Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style: Difference between revisions

Manual of Style

This page falls within the scope of the Wikipedia:Manual of Style, a collaborative effort focused on enhancing clarity, consistency, and cohesiveness across the Manual of Style (MoS) guidelines by addressing inconsistencies, refining language, and integrating guidance effectively.Manual of StyleWikipedia:WikiProject Manual of StyleTemplate:WikiProject Manual of StyleManual of Style articles This page falls under the contentious topics procedure and is given additional attention, as it closely associated to the English Wikipedia Manual of Style, and the article titles policy. Both areas are subjects of debate. Contributors are urged to review the awareness criteria carefully and exercise caution when editing. For information on Wikipedia's approach to the establishment of new policies and guidelines, refer to WP:PROPOSAL. Additionally, guidance on how to contribute to the development and revision of Wikipedia policies of Wikipedia's policy and guideline documents is available, offering valuable insights and recommendations.

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Manual of Style page.

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This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Manual of Style page.

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Template:MOS/R

For a list of suggested abbreviations for referring to style guides, see this page.

There is now a proposal at the Village Pump that Wikipedia talk:MoS be established as Wikipedia's official page for style Q&A. This would involve actively guiding editors with style questions to WT:MoS and away from other pages. Participation is welcome. Darkfrog24 (talk) 12:41, 15 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I've hardly ever seen anyone else but me interested in creating our English texts for the easiest possible reading aloud, to children and the blind and others, by the avoidance of an unnecessary amount of foreign words. Foreign words, often hard or impossible for English readers to pronounce, are being added to our articles in what I consider an alarming extent noiwadays nowadays, and some of the users doing so seem to have their own agendas in pushing as many words as they can from their (non-Engliush) languages into all kinds of texts here, where I can't see it's necessary to do that to improve them. What, if anything, can be dome done to stem the tide? --SergeWoodzing (talk) 23:47, 16 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I notice you slipped a bit of Spanish into that last sentence. But seriously, although we should always use the clearest and simplest language we can, I think trying to protect children, the blind and others from foreign words would be misguided and not in their interests. Formerip (talk) 00:02, 17 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

And the second sentence contains a Latin double-plural – even sighted adults may find that perplexing. Maproom (talk) 09:06, 17 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

We also have the Simple English Wikipedia, located at simple.wikipedia.org. It's designed mostly for ESL readers, but how does it factor into the phonetic empathy project? Darkfrog24 (talk) 23:53, 16 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

See Wikipedia:Make technical articles understandable and Category:Wikipedia articles that are too technical.

—Wavelength (talk) 00:21, 17 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I am surprised, and frankly sort of disappointed, to see that two colleagues would be so cavalier as to try to ridicule or even bully me by remarking on my typos (now corrected) and Latin grammar, rather than dealing with what I consider an increasingly serious problem on English Wikipedia. How sad!

Even as an old person with poor eyesight, with English as my first language, and having taught English for many decades, I can't see how what I wrote can be interpreted as a wish, in general, to "protect children, the blind and others from foreign words". ?

The fact I'm addressing here is that more and more foreign language words are being added where it is not necessary to do so, and that (just like ridiculing other editors), I believe is not constructive to this project.

I am aware of, and appreciate, Simple English Wikipedia, whereas I think our regular readers should be able to use regular English Wikipedia without the unnecessary (note: unnecessary!) obstacles that the addition of an unnecessary (note; unnecessary!) amount of hard-or-impossible-to-pronouce foreign words obviously creates.

Thank you Wavelength for those valuabe links! Could/should something be added there more specifically about not adding foreign words unnecessarily?

There is at least one editor I know of (among 5-6 I've seen doing this a lot) who does not consider foreign words to be "technical terms", and thus sees no limit to what h/s can go about doing, more and more. --SergeWoodzing (talk) 16:42, 17 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, so it's not that you need simple English for a project; it's that you a see a problem in the general English Wikipedia and you think we should put a rule/guidance/etc. against it in the MoS. Is that correct?

