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faq page Frequently asked questions Wikipedia's Manual of Style contains some conventions that differ from those in some other, well-known style guides and from what is often taught in schools. Wikipedia's editors have discussed these conventions in great detail and have reached consensus that these conventions serve our purposes best. New contributors are advised to check the FAQ and the archives to see if their concern has already been discussed. Why does the Manual of Style recommend straight (keyboard-style) instead of curly (typographic) quotation marks and apostrophes (i.e., the characters " and ', instead of “, ”, ‘, and ’)‍? Users may only know how to type in straight quotes (such as " and ') when searching for text within a page or when editing. Not all Web browsers find curly quotes when users type straight quotes in search strings. Why does the Manual of Style recommend logical quotation? This system is preferred because Wikipedia, as an international and electronic encyclopedia, has specific needs better addressed by logical quotation than by the other styles, despite the tendency of externally published style guides to recommend the latter. These include the distinct typesetters' style (often called American, though not limited to the US), and the various British/Commonwealth styles, which are superficially similar to logical quotation but have some characteristics of typesetters' style. Logical quotation is more in keeping with the principle of minimal change to quotations, and is less prone to misquotation, ambiguity, and the introduction of errors in subsequent editing, than the alternatives. Logical quotation was adopted in 2005, and has been the subject of perennial debate that has not changed this consensus. Why does the Manual of Style differentiate the hyphen (-), en dash (–), em dash (—), and minus sign (−)? Appropriate use of hyphens and dashes is as much a part of literate, easy-to-read writing as are correct spelling and capitalization. The "Insert" editing tools directly below the Wikipedia editing window provide immediate access to all these characters. Why does the Manual of Style recommend apostrophe+s for singular possessive of names ending in s? Most modern style guides treat names ending with s just like other singular nouns when forming the possessive. The few that do not propose mutually contradictory alternatives. Numerous discussions have led to the current MoS guidance (see discussions of 2004, 2005, 2005, 2006, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2008, 2008, 2009, 2009, 2009, 2012, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2017, 2017 (the RfC establishing the present consensus), 2018, 2018, 2019, 2021, 2022). Why doesn't the Manual of Style always follow specialized practice? Although Wikipedia contains some highly technical content, it is written for a general audience. While specialized publications in a field, such as academic journals, are excellent sources for facts, they are not always the best sources for or examples of how to present those facts to non-experts. When adopting style recommendations from external sources, the Manual of Style incorporates a substantial number of practices from technical standards and field-specific academic style guides; however, Wikipedia defaults to preferring general-audience sources on style, especially when a specialized preference may conflict with most readers' expectations, and when different disciplines use conflicting styles.

Discussions on this page often lead to previous arguments being restated. Please read recent comments, look in the archives, and review the FAQ before commenting.

