Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 185

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By default, write all articles in the present tense, including for those covering products or works that have been discontinued. One that keeps coming up, and I want to be sure about: XXX is/was the first to YYY. It seems to me that if you were the first, then you still are, so it should be is. But then again, sometimes it sounds right with was. Thanks for any fast replies! Gah4 (talk) 15:30, 20 September 2016 (UTC)

Here is the actual statement in question: The 12-bit PDP-8, produced by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), is the first successful commercial minicomputer. It is still a minicomputer, though no longer in production. For comparison: Jackie Robinson ... who became the first African American to play in Major League... Since he isn't playing anymore, past tense seems to make sense. The PDP-8 is still a minicomputer, and some are still running. It will still be a minicomputer, even when none are running. Thanks. Gah4 (talk) 14:45, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

"Was" is more natural except for cases where the qualification is still current and unique. "Margaret Thatcher was the first female Prime Minister of the UK." - she is no longer PM, and no longer the only female PM. "Angela Merkle is the first female Chancellor of Germany."

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 21:21, 22 September 2016 (UTC).

The current part I understood, but not the unique part. While Thatcher is no longer PM, the PDP-8 is still a minicomputer, though not the only one. I am willing to go either way on this. Would Thatcher have been not "...the first Prime Minister ..." (without the UK qualification) if a female Prime Minister of another country has been elected while she was serving? Is unique less important than current? Thanks in advance. Gah4 (talk) 21:59, 22 September 2016 (UTC)

Golda Meir and Indira Ghandi were the first female PMs - and the PDP-8 is no longer commercially successful.

But the general rule still holds.

I agree that this isn't logical on its face - consider though, racing your friends to a tea room. If you get there first you might call them and say "I am first here!" - but when they arrive you would say "I was first!". Perhaps there is some subtlety relating to "First to arrive", "First to be elected", "First to be appointed" which are events (generally) in the past, giving their tense to "First to hold the post of.." etc, which are states that could be current. Or perhaps this is just one of those linguistic oddities.

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 11:27, 24 September 2016 (UTC).

Or maybe just rare is enough? Maybe still present for the first few, but after 10 or 20, being first isn't so important anymore, so past tense? Not so obvious to me. Gah4 (talk) 22:04, 22 September 2016 (UTC)

I would use "The 12-bit PDP-8, produced by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), is the first successful commercial minicomputer", because as Rich Farmbrough pointed out, it is no longer a successful microcomputer. Our language generally treats firsts that are not longer current news as past-tense anyway, regardless. One would write that the PDP-8 is a microcomputer, and that it was the first commercially successful one. This is natural English in any register.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  07:41, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

I found several articles using "was certified Multi-Platinum" or "Triple Platinum", "Gold", others use "was certified multi-platinum". which one should be used? Cornerstonepicker (talk) 22:53, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

After an album goes lower-case platinum, it might win an upper-case Grammy. EEng 23:11, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

I am not so sure... an album made of (lowercase) platinum might be certified "Double-Platinum" (uppercase but in quotes) Blueboar (talk) 18:00, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but I'm seeing some inconsistency, when titles are italicized, does it apply to everything except music? I have been looking through this, some articles such as In the Hall of the Mountain King aren't. Many recent songs aren't italicized such as Hotline Bling, All About That Bass, and Work (Rihanna song), while some of them are such as Also sprach Zarathustra (Strauss). A lot of other things such as movies and TV shows are such as Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, and The Big Bang Theory. This needs to be clarified. Eric S.V. (talk) 00:54, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

Song titles aren't italicized. See WP:MOS#Titles. EEng 01:34, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

@Eric0928: With regards to music, albums are italicized while individual songs aren't. Notable films are italicized. Regarding written works, full length books and novels are italicized. Articles, essays and short stories aren't. The general rule is to italicize major artistic and literary works, and to use quotation marks to set off minor works. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 05:27, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

Like I said, see MOS#Titles. EEng 06:56, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

There was a minor quasi-edit-war going on over at The Signpost involving me, User:Pldx1, User:QuackGuru, User:Tony1 and User:Citobun. I'm not interested in pursuing it any further, but I'm wondering if this issue has come up before and if we have a policy statement on it. A number of edit summaries appeared to indicate that the writers believed the publication had changed from "bi-weekly" to "fortnightly", which seemed ... weird. (I looked at the archives and it appears to have changed from "once a week" to "once every two weeks".)

