Wiktionary talk:Entry layout/archive 2007

Standardizing References according to Wikipedia Standard

Over on Wikipedia, they have standardized reference entries so that there is only one Reference section per page, which is universal to all subordinate sections. Over here it would work as follows:

Text Entry from the first source

Text Entry for subsequent entries from the first source

Text Entry from the Second Source

Text Entry for subsequent entries from the Second source

Text Entry when only a single entry is given for each source

Text Entry when only a single entry is given for each source

The tags can be used in any order in the text, and they would show up in the reference section in the order of first placement, so that 1,2,3,and 4 would line up in the reference section, even though the subsequent tags were inserted as required in the text.

CORNELIUSSEON 11:19, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

References

CORNELIUSSEON 11:15, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

---

This is not going to work here. (First, note that the wikt is a separate project, we don't follow wp standards, we have our own; that doesn't mean they are not worth looking at.) We don't have a lot of running prose text, that needs out-of-line references; when we need them they can be inlined. Most references are for the entire (language section) entry, at the bottom of the section.

The other point is that we keep almost everything inside the language sections within an entry (even category tags!). The wp style just doesn't add anything useful here. Robert Ullmann 11:43, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree that this won't quite work here. For one thing, we are a multilingual dictionary with many contributors who speak minimal English. Requiring them to understand the complexities of this system for references would be unduly taxing. It also would be very odd to have the references from multiple languages at the bottom of the page; does this method work hierarchically. That is, would we be able to include several separate References sections on a single page - one for each language section? --EncycloPetey 15:51, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

It doesn't work hierarchically, but it does work in a one-pass sequence, the < references/ > tag generates all of the notes to that point. So it can be used inside a language section. There just isn't any point, we don't have pages of text with footnotes like the 'pedia. It isn't useful for us. The references we use in the References section are almost always not for one specific sentence in a long text, as they are in the 'pedia. The refererences that are in the text (the citations) always have their source in-lined in our style. Robert Ullmann 16:07, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Pronunciation section

There seems to be no real consensus about the layout of the pronunciation section. I’d like to have this discussed, and hopefully clarified. I see several problems:

• Sometimes the IPA, SAMPA and AHD entries are listed as a bulleted list, sometimes they are on one line, often with a UK or US tag. It gets even more complicated if there are Australian or other variants.
• It is unclear how to format additional information. The page now promotes an indentation before the rhymes, but I observe that most people have been removing this indentation in entries, and I personally think it looks better too. Same thing with hyphenation info.

My proposal: one line per pronunciation variant, i.e. US, UK or other, or without tag if they are the same; this one line containing AHD (or whatever it is going to be called now), IPA and SAMPA, in that order. These lines preceded by a * each. Every additional tag as another entry in this bulleted list, so no indentation for rhymes ans hyphenation. Maybe leaving a blank line between the real pronunciation info and the other stuff.

laugh seems to have it like I propose here:

Pronunciation

• US: IPA^(key): /læf/, Template:X-SAMPA
• British, Australia: Template:X-SAMPA

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɑːf

Let the discussion begin. henne (talk) 16:01, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

I suggest you take this to the Beer parlour, where many more people will see it.

I think the audio pronunciation should go on the same line as the the other pronunciations for the region it belongs to. Otherwise, I agree. --Enginear 21:24, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

We can't always do that because more then one region may have the pronunciations combined. --EncycloPetey 20:38, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

I hadn't realized I was working against a template when I was removing the ":" before Rhymes. I just didn't like the wasted space on the opening user screen. White space on the right is bad enough (possibly unavoidable), but vertical white space seems extra bad. DCDuring TALK 20:33, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

There has been some discussion in the past about the colon. I don't like it, personally, and its use predates our current formatting conventions for the section. See Wiktionary:Beer_parlour_archive/August_06#Rhyme formatting for comments from the person who initially began adding the colon before Rhymes. --EncycloPetey 20:38, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Alternative spellings

I just realized that the header "Alternative spellings" is recommended to be placed at top, as a h3 header. I don't think that's very useful, at least not if you have a word of two POS:s, but only one of them may be spelled in that alternative manner. Ok, I'm short of examples at the moment, but I believe there should be aplenty, somewhere. \Mike 22:28, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Personally, I like to see the spelling variation up front. If the spelling does happen to apply only to one sense (which is actually quite rare), I prefer to explain that with a parenthetical gloss, just as we note the geogrphic range. --EncycloPetey 22:30, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Pronunciation for laymens

This style page states:

Whenever possible, however, such ad hoc pronunciations should be replaced with one in an unambiguous system, such as IPA

That's all very well and good but if I want to know how to pronounce a word, isn't it a bit much to expect me to go to the IPA page and look up each individual syllable one by one? Certainly I doubt anyone who doesn't have a vested interest in language knows the entire IPA system by heart. This website is supposed to be as accessible as possible. I'm not saying IPA is a bad thing, but getting rid of ad-hoc pronunciations definitely is. Both should be provided. /ˈhɑːbɪnʤə/ means absolutely nothing to me. HAR-binger on the other hand, does. Dictionary.com does it, and as a result I find it far more useful for pronunciations than this website. I'm sure this has been extensively discussed before - can anyone provide me with any links to relevant past discussions, project pages or voting pages? I'd like to read up on both sides of the argument. 172.200.98.233 17:55, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Try Wiktionary:Pronunciation and the Discussion Archive that is linked from its Talk page. Not all the information is there (yet), but that's the hub for Pronunciation discussions. The central problem with ad hoc pronunciations (including the one you've provided) is that they're far too ambiguous. Does the "-binger" in "HAR-binger" rhyme with ringer or with cringer? That kind of ambiguity should be avoided whenever possible. --EncycloPetey 18:05, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Nor do you have to know the entire IPA, only about a quarter of it is used for broad transcriptions of English. Jimp 08:45, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

What about enPR, Wiktionary’s system of English phonemic representation? –It is mostly unambiguous, yet it is easier to learn than IPA and SAMPA. † Raifʻhār Doremítzwr 16:22, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Example sentences

I'd like to echo a previous comment (made 9 months ago) and point out that this page says nothing at all (that I could find by searching for "sentence" or "example") about the formatting of example sentences. The de facto standard seems to be to format them like this (rough, stripped down example):

to move

1. To put into motion; to change the location of.

   Let me move this pillow so you can sit in the chair.