What do you mean by "foreign words"? Is it like in nineteenth century novels, where the characters just start speaking French with no translation? Darkfrog24 (talk) 17:07, 17 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

For example, in choosing between On Södermalm there are gröna linjens tunnelbana stations Slussen, Medborgarplatsen and Skanstull before you cross Skanstullsbron and get to Hammarbyhöjden and Blåsut. - or - Taking the green line due south from the Old Town there are three subway stations before you leave the central city for the suburbs. - I'd prefer the latter or a similar solution, without unnecessary foreign words, in this case as relevant to an English text about transportation in Stockholm.

The best place for discussing changes to Wikipedia:Make technical articles understandable is Wikipedia talk:Make technical articles understandable.

—Wavelength (talk) 02:25, 18 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

There is some question though, as I inferred above, as to handling foreign words as "technical terms". --SergeWoodzing (talk) 18:37, 18 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Is the above ("gröna linjens tunnelbana stations Slussen") an actual example from a Wikipedia article, and did editors defend its use? Pburka (talk) 22:47, 19 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

That is as clear a hypothetical example as I can give in answer to the specific quetion I was asked by Darkfrog24. If at all possible, I would like this discussion to be one of pronciple, without involving other specific editors. Is that possible? --SergeWoodzing (talk) 22:56, 19 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The problem with discussing principles is that anything we put into the MoS will be treated as absolute gospel by at least a few editors. We have to be very careful that we're putting in rules that are going to solve real problems and not just satisfy whims. The clearest way to establish that the problem is real is with diffs, links to specific changes to specific articles that demonstrate that the problem is non-sporadic enough to merit adding another rule to the MoS. Right now, "write in English" falls under WP:COMMONSENSE, but if you've been changing non-English words to English and someone else has changed them back, that would show that the problem needs a bigger solution. Darkfrog24 (talk) 00:01, 20 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

When formatting references I had always assumed that 'title case' was used for the titles of journals and books and that 'sentence case' was used for the titles of journal articles and book chapters. This is a style that is used by many scientific journals. I've now discovered that this choice is not explicitly specified in the manual of style which reads:

"The titles of articles, chapters, songs, television episodes, research papers and other short works are not italicized; they are enclosed in double quotation marks. Italics are not used for major revered religious works (the Bible, the Quran, the Talmud). Many of these items should also be in title case." (colour added)

So my question is, which of these items should be in title case? Or does WP:CITEVAR apply? Aa77zz (talk) 16:48, 18 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

MOS:ALLCAPS. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:20, 18 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• WP:CITEVAR applies per the RfC at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters#Exceptions to Small Caps which stated MOS does not seem to apply to references using a style using these (such as BlueBook). In any case, changes to citation style should be made at WT:CITE, not here.. That doesn't address the question however. WP:CITEVAR applies. If your chosen citation style uses title case, then you use title case. If it uses sentence case, then you use that. If it uses italics or underlines, ditto. GregJackP Boomer! 23:13, 18 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• I agree that this is a matter for CITEVAR: variations in this choice from article to article are ok but within a single article we should be consistent. My own preference, btw, is the one expressed at the start of this section: sentence case for journal articles and book chapters, title case for journal names and book titles. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:56, 19 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• As long as it is consistent within the article, I agree with you and think that it's fine. I personally use Bluebook for articles I create, so journal articles are title case and in italics while book titles are in title case and smallcaps. GregJackP Boomer! 20:51, 19 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:WikiProject Anthroponymy/Standards is the de facto MOS guideline for anthroponymy pages, yet it's currently located as a subpage of a Wikiproject. This page clearly belongs in the MOS, and I have proposed moving it there. If you want to comment, please do so in that thread. Thanks! —Swpb^talk 13:08, 19 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Started a discussion regarding part of the MoS at the Village pump. Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#RfC: Should the holder of a political office be linked within an infobox more than once (i.e. as the successor), when they have already been linked (e.g. as the vice president, predecessor, lieutenant, etc.)?. —Godsy^(TALK_CONT) 06:38, 21 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Do we "correct" the spelling in quotations to the ENGVAR of the article, in the manner that "trivial spelling and typographic errors should simply be corrected without comment"? As in, when an article in CanEng quotes an American critic ("in favor of this tatty fetish")—should that favor be "corrected" to favour? Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 11:06, 22 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