Basically "bi-weekly" is ambiguous as it also has the meaning "twice a week", but "fortnightly" is likely unfamiliar to American readers (in The Cable Guy it was used in order to add an archaic, "medieval" flavour to the dialogue). In cases like this, does lack of ambiguity trump consistency in variety of English within an article? Or vice versa?

And (although it's not relevant to the Signpost article) if an article does not have WP:TIES to any particular variety of English, would disambiguating "bi-weekly" be justification enough to change the variety of English used in an article?

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 12:16, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

• Edit-war? First I knew. It started as "fortnightly" but linked, which I wondered was because US readers mightn't know that word. Then it was "bi-weekly", which is indeed likely to make people wonder whether it's twice weekly or two-weekly. I thought "two-weekly" was a good solution. Then I looked up "fortnightly in my US encarta dictionary, and it seemed to be universally understandable (true?). It's not something anyone should get steamed up about. Tony (talk) 15:23, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

  When I moved to Texas from the UK in 1989 "fortnight" was a word I had to eliminate from my vocabulary as it drew baffled looks. In article space I think it shouldn't be used in AmEng articles, but I don't know what the relevant rule would be for non-article-space writing. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 15:30, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

There is a story that some (many by now) years ago, someone reported data in metric units in the US. (See also FFF system.) They were asked to convert the results to English units. They did, and velocities came out in furlongs/fortnight. This story is well enough known that many scientists now know what a fortnight is. Furlongs are still used in horse racing, too. There is confusion over weekly being a frequency or period, and so whether biweekly doubles the frequency or doubles the period. (Same for bimonthly, biannually, etc.) Though a centennial is a 100 year celebration, (time period, not frequency), and so bicentennial is unambiguous. It does seem that fortnightly removes the confusion in that case. Gah4 (talk) 17:15, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

What about: "once every other week"? Blueboar (talk) 22:31, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

Many words and very Amercian (and not logical, either). Tony (talk) 01:47, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

• All of these newspapers say "biweekly": Category:Biweekly newspapers. There is no Category:Fortnightly newspapers. --Floquenbeam (talk) 02:08, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

Although that category is a bit of a mess, and apparently contains newspapers published twice a week, once a week, once every two weeks, and once a month (someone should probably do some QA on those). I guess my point is the category name, though, not whether it's misused in some of them.--Floquenbeam (talk) 02:11, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

It's weird to use a temporal word that has to be linked: it's back again. "Two-weekly" seemed ideal, but "biweekly" would be better if that's not acceptable. Tony (talk) 02:28, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

It might just be me, but "two-weekly" looks horrible, and I don't recall ever seeing it in print. Googling "two-weekly newspaper" brought up a small number of hits (amidst a much larger number of pages descibing weekly newspapers, two of them), and those look like ungrammatical translations by native speakers of various Slavic languages (Russian and Serbian). Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 09:54, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

Surely it would be better to use the unambiguous "fortnightly" than the ambiguous "biweekly". Just because some readers don't know a particular word is not a reason not to use that word - this is not Simple English Wikpedia. At least if the reader does not know a word they can go and look it up in a dictionary, whereas if the word is ambiguous they may take the wrong meaning without realising it. Mitch Ames (talk) 07:34, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

@Mitch Ames: Just to be clear, I think several of the users who favoured "fortnightly" did not understand what it meant (apparently believing that at some point it changed from being bi-weekly to fortnightly). This would be the opposite' of the problem you are addressing with "Just because some readers don't know a particular word is not a reason not to use that word". Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 10:01, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

"... [published] every two weeks." Ghmyrtle (talk) 10:12, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

It's a tough call. "Bi-weekly" is unclear (it also means "twice a week"). "Fortnightly" is straight out, it's a Britishism without meaning in America. "Two-weekly" is not English at all so that's out. Rewriting to "...every two weeks..." should be the preferred option. Herostratus (talk) 13:25, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

@Herostratus: Thank you for agreeing with me on "two-weekly"; I thought I was going crazy for a second there. As for "every two weeks", the problem is that if you look at the article, in the infobox it says its "type" is "fortnightly newspaper"; we can't very well say "newspaper published every two weeks", can we? Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 23:25, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

"Fortnightly" is essentially unused in contemporary American writing. I have no idea how often it is used in British writing. The issue is not that Americans don't know the word - they do. The word 'fortnightly' is archaic, like 'apothecary', and will take away from the credibility of the article, unless you want it to have an "old timey" feel. "Once every other week" or "Once every two weeks" is direct and to the point. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:29, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

