Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Language and linguistics
The following discussions are requested to have community-wide attention:
| Should this article start by describing whataboutism as a Soviet-era propaganda technique or as a recent name for a classic rhetorical device? — JFG talk 16:40, 21 July 2017 (UTC) |
| It was proposed in 2016, without objection, to split what is presently titled Comma#Uses in English to a separate article, per our guidelines WP:Summary style and WP:SPINOFF. WP:Article size#Splitting an article (WP:SPINOUT) is also potentially relevant for future article growth, and WP:Stand-alone lists may be as well, since the bulk of this article is a list of (and sublists of) usage and functions of the comma.
Should this split proceed? I would just do it, but lack of objection is not quite the same thing as a show of support, especially on a page with few watchlisters. I'm including a Nominator's rationale: The section is already long, and overwhelms the rest of the content on the page. Yet it is barely developed compared to what could be written with additional sourcing. It needs a lot more of that, since it seems to principally be drawing on only a handful of sources (mostly The Chicago Manual of Style and The Guardian Style Guide), which are not actually representative of the breadth of usage. For example, I've written and sourced multiple paragraphs about a single particular usage dispute, the punctuation of the abbreviations of id est and exempli gratia in English. That material is presently living at List of Latin phrases (E)#exempli gratia and List of Latin phrases (I)#id est, as long footnotes that are essentially identical, because that's where those phrases redirect to. It would make more sense for us to have a comprehensive and sectional article on comma usage in English, with that material in a subsection on parenthetical and introductory phrases. (If articles were created at Exempli gratia and Id est they would both consist largely of that same text.) This is just one example of the kind of material that can be added, and how much it would expand what is presently an already over-long section here, but which remains poorly developed encyclopedic content when the "Uses in English" material is viewed on its own. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 08:03, 9 July 2017 (UTC) |
| Currently our IPA transcription system for English acknowledges the diaphonemes /ᵻ/ and /ᵿ/, which denote free variation of "either /ɪ/ or /ə/" and "either /ʊ/ or /ə/", respectively. Should we keep these as accepted symbols for transcription of English pronunciation? Nardog (talk) 13:24, 4 July 2017 (UTC) |