Section sizes Section size for Wikipedia:Manual of Style (157 sections) Section name Byte count Section total (Top) 2,657 2,657 Retaining existing styles 2,787 2,787 Article titles, sections, and headings 137 12,896 Article titles 3,441 3,441 Section organization 4,752 4,752 Section headings 3,756 4,566 Heading-like material 810 810 National varieties of English 847 6,724 Consistency within articles 1,274 1,274 Opportunities for commonality 1,882 1,882 Strong national ties to a topic 1,468 1,468 Retaining the existing variety 1,253 1,253 Capital letters 648 18,724 Capitalization of The 984 984 Titles of works 1,232 1,232 Titles of people 780 780 Religions, deities, philosophies, doctrines 4,974 4,974 Calendar items 701 701 Animals, plants, and other organisms 5,616 5,616 Celestial bodies 1,249 1,249 Compass points 1,203 1,203 Proper names versus generic terms 1,337 1,337 Ligatures 495 495 Abbreviations 778 8,144 Write first occurrences in full 640 640 Plural forms 245 245 Punctuation and spacing 1,175 1,175 US and U.S. 1,929 1,929 Circa 279 279 Avoid unwarranted use 662 662 Do not invent 874 874 HTML tags and templates 383 383 Ampersand 1,179 1,179 Italics 105 6,366 Emphasis 1,133 1,133 Titles 572 572 Words as words 1,320 1,320 Non-English words 751 751 Scientific names 499 499 Quotations in italics 581 581 Italics within quotations 767 767 Effect on nearby punctuation 638 638 Quotations 1,355 17,463 Original wording 3,688 3,688 Point of view 1,234 1,234 Typographic conformity 5,818 5,818 Attribution 438 438 Quotations within quotations 94 94 Linking 483 483 Block quotations 3,214 3,214 Non-English quotations 1,139 1,139 Punctuation 203 77,257 Apostrophes 2,064 2,064 Quotation marks 394 13,595 Quotation characters 1,035 1,035 Double or single 1,234 1,234 For a quotation within a quotation 869 869 Article openings 729 729 Punctuation before quotations 2,023 2,023 Names and titles 1,331 1,331 Punctuation inside or outside 3,717 3,717 Quotation marks and external links 940 940 Quotation marks and internal links 1,323 1,323 Brackets and parentheses 3,366 4,571 Brackets and linking 1,205 1,205 Ellipses 3,363 3,363 Commas 4,876 8,072 Serial commas 3,196 3,196 Colons 1,868 1,868 Semicolons 3,331 5,721 Semicolon before "however" 2,390 2,390 Hyphens 9,985 9,985 Dashes 939 16,165 In article titles 759 759 In running text 2,195 12,353 In ranges that might otherwise be expressed with to or through 3,064 3,064 In compounds when the connection might otherwise be expressed with to, versus, and, or between 5,212 5,212 Instead of a hyphen, use an en dash when applying a prefix or suffix to a compound that itself includes a space, dash or hyphen 1,297 1,297 To separate parts of an item in a list 585 585 Other uses for en dashes 543 543 Other uses for em dashes 966 966 Other dashes 605 605 Slashes (strokes) 3,341 3,948 And/or 607 607 Symbols 595 595 Number (pound, hash) sign and numero 2,310 2,310 Terminal punctuation 737 737 Spacing 512 512 Consecutive punctuation marks 1,151 1,151 Punctuation and footnotes 2,179 2,179 Punctuation after formulae 218 218 Dates and time 361 5,083 Time of day 794 794 Dates 1,033 1,033 Months 323 323 Seasons 774 774 Years and longer periods 1,080 1,080 Current 718 718 Numbers 1,884 1,884 Currencies 1,637 1,637 Units of measurement 2,737 2,737 Common mathematical symbols 2,606 2,606 Grammar and usage 46 12,752 Possessives 158 1,918 Singular nouns 975 975 Plural nouns 523 523 Official names 262 262 Pronouns 104 5,813 First-person pronouns 1,494 1,494 Second-person pronouns 2,315 2,315 Third-person pronouns 1,900 1,900 Plurals 2,005 2,005 Verb tense 2,970 2,970 Vocabulary 98 22,558 Contractions 476 476 Gender-neutral language 1,692 1,692 Contested vocabulary 256 256 Instructional and presumptuous language 2,461 2,461 Subset terms 618 618 Identity 1,957 3,604 Gender identity 1,647 1,647 Non-English terms 301 8,016 Terms without common usage in English 1,547 1,547 Terms with common usage in English 400 400 Spelling and romanization 4,917 4,917 Other non-English concerns 851 851 Technical language 1,961 1,961 Geographical items 3,376 3,376 Media files 69 2,791 Images 313 313 Other media 181 181 Avoid using images to display text 884 884 Captions 526 1,344 Formatting of captions 818 818 Bulleted and numbered lists 1,552 1,552 Links 10 1,750 Wikilinks 1,411 1,411 External links 329 329 Miscellaneous 18 13,493 Keep markup simple 1,219 1,219 Formatting issues 1,016 3,146 Color coding 1,245 1,245 Indentation 885 885 Controlling line breaks 2,471 2,471 Scrolling lists and collapsible content 3,164 3,164 Invisible comments 1,554 2,817 How to add an invisible comment 1,263 1,263 Pronunciation 658 658 See also 1,199 4,870 Guidance 1,242 1,242 Tools 300 300 Other community standards 523 523 Guidelines within the Manual of Style 310 1,606 Names 1,296 1,296 Notes 24 24 References 28 28 Further reading 1,206 1,206 Total 228,484 228,484

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Add a link to new discussions at top of list and indicate what kind of discussion it is (move request, RfC, open discussion, deletion discussion, etc.). Follow the links to participate, if interested. Move to Concluded when decided, and summarize conclusion. Please keep this section at the top of the page.

