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Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (plurals)/Archive 1

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It seems that the general practice on Wikipedia is to use plural forms for Category names. That makes sense, but I think it should be documented here. --agr 16:42, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Law, etc

de:Wikipedia Diskussion:Regeln für die Namensgebung:Singular-Plural-Debatte

This naming convention does not comport with the commonly accepted usage of plurals in re certain legal subjects. To wit:

  • Torts (Read "the law of torts")

It would make much more sense to list subjects like these under the plural form and redirect the singular form to the plural.

In fact, this naming convention is much too restrictive and should not be imposed as a general rule. Many plural nouns take on a completely different meaning when they are reduced to their singular form, so why not let these decisions be made on a case by case basis? Or are we to stand on the ceremony of tradition when reason dictates otherwise?

--NetEsq

I disagree. Simply look up the definitions for the above at dict.org: 

Tort
  2. (Law) Any civil wrong or injury; a wrongful act (not
     involving a breach of contract) for which an action will
     lie; a form of action, in some parts of the United States,
     for a wrong or injury.

The plural forms you speak of are jargon. There is nothing wrong with tort law or contract law and we do have a long tradition on singularizing anything that isn't always capitalized in English. Therefore wikipedians by and large instinctively link the singular form. --mav

I am aware of the tradition; I don't think it makes sense. Besides, Wikipedia is not a dictionary.--NetEsq
You misunderstand: "Wikipedia is not a dictionary" means that an article is not an article if it is only a dictionary definition or can only be a dictionary definition. --mav
I think I understand quite well: You cited a general dictionary as support for your position that an encyclopedia article for a legal term should not take a plural form, and I cited a legal encylopedia to support my position to the contrary. Which authority do you think is more relevant?--Netesq
I wouldn't go so far as to call them jargon, but I would reach the same conclusion as mav. Also for Conflicts of law, the name for that area of study in law is Conflict of laws. "Laws" is in the plural because there must necessarily be two different laws to create a conflict. Eclecticology 10:23 Aug 23, 2002 (PDT)
I respectfully disagree. Law school courses which deal with this topic deal with legal conflicts and bear the title "Conflicts of Law." (See LII - Conflicts of Law; see also LII - Contracts.) --NetEsq
With respect, the very article which you cite begins "The question to be asked by one concerned with conflict of laws is ... " with "conflict" in the singular; textbooks on the subject typically use the singular in their titles. Eclecticology 17:39 Aug 23, 2002 (PDT)
This isn't a law encyclopedia, this is a general encyclopedia. As such if a term can reasonably be used in the singular then that is where the article should exist. Do use the plural form on the first line and make redirects if you like; other wise do this [[tort]]s. --mav
The distinction between law encyclopedias and general encylopedias is lost on me. Rather, this is one instance where the general rule of preferring singular noun forms clearly does not make sense. Given time, I could find many more instances where this general rule does not make sense. As such, the general rule should be re-examined, deliberately broken (when appropriate), . . . or simply ignored.--NetEsq

Perhaps the problem here is that you want to write an article about tort law at torts. Why not simply move this article to the tort law title? BTW "Ignore all rules" is a rule to consider and is not policy. The anti-pluralization rule is important and needs to be kept. Ease of Linking rules the day here and in most cases. As I said before if the word is at all validly used in the singular form then the article on that topic must be in the singular. Otherwise when somebody wants to create a link to it (not knowing about the redirect) they will type [[torts|tort]]. --mav

The problem here is that I prefer to use plural forms for encyclopedia articles when plural forms make more sense, and I am not persuaded by your arguments to the contrary, which are nothing more (nor less) than irrational appeals to maintain the status quo. To wit, "[t]he anti-pluralization rule is important and needs to be kept." Why? Because you said so? Well, I say otherwise, so I will ignore the anti-pluralization rule and use plural forms when plural forms make more sense. And should someone choose to enforce the anti-pluralization rule and "correct" my contributions, that will be his or her prerogative. I will either ignore these corrections, or challenge them on the appropriate talk page, and thereafter let the chips fall where they may fall.--NetEsq

The convention here has only one reason, but it's a very strong one: it's simply a lot easier and less error-prone to type [[crayon]]s than [[crayons|crayon]]. If there's any reasonable chance that the term will be used in the singular in other articles, then it's important to make sure the singular link works, so that ad-hoc linking works correctly as often as possible. There is also value in following convention for its own sake, also to make ad-hoc linking more likely to succeed--if you know the conventions for titling certain kinds of articles, you don't have to look up an article to make a link to it; you can just assume it's titled the way you would expect, and it will likely work. These ad-hoc and "accidental" links are at the very heart of what makes Wikipedia work.

Now, all that having been said, there's not much reason to object on those grounds to an article title in the plural if there's a singular redirect to it, except that it sets a bad precedent for new users. If they see the plural article, they have no way to know that there's a singular redirect to it, or that there should be, so they are likely to create plurally-titled articles without creating the corresponding singular redirect, because they don't know any better. All in all, the main article on any topic should be singular if it's at all reasonable to do so, but there might be reasonable exceptions.

