about people who use freedom units. A pity the legislature in my country can't or won't get it together. :^) Of course, cherry-picking comments from an entirely unrelated discussion is a sure way to be "a person with whom you should expect a rational debate on this". --Izno (talk) 22:03, 14 April 2020 (UTC)
If you're using the lazy definition of "rational" as "willing to pretend literally any perspective is equally plausible" then no I'm not, because I actually know something about the subject. And I think I'll be shredding my mail and checking my door locks from now on, seeing how readily you remember which posts from literally years ago on totally unrelated discussions you want to pick quotes from! Archon 2488 (talk) 22:55, 14 April 2020 (UTC)
It has to be said that that particular racist diatribe was especially memorable.
But we don't have to go there. In this discussion so far you've accused people of wilfully spreading lies and accused people who see a system about non-metric units of not even being "vaguely educated". You've made plain your views on newspaper owners "a guy who makes Mussolini now look a bit like a cuddly centrist" - how's that for neutrality?
We all know that you don't like imperial units. You've told us over and over again. You've told us in great detail on numerous occasions how deeply stupid you think people who use non-metric units are. You've made it clear repeatedly what terrible people you think the rest of us here are. We've done all this twenty times before. Can we move on? Kahastoktalk07:31, 15 April 2020 (UTC)
Just responding to the egregious misrepresentations:
Racist. Wow. I will observe only that a) it is impossible to be "racist against white people", in practice, because racism implies the existence of structural and systemic oppression, which is in reality not targeted against white people in our culture and b) similarly it is practically impossible for a critique of the British state to be racist. Ironically, the "anti-white racism" nonsense is a classic racist dog-whistle used exclusively to silence POC who speak about their experiences of oppression in ways that white people do not like; only white people who have had the luxury of never having to learn what racism is can afford to say such ignorant things.
wilfully spreading lies: the misrepresentations of the metric system (remember "kilofeet" and "kilodays"?) from apparently educated people are difficult to read, I confess. It's distressing. That the people saying these things are liars is a simple explanation, which I have maybe gravitated to because some of the alternatives are more upsetting. In any case, it is far easier for you to make your arguments about me rather than metric. I wonder why. You know perfectly well that, as braindead and morally bankrupt as this consensus is, I will not disregard it; you must also know that the anti-metric rubbish you are inexplicably keen to defend will go the way of phlogiston theory. It is purely a matter of time. Thig ar latha.
vaguely educated / deeply stupid: you know, and have not been able to deny, that education in practice implies education in metric. The corollary of this is that someone who claims not to be able to use it properly is to that extent uneducated, or a liar (for presumably political purposes). But in any case, you don't impress other people by telling them how much you don't understand, especially about something trivial and commonplace. That falls beneath the standard of numeracy that, I believe, a work of reference is entitled to assume of its readers.
how's that for neutrality – Rupert Murdoch is not owed, in me, a pandering sycophant, or even someone willing to overlook his evil behaviour. Sorry. The fault here lies with whoever introduced his rag's uneducated nonsense into an encyclopedia's style guide.
who use non-metric units – no. Using non-metric units, in a context where it is appropriate, is acceptable, provided there is a conversion into modern/standard metric units. You'll pretend I'm inventing my own bizarre standard here, free from evidence and used by nobody else, when in practice I'm describing what I have observed most professional, reputable works of reference (meaning, with somewhat more integrity than a newspaper) to do. Claiming not to understand standard, modern metric units is something entirely different, and I'd put it in the same category as someone pretending not to understand Arabic numerals and demanding editors be compelled to convert everything to Roman, as a pointless waste of time. We all know this in practice feeds into a political game; some right-wing xenophobic British people are so atrociously bigoted they cannot bring themselves to admit the French might ever have had a good idea (they are certainly too historically illiterate to realise that pounds and ounces are Roman rather than English), and so they will pretend to have never heard of kilograms and metres when it suits their purposes. My position is that even if this is genuine ignorance of metric, an encyclopedia cannot pander to every form of ignorance its readership displays.
"I don't like imperial units". You are correct. I also don't like flat earth theory. To imply I have no reason for opposing the promotion of either of these on WP beyond "I don't like it" – when I have explained in excruciating detail why it is unprofessional and inappropriate for something pretending to be a work of reference to place artificial barriers in the way of its editors using the metric system correctly, based on a desire to patronise or pander to its perceived readership – is absurd. Archon 2488 (talk) 18:12, 15 April 2020 (UTC)
It is impossible to be "racist against white people", in practice, because – that's just stupid, and can we stop this now? EEng19:53, 15 April 2020 (UTC)
Just stupid, and yet an entirely typical view of people who study racism and actively oppose it. Why do you not take such offence at bad-faith use of the term "racist" which serves only to cheapen it? Or do you think a tongue-in-cheek rant about backwards British people is actually comparable to systemic racism and the legacy of slavery? Archon 2488 (talk) 09:22, 16 April 2020 (UTC)
Anyone can be racist against anyone of a different ethnicity, nationality or identity, as is specifically recognised in British law. It is completely possible for someone to commit racially aggravated offences against white people. It is also perfectly possible for white people to commit racially aggravated offences against other white people (as has happened in Scotland, for instance, where people have been arrested for anti-English racism). Take that from an ex-police officer. So let's stop this ludicrous argument. -- Necrothesp (talk) 10:53, 16 April 2020 (UTC)
The Guardian style guide specifies metric first but always followed by conversion in brackets, for both height and weight, and has an interesting section on the metric system. As an over-60 maths graduate in the UK... I can never remember how tall or heavy I am in metric units but don't mind whether the metric appears first or second in Misplaced Pages (as long as the weight is in stones and pounds). PamD07:53, 15 April 2020 (UTC)
I think this is a substantial argument in the context of this discussion. Regarding @EEng's concerns about this discussion being stupid: somebody had this discussion previously, and concluded to display imperial units first before displaying metric ones parenthetically. And someone will likewise have to have this discussion at some point in the future when the UK will completely transition out of using imperial units; why not let that future point be now? If it wasn't a stupid discussion then, it isn't a stupid one now. If it's so trivial for having one order of units vs. the other, why not placate the people who prefer metric units (95% of the world) while still satisfying the people who prefer imperial units, rather than having this discussion over and over again? Getsnoopy (talk) 00:15, 18 April 2020 (UTC)
Again: with extremely rare exceptions the current guideline provides for both metric and US/imperial units to always be given, the only issue being which comes first and which follows in parens. And yet, as one observer put it:
This scarecrow of a debate has, over the course of time, become so complicated, that no man alive knows what it means. The editors most invovled understand it least; but it has been observed that no two editors can talk about it for five minutes without coming to a total disagreement as to all the premises. Innumerable children have been born into the cause; innumerable young people have married into it; innumerable old people have died out of it. Scores of editors have deliriously found themselves enmeshed without knowing how or why; whole families have inherited legendary hatreds because of it. Young boys, promised a new rocking-horse when the question should be settled, have grown up, possessed themselves of real horses, and trotted away into the other world; young girls have become mothers and grandmothers; a long procession of arbitrators has come in and gone out.
OK, that was actually Dickens. But (and I'm serious now) the question has spawned 372 Talk:MOS threads, scores of indefinite blocks, countless lesser blocks, three Arbcom cases, a suicide, several divorces, dozens of rage quits, a bomb scare, a fatwa, a fall of governement, three French hens, two turtle doves, and a partridge in a pear tree. All over which of kg or lbs gets pride of place and which goes in parens. Big fucking deal.
If it's so trivial for having one order of units vs. the other, why not placate the people who prefer metric units (95% of the world) while still satisfying the people who prefer imperial units – because no one will be placated and no one satisfied.
rather than having this discussion over and over again – We don't need to do something "rather than" have the discussion; we can just not have the discussion and leave things alone.
You're welcome. I always try to bring gentleness, love, delicacy, and complete sincerity to my posts. EEng00:29, 19 April 2020 (UTC)
@Getsnoopy: The stock argument you'll hear from the anti-SI old-guard, periodically trotted out for public display like the appalling old waxwork it is (h/t Prince Charles), is that this is a violation of Misplaced Pages's policy on neutrality. Regardless of the fact that it is very common for UK reference publications to give measurements in metric – exclusively in metric, which as EEng points out is not being proposed here – and this somehow results in a) literally nobody writing to the editors, frothing in rage, complaining they can't comprehend those goddamned French centimajiggles and kilowotsits and won't they please bring back furlongs, pecks, tanners, and corporal punishment in schools b) no meaningful violation of any sort of political neutrality on the part of the publication. We'll hear – another desiccated old corpse of an argument, disinterred, reanimated, slaughtered, butchered and microwaved, a dish served up with the inexplicable expectation that anyone other than its creator might find it vaguely appetising – that unless we have evidence of what appropriate UK unit usage is (meaning, say, some newspaper's style guide), we're just making it up and cherry-picking sources to suit our preferences. I've long since given up hope of the MOS consensus showing even a vague ambition not to be retrograde on this, but future editors will keep coming to this issue (as I did first in 2013), wondering why an internet encyclopedia in the 21st century is so utterly backwards, and getting no satisfactory answer. This is the reason why "just not having the discussion" is not a viable option – everything that can be said on the subject has been said, but not everyone has said it yet. The eventual and inevitable conclusion is denied by roughly nobody, as you observe. The rational solution is, as you propose, to make the date of transition now (or never to have needed to have one in the first place), but for political reasons this is unworkable. I can 100% guarantee you that anti-metric factionalists will torpedo any such proposal under cover of "won't somebody please think of the readers!" platitudes. Archon 2488 (talk) 09:41, 20 April 2020 (UTC)
everything that can be said on the subject has been said, but not everyone has said it yet – That's a very perceptive observation about a lot of WP controversies, come to thing of it. EEng06:06, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
In Favor The SI-system is the 'Lingua France' of the world if they want to speak about measurement. It is used by 97 % of world population. MajorValerian (talk) 15:35, 26 May 2020 (UTC)
Adding "holiday" and other similar terms to WP:SEASON?
