Talking Point

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I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wiktionarian! If you have any questions, bring them to the Wiktionary:Information desk, or ask me on my talk page. If you do so, please sign your posts with four tildes: ~~~~ which automatically produces your username and the current date and time.

Again, welcome! -- Cirt (talk) 05:05, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

Signature.

Sorry, but your signature is problematic, for reasons given at Wiktionary:Signatures. (But I'll grant that it's clever!) —Ruakh_TALK 21:30, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Hello Ruakh -- Well, I'm sort of sorry too, but I honestly don't see it as problematic. In fact, I think it conforms superbly to every criterion at Wiktionary:Signatures. It isn't offensive, misleading, or promotional; it links directly to my user page (not quite sure what "prominently" means there, but my full signature is the link and is cleanly separated from the preceding text and the subsequent date/time stamp); it's very easy to recognize and remember and matches my username to a T; it also comes in nicely under the 255 character limit. So I still feel really good about it. We may just have to agree to disagree regarding this ... er ... point. — · 18:10, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Capitalization

Re diff: one of the things "capitalization" refers to is "choice of case (uppercase or lowercase)", and hence about half of the uses of Template:alternative capitalization of are on uncapitalized pages, soft-redirecting them to capitalized pages, and the other half are soft-redirects in the other direction. I'm not sure there should be a proper noun section at god, but if the discussion at RFD decides that there should be, the template ISMETA used was fine. - -sche (discuss) 01:19, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

Hello -sche: Thanks for your message. I'm a bit sorry to say this, since I see that it was you who made the "choice of case (uppercase or lowercase)" change to the definition of capitalization, but I think that definition is probably wrong (as are the many uses of Template:alternative capitalization of for uncapitalized terms). I don't see support for this definition in any dictionary at OneLook or in my unabridged Random House, and the gold-standard OED explicitly defines capitalization as: "The action of writing or printing something in capitals; the action of changing a text from lower to upper case." I also don't see any clear support for your definition in the citations provided with that entry and I'm unpersuaded by the earlier discussion about this with other editors on your talk page. I really, honestly think that the OED is probably right and that this definition is probably wrong. -- · (talk) 03:18, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

Undoing specification of verbs as ergative rather than transitive|intransitive

Generally, but specifically in relation to the verbs scorch and tip which you recently amended to undo my edits, why do you think using the transitive|intransitive form has "superior clarity" to using 'ergative'? My understanding of Wiktionary cross-referencing (and I confess I'm a relative novice) is that an ergative verb is automatically included in the List of Ergative Verbs only if the ergative specification is used in the definition.

Further, I think that using the ergative spec adds to an understanding of the word's usage. English is rich in ergative verbs, and I believe Wiktionary's users benefit from having them identified, far more than simply being informed that the verb has both transitive and intransitive usage.

Using the term "ergative" means that the same (in fact, more) information can be conveyed with fewer words - it is more concise.

I'd like to hear your views, and please reconsider your undoing.

Finally, I see that I may have incorrectly changed the initial capital letters to lower case. My apologies. I noticed that the use of capitals is inconsistent in Wiktionary.

Harry Audus (talk) 02:47, 22 December 2015 (UTC) Harry Audus