(newest on top)

• Template talk:Infobox song#RfC: customizing infobox background colors based on album or single cover colors – involves MOS:COLOR concerns (Jan.–Feb. 2025)
• Talk:1925 Tri-State tornado#Requested move 26 December 2024 – involves a number of style and title questions, including capitalization, disambiguation preferences, what the most common name in RS is, etc.; reopened after move review (Dec. 2024 – Feb. 2025)
• Talk:Vasa (ship)#Informational footnotes (again) – a discussion pertaining to MOS:RETAIN and MOS:LAYOUT (Jan.–Feb. 2025, following on a not quite conclusive Feb. 2024 RfC)
• Talk:Armenian-occupied territories surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh#Requested move 18 December 2024 – a MOS:AT / WP:AT question (involving ambiguity, consistency, concision, and other concerns)
• Talk:Second Italo-Ethiopian War#Flags in the infobox – a MOS:FLAGICONS matter (Nov. 2024)
• Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Biography#Proposal to import a line-item from WP:JUDAISMSTYLE into MOS:BIO – to use policy-based material on "Christ" found in an essay but more useful in a guideline (Nov. 2024)
• Wikipedia talk:Article titles#Request for comment on the relationship between WP:CRITERIA and WP:TITLEFORMAT – has stylistic implications (punctuation, leading "The", etc.) despite not being intrinsically an MoS matter (Nov. 2024)
• Talk:Battle of Tory Island#Infoboxflags – use of flag icons in infobox per MOS:INFOBOXFLAGS (Sep.–Nov. 2024) – See also prior Talk:Sino-Soviet border conflict#Belligerents flags.

 You are invited to join the discussion at Archimedes § MOS:'S. Remsense ‥ 论 21:13, 29 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Specifically, input would be appreciated regarding the treatment of derivative proper names (e.g. Archimedes' principle) in running text versus the titles of dedicated articles. Thanks! Remsense ‥ 论 07:36, 10 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Just for the record, I detest and/or, which the MOS backs me on, but (besides ... instead of the clearer [...] in quotations) I also detest Archimedes's. Can't we just use the Latinate genitive Archimedis? --Florian Blaschke (talk) 04:56, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

As someone who does not particularly despise Archimedes's, I would cast my even less ramified ;vote for that. Remsense ‥ 论 05:01, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Me also. It’s a straightforward grammatical rule that ‘s indicates a possessive singular and ‘ ,following on from an s, indicates a possessive plural. That is clear to both casual and expert readers alike, and the large majority of our readership nowadays wont have any familiarity with the archaic or traditional forms used for a handful of mostly ancient historical figures. MapReader (talk) 05:30, 7 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Not quite; ‘s indicates a possesive of either a singul or of a plural not ending in s. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 13:34, 7 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The genitive Archimedis is faux Latin in this situation. The correct Latin is la:Cochlea Archimedea (the adjective wikt:Archimedeus = Archimedean). More importantly, the Latin genitive is confusing in English. 173.206.40.108 (talk) 02:25, 7 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It seems to be required by MOS:WAW that any statement that uses constructions like:

• This concept is called Example, ... (also termed, known as, referred to as, etc.)

italicize the term. However, this is almost never consistently done even in many of our FAs (see Introduction to general relativity, used as an example in the MoS), and many other publications are unbothered. Am I worrying about something that doesn't make a difference in the clarity of many passages?

I just struggle with paragraphs like (adapted from Chinese characters § Zhou scripts):

It just looks weird that maintaining a natural flow in more jargon-y passages requires two terms to be italicized and one not to be. It looks arbitrary, and might even confuse readers if they notice? Remsense ‥ 论 01:56, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think that either of the phrases in the example qualify as words as words. WAW, I think, applies to things like, "Of all the nouns, birdcage is the best." Or, "...some egghead discovered a misprint of the book, with relative misspelled." I would use quotation marks in the example you provided.

Unless, of course, I'm mistaken. Primergrey (talk) 01:35, 17 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If I diagram the sentence This is known as Example. out, it is clear to me that Example must be analyzed as representing the word Example, not the referent Example in itself.

Maybe the wording needs to be relaxed or massaged a bit—something like, when a word is being invoked as the topic of discussion, as opposed to its merely functioning "as a word" to accomplish an identical task within a sentence (e.g. introducing vocabulary) that many other constructions would. Remsense ‥ 论 17:56, 25 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Your initial example is definitely a "words as words" usage: as you say, we're calling out the name of a thing, not the thing itself.

Note that this is accepted style outside of Wikipedia (see the Chicago Manual of Style FAQ entry). Even if it's not applied consistently throughout the encyclopedia, it should be fixed when its absence is encountered like any other brokenness.

Personally, I find the "Chinese characters" example to be more readable with the WAW examples set off in italics, for the reasons given in the Chicago FAQ entry.