Can we add a line under WP:SEASON to avoid terms like "holiday" or other similar terms that are often used to reference to non-specific periods? (I'm not sure what others there might be beyond "holiday", but ...) --Masem (t) 15:10, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
I guess the question is how far we want this page to move away from astronomical concepts (winter, summer) to start dealing with cultural concepts ("holiday season", "school vacation"). EEng16:19, 4 May 2020 (UTC)
Perhaps maybe a separate section but within the main section on time factors dealing with culture concepts around time, which should be available to refer to approximate date periods, just to avoid conflating things then (as when I look at the subsection order, I do see the logical progression based on time unit sizes). I mean, I think there's general agreement we don't say "The film was released during the 2019 holiday season." but I can't readily point to a MOS page say why that's bad outside of "well, see SEASON? same reasons...." --Masem (t) 16:31, 4 May 2020 (UTC)
Right, and we also don't want articles to say, "The story got a lot of attention during the 2019 silly season", unless silly season is linked. Similarly, I guess, Hurricane season, hunting season. Maybe I'm getting stuck by the fact that all the examples so far involve the word season. Can we think of examples not using that word -- something something week for example? EEng17:23, 4 May 2020 (UTC)
Well there's like spring break, homecoming, and that gets into ideas of anything tied the vague "school year" concept. I'm lacking ideas from other cultural norms but am sure there's more examples. A few more examples to express the general idea would be good. As a note, I would not avoid using "hurricane season" if we're on a topic about hurricanes where we've likely defined what hurricane season is or are linking to that (as most hurricane articles do), but I wouldn't use is as a general time reference on an unrelated article. There are some times these terms are proper but only when in the right context. --Masem (t) 17:32, 4 May 2020 (UTC)
I was thinking about school-related stuff too. Of course spring break, summer school, fall semester are already covered by the main warning. Homecoming (or, say, prom season) is exactly the sort of cultural reference, far disconnected from astronomy, that I think we just have to rely on editors to realize need glossing or linking, without our treating it here. So I'm still unsure if there's enough left to be worth a bullet point. We need more examples. EEng01:40, 5 May 2020 (UTC)
FWIW, the standard for the international date format ISO 8601 was recently revised (2019) to include so called Extended Date Time Formats. This expands the form "yyyy-mm" by the following sub-year groupings for "mm":
01: January
02: February
03: March
04: April
05: May
06: June
07: July
08: August
09: September
10: October
11: November
12: December
21: Spring (independent of location)
22: Summer (independent of location)
23: Autumn (independent of location)
24: Winter (independent of location)
25: Spring (Northern Hemisphere)
26: Summer (Northern Hemisphere)
27: Autumn (Northern Hemisphere)
28: Winter (Northern Hemisphere)
29: Spring (Southern Hemisphere)
30: Summer (Southern Hemisphere)
31: Autumn (Southern Hemisphere)
32: Winter (Southern Hemisphere)
33: Quarter 1 (3 months in duration)
34: Quarter 2 (3 months in duration)
35: Quarter 3 (3 months in duration)
36: Quarter 4 (3 months in duration)
37: Quadrimester 1 (4 months in duration)
38: Quadrimester 2 (4 months in duration)
39: Quadrimester 3 (4 months in duration)
40: Semestral 1 (6 months in duration)
41: Semestral 2 (6 months in duration)
While we do not support ISO 8601 dates per se (except for, in some areas, the "yyyy-mm-dd" form), this means that the "????-??" form has become even more ambiguous than it already was (Example: "2019-21" means "spring 2019", rather than "2019-2021").
It is quite likely that our citation templates will support these "extended month" values at some point in the future at least on wiki source code level to help unambiguously specifying some sub-year groupings in dates (but would probably display them as text only in citations).
So, whatever we do in regard to WP:SEASON, we might at least keep these particular sub-year groupings in mind as patterns that will likely be used more frequently in the future.
Yes, I can definitely foresee the prospect of people adding ISO encodings of quadrimesters to articles. I really think that may become popular. EEng19:25, 7 May 2020 (UTC)
Of course, you meant that with a tongue in cheek. ;-) To be honest, while I am happy that an official notation exists to note down such groupings numerically, they could have come up with more thoughtful numerical assignments which would follow some higher logic and have mnemonic value (and also cover a few more cases which would have more practical value than, perhaps, quadrimesters in particular). But now that it has been published the way they did, people will have to use their system or none at all.
In regard to WP:SEASON, my comment above was, of course, more referring to the lingual representations of these groupings than to their numerical assignments.
Well of course I speak with forked tongue; in this case only one fork was in cheek. I was thinking the same: the coding is absolutely stupid. It's like something you'd find in a COBOL program from 1965. EEng21:23, 7 May 2020 (UTC)
I love the ISO date format but if I'd seen a date like 2020-21 before I saw this chat then I would have been confused and would have instantly reverted it. If an ISO lover like me can be confused, then what hope does a layman have?
I am also against such terms like 'holiday season' because it is a term used mostly in N.America, the rest of us need to look it up and it is so easily replaced with neutral terms. But whether it should be banned here or be banned in another location is up for discussion. Stepho talk23:00, 7 May 2020 (UTC)
MOS:DATETIES states: Articles on topics with strong ties to a particular English-speaking country should generally use the date format most commonly used in that nation (my emphasis). Can anybody explain why this rule only applies to English-speaking countries? I edit a lot of articles with strong national ties to Denmark, which use the DMY format, and would therefore naturally use that format in those articles. An example: I would like to change the date format in Thorkild Grosbøll from MDY to DMY, but am (per MOS:DATERET) not allowed to do that. I understand that we do not wish to allow the YMD format that are used in e.g. China, but we could say that if an article have strong national ties to a country, and that country uses either DMY or MDY, then the article should follow the convention of that country (note: there is already a special rule for Israel, which speaks Hebrew). ― Hebsen (talk) 20:04, 11 May 2020 (UTC)
An interesting point. The reason stems in part from the preceding sentence: "For any given article, the choice of date format and the choice of national variety of English ...", Denmark does not have a national variety of English so there is no particular mandate to use English or American conventions. MOS:DATERET is aligned with MOS:RETAIN and MOS:DATERET and states that article should follow the conventions that they were first written in. Presumably the first significant editor for Thorkild Grosbøll was American and therefore American conventions apply. If Denmark want's to adopt a form of English as an official language then I'm sure we'll all be happy to change things! Martin of Sheffield (talk) 20:45, 11 May 2020 (UTC)
The sentence you are quoting ends with ... are independent issues. If they are independent issues, why would the date format be linked up on whether or not the country in question use English? Surely there is no national variety of English in Denmark (nor any preference between those that exists). But there is a national date format, and this can be directly transferred into English. ― Hebsen (talk) 21:25, 11 May 2020 (UTC)
Have a go at getting consensus for change on the talk page. I'd support you, but you may find a large American contingent who will dispute the change. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 22:14, 11 May 2020 (UTC)
My take on it is that RETAIN is the main thing and TIES is the exception to it. That is, optional styles should not generally be changed just because you prefer the other style. You need to get consensus on the talk page. TIES is an exception, meant to streamline the process in the case of really incongruous things (say, an article on an American building that mentions the use of "aluminium" in its construction), and it's limited to ties to English-speaking countries because that's where the sharp incongruity comes from. I don't really think it's so sharp in the case of Denmark.
