Wiktionary talk:English entry guidelines

Etymology

This document could briefly note the dates, major changes (e.g. futhorc->Latin alphabet, vowel shift, þ/ð->th, æ, etc.), and bulk borrowings (Norman/Anglo-Norman, Anglo-French) associated with Old English (ang from 450 to 1066), Middle English (enm from 1066 to 1500), and Modern English (eng from 1500 to present). Not sure exactly what detail to include here since I don't spend much time writing English etymology sections, but some detail would probably be helpful. —Rod (A. Smith) 20:59, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

There should probably be a subpage on the history of language, with a summary thereof on the main page. — This unsigned comment was added by DCDuring (talk • contribs).

Thoughts on content

We need to get some links to the most important WP articles on English and to the WP categories and portals relevant to English. Also our own few appendices. Tests for parts of speech in English and discussions of other lexical categories would be appropriate.

Idiomaticity and proper nouns may need some place for longer term thought, whatever our policy or practice is at the moment. This seems a good place to place such subpages. I have a feeling that idiomaticity does not mean the same thing to someone thinking about Chinese, English, and French, for example. It might be desirable to develop the consequences of these differences in each language. DCDuring TALK 16:15, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Noted tests for Determiners and placed some tests for Nouns at Appendix:English nouns#Tests. Wish I could find more. --Bequw → ¢ • τ 18:04, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Acronym or Initialism

Some terms cross the line between acronym and initialism, being able to be pronounced letter-by-letter or phonetically like a word (FAQ or SAT). I think they should be put into both categories, but what should we put as the POS header? My inclination is to put "acronym" since it is more widely known and in common parlance is used for both types. But what about when the letter-by-letter pronunciation is more common (which I believe is the case of SQL)? Or IRA where the organization is only pronounced letter-by-letter but the financial tool is pronounced both ways? Would it be fine to just note these details in the Pronunciation section? --Bequw → ¢ • τ 18:57, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

There's the same problem for terms that are pronounced part letter-by-letter and part phonetically (JPEG, CD-ROM). Again, should we categorize as both, but put "acronym" as the header? --Bequw → ¢ • τ 08:02, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

A term that is part pronounced as a word and part pronounced letter by letter is still an acronym. As for CD-ROM, IMO, that is merely an SOP construction of a nominal initialism (CD) followed by a postpositive adjectival acronym (ROM). † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 23:49, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Debated PoS

Leaving aside the tricky issue of numbers/numerals, the two part-of-speech headers that are currently "debated" at WT:AEN#Parts of Speech are Particle and Contraction. Is there consensus for their usage? I can't find any BP discussions about them. --Bequw → ¢ • τ 01:00, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

For English, I don't think Particle is a generally accepted header, but Contraction might be if you took a straw poll. There are other languages where each of those headers is essential, but I'm not aware of a consensus for English entries. --EncycloPetey 02:51, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

I have been amusing myself with Category:English words suffixed with -n't. CGEL would have us believe that at least some of these are inflected forms of verbs. Perhaps, but that would not cover 'tisn't and I'ven't very well, unless English is to be made out to be more of an inflected language than is customary. I think "I'ven't" is not a grammatical constituent in a canonical sentence, though it could be used anaphorically as a complete sentence. Other contractions are a bit problematic in the same way, especially those that include a form of the particle "to" ("gonna") or are composed of a pronoun and an auxiliary verb ("I've"). These non-constituents cannot readily be assigned to traditional PoS headers. I have been placing multiword non-constituents under the non-traditional PoS header "Phrase". On its face, this seems like a poor choice for contractions that are spelled solid (eg, "gonna"), and little better for contractions with apostrophes. I conclude that we cannot readily dispense with the Contraction header. If my determination about items being non-constituents is wrong, then perhaps all items can be assigned to traditional PoS headers. Contractions should be the only single words that have the potential to be non-constituents, excluding abbreviations from consideration.

