Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (Japan-related articles)/misc20

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By topic: Japanese translation note Article title name order Include Kunrei-shiki with the Hepburn? Circumflexes vs. macrons Name table usage Tessaiga or tetsusaiga? Naming order UTF-8 article titles (+macrons) Prefecture in article title Emperor article titles Japanese dates Macron RfM results Fictional characters City naming Prefectures and macrons More macrons discussion Macrons Ryukyu debate and polls Ogasawara/Bonin Islands discussion and poll New romanisation debate rehash BCE/CE vs. BC/AD

Contents 1 New template 2 Manual of Style: What to do when various Manuals of Style give inconsistent guidance 3 "nihongo2" is one up on "nihongo" 4 New project to coordinate Manual of Style pages 5 Bold and italic Japanese characters 6 WPJ template? 7 Re: Names of modern figures 8 Proposal 9 Move proposal

New template

This needs to be updated for the new Template:Nihongo3. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 07:59, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but this template does not seem necessary at all. I've used {{Nihongo}} before in a similar fashion, and all you have to do is put the romaji first and the English third (kanji second of course). So there is no need to have another template just for this basic switch.--十八 09:57, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Manual of Style: What to do when various Manuals of Style give inconsistent guidance

A spirited debate is taking place at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#Project guidelines. The discussion is on a proposal to add the text "... where there is inconsistency between MOS and its subpages, MOS prevails" to the main manual of style. Fg2 (talk) 08:16, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

"nihongo2" is one up on "nihongo"

Thank you (whoever) for changing the "nihongo" template back to what it was before. Not because I like the way it is now, but because I dislike it less. (It's less bulky, and unlike the decorative version the CSS doesn't have blunders.) Below, I'll argue that "nihongo2" is a better solution much of the time.

First, let's reconsider what "nihongo" does, via example.

{{nihongo|Shōji Ueda|植田 正治|Ueda Shōji|comment}} is right now converted into:

(With a little "i" graphic, it's a lot longer than that.)

I'll try to explain the above for those who aren't so familiar with HTML/CSS:

1. A sizable chunk of it -- the part that's in pink -- adds a little question mark and links this to Help:Japanese. (I'm not going to dissect this.)
2. Using "lang" and "xml:lang" (for HTML and X(HT)ML respectively), it tells any browser that's interested that the kanji part is in the Japanese language (not that it's in Japanese script). I suppose that this is for audio browsers, so that they attempt to render 植田正治 in Japanese rather than, say, Chinese. (In principle, lang="ja" xml:lang="ja" should be added for Japanese in roman script too, but I'm not recommending this.) Further, MediaWiki:Common.css says: :lang(ja) {font-family: Code2000, "Arial Unicode MS", "Bitstream Cyberbit", "Bitstream CyberCJK", IPAGothic, IPAPGothic, IPAUIGothic, "Kochi Gothic", IPAMincho, IPAPMincho; font-family /**/:inherit;}. I find it hard to think of any browser that benefits from the latter.
3. It puts the kanji into CSS class "t_nihongo_kanji" and romanized Japanese into CSS class "t_nihongo_romaji". Neither seems to be defined anywhere, though I suppose (i) individuals are welcome to define them for themselves, and (ii) one or both might be added to common.css later.

We all know the first of these three. As for the second and third, they're laborious to explain but add up to very little.

Back to Ueda. He was a member of Chūgoku Shashinka Shūdan. I'm not aware of an English name for this (and doubt that there was one), but let's imagine for a moment that it was "Chugoku Photographers' Club". What I'm encouraged to do is write {{nihongo|Chugoku Photographers' Club|中国写真家集団|Chūgoku Shashinka Shūdan}}. Result: Duplication of all the rigmarole above, with a duplicate (and elegant/helpful/irritating/obnoxious) and pointless link to the exact same Help:Japanese article.

Alternatively, I can write Chugoku Photographers' Club ({{nihongo2|中国写真家集団}}, ''Chūgoku Shashinka Shūdan''). Result:

No mind-numbing repetition of the link, much less bulk, and little (probably nothing) lost. And this is why I am using "nihongo2" as much as possible and "nihongo" as little as possible. -- Hoary (talk) 09:40, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

And your point being? I might add that you want to use, in general, as little kanji as possible when writing the article, this encyclopedia being English one. Ideally, almost all article on topics related to Japan would contain only one nihongo template in the opening sentence. So I don't see much a problem with an older version and new version. Of course, there is still a problem that the icon is probably confusing to people other than Japan-related articles contributors (but I'm not interested in repeating myself.) -- Taku (talk) 11:03, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

And my point being that when, as often happens, I want to add kanji in more than one place, I prefer to use "nihongo2" wherever possible for those second and subsequent occurrences, because doing so avoids pointless repetition of a link, and reduces the bulk of the page. Further, I recommend that others consider doing the same.