That said, I personally prefer DMY even though I'm American, because it just makes more sense, and it's not at all unknown in the States (though it may tend to come across as "military"). --Trovatore (talk) 22:28, 11 May 2020 (UTC)
I tend to agree with Hebsen, and have interpreted MOS:DATETIES as such given that it says are independent issues. This has empirically been true in my experience as well; this article on Thorkild Grosbøll seems to be an exception. Either way, to clarify the language, we should remove the "English-speaking" part. In fact, it would probably be much easier to just say "For all articles that do not have strong ties to the United States, use DMY dates" similar to the MOS:UNITS policy. Getsnoopy (talk) 22:53, 11 May 2020 (UTC)
No, I don't agree with this. Non-English-speaking countries don't have "TIES privilges" on English Misplaced Pages, and I would be opposed to changing this. --Trovatore (talk) 00:14, 12 May 2020 (UTC)
I would read this as meaning that DMY vs MDY is not so much "UK vs US" as "US vs rest of the world", similar to the unit presentation formats. Which is a fair point; although I don't much care either way, it is arguably jarring to have an article for a generic, non-American-specific audience use a date format that is not widely used in most of the world, purely because the first tie-breaking contributor in that article's history did. Especially if it's about a country that does not use that format, a devil's advocate might say, similarly to how having distances in Germany expressed primarily in miles violates the principle of least astonishment. But unlike that latter case, I suspect the feeling will not be strong enough to change MOS guidance. Archon 2488 (talk) 15:58, 12 May 2020 (UTC)
Do remember: DATERET doesn't say you can't change dates, just that you should not change such dates without seeking consensus first. Ask on the talk page of that article "I'd like to use DYM than MDY here...". --Masem (t) 00:17, 12 May 2020 (UTC)
It seems very unsatisfactory to argue for a change in date format with the reason "strong national ties", when MOS:DATETIES does not apply. How on Earth should I make a policy-based argument? (nevertheless, for my example, I have started a discussion on Talk:Thorkild Grosbøll). ― Hebsen (talk) 13:30, 12 May 2020 (UTC)
I reject Hebsen's statement "Denmark, which use the DMY format". In the context of this guideline, "DMY format" is short for an integer between 1 and 31, followed by one of the words "January", "February", etc., followed by the numerical year. Since Denmark does not use English month names, it does not use the DMY format. Jc3s5h (talk) 01:23, 12 May 2020 (UTC)
This argument is like saying that Denmark does not prefer SI-unit because a second is named "sekund" in Danish. Danish dates (e.g. 12. maj 2020) can be directly translated into English (e.g. 12 May 2020), and will then keep the date-month-year order. ― Hebsen (talk) 13:30, 12 May 2020 (UTC)
How dates are written by writers of another language is one of the things you learn when studying another language. I'm a native US English speaker. When learning French I learned that January 1 is le 1 janvier and January 2 is le 2 janvier, with the first day of the month alone being expressed with an ordinal number. Also, the names of months aren't capitalized. So when I write in French, that's how I write. I don't write Janvier 1 and Janvier 2 just because I write "January 1" and "January 2" in English. Likewise, I presume that native Danish speakers, when writing in English, write dates according to an English (whether UK or US) style. How they write dates when they're writing English is what's relevant here, not how they write them when they're writing Danish. Largoplazo (talk) 13:45, 12 May 2020 (UTC)
Except when they don't, apparently. And it remains irrelevant for how English-language WP is written. Doremo (talk) 16:29, 12 May 2020 (UTC)
I guess no rules without exceptions. The Copenhagen Post and The Local are primarily written by foreigners residing in Denmark, and are not really representative for how Danes write dates in English. Clicking around a little more on the Foreign Ministry's webpage, you will find that both DMY and MDY are used, but the former is prevailing. Similar trends can be observed on other high-profile Danish websites in English (like DMY is also used in the US). I would say that I find MD used a little more than expected, but still far for being equal to DM (I found almost no usage of DMY, presumably because it is when the year is added, that things becomes weird). It is righly relevant. You can only say it is irrelevant if you assume that the English Misplaced Pages is primarily for people speaking English natively, but that is not the case. ― Hebsen (talk) 14:14, 13 May 2020 (UTC)
Unless the aforementioned foreigners are both non-Danish and nonnative English speakers, that implies that the native English speakers (i.e., the more proficient ones) in Denmark are using MDY, and that the nonnative English speakers (i.e., the less-proficient ones) in Denmark are using DMY. Doremo (talk) 14:31, 13 May 2020 (UTC)
This would make sense only if Denmark didn't use the Gregorian calendar, e.g. if they used a calendar which did not have the exact concept of a month as expressed in the Gregorian calendar, such as a lunar calendar or the French Republican calendar. Since there's a direct mapping of a DMY date in the Gregorian calendar expressed in Danish onto one expressed in English, this analogy makes no sense. (Moreover, there's an obvious abstraction to "time units are ordered by smallest to largest denomination", which is independent of the choice of calendar.) Archon 2488 (talk) 16:02, 12 May 2020 (UTC)
I am sorry you do not wish to discuss things on the talk pages. Can you elaborate why you think it is dead on arrival? Yes, there have been many discussions about date formats, but not many about this issue in particular. Searching through the archives, the most recent serious discussion was in 2014 (please point me to a newer discussion, if one exist). There were support for changing it, but in never got farther than attempts to find a suitable wording. ― Hebsen (talk) 13:30, 12 May 2020 (UTC)
Your proposal seems to be to expand the scope of a MOS rule (from English-speaking countries to just plain countries) without any evidence that such an expansion is needed i.e. any evidence that there are chronic, recurring problems on individual articles that would forestalled by such an expansion. See WP:MOSBLOAT. EEng17:54, 12 May 2020 (UTC)
Indeed, so the point is that MOS doesn't need a rule narrowing the scope to English-speaking countries. That effectively reduces a rule, if minimalism is what we're after. Getsnoopy (talk) 03:30, 13 May 2020 (UTC)
Actually, the proposal would simplify the wording rather than making it more complicated. Also, while the English language is the transfer medium in the English Misplaced Pages, the project "as is" is international: We are writing for everyone, so it only makes sense to remove any bias from the wording.
You both misunderstand. The minimalism sought is limitation on the range of situations in which MOS prescribes what to do instead of leaving it to editor judgement. That generally means fewer rules, shorter rules, less verbiage (and those characteristics are desirable in and of themselves, of course). But one in a while, as here, a piece of additional verbiage acts to limit scope, and that's what's most important. The proposal is to remove two scope-limiting words, thus expanding the scope. EEng14:37, 13 May 2020 (UTC)
All that's being "misunderstood" is the application of a high-handed essay that you wrote and that no one is obligated to even read, let alone be mindful of, in order to productively participate. Primergrey (talk) 12:24, 15 May 2020 (UTC)
Well, they do need to read it before making a post purporting to respond to it. Now please go back to being your usual jolly self. EEng18:16, 15 May 2020 (UTC)
Mee-ow. But I do enjoy how much these increasingly tortuous acronyms make Misplaced Pages sound like Scientology. Let's see if we can up the cultish language: "MOS Board and Editingness"? Archon 2488 (talk) 13:04, 15 May 2020 (UTC)
I disagree with Matthiaspaul; the change would greatly complicate the rule.
First, although it might be fairly easy to determine what the predominant date format is for a country where predominant calendar is the Gregorian calendar and the language is related to English, for other countries such as Saudi Arabia or India, where different calendars and alphabets other than the Roman alphabet are used, determining the predominant date format is more difficult.
Second, since this is the English Misplaced Pages, most of the editors use English as their main language, and often read English-language sources, even if the topic of the article is something or someone connected with some other language. Therefore, many editors will not know what the predominant date format is in the language most closely associated with the topic of the article. Jc3s5h (talk) 14:04, 13 May 2020 (UTC)
I have found the contrary to be the case; most editors on topics related to specific countries seems to have ties to that country. Therefore they would know what date format to use. This is presumably also the reason that DMY is prevailing on articles on (for example) Danish topics. On your first point, we agree that the date format should not be the one they use in their own language, but rather the one they use when writing English (only if one is prevailing). ― Hebsen (talk) 14:29, 13 May 2020 (UTC)
Don't most countries have an official Gregorian date format anyway? In any case, like US Customary units, the MDY format is to the best of my knowledge confined largely to one country. Archon 2488 (talk) 18:15, 13 May 2020 (UTC)
And even then, only to its civilians. DMY is common in US military contexts, so it has a tendency to show up in articles on US military topics. —C.Fred (talk) 18:20, 13 May 2020 (UTC)
I can tell you definitively that India uses DMY dates. And in line with everyone else, it's true that DMY dates are common even in the US depending on the situation (e.g., the military, the MLA citation format, academia in general, etc.). And I see ambiguity as complexity, since different people doing as they please not only leads to inconsistency, but then arguments like these about what to do when and where. This is why I was proposing amending the rule to say "use DMY in every article except for US-related articles which are not about the US military", seeing as approximately 90% of the world uses DMY/YMD dates. This would radically simplify the wording, both in length and in complexity/ambiguity. Getsnoopy (talk) 23:21, 13 May 2020 (UTC)
Specific proposal
Thanks for the inputs everybody. It have been a good discussion with some excellent points from many. I understand (and largely agrees with) the philisophy behind EEng's position of limiting the scope of MOS. In this case, however, there is already a rule: WP:DATERET. This forces us to use a specific style, namely the one the first editor used. Sure, DATERET allows changing the date format by consensus on a case-by-case basis, but it is next to impossible to argue such cases with policy-based arguments. DATERET simply sets no standard for how to do it, and then any argument can reasonably be interpreted as WP:IDONTLIKEIT.
I have tried to formulate a possible extension to WP:DATETIES that really sums the issue I have with the current version:
For articles related to non-English-speaking countries, either format can be used. If one date format is predominantly used in that country (when writing in English), it is acceptable to change to that format (if it is among the acceptable date formats).
