User talk:Ro Thorpe/Archive 3

Ro Thorpe

Current talk page

Archive 1, Archive 2, Archive 3

archiving

Hi Ro, I deleted the Archive 2 page because I don't think it will let you move to a page to one that exists. I put a new archive box in, too - {{archive box}} in you new talk page. Let's see what happens! D. Matt Innis 00:57, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

PJ Proby

Why did you move this to P.J. Proby? Style guides recommend that title with initials no longer use full stops. It's PJ Proby not P.J. Proby. Meg Ireland 22:38, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

• PS: Archive your Talk page please. It's too long. Meg Ireland 22:41, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

I think that must be referring to initals like ABC, CBS, PVC, initials only. People's names must have the stops.

I don't know how to archive, but you're welcome to do it, or tell me how. Ro Thorpe 22:50, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

No, they list people's names as examples. Meg Ireland 22:58, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

Ro, can I ask what system you are using? I've always used BE with the New Oxford Style Guide as my source. The OSG states: "no dots and no spaces in initials". Meg Ireland 23:26, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

I'm about 99% certain that CZ style is to use A.J. Leibling, A.E. Housman, but ABC, NATO etc. I'll try to find some examples. Hayford Peirce 23:36, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

(Unindent). A *very* quick search found P.G. Wodehouse, C.S. Lewis, C.S. Forester, and B. P. Koirala of Nepal. So I'm sure that there are many others. And that this is the accepted CZ style. Therefore Ro was correct to move the article to P.J. Proby. Hayford Peirce 23:44, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, Hayford. Hope that's OK/O.K. with you, Meg. Ro Thorpe 23:50, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

Rheaux tried to wipe me out with an edit conflict, but I managed to recover the following:

In Article Mechanics, we find:

Grammar, spelling, punctuation, and usage [edit]

Strunk and White's Elements of Style is useful; the first edition is available here.

For American English, please consult The Chicago Manual of Style for matters of formatting, punctuation, etc. and Garner's Dictionary of American English Usage for issues of usage.

For British English, consult Fowler's Modern English Usage.

I have just consulted my own copy of Fowler's, and throughout he uses the periods when giving people's names. So CZ is telling us to use Fowlers, and Fowlers tells us to use the period. Hayford Peirce 23:57, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

More examples: G.K. Chesterton, G.W.F. Hegel, and R. James Woolsey. In Wikipedia, all names have the periods, including the quinessential British historian A.J.P. Taylor. Hayford Peirce 00:09, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

I have to say I'm mighty relieved, even if I'm wiping you out again (cue surfing music...) Ro Thorpe 00:16, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

(Restoring this comment below which was removed during Hayford's page move):

Is there a reason Hayford when I talk to someone on CZ you always butt in? It's becoming exceedingly annoying. If I wanted to talk to you I would have left a message on your Talk page, not Ro's.

I have moved it because I really can't be bothered arguing semantics anymore. At least I left a comment on your Talk page, something which was not afforded me. Meg Ireland 02:41, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

Meg, I'm afraid that you have a distorted view of what CZ is -- the talk pages are there for precisely that reason: Talk. If you want to have a *private* conversation with another member of CZ, then email that person privately. As long as you direct your comments to Ro's talk page (or to any other Citizen's, I, and any other Citizen have a perfect right to read it and to add our own comments to it. If you were to send messages to me on my *own* talk page, then Ro, and Larry Sanger, and a gazillion other people are welcome to come and add to it. Hayford Peirce 03:26, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

Okay then Hayford in future I will email only instead, btw on wikipedia P.G. Wodehouse, C.S. Lewis, C.S. Forester all have spaces between the initials, so the article title should be eg. P. G. Wodehouse not P.G. Wodehouse, according to the Chicago Manual of Style (2003): "The space between initials should be the same as the space between the last initial and the name ... with or without periods". (p. 312) Meg Ireland 03:36, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

Let me drop in, as well :-) Shouldn't it be full names (usually) for the main title, at least for those names the person used himself? e.g. Gilbert K. Chesterton. (I agree that G. K. Chesterton - with two space - does not look well, so that initials in sequence should not be separated by spaces). But in the case of "PJ Proby" or "P J Proby" this seems to be a pseudonym or artist's name, and as such, I think, it should not be changed -- it is a sort of a "trademark" that should be used as used by himself. Peter Schmitt 09:33, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

It depends entirely upon what the person is generally known by. A.P.J. Taylor, the historian, and A.J. Cronin, the writer, for instance, are *always* written about and identified in that way. Chesterton appears to be a toss-up -- a Bing search lists 2.5 million for the Gilbert K. and 2.4 million for the G.K. C.S. Lewis, I would say, is also *always* identified that way. As for Proby, I've never heard of him and don't have a clue as to who he is or what he does or what he calls himself. Hayford Peirce 14:45, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

This Gilbert K. Chesterton is new to me. Whatever next, Percival J. Proby? Ro Thorpe 15:56, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

I don't know PJ Proby, either. But I looked at the CZ page about him. Peter Schmitt 17:00, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

Gilbert K. is new to me also, but it seems to be in wide use, at least according to Bing. You can try Googling it to see what turns up. (PS, I think that G.B. Shaw and George Bernard are probably both used widely, but I'm not gonna bother to Bing it.Hayford Peirce 17:11, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

