In articles that are not specific to a country, express amounts of money in either US dollars, euros, or pounds sterling (choose one only). Don't link the names or symbols of currencies that are commonly known to English speakers ($, £, €), unless there's a particular reason to do so.
Add this to your user page by typing in {{Styletips}}
Errors in date style "fixes"
Hi Tony. Can I ask you to be careful when doing date style fixes, not to "fix" date ranges when there are mulltiple date ranges in close proximity to one another. This typically happens with football seasons, for example. Specifically, in this edit, "their five-year winning streak in the championship between 1984–85 and 1988-89" is correct and "between 1984 and 1985 and 1988–89" is wrong; "Steaua managed a six consecutive championship streak between 1992–93 and 1997–98" is right and "between 1992 and 1993 and 1997–98" is wrong; "to make it to the Champions League group stage three years in a row between 1994–95 and 1996–97" is correct and "between 1994 and 1995 and 1996–97" is wrong. Scolaire (talk) 17:28, 17 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
By the way, why do you not link to your talk page archives? It would be useful for me to find out whether this has been brought to your attention before. Scolaire (talk) 17:33, 17 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Shipwreck lists
Please do not unlink flags in lists of shipwrecks or ship launches. There are hundreds of these lists and established practice is that the flags link. Mjroots (talk) 06:22, 27 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hello, this is Winter. I have noticed that some of your script assisted edits have not followed the documentation stated by infobox company. You are spamming these edits without properly reviewing what they are doing. Please take the time to review your edits. If you have a complaint, please move it to the company infobox talk page. WiinterU14:30, 19 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
On Paramount Global, you changed many of the perimeters to be delinked and also changed [[Public company|Public]] to Public company, even though the documentation stated that it has to be the original. On Princess Pictures, you changed [[Privately held company|Private]] to Privately held company. This has already been revised, that is why the perimeter is "Company type" and not "Type" anymore. WiinterU23:10, 19 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There was recently a discussion (but where?) on this point, with consensus that "Public" and "Private" are sufficient. By "perimeter", do you mean "field"? I don't follow your logic: if the perimeter is "Company type", why repeat the word "company"? Tony(talk)01:37, 20 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Shripad Amrit Dange
I did not insert links. Somebody else did and you removed them. Can you justify their removal?
Do you take my point about the lakhs?
Can you justify any of the other changes? Spinney Hill (talk) 08:50, 23 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The problem with lakhs is that no one else (non-Indian second-language speakers included) understands them. You need to insert conversions at the very least. en.WP rations links to the most likely to be followed by readers. Most of those links were common terms: we do not want a sea of blue, which disrupts the reader. This was decided a decade and a half ago; also, please read WP:OVERLINK. Tony(talk)08:52, 23 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I agree about conversions. There are certain Americanisms in other articles which non-Americans do not understand (or which mean something else in British English e.g. "braces") which I have pointed out -not the spellings or the simple words that appear in US films like "faucet,"
Spinney, if you need a quick run-through of another article you've worked on, please ask and I'll try (unless my workload is high at the time). Tony(talk)13:39, 23 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Tony1
I am happy to see that you are still very active and, I hope, well. Have you ever considered publishing your excellent guidance on writing to a broader public than those who discover it on your User and Talk pages? Have you already done so? —Finell02:16, 25 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Finell, it's available to the public already; all that's needed is to promote it outside WP. It desperately needs renovation, which will have to wait untill I finish a big job (should be in a few months). Thanks for your kind words. Tony(talk)02:20, 25 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
i seem to remember having had this discussion before. Isn't it nonsense for someone to have "professor of University of Edinburgh" as an occupation? Are people not aware of the difference between a person's occupation and their job title? It isn't even a subtle difference. The occupation of the subject ought simply to be "educator" or "professor", don't you think? -- Ohc revolution of our times21:11, 4 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, thank you for your many script-assisted fixes. I noticed that some of the {{flagg}} fixes don't always render correctly, for example at Special:Diff/1217808882. Also, I'm not sure if it is wise to replace {{flagg|cncie}} with {{flagu}} as a rule, because they aren't necessarily exchangeable, the former uses IOC country code while the latter uses ISO 3166-1 which doesn't always match. If you want to unlink the country name, you can use {{flagg|uncie}} instead. Thanks, --Habst (talk) 15:49, 7 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your contributions to Imagicomm Entertainment. Unfortunately, I do not think it is ready for publishing at this time because it needs more sources to establish notability.
I have converted your article to a draft which you can improve, undisturbed for a while.