Now, all that having been said, I don't think "tort" is even close to an exceptional case. It's a perfectly ordinary English noun used commonly in the singular, so of course it should have a singular artilce title. Users weiting other articles about law should be able to type merrily along about a [[tort]] case they want to cite, or [[tort]]ious interference, or whatever, and expect their links to work well. --LDC

I don't find this page very contentious, but I do find the example a little strange. "Harold took out his purple crayon and drew up the covers." The phrase "draw up the covers" suggests something that you do to keep warm in bed. It gives me visions of this kid with the covers tented over his head, looking to do mischief with his purple crayon. Eclecticology 09:42 Aug 23, 2002 (PDT)

So there are two very good but apparently conflicting concerns here:

  • A Wikipedia article deserves a natural title, as a chapter does in a book or an article does in a newspaper. Sometimes it is natural then to have it plural. To me Bird sounds more like the abstract notion of a bird. Look at the corresponding article. The article is not about what it is like to be a bird - which might have a philosophical or linguistic article of its own by the way. No, it is about giving an overview of the many birds out there. This is similar to prefering Stephen Jay Gould to Gould, Stephen Jay. The latter has a formal touch in it, hasn't it? As if we were reading some index or some linearly-ordered paper dictionary. Why should we be reminded of any indexing scheme or link management concern here?
  • When people write articles that mention an instance of a bird or any thingumajig, they want it easy to offer a link toward an expected relevant article. And we want their link not to miss the expected article and get some user writes another one from scratch. The singular convention eases this. (If the contributors know about it that is - they may as often write a link to the plural form and be wrong.)

But there is a simple technical solution to that. It would smooth out other problems as well and make Wikipedia better: Let's make searches and links to absent articles just behave the same. In case the expression searched for or linked to doesn't exactly match, the user would be offered the same opportunities to reach the right place or fill in the missing information: a list of substring-matching articles, plus a blank editing form to create the missing article, plus a button to create an automatic redirection link to one of the listed article in case the user thinks the wanted article isn't missing but exists under another title.

This would prevent duplicated efforts under different titles and make the distinction singular/plural less of an issue.

By the way, I'm tempted to think that allowing plurals or not triggers the same amount of redirection links, because:

  • some readers may be naturally searching for the form they naturally think of, and that would be the plural form in some cases. "If I'm interested in birds I search for birds". Not everybody is mature enough or formal enough or willing to think the way computers want us to. Now if every contributor to Wikipedia has been good and has been following the current singular policy, then unfortunately there would be no plural entry and so the expected article would not be found in the title match list. It would be systematically found after, in the midst of the text matches list - if the article ever contains the plural form that is (but this is to be expected).
  • A remedy to the latter is to have systematic links from the plural forms to the singular forms.

Cheers! Clauchau 15:59 Dec 12, 2002 (UTC)

I moved Palestinian refugee to "Palestinian Refugees" and Efghij moved it back, pointing here for explanation why. Am I the only one who thinks that having an article titled "Palestinian refugee" is ridiculous? Can someone help me out here? uriber 20:23, 3 Aug 2003 (UTC)

languages or language?

Michael Hardy changed this policy page to prefer Romance languages over Romance language, and also moved [1] [2] [3] a few articles to conform to this approach.

I wonder what the rationale behind this was? It seems to me that they should be treated as with crayons, and I alude to this in the text I added. But I'm sure Michael had good reasons for his change, so I wonder what folks think. Martin 20:45, 23 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Partly the rationale was consistency with other language families such as Germanic languages, Slavic languages, etc. But more basically: the article is about the family of languages, not about the concept of a particular kind of language -- one that belongs to the family. Michael Hardy 05:24, 24 Sep 2003 (UTC)
There's a difference in emphasis, I guess: elephant spends more time talking about features of a typical elephant, whereas Romance languages spends more time talking about the group, but the former does spend a little time talking about elephants in general, and the latter does spend some time talking about the features of a typical Romance language, so it seems like a tough line to draw, compared to just making everything singular. Martin 09:36, 24 Sep 2003 (UTC)
The change makes sense to me. There isn't any single thing called the "Romance language", there is just a group of things called the "Romance languages". Or, to look at it a different way, the thing that makes this a worthwhile encyclopaedia article is the fact that these languages make a group - individual Romance languages naturally go on their own page (so the Romanian language is to the Romance languages what Ringo Starr is to the Beatles, or something). The awkwardness over having to type [[Romance languages|Romance language]] can be got round with a redirect. --Camembert

I'm not sure of your logic, Camembert, because it seems like the same criteria could be applied to, say, elephants

  1. No single thing called the elephant (though one can talk of an elephant, or a romance language)
  2. Worthwhile article, because elephants form a species, just as the Romance languages form a language group
  3. Dumbo is to elephants as Ringo Starr it to the Beatles
  4. You can always have a redirect