The question remains what should be included under that header. Only terms with apostrophes, but not possessives? All compounds with omitted letters or eye-dialect respellings? All words with both apostrophes and omitted letters? What is the boundary between abbreviations of various types and these? Between blends and these?

Finally, I am not sure whether we gain much by having some things that strongly resemble contractions debatably assigned to traditional PoS categories rather than under the contractions header. The items that should belong to a traditional PoS would be contractions of single words which have a traditional PoS (eg spellings of "boatswain"). DCDuring TALK * Holiday Greetings! 03:05, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Current en.wikt categorization of contractions is messy. Apostrophes don't appear to necessary when the expansion has whitespace (coulda) but are sufficient when the expansion doesn't (ma'am). I dislike that ma'am and Mr are categorized differently. What if we used the wikipedia (w:Contraction w:Abbreviations) distinction that abbreviations are only truncations (so "Mr" would be a contraction)?

I agree that fitting contractions into grammatical-PoS categories/headers isn't beneficial when the expansion contains whitespace. --Bequw → ¢ • τ 08:22, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm flip-flopping on this. What about the using the contractions header the same way I have used Phrases. That is, assign any contraction to a traditional PoS if its expansion is a phrase that could be assigned to a PoS and use Contraction as a residual header. That would leave all the one-word non-constituents in contractions and provide a temporary home for those that have debatable PoS. A contraction is like an alternative spelling in many ways. We use alt sp as a category, but the term retains its PoS. Unlike what I did with phrases where I have assumed that the presence of whitespace was an adequate marker to distinguish a phrase from a word of the same PoS, we should use Category:English contractions to mark all contractions no matter what PoS header they have, even one of the abbreviation headers.

Some asides: We need to make sure that the contraction always appears as a synonym for the expansion if the expansion is included. Why don't abbreviations have a grammatical PoS header? They aren't all proper nouns or even nouns. A phrase that includes a contraction shouldn't be be deemed a contraction, should it? The category has some of those. DCDuring TALK * Holiday Greetings! 13:05, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

I think your view of "only assign it a Contraction header if it doesn't fit a particular PoS" describes my feelings, or at least it describes how I've been operating up to now. You can browse the entries at Category:Galician contractions to see some examples (in Galician) that don't fit a single PoS. Spanish has a few similar contractions like al and del, but Galician contracts every article (and some determiners) in combination with a wide range of preceding prepositions. I haven't entered the entire list as entries yet, but the category contents as they are should give you the idea. --EncycloPetey 15:47, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

There might be general principles of applied lexicography here: 1., the primacy of generally accepted, useful grammatical categories and, 2., the need for permanent residual categories that don't have embarrassing names. "Words not otherwise classified" is embarrassing; "contractions" and "phrases" seem much less so. (In traditional grammar, I think of "adverbs"). DCDuring TALK * Holiday Greetings! 16:25, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Acronym orthography exceptions

I see two common exceptions to our orthographic conventions and wonder if they are standard and should be codified:

1. Measure acronyms (mph for "miles per hour") and some latin acronyms (q.v.) are in lower case. But what about AD? And are there other foreign acronyms that are lower-cased?
2. Latin acronyms with periods (q.v. instead of qv).

I'm pretty sure about the first, but not so for the second (style guides differ). --Bequw → ¢ • τ 09:36, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

Interjections

I have posted some thoughts at Wiktionary talk:Interjections. Comments are welcome. — This unsigned comment was added by DCDuring (talk • contribs).

