Wikipedia talk:Simplified Manual of Style

WT:SMOS

Example of British punctuation may be misleading

Art, I believe that your example of British/logical style may be inaccurate. At the very least, it makes it look like periods and commas go outside the quotation marks all the time. To quote Chicago 14:

The British style of positioning periods and commas in relation to the closing quotation mark is based on the same logic that in the American system governs the placement of question marks and exclamation points; if they belong to the quoted material, they are placed within the closing quotation mark; if they belong to the including sentence as a whole, they are placed after the quotation mark.[1]

So maybe dialogue wouldn't be the best example. Perhaps something like this would be better:

On Wikipedia, place periods and commas inside or outside the quotation marks depending on whether they are part of the quoted material or not: The word "carefree" means "happy". but She said, "I'm feeling carefree."

My own personal preference would be to also include the words "This differs from standard U.S. punctuation rules." As you know, I don't think people should be using this system in American English articles, but if they are, they should do it right. Darkfrog24 (talk) 12:27, 18 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

My example was copied from the end of Quotation mark#Punctuation, so if it's wrong, then maybe you should change it in both places. Art LaPella (talk) 00:20, 19 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

That style is used primarily in British non-fiction. British fiction has the commas tucked in. Darkfrog24 (talk) 01:06, 19 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Intro section?

This page should probably have a few lines explaining what it is. At the very least, it should say, "If you want more detail, check the full-form MoS. In any edit conflict, the full MoS trumps this one."

In particular, internal consistency should be mentioned. "Either 'James' house' or 'James's house' is OK" could be construed as meaning that both are okay within one article. Perhaps this guide could include a line reading: "Sometimes there's more than one right way to write, but choose just one and use it consistently throughout the article. For example, do not switch back and forth between using and omitting the serial comma in the same article." (Side note: Aren't we supposed to spell out "okay"?)Darkfrog24 (talk) 12:42, 18 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Well, it has a one-line intro that says something similar. The internal consistency rule is often cited at MoS debates, but I'm not convinced our debates are a newbie's priority. He's more likely to be seen changing one optional style to his preferred style, simply because he thinks the other style is a mistake. He may or may not see that the rest of the article is written in the style that offends him, but if he does see it, he will presumably consider that to be additional mistakes, and "fix" them. Art LaPella (talk) 00:27, 19 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

"More" boxes

I find them very disruptive strewn about the running text. Perhaps at the end of bullets? Certainly not within sentences. And could they be smaller? Tony (talk) 02:31, 12 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I don't understand "at the end of bullets". At the end of a line, as they are now, except there is a bullet at the beginning of the line? I don't know how they could be smaller and still say "More", but we have discussed how they could be fainter. Art LaPella (talk) 06:53, 12 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
On second thought, the <small> parameter would make read more ... smaller than read more .... Art LaPella (talk) 07:09, 12 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

For some reason, the small thing hasn't been working on Safari for the Mac for quite a while. Damn nuisance; and it makes me not trust that syntax. I suggest a quite different display. Tony (talk) 09:18, 12 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

How long before it becomes suboptimal?

I'm wondering ... a lot is not mentioned that probably should be. Tony (talk) 09:35, 12 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Since you are one of the main authors of the existing system, I doubt if we'll agree on that one. Of course everything is still mentioned if you click through. Art LaPella (talk) 18:14, 12 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I was hoping for a non-personlised opinion. Would twice the current size be too much? Would 10% of the size of the current main MoS be appropriate? Who is the intended readership? (Newbies, early editors ... every editor?) Tony (talk) 00:11, 13 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

WP:SMOS is largely mine, so naturally I'm happy with its size. Others may speak for themselves. Wavelength and Incnis Mrsi have expressed more radical proposals, and I'd be happy with those too. The intended readership is whoever doesn't click through to the full Manual of Style. I think such clicking through would be unusual with the exception of about 30 MoS experts. Even SMOS has more information than most editors seem to know, as expressed through their editing. Art LaPella (talk) 03:05, 13 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I suggest about twice the word length as is here. Some points seem to be too detailed: why not cut the religion-related caps, for example? There's more basic stuff that's current not included. Tony (talk) 04:56, 13 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I could elaborate about my opinion, but I'd rather encourage some others here – Art LaPella (talk) 20:05, 13 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Oh heck, here are some examples of the statistics I would like to see used, starting with the Capitalization section:

Sentence case for articles is seldom a problem.

Sentence case for section titles isn't always used in about 1 article out of 10 articles where that problem is a possibility (about half of them).

Only a few percent of articles have captions. Out of 10 such articles, only one had a sentence case problem: Cult wine. But half of them had periods for sentence fragments.

The SMOS religious section has grown. "Bible" occurs 101,000 times according to Google (inflated by including "biblical" among other things). About 1% of the "Bible"s were improperly uncapitalized, but we probably need that rule just to explain "biblical" which is a bigger issue – about 1/3 of the "biblical"s were capitalized (excluding titles etc).

I didn't find a clearly miscapitalized "God". But I have in the past. When it happens, it's unlikely to be a simple oversight, because uncapitalizing religious words, especially "God", is the style of American Atheists and anyone who imitates them, so all-out religious edit war is imaginable.

"shrew" is wrongly capitalized about half the time.

I didn't find anyone miscapitalizing "all winter" (a phrase chosen to avoid people named "Winter"). So I may have overestimated the seasons problem.

Note how unknown some of our best-known rules are, despite their position in the Manual of Style. Few people are presumably aware of them. I hope SMOS doesn't get the same problem. Art LaPella (talk) 22:58, 13 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The size is fine; it is maybe already too large. Any more, and people just won't read it. This should be a summary of how Wikipedia in-house style is unique, not a basic primer on how to write grammatically correct prose. It should assume that many people who read it are intelligent and just want a quick overview of wiki ways before taking off and creating some content. If you want something about common errors in articles, maybe make a separate section, and call it something like "common errors". Not everyone in the world confuses there, their, and they're or your and you're. Why alienate those people right off the bat. Neotarf (talk) 00:13, 14 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia has these pages.

—Wavelength (talk) 00:30, 14 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Simple Wikipedia for inspiration

Editors who want a simple manual of style might find inspiration in these pages.

—Wavelength (talk) 22:29, 13 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I believe the Simple English Manual of Style is almost the same as the English MoS about 2005, when I suppose it was copied. Art LaPella (talk) 22:40, 13 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]