Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Fictional characters/Style guide

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Tense edit

Latest comment: 7 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Please provide guidelines for use of present vs. past tense of characters. E.g. the use of past tense in this page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lone_Gunmen) feels wrong. Gvanrossum (talk) 04:08, 10 May 2016 (UTC)Reply

"In" or "from" edit

Latest comment: 5 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

I've looked around for the best place to leave this message and this seems to be the ideal choice, but if I'm wrong please feel free to direct me elsewhere. Something that has been bugging me for a while, and I'm sure has doubtless been brought up before, is the use of the word "in", rather than "from", within the lead sentence of Wikipedia articles about fictional characters. Currently, articles that read "XXX is a fictional character in the YYY universe" are implying that XXX is, within the continuity of YYY, a fictional character (i.e. not a real person within that universe) which, in most cases, is false. I believe the articles would be better suited changing the word to say "XXX is a fictional character from the YYY universe" in order to avoid the implication. For example:

"Darth Vader is a fictional character in the Star Wars universe" is incorrect. Darth Vader is a non-fictional individual *in* the Star Wars universe, but he is a fictional character in real life. Changing this to "Darth Vader is a fictional character from the Star Wars universe" would fix this issue and maintain to intention of the lead sentence. Thoughts? --Jasca Ducato (talk | contributions) 09:09, 23 April 2018 (UTC)Reply

I agree - though it currently says "Darth Vader is a fictional character in the Star Wars franchise" but I think it's still better to say "from" regardless, for example, "Bart Simpson is a character from The Simpsons" is better than "Bart Simpson is a character in The Simpsons". Also, a lot of TV character articles I edit used to use "in" and when a character was was written out (i.e. no longer "in" the show), some editors would change the lead to "...was a character in...", but if we say "is a character from" then it's clearer that the present tense should be used. — ᴀnemone ᴘroᴊecтors 08:58, 10 May 2018 (UTC)Reply

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