Hyphen as a word divider

Currently it seems that the only English word divider we recognize is the space (and phrase dividing punctuation such as ( ? ! . , ; — ). This implies then that anything set off by white space is a single word and therefore worthy of inclusion. I think we should include a nuanced view of the hyphen given hyphenation rules about compound modifiers. Almost all adjectival and adverbial phrases that precede their modificand are hyphenated for clarity while only some of them are hyphenated when they follow their modificand. So we have "well-respected gentleman" but "that gentleman is well respected". I think that we should only include English terms with hyphens if the terms contain the hyphens when not used as a prefixed compound modifier. Said another way, the hyphen may act as a word divider when it is used to clarify compound modifiers. This change would prohibit the addition of long terms such as in "he's a knock-your-socks-off kind of guy". --Bequw → ¢ • τ 18:14, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

I think I agree with the idea. I hope the wording is precise. What would the force of reaching agreement on this page on this matter? DCDuring TALK 10:46, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Capitalization of titles

I'm seeking confirmation that we should have separate, capitalized English entries for Titles and Styles of address (such as Doctor and Lord). It would appear we should from looking at Category:Titles. On the other hand, many of the upper case forms of titles have been deleted (eg Chairman and Coach). Were the deletions just a result of the ConversionScript mess (they were just redirects at the time) or should we not make these separate entries? --Bequw → ¢ • τ 05:34, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Would we be able to reap the benefit in terms of a shorter, more comprehensible entry at, say, doctor, or would a well-meaning contributor add the title sense at doctor? It is just like interjections. Whatever I think about Interjections and whatever the "used-as-exclamation/interjection context and definition under another PoS for the headword, I expect users will decide that the headword needs an interjection PoS. I know it is against current practice or policy to keep the capitalized redirects, but they do serve to discourage duplicative entries of this type. In their absence we will get the capitalized entries eventually. DCDuring TALK 10:54, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Placement of Gutenberg rankings

As I mentioned at Template_talk:rank#Placement I think we should change the placement of the Gutenberg rankings. I think the easiest change would be to move them from the top of the English entries to See also sections. This information is too insignificant to have more prominence than pronunciations and definitions so should be moved lower. It would also make the entries more standardized with the ELE as the See also section is where links to non-etymologically-related terms should be. Sound fine? --Bequw → τ 15:57, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Sounds great to me. Even the other frequency information is quite space-consuming, as well as not being comprehensive enough. Wouldn't readers be better served by counts in corpora for less frequent words (especially monosemic ones) than what we give them? DCDuring TALK 16:11, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Actually, the more I think about it, the more I think Trivia might be a better fit. The ELE claims See also is for semantic relationships, which the rankings don't impute. --Bequw → τ 20:51, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

Rankings are not of any great import to users, AFAICT. Trivia seems OK to me.

I have interpreted See also as for semantic relations other than the several specified, as a holding pen for words not yet assigned to a semantic relation with a more specific header, and for sister projects (which are, after all, not "external" to the WMF family). DCDuring TALK 22:15, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

I don't think we should be moving anything into a "Trivia" section, on the contrary we should be getting rid of them as there is always going to be better place to put anything worth having, and anything that doesn't fit anywhere else should be deleted. The rankings are useful information, and what could be less trivial to a dictionaric work than information about the usage of words? Perhaps we should have a separate header for "statistics" or something like that, as the Gutenberg rankings are only one metric, and I can forsee us having others in the future. I agree that "See also" is not a good fit. Thryduulf (talk) 22:53, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

The problem is that Gutenburg ranking isn't even a good metric. Gutenburg has mostly pre-1913 works so the statistics off by at least a century. It's also not a good sign when we have WT:PREFS to completely hide it. Statistics could be a good header. Is there other useful info that we could acquire easily that would fit there? --Bequw → τ 04:37, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

I got it. Usage notes! --Bequw → τ 14:55, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

The templates are quite extravagant in their use of space wherever the space is taken. It might be justifiable for contemporary frequency levels or rankings, but hardly for Gutenberg. All the frequency templates bear little information on the entry, most of the space being taken by links to other entries and surrounding prettification. I have always thought that frequency rankings from sources such as BNC and COCA, especially, for not-so-common words would be useful, especially to discourage the creation of translations for non-occurring words. (We could then progress to excising non-occurring words from translations and definitions.) DCDuring TALK 16:59, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