Thanks. (i) That inconsistency is built into the script. (2) Not the script: that's my fault. I'll fix it. (3) Again, my manual edit. I find "served as" for wealthy, powerful politicians rather self-serving. Tony(talk)03:24, 1 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Redundant commas
Hi Tony! Recently a User made an edit to VH-RMQ, an article on my watchlist. The edit added 25 characters but most of the additions were redundant commas. See the diff.
I checked the User contributions for the User responsible and I could see that most of their edits insert commas where previously there were no commas. The majority are to insert commas at the end of dates that are embedded in sentences. For example, the following: diff 1, diff 2 and diff 3.
Before I write to the User responsible I want to check what resources are available to help Users with the matter of commas, and redundant commas in particular. Are you aware of any Wikipedia guidance that clarifies when commas are desirable, and when they are not?
I see you have some useful guidance on your User pages. Do you have anything devoted to commas that might persuade the User responsible that extra commas don’t necessarily mean extra quality? Thanks for any assistance. Dolphin(t)13:37, 1 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Please stop this user from inserting silly commas: they're like road-humps for readers. Unfortunately no "Comma workshop" yet, but perhaps later this year. Tony(talk)03:32, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your support. I found MOS:DATECOMMA and MOS:DATE. Unfortunately they do not support our preference for economy with commas around dates embedded in sentences.
Perhaps there is an opportunity to challenge this item in MOS. Insisting on a comma after a date looks like a relic from the 1950s. Dolphin(t)10:51, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I dislike the addition of a comma to produce the "In 1952, she moved to England." format, which I think might be a "fronted adverbial", something I never came across in an old-fashioned academic education in the UK. But if a date is in the American format with an internal comma, I feel that there does need to be a date after the year too. PamD11:09, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see any difference across the Atlantic. It's rather difficult for a manual of style to legislate comma usage: it's complex. But adverbial and prepositional phrases at sentence start are just silly—a habit I fear editors see in others and adopt thinking it's required. BUT, if the initial phrase is medium to long, that sways a bit toward using the comma; and even after a short initial phrase a comma is useful for breaking up numerals; so "In 2011 1032 craters were detected on Mars" would possibly be improved with a comma. Tony(talk)11:18, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
So many editors are adding those horrible commas after "In 1952" that I'd assumed it was correct, rather than reverting them as clunky prose, just as you say. I should be more assertive in the interests of decent writing. Thanks. PamD11:39, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
At MOS:DATE there is actually a valuable ruling in the case of dates written as dd month year without an intervening comma. The Table shows that closing the date with a comma is incorrect. Hooray!
I was able to incorporate this in a message to the User in question. See my diff.
If the date is written as month date, year then the Table at MOS:DATE shows that a comma is required after the year, to close the date. Dolphin(t)11:43, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Comma therapy is especially productive when an article goes through the history of the subject, with almost every paragraph starting the same repetitive way. This needs the delete button to smooth things out. Watch for nested phrases, though, like: "In 2011, without hindsight, the troops went on the attack." Tony(talk)11:47, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, manual error. I'll fix it now. Tony(talk) 09:03, 16 June 2024 (UTC) PS I'm amused that this family of articles announces "single-sex" and "school for boys/girls". Tony(talk)09:04, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
W. David Marx Script-assisted styles fixes
Hi Tony1,
I can see that you are trying to use scripts to make changes on the article W. David Marx (Author). Having looked through your talk page, I can see that there are other people complaining about these edits. If you want to continue to edit on W. David Marx, please provide evidence and explanations for the changes you make, including taking out hyperlinks. Otherwise I will keep reverting them - without explanation I cannot understand why you are making these edits and therefore change my mind, if I am incorrect.
