User talk:Chris the speller

This user is one of the 400 most active English Wikipedians of all time.

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Assistance Needed

Could you possibly proofread the article regarding Max Baker-Hytch? Your help would be appreciated. --153.170.47.139 (talk) 18:32, 28 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Done - it was pretty clean. Chris the speller ^yack 18:54, 28 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I noticed you were one of the contributors on the article page, so, you are notified on

Hermann Ehrhardt

I don't agree with your intermpretation of the MOS here. In context, Brigade is a proper name, just abbreviated to avoid redundancy. But since my interest is accuracy & completeness of content, I'm not going to get too excited about it one way or the other. GHStPaulMN (talk) 11:17, 7 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You don't have to interpret MOS:MILTERMS; it speaks clearly. It says that "Formal names of military units" are proper names and therefore capitalized. "Marinebrigade Ehrhardt" is a formal name; "the brigade" is not. Chris the speller ^yack 13:49, 7 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hyphens?

I know that you are good about punctuation. What hyphens should Small form-factor PC have? Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 01:36, 19 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This is tricky, because "form factor" is a noun and takes no hyphen. It would be fine to say "I want a PC with a small form factor", or "I want an SFF PC". But if it is expanded to "a small form factor PC", "small form factor" is a compound modifier, so that would indicate that a hyphen should be used between "small" and "form factor". No hyphen after form, because multi-word nouns don't take hyphens, as in "a pre-World War II movie". So "a small-form factor PC" could be considered properly hyphenated, but it does not lead to smooth reading. Maybe this is why newspapers and industry publications generally do not use any hyphens in "a small form factor PC", and trying to stuff hyphens in there will probably lead to unhappiness. The current page name would be better with two hyphens and even better with none. As it is, it looks like it is about a form-factor PC (whatever the heck that is) that is small. The lede defines SFF, and it might be a good idea to use "SFF PC" exclusively in the rest of the article. Chris the speller ^yack 03:47, 19 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Are you sure about "a pre-World War II movie"? I thought the rule was to use hyphens throughout a compound modifier, as opposed to between the adjective and noun, because lots of compound modifiers don't even have an adjective and a noun (ease-of-reading considerations, slowly-but-surely strategy, six-hectare-limit rule). The practicality of hyphenating the whole thing is obvious: that way it doesn't read like a movie about the second war over the pre-World. Or a factor relating to small forms. Bryan Henderson (giraffedata) (talk) 21:04, 21 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I'm very sure. Search with DuckDuckGo (which pays attention to hyphens) for "pre-world-war-ii movie" and then "pre-world war ii movie" and see what comes up. None of your examples involve multi-word nouns. I can't think of any unhyphenated multi-word nouns that pick up a hyphen when an adjective is added in making a compound modifier. I admit that my example of "a pre-World War II movie" was not entirely appropriate, as "World War II" is a proper name, and you really can't jam hyphens into it. Back to the original question – "What hyphens should Small form-factor PC have?" – there is no slam-dunk right answer, and the closest I can come is no hyphens at all, as used in most sources I could find. Apparently, AI has not yet caught up with me; I asked Copilot (at bing.com/chat) about this case of hyphenation, and it said that "I bought a small-form-factor PC" was correctly hyphenated, and then said that "I bought a small form-factor PC" was correctly hyphenated! When I asked about the example with no hyphens, it preferred two hyphens. Chris the speller ^yack 01:42, 22 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Belgian government formation

Hello Chris the speller, since you edited this recently, I was wondering how Arizonacoalitie [nl] should be spelled in English: "Arizona coalition" or Arizonacoalition as it is in the text now. Thank you so much for your time. Lotje (talk) 04:23, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think most English-speaking folks would prefer "Arizona coalition". By the way, I fixed a typo in the article in an interlanguage link. Chris the speller ^yack 04:39, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you very much Chris :-) Lotje (talk) 04:41, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Editor experience invitation

