Template talk:Lain in State (USA)

Status indicators for certain officeholders

This template is a good idea. I wonder if it might make sense to add a little bit of differentiation to identify certain individuals. Specifically, I think it might make sense to put presidents in boldface (and maybe presidents who died in office would also get italics or an asterisk or something like that). Since this template is new and has only a couple editors so far, I figured I'd raise the issue here rather than simply making the change. --EightYearBreak (talk) 14:34, 29 August 2018 (UTC)

The suggestions sounds good. Following your ideas, what about:

  BOLD - President
  ITALICS - Died in office (possibly for elected officials & Supreme Court justices, and not just Presidents ?)

RSStockdale (talk) 16:22, 30 August 2018 (UTC)

I think that makes sense. It would be a little more work to see which other officials died in office, but not a ton more. Depending on how many of them did, it might end up with a lot of italics and get unmanageable, but I guess we can cross that bridge when we come to it and see how it looks. The only other caveat is that for presidents and justices, it would be obvious which office they died while holding, but potentially less clear for the others. But it's still relevant information, easily conveyed, and easily determined from clicking the relevant article. --EightYearBreak (talk) 18:42, 30 August 2018 (UTC)

Ok. Then I'll BOLD the Presidents as a start. RSStockdale (talk) 22:56, 31 August 2018 (UTC)

It is done. Looks good. I checked on the names of those who died in office. Over half of those listed in "Lain in state" did, along with the last 2 Justices. Not sure that it would help by marking them with italics; seems like it might be messier since there are so many. Thoughts? RSStockdale (talk) 23:24, 31 August 2018 (UTC)

I added the bolding of Chief Justices as well. RSStockdale (talk) 13:30, 8 October 2018 (UTC)

State funerals

I also suggest that the template should link to the Wikipedia article for the person's death and/or (state) funeral, if one exists. For example, Death and state funeral of Ronald Reagan. I think maybe another ‹small› parenthetical might be the way to go here -- for example:
Reagan (2004) (funeral)

I know there's a risk of overloading the template with too much information, but since the template is focused on the death and memorialization of notable people, I think it's logical that readers may want to go straight to the article on those topics, if those topics are notable enough to have warranted an article in the first place. --EightYearBreak (talk) 14:34, 29 August 2018 (UTC)

I have added the link named "Funeral" (per your suggestion) to the 4 names that have separate pages (Lincoln, Kennedy, Reagan, Ford). RSStockdale (talk) 19:56, 26 September 2018 (UTC)