I'm not convinced "usage notes" is the right place to put it as it doesn't really fit that well with the current contents of such sections, which is typically explaining nuances of current usage or other similar things that require more words than would fit in a context label or as part of the definition. Definitely not with the current template (and I agree with pretty much everything DCD says above) as it will overwhelm what's there already - where they are currently doesn't conflict with anything else. I'm coming round to the opinion that we need a companion page for things like frequency rankings, other statistics, etc. - something akin to the citations pages perhaps? Thryduulf (talk) 22:24, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

Well we should do something with them, as the current position is probably the worst. We could make them less overwhelming for Usage notes sections by removing the other words with nearby rankings. I don't think anyone browses that way and we can just have a link to the list. We could make it more useful by extending it so that other frequency statistics could be shown as well. The output could be something like:

• Prevalence: #84 most popular word (Gutenburg), #90 (BNC)

As we already have another per-entry namespace (citations) I'd want to see more potential information before we add another one (it takes programming and then we'd have to have another tab at the top etc.).--Bequw → τ 23:45, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

"Well we should do something with them, as the current position is probably the worst.", I disagree with that - while the current situation may not be good, overwhelming or confusing the usage notes section would be worse (and I'm not convinced the reformatting you suggest wont do just that). Worse than that would be to keep moving it hither and thither.

Regarding "another per-entry namespace", yes we'd need to decide what went in it (frequency rankings? anagrams? word play? spelling bee trivia? scrabble records? false friends? extensive list of cognates?), and whether it needs a tab or just a namespace or maybe even a pseudo-namespace? We should be thinking about the answers, not dismissing the questions. Thryduulf (talk) 00:34, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

I guess I'm not sure what you mean then by "overwhelming or confusing". How would a single line be overwhelming? How would showing commonness of usage be confusing (esp. since similar info already exists in this section, e.g. encyclopedia#Usage notes)?

I'm not trying to dismiss the questions associated with an additional NS, I just don't see the need. Editors currently have places for all the things in your list (I hope Usage notes, Anagrams, Trivia, Trivia, Trivia, Etymology, Etymology). There may be more logical ways to organize the content, but that would have to be shown first. --Bequw → τ 03:07, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

The very idea: putting frequency-of-usage statistics in Usage notes! The trimmed-down content and link to the complete list that you propose would be a great improvement and would not prejudice eventual further improvement. Incremental improvement seems to be the only kind of improvement we can manage. DCDuring TALK 10:40, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

(unindent) Could you do a mockup of how it will look in the usage notes section as it seems what I'm thinking it will look like is not what you and DCD are thinking it will look like. Regarding the placement of the things I suggested, see a new discussion on the beer parlour. Thryduulf (talk) 11:11, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

I've made {{rank/test}} and put it on free (entry w/o an existing Usage notes section) and its (entry w/ an existing Usage notes). How do they look? --Bequw → τ 03:29, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

It looks nice, but I am bothered by a category problem. Usage notes is usually associated with a PoS and has an L4+ header whereas usage ranking, as usually measured, is associated with an L2 header. I also think we might be committing an act of zeugma inappropriate in a dictionary by using two different senses of "usage" (not distinguished in our entry for usage, BTW) under the heading:

1. amount of use: corpus-based frequency of a spelling.
2. manner of use: how-to-use-this Ety/PoS (including alternative spellings).

-- DCDuring TALK 11:35, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I had thought of this. WT:ELE#Usage notes technically says the header can come anywhere (and sometimes already contains such L3 info - encyclopedia#Usage notes). In linguistics, I have seen frequency statistics at the sense-level, though it's not as common as at the spelling level. Does running a poll (informal vote) to see what people prefer sound good? If need be a run-off between the most-liked solution and the status-quo can be done after that. --Bequw → τ 14:21, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

That would seem to be yet another passage of WT:ELE that I dislike. I especially dislike the introduction of an L4 Usage notes header under Etymology or Pronunciation.

Not only don't we have sense-level frequency, we don't have ety or PoS-level. Even COCA is not reliable as to PoS though they purport to have such capability.