This is designed to have the least possible impact, while still solving the problem. All pages that today are compatible with MOS will remain being so, and no editor needs to change editing practices. It will not place any burden on editors to know the specific date format used in English in specific countries; instead this burden is placed on those who wish to change the date format. (If anybody is interested, here is my old (more intrusive) version.) ― Hebsen (talk) 21:29, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
This proposal sounds like it encourages those wishing to change the date format to engage in original research to determine what date format is used by residents of, say, Uzbekistan when they are writing English as a foreign language (to thus impose a change on text that may have been written by a native English speaker). Doremo (talk) 11:59, 15 May 2020 (UTC)
No, WP:OR only refers to material—such as facts, allegations, and ideas, not to style choices. We make style choices all the time, of different reasons. Using one date format instead of another is not OR. In addition, that policy does not apply to talk pages, where such discussions would be held. In discussions, of course, arguments backed by sources have naturally more weight that arguments without. ― Hebsen (talk) 18:40, 16 May 2020 (UTC)
Correct. But I still think it calls for something to be investigated and debated that is just as well handled by arbitrary choice. EEng20:55, 16 May 2020 (UTC)
Without implying that I want this text to be adopted, my reading is that it would apply only if the country has an official (English-language) standard. TBH this is a murky thing, as English is official in a lot of countries that are not traditionally considered Anglophone (not predominantly English-speaking), e.g. India. Whether text has been written by a native speaker is and should be, to my mind, irrelevant regarding whether it complies with the MOS. Archon 2488 (talk) 12:43, 15 May 2020 (UTC)
Oppose. In my experience, finding a reliable source that makes a statement similar to "XXX is the predominant usage in British English" are usually hard to find, although exceptions exist. For example, it's easy to find that the box that transports people between floors in a building is called a "lift" in Britain, but can you find a reliable source that tells us which variants of English predominantly use "BC" vs "BCE" for years 2020 years before the current year? If it's hard to resolve for countries that predominantly use English, it will be even harder for countries where other languages predominate. That's a big, unnecessary burden to impose on editors. Jc3s5h (talk) 20:29, 15 May 2020 (UTC)
I was thinking along the same lines. If articles on Brit subjects aren't in Brit English, it jars Brits. If articles on American subjects aren't in American English, it jars Americans. And so on for other English-speaking countries. But the amount of arguing that will ensue in trying to establish what kind of English is spoken in Lithuania just isn't worth it for avoidance of jarring what few Lithuanians might care, so we just go with the arbitrary tie-breaker that's worked well for so long i.e. he who gets there first gets to choose. EEng21:10, 15 May 2020 (UTC)
Although a rarity, I wholeheartedly agree with the points above. The goal should be to reduce unnecessary discussions like these, not increase them. If the proposal had been to just use (or be allowed to change to) DMY dates for every article that's not tied to the US, I would've absolutely been on board. But this proposal would make guidance like this more contentious than it already is. Getsnoopy (talk) 23:24, 15 May 2020 (UTC)
Question What is the most used style, by country and major international organisations? This might become the default style (DMY v MDY) where there is not a recognised national variety of English (more specifically, English is not recognised as a language of the country). Regards, Cinderella157 (talk) 10:04, 30 May 2020 (UTC)
I believe the Phillipines use both DMY and MDY (according to their article, but it is unsourced). Others might as well, but I don't really know. ― Hebsen (talk) 15:56, 30 May 2020 (UTC)
The only problem with this viewpoint is that Misplaced Pages is written in English and English is the native language of many of the inhabitants of the USA. To ignore their habits and usages in creating Misplaced Pages policy just because "Only Americans use MDY." misses the point: are we making a website for English-speaking Americans to use as well? Why do they have to compromise on the Misplaced Pages in their mother tongue in favor of practices among a minority of native speakers/second language learners? I would just see either usage as a normal part of English, equally acceptable. Geographyinitiative (talk) 10:28, 30 May 2020 (UTC)
Minority? You might want to check how many people in India speak English. I believe it's in the order of 400 million. Can I also suggest you have a read of Help:Edit summary, the fifth word of which is "brief". HiLo48 (talk) 10:35, 30 May 2020 (UTC)
Relative numbers of native English speakers in the major English-speaking countries The viewpoint is certainly problematic in that most native speakers of English (in the "first circle" countries, using Braj Kachru's term) are American, and so a majoritarian perspective would imply that all English WP articles except those specific to the UK (etc.) should use MDY. Doremo (talk) 10:49, 30 May 2020 (UTC)
Native-speaker status is a good criterion for analyzing usage patterns because we assume it correlates well with being a competent language user (e.g., using proper subject-verb agreement, differentiating between subject pronouns and possessive adjectives, and following basic capitalization rules, to choose a few additional issues). Doremo (talk) 16:22, 30 May 2020 (UTC)
Please, please, please. Let's not turn this into a fight between L1 and L2 speakers of English. I have two observations:
1) It's not unheard of for a publication to adopt a certain style and require it to be used consistently (e.g. IEEE Spectrum using SI, which isn't common US practice), and I submit that it would not be inappropriate for an internationally oriented work of reference to do something similar, for example with date formats (or, perish the thought, with units of measurement – but that discussion will be ongoing at the time of the Second Coming, and the Third, and...) People will say that to do so would compromise NPOV; to which one need only ask, do these other publications abandon any claim to neutrality they might have by doing the same? Of course not.
2) A large number of people who use WP are, in point of fact, not native English speakers. Hence the pie chart is not, I submit, a useful contribution to this discussion. Maybe these editors and readers don't even come predominantly from countries where English is well-established as a lingua franca, although a small minority native language, like India or South Africa. This whole conversation seems to me like a relic of the pre-internet age; national borders are largely irrelevant (pace Chinese censorship, etc) in determining how people are able to communicate online. If, say, Dutch, Swedish, and French native speakers want to use the English WP as a means to communicate among each other in their second language (along with native English speakers in their L1), that is their right and prerogative. WP belongs to them as much as it does to Americans (and please, nobody respond with something as problematic/thinly veiled xenophobic as "they have their own Wikis"). The English language belongs to everyone who can use it; since you bring up competence, I'll only observe that it is not at all unusual to meet well-educated L2 speakers whose written English is superior to many natives. Archon 2488 (talk) 17:58, 30 May 2020 (UTC)
Agree with Archon 2488. Personally I disagree with the practice of keeping the original date format that some user chose at the beginning, and I think it goes against the principles of Misplaced Pages. In my opinion, unless specifically linked to the United States, all articles should use DMY. It is the format most widely used everywhere except in the US, and the vast majority of readers of the English Misplaced Pages are not Americans. --Ita140188 (talk) 12:43, 1 June 2020 (UTC)
I agree that the general rule should be that all articles should use DMY for dates, EXCEPT for articles specifically linked to the United States. However, if changing the format proved contentious in an article, the order could revert to MDY if that was the consensus of the editors of that article. Michael Glass (talk) 12:56, 2 June 2020 (UTC)
Millions (m), billions (bn) & trillions (trn)
Hi there! Just wanted to check on this. I notice that on MOS:NUMERAL the policy states:
M (unspaced, capitalized) or bn (unspaced), respectively, may be used for "million" or "billion" after a number, when the word has been spelled out at the first occurrence (She received £70 million and her son £10M).
So, is there a reason that one cannot denote, say $100 million as $100m, instead of $100M? There was a little discussion over this back in 2011 but can't seem to find anything since. Is this a metre thing, e.g. 100 metres? If its denoting money I think the difference would be found in the currency sign (€) and the "m" right next to the number e.g. €40m instead of 40 m. Donna Spencer02:23, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
Also the potential for confusion with thousand, perhaps? There are all sorts of ways that this gets abbreviated, e.g. M, m, mn. Arguably M is the most logical because it avoids confusion with the symbol for the metre and also ties in with the prefix "mega". In any case, the best thing to do is to pick one and stick with it, which is what the current guidance does as far as I can see. Archon 2488 (talk) 14:15, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
There are more recent discussions on this line here and here.
I'd note that if the "M" were intended to be the SI prefix mega-, as suggested by the 2011 discussion and as suggested here, then that directly contradicts the line directly afterward:
SI prefixes and symbols, such as mega- (M), giga- (G) and tera- (T), should be used only with units of measure as appropriate to the field, and not to express large quantities in other contexts
I'd question whether articles actually prefer "M" over "m"? I'd have thought "$100m" would be more common, and unambiguous in the vast majority of cases, but I'd be interested to see actual statistics if there are any. I think the idea that someone might take "$100m" to mean 100,000,000 millidollars or 100,000,000 dollar-metres is pretty far-fetched.
I think before adopting an abbreviation for "trillion" we need to establish a) that one is needed and b) that the proposed abbreviation is in actual use elsewhere.
And finally, I rather think the current guidance is flawed, and that we should only be abbreviating at all in contexts where there is limited space or where we have a long series of numbers in the millions or billions. In the example given by MOS:NUMERAL, I think She received £70 million and her son £10 million would probably be better. Kahastoktalk17:12, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
I don't see this as a contradiction because it isn't being (ab)used as an SI prefix. Not least because it's actually being used as a suffix, in the cases described here, like "$10M". By contrast, "10 MUSD" or "5 TGBP" (meaning something like megadollars or terapounds), would be misusing the SI prefixes in this way. My meaning was just that the uppercase M, to the casual eye, looks more obviously and unambiguously like "million", both because it's bigger and because it happens to look the same as the symbol for the SI prefix "mega". Using lowercase m seems to offer no advantage, and IMO it makes sense to pick a single unambiguous format and recommend that. Throwing in the rest of my 2d (1⁄6s; £1⁄120), it would probably make most sense to pick a set of one-letter or two-letter abbreviations, either {'M', 'B', 'T'} or {'mn', 'bn', 'tn'}.