No. If the quoted author was following the conventions of spelling that apply in the author's country, or the publication in which the material appeared, it wasn't an error and isn't subject to "correction". Jc3s5h (talk) 11:41, 22 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

An interesting twist, however, might be the case where we're quoting what someone said as opposed to what they wrote. Jimp 12:04, 22 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I still wouldn't "correct" it. If they're speaking in US English, spell it in US English, as if the speaker had published a transcription. Correct obvious flubs, however: if it sounded like "flavor" but they obviously meant "favor", write "favor" (not "favour"). —sroc 💬 02:02, 23 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I would say, use the variety the source reports, not the one we imagine the speaker was using.

To take a plausible example, let's say that an interview with Barack Obama appears in The Economist. (Well, not sure they do interviews, but other than that, plausible.) Probably The Economist will use British spellings to report what he said, right?

Then if we give a direct quote from that interview, we should use the British spellings, even though Obama (presumably) doesn't use them, and even in Obama's article, which of course is in American English.

Look, if this is distracting, there's a simple solution: Take away the quotation marks, and paraphrase. But don't frak with what's between quote marks. --Trovatore (talk) 03:50, 23 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I'm a little disturbed by the rationale attached to this rule, though:

However, national varieties should not be changed, as these may involve changes in vocabulary, and because articles are prone to flipping back and forth.

This seems to suggest that, if it were a color-v-colour case that didn't involve vocabulary, and if we weren't worried about the variety of the article changing at some point, we would be perfectly OK with changing the variety in the direct quote. Surely that is not the case? I know that quite a few publishers do do this, but I think they are quite wrong to do so, and we should have a higher standard for precision.

Maybe we should just make it "national varieties should not be changed", and dump the rationale? --Trovatore (talk) 16:45, 22 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

You wouldn't change a quote by a representative of Vauxhall saying "boot" to say "trunk", so don't change how they'd spell "colour" either. —sroc 💬 01:56, 23 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It's not clear to me that this follows. Spelling and vocabulary are quite different things. Pburka (talk) 02:02, 23 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

You wouldn't say: "The boot was a different color from the body"—a mix of UK vocabulary and US spelling. That's schizophrenic. Remain faithful to the variety of the quoted speaker/writer. —sroc 💬 02:06, 23 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not arguing to change the rule. I'd just like to remove the rationale, which I think is not the real reason for the rule (or at least not the most important one) and weakens the statement by its presence. --Trovatore (talk) 02:53, 23 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

This kind of rule needs a fuzzy boundary. Very few quotes are verbatim (I seem to remember the press making some sports star look like a moron by quoting every "um", "er" and pause). When someone speaks a pidgin English, we translate into familiar English (else it would seem to be mocking), and if they speak another language, we translate. When a dialect differs enough that words might be unfamiliar, we substitute. I think that the 'trunk'/'boot' example is in the fuzzy zone where we expect the reader of either variant to be familiar with both words. I think the overarching rule should be to adjust the quotation sufficiently that a reader of that variant will be familiar with the language it is expressed in. It is also only if we wish to convey (or even draw attention to) the dialect/accent/jargon of the speaker that we should consider not translating to the variant of the article. We don't quote someone as saying "She picked fresh 'erbs", even though this standard pronunciation in much of the US. —Quondum 03:19, 23 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure, but it seems as though you're talking about quotations of speech here, is that correct? That's a very rare case. We work from reliable secondary sources (primarily secondary anyway, ha ha), and these are almost always written sources. I suppose there's no reason in principle why a reliable secondary source couldn't be in audio or video format, but in practice, they almost never are.

