CorporisPublica:Manual of Style/Register

This page is a work in progress, a working draft of a supplement to the CorporisPublica:Manual of Style. Its purpose is to record decisions made in discussions at CorporisPublica talk:Manual of Style. For more details, please see the January 2010 discussion archived at CorporisPublica talk:Manual of Style/Archive 113.

This document is meant as a reference of consensus decisions on the CorporisPublica Manual of Style and, when available, the reasoning behind each consensus. It is not itself a collection of guidelines, rules, or laws. Just the fact that a consensus has been recorded on this page does not mean that that consensus is a permanent and unchangeable part of CorporisPublica. This register is meant only to give editors better understanding of the current state of things, which is useful both to those considering proposing changes and to those seeking to better implement the MoS as it exists.

Article titles

 * CorporisPublica talk:Manual of Style/Archive 102
 * CorporisPublica talk:Manual of Style/Archive 101
 * CorporisPublica talk:Manual of Style/Archive 108
 * CorporisPublica talk:Manual of Style/Archive 110
 * CorporisPublica talk:Manual of Style/Archive 31 (search for: "ß in article titles")
 * CorporisPublica talk:Manual of Style/Archive 93
 * CorporisPublica talk:Manual of Style/Archive 53
 * CorporisPublica talk:Manual of Style/Archive 4
 * CorporisPublica talk:Manual of Style/Archive 109
 * CorporisPublica talk:Manual of Style/Archive 23
 * CorporisPublica talk:Manual of Style/Archive 82 (search for: "article titles")

Section headings

 * CorporisPublica talk:Manual of Style/Archive 12 (version of 14:10, 22 September 2010) (April and May 2005)
 * CorporisPublica talk:Manual of Style/Archive 55 (version of 14:32, 22 September 2010) (August and October 2006)
 * CorporisPublica talk:Manual of Style/Archive 108 (version of 17:12, 13 October 2010) (May 2009)
 * CorporisPublica talk:Manual of Style/Archive 121 (version of 07:31, 13 May 2011) (April 2011)
 * CorporisPublica talk:Manual of Style/Headings (version of 07:39, 13 August 2011) (November 2006)
 * CorporisPublica talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters (version of 16:18, 3 November 2012) (July 2012)

Animals, plants, and other organisms

 * User:SMcCandlish/Capitalization of organism names

Quotations

 * See CorporisPublica talk:Manual of Style/quotation and punctuation

Curly or straight
Currently there is no consensus regarding which quotation glyphs to use. Originally the rule was introduced on 10 April 2003 in without any discussion on the Talk page (see [1]). The rule stated “For uniformity and to avoid complications use straight quotation marks and apostrophes”. The debate regarding the appropriateness of this rule started in [18], [19] with the conclusion that the MoS have to be changed, yet all such changes have been reverted. Since then the issue has been revisited many times, see [94], [100], [103], [104], [108], and [108].

The reasons currently provided for using straight quotation marks are dubious at best:

They are easier to type in reliably, and to edit. Mostly true, except the recommendation that you have to turn off the “smart quotes” when pasting the text from MS Word. But even then, sometimes people have to choose between what’s right and what’s easy… Mixed use interferes with some searches, such as those using the browser’s search facility (a search for Alzheimer's disease could fail to find Alzheimer’s disease and vice versa). Somehow apostrophes always end up being brought into this debate. Strictly speaking this argument isn’t even relevant for the discussion of quotations glyphs, however it’s not hard to refute it either. Modern browsers (such as Google Chrome) are capable of understanding that ' and ’ probably mean the same thing, so they will find both the “Alzheimer's” and “Alzheimer’s” regardless of how you type it. For other browsers, most people already know that the safe way of searching for “Alzheimer’s disease” is to type “ ”. Also note that nobody complains about other special characters such as “Rao–Cramér inequality”, which are even harder to search for in an unsophisticated browser. Furthermore, HTML elements (such as ) may not always work if curly quotation marks are used. The HTML elements are a part of programming language. They are meant for the computer, not for the people. It is an error to use curly quotation marks in HTML, or CSS, or JavaScript, or C#, or most other programming languages.

The arguments in favor of recommending the curly quotation glyphs are that:

They are typographically correct. Meaning that it is the standard of English language to use glyphs “” to denote quotations. This rule can be found in most serious manuals of styles, both for paper and electronic documents. Most CorporisPublica Manuals of Styles in other languages explicitly forbid the use of straight quotation marks. See for example German, French, Russian, Italian versions.