With response to WT:MOSLINK, I understand why you have used the script. However, with this new information, I will happily go through myself and make these corrections individually if you don't mind. Theobrad (talk) 10:38, 26 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I have gone through and adjusted your changes. In hindsight I agree most of them are correct. With the Board of Directors one, as it is a specific Board of Directors (one at Human Made) that I am referring to, is it or is it not meant to be capitalised. As it is in the same sentence as Human Made, it could be written "the Human Made Board of Directors," in which case it would definitely be capitalised (according to a quick search). Theobrad (talk) 10:46, 26 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The authoritative US and UK style guides, and our own WP:MOSCAPS, say to minimise unnecessary capping. That includes "board of directors", "board", "board members", and "chair of the board". Tony(talk)10:57, 26 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
June 27, 2024
Hello, this is Winter. I have noticed that some of your style fixes have gone against the documentation of {{infobox company}}. Public company should always be linked as [[Public company|Public]], and corporate titles always have to be linked. Please make sure your scripts comply with the documentation of {{infobox company}}. WiinterU00:32, 28 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I reverted your script-assisted edits to Crystallography. There was no reason I can see to remove the links to the UN or the centuries, removing that to iron was wrong as the structure matters, and changing "Paul heinrich von groth|Paul Heinrich von Groth" to "Paul heinrich von groth" is obviously wrong, even Google autocorrect knew this as I typed this message. Perhaps discontinue using it? Ldm1954 (talk) 08:53, 1 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Who doesn't know what iron is? If its structure is at issue, link to the relevant section of Iron. Linking chronological terms is strictly discouraged, and has been since a community-wide RfC in 2009. I don't know how the von Groth thing happened. Tony(talk)09:44, 1 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I removed the chronological terms as updated to Iron#Allotropes, a good suggestion. The article needs major work, but is not at the top of my to-do list as yet, life is finite. Ldm1954 (talk) 10:19, 1 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Tony, I am so happy to see you have resumed activity on Wikipedia! Your writing exercises were so much fun and have measurably improved my writing (if not my life!). Carry on my friend, and I hope to learn more of what you've been doing the past decade. What happened to your research on the human factors in musical sight reading? Ke6jjj (talk) 05:23, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your kind words, Jeremy. The exercises are badly in need of renovation, which might happen by the end of the year. Research on sight reading? Since my PhD I haven't done anything in that area; but I am preparing something big in music theory. I don't think I ever left WP. Tony(talk)01:24, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Help talk for new article
Hello! I hope you're doing well.I've just created an article called 5 July Committee, but I'm not sure if it's totally ready to be on the Main article page or if I should move it back to a Draft page for more work. Your help with the other article I created was amazing, and I'd really appreciate it if you could take a look at this one too.Thanks a lot, and I hope to hear from you soon. Bruno pnm ars (talk) 11:56, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Request for assistance in creating a Wikipedia article
Hi Tony, hope you're doing well! I was referred to you by Meta AI as an experienced editor who can help me create a Wikipedia article about myself. I'd greatly appreciate your guidance and expertise in getting my article started. Please let me know if you're available and willing to help. Thanks in advance! Alhaji Jatlaw (talk) 13:13, 14 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Good afternoon! I noticed you'd removed the spouse names in William Morgan Conder and John Allen Greer. Is there any reason for removing these, so long as they're properly sourced? I know that for children, parents, or unmarried partners the guidance is to only include names if the individuals are notable, but that spouses are often included regardless of individual notability per the guidance in the basic biography template documentation. Wanted to make sure I hadn't missed some project discussion before I made any additional changes or edits. Thanks! nf utvol (talk) 01:13, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, they weren't properly sourced (nor the claim of three children in the Condor article), and it wasn't thought suffidiciently important to include mention (and sources) in the main text. Biographies are stricter about sourcing than other articles are. Tony(talk)01:37, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Tony1 Why leave Conder's wife in the text of the article, if she's not well-enough sourced for the infobox? Do different rules apply? PamD05:26, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hi there, I added back both of the spouse names to the infobox. For Greer, I added a ref to the infobox since it's not otherwise mentioned in the article. For Conder, it's sourced at the mention in the main text. I very much understand the sensitivities for biographies, especially BLP, but in these cases the spouse's name would be considered non-controversial fact-of information and is (now) appropriately sourced. Perhaps it's worth a broader discussion as to whether or not non-notable spouses should be included in infoboxes? If that's the case, we should probably take the conversation to the Template:Infobox person talk or Wikipedia:WikiProject_Biography talk. Have a great day! nf utvol (talk) 00:04, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The dots are used to indicate that a word is abbreviated. For example, J. Cell. Sci. could be for Journal of Cellular Science, whereas J. Cell Sci. could be for Journal of Cell Science. Dots can be omitted as a matter of style, but in the infobox it's clearer to use them. It will also prompt the creation of redirects (J. Cell. Sci. + J Cell Sci → Journal of Cellular Science) if they haven't been created. Headbomb {t · c · p · b}00:19, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I would like to understand why the link to Political corruption from Corruption in New South Wales was removed. It is helpful link but I don't understand the value of removing the link vs keeping the link. Could you please elaborate. Thank you otherwise. Also premier usually has capitalisation given it is a title. The script IMO is doing more harm than good without manual oversight removing assistive formatting where it was required. MissAnonymous123 (talk) 02:52, 31 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Article Styles