"But it's broken in a lot of places" is not a reason to avoid fixing it or to soften the guideline language. (See MOS:THISISALIST as another example of "boy, sure is broken a lot".)--NapoliRoma (talk) 18:45, 25 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes and no: of course a rule going unfollowed isn't itself reason to throw it out, but it's also the case that guidelines are meant to reflect consensus, and if no one understands this to be the guideline, then there's a disconnect that has to be bridged one way or t' other. The question is whether a softer position like the one I tossed out above is both logically consistent and in line with consensus.

Two more points: firstly, what isn't illustrated in the example passage is that the frequent use of italics in prose is tiring on the eyes. Secondly, prose gets unwieldy fast when other uses of italics (non-English, emphasis indicating contrastive stress) also appear with some frequency—it's strictly correct that italics for non-English terms is also just a WAW usage, but I think the reader tackles the patterns differently enough that they can then be conflated and confused. Remsense ‥ 论 19:15, 25 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that it's less than clear. My mental shortcut is: If I could mentally add the "the word" before the word which might be italicized, it should be italicized, otherwise no. So, I wouldn't italicize "This concept is called the word Example, ...". But I would italicize in "Of all the nouns, the word birdcage is the best." SchreiberBike | ⌨  22:49, 25 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I understand that there is generally something of a taboo about breaking the entirety of a section into subsections without leaving any "independent" content; i.e., having all of the information under a given level two heading further located under level three subsections. I can see the appeal of having a separate paragraph at the beginning of the section as a sort of mini-lead, but as far as I can tell, there is nothing in the MOS requiring this. Is there truly anything wrong with having part of an article formatted like this, even if it isn't the most popular? — Anonymous 00:57, 24 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

No, there's nothing wrong with this. I've done this in multiple Good Articles including Antiparallelogram, Binary logarithm, and BIT predicate. I don't recall seeing any complaints about this from the GA reviewers. As long as the section title is self-explanatory enough and its subsections independent enough, one doesn't need a section summary paragraph first. In all of these cases, one could add a paragraph briefly summarizing each subsection, but it wouldn't add much useful content to the article. —David Eppstein (talk) 02:37, 24 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Per above, there are obvious cases when it is advantageous versus when it is not. It depends on which structure feels more or less natural for discussing the subject at hand, as obvious as that may sound.

(Someone tell me if I'm wrong here, but iirc German academia actually has particular preference for perfect cover by the subsections within monographs etc. A bit different than ordinary technical writing esp. since it's doing something very particular, but the infamous Tractatus comes to mind as the total reverse.) Remsense ‥ 论 03:08, 24 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Just to be clear, executive order titles do not have quotations, correct? Across such articles, I have seen some with and some without, and MOS:NEITHER is not too explicit. I am asking due to the influx of executive order pages being created. Why? I Ask (talk) 10:53, 24 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Do you mean whether quotation marks should be used around their titles when referring to them? Gawaon (talk) 03:49, 25 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Gawaon: Yes... For example, see Restoring Names That Honor American Greatness versus Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government at the time of writing this comment. I am fairly certain it should be no quotation marks, but given their equal prevalence, I thought I should ask. Why? I Ask (talk) 03:53, 25 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'd say that yes, quotation marks should be used around them. We generally use quotation marks around titles of the kinds of works that are typically short and rarely published stand-alone (newspaper and journal articles, short stories, poems etc.), and use italics for long, stand-alone works (novels and other books, films and TV series etc.). Executive orders seem to fall into the short category and so get quotation marks. Gawaon (talk) 04:12, 25 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think we'd benefit from some explicit guidance in MOS:TITLES or MOS:LAW regarding laws, orders, etc. Currently, there doesn't seem to be much consistency. Affordable Care Act (USA) is in plain text, while Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act 2003 (Australia) is italicised. I also note that most treaties (e.g. Treaty of Versailles, Montreal Protocol) are simply capitalized. pburka (talk) 04:27, 25 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, MOS:NEITHER would make it seem like they do not get quotations as legal documents. That is what the MLA guidelines say, at least. I just wanted to ask before any mass edits. Why? I Ask (talk) 04:48, 25 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I find capitalization sufficient for executive orders, laws, acts, etc. I don't see them in quotes in sources. I've noticed that Australian acts, etc. seem to be italicized, but I've never made the effort to investigate it. If something is capitalized on Wikipedia, that identifies it as a proper noun, a specific thing. That's enough. SchreiberBike | ⌨  12:53, 25 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

According to the government style guides of both Australia and Canada, laws go into italics. But it seems like the United States and the United Kingdom do not use either quotes or italics. This is probably a case of WP:ENGVAR that the MOS on law or title of works should cover. Why? I Ask (talk) 18:55, 25 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

MOS:ELLIPSIS says: "Wikipedia's style for an ellipsis is three unspaced dots (...); do not use the precomposed ellipsis character (…) or three dots separated by spaces (. . .)".