When we report a quotation from a printed reliable secondary source, we should never change the variety of English. No fuzziness at all. We just shouldn't do it. --Trovatore (talk) 03:37, 23 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I remember a few months ago there was a question here about an American magazine attributing a quote to, I think, Douglas Adams. The quote used American spelling, and an editor wished to know if they should change it to British English, given that Adams was British. (I may have the details wrong, but it's a good hypothetical, anyway.) Would you keep the American spelling in this case, even if the quote is attributed to a British author and used in an article with strong national ties to Britain? Pburka (talk) 03:45, 23 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

See my example above, with Obama and The Economist. --Trovatore (talk) 03:52, 23 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• I would normally use an article's prevailing engvar spelling in an oral quote, and of course never change envar in written quotes. But it would become awkward if both oral- and written-mode quotations are used in the same article where the speaker/writer sourced speaks a different variety from that in which the article is written. Best to use editorial judgment on those occasions—difficult to express in MOS. Tony (talk) 04:00, 23 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Someone has just said that consensus trumps the Manual of Style. Is this true? 156.61.250.250 (talk) 12:31, 23 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Sure. The MOS is not a policy, and the manual itself is determined by consensus. However, editors should understand the manual's goal of consistency across the encyclopedia. Also, remember that the MOS generally represents a community consensus, which shouldn't be superseded by local consensus among a small group of editors. See WP:CONS for a discussion of what consensus means. Pburka (talk) 13:14, 23 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Unless WP:IAR is invoked, which is an explicit decision that a given page should be different for what ever reason. That is a perfect legitimate way of operating according to the oldest and highest policy. Not to mention the longstanding... tension, shall we say, over just how much of a Wikipedia-wide consensus MOS actually is vs being the creation of only a handful of especially concerned editors who obsess over these details, and sometimes have an unfortunate habit of acting like their edits are automatically consensus because of the MOS. but I digress...oknazevad (talk) 18:01, 23 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Not true. I was doing some gnoming, figured that the principle of internal consistency trumped the MoS's position, and moved some stray commas so that the whole article was punctuated the same way. I got brought up on AN/I for it. No we don't get to ignore the MoS even when we have a reason that makes sense. For a wider example, there's the idea that individual wikiprojects don't get to make up their own rules for capitalization, etc. The biggest example is probably WP:BIRDS. Darkfrog24 (talk) 04:09, 24 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

See WP:BIRDCON for the very lengthy RfC on that one, winding down several years of resistance to MOS:LIFE by [certain vocal participants in] one wikiproject. The closing admin even personally favored the capitalization scheme propounded by the wikiproject, but posted a carefully reasoned, detailed close rationale in favor of MOS:LIFE's instructions. While the debate itself is too repetitive and long for most to wade through, the close is worth reading for the procedural reasoning that led to that conclusion. (And it's also interesting to note that the close did not even get to several other, non-procedural rationales for concluding against the demands of [some members of] that wikiproject, which would have led to the close going the same way anyhow.)  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  08:20, 24 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Several distinct points to cover here:

1. The general principle is covered at WP:LOCALCONSENSUS policy: Insular groups of editors (e.g. wikiprojects) do not have some kind of "sovereign" authority to override site-wide consensus (e.g. general-application guidelines like MOS and its subpages, or the naming convention guidelines that interpret WP:AT policy) in "their" articles. Wikiprojects do not "own" articles, no matter how vigorously they protest that an article is within their scope and that [some] participants in that project have agreed amongst themselves that they prefer something different to what MOS/NC advises. WP:GAN and WP:FAC regularly require compliance with MOS and NC guidelines, as just one example, and yes, editwarring at articles to push anti-MOS styles can result in actions at WP:ANI. A "wikiprojects are their own fiefdoms" approach cannot possibly be valid. Not just because that policy says so, but because the idea is simply irrational, for the simple reason that any given topic can be within the scope of multiple projects, which would (and historically did) lead to conflicting style demands on, even conflicting styles actually used within, the same article, and editwarring over it. Our Manual of Style is centralized and generalized to the extent possible, for real reasons.
2. Anyone who says "that's just a guideline" does not understand WP:POLICY; guidelines are not "ignore them any time you want" documents. They differ from policies primarily in a) covering editorial territory that is not absolutely critical to Wikipedia's basic values as a project (like verifiability, neutral point of view, no copyright violations, no personal attacks, and other policies), and b) consequently being easier to get consensus to change than policies.
3. If some wikiproject is darned certain that MOS (or the NC guidelines) have gotten something demonstrably wrong with regard to a topic area within the scope of the wikiproject, the sensible, well-accepted, and usually only effective procedure for making that case is to raise a discussion about it at WT:MOS, or maybe the talk page of the more specific guideline (WT:MOSNUM, WT:NCP, etc.). And raising it at WT:MOS is generally going to be the best tactic, especially if advertised via WP:RFC and (if it seems to warrant it) WP:CENT and WP:VPP, because it ensures that the result effectively cannot possibly be a "local consensus". MOS is one of the most important guidelines on the system, and one of the most watchlisted, since it basically effects every article. Various attempts to tweak an MOS subpage to get some specialized exception, that the proponents of which don't think will pass muster at WT:MOS itself, is generally a waste of time, because the main MOS page explicitly supersedes its subpages. I.e., if they are altered to contradict it, they are trumped. Anyway, the key fact that MOS has been built almost entirely by presenting arguments (proposals beforehand, or WP:BRD rationales after WP:BOLD edits) on its talk page, to change MOS to account for various cases that weren't accounted for before, is incontrovertible proof that the recommended procedure works.
4. A handful of editors tirelessly beating a "MOS isn't really a consensus" drum doesn't make their hypothesis true. The very facts that ANI, FAC, GAN, CFR, and RM, among other formal processes, depend on and "enforce" MOS, and that WP:AT policy explicitly defers to MOS repeatedly on style matters, clearly demonstrate that it's an accepted site-wide consensus, even if debates flare up here and there about some particular detail in it. It simply is not possible that some secret cabal controls MOS. Anyone can edit MOS (or, more often, propose and get consensus for an edit to it, using its talk page). Of course, MOS in practice is principally edited by those with a long-term interest in its content and stability. This also happens to be true of every other page on Wikipedia, except perhaps certain articles that are the subject of a lot of "drive-by" editing due to their topic's popularity or controversiality, and even those usually have a cadre of watchlisters who keep those pages sane.
5. Finally, WP:IAR is not the "oldest and highest policy" (it dates in some very different form to 2002, and has stably been labeled a policy only since 2005; WP:NPOV, WP:NOT, WP:EP, WP:DP, and WP:COPYRIGHT all date to 2001). More importantly, invoking IAR requires a serious rationale, not simply a refusal to play along for personal reasons: "If a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia" is actually quite a stringent requirement, rarely satisfied. The second, third, and fourth items at WP:Ignore all rules#See also explain fairly well when IAR is actually used legitimately, and why it's so infrequently used.

 — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  08:20, 24 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

What will the archive box at the top of this talk page look like when the talk page reaches 1000 archives?? The box will get wordier and wordier, that somewhere along the line it will take up too much space. Any thoughts?? Georgia guy (talk) 17:54, 23 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

That time is a looong way off for this page. Compare WP:ANI which is now at 886; some time ago it was adjusted to show the most recent 11 to 20 archive pages. The same is done for some of the other related pages, which all have fewer: WP:AN shows 11 to 20 out of a present count of 271. The Village Pumps like WP:VPT mostly show up to 25. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:35, 23 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

From MOS:PUNCT:

Where an apostrophe might otherwise be misinterpreted as Wiki markup, use the templates {{'}}, {{`}}, and {{'s}}, or use <nowiki> tags.

Straight quotation marks are easier to type and edit reliably regardless of computer configuration.

If we were using the curly apostrophe (and single quotation marks) everywhere, these cumbersome templates would not be needed at all. That’s a huge plus for “authorabilitiy”.

(Searches for Alzheimer’s disease will fail to find Alzheimer’s disease and vice versa on Internet Explorer)

This is not an argument to favor either curly or straight marks. It’s an argument to file bug reports for browsers to treat both the same. The same goes for the Wikimedia search engine.