Whenever possible I would use neither Bing nor Google, but the version used in the books (title page and/or signature on the foreword). Peter Schmitt 17:35, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

Not a bad suggestion, Peter. But it blows your Gilbert K. out of the water. If you go to the book section of Amazon and type in G.K. Chesterton you get 12,600 hits. With Gilbert K. you get 875. And *most* of the book covers that I saw say G.K.... Hayford Peirce 17:58, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

(Unindent) In the 60s when I first saw them, I was surprised to see Penguin Books had 'Bernard Shaw' without the 'George'. Ro Thorpe 17:55, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

Strange. Like having a book with the author being "Conan Doyle". Hayford Peirce 17:59, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

('Unindent' Why?) Yes, although WP on Conan Doyle says: 'The origin of this compound name is uncertain', whereas 'Bernard' clearly was a 'middle name' in the usual, given, sense. Ro Thorpe 18:10, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

To tell the uninitiated that, yes, I meant to end the on-going indentation wars and to start things over again from the left margin, not that I did this by mistake or ignorance. Or willfulness. Yes, the Conan Doyle business is a true Victorian mystery to me. It seems to me that when I was a kid most people referred to him as Doyle. But that as the years went by he became more and more often Conan Doyle. Hayford Peirce 18:20, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

Well, I did not know about Chesterton, but since I remembered the Gilbert (but not the Keith) I took this as an example. Peter Schmitt 18:34, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks

OK, Robert. I will. I had not realized the error. Thanks for the warning.

Greetings from the neighbor country. --Javier Abellán Sánchez 09:19, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

Talk page creation

David Volk has said, if I understand correctly, that there can be a bug in "definitions needed" if the default is accepted and a talk page is created immediately after metadata is saved. As a result, I make a practice of creating metadata, going back to the main page, creating the definition, and only then creating the talk page. In general, I don't need to have them created for me while I'm in the process of setting up an article; there may be a reason why I don't create them immediately. Howard C. Berkowitz 22:14, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

King Kamehameha I

I have no objections to the edits you made, and indeed thank you for taking the time to do so.

Just for my own future reference, is there a rule or policy regarding this, or is it merely an unspoken rule, or perhaps a difference in British and American english writing styles?Drew R. Smith 01:39, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

If you mean the capital letters, no, it's not to do with British/American, it's about title case and normal case. The headings are supposed to be in normal case, though a lot of people here at CZ don't seem to be too bothered about this. But it is important to distinguish between proper names and other words in an encyclopedia. Thus 'Kamehameha' in the header above. It's usually done correctly at Wikipedia, where they have robots on the case, if I am not mistaken.

I was about to put in some okinas also. Since they aren't part of standard English and therefore cannot go in the article titles (someone will I hope soon correct me if I'm wrong about this) I was going to put in some piped links, with the okina version on the right, so it shows up in your article but doesn't effect the titles when the articles come to be written... Ro Thorpe 01:53, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Ok, thanks for clearing that up. I was under the impression that headings were treated like titles of books, with every word uppercase, save for small words...

As for the okinas, no, I don't believe they can be put into the article titles, which is why I usually use a backtick for links instead. Also, we now have the {{okina}} template, which produces an okina that is readable by all browsers. This doesnt work with links either, for example Hawaiʻi, but does work in plain text like this Hawaiʻi. The only reason I haven't been using it is because it is a pain to type out {{okina}} every time. Once the article is complete, I will go through and replace all the instances of the backtick with this template.Drew R. Smith 01:58, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

I stand corrected. Apparently it does work with links. It still doesn't work with article titles though, so you would have to use [[Hawaii|Hawai{{okina}}i]] instead of [[Hawai{{okina}}i]] which produces [[Hawaiʻi]].Drew R. Smith 02:00, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

In the meantime, I have Moved everything to a new article with the word King at the end -- CZ convention is NOT to call an article King Hayford III but Hayford III, King. etc....

Well, I'm wrong again, as usual. CZ does not USE the word KING in article titles, no matter *where* it's located. So I'll move it again....

Sorry I haven't replied sooner, Drew - internet connexion went away last night. Yes, that's right about capital letters: our headers are not titles.

The okinas look very nice...

So no Kings in titles any more? Thanks, Hayford. Ro Thorpe 12:58, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

You're lucky your connection only goes down once in awhile. I'm sharing internet with my neighboors (legally, I pay a third of the bill) but the router is located in their house, so I get the shaft sometimes. I can only reliably get a connection at night.Drew R. Smith 13:21, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

What a drag! Ro Thorpe 13:32, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Ok, I think I'm done with this article. Would you look over it and see if anything really stands out to you?Drew R. Smith 01:39, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Nutters

It seems to me that in lotsa Brit thrillers the bad guys (usually, but occasionally the good guys) are always trying to use "nutters" to incapacitate the other guy. I guess that in 'Merkin this would be known as a "head butt" but one doesn't see it very often in fiction, just in rasslin'. If you said in 'Merkin that someone gave me a nutter, the other person would probably be puzzled, then decide that you had been kicked in the crotch (crutch, as per an earlier discussion.) Whaddya think, old myte? Hayford Peirce 22:48, 15 August 2009 (UTC)