The example of that's specifically marked as wrong is "In a population of 1.3G people". Change that to "1.3M people", and we say we should do it in one line and that we shouldn't do it in the next line. The only difference appears to be what's in your mind when you write it rather than what actually appears on screen. Kahastoktalk19:04, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
If "M" is approved as an abbreviation of "million" rather than as a contextually inappropriate use of the SI prefix for mega, then I see no problem here. The MOS does not, on my reading, tell editors to write about megapersons, or anything comparable to that. As illustrated by the fact that "1.3G people" is disallowed, as you observe. Touching on EEng's favourite point, I would want to see evidence that this advice has caused confusion in article-space before discussing it in any more detail here. Archon 2488 (talk) 22:03, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
To partially answer your note about m usage, I see it commonly used in business newspapers and can be sourced here as denotive of one million. The same goes for trn. I, too, agree that these notations should be used only "where there is limited space." @Archon 2488: I think you're right on the dot in your calls to standardize one-letter or two-letter abbreviations. That will make this type of guidance much more clear and effective. Donna Spencer17:35, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
We can increase the number of letters in the abbreviation as an additional reminder of the power, in units of 10. Thus: m, bn, trn, qdrn, qntln, sextln. Archon 2488 (talk) 18:33, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
Actually, as an aside, I do think it weird that MOS:TRILLION redirects to that section and yet "trillion" (tn or trn) is not mentioned. I feel like that could be confusing to editors. Donna Spencer20:50, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
The section does actually define a trillion (as 10, as opposed to 10). But previous discussions (such as this one) have not accepted a standard abbreviation. Kahastoktalk21:00, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
Also, in the desperately sad eventuality that this was not immediately obvious to everyone, my suggestion was a piss-take. Archon 2488 (talk) 22:23, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
I've been hearing a lot about piss-taking recently and I'm moved to request that my fellow editors be a bit more circumspect in discussing their erotic fetishes. EEng23:44, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
A lot of the UK press use the abbreviations m for million and bn for billion, these include BBC News, The Guardian and The Telegraph newspapers. For trillion, tn is used by the BBC & The Guardian (the Telegraph doesn't use trillion, preferring "million million" instead). I do prefer these abbreviations as they're the ones I'm most familiar with. I do find it odd that Misplaced Pages requires M for million, I don't think I come across this anywhere else (except a few older sources where it is used to denote a thousand). As for whether we should use these abbreviations: infoboxes and tables – definitely, for article text I find the Guardian's guide is quite interesting, it allows the abbreviations for money and inanimate objects but not for people & animals (something doesn't look quite right with "2M people"). --Voellotalk20:13, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
I would observe that the use of "m" (mille) to mean "thousand" predates the distinction between upper- and lower-case in the Latin alphabet by centuries. In normal text, an abomination like "2M people" should never be allowed, as it should be spelled out in full. Tables and other such space-limited media may use such abbreviations if they need to, although in most cases there is likely a better alternative. Archon 2488 (talk) 22:50, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
No, that guide would say "2 million people would have over $3bn in student debt wiped out" or "the industry, which employes 1.5 million people worldwide, produces 600m tonnes of coal annually". Though of course, it would allow the fully spelt out versions too. --Voellotalk21:58, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
The context of "600m tonnes" is actually a pretty good illustration of why I specifically dislike the lower-case "m" as an abbreviation for "million". Using it in proximity to units of measurement is asking for, at worst, confusion, if not just unnecessarily ugly text. I would also note that the convert template does not use these abbreviations with its output, e.g. 600 million metres (2.0×10 ft) (standard form) or 600 million short tons (540 Mt) (SI prefixes). Units should use SI prefixes where appropriate (hence "600 Mt" rather than "600m tonnes" or similar). Archon 2488 (talk) 22:22, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
I agree that the SI prefixes are a better fit when brevity is needed; I was just paraphrasing one of their examples in their style guide. However, I would argue that "600M tonnes" would look more unwieldy, and could cause greater misunderstanding, as some may read it as a metric-prefix which had been incorrectly typeset. In general, I think the wider use of the lowercase version throughout print media would create less of a chance of misunderstanding, as more readers would be familiar with it. --Voellotalk00:25, 15 May 2020 (UTC)
It looks like the "and her son" example is something I shortened from an existing, longer example (check both sides of ). I agree that M and bn should be used primarily in tables, infoboxes, and maybe text containing a long series of figures. Yet, in tables/infoboxes there probably isn't room for the on-first-use-spell-out. So I think there's at least room for a better example and maybe a refinement of the guideline itself (re infoboxes etc as just mentioned). EEng18:52, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
We've had a few suggestions here, none of which offers any obvious large advantage to my mind over keeping the MOS as it is. For the sake of (perhaps foolish) consistency, I would prefer picking a set of standard one- or two-letter abbreviations and sticking with it; including trillion isn't a terrible idea, but if the need to abbreviate it is rare enough that it doesn't need to be included in the MOS, fair enough. If, as I suspect, recommending "M" and "bn" (and saying nothing about larger numbers) hasn't caused disruption in article-space that cannot be resolved except by changing the MOS, then what is the benefit of changing the MOS at all? Especially considering that we would thereby be telling editors to change god-knows-how-many articles from one well-established style to another that offers at best a purely hypothetical advantage. Archon 2488 (talk) 11:45, 15 May 2020 (UTC)
I think there's broad support for only abbreviating where space is restricted or where "million" or "billion" becomes repetitious, rather than just the second time it's used in a sentences. Kahastoktalk15:56, 15 May 2020 (UTC)
I would also say there is broad support for standardizing where million, billion, and trillion become repetitious as well. However, I will say, my original post was asking for clarification rather than a MOS change. But that aside, I am not buying the "m" is too close to 'metre' argument. If there is a currency symbol in front of it, there's no way someone could mistake "swimming a $100m" – that is of course, unless someone is swimming in a 100 metre-pool filled with $100 million. Perhaps a distinction between currency & non-typeset numbers, e.g. $100m v. 100 m is warranted. @Voello: do correct me if I'm wrong but such a distinction exists in the sources you mentioned? Donna Spencer17:12, 15 May 2020 (UTC)
Oh, sorry @DonSpencer1: just to clarify they don't have any distinction between the use of "m" for million or for metre. Interestingly, all three of the guides have even less of a distinction than there would be here on Misplaced Pages, as they do not stipulate the nbsp between the symbol and quantity unlike our MOS (e.g. 10m, not 10 m). However, I do think the distinction can easily be derived through context as to what the "m" stands for; and they don't make note of needing to change the structure or formatting of a sentence so they not be confused. --Voellotalk03:46, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
Perhaps its going here...
@Voello: Agreed, the context does indicate its meaning. I think it would be better to move from MOS:NUMERAL to MOS:CURRENCY#Formatting for this. The formatting section states: "million and billion should be abbreviated M or bn". If anything is to be changed, the formatting section should read "million, billion, and trillion should be spelled out on first use, and (optionally) abbreviated M, bn, and trn (all unspaced) thereafter". I think modifying that section instead would address the notation, brevity, and metre issues brought up for MOS:NUMERAL. Donna Spencer13:57, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
Let me make sure I understand this. You're suggesting that this M and bn (and maybe trn) notation should be used only for monetary values? That's an interesting idea. Do we have any other realistic use case for these abbreviations? EEng
Exactly. So, I don't know if you're referring to its actual use on articles or in real life so I'll provide both. I could see it being very useful on articles like 2020 Russia–Saudi Arabia oil price war or larger articles like Economy of Spain. As Voello, Kahastok, and I pointed out, when coupled with a currency sign, it would be helpful repetitious notations of monetary amounts. I think just the proposed additions in green (above) will do IMO. Donna Spencer18:59, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
No, I meant does anyone have realistic uses cases other than for money amounts i.e. can anyone show reasonable uses we'd be "outlawing" if MOS restricted use to money? EEng19:45, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
Population size is an obvious one, though I can't think of any examples in the wild. Googling finds a few, but once you strip out talk pages, source titles in citations and instances that don't follow MOSNUM already, you lose most of them. The trouble is you actually have to google a number becuase "m people" just finds the band.
(There is, incidentally, a case that could be made in this instance for "m" being too easy to confuse with "metre". The phrase "2m people" is theoretically ambiguous as it might be referring to people who are 2 metres (6 ft 7 in) tall. Though I still find it difficult to imagine a context in which it would be ambiguous in practice.) Kahastoktalk21:03, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
But if we were to just follow MOS:CURRENCY, couldn't we just add "trn" for trillion just as we have M and bn for million and billion, respectively? If its in the currency MOS then I don't think it would necessarily restrict other sections, e.g. MOS:NUMERAL, which is to say editors can use $2m to denote $2 million but not use 2m people for the reasons outlined by Kahastok above. In line with this I see 2 changes we could come to a conclusion on:
Motion 1: To add trn or tn as an abbreviation for trillion dollars
Motion 2: To standardize either (a) {mn, bn, tn} or (b) {M, bn, trn} or (c) {m, bn, trn}
This way we can further differentiate between 'm' as notation for metre or million because, as outlined, it can get confusing when a currency symbol is not in front of it. Donna Spencer21:41, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
Let's not do motions just yet. For now let's just keep exploring. So far Kahastok's mentioned population size as a possible non-monetary application of M (I'm going to assume for now we're staying away from m) or (conceivably) bn, but he says he can't bring any examples to mind. Can anyone? What we need is examples in which the ability to use M (for populations, or anything non-monetary) is really, truly a benefit to the reader. EEng22:27, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
Dondervogel 2, let's argue the specific abbreviations later, if that's all right with you. What do you think about restricting their use to monetary amounts? If not, can you give us a few actual article examples of its use outside monetary amounts? EEng02:43, 30 May 2020 (UTC)
"Use figures at all times with currency signs and abbreviations: £1, $2. Abbreviate million to m and billion to bn in headlines.
In stories concerned mainly with money, company reports and City page references to bids and deals, use m and bn. In news stories as distinct from stories in the business section always write million and billion in full."
At the risk of contributing to unnecessary MOSBLOAT, does it make sense to say something to the effect that unit-based names for measured quantities (that is really verbose but I don't know what else to call them) should not be used? I mean the likes of "acreage", "square footage", etc. since in these cases more prosaic terms like "area" would be more apt – they do not have ties to a specific set of units, and they do not presume familiarity with imperial/US units (since in practice, nobody talks about "kilometrage", "kilomometers", or "hectarage"). I can't readily think of a case when these words are the appropriate choice for communicating information. Archon 2488 (talk) 15:53, 21 May 2020 (UTC)
Acreage is a relatively normal English word and hectarage is not. The word acreage is also often a synonym for cultivated land, and replacing it with area would often be awkward: "increased prices for corn led farmers to devote more acreage to corn"; "He obtained acreage on the mountain by paying for it in barrels of flour and meat"; "Irrigated acreage in the area is likely to increase." Doremo (talk) 16:18, 21 May 2020 (UTC)
I suppose my initial wording was too bold. But still, something like "the planted acreage increased from 100 to 200 hectares (250 to 490 acres)" strikes me as clunky at best. Archon 2488 (talk) 16:39, 21 May 2020 (UTC)
Strong oppose. The proposal appears to be to ban perfectly cromulent English words because they tend to be etymologically derived from non-SI units. Even metrication advocacy organisations tend not to go that far.
There's no evidence that these words actually cause any problems. OTOH, banning them would cause significant problems (clunky sentences, awkward circumlocutions), particularly in fields where such terms are standard. For example, at least one article would have to be moved from its WP:COMMONNAME as a result. Kahastoktalk17:09, 21 May 2020 (UTC)
Partial support While not disagreeing with Doremo I find it unencyclopaedic to say "an acreage of 5 acres". Conversions aside, it should always be "an area of 5 acres". Dondervogel 2 (talk) 22:53, 21 May 2020 (UTC)
This is a style manual, not a writing course. There's no limit to the ways people can write clunky prose. That's not a good reason to "ban" these words. --Trovatore (talk) 23:27, 21 May 2020 (UTC)
The problem is clunky prose of the sort that Dondervogel and I illustrate above. I do not, personally, think "an electric potential of ten volts" is an awkward circumlocution of "a voltage of ten volts"; the latter, at least, sounds more awkward to my ear. FWIW, since you mention it, I would also tend to describe "wattage" and "amperage" as bad style, where they are used in lieu of the perfectly usable (and to my mind more common) English words "power" and "current". And in this case, they do derive from SI units.