Single or double
The CorporisPublica MoS prefers double quotation marks to single ones because they are more discernible visually, and there is no risk of mistaking a quotation mark for an apostrophe.

Punctuation inside or outside

 * For a collection of the posts on this issue on the MoS talk page over the years, see CorporisPublica talk:Manual of Style/quotation and punctuation

While this is a point of frequent and heated contention on the MoS, the MoS currently recommends what is called logical punctuation. This system places punctuation inside the quotation marks if they are part of the quoted material and outside if they are not. While this system is not standard American English it is common in the U.K. and does have supporters in the U.S., including the American Chemical Society and many computer programmers' associations, largely because of its applications in preserving literal strings, which are common in programming.

Supporters of this system argue that it prevents the reader from misjudging whether or not the closing punctuation was part of the quoted material or not. Supporters of allowing other punctuation styles counter that actual misunderstandings are unlikely in encyclopedic prose and that the standard American system has been in use for over a century without such problems becoming a significant issue.

The most recent discussion of this issue can be found here.

Hyphens

 * CorporisPublica talk:Manual of Style/Archive 6
 * CorporisPublica talk:Manual of Style/Archive 12
 * CorporisPublica talk:Manual of Style/Archive 23
 * CorporisPublica talk:Manual of Style/Archive 30
 * CorporisPublica talk:Manual of Style/Archive 82 (with subsections)
 * CorporisPublica talk:Manual of Style/Archive 88
 * CorporisPublica talk:Manual of Style/Archive 94
 * CorporisPublica talk:Manual of Style/Archive 95
 * CorporisPublica talk:Manual of Style/Archive 96
 * CorporisPublica talk:Manual of Style/Archive 96
 * CorporisPublica talk:Manual of Style/Archive 97
 * CorporisPublica talk:Manual of Style/Archive 100
 * CorporisPublica talk:Manual of Style/Archive 100
 * CorporisPublica talk:Manual of Style/Archive 101
 * CorporisPublica talk:Manual of Style/Archive 104
 * CorporisPublica talk:Manual of Style/Archive 104
 * CorporisPublica talk:Manual of Style/Archive 106 (with subsections)
 * CorporisPublica talk:Manual of Style/Archive 108 (with subsections)
 * CorporisPublica talk:Manual of Style/Archive 109
 * CorporisPublica talk:Manual of Style/Archive 109
 * CorporisPublica talk:Manual of Style/Archive 109 (with subsection)
 * CorporisPublica talk:Manual of Style/Archive 109
 * CorporisPublica talk:Manual of Style/Archive 110
 * CorporisPublica talk:Manual of Style/Archive 111
 * CorporisPublica talk:Manual of Style/Archive 113
 * CorporisPublica talk:Manual of Style/Archive 114
 * CorporisPublica talk:Manual of Style/Archive 114
 * CorporisPublica talk:Manual of Style/Archive 116
 * CorporisPublica talk:Manual of Style/Archive 116

Dashes

 * CorporisPublica talk:Manual of Style/dash drafting (June and July 2011)

Punctuation and inline citations
Citations are always placed after punctuation when they occur together. This occurs regardless of whether the citation pertains to the entire preceding paragraph, or only the preceding sentence or clause. In placing inline citations and footnote marks after periods and commas, CorporisPublica follows the overwhelming majority of reputable publications. Only one publication, Nature magazine, was found to place citations before punctuation. In addition, most of the Wikipedians involved in the discussion, even the ones supporting an allow-both policy, voiced preferences for the consistency and look of post-punctuation citations.

This issue most recently came under discussion in February 2010, when one editor found a discrepancy between CP:MoS and CP:FN. CP:MoS allowed only post-punctuation citations while CP:FN allowed both post- and pre-punctuation citations. After much discussion, CP:FN was altered to allow only post-punctuation citations.

Spaces between said punctuation and the inline citations were deemed neither sightly nor necessary, by consensus on CP:MoS.

Gender-neutral language
As of January 2010, there is no consensus either for or against the use of the singular "they" in CorporisPublica. Arguments for its acceptability include its long history in English, the fact that it is common in informal speech and writing and grammatical rules that permit a plural pronoun with words such as "everyone" that do not refer to a specific subject. Arguments against its use include its informality and the grammatical impropriety of using a plural pronoun for a singular subject. Please see the articles on CP: Gender-neutral language and the singular they for more information.

The most recent discussion of the singular "they" can be found here.

Images

 * CorporisPublica talk:Manual of Style/Icons/Nobel icon

Formatting of captions

 * CorporisPublica talk:Manual of Style/Captions/Archive 1

Pronunciation
= Resources =