2. ...

That is, to immediately follow the associated definition with an indented (#:), italicized example sentence with the headword in bold. An example like this (a better one, hopefully!) should be given in (/under) the Definitions section. - dcljr 19:13, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

This problem is raised periodically (both here and elsewhere). If you're willing to draft a concise explanation that describes the formatting you've used above, I'd be willing to VOTE for its addition to the ELE. --EncycloPetey 00:08, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

References section

I would include in this section:

"For references in Wiktionary, you can add  :

• {{R:Century 1911}}
• {{R:Webster 1913}}

to the reference section in the page.

See also Wiktionary:Webster. —This unsigned comment was added by 212.73.58.137 (talk • contribs) 2007-05-30T20:18:32.

Templates

I would add information about the use of preloaded entry templates. — This unsigned comment was added by 212.73.58.137 (talk) at 2007-05-30T20:18:32.

Hmmm. That's a good start, actually. I hope I don't let this fall through the cracks again. --Connel MacKenzie 15:21, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Descendants

The section for Descendants currently indicates that it's to be used for words which "inherited or borrowed" the word in question. I do not think we should include borrowings. The value of Descendants is that it shows us how a word has developed as a language has evolved, e.g. Latin parabola --> Spanish palabra. The conclusions you can draw from this are confused if there are also borrowings in the same section, which have of course not evolved in the same way (eg in this case the Spanish word parábola).

I suggest we either put borrowings in a =See also= section, or that we leave them in =Descendants= but mark them in some way, maybe adding a (borrowing) tag after them. Either way it is essential that we distinguish them from natural descendants. Widsith 09:15, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

I would prefer marking borrowings as such over removing them from the Descendants section. For English, which has an enormous borrowed vocabulary, listing English descedants of foreign words is very helpful for showing where the meanings originated. This is especially true when it comes to English descendants of Latin, French, and Greek terms. Moving this information to See also loses the significance of why the term is listed, removed the language identification from the target word, and burdens an already over-used section with additional random information. Of course, the deatils of how a word went from one language to another is really the subject of the Etymology section. --EncycloPetey 17:35, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Redirects in Wiktionary space

I propose that all of the "sections" used in the standard entry layout have a page in the "Wiktionary" namespace that either describes that section in more detail or redirects to this page. In particular, the redlinks below would need pages or redirects created:

==English==
===Alternative spellings===
===Etymology===
===Pronunciation===
*Hyphenation
*Rhymes
*Homophones
*Audio files in any relevant dialects
===Noun===
Declension
#Meaning 1
#*Quotations
#Meaning 2
#*Quotations
     etc.
====Usage notes====
====Synonyms====
====Antonyms====
====Derived terms====
====Related terms====
====Translations====
====References====
====External links====
===Verb===
Conjugation
#Meaning 1
#*Quotations
     etc.
====Usage notes====
====Synonyms====
====Antonyms====
====Derived terms====
====Related terms====
====Translations====
====Descendants====
====References====
====External links====
===Anagrams===
---- (Dividing line between languages)
==Finnish==
===Etymology===
===Pronunciation===
===Noun===
Inflections
#Meaning 1 in English
#*Quotation in Finnish
#**Quotation translated into English
#Meaning 2 in English
#*Quotation in Finnish
#**Quotation translated into English
====Synonyms====
====Derived terms====
====Related terms====

The purpose is mainly to help those searching for these terms to find information on the proper formatting and contents of those sections. Any objections? - dcljr 20:54, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

No, I think a better method might be to link Wiktionary:Glossary items where relevant. The POS headings already have their own subpage - making a maze of itty-bitty subpages to hunt down doesn't really help. The end result should be maintainable, particularly in response to a WT:VOTE. --Connel MacKenzie 20:58, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

They don't have to be itty-bitty subpages, so long as they link to a relevant page that explains the proper formatting of the relevant type of section. I don't think you understood my original question. I wasn't asking if I could link the terms on this project page; I was asking if anyone had objections to creating these pages as redirects to the relevant info so as to make search results for things like "derived terms" more useful. - dcljr 01:00, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

I object to have pages named Wiktionary:Finnish and especially to Wiktionary:English. The format page for English entries is WT:ELE. For other languages, it is the same unless a Wiktionary:About Finnish (or the like) exists. This problem extends to the parts of speech. The format for Noun is on WT:ELE, unless the noun is not English, in which case one must look on the relevant formatting page for that language. The same is true of many other sections redlinked above. --EncycloPetey 20:43, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

As I said, many can redirect to this page. When I can't find information about something on a Wikimedia wiki, I will often try a search for "Project:Topic", where "Project" is the name of the project I'm on (here, "Wiktionary"). Sometimes this works, sometimes not. I think it would be helpful to create these kinds of pages as (at least) redirects to the appropriate information. - dcljr 01:00, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Conjugation header

Where should ====Conjugation==== be laid out on the page? --Pampotte 14:43, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

See Wiktionary:Votes/pl-2007-06/ELE level 4 header sequence Robert Ullmann 14:45, 27 December 2007 (UTC)