The point is that generalising from a unit name to the name of the dimension is bad practice and conceptually confused; units quantify a dimension, whereas the dimension is not constrained or defined in any sense by an arbitrary choice of measurement scale. Who the phoque knows what "chainage" is, who hasn't worked in surveying or for a railway? Who doesn't know what "distance" is? The overuse of these "-age" words (what are they called?) is jargon. "Area" is a plain English word that nobody can reasonably be expected to misunderstand. Archon 2488 (talk) 20:19, 22 May 2020 (UTC)
The article Electrical substation uses the word "voltage" 46 times. Most of those instances are nowhere near a measurement in volts. Replacing them all with "electrical potential difference" or "potential difference" is not going to make the article read better. Nor will it make the article more understandable or less jargon-filled.
And as others have noted, "acreage" has significant connotations beyond "area" that we may want to use. The distance between two stations may be very different from the chainage, and on appropriate articles we should make the distinction. We are writing in English and we can reasonably expect our readers to understand English words.
The way to deal with clunky sentences is to fix the clunky sentence in question. The way to resolve jargon on general-interest articles is to fix the jargon-filled sentence in question. Neither is served by arbitrarily getting rid of a class of words that you don't happen to like. Kahastoktalk20:47, 22 May 2020 (UTC)
But are those objectives served by getting rid of a class of words that mostly function as opaque, imperial-biased measurement jargon, and replacing them with something unambiguous? If you mean "cultivated area", say that. IMO, an encyclopedia should not rely on vague connotations; it should say what it means. Archon 2488 (talk) 22:00, 22 May 2020 (UTC)
No, the objective of avoiding clunky sentences and jargon is best served by avoiding clunky sentences and jargon. The words you seek to ban are no more ambiguous or vague than the words you seek to replace them with.
You want "something unambiguous"? At this level, unless you're planning on requiring that Misplaced Pages be rewritten in Ithkuil, you're not going to manage that. All human language has nuance and implication and ambiguity baked in. And that's a feature not a bug.
But the point comes out again - you object to these words as "imperial-biased". Even the metrication advocacy organisations don't go as far as you are going here. Kahastoktalk22:43, 22 May 2020 (UTC)
> The words you seek to ban are no more ambiguous or vague than the words you seek to replace them with.
I'm going to call you on this. How many people could tell you what "acreage" is, versus "square footage", versus "area"? What if you consulted people who are not native English speakers, or who live in countries (most of them) where acres and square feet are not normal units of measurement? I assert that the former are jargon and the latter is the common, plain-language name for the concept. And yes, these terms are biased against people who do not have a good understanding of the cultural contexts in which imperial units are used. You get brownie points for knowing about John Quijada, but I do not accept your analogy as being "cromulent". If an unambiguous term exists it makes sense to use it. Claiming that language is inherently ambiguous is frankly a crap excuse for not writing clearly. Sort of like Fred West getting caught with bodies under his patio and claiming that humans are inherently a bit shit. Yes, but that is not the point. Archon 2488 (talk) 23:18, 22 May 2020 (UT
It's deeply depressing I have to say anything like this, but for the avoidance of doubt I was not comparing you to Fred West. The meaning of the analogy (and I note with interest you neglect to reply to the substance of my comment) was that "language is inherently ambiguous" is very readily deployed (not, again lest you think the reason I edit WP is to assassinate your character, by you in particular, or as far as I am aware, at all) as a bad-faith excuse for poor and ambiguous prose, or overly jargon-laden prose.
FWIW, the comparison to a serial killer was quite obviously meant to be a humorously absurd escalation of how people can use logic like this to excuse problematic behaviour (it is sort of ironic that this happened in the context of a discussion about how language can have many possible shades of meaning and should not be taken literally, and I take it as read that the rules of the "this is a joke" language-game are not the same as those of the "this is a statement of literal fact" language-game, for reasons I hope are obvious). I regret that this was not apparent in the phrasing above.
My personal feeling – and I now appreciate that it is not shared, so I will not continue to advocate for it – was that terms such as I have described are often unnecessary and culturally biased jargon used in lieu of simpler and more neutral terms, which per guidance it makes sense to prefer. I do not, in good faith, think more people understand "chainage" than, say, "distance measured along the track". The fact that it references an obscure and obsolete unit unknown to, I would guess, well over 90% of our readers (in the context of UK units, WP bans kilometres with vastly less reason!) is another reason to proscribe its usage. Archon 2488 (talk) 11:59, 23 May 2020 (UTC)
I guess the slipshod editors of IEEE Transactions on Electrical Insulation slipped up in letting through such abominations as "A new concept for medium-voltage cables: improved voltage life of belt-type cables", "Determination of space charge distributions in polyethylene samples submitted to 120 kV DC voltage", "Prebreakdown currents of vacuum tubes with increased pressure stressed with AC voltage", "Improving the high-voltage quality of alumina insulators", "Prediction of Breakdown Voltages of Binary Gas Mixtures" and so on . EEng20:56, 22 May 2020 (UTC) P.S. Fascinating followup from v24n2 (1989), W.F. Schmidt: "High voltages for particle acceleration from thunderstorms: A. Brasch and F. Lange": "An early experiment of two German physicists, A. Brasch and F. Lange (1930), who conceived the idea of harnessing the huge potential differences between charged clouds of thunderstorms and the earth, is briefly described ... The project was discontinued when a fatal accident claimed the life of a coworker of Brasch and Lange." Ouch!
The journal you refer to, I am assuming, prefers SI as policy (because IEEE does), which does not apply here. The point being that WP does not follow the usage of journals, and what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Archon 2488 (talk) 22:00, 22 May 2020 (UTC)
So that would be sauce-age. Actually, I have no idea what the point is of what you just said. EEng23:04, 22 May 2020 (UTC)
So by that logic, the fact that the journal is written in English presumably therefore means that Misplaced Pages is not allowed to be written in English? Kahastoktalk22:30, 22 May 2020 (UTC)
Strong oppose. As this is unrelated to the way we present dates and numbers in articles, I don't think this is an appropriate talkpage to discuss the banning of standard English words from Wiki's vocabulary. Doesn't MOS have a section on banned words that you could take this to? -- DeFacto (talk). 10:08, 22 May 2020 (UTC)
"present dates and numbers" – read sensu stricto, this does not define the entire scope of MOSNUM, as I understand it. Not least because it was about measured physical quantities and the appropriate terminology to use when describing them. I take it as read that my choice of "ban" was tongue-in-cheek. Archon 2488 (talk) 20:30, 22 May 2020 (UTC)
@Archon 2488: nevertheless, it comes across as wanting to discriminate against the use of certain standard English words (words that are in common enough usage to appear in the OED), not in terms of how they are used in English today, but because there is an association with a non-metric unit of measure in their etymology. -- DeFacto (talk). 12:03, 23 May 2020 (UTC)
I did clarify above that my argument also applied to "wattage" over "power" for example, so this isn't fair. "A wattage of ten watts/horsepower" sounds frankly ridiculous, to my ear, whatever units of power you choose. Actually, the fact that "a wattage of ten horsepower" sounds so ridiculous is a great illustration of the problem with these words: they are insufficiently abstract, and they are based on naive generalisations about physical quantities that do not reflect a real understanding of them. Thus "mechanical power" and "electrical power" are implicitly treated as separate concepts: "wattage" can refer to the latter, but not as commonly to the former, whereas "horsepower", when used as a synecdoche – maybe that is the word I want – for "power", refers only to the former. This is just an unphysical confusion of concepts; a power is a power regardless of how it is generated or what is done with it. Anyhoo, my argument went down like a bucket of fetid camel diarrhoea, so I have abandoned it.
And "appears in OED" is meaningless as a criterion of common use, because the OED lists every word equally, however obscure or archaic it might be. Floccinaucinihilipilification appears in the OED; how widely is it used, except as a parody of long latinate words? Similarly for vulgar 90s slang. Its objective is to document every word in English usage, not to make any sort of prescriptive statement about what is common usage and therefore likely to be understood. Archon 2488 (talk) 12:23, 23 May 2020 (UTC)
Oppose Acreage is a perfectly useful and acceptable word. Guide for the Perplexed: EEng is joking, and Martinevans123 is trying to keep the jokeage going. CullenLet's discuss it07:22, 23 May 2020 (UTC)
Oppose Can we please just stop with all this? Does anyone really believe that anything useful is being accomplished here? Paul August☎15:41, 23 May 2020 (UTC)
(ec) @Paul August: Why should we stop? Archon 2488 made a serious and sensible proposal, which I would paraphrase as "write so you cannot be misunderstood". More specifically he suggests we should prefer "power" to "wattage" and "distance" to "footage". I agree with him. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 05:58, 24 May 2020 (UTC) Dondervogel 2 (talk) 06:02, 24 May 2020 (UTC)
@Dondervogel 2: First of all, I think you and Archon 2488 both misunderstand these words. Acreage is not a number of acres, at least not normally; it's an expanse of land. Footage is a sequence of film. These words do not ordinarily refer to measurements; they refer to the objects thus measured.