So, the only remaining argument for preferring straight marks is ease of input:

Straight quotation marks are easier to type and edit reliably regardless of computer configuration

Considering autoformatting/autocorrection in Word etc., this could just as well be implemented in Visual Editor, this point is also very much moot. It comes down to this: one looks a bit better, the other is a bit easier to enter.

This doesn’t seem like being strong enough a reason to justify edits to transform a stable article from one style to another. Alas, that happens on a regular basis. So I’d like some backup to revert such minor changes without risking an edit war. Are you with me? — Christoph Päper 20:25, 23 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Ease of input is one major reason to prefer straight quote marks, but curly quotes also have little meaning in English. MOS:PUNCT has a longstanding consensus, so I don't think you will have much support for curly quotes. So when you see them being converted to straight quotes, don't revert. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 21:05, 23 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Can you explain how changing to straight marks article-wide, all at the same time, detracts from reader value? Perhaps I'm missing something, but I also don't see any value in a concept of article stability if it gets in the way of improvements to an article. ―Mandruss ☎ 22:29, 23 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The font which is used is a sans-serif, so curly quotes are not necessary. Also I use a Text editor with the curlies turned off, so what am I to do – turn them back on? Waste of time. BeenAroundAWhile (talk) 00:00, 24 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Ease of input is a very significant factor. Virtually no one is going to memorize special-character-generation codes for at least four different "curly" characters, much less memorize them different codes for the different OSes many of them use (e.g. Mac at home, PC at work, iOS phone, Android tablet). And there are other input concerns, especially for those of us that use external text editors, some of which throw errors about mismatched quotation marks, that can be a tedious to track down and fix in a long article. Imagine if English sometimes still used the long s except at the beginnings and ends of words, but that the usage wasn't consistent, and the codes to create them differed from OS to OS. Now imagine that Modern English had developed two variants of the long s and two of the short, and that each was used in specific positions in words, but that usually no one wanted to bother, and it did not actually aid readability in any way. See the problems yet?  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  08:30, 24 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The style given is just not being followed by WP editors and anyway is not the custom in the U.S. and Canada, so I was WP:Bold and simply deleted it. BeenAroundAWhile (talk) 23:54, 23 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

For the record, BeenAroundAWhile, I reverted you because, while Wikipedia editors generally do not follow WP:Logical quotation, this subject has been repeatedly debated at this talk page and attempts to achieve WP:Consensus to remove that text has repeatedly failed. There should be WP:Consensus for its removal. Flyer22 (talk) 00:01, 24 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Agree with the revert. Community consensus is established by discussion leading to guidelines, not by individual perception(s) of what's commonly done. ―Mandruss ☎ 00:06, 24 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Agree with BeenAroundAWhile that WP:LQ needs to be replaced; disagree that "just be consistent" is enough instruction. The English language has two systems for dealing with this, and we should tell people how to use them correctly. WP:LQ is the single most challenged part of the MoS for good reason. As for consensus, 1) The last RfC we had on this issue was written in a biased manner; 2) while a majority of participants said that we should use only British punctuation, the majority of sources said the opposite. Wikipedia's not a democracy. We're supposed to care more about what's verifiable than about what people happen to like. The MoS shouldn't have personal preferences up there as rules. There's no reason not to use ENGVAR for punctuation. Darkfrog24 (talk) 04:00, 24 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Mandruss, if you're concerned about compliance and individual perception, we actually did check the last time this came up: [1]. Compliance with WP:LQ is pretty low. Darkfrog24 (talk) 04:06, 24 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Darkfrog has campaigned for internal punctuation on the internet more widely, seeing it as a nationalistic issue. But she fails to account for the fact that it crosses the boundaries of national variety. Tony (talk) 05:23, 24 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Nevertheless, Darkfrog24, a sampling of articles says nothing about how many editors even know about the guideline. In my experience, even when an editor edits per MOS:LQ, they rarely bother linking to it in their editsum, so it appears they are just editing per their personal preference. This does nothing to educate other editors, and it's unwise to cite non-compliance to justify the elimination or modification of any guideline. ―Mandruss ☎ 05:29, 24 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]