Each article sets it's own technical style and I am not sure why style needs to be dictated by the script. I don't think it's helpful for changing the entire article style via scripting when this is not mandated I believe by WiKi? Often the technical style is friendly to the editor who has been intensively working with it and resetting the style can bring manual overhead that gets in the way to say. And some regional, country or jurisdictional contextes may require e.g. different capitalisation e.g. for titles like "Premier" that are specific to state level in Australia. Also if the script / automation is used should IMO document it's changes in iterative edits and not in one big edit mixing them to align better with changelog. I'm not against large manual edits but don't like to get steamrolled by scripts dictating it's own style on technical styling. MissAnonymous123 (talk) 03:01, 31 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You're getting basic things wrong, like the "S" in your title above. And please take care with "its" versus "it's". If you want to argue about individual items in that edit (which I've reverted), please do. Have you been here for long? I don't think you've absorbed the way things are done. And BTW the opening sentence of that article needs urgent work. Tony(talk)03:06, 31 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I will change a style if it's contrary to WP's guidelines. Being consistent across a whole article is required, but it has to be an acceptable style. Tony(talk)03:38, 31 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't want you are personally attacking me but I don't think you are being constructive. Most of your edits were stylistic in nature and changed the article wholesale. MissAnonymous123 (talk) 04:08, 31 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I am having trouble with the editor as it is very annoying in it's standard mode. I just don't think it is nice to resort to personal attacks instead of raising the issues merit basis. Please fix the attitude, I don't think I am staying because of crap attitude like that. MissAnonymous123 (talk) 04:10, 31 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Also mocking someone's language capabilities is just plain wrong. Making assumptions about someone's capabilities or character whilst bombing the articles with bot-like script auto-spam without edit summaries? I am not sure what the issue is really. MissAnonymous123 (talk) 04:12, 31 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
(talk page watcher) @MissAnonymous123 I've fixed some of the problems in the article. In particular, note that section headings in articles always use at least two hyphens, and then subheadings go step by step. Also "it's" means "it is", while the adjective "its", as in "his, her, its" doesn't have an apostrophe. That isn't a choice of style, it's correct writing. Punctuation goes before references: not a style choice but WP:MOS. PamD05:17, 31 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Dear Tony1 and friends, over the years I have found numerous examples of the words “as such” in Wikipedia articles. These 2 words have usually been redundant so I have erased them without replacement.
Recently I found 2 articles in which the words “as such” were used clumsily in the first sentence of the lead section! I replaced them with what I hoped was a more appropriate word. See my diff1 and diff2. Both my edits were promptly reverted by the same User who appears to be an advocate, or at least a defender, of the expression “as such”. Am I missing something about some inherent merit in the words “as such” in formal writing?
To his credit this User then left me a message on my Talk page pointing out some of my personal shortcomings. Apparently in my list of contributions to Wikipedia he can see that I have done a lot that is unacceptable but he didn’t clarify what or why. He also mentioned some of the shortcomings of medical doctors and students of medicine! See User talk:Dolphin51#"Encyclopaedic language".
Is this User a person in good standing with the copy editing community? Does he speak with any authority or credibility on matters of what constitutes good writing in an encyclopaedia, and what doesn’t? Dolphin(t)14:22, 16 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I am looking forward to seeing what that looks like! I still share them with people every few months. They're an incredible resource on and off Wikipedia. Ed[talk][OMT]03:17, 24 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
OK, I've reinstated them, but not as "Easter egg" links (to plain years). Let readers know the specificity or they'll never click on them. Also, please note how range dashes are done. Tony(talk)01:00, 31 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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Trying to understand the rational for your date changes
Just looking at the difference on your edit to sweet potato it looks like the vast majority of dates were dd-mm-yyyy and it was templated to that before your change. Shouldn't you have corrected the minority of dates to dd-mm-year, instead of changing them to mm-dd-yyyy order. What am I missing? 🌿MtBotany (talk) 04:06, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
old version: "In topology and related areas of mathematics, a subnet is a ..."
new version: "In topology and related areas of mathematics, a subnet is a ...".
This was absolutely the right thing to do as topology is already a broad area of mathematics and there was no need to have a link to the top level field of mathematics from a small topic within the category of topology. If a hypothetical random user lands on this particular page and wonders what this is all about, they can click on topology, where they will see it's part of the large field of mathematics, with an accompanying link.
I am ranting here a little, because I have edited some mathematics pages in the past to do the same change, only to see another editor put this back.
Anyway, thanks for this.
Also curious, did you have a script intelligent enough to do this automatically? PatrickR2 (talk) 04:46, 14 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
We love satisfied customers. I just tested linked "mathematics" and "maths". It unlinks the former but not the latter. I'll ping User:Ohconfucius, who invented and manages the composite script. Tony(talk)04:58, 14 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