I agree that it's usually poor writing to use these words together with a number, but it's not within the remit of the MoS to identify everything that's usually poor writing. --Trovatore (talk) 16:43, 24 May 2020 (UTC)
To clarify, I was talking about "square footage" when it is (mis)used to mean "building floor area". The fact that nobody talks about "square meterage" is revealing. When "footage" is used to mean "recorded video", it is so divorced from its etymology that I think a lot of people would not recognise it as originally referring to reels of film measured in feet. Indeed, you might well read about "gigabytes of footage" these days, for exactly that reason. Archon 2488 (talk) 18:47, 24 May 2020 (UTC)
Semi-oppose. While I get where you're coming from and agree with a lot of your positions, this is not one of them. I don't think you're going to convince many people that acreage is not proper English in the sense that it's a word (just like percentage, footage, etc.). However, I think your argument would have much more mileage (no pun intended) if you said that these words (except for maybe percentage) are considered informal, and therefore should be avoided. But I don't think we need a policy outlining that, as we probably already have some sort of policy that says to use formal English rather than colloquial English (MOS:TIES comes to mind). Nevertheless, these kind of things are probably best resolved on a case-by-case basis. Getsnoopy (talk) 05:54, 24 May 2020 (UTC)
Actually, in many cases the words that would be banned here are more formal and less ambiguous than the alternatives offered. If there's a problem, it's with topic-specific jargon rather than informality.
We do tell people to make technical articles understandable and to avoid using too much technical language. But avoiding all jargon is neither possible nor desirable. And if you want to reduce unnecessary jargon, the way to do it is to deal with specific instances of unnecessary jargon when they arise, not to ban whole classes of word based on their etymology. Kahastoktalk12:38, 24 May 2020 (UTC)
I was not talking about jargon. It's about vague (wattage) vs well defined (power). There's nothing vague about "proton" or "electron". Dondervogel 2 (talk) 13:31, 24 May 2020 (UTC)
This is not a proposed ban only of the word wattage. It is a proposed ban of all words of the type +age. Therefore it applies equally to tonnage, voltage, chainage and other similar technical terms. It is not clear whether percentage is included as well.
That said, the word wattage is actually rather less vague than power. Power is any rate of transfer of energy. In most circumstances, wattage specificially refers to electrical power. Kahastoktalk17:34, 24 May 2020 (UTC)
That's a good point. It's also the first sensible argument I have seen against the proposal in this entire discussion. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 18:14, 24 May 2020 (UTC)
And "voltage" with "electrical potential difference", and "chainage" with "distance along a railway line", and "tonnage" with "cargo volume of a ship", and "footage" with "recorded material"? This is not a discussion about "wattage" alone. All words derived from +age would be affected. And on some articles we would move from aiming to inform the reader to an exercise in constrained writing.
We can reasonably expect readers of the English Misplaced Pages to understand ordinary English words in their ordinary English meaning. There is no reason to assume that words such as "wattage", "voltage", "footage" and "mileage" are somehow uniquely difficult to understand in a way that applies to literally no other word in the entire English language. To the point that our guideline on words to watch begins, "here are no forbidden words or expressions on Misplaced Pages", a situation that this proposal seeks to change.
And don't forget that if a reader genuinely has difficulty with these ordinary English words given their ordinary English meaning, we do have simple.wiki available. Kahastoktalk19:47, 24 May 2020 (UTC)
And yet ordinary English words such as "metre" and "kilogram" – at least as common as "acreage", if not vastly more so – somehow apparently are uniquely difficult to understand, if some people here are to be believed. Archon 2488 (talk) 13:01, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
The proposal here was to ban the word "acreage", and similar words from Misplaced Pages.
On that basis, I assume that you will now cite the policy or guideline that bans the words "kilogram" and "metre" from Misplaced Pages, or even any proposal made to ban the words "kilogram" and "metre" from Misplaced Pages.
To avoid any doubt, as per your original proposal here, a "ban" means that there is no "case when these words are the appropriate choice for communicating information", and that therefore that they "should not be used" on Misplaced Pages, irrespective of context (since your original proposal did not limit the ban on these words based on context). Kahastoktalk13:21, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
MOSNUM, as it stands, de facto selectively bans these words based on hairsplitting distinctions (such as when they are used in the context of expressing the heights of people of certain nationalities), and this policy is justified by occasional assertions that the words are not understood. Even though we're supposed to believe at the same time that they are understood on something like >95% of articles. Of course the sections I am referring to are not worded in that way, but that is their effect. I've long since learned that this doublethink is mandatory and practiced it appropriately, so no more of that.
I've said a few times here that "ban" was a stupid choice of word on my part. What I was really thinking about, before shelving the idea that the MOS should say anything explicit about this, was a recommendation that these words were, as you quote me, not the appropriate (best) choice for communicating information to readers. In any case, the MOS is not absolute, so a recommendation that they were not stylistically optimal would not preclude their use if there was a desperate need to do so. Nonetheless, I do not feel that words like "acreage", which make ambiguous reference to obsolete units of measurement, are the most appropriate in the vast majority of circumstances, but as you and others have pointed out, there are any number of ways in which editors can fail to make the best choice of words for communicating information, so the MOS cannot exhaustively catalogue them. Archon 2488 (talk) 14:03, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
So, in other words, there is no such ban in the MOS, or in any other policy or guideline, and no such ban has ever been proposed. And your claim to the contrary was entirely false. Kahastoktalk14:55, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
Entirely false? You mean there's not even a context-specific ban on kilograms? So you're happy with me, a UK passport holder, saying that I weigh 82 kilograms on Misplaced Pages? Wait, what's that? You're actually not? How interesting! Archon 2488 (talk) 15:31, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
You claimed that "metre" and "kilogram" were treated in the way that you sought to treat words like "acreage" and "tonnage". This was false. As you are well aware, all measurements such as you describe are required to be given in both imperial and metric systems.
However, given the vehemence with which you have repeatedly expressed your views on measurement systems, given the numerous personal attacks that you have directed toward me and other editors on this page because of this point and given the discretionary sanctions that you have been warned of, I would suggest that it would not be productive for you to pursue this further at this point. Kahastoktalk16:15, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
It's not going any further, because I've already abandoned the proposal. Because people explained to me why it wasn't a good or workable idea and why the MOS was not the appropriate instrument for giving such stylistic guidance; not because they threatened me. I would suggest that veiled threats of sanctions for making proposals you don't like isn't a good MO. If it's a bad proposal (and I now accept that this one was), then just explain why. Playing the victim when you are the one actively threatening an editor whose crime was to make a proposal you disagree with is a bit hard to accept. Even if it was a stupid proposal. Archon 2488 (talk) 17:23, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
References
If anyone doubts that, I suggest they write a draft of isotope without using jargon words like "proton", "neutron", "electron", "nucleus" and "atom".
Reqeust I'm going to whip out my Swiss Army knife for these issues, WP:MOSBLOAT. Can we please see actual examples of actual disputes on actual articles that the contemplated guideline would address? So far it's all hypothetical. EEng15:07, 24 May 2020 (UTC)
I suspect that there are times when I have found it strange, but mostly I think we should leave it to editors to use what works best in context. Note that besides giving the quantity, it also suggests the unit desired. If one asks for acreage, the answer should not be in square feet or hectares. I do find amperage instead of current a little strange, but only a little. Voltage sounds much better than electromotive force, though possibly electrical potential difference could also be used. Square footage isn't unusual at all in English. Watt is supposed to be the SI unit for power, independent from electrical usage, but as above it often suggests electrical power. Note, for example, that power plants are often rated in GWe, that is electrical gigawatts, as opposed to the thermal power that is used to generate it, about three times more. On the other hand, wattage is mostly not used for power plants. Gah4 (talk) 19:49, 24 May 2020 (UTC)
It occurs to me that the word mileage is commonly used in the US for automobile fuel usage. That is, miles/gallon. So, the name isn't always the unit followed by ago. As well as I know, in metric countries they use litres/100km, so a reciprocal unit. I don't know what -age word is used there. Also, they might not be used along with a unit, so one might ask about a lamp wattage, or floor square footage. Gah4 (talk) 05:33, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
Not just the US, in the UK people use "mileage" for fuel consumption. As regards electrical terms: if you buy a light bulb or a kettle the current demand is marked in watts – therefore wattage, and fuses are marked in amps – therefore amperage. These terms are straightforward everyday usage that don't need technical knowledge. Let's just stop trying to ban things because WP:IDONTLIKEIT and let the particular instances speak for themselves. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 08:49, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
Comment To try to make a serious point, MOS:COMMONALITY applies to words like "acreage" (meaning area) and "mileage" (meaning fuel consumption). If there are significant differences in the usage of a particular word in different dialects of English, then we should try to avoid that word ("avoid" not "ban") when it can be done without impairing readability. There's an age issue too. As an officially elderly person (based on the UK Government's definition in relation to Covid-19), I'm happy with both "acreage" and "mileage" in the senses I gave above, but younger people outside the US may not be. If that is the case (or when it becomes the case), we should try to avoid such words. "Voltage", "wattage", etc. are totally different cases, since the units are universal, and the argument is about scientific precision, not ordinary language use, and this is not a purely scientific encyclopedia, but a general one. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:05, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
(edit conflict)I agree that "ban" was a stupid choice of word on my part. But I've changed my mind to favour editorial discretion over MOS mandates – as others have pointed out above, there are any number of ways in which editors can write bad prose, and it's not wise to try to anticipate all of them too closely. Not least because, as you say, there is a reasonable amount of contextual nuance here. Archon 2488 (talk) 13:01, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
I have some edits with the edit summary: sounds better. Some of the cases in this discussion I probably think should be changed, and others not. What is the wattage of that light bulb? makes sense even when it is turned off, where What is the power of that light bulb? doesn't seem quite right when it is off. The power is zero, but the wattage (rating) isn't. A circuit breaker has an amperage (rating) even when the current is zero. If I ask about the amperage of a circuit, I don't mean the current current, but how much might be safe, which might include more than the breaker rating. (It depends some on context, which isn't so easy to explain.) Depending on context, trip mileage might mean round trip distance or trip gas mileage. In a farm context acreage of corn might mean how much is currently planted with corn, where area of corn doesn't make sense. It might be that in some cases, it is too informal for an encyclopedia, but I don't believe enough to ban it outright. I had thought that no-one would say mileage per gallon, but a web search does show that some do use it. Gah4 (talk) 12:52, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
In the name of mercy please let us stop this. Someone should, perhaps, write an essay discussing the stylistic issues. And here I'll shamelessly plug my latest essay, WP:LOCATION. (I was going to call it WP:LOCATIONLOCATIONLOCATION but for some reason that's on the title blacklist.) EEng14:13, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
Oppose. I think it would be accurate to say that all of the English speaking countries have historically used US/imperial units and consequently, there is a linguistic legacy that persists to varying degrees in different varieties of English to varying extents. If anything, such usage (and avoidance of such terms) is already covered by WP:ENGVAR (MOS:COMMONALITY). To be more specific (ie particular terms) would be bloat/creep. Regards, Cinderella157 (talk) 01:17, 26 May 2020 (UTC)
Grouping of digits
Since English is the Lingua Franca of the World which many people of different countries speak and learn we should make a change how we Group Digits.
