User:Tony1/Monthly updates of styleguide and policy changes/August 2008

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Excellent, important, outstanding, world-famous have been added to the list of words that should ring alarm bells.


This is a new section that lists optional elements that may be included in a lead, in addition to introductory information, and the order in which they should occur.


Added to the Animals, plants, and other organisms:

In articles that cover two or more taxonomic groups, a consistent style of capitalisation should be used for species names. This could involve the use of:
  • scientific names throughout (often appropriate for specialist articles;
  • title case for common names of species throughout (per WP:BIRDS) and lower case for non-specific names such as eagle or bilberry, which may work well for articles with a broad coverage of natural history; or
  • lower-case initial letters for common names, which may work well for non-specialist articles that happen to refer to different taxonomic groups.

In quotations, the phrase between the commas was added:

If there is an error in the original statement, use [sic], or {{sic}} (which produces [sic]), to show that it is not a transcription error.

The advice for where a quotation within a quotation results in jostling single and double quotation marks was changed:

use the {{" '}}, {{' "}} and {{" ' "}} templates for this purpose: ...your right to say it.{{" ' "}} Do not use plain or non-breaking space ( ) characters, as this corrupts the semantic integrity of the article by mixing content and presentation.

In [[slash, this was added:

Use / when representing mathematical division, except in the context of elementary arithmetic.

The guideline on spaced slashes was changed to this:

A spaced slash may be used to separate items of which one or both have an internal space (the NY 31 east / NY 370 exit with the NY 31 east/NY 370 exit), or where it otherwise makes the reading easier.
  • New section: Punctuation after formulas: "A sentence that ends with a formula must have a period after the formula. If the conventional punctuation rules would require a question mark, comma, semicolon, or other punctuation at that place, the formula must be followed by that punctuation."

Chronological items

  • Full date formatting is now deprecated.
  • The guideline on terminology for the seasons was modified.

Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Which_system_to_use|Units of measurement]]

  • For UK-related articles, the main units are metric; previously, the main units could be metric or imperial.

A new subsection, Amsersand, was added:

The ampersand (&) is a logogram representing the word and. In running prose, use it instead of and only if there is a good reason to do so. The ampersand may be used in tables and infoboxes where space is restricted. Retain it in the titles of business and works, and in quotations.

A new subsection, Scrolling lists, was added:

Scrolling lists and boxes that toggle text display between hide and show are acceptable in infoboxes and navigation boxes, but should never be used in the article prose or references, because of issues with readability, accessibility, printing, and site mirroring. Additionally, such lists and boxes may not display properly in all web browsers.

This was added to Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Bulleted_and_numbered_lists|Bulleted and numbered lists]]:

Do not leave blank lines between items in a bulleted or numbered list unless there is a reason to do so, since this causes the Wiki software to interpret each list item as an individual list.