I want to use as few kanji as are needed to make the resulting article informative and helpful. But I strongly disagree with any claim that "almost all" articles on topics related to Japan should have no more than one string of kanji. Tadahiko Hayashi is neither typical of articles on Japan-related subjects nor a good article, but it's typical of my articles in mid-development: (i) it's bristling with names in kanji because there's no likelihood that most will get articles in the foreseeable future and in the meantime people may want to look up the names elsewhere; (ii) it has a bibliography that gives Japanese titles in Japanese script as these are what are easiest to look up (in addition to Japanese titles in roman script, English titles where these exist, and my own translations of the Japanese titles into English where I know English titles don't exist). I believe that these additional kanji are (potentially) helpful, and really don't care if they make a bizarre impression on people who can't read them or aren't interested in them. They'll make less of a bizarre impression if they're not all accompanied by a link to Help:Japanese. Which is why I intend to convert most examples of "nihongo" in that article to "nihongo2". -- Hoary (talk) 14:18, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

We do agree that the fewer nihongo (not nihongo2) templates the article has the better, so this isn't an actual debate but anyway. (In fact, others might find this interesting.) By "almost all articles must have at most one kanji" I meant eventually so. It clutters text a lot, often too much, if books title or names of institutions are given with English translation, kanji and romaji scripts. Usually, the first sentence of an article contains a rather detailed information on the name of the topic it discusses. (In case of Japan-related topics, this information includes kanji.) This is good because this is part of the role of the sentence; that is, to define the topic. This doesn't apply to names or titles mentioned in the middle of an article. Ok, granted, I add kanji for all the time in places other than first sentences. But this is just a temporary measure; eventually red links would go away along with kanji. It is true that not every book or institution is notable enough to merit a standalone article; but then I would ask: do we need to provide data lengthy enough to disrupt narrative, if not in the footnote. I know kanji is often useful information when one wants to find, say, a book by that kanji. But, for example, when mentioning a book, say, in a biography article of a novelist, we should use a footnote that would contain the year of publication, language, publisher, link to a digital copy (e.g., Aozora bunko) if available, etc. I know I don't do this, but that's because I'm lazy :) Some article contains a chunk of Japanese text in the middle of an article. Japan Standard Time is an example. But in this case that Japanese text should be replaced by a translation and the text should go to the footnote.

Of course, there are a lot of exceptions to this eventuality-kanji-must-be-gone rule. In particular, in the early post, I didn't think of lists; they are probably a different story. I meant to refer to occurrences of kanji in narrative. -- Taku (talk) 23:18, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Ah. First, it seems that we're basically in agreement on when kanji are appropriate. One reason why people here may be interested in how the "nihongo" template would be rendered by the browser is the cumulative effect when "nihongo" is splattered all over the page. In the past, I'd used it fairly freely, perhaps five times in an article; recently, another user added "nihongo" to lots of instances of nontemplated kanji in my articles (here's an example) and the purely visual effect (I mean, without considering the actual HTML/CSS coding) was grotesque; that user's efforts have led me to (i) convert all their good work to "nihongo2" and (ii) splatter my other articles with "nihongo2" as a defensive measure. All very tiresome. Of course a lot of editors who insert Japanese script here and there are blissfully ignorant of the existence of these templates and don't use them. But while the people who do use them seem happy to add "nihongo" wherever possible, I recommend that (whatever it ends up looking like) it should instead be used very sparingly. -- Hoary (talk) 01:21, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

New project to coordinate Manual of Style pages

Wikipedia:WikiProject Manual of Style is being formed. A draft of its goals (copied from the project page) follows.

Initial goals

• Provide a forum to discuss issues which cut across several Manual of Style pages, and any other issues which are related to the Manual of Style.
• Facilitate communication between editors interested in different aspects of the Manual of Style, and encourage editors to think of the Manual of Style as a whole.
• Identify discrepancies between individual Manual of Style pages, and encourage the resolution of these discrepancies.
• Develop guidelines for adding new pages to the Manual of Style, and for dividing or combining current Manual of Style pages.

Further goals

• Provide a cooperative and collegial forum for centralised discussion of style issues on Wikipedia.

