Wikisource talk:Style guide

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[edit] Disambiguation guidelines

I propose the following guidelines for disambiguation pages.

Disambiguation pages
A disambiguation page is a page listing multiple works of the same name (example: The Raven).

  1. Page titles should be the ambiguous title being disambiguated.
  2. The {{header}} template is standardised: the title is the ambiguous title; the section name is "(disambiguation)"; the notes contain the template {{disambig}}.
  3. Disambiguated works are listed in bulleted form as such:
    * '''[[The Raven (Poe)|The Raven]]'''—A poem by [[Author:Edgar Allan Poe|Edgar Allan Poe]]
  4. Disambiguated work titles: see 'Page titles'.

// [admin] Pathoschild (talk/map) 20:33, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. Although, what is the difference between number 3 and number 4?—Zhaladshar (Talk) 01:44, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
Sounds good to me, too; I believe the difference is the formatting of the actual titles of the works, such as The Raven (Poe) and The Raven (Someone Else). My only thought was that perhaps we could change the colour of the header on the disambiguation page, to make it clear that this isn't a work... however, it's not really necessary. Jude (talk,contribs,email) 01:51, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
Number 3 covers the formatting of each line on the disambiguating page, whereas number 4 covers the disambiguated page titles themselves. // [admin] Pathoschild (talk/map) 16:42, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

It says with no links except the titles. However I think a link to the author's pages could be useful. Yann 20:15, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Naming policy

I don't understand the naming policy—why would we want The scarlet letter and not The Scarlet Letter? Or The pilgrim's progress, The gambler, Pride and prejudice, etc. Why not use simple rules like capitalize all words except articles and 2-4 letter prepositions? It seems that that is the de facto policy; perhaps this page should be updated? --Spangineerwp (háblame) 18:57, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

The naming convention is for titles with no original capitalisation, intended to correct problematic titles like "Presidential Radio Address Of 17 May 2006" or "NEWSPAPER ARTICLE ON THE WAR OF 1812". For most words, the phrase "unless an original capitalisation is consistently used" overrides the previous statement. For example, if "Pride and Prejudice" is the most common capitalisation, that one should be used instead. Think of it as a default capitalisation for works with no original capitalisation.
Regardless, this section will soon be replaced by a global naming policy that will be more in-depth. // [admin] Pathoschild (talk/map) 19:14, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the response. Has the work on the more detailed naming policy already begun? --Spangineerwp (háblame) 19:24, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
It's on my short-term to-do list; I intend to begin once I finish TemplateScript. It should be ready for proposal in a week or two. // [admin] Pathoschild (talk/map) 19:38, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

OK, let's make a proposal. I suggest replacing:

Sentence form (most words lowercase) is preferred, unless an original capitalisation is consistently used. Normal exceptions, such as proper nouns, apply.

with

Capitalisation for titled works using title case: all words capitalised except short (< 5 letters) articles, prepositions, and conjunctions (except when the first or last word); but if the title is consistently capitalised in a different format, use that instead. For originally untitled works (e.g. Bin Laden's letter to Mullah Mohammed Omar), use sentence case: all words uncapitalised (except the first word), with the normal exception for proper nouns.
--Pharos 10:36, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Text formatting

What kind of formatting is generally permissible? For example, what about converting "--" to "—" and making ellipsis spacing consistent? --Spangineerwp (háblame) 22:21, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Personally, I always change -- to an em dash (using {{--}} or '—' (it's so much easier to type an em dash on a mac!)), and insert elipses etc. But I don't know if it's generally how people work. There doesn't seem to be any overt policy on typography (although maybe one is emerging?). But, I'm nearly two years late with this reply, so I guess you've figured something out by now... :-) — Sam Wilson ( TalkContribs ) … 07:56, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Naming and translated works

Do we want names for translated works under (1) original title in foreign language, (2) direct translation of title in foreign language, (3) whatever some old PD translation was originally published under, or (4) whatever is considered the "common" name in English, i.e. the Wikipedia naming standard. Personally I would suggest (4), but either way I think we do need some standard here.--Pharos 04:17, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Long 's' (ſ)

Is there a final policy on the use of long 's's (unicode character 017F: 'ſ', 'ſ')? Some works (e.g. Elegie I) keep it, but there seems to be a lack of consensus (see Wikisource:Scriptorium#Typography_queries). Would it be useful to create a template (say, {{Long s}}) to be used for every instance of a long s, so that it could be easily changed to a short 's'? Is there a way of changing how the template operates on a per-work basis? That might be useful, although if a site-wide policy were to be decided upon it would be unnecessary. —Sam Wilson contrib's | talk 02:21, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Just to tidy up here, and in case anyone's missed it elsewhere: please use the long 's' template (either {{Long s}} or {{ls}}; they're the same) for transcribing these characters. The template is currently set to display the long 's' on Page namespace pages, and a modern 's' on Main namespace pages; this makes for easier reading and source fidelity. There is not yet a way to change the output on a per-work basis. — Sam Wilson ( TalkContribs ) … 07:51, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
Why should it display a modern 's' in the main namespace? We should match the original orthography; if necessary, we can add an explanatory footnote or header description. —{admin} Pathoschild 08:16:50, 08 September 2008 (UTC)

Actually that's just what I thought at first, too. But now I quite like the idea, especially as it's so easy to change at any point — ideally, I'd like to see some way of changing it on the fly, per-page as it were. Certainly, reading modern Ss is easier than long Ss (although after a page or so the become pretty invisible). User:Jayvdb added the code to display differently in the main namespace, by the way; maybe he can add some extra explanation.

I'm not sure about being completely true to the original orthography, though: we don't, for example, use st ligatures (do we?), or match fonts; isn't this in the same league? Hmm, maybe I'm being contradictory there: I do want to keep the long Ss, after all… so I don't know.  :-)

Sam Wilson ( TalkContribs ) … 09:41, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

[edit] lefttext & prose CSS classes

As far as I can see, it doesn't matter which of these classes is used when one is formatting a page that contains {{Page}}s: they both provide a left margin that the [page] link sits in. So it's just up to the editor? Or are there other differences between these two that I'm not aware of? And are there any other similar classes that it would be useful to mention in the Style guide?

Personally, I prefer the prose class, with the adition of font-family:serif (like this paragraph), because it's actually almost possible to sit down and read a lengthy text on-screen, or so I find. I would support some guideline that encourages editors to use somesuch formatting, if anyone else is into it…

Sam Wilson ( TalkContribs ) … 08:07, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Personally, I find sans serif fonts (especially nice wide ones like Verdana) easier to read on-screen than serif fonts. Printed on paper, though, I prefer serif fonts. Angr 11:08, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Author naming convention

Following on from the discussion about {{Initials}} on template's talk page and WS:S, it would seem that we have a policy to have full names, not partials (first/last) or initials. I would think that if we have the preference for full names then we should be specifically stating that, rather than leaving it for contributors to discover for themselves at a point in time. If this page is to be kept simpler, then maybe we could add that direction to {{Author}}. -- billinghurst (talk) 10:24, 28 December 2008 (UTC)