We might be ready for a straw poll. I think we would want to make clear that we are referring to a near-bottom-of-L2 placement for an L3 Usage notes header. DCDuring TALK 14:49, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

e.g.

Should e.g. be written with or without periods? According to this page, it should have periods since it's a "truncation", however the usage suggests otherwise. And maybe it's due to my AE bias, but I think "Dr." and "Mr." are far more common than "Dr" or "Mr". In fact, I would even go so far as to say they are incorrect (in formal American writing).71.155.237.72 18:26, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

Descendants

How do we feel about Descendants sections in English entries (for example, see pickaninny#Descendants? --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 21:28, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

Why would we object?--Prosfilaes (talk) 22:27, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

I thought there might be a reason, because I've almost never seen it. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 23:12, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

We don't have much information on the descendants of English, but I don't see where we shouldn't use it where we have it.--Prosfilaes (talk) 09:53, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

It's pretty standard to put {{qualifier|borrowed}} when it's the case, the only languages which are descended from English are creoles. Mglovesfun (talk) 09:57, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

Entry created first to be made "lemma"

In diff, an -sche (talk • contribs) introduced this to the page:

"If a word is spelled differently in different standard varieties of English, the spelling (that is, the entry) which was created first is made the lemma; to avoid unmaintainable duplication of content, other spellings soft-redirect to it."

• I oppose and reject this would-be policy. This has not been the common practice for the time for which I was editing Wiktionary since the end of 2006. A notable example of this not being the common practice is color vs. colour, both of which host content, as they should.

  I favor that a spelling that is very common overall and still fairly common in the U.K. is made the main entry, even if the U.K. variant was created first; this contradicts the proposed policy. If this is not favored by the editors, at least a spelling that is more common both in the U.S. and the U.K. should be made the main entry even if a less common alternative spelling was created first.

  A related discussion is at Wiktionary:Beer_parlour/2013/July#British.2FAmerican_spelling_and_redirects. Other related dicussions include Wiktionary:Beer_parlour_archive/October-December_05#Especially_British_.3F, and Wiktionary:Beer_parlour_archive/March_06#First quarter 2006 US vs. UK flamewar. --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:36, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

• I support the policy while also noting that it only applies to spellings that are exclusive to one area or the other. Spellings which are accepted in most places should naturally have priority over local, less-used variants. This means that the rule does not apply to -ize because that is used everywhere, but it would apply to -or/our. —CodeCat 10:45, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

  Re: "... while also noting that it only applies to spellings that are exclusive to one area or the other.": The policy does not say anything of the sort. If you read it again, it is not constrained to spellings that are exclusive to one area or the other. --Dan Polansky (talk) 12:38, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

  Re: "...but it would apply to -or/our": "-or" are not exclusive to U.S.: see GNV: color, colour constrained to British corpus. So per your constraint to "spellings that are exclusive to one area or the other", the policy would have probably very small area of application, if any at all. --Dan Polansky (talk) 12:43, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

I suppose the logic is, a bad rule is better than no rule at all? Mglovesfun (talk) 11:14, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

Really? Such as the infamous attributive-use rule that excluded many more place names than editors actually wanted? --Dan Polansky (talk) 12:38, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

Actually, Wikipedia has a similar policy, but it only applies in the absence of consensus of the preferred spelling, from what I remember. So if the editors cannot agree which spelling to use as the main one in a particular case, the first created one is used. But that is different from the policy proposed above. --Dan Polansky (talk) 12:40, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

I wrote that as a question, not a statement. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:56, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

• I support this fair and useful rule. --Vahag (talk) 11:34, 31 August 2013 (UTC)
• I oppose this as a limitation on the use of facts about usage and frequency to determine which form is an appropriate lemma. Usage examples as well as the terms used in the definiens should differ according to the language and culture of the regions involved. It is no accident that most of the major dictionary publishers have US and UK editions that differ in more than just their covers. If we don't have a sufficient number of English-language contributors to support this, then we should consider that the problem might lie in the effect of our entire complex of practices on newbies. DCDuring TALK 13:16, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

