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| :::::I considered the option of renaming the ] article to be in the plural, to match its lead sentence, so I checked ] which says generally the article title should be singular. Just to mess with my head, "]" is itself plural and starts with the singular, bolded "An '''article title''' is ..."! ] (]) 13:46, 29 January 2014 (UTC) | :::::I considered the option of renaming the ] article to be in the plural, to match its lead sentence, so I checked ] which says generally the article title should be singular. Just to mess with my head, "]" is itself plural and starts with the singular, bolded "An '''article title''' is ..."! ] (]) 13:46, 29 January 2014 (UTC) | ||
| == Standard paragraph length == | == Standard lead paragraph length == | ||
| With (which I reverted) by ], Spinningspark changed the longstanding part of the guideline that states " should ideally contain no more than four paragraphs and be carefully sourced as appropriate." Spinningspark changed it to "length should be commensurate with the size of the article and be carefully sourced as appropriate." And below on the same page, Spinningspark changed "As a general guideline—but not absolute rule—the lead should usually be no longer than four paragraphs." to "For a long article the lead might typically be four paragraphs—but this is not an absolute rule." Spinningspark cited ] for the changes. | With (which I reverted) by ], Spinningspark changed the longstanding part of the guideline that states " should ideally contain no more than four paragraphs and be carefully sourced as appropriate." Spinningspark changed it to "length should be commensurate with the size of the article and be carefully sourced as appropriate." And below on the same page, Spinningspark changed "As a general guideline—but not absolute rule—the lead should usually be no longer than four paragraphs." to "For a long article the lead might typically be four paragraphs—but this is not an absolute rule." Spinningspark cited ] for the changes. | ||
Revision as of 18:21, 27 February 2014
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Links in boldface
WP:BOLDTITLE kindly provides guidance what not to do:
- Links should not be placed in the boldface reiteration of the title in the opening sentence of a lead:
The Babe Ruth Award is given annually to the Major League Baseball (MLB) player with the best performance in the postseason. (Babe Ruth Award)
with the rationale that
some readers will miss the visual cue which is the purpose of using bold face in the first place.
which is all cool, but it does not offer a suggestion what to do instead. I stumbled upon Banana leaf and saw the just awful tautology "Banana leaves are the leaves of banana". Well, duh! So I changed it to something meaningful . However, there is no easy way to conform to WP:BOLDTITLE and provide a separate wikilink to banana anywhere near the first sentence. Sure, the lead could be completely rephrased to do that, but the above limitation sounds just too rigid in the first place. I could agree with such recommendation or guideline, but it should be phrased in softer terms, like adding a "however, when there is no simple workaround..." clause, to allow the practice in certain situations. Losing the "visual cue" is certainly a lesser evil than reading prose convoluted to satisfy artificial limitations. Thoughts? No such user (talk) 12:52, 27 January 2014 (UTC)
- I am not seeing that WP:BOLDTITLE requires that banana should be linked at all, let alone in the first sentence, and there are plenty more occurences in the first paragraph. It could even be argued that linking it is a case of WP:OVERLINK. If it is not overlinking the argument that "banana leaves are leaves of the banana plant" is a tautology starts to lose its force. SpinningSpark 15:44, 27 January 2014 (UTC)
- Well, it could be argued, but in this case Banana is clearly the main (summary-style) article for Banana leaves; we ought to link it somehow from the lead or a hatnote. Just now I stumbled upon Geography of Quebec, which violates the guideline in the same manner, and has done so since its inception in 2003 .
My opinion (and I'm open to be convinced otherwise) is that violating this guideline is sometimes a lesser evil than the alternatives. Similar problem is often exhibited in articles with obvious, descriptive titles, where the definition is unnecessary (Banana leaf, Geography of France), but there is a strong inclination to link back to the main article. No such user (talk) 16:05, 27 January 2014 (UTC)
- Well, it could be argued, but in this case Banana is clearly the main (summary-style) article for Banana leaves; we ought to link it somehow from the lead or a hatnote. Just now I stumbled upon Geography of Quebec, which violates the guideline in the same manner, and has done so since its inception in 2003 .
- In the case of Geography of Quebec and Geography of France the solution is simple, per MOS:BOLDTITLE:
In general, if the article's exact title is absent from the first sentence, do not apply the bold style to related text that does appear:
- The article's exact title (in particular the word "geography") does not appear in the lead sentence so do not bold Quebec or France, in which case the link is fine.
- Perhaps the better solution for Banana leaves and the like in general is to include the link, but not the bold:
Banana leaves have a wide range of applications ...
- on the grounds that the link is more useful than the bold. Actually I just noticed that this particular article is the singular Banana leaf, but the lead sentence is the plural - which means that removing the bold is the MOS-compliant solution (if the article's exact title is absent ... do not apply the bold style). Mitch Ames (talk) 12:47, 28 January 2014 (UTC)
- I don't think the MOS ever intended that to apply to plurals. It is simply a grammatical necessity that the plural has a different spelling. This is the same kind of thing as captialisation. The first word of the title is capitalised, but in running text it may not be unless the title term happens to occur at the beginning of the sentence. Even though it's plural, it is still effectively the same as the title term. SpinningSpark 20:21, 28 January 2014 (UTC)
- You might be correct about the intent of not applying to plurals, but the guideline does use the word "exact", not "effectively the same", and by any reasonable definition of the word exact, "banana leaf" is not exactly the same as "banana leaves". The exclusion of capitalisation can be deduced from the first two examples ("The electron ...", "The inaugural games of the Flavian Amphitheatre ...") but the same cannot be said for plurals because there is no corresponding example. If the guideline is intended to include bolding of plurals, then it should probably say so explicitly, and not use the word "exact. You may care to raise a change proposal RFC to that end, and see what the general opinion is.