Editors who wish to join the project may add their names to the list on the project page. Fg2 (talk) 01:24, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Bold and italic Japanese characters

Should bold or italic type be used for Japanese characters? --88.78.242.225 (talk) 18:13, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Use the Nihongo template, which formats them automatically. Doceirias (talk) 19:51, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

The main wp:italics specifically says not to use italic on non-Roman scripts such as Cyrillic, Greek, or Japanese. It also recommends not using bold text for such text, but does not absolutely forbid it. Rhialto (talk) 21:44, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

It makes the characters look bad when around roman script. Take "Nihongo" (日本語, "Nihongo"^?) in italics: 日本語 and bolded 日本語 and then the even more dreadful bolded-italic: 日本語. I don't see a need to ever have to italicize or bold Japanese script, so I'd say don't do it.--十八 22:33, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm running Firefox 3b4 on OS X 10.5.2 and neither the italic nor bold italic variants show up as italic at all. So on top of looking bad, they don't even work on some systems. -Amake (talk) 09:59, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, it is only a beta, so I wouldn't be too worried once the full version is out.--十八 10:39, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm running Firefox 3 Beta 4 on WinXP and both the italics and bold (as well as the bold italics) display just fine for Japanese text. If you're sure it's not another issue, you may want to file a bug report. Bendono (talk) 11:31, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

I was assuming that italic and bold italic variants simply weren't provided by default on OS X, but it shows up correctly in Safari 3.1. Maybe it is a bug. I'll have to look into it more. -Amake (talk) 12:03, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree with the others: if you're using Japanese text, use the {{Nihongo}} template. ···日本穣^{? · Talk to Nihonjoe} 01:13, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

WPJ template?

While of course having the WPJ template is useful here on the talk page, should there really be a WikiProject tag on the MOS page itself? I don't think we should imply that the Wikipedia-space MOS is subordinate to (or even just of equal importance to) WPJ, although I do support WPJ wholeheartedly. Dekimasuよ! 02:32, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

The navbox is there so people can find other Japan-related project pages (and the page is listed in the navbox). ···日本穣^{? · Talk to Nihonjoe} 03:45, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Re: Names of modern figures

I am confused by this edit by User:Eruhildo mainly because the last part of the addition, This may not necessarily be the same as the official name(s). directly conflicts with the first point on that list, Use the official trade name if available in English/Latin alphabet. Why should we be telling people to use the most popular name while at the same time telling people to use the official name is one exists? I think the last sentence of Eruhildo's addition should be taken out so that it doesn't conflict with point one, and re-write it as "In the case where an official spelling isn't given, use the most commonly known name" or something to that effect.--十八 20:10, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree. Consistency between projects is a good idea; but, adding to the current MoS with terms that directly contradict the existing MoS should be done only after a discussion here. Neier (talk) 11:56, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

It applies to fictional characters only. I merely copied and pasted it from WP:MOS-AM because I'm tired of seeing inconsistency. If you have an exception to a rule, it's not a contradiction. Though perhaps it would be better to leave out that last sentence about differing from the official name and link to the other MOS? How about "In the case of fictional characters, one should use their most commonly known name, as per Wikipedia's naming conventions. See Manual of Style (anime- and manga-related articles)." Is that acceptable? --Eruhildo (talk) 14:41, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Then it seems more to be that WP:MOS-AM was at fault for creating the inconsistency. I don't think WP:UCN should really be used though since at multiple places in that page it specifically talks about an article name, not necessarily about the spelling of a name within an article, such as in the Rationale section: "Names of articles should be the most commonly used name for the following reasons:", and then again in the Overdoing it section: "If there is no agreement over whether a page title is "overdoing it", apply the guidelines at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (precision)." So I don't think WP:UCN should, say, apply to fictional characters that don't have articles. Plus there's an Exceptions section on that page too, and I believe it makes sense for one such exception to be that the common name should only be used if an official spelling isn't already provided. I mean, take into account Yūko Gotō instead of the more common Yuko Goto which is technically a misspelling, and this was moved per WP:MOS-JP, as shown here.--十八 19:58, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I kind of wondered about that common name thing - I thought it looked like it was for naming articles, but I figured since this has been this way since the first time I read MOS-AM that I shouldn't question it. Meh, trying to change that could be a long discussion though - there are a lot of articles using the common names of characters, plus there are lots of series with no official romanizations. That could be messy. There's no way I want to get involved in that. --Eruhildo (talk) 02:41, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Proposal

There is a proposal at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#Loanwords and the inclusion of original terms in parantheses. This is directly relevant to several thousand articles on Japan-related topics. Interested editors are invited to participate. Fg2 (talk) 09:43, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Move proposal

See Talk:Ume#Requested move. Badagnani (talk) 04:51, 27 March 2008 (UTC)