Ditching our "complex of practices" would certainly make us more welcome to newbies but would impair the quality. There's already Urban Dictionary for people who want to go and write anything, without any rules. Equinox ◑ 13:21, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

It's hardly a question of "no rules". A good user interface doesn't require "rules", just as a well-designed door doesn't require a sign saying "push" or "pull". The more we require learning and following explicit rules rather than improving the user interface to facilitate compliant contributions the more we favor those who are already contributing and discourage those who might reinvigorate the place. DCDuring TALK 14:12, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

• Support  The wording might be improved. But it’s easy enough to infer from the current text that a word that has an acceptable common spelling used in all varieties of English needn’t consult this fall-back rule. So, for example, if baptize is perfectly acceptable in both British and North American English, even if it is not the most common everywhere, then it would be a more appropriate lemma spelling than baptise.  —Michael Z. 2013-08-31 20:51 z

  It's not easy enough for me at all to infer what you are inferring from the rule; is this perhaps written in the rule using an invisible ink? But anyway, can you clarify whether "behavior, behaviour" is such that it "has an acceptable common spelling used in all varieties of English", given the evidence available at Google Ngram Viewer, viz GNV: behavior, behaviour in American corpus and GNV: behavior, behaviour in British corpus? Do you agree that "behavior" meets this condition? Thus, do you support my edit in diff in "behavior", as contrasted with the edit by User:-sche in diff in "behavior"? --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:18, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

  Finally, do you agree that User:-sche broke the very policy that he is now pushing when he turned "behavior" into a secondary entry in diff, given that "behavior" was created on 6 July 2003‎[1] whereas "behaviour" was created on "21 July 2004‎"[2]? Given that the objectionable edit by User:-sche (diff) is from 18 October 2012, was the policy now pushed by him as common practice really been believed by him to be the common practice on that date? Was the edit by User:-sche made after a discussion and a consensus or was it a single-handed action consulted with non-one and based on no consensus at all? --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:25, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose Either American spelling should be the default spelling since that's the most widespread variety of English, or all varieties should have an equal treatment with full entries (per NPOV policy). This random assignment of defaultness on the basis of entry timestamp is likely to generate and has probably generated many cases where a much more widespread spelling is being redirected to the much less used spelling. I dislike redundancy, but I dislike disorder even more. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 12:05, 1 September 2013 (UTC)
• Support. One can rationalize any option. Some prefer British because it has the most speakers, some prefer American because it has the most native speakers, some prefer British because it is used in more countries, some prefer American due to delusions of fighting British colonialism. Letting the first created spelling be the lemma is fair and practical, and works well in Wikipedia. — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 12:57, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

• This is basically how I feel about it. Apparently there is too much misplaced "language patriotism" on both sides for any non-arbitrary system to work — though I have to agree with Ivan that the current approach feels disorderly. Perhaps some day we will be able to maintain a single entry and have it propagated across multiple spellings using scripts. Equinox ◑ 13:00, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

  Re: "Letting the first created spelling be the lemma is fair and practical, and works well in Wikipedia": This is not entirely accurate. Wikipedia applies the first created form only if there is no consensus in each particular case on another form, as apparent from the discussions in W:Talk:Yogurt. The relevant WP policies are W:Wikipedia:RETAIN, and W:Wikipedia:ENGVAR, especially this:

  "When no English variety has been established and discussion cannot resolve the issue, the variety used in the first non-stub revision is considered the default.".