- I don't think the MOS ever intended that to apply to plurals. It is simply a grammatical necessity that the plural has a different spelling. This is the same kind of thing as captialisation. The first word of the title is capitalised, but in running text it may not be unless the title term happens to occur at the beginning of the sentence. Even though it's plural, it is still effectively the same as the title term. SpinningSpark 20:21, 28 January 2014 (UTC)
- Of course one might also just reword the first sentence of Banana leaf. Per WP:LEADSENTENCE we don't have to use the article title (or its plural) in the lead so: "The leaves of the banana plant have a wide range of applications because ..." (link "banana", no bold). Mitch Ames (talk) 13:40, 29 January 2014 (UTC)
- I think I'll just be bold and change the MoS to exclude pluralization and capitalization from "exact". This is a long-standing practice anyway, I haven't even noticed the "exact" phrasing. No such user (talk) 15:52, 29 January 2014 (UTC)
- I think a better solution is to simply remove the word exact (which I have now done as editing of the page has commenced before ending the discussion). The problem here is people trying to treat the guidelines as legal regulations. The guidelines are just that, guidelines written by other editors. They all have a template at the top saying use common sense, but no one seems to read that bit. SpinningSpark 19:21, 29 January 2014 (UTC)
- Agree on all points. Nonetheless, I'd like if we can document the original issue I raised a bit better. Many people think that the lead sentence must repeat the title in boldface no matter what, and stretch and twist its wording to fit it in. We should clarify what we consider good practice. I have my own doubts about it, too (otherwise I wouldn't raise the issue). No such user (talk) 08:22, 30 January 2014 (UTC)
- The 1st and 5th bullet points of WP:LEADSENTENCE say "the title does not need to appear verbatim in the main text" and "the title of the article need not appear verbatim in the lead". MOS:BOLDTITLE says "If the article's title does not lend itself to being used easily and naturally in the opening sentence, the wording should not be distorted in an effort to include it." How much clearer do we need to make it? Mitch Ames (talk) 12:41, 30 January 2014 (UTC)
- Agree on all points. Nonetheless, I'd like if we can document the original issue I raised a bit better. Many people think that the lead sentence must repeat the title in boldface no matter what, and stretch and twist its wording to fit it in. We should clarify what we consider good practice. I have my own doubts about it, too (otherwise I wouldn't raise the issue). No such user (talk) 08:22, 30 January 2014 (UTC)
- I think a better solution is to simply remove the word exact (which I have now done as editing of the page has commenced before ending the discussion). The problem here is people trying to treat the guidelines as legal regulations. The guidelines are just that, guidelines written by other editors. They all have a template at the top saying use common sense, but no one seems to read that bit. SpinningSpark 19:21, 29 January 2014 (UTC)
- I think I'll just be bold and change the MoS to exclude pluralization and capitalization from "exact". This is a long-standing practice anyway, I haven't even noticed the "exact" phrasing. No such user (talk) 15:52, 29 January 2014 (UTC)
- I considered the option of renaming the Banana leaf article to be in the plural, to match its lead sentence, so I checked Misplaced Pages:Article titles which says generally the article title should be singular. Just to mess with my head, "Misplaced Pages:Article titles" is itself plural and starts with the singular, bolded "An article title is ..."! Mitch Ames (talk) 13:46, 29 January 2014 (UTC)
Standard lead paragraph length
With this edit (which I reverted) by Spinningspark, Spinningspark changed the longstanding part of the guideline that states " should ideally contain no more than four paragraphs and be carefully sourced as appropriate." Spinningspark changed it to "length should be commensurate with the size of the article and be carefully sourced as appropriate." And below on the same page, Spinningspark changed "As a general guideline—but not absolute rule—the lead should usually be no longer than four paragraphs." to "For a long article the lead might typically be four paragraphs—but this is not an absolute rule." Spinningspark cited Misplaced Pages talk:Manual of Style/Lead section/Archive 17#Four-paragraph lead for the changes.
Like I stated in the edit summary for my revert of Spinningspark's edit, I see no WP:Consensus that the page should have been changed in such a way. And I consider the changes problematic because this is a longstanding part of the guideline that most very experienced Wikipedians are familiar with, especially experienced WP:Good article and experienced WP:Featured article reviewers. Like Spinningspark stated in the above linked discussion, this portion of the guideline is practically set in stone. This to me means, because of its mass reach and the fact that most of the people familiar with it will not be aware of such changes made to it until much later, these changes should be something that the WP:Manual of style editors in general decide on; in other words, a lot more people. I feel that the general WP:Manual of style editors should be invited to this discussion. I also don't agree with the changes because I believe that we should have a standard length; the "ideally no more than four paragraphs" rule has remained strong because it usually does not take more than four paragraphs to summarize an article and we generally should not have articles that have leads exceeding that length; the last thing we need are people thinking that five or more paragraphs for the lead is generally a good thing. This portion of the guideline is not about "or a long article the lead might typically be four paragraphs—but this is not an absolute rule"; it's about the lead likely being too big if it exceeds four paragraphs. Flyer22 (talk) 18:20, 27 February 2014 (UTC)