Not that I disagree, but just to understand a little better. When we say yearly, we mean one day every year, but often not the same day every year. Similar for monthly. Weekly more often means the same day every week, but maybe not always. Every fourteen days means on the same day, and alternate weeks. In some cases, you might need one day out of every two weeks. That once every other week means one day, any day, in non-consecutive weeks. The real problem is that we don't use parentheses where mathematics does, and that bi(weekly) and (biweek)ly mean different things. Unless it doesn't work for some other reason, I am fine with "once every other week" or "once every two weeks". Are there cases where those are not grammatically correct? Gah4 (talk) 14:01, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

Here's a Daily Beast article that discusses The double meaning of biweekly, but it seems to conclude that current magazines favor the every two weeks definition and that biweekly when applied to newspapers favors the twice a week (or what we call semi-weekly) now. AngusWOOF (bark • sniff) 15:23, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

I didn't want to bring it up because I know how happy people on this forum are to throw contextout the window and request sources that confirm that the sky is blue, but now that someone else has already presented a source that confirms the sky is blue I might as well express my agreement; of course current magazines favour the "every two weeks" definition, because there are more magazines published every two weeks; if there were more magazines published twice a week, no doubt there would be more magazines that prefer the "twice" a week definiton. (This means I have my doubts about the Beast's newspaper conclusion, mind you.) This means that, if I saw our article on The Signpost stating that it was a "bi-weekly" publication, I would (and did) naturally interpret it as meaning "once every two week", and would assume our readers would do the same. On top of that, every dictionary I have checked lists "every two weeks" first.

Now to the bigger question: if "fortnightly" is a Britishism that Americans don't use except if they are trying to be funny (or some such), then should we limit "fortnightly" to articles that are otherwise written in British or Oxford style? And if an article doesn't specifically have WP:TIES to American English but the word "fortnightly" would be useful to eliminate ambiguity, should we just change the article to use British or Oxford style?

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 23:25, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

It would be nice to use a word or words that don't have to be linked. Tony (talk) 00:32, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

Doesn't part of the confusion stem from the fact that the Signpost doesn't actually come out fortnightly? The last issue was dated 28 September; the one before was 6 September, and the one before that on 18 August. Hawkeye7 (talk) 01:18, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

No, it doesn't. Tony (talk) 03:53, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

Note that when I said there was confusion, I was referring specifically to Pldx1 and QuackGuru, who both indicated a belief that it had changed from being biweekly to fortnightly, but neither of them have posted here; I wouldn't say it's beyond belief that these two editors thought that it used to come out once every two weeks and now comes out on an irregular basis and that this is what "fortnightly" means. I have no experience with QuackGuru, but Pldx1 has definitely made mistakes of this type. If this is the case, then yes, part of the confusion does stem from the fact that it doesn't come out fortnightly. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 04:22, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

"Fortnightly" appears to be even more useful than I'd realized. If English is to use archaisms like "gotten" (got), "albeit" (if), "amongst" (among) and the mandative subjunctive, then let it use "fortnightly" as well. Not that I advocate any campaign of substituting it for any fuzzier term. -- Hoary (talk) 01:15, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

• Agreed with above comments that "two-weekly" is a made-up nonsense, and "biweekly" is ambiguous. It simply isn't true that "fortnightly" is meaningless to Americans, it's only meaningless to very poorly educated Americans, and for them we can simply link the word as [[fortnightly]]. No problem to solve. It's also correct that "fortnightly" is more precise; it's means every 14 days, while "biweekly" – even if interpreted as "every two weeks" not "twice a week", an interpretation we cannot guarantee without using a piped link anyway – does not mean every 14 days, but within every two week period, not necessarily 14 days apart.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  06:57, 3 October 2016 (UTC)
  • "within every two week period, not necessarily 14 days apart" is an interpretation of "biweekly" I've yet to encounter. If true, can "fortnightly" never be interpreted the same way? Curly Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 09:59, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

I'd actually take it the other way from CT here; both "every 14 days" and "within every two week period, not necessarily 14 days apart" are possible interpretations of both "biweekly" and "fortnightly". "Fortnightly" only has the exclusive meaning of "every 14 days" if we read that interpretation into it; it means "within every fortnight", which is the same as "within every two week period". So yeah, there isn't a difference in that sense; the ambiguity of "biweekly" comes from the alternate meaning of "twice in a week".