Hi Chris the speller :) I'm looking for experienced editors to interview here. Feel free to pass if you're not interested. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 06:29, 14 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Newly created

Hello! I noticed that you recently changed some instances of "newly-created" to "newly created". Would you mind explaining why it doesn't use a hyphen? Thanks! Wafflewombat (talk) 16:27, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Per MOS:HYPHEN: "Avoid using a hyphen after a standard -ly adverb (a newly available home, a wholly owned subsidiary)". Wikipedia is not alone; see Hypercorrections: Are you making these 6 common mistakes? in the section "Hyphenating "-ly" adverbs". Chris the speller ^yack 16:36, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree with that article. If you take out a word and the sentence no longer makes sense, then I think it should have a hyphen. You don't say "a[n] owned home". wholly and owned need to be together as a compound adjective. Plenty of style guides agree:

https://www.grammar.cl/english/compound-adjectives.htm However, if Wikipedia prefers no hyphen, I guess I give in. Wainuiomartian (talk) 01:13, 26 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I searched nytimes.com and found "Nearly everyone wants a kitchen that has a brightly lit but glare-free work area". Your example web site has a top-level domain given out by Chile, probably not the best place for working out fine points on English usage. Wikipedia is not an outlier in using this style for compound modifiers; this is very mainstream. Chris the speller ^yack 01:26, 26 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Please stop changing Assembly to assembly

I see that you are changing capital-A Assembly to assembly using AWB, for example, here. The problem is that Assembly was supposed to be capitalized there because it's a proper noun. Please be careful with AWB. voorts (talk/contributions) 23:32, 28 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Please see MOS:INSTITUTIONS, which governs such cases. "New York State Assembly" is a proper name, but "the assembly" is generic. Wikipedia says these do not take capitals. Chris the speller ^yack 04:05, 29 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

On second look, I think MOS:INSTITUTIONS could be improved. At merriam-webster.com, it has "assembly (2) capitalized : a legislative body". Also, it is capitalized by newspapers. Chris the speller ^yack 04:13, 29 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

MOS:INSTITUTIONS says "[g]eneric words for institutions, organizations, companies, etc., and rough descriptions of them (university, college, hospital, church, high school) do not take capitals". I think Assembly is more similar to House of Representatives or the House, not a university or church. voorts (talk/contributions) 18:09, 29 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

"Visiting Professor" or "visiting professor"

Hello, I notice that on the Wikipedia page Quentin Skinner you have gone through the "Visiting Professor"s and replaced them with "visiting professors". I can see why you might have done this. But I don't think it's right. Being a professor is a job title or honorific, not a qualification like a PhD. So, if you are a professor you are a professor of something or in some specific context, and when the professorship is being discussed as a specific job title, it is a proper noun, e.g. "Professor of Modern History at Oxford". At Leuven, Northwestern etc. Quentin Skinner's title was "Visiting Professor".

See for example the following advertisements from the LSE, the Royal Academy of Engineering, and the Leverhulme Trust. To quote the first link from the LSE, e.g. "The School may confer the title of Visiting Professor or Visiting Professor in Practice for a defined but renewable period on persons of appropriate distinction whose connections with the School are appropriate to the visiting title." So, I really think that it ought to be Visiting Professor for the same reason that I would raise an eyebrow at someone saying that LBJ was a "former vice president of the USA". However, I see from your profile that you're an editor of incredible experience, and so I wanted to ask you in case I was mistaken!

Re the MOS, I was under the impression that capitalisation occurred with professional titles "[w]hen a formal title for a specific entity (or conventional translation thereof) is addressed as a title or position in and of itself, is not plural, is not preceded by a modifier (including a definite or indefinite article), and is not a reworded description". One of the examples it gives is "Theresa May became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in 2016." I thought that, in the Quentin Skinner article, "He has been Visiting Fellow at the Research School of Social Science at the Australian National University (1970, 1994, 2006); Visiting Professor" and so on was a clear application of this principle. But I may be wrong!