Well, I'm still unconvinced, but as long as you always make redirects from the singular to the plural, I'm unfussed. Martin 09:36, 24 Sep 2003 (UTC)

You're right, I'm not putting my case across too well. Originally I was going to say that "Romance language" is no good because it's ambiguous (which Romance language?) - that's what I meant by saying there's no such thing as the "Romance language". I wasn't entirely convinced by this myself, though (it's a better argument against Zeno's paradox than it is against Romance language, certainly). I'm becoming a little less convinced the more I think about it, but in the end, I think it just feels (slightly more) "right" to me to have "Romance languages" but "elephant" or "crayon". Seems I can't rationalise this very well, however. --Camembert

Just to be difficult, elephants do not "form a species": there are three species. Not that you wanted to know that in this context. ;) Tannin

polynomial series

Presumably you also disagree with the various polynomial series given as exceptions in the policy? --Camembert

Well, yes. Why should integer or prime number or denominator or Fibonacci number be singular, but Legendre polynomials plural? It just makes no sense to my pidgeon-holing sensibilities.
Still, there you are. Martin 13:30, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)
I think I'm coming round to your way of thinking. But as you say, no big deal so long as redirects are in place. --Camembert 13:52, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)
One would not expect to find "Joint Chief of Staff" as a title.

Not clear why not, at least to me. Is this a US thing? Could someone explain? :) Martin 13:58, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Martin, the boss of the Army in most countries (including, last time I checked, the UK) is the Chief of Staff. The boss of the Navy is the Chief of Staff of the Navy, and so on. All three services are coordinated and ultimately run by a committee of 3 or 4 people: the professional heads of Army, Navy, and Air Force. Often, there is a 4th member, who can come from any branch, and becomes the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. There is no such thing, in other words, as a "Joint Chief of Staff" - a CoS, yes, but the Joint Chiefs of Staff are either just that (plural), or else they are merely the heads of their own organisations - e.g., Chief of Staff of the Navy (singular). Err ... I don't think that makes it any clearer ... Think of it this way, the Joint Chiefs of Staff are like scissors or trousers: you can't have just one of them. Tannin 14:41, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I disagree

(Now, if that's not an ambiguous and provocative title, I don't know what is!) What I actually disagree with are the given exceptions. I see no reason whatsoever why these are different from any other plural noun. The way I see it, the rule could be as simple as

If a word is a genuine plural noun (i.e. there is a directly related singular form), the article should be at the singular form.

Surely it is just as possible to mention one Bernoulli number, or one Romance language as it is, say, one bacterium, or one ant. I think the example given above of elephants sums it up nicely. Think about what question the article is answering - in the case of Romance languages, we are answering the question "What is a Romance language?" We could ask "What are Romance languages?", but in general we wouldn't - start talking to someone about "alphabetishonks", and they will likely ask you "What's an alphabetishonk?"

If we could state it as simply as this, maybe we could have less debate over every possible exception, and just stick to it. I admit that there will be a very few exceptions not covered by this, for instance:

Where the historical singular and plural of a word are now used unambiguously with different meanings, it may be worth creating articles for both forms. For example, data is historically the plural of datum, but now used as a seperate term. However, the study of cycles may involve discussing a single cycle, and more than one cycle in the other sense would be referred to as cycles, and thus the terms cannot truly be said to be seperable.

(This last example, by the way, is currently disputed, and I would love for you to have an opinion about it.)

I'm not sure how well I'm stating my case here, and I can think of various counter-arguments to what I've put, but so far I can't think of any that wouldn't apply equally to all nouns, so I hereby invite you to come up with one. - IMSoP 22:44, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Collective nouns

This convention should mention an exception in the case of collective nouns which change in meaning when used in the singular. Some examples (I'm sure there are more):

This came up because there is currently a proposal to rename Dalek to Daleks, but as written this convention doesn't allow the more logical latter title.

I suggest adding the following bullet point, under the list of exceptions. Note that this may result in changes to the names of some articles (e.g., Cossacks, and several fictional races: Dalek, Dwarf, Elf, Vulcan (Star Trek), etc.).

After some thought, I've realized that this doesn't require an addition, but perhaps a clarification is appropriate. The name of a people is different from the name of a member of that people. But sometimes the name of a people corresponds to the plural word for members of that people. —Michael Z. 2005-07-4 19:24 Z

Proposed convention: Collective plural names of military organizations

Miliary units, especially service branches, often have their official English-language name in the plural. Examples include the Royal Marines, the Land Forces of Poland the Royal Welch Fusiliers, and the historical United States Army Air Forces. Wikipedia should call these organizations by their correct plural titles and redirect from popular colloquial nicknames. --Jpbrenna 1 July 2005 06:37 (UTC)

These seem to be examples of proper names which don't have a singular form. E.g., the organization is the Royal Marines; the term royal marine refers to a member of that organization. I don't see the need for a new convention. Are you suggesting an amendment, addition, or clarification of this policy? —Michael Z. 2005-07-4 19:21 Z
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