Do this cover only the U+2026 character …, or also the U+22EF midline horizontal ellipsis ⋯ (a.k.a. centered dots), in which case this should be mentioned?

I'm asking because there was an uncontroversial technical request by Hairy Dude to move 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + ⋯ (with the midline horizontal ellipsis) to 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + ... (with an uncentered horizontal ellipsis). I don't know whether using uncentered dots is typographically correct in this context. In examples, Help:Displaying a formula#Larger expressions suggests the use of centered dots in such a case. About this, I've opened a discussion: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Mathematics#Dots / ellipsis in math formulas.

— Vincent Lefèvre (talk) 13:39, 26 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Also, it would be helpful if any mention of Unicode character beyon ASCII, e.g., U+2026 … HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS, U+22EF ⋯ MIDLINE HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS, used the {{unichar}} template -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 15:57, 27 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It definitely only covers lowered dots, U+2026. The other kinds of ellipsis are used primarily in mathematical formulas and replacing them by individual dots would break the formatting of those formulas. Hairy Dude has stated in Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Mathematics that the supposed "uncontroversial technical request" (which per that discussion turned out to be controversial and was reversed) was based on a misunderstanding: they incorrectly believed that the dots in the article in question were lowered dots, U+2026, possibly because of technical limitations of their browser. Centered dots are typographically correct for this formula, and uncentered dots are incorrect. (The meaning is still conveyed but the formatting is not good, kind of like writing the name Lefèvre without using the grave accent.) —David Eppstein (talk) 18:15, 27 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Are there any circumstances apart from mathematical formulas where they might legitimately be used? pburka (talk) 00:15, 1 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I read that to be Wikipedia's style for an ellipsis is three unspaced dots (...) prohibits all other types of ellipses; the other things after the semicolon appear to be "including but not limited to". The purpose of MoS is consistency.

The centering can easily be done with {{DISPLAYTITLE:1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + <span style="position:relative;bottom:0.3em">...</span>}}. In fact with this CSS, the dots render more centered on my computer. 173.206.40.108 (talk) 08:06, 6 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Is n-th or nth supposed to be used? If you do know, please add it to the dash/hyphen section of the page as that's where people will probably look for it, (idk if a hyphen or en dash is supposed to fall between "n" and "th") and if there is not a standard set for Wikipedia I think that it should be set to be "n-th" with a hyphen to match the OEIS, as n-th is typically referring to a sequence and the OEIS is probably the organization to look to when handling sequences. Apersoma (talk) 19:47, 28 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The OEIS, great as it is, is not eminently viable as a style guide, since its choices seem to be made toward facilitating plaintext representations. Since we're typically meant to italicise variables, wouldn't nth be correct? Remsense ‥ 论 19:50, 28 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

My preference would actually be n^th, as a specific exception to the rule about not using superscripts here, because it extends better to (n+1)^st and so on. I think (n+1)st is kind of confusing. --Trovatore (talk) 20:23, 28 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You don't think that would be potentially confusing for expressions involving exponentiation? Remsense ‥ 论 20:27, 28 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah. I don't know any solution that can't be confusing. I think the superscripts might be a little better. --Trovatore (talk) 21:11, 28 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Reasonable minds may differ here I think. Given variables are theoretically italicized, I think I prefer the other method as more parsimonious. Remsense ‥ 论 21:18, 28 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I strongly prefer nth, not n-th. The OEIS choice is not standard elsewhere and appears to be a hack to allow them to continue to use plain-text ASCII formatting and still distinguish the formula part from the text part. Because we do not limit our content to plain-text ASCII we do not need and should not use this hack. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:03, 28 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

So what do we do with en-plus-first? --Trovatore (talk) 21:06, 28 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

${\displaystyle (n+1)}$th, pronounced "n plus wunth". —David Eppstein (talk) 21:57, 28 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Understanding perfectly well orthography need not adhere to phonology when semantics is what matters—is it common to pronounce it "n plus first"? Remsense ‥ 论 21:59, 28 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sure you can hear it pronounced that way but I think it is incorrect. We are using the numerical value of 1 in the expression, not using 1 in the positional sense, so it is "one" not "first", and then the suffix "th" applies to the whole expression. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:00, 28 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