Note, though, that if SMcCandlish were right in his reading, "fortnightly" would be a factual inaccuracy in this case, and "biweekly" would be unambiguously the superior choice. The Signpost doesn't appear to be consistently published in fourteen-day intervals.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 14:25, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

• How to describe the new periodicity of the Signpost ? Despite the opinion of User:Hijiri88, this is top and foremost a matter of periodicity, rather than a matter of style. During ten years, the Signpost was a weekly publication. This should be clear from the article, but this was not. Recently, from July 2016 onwards, the periodicity changed. During these last three months, the issues were released on 2016-07-04, 2016-07-21, 2016-08-04, 2016-08-18, 2016-09-06, 2016-09-29. We have five intervals, and a total of 87 days. Thus, the experimental periodicity amounts to 17.4 days. This can be described as a bi-((five weeks)-ly) since 17.4/7 is really near to 2.5. Concerning the nominal periodicity, it can only be described by a faithful quote of the sources. And if the authoritative source says "fortnightly", we have to say "fortnightly". In this context, original research about archaism, U.S./T.H.E.M. balance and so on is simply irrelevant. Pldx1 (talk) 08:57, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

Pldx, if you want to show up and insult me and assume bad faith, and completely miss the point of the problem, you should do it before a half-dozen other users comment otherwise. The commentary you provide above doesn't gel with the rationale you provided in your edit summary, and it's pretty clear you have not read and understood the lengthy commentary above, which is primarily about regional varieties of English and subtle ambiguities. The simple fact is that if we were discussing the Signpost article and how frequently it is published, we would do so on the article talk page; this discussion is taking place here because of an incongruity between the need for precision and the need for internal consistency in the ENGVAR we use, and of the possibility that if a British English word that Americans don't use is needed for precision we should change the article's ENGVAR for internal consistency. But thank you. I am flattered that you are trying to make this discussion about me. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 12:35, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

• Welcome to the classic MOS discussion. EEng 16:50, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

There are words which don't have an equivalent in some other varieties of English. "Ouster" is an AmEng word, which we use widely. On the same basis "fortnightly" should be unexceptional. Two-weekly is also OK, though, as is "every two weeks". All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 20:05, 3 October 2016 (UTC).

@Rich Farmborough: Could you provide a source that does not contain grammatical errors, slang, or other unencyclopedic language that uses the word "two-weekly"? Or (better) a print dictionary/thesaurus that includes an entry on it or lists it as a synonym for "bi-weekly" or "fortnightly"? You and Tony say you think it's fine, but everyone else seems to think it "isn't English". I know from a descriptive grammar standpoint "not English" is not appropriate, but Wikipedia is supposed to be written in a certain register. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 05:13, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

@Rich Farmbrough: I'm repinginging you because I misspelt your name. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 07:03, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

Google books is your friend here:

1

2

3

4

There are others, notably from Kenya and India.

Most of these are tables, where, perhaps, the editors faced the same difficulty of finding a relatively short term.

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 17:19, 4 October 2016 (UTC).

• What is the issue with "every two weeks", by the way? Curly Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 21:22, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

@Curly Turkey: The "type" in the infobox would need to be changed to either "newspaper" (no qualifier, so likely to face oposition for "removing information") or "newspaper published every two weeks" (incredibly wordy). Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 05:13, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

I can't believe we're having such difficulty in finding wording that is understandable across the Atlantic and doesn't have to be linked. Hijiri, why can't Curly's suggestion be worked in? Tony (talk) 07:07, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

I never said it can't be "worked in". If what you mean is "Why can't every two weeks be used in the infobox?": For the reason I just gave. But please assume good faith. You seem to be coming at this from the assumption that I am trying to find an ENGVAR-neutral solution to this one article's problem, and am abusing the MOS talk page for this purpose. I have explicitly stated, several times, why I posted this here rather than on the article's talk page but you have completely inored me. It's not your fault, mind you: everyone seems to have inored me. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 08:29, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

My overall comment was clearly addressed to everyone, with a query tangentially to you (not the attack you appear to have assumed). Tony (talk) 08:36, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

I didn't assume any attack. I just said you seem to be missing the point of the discussion. There is no catch-all solution. My feeling is that if in a particular situation it is determined that a word that is not used (or is not seen as being appropriately formal) in one ENGVAR is the best option for an article that happens to be written in that particular ENGVAR, and there are no TIES between the subject and that ENGVAR, then we should consider just changing the ENGVAR the article is written. (The fact that my preferred ENGVAR is Oxford-style makes my somewhat liberal position on this matter questionable, though: as far as I am concerned, anyone who puts a lot of work into improving an article without TIES should be able to unilaterally change the ENGVAR, because most of what I write gets confused for "British spelling" anyway, and digging through the page-history to try to figure out what the "original" ENGVAR of an article was is pretty pointless if most of our editors are ignorant of Oxford-style.) Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 09:02, 4 October

2016 (UTC)

Perhaps a rather than frequency we should have a field for period? All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 17:19, 4 October 2016 (UTC).

