Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2022 October 14

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October 14

oxford comma

do we use the oxford comma when editing/writing articles in wikipedia? Kitten qt (talk) 01:56, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

See MOS:SERIAL. There's no simple yes-or-no answer, except of course that the right answer is "yes". --Trovatore (talk) 03:17, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

Don't use an Oxford comma if inserting it creates an ambiguity, but insert one if this helps to avoid an ambiguity. Other than that, I tend to write commas at spots where I'd insert a pause when speaking the sentence aloud, and omit them otherwise. This makes me occasionally write a comma preceding "and" or "or" even if the conjunction is between only two items.  --Lambiam 06:36, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

Kitten_qt -- The broader answer is that Wikipedia has chosen an eclectic mix of punctuation styles of national variants of English (or other commonly encountered English punctuation variations), according to what seems clearest. So Wikipedia style has the British "logical" placement of quote marks with respect to other punctuation (as opposed to the American reordering of quote marks with respect to other punctuation), but also follows the American practice of the outermost layer of quote marks being double (as opposed to the British single outmermost quotes). With respect to spelling, each individual Wikipedia article should follow the spelling pattern of the most relevant English variant ("ENGVAR"), but common Wikipedia punctuation conventions apply to all English Wikipedia articles. The serial comma fits in with this pattern... AnonMoos (talk) 07:16, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

We should also agree to use the logical day-month-year date format even in articles otherwise written in the American variant. — Kpalion^(talk) 08:33, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

YYYY-MM-DD is the only "logical" format. But we are guided by WP:MOSNUM#Formats, which accepts several possibilities. --174.95.81.219 (talk) 08:41, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

NONE of these conventions are based on logic. There is just "what I prefer" and "what bullshit I tell myself and others to convince me it is the best". These conventions are all arbitrary; it doesn't matter what the convention is, just that we have a convention. I.e., we should all do the same thing, though it doesn't matter which of the menu of equally arbitrary same things we all do; we just need to pick one and go with it. The conventions were unfortunately established when the world was a less connected place; so when it started to matter, we had these fossilized conventions. Which is to say it only causes confusion now because far flung places on Earth actually communicate with each other continuously. Prior to the mid 20th century, that wasn't true. --Jayron32 14:05, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

Jayron32 -- The Wikipedia choices are not purely arbitrary. American reversed punctuation has some prominently "illogical" aspects, and some computer programmers have hated it for that reason (see here), so British usage was welcomed as not having such problems. And doubled quote marks are less likely to be overlooked than single quote marks, while the serial comma avoids the "To my parents, Ayn Rand and God" dedication problem and similar... AnonMoos (talk) 22:22, 15 October 2022 (UTC)

You're not entirely wrong, sometimes, an accidental ex-post-facto benefit is found from some arbitrary standard; such as the happy accident that British dating practices work better in computer contexts. That doesn't mean that most of these conventions are established because of the benefit. They are almost always established because having a standard is important, often without regard for which standard. It's important that everyone in a country drives on the same side of the road. It doesn't really matter which of the two sides they drive on, though. --Jayron32 12:21, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

Well, DMY has the logic of "smallest to largest time unit" and YMD has the reverse. I can't see any logic to MDY (and I've lived all my nearly half century of life in the US). --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 14:06, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

Where language is concerned, "logic" doesn't necessarily figure into it. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:38, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

Khajidha -- It reflects spoken language (no other reason). When reading a date aloud, we usually say "January sixth, twenty twenty-one", etc... AnonMoos (talk) 18:13, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

Which is illogical itself. It's the sixth day of January, not the January of the sixth day. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 18:52, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

Looking through Newspapers.com, British papers as recently as 2020 were using the "MMM DD, YYYY" format. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:47, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

I don't think DMY refers to that: more the usage of 9/11, which in British-speak means 9 November or November 9th, both of which formats are used. Bazza (talk) 19:12, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

Jayron32 -- National punctuation practices (in the UK, US, etc) certainly have a significant element of historical chance or contingency. However, Wikipedia punctuation practices were established by intelligently picking and choosing individual features from among the various national variants... AnonMoos (talk) 18:11, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

Keep telling yourself that. Maybe some day it will be true. --Jayron32 11:38, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

Whatever -- it's not accidental that the choices that were made were the best from the Wikipedia point of view. AnonMoos (talk) 23:10, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

@AnonMoos: You infer that British quote marks (or "speech marks") practice is single outermost. This is not the case, as shown by this BBC educational material. In my (long) experience, most people will use double-quotes in day-to-day writing but, as shown in the example towards the bottom of that linked page, some printed style guides will opt for singles. The BBC's own own style guide for news articles prefers singles for headlines, and doubles in text. Is American English usage clearer-cut as you imply? Bazza (talk) 09:47, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

American usage sometimes uses outermost single quotes when one word or a brief phrase is being mentioned, but otherwise outermost double quotes are greatly preferred. I haven't studied British practices in any detail -- I only know that sometimes I encounter outermost single quotes where double quotes would generally be used in the U.S... AnonMoos (talk) 10:11, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

School motto

Can anyone make sense of this school's motto: Nemo sibi nascitur? Our article says "No one is born unto themselves alone" which is a bit puzzling; is it a "no man is an island" sort of idea? Alansplodge (talk) 12:19, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

I think so. The literal translation is closer to "No one is born for himself", i.e. for his own sake. There's a fuller discussion of the adage at [1]. --Mahagaja · talk 12:24, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

Thank you kindly. It would seem to be a triumph of brevity over intelligability. Alansplodge (talk) 16:07, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

If you interpret sibi as a kind of "ethical dative", it would be fairly clear to those versed in Latin (however, the English word "unto" is not very suitable to express this concept). Of course the form sibi is indifferent to gender or number... AnonMoos (talk) 16:36, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

Isn't that a hallmark of Latin in general? I don't find the sentence that strange, but it could be due to my native Swedish sharing a general reflexive pronoun. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 22:06, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

It's a hallmark of Latin motti; I wouldn't assume it extends to Latin in general. —Tamfang (talk) 05:45, 16 October 2022 (UTC)

Latin sometimes looks more cryptic than it actually is, since there are no definite or indefinite articles, and information that would be expressed with prepositions, pronouns, or auxiliary and modal verbs in English is often expressed with word endings. Nemo sibi nascitur could be clarified a little if a word meaning "only" or "alone" were added, but I don't consider it all that cryptic... AnonMoos (talk) 18:14, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

Resolved