As I thought, then. Thank goodness. Remsense ‥ 论 22:02, 28 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don't agree with David about it being incorrect. Both forms are found in the wild, but in my experience "first" is more usual, and I prefer it because it just sounds better. --Trovatore (talk) 22:07, 28 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Only until you think about it some more. It is a type error. "First" is grammatically ordinal, but the 1 in the subexpression ${\displaystyle n+1}$ is not mathematically ordinal. The meaning of the expression is ordinal(plus(n,1)), not plus(n,ordinal(1)). There are natural-language ways of combining ordinals (by which I mean positions, not mathematical ordinals): "second best" or "second from last") but the operation they represent is not quite addition. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:58, 28 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I mean, I understand what you're saying. But you could make the same argument about twenty-first. In Italian (for example) you'd say ventunesimo, not *ventiprimo, but in English the suffix "agrees", so to speak, with the last numeral in the expression, which I think makes (n+1)-st or however you want to handle hyphen/superscript/etc more natural for English. --Trovatore (talk) 23:07, 28 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think we need any guidance about this in MOS:DASH. We needn't list all the cases where dashes/hyphens aren't used, and I imagine anyone pondering whether to use one would end up at nth, which has an example of correct formatting. pburka (talk) 00:05, 29 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I feel that it's time to change the paeudo-namespace to "MS:" because the "O" is for "of" and typically abbreviations shouldn't include letters standing for "of". style="color #964b00 Cyber the tiger🐯 (talk) 00:01, 31 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

See what happens if you click this link, coded [[MS:Laman Utama]]: MS:Laman Utama. Largoplazo (talk) 00:33, 31 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

See, for example, LOC, TOC, and MOU. pburka (talk) 02:01, 31 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Good point. Also, POS and DoS attack. And, in the US, DOJ, DOE, DOD, DOT, and DOL. And G.O.A.T. Largoplazo (talk) 02:18, 31 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I offer MoS. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:58, 31 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Layout § Semi-protected edit request on 28 January 2025 fix contradiction with WP:MOSSIS. 173.206.40.108 (talk) 07:28, 6 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Apparently WP:BECONCISE, WP:SUCCINCT redirect to WP:TLDR, a stupid term with bad redirects. One of my professors is on a team editing the world's (maybe formerly) largest science/mathematics book--on abstract algebra--which was 20,000 pages (multi-volume). It was made more efficient (saying more with fewer words) while describing same, so they reduced to maybe 5,000 pages (or in range of 10% to 1/3). Isn't that what conciseness/succintness is, though for most people, still too long to read? Redirects should be to more (less unintellectual) details here (or WP:CONCISE), not a crass Internet meme term mostly used by Millennials, Zoomers who grew up reading few books; there's an article how even freshmen at USA's elite colleges feel they can't read books, because they never got in the habit. I'm not deletionist, but I'd say delete WP:TLDR, because people saying that about one full-length standard (not extended) Twitter/X statement (increasingly common) may not want knowledge.--dchmelik☀️🦉🐝🐍(talk|contrib) 06:18, 9 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It's just an essay, not policy. Gawaon (talk) 02:25, 10 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, well people are throwing many of these around maybe implying they should be followed, and 'WP' could look official. What about the redirects?--dchmelik☀️🦉🐝🐍(talk|contrib)

If you want to move or delete Wikipedia:Too long; didn't read you'll have to suggest doing so on that page. Success would be more likely without weird comments about people now in their 40s growing up without books. CMD (talk) 13:57, 10 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If you want others to read your posts? Then comply with their requests to shorten them. You can't force others to read'em. GoodDay (talk) 17:55, 10 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah but TLDR is an insult. "I didn't read your whole paper, it was [not succinct enough, not concise enough, too prolix, whatever] might sting but is not an insult and is constructive criticism. "Here's your paper back, TLDR" is just dismissive. Herostratus (talk) 01:05, 11 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Actually I went ahead and did put in a requested move there. Herostratus (talk) 02:24, 11 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Good; thanks. I don't consider 'TL;DR' an insult, but indeed dismissive, anti-intellectual, and not conducive to discussion: if they won't read what others say, why should anyone read what they say, and why say it at all? It's often a waste of others' time just like many people only replying 'me too' when Eternal September started on Usenet and then early world wide web (WWW) forums--dchmelik☀️🦉🐝🐍(talk|contrib) 18:32, 19 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]