Since we currently use 2 formats to group digits: comma (,) or narrow gap . It is confusing for viewers of different countries which use the comma (,) as a decimal seperator.
""We dont need to just use the narrow gap but we should give it priority when we do digit grouping. Like the italian Misplaced Pages already does.""
My proposal: When grouping of digits in groups of three, prioritise the narrow gap then the comma (,).
Ultimately this is the English Language WP. We follow English, not Italian, usage. Note that according to WP:DIGITS "Note that use of any space character as a separator in numbers, including non-breaking space, is problematic for screen readers", we would be trading effective use of the English WP for a confusing and unfamiliar style. Just as we assume that non-Anglophones have to learn English vocabulary, syntax and grammar to read sentences, is it unreasonable to assume the same for numbers? Martin of Sheffield (talk) 13:59, 26 May 2020 (UTC)
Italian usage was only an example. What else should the english wikipedia follow if not english... Why would it be an unfamiliar style? The space as a 3number seperator is the easiest to understand, one look any everybody understands what it means. (1000000 = 1 000 000) The average reader interprets these numbers as 1 million easily, dont assume hes stupid. Any new change will be unfamiliar at first, for everyone. But the space as a 3number seperator is already used since decades. yes of course non anglophones need to learn the english vocabulary, syntax and grammar, but Numbers and number seperation arent exclusevly english, it is its own internationally accepted language. A space as a 3number seperator is understood everywhere in the world and the standord of ISO and other organizations. Numbers and their seperation are universal in all languages no just english. Also an article which covers this nicely: http://themetricmaven.com/the-presentation-of-blank-space/MajorValerian (talk) 14:58, 26 May 2020 (UTC)
The style you describe is allowed in the contexts where it is used, mostly in the context of talking about SI units directly (since the SI style is to allow either the period or comma as decimal separator, but to mandate the thin non-breaking space as the digit separator) or the physical sciences. It's not widely used elsewhere. Formally, in SI, "100,000 m" means the same as "100 m" (neglecting the greater implied precision in the former). The issue isn't so much the supposed stupidity of our readership as wanting a simple and consistent style that matches what is widely used in the relevant English-language context IRL. Add that to the additional technical issues with the space-as-a-separator style, as mentioned above, and you have an unnecessary headache for the sake of recommending a style that is a trivial change to what we already have, in the process deprecating the style used on millions of articles. Archon 2488 (talk) 19:05, 26 May 2020 (UTC)
It would not hurt millions of articels. They would just get changed over time or some people do it willingly. But you made some good points, i agree with them. MajorValerian (talk) 00:06, 27 May 2020 (UTC)
I would love to have this as a policy, seeing as it's the official way to do it in SI/ISO contexts, but I doubt you'd get much support for it here with issues of "legacy" and "convention". This is also not to mention that it has nothing specifically to do with English, but with English as it's used in certain countries. South Africa uses the comma as the decimal separator, for example, in English. Add to this the issue of other languages using commas as well and the original motivation of the narrow-space over comma becomes increasingly clear. However, the point about screen readers is a valid issue, although I don't know about its prevalence now as compared to when the original policy has been considered. Getsnoopy (talk) 21:44, 26 May 2020 (UTC)
I support the use of a thin space as thousands separator. It solves the inherent ambiguity in 100,000 m. I also agree it does not need to happen overnight. It can (probably should) happen slowly so that the readers don't ever notice the difference. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 09:08, 1 June 2020 (UTC)
ISO 8601 YYYY-MM Calendar Date Format
I propose the ISO 8601 YYYY-MM calendar date format be added as an acceptable date format. YYYY-MM is the reduced accuracy version of the extended calendar date format. The format is not ambiguous, because ????-?? always means YYYY-MM. It never means YYYY-YY according to the standard. Readability should not be an issue, as Misplaced Pages already separates semantics and presentation by rendering Wikitext markup into formats intended to be more human readable. It's common for computers to store dates in ISO 8601 format and render them into whatever format the user desires. YYYY-MM-DD is already an acceptable format for citations, but YYYY-MM is not. One problem with this is that some sources provide only a month and year. In these cases, date formats can't kept consistent throughout the article when YYYY-MM-DD is used elsewhere, unless the YYYY-MM format is acceptable. Squideshi (talk) 00:53, 1 June 2020 (UTC)
Two problems to sort out for you:
I believe the ISO now has forms for 1st–4th quarter, 1st & 2nd half and other division of the year. This would need to be addressed by someone who has access to the most recent standard.
Many periodicals use <year>-01 for the first issue in the year, <year>-02 for the second and so forth.
If WP were to adopt this change then issues such as this need to be written up carefully so that the majority who have no access to standards are not constantly being told off for non-compliance! Martin of Sheffield (talk) 09:00, 1 June 2020 (UTC)
For quarters, we can use dates like 1999-Q4, 2020-Q1. Of course, different companies use quarter in different ways (eg, calendar year, US tax year, Australian tax year, arbitrary year) but I can't see any system surviving that one.
Periodicals using 2020-01, 2020-02, etc for successive issues during the year can use |year=2020 and |issue=1, |issue=2, etc. Stepho talk23:14, 1 June 2020 (UTC)
Oppose: we write for readers. I suggest that the majority of readers are not familiar with ISO standards, and would interpret 2007-09 as "2007 to 2009" rather than "September 2007". That's why we don't use all-numerical dates, because 6/11/1989 can mean 6th of November or 11th of June, while 6 November 1989 and November 6, 1989 are both unambiguous. If your source only has a month and a year, spell it out: November 1989. Remember the readers. PamD09:10, 1 June 2020 (UTC)
Oppose: the current guidance is there for good reasons. YYYY-MM-DD is acceptable in certain contexts, because it is unambiguous. YYYY-MM and YYYY–YY can only be distinguished by the choice of hyphen or en-dash, which is hopeless for most of us. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:30, 1 June 2020 (UTC)
Oppose: It is ambiguous and most user would not understand what is meant by it. There has to be clarity and use of different types of dash is not sufficient to show the meaning of the date. Most people do not know about the ISO standard and get the format of full dates wrong — YYYY-MM-DD is similarly ambiguous and probably should be ditched for clarity as well. Keith D (talk) 11:49, 1 June 2020 (UTC)
Oppose. As it is we should only be allowing YYYY-MM-DD in non-reader-facing technical applications, such as sort keys for tables where the ISO date is not reader-visible, and not even in visible references. YYYY-MM is ambiguous. Period. oknazevad (talk) 13:53, 1 June 2020 (UTC)
There is an unambiguous ISO 8601 form <YYYY>-<MM>-XX where the XX is a literal placeholder for unspecified digits (see Extended Date/Time Format (EDTF) Specification now part of the ISO 8601). At one time cs1|2 experimented with an early form of this (<YYYY>-<MM>-UU) as a way for automated processes (editors, bots, etc) to write month-precision dates in cs1|2 templates. That would let the template best decide how to render the date ({{use xxx dates}}, |df=). I would still like to see that implemented in some fashion.—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:35, 1 June 2020 (UTC)
Support. With the current system we have some article with references in the form yyyy-mm-dd. If we wish to add a reference to a magazine from May 2020 then we need to add 2020-05 to match the other references. But that's not allowed, so we add it as May 2020. But WP:DATEUNIFY says the references must all use the same format, so we change all references to d mmm yyyy or mmmm d, yyyy. But that breaks WP:DATERET and also rubs many editors up the wrong way. There is no win in the current system - only a choice of which policy/guide to break.
Many of the negative comments are about it being ambiguous with yyyy-yy. If a yyyy-mm date was presented in isolation then I could see the ambiguity. But these will be used among a whole pile of other yyyy-mm-dd dates in a whole pile of references. Do we think people are so stupid that after seeing 50 references to 2001-12-31, 1995-06-27, etc that they will suddenly think that the pattern changes? Granted, a few will be confused due to ingrained habits. Just like there are some people who will never believe that "colour" is a correct spelling. To mitigate against this, we can advocate replacing yyyy-yy with either yyyy-yyyy or at least yyyy-'yy. And in the end game, if somebody does get confused - does it really matter? The type of people that go chasing up references are usually smart enough to either figure it out or to try each of the various formats. The type of people that get confused are rarely the type that go chasing references. Stepho talk23:07, 1 June 2020 (UTC)
Limited support – in a context where it will not cause confusion, this might be acceptable. For example, labelling the bins a histogram with year/month, where space is constrained and the benefit of using a terser notation is being able to use a larger and more legible font. Ambiguous nonsense like "2007–08" to mean "2007–2008" should be strongly deprecated, however. Archon 2488 (talk) 11:55, 2 June 2020 (UTC)
Kliban: Converting feet to meters
