User:PeterKa/Diacritics proposal
Why we shouldn't use Vietnamese diacritics in English-language writing:
- The Chicago Manual of Style recommends using the spellings given in Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary, Merriam-Webster Biographical Dictionary, Merriam-Webster Geographic Dictionary, and International Who's Who. All four of these of references give Vietnamese names without diacritics.
- Other standard library reference works that cover Vietnam do the same: Britannica, Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War (2011), Encyclopedia of Modern Asia (2002), National Geographic Atlas of the World, and Lonely Planet Vietnam.
- Go on Amazon and search for "Vietnam" books. I guarantee that no book that comes up in the top twenty will use Vietnamese diacritics in the running text.
- They're considered "distracting," according to the style guide of National Geographic. We want readers to focus on the content of the article rather than the style it is written in.
Should our guidelines on diacritics and spelling be rewritten to reflect the recommendations of major style books?
Executive Summary: The current guideline recommends resolving diacritic and style issues by doing a Google Book search in order to determine “general usage.” This is an “invented here” approach not recommended by any published style guide. It is also laborious when it done correctly (as it rarely is) and is easily manipulated by partisans. The current proposal would revise the guideline to emphasize the use of reference works, in line with the recommendations of the major style guides.
Wikipedia is built on the idea that our article on Foo should reflect what reliable sources have to say about Foo. By the same logic, our guideline on diacritics should reflect what published style guides have to say about this subject. No guide advises editors to “follow the general usage in reliable sources,” do a Google Book search, and count how many books use a diacritic and how many don't. GBooks isn't structured to do this type of research, and counting diacritics is an unusual skill with application only on Wikipedia. As for Ngram, it may be able to tell you which name is more common or which spelling is more common. But it doesn't detect diacritics with any accuracy.
We need guidance that is short, sweet, and based on the advise of style specialists. All the major guides recommend that editors consult a widely available reference work, preferably a general purpose dictionary from a major publisher. The current guideline includes the parenthetical clause "including other encyclopedias and reference works." This clause suggests that editors are already permitted to follow the approach outlined below. But it needs to be made clear that this is the preferred approach, the one the experts recommend. The guides recommend various dead tree dictionaries for use as a first reference. But their online counterparts obviously make more sense for our purposes.
I propose replacing the text in WP:DIACRITICS with the following:
Issues concerning style, spelling, and diacritics may be resolved by consulting a widely available English-language reference work. Online dictionaries are available from American Heritage, Collins, Merriam-Webster, Oxford, Random House, and Webster's New World College Dictionary. Encyclopedia Britannica and Columbia Encyclopedia may also be consulted.
The Chicago Manual of the Style recommends Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (for American spelling), Merriam-Webster’s Geographical Dictionary (for place names), and Merriam-Webster’s Biographical Dictionary (for personal names). The Associated Press Stylebook recommends Webster’s New World College Dictionary. The Oxford Style Manual recommends The Concise Oxford Dictionary (for British spelling) and The Dictionary of National Biography (for the names of British individuals).
Here are some examples:
| Wikipedia | Merriam-Webster | American Heritage | Oxford | Webster’s New World | Encyclopedias | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Collegiate | Biographical | Britannica | Columbia | ||||
| Edvard Beneš | Be•neš, Edvard | Be•neš, Edvard | Be•neš, Eduard | Beneš, Edvard | Beneš, Edvard | Edvard Beneš | Eduard Beneš |
| Tadeusz Kościuszko | Koś•ciusz•ko, Tadeusz Andrzei Bonawentura | Koś•ciusz•ko, Tadeusz Andrzei Bonawentura | Kos•ci•uśz•ko or Kos•ci•us•ko, Thaddeus | Kosciusko, Thaddeus | Kosciusko, Thaddeus | Tadeusz Kościuszko | Thaddeus Kosciusko |
| François Mitterrand | Mit•ter•rand, François (-Maurice) | N/A | Mit•ter•rand, François Maurice | Mitterrand, François | Mitterrand, François (Maurice) | François Mitterrand | François Maurice Mitterrand |
| Ngô Quyền | N/A | Ngo Quyen | N/A | N/A | N/A | Ngo Quyen | N/A |
| Hideki Tojo | Tō•jō Hideki | Tōjō Hideki | To•jo, Hideki | Tojo, Hideki | Tojo, Hideki | Tōjō Hideki | Tōjō Hideki |
| Mihály Vörösmarty | N/A | Vö•rös•marty, Mihály | N/A | N/A | N/A | Mihály Vörösmarty | Mihály Vörösmarty |
| Wikipedia | Merriam-Webster | American Heritage | Oxford | Webster’s New World | Encyclopedias | U.S. Board on Geographic Names | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Collegiate | Geographical | Britannica | Columbia | Conventional | Approved | ||||
| Istanbul | Is•tan•bul | İs•tan•bul | Is•tan•bul | Istanbul | Istanbul | Istanbul | Istanbul | N/A | İstanbul |
| Jyväskylä | Jy•vas•ky•la | Jy•väs•ky•lä | N/A | Jyväskylä | N/A | Jyväskylä | Jyväskylä | N/A | Jyväskylä |
| Kinmen | Que•moy | Que•moy | Que•moy In Pinyin Jin•men | N/A | N/A | Quemoy Island | Quemoy | Quemoy | Jinmen Dao |
| Lübeck | Lü•beck | Lü•beck | Lü•beck | Lübeck | Lü•beck | Lübeck | Lübeck | N/A | Lübeck |
| Ploiești | Plo•iesti or Plo•esti | Plo•ieş•ti or Plo•eş•ti | Plo•ieş•ti or Plo•eş•ti | Ploieşti | Plo•ieş•ti or Plo•eş•ti' | Ploieşti | Ploieşti | N/A | Ploiești |
| Zürich | Zu•rich | Zü•rich | Zu•rich | Zurich | Zurich | Zürich | Zürich | N/A | Zürich |
BGN sets U.S. government usage in geography. The atlases and gazetteers generally get the names they use from BGN, although they may adjust them to fit their house styles. The “conventional” name is the name BGN deems suitable for English language usage. The “approved” name is the official name in the local language (or official Romanization if the script is non-Latin). Although I used the chart to focus on difficult cases, it is common for all the references, including Wikipedia, to be in agreement, as you can see here. In other words, the way editors currently determine article titles is much closer to the proposed method than to the GBook counting approach.
Raw data dump
- “The best advise is to treat any one item consistently within a given text and follow the newest edition of a suitable dictionary, such as the Concise Oxford Dictionary.” Oxford Style Manual, p. 160.
- “For general matters of spelling, the University of Chicago Press recommends using Webster’s Third New International Dictionary and its chief abridgment, Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary...if the Collegiate disagrees with the Third International (as sometimes happens) the Collegiate is the one to follow as it has been revised more frequently and represents the latest lexical research." Chicago Manual of the Style, p. 350.
- “Although the University of Chicago press uses Webster as its spelling authority, the use of other standard dictionaries such as the American Heritage Dictionary and the Random House Dictionary of the English Language is also acceptable.” CMOS, p. 350.
- “For the names of well-known deceased persons, Chicago generally follows the spelling in Merriam-Webster’s Biographical Dictionary or the biographical section of Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary.”, CMOS, p. 387.
- “For the spelling of names of places, consult Merriam-Webster’s Geographic Dictionary.” CMOS, p. 403.