All best, Gulielmus (one of the happy contributors to the page in question). Gulielmus Rosseus (talk • contribs) 22:11, 7 August 2024 (UTC)<[reply]

There is no comparison between "Theresa May became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in 2016" and "Clement G. Hodges became visiting professor of history in 2016". Any number of universities can have visiting professors, and any one university can have more than one, for all I know, but only one person can be Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. If "of the United Kingdom" gets dropped, then the capitals get dropped, so "Theresa May became prime minister in 2016" is correct. The MoS mentions "a formal title for a specific entity", so I do not change to lower case in "the James Barr Ames Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School"; that's specific. Raise your eyebrow all you want, but in Wikipedia, "former vice president of the United States" is as it should be, in lower case. Quotes from the LSE carry no weight about capitalization in Wikipedia; see WP:SSF, which says "The specialized-style fallacy (SSF) is a set of flawed arguments that are used in Wikipedia style and titling discussions. The faulty reasoning behind the fallacy of specialized style is this: because the specialized literature on a topic is (usually) the most reliable source of detailed facts about the specialty, such as we might cite in a topical article, it must also be the most reliable source for deciding how Wikipedia should title or style articles about the topic and things within its scope." If you consult a good dictionary, you will see that "professor" and 'visiting professor" are common nouns. Chris the speller ^yack 00:49, 8 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for taking the time to explain your reasoning for me. However, I must also candidly tell you that your response is the only occasion (and I have perhaps just been too lucky till now) that I have felt talked down to by a fellow editor and treated without the appropriate respect that editors owe each other. Perhaps you are too used to these questions being cynical exercises in pedantry by ill meaning people. But I honestly wanted to better myself as editor of a page I have in recent years taken much care to improve. I was not precious about the particular set of words you changed (I did not even write them), made no attempt to undo the change, and instead explained that I was sincerely sure you knew better and asked for help.

It's all well and good to tell me that only one person can be PM of the UK, with an open mind I can interpret that as you just giving me an example of the rule rather than patronising me. Likewise, 'raise your eyebrow all you want', though falling below my own standard of professional courtesy for friendly enquiries to strangers working on the same project, may well just be jovial banter. But to actually cite a page on a species of faulty reasoning that I have not anywhere used, and to actually advise me to look at it, is really quite something. I was not citing the LSE or any other source for their authority, I was simply citing them as examples of uses of the term in ordinary English. It would have made no difference to me whether or not the example came from a NY Times article, or a book, or a cartoon, so long as the example was English. It won't surprise you that the easiest places to find the term "visiting professor", when I googled it, were academic websites. I do not, as it happens, consider advertisements on the LSE website as an authority on what the LSE thinks good style is, let alone what Wikipedia should consider good style! The website is not what I would consider specialized literature, it is not (I wouldn't think) written by specialists or even really written for a specialist audience. I can just about see why, if I adopt a very cynical posture, that you would think I was somehow trying to dazzle you into submission by invoking weighty authorities. I was not.

The consequence of this is an inevitable temptation to take what you have said far less seriously. I have resisted that, and instead consulting with greater care and diligence the MOS, and indeed further Wikipedia articles (e.g. on the US vice presidency), and found that you are correct. So I must still thank you for helping me to navigate the required style.

All the very best. Gulielmus. Gulielmus Rosseus (talk) 15:06, 8 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You should not be feel insulted or offended. I intended this as an explanation for you and also for the many dozens of editors who watch my talk page, and especially for future editors who will (not 'might') question my capitalization changes in the future – I hope I can just refer to this discussion instead of reciting the whole thing again. It was meant for the least experienced editors as well as editors, such as yourself, who have extensive experience in Wikipedia but perhaps somewhat less in all the nuances of WP's style of capitalization. Happy editing! Chris the speller ^yack 16:50, 8 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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