  In this discussion here at Wiktionary, I see little effort to seriously look as the issue and base the decision on facts as far as possible, even though facts alone will not help. The supporters using Wikipedia to support their stance have not demonstrated that they are familiar with the Wikipedia policy and practice in question. --Dan Polansky (talk) 13:16, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

We’re all looking at the issue seriously. Some just don’t agree with you. Deal with it. — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 13:34, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

You are misrepresenting Wikipedia. Your user has no contributions on English Wikipedia[3], so it appears unlikely you are familiar with Wikipedia policies and their application; your statements suggest you indeed are not, yet you speak as if you knew what you were talking about. --Dan Polansky (talk) 13:37, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

Try my username. — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 13:40, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

Oops, fooled by the great practice of having a signature different from the user name. So there[4] are some contributions, then. --Dan Polansky (talk) 13:55, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

Regional differences

The previous discussion is about spelling. But there is a related issue which I'm not sure has yet been broached. A dictionary really needs to specify where words are not in common use and are likely to be met with misunderstanding or incomprehension (for example, a car "boot" in Britain is a "trunk" in North America, a street "pavement" is a "sidewalk"; "blether" or "gallus" will not readily be recognised outside Scotland, &c). Should we have a convention about how such differences are shown to users? Or is there one already? Deipnosophista (talk) 10:22, 31 July 2016 (UTC)

RFC discussion: May 2017

See Talk:kiss someone's ring#RFC discussion: May 2017.

Proper nouns

Let's keep track of discussions of whether or not certain categories of words are proper nouns:

• Languages (Maori, etc)
• Religions (Christianity, Buddhism)
• Collective nouns for peoples (the English, the French)

- -sche (discuss) 17:30, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

RFM discussion: November 2015–August 2018

The following discussion has been moved from Wiktionary:Requests for moves, mergers and splits (permalink).

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.

---

Wiktionary:About English to Wiktionary:English editing guidelines, or similar

And likewise for other languages. "About English" doesn't really reflect the purpose of these pages, they are really a collections of rules and guidelines specific to a single language. So I propose to rename them to something more descriptive. The name "editing guidelines" is up for debate, I'm mainly concerned about changing the name, not about what the name should be in the end. Other possibilities I could suggest include "English entry guidelines", "Editing English entries". —CodeCat 19:14, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

Probably a good idea, despite longstanding practice. I guess "entry guidelines" is the best out of the possibilities you suggested, but I don't love the sound of any of them. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 19:23, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

Yeah English entry guidelines sounds good to me. Renard Migrant (talk) 17:02, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

• Kept for lack of other action. --Genecioso (talk) 22:18, 4 June 2018 (UTC)|
  • Actually, I see consensus for renaming to "Wiktionary:English entry guidelines", and have effected the move. — SGconlaw (talk) 12:48, 19 August 2018 (UTC)

@Sgconlaw The RFM was actually for the equivalent pages in all languages, not just the English one. Do you feel up to moving the rest too? —Rua (mew) 21:54, 28 April 2019 (UTC)

Ugh, not really. Maybe the matter should be reopened for further discussion. — SGconlaw (talk) 02:04, 29 April 2019 (UTC)

For future readers, this has been reopened at RFM. - excarnateSojourner (talk | contrib) 20:43, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

Hyphenation

Discussion moved to Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2019/June#Hyphenation.

Grammar

• "he wished dicuss ..." - not: "he wished to discuss"
• "We sincerely hope Vienna meeting will ..." - not: "We sincerely hope the/this Vienna meeting will ..."

It's US English ("May 31, 1961"). Questions:

• Is the lack of to (infinitive marker) and of article or demonstrative pronoun common enough?
• Where/How are such grammatical/syntactical features mentioned? Usage notes in to, the, if it's common enough?

--幽霊四 (talk) 18:39, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

Hyperfocus on Crudity

I often see these hilarious and useless arguments about this or that neologism that is some kind of crude or obscene language now found on the dark corners of the internet. My friends, while that stuff does have its value, that is not the end all be all of Wiktionary. For instance, there are about twenty provinces of China that have a very minimal amount of coverage on their geography. There are other realms of terminology left unexplored, or given an entry but with several senses uncited. When will you all get around to something important, like old and new cites for the various senses of discrimination? These are the kind of topics that will be personally uplifting for the editor and uplifting for the community at large. Try some work in those areas rather than hyperfocusing on the latest insane nonsense generated by the hoi polloi. Have some self respect. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 18:30, 11 May 2022 (UTC)