How to parse "inored" ? Among the guesses, we have "ignored", "minored", https://www.google.com/patents/USPP22794, or even an Oxford-style sentence of which most of our editors are ignorant. Pldx1 (talk) 10:52, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

@Pldx1: Glass house; don't throw stones. Your own grammar and spelling, both on talk pages and in the article space, is atrocious, so deliberately trying to "zing" me like that is not a good idea. I often edit from an iPad while sitting on a train and holding it in my hands, and the "g" is right in the middle of the screen and very easy to miss when I very lightly tap it with my left thumb. This is no doubt how I missed it twice in a row. It is impossible to read my sentence as making any kind of sense with "minored", or any other possible word. "minor" as a verb is actually extremely rare in comparison to "ignore". The fact that you misuse the word "parse" in the same sentence is ... interesting. Additionally, it is perfectly clear that you don't understand my comment about how RETAIN is abused by people who are not familiar with minor regional and other variations of English like Oxford. If you keep this behaviour up, I will report you on ANI again, and you will not get off with a warning this time. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 11:54, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

• Elements of this discussion have an intriguing appeal, but it is mostly extraneous, to a question I do not regard as difficult to answer. I do think it's important to align statements about a publication's publishing frequency with the actual frequency of publication. Regarding The Signpost, "semimonthly" seems most accurate, in my opinion.--John Cline (talk) 11:33, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, but what about the part of the discussion that isn't extraneous? Should we add an exception to the wording of MOS:RETAIN (or at least implicitly recognize such an exception without inscribing it into the page) that would allow replacing the American spellings to make articles like this internally consistent? Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 11:54, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

MOS:RETAIN seems sufficiently adequate in its current form. The stipulated example where an exception of the language variant would be appropriate is shown as: when "a term/spelling carries less ambiguity" (my emphasis). This certainly goes beyond implicit recognition.--John Cline (talk) 22:23, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

I went ahead & piped the Wikilinked term as "every two weeks" in its first appearance in the article and added a note to the infobox so the meaning is clear within the article that the meaning is "every two weeks". Feel free to revert if unwanted (thought to be redundant or inappropriate or just unwanted etc). Shearonink (talk) 18:12, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

OK, but why does "every two weeks" need to be linked at all? Tony (talk) 04:24, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

Isn't that discussion off-topic for the MOS talk page? Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 04:44, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

Perhaps it is off-topic for this page Hijiri, but the discussion about the usage of the word at a specific article took place here so I thought that it would be appropriate for me to respond and notify any interested editors about my edits here. As to why it needed to be linked Tony1, it didn't need to be linked at all, it's just that fully-explaining a possibly unfamiliar term to our general readership seemed appropriate to me. Any further discussion about linking/piping/fortnighting at the Signpost article should probably take place at that article's talkpage. Cheers, Shearonink (talk) 06:03, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

Yes, other people have posted partly or mostly (and in one case entirely) off-topic commentary to this thread that was supposed to be about the relationship between ARTCON, RETAIN and the need for clarity of meaning in cases like the "fortnightly"/"bi-weekly" problem in that article. That still isn't a good reason to post here about alternative solutions to that article's supposed problems that aren't related to the relationship between the different parts of the ENGVAR guideline. As far as I was concerned, the specific problem with that article was solved when Citobun reverted me the first time, and all further discussion, regardless of the venue, has just muddied the water unnecessarily. Admittedly, I probably could have prevented this by specifying more clearly in my original post that I accepted Citobun's solution (reminding me that "biweekly" is technically ambiguous -- I had been instinctively reading it to mean what it was intended to mean, and it didn't occur to me that others might interpret it differently) and had no interest in discussing it further. I tried to downplay any implication that I believed I was "right" and the users whom I had reverted or who had reverted me were "wrong" (hence "minor"), but I guess that wasn't enough. Anyway, this thread is far too overrun with commentary on The Signpost's publication schedule at this point to accomplish anything meaningful with regard to ARTCON and RETAIN, so I guess I should just stop talking and let the thread be archived; further discussion of the other stuff should take place on the article's talk page. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 10:16, 5 October 2016 (UTC)