User:Robert Ullmann/Form of

Stub entries

We have created huge numbers of sub-minimal stub entries that lack any English definition at all:

Spanish Verb saltáramos The first-person plural in the imperfect subjunctive mood of the verb saltar.

This contains almost no information at all. It says it is a verb, and one must look elsewhere to decode what it might be. To a non-native speaker of English, or one who doesn't know the grammatical forms (i.e. most users are one or both) it is useless.

Compare:

Esperanto Verb estu (jussive mood of esti) (command) be, may [something] be Patro nia, kiu estas en la ĉielo, Via nomo estu sanktigita. Our Father, who is in heaven, may Your name be kept holy.

This says it is the "jussive mood", but one need not have any clue what "jussive" means. It has a definition in English, and an example of use. Its meaning is clear, without requiring any particular knowledge of Esperanto or its grammar. This is what a dictionary should do. The inflection is on the inflection line and it refers to the infinitive or whichever citation form is used. The definition line contains a definition.

Also compare another "form of" entry:

English Noun fucopyranose (plural fucopyranoses) (biochemistry) The pyranose form of fucose.

Is this a form of a noun? Keep in mind that "pyranose" is just as obscure as "jussive" to 99.9% of the readers. (Did you know what either meant before reading this? Do you know now?) This is a proper definition of the word, and the inflection is on the inflection line where it belongs.

Better entries

Starting with the present verb form entry:

Spanish Verb salto (infinitive: saltar) First-person singular (yo) present indicative form of saltar.

We move the inflection where it belongs, and add some more to make a good stub entry:

Spanish Verb Template:defn form

The entry has the same information, with the inflection on the inflection line. But it is now set up to be expanded. The wikitext looks like this:

===Spanish=== ====Verb==== {{infl form|es|verb|saltar|1|s|pres|ind}} # {{defn form|es}} #: <!-- example of use --> #:: <!-- translation of example -->

This means that another editor can come along and expand it with the desired definition and examples, without having to reformat an entry that has no apparent place to add them:

Spanish Pronunciation IPA(key): [sal.ˈtəʊ] Verb (I) jump Yo salto la valla. I jump the fence. Conjugation

And now we have a proper entry.

As shown, the conjugation table can be included, it is one line of wikitext.

This requires that tables are not set up to rely on {{PAGENAME}} and don't improperly categorize when the inflection line template should be doing that. Unfortunately this one does, but has been fixed to only cat in NS:0 so can be used in an example such as this. A simple method to fix templates that do is to categorize if and only if PAGENAME=infinitive, this has been done in some templates. Templates that rely on PAGENAME can be fixed by changing that to {{{inf|{{PAGENAME}}}}}, or the corresponding terms for declensions rather than conjugations.

Definitions

As most forms in highly inflected languages do not have corresponding forms in English, grammatical periphrasis is used, as usual when using the same verb (etc) in English. For example, the future perfect of "do" is "will have done". This gives the reader a very clear idea of the tense and mood, and the English inflection as part of it ("done" for "do").

Swahili Verb (I) went (to) Jana, mimi nilikwenda sokoni nikanunua chakula. Yesterday, I went to the market and then I bought food.

Example sentences

The example sentence(s) then should take great care to show the form in the correct usage for the inflection. It may take a native speaker to do this well.

Swahili Verb (I then) bought Jana, mimi nilikwenda sokoni nikanunua chakula. Yesterday, I went to the market and then I bought food.