Talk:Guatemalan president Jimmy Morales announces move of Israeli embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem

Latest comment: 6 years ago by Acagastya in topic Commas

Review of revision 4371492 [Passed] edit

Make protected edit

{{makeprotected}}
117.248.120.35 (talk) 09:38, 25 December 2017 (UTC)Reply

  Done by SVTCobra.
117.248.120.35 (talk) 10:13, 25 December 2017 (UTC)Reply

Idiom "Follow in the footsteps" edit

The expression "follow in the footsteps of" needs an "in the" but that's an easy fix. The issue is that it's kind of poetic and has connotations of a child imitating a parent or mentor, giving the implication that Wikinews expects countries to do this. I'm confident President Morales doesn't want his country to look like a protege of the United States. Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:59, 25 December 2017 (UTC)Reply

East (City) edit

The construction East (Greenville) can mean "an eastern district of Greenville," "a district in Greenville merely called eastern (say because it used to be the east before the city grew)" or "a separate city east of Greenville." For that reason, I think the words saying that East Jerusalem is part of Jerusalem have earned the space they take up. Darkfrog24 (talk) 14:01, 25 December 2017 (UTC)Reply

Commas edit

Please don't switch to British or non-English rules when the article is already written in American English and is internally consistent. I deliberately used the exact same placement as the source, The Star, so that no one's teeth need be set on edge. Sometimes I even go out of my way to find an extra source just so the article can be fully correct without annoying anyone on the team. Switching between British and American English does not give the reader the best experience, and it's such an easy fix. Darkfrog24 (talk) 05:47, 27 December 2017 (UTC)Reply

I used the Facebook post as the source, which is actually the primary source for announcement, not The Star. I have spoken about this before, when I review articles, the quotations must be how it appears in the primary source.
•–• 06:05, 27 December 2017 (UTC)Reply
In American English, even when quoting a primary sources, the comma must precede the closing quotation mark. Here is a source discussing the differences between British and American quotation processes: [1]
I'll try to finagle things so that the punctuation is correct without interfering with your preferences, but please do not introduce errors into the article in this way next time. Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:04, 27 December 2017 (UTC)Reply
As a reviewer, I have to see things remain truer to the actual source — let it be official statement or a tweet. I am not comfortable with allowing symbols that were not in the statement.
•–• 14:16, 27 December 2017 (UTC)Reply
@Darkfrog24: Evidently both of you were seeing the other as introducing an error, the difference being what kind of error. Style and information content. (After our long discussions at en.wp MOS talk, I moved past our respective positions, and past our reasons for our positions, to think about the origins of our differing priorities.) --Pi zero (talk) 14:28, 27 December 2017 (UTC)Reply
I think the three of us are pretty much talked out on this matter. You think that a comma constitutes information content and I find it part of the quotation process and that correct American English requires it. I can show you more sources backing this up if you think seeing them again would help. What I've been doing is 1) finding extra sources as I said above even though strictly speaking they aren't necessary and 2) rewording so that the punctuation is both correct and consistent with the preferences of people who are not comfortable using American punctuation. That might be our best bet for now: arrange the quote so that no one's teeth are set on edge. But I must insist on not pulling out the punctuation that I or our professional sources have placed with such care.
I am inferring that you think I have my priorities backwards (I use "infer" deliberately). Here's where I'm coming from: I have witnessed the problem of poor punctuation leaving a bad impression on the reader, and I've seen loads of source material saying that commas must be placed this way. However, I have never seen even one mistake or problem attributable to placing the comma inside the quotation mark, despite several stints of actively looking for them. I've seen no reliable sources reporting such problems, and one reliable source, Chicago Manual of Style 15th14th edition, actively says it's not a real problem. So I'm addressing the boring problem that I've seen happen on a regular basis. Darkfrog24 (talk) 15:14, 27 December 2017 (UTC)Reply
Well... my reasoning above does not engage normative judgements about priorities. I see your priorities in the sorts of criteria you're applying; but I was merely remarking that atm I'm standing back from normative judgements to consider why some people have different priorities than others have (and I wasn't planning to get into the answer to that question, even though I've developed some some insights into it over the past thirty years or so, as it's hard to get more abstract that trying to discuss the nature of people's thought processes). --Pi zero (talk) 16:24, 27 December 2017 (UTC)Reply
Oh believe me you feel others are uncomfortable because don’t use it. Since I have always studied the other style, reading The Giver was very odd, and I could not connect to the story properly. In any case, for me, it is how the source is.
223.180.28.13 (talk) 17:30, 27 December 2017 (UTC)Reply
People who learn to read in American English often describe the same experience when reading something British. Neither system outperforms the other in that respect. The upside is that then we all learn that there are multiple systems and how they work. Darkfrog24 (talk) 14:38, 28 December 2017 (UTC)Reply

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just because one system allows something, I can't overrule what the official statement has, or has not.
•–• 14:50, 28 December 2017 (UTC)Reply

Tucking in the comma does not constitute overruling what the official statement has or has not. It is understood that the comma, like the quotation marks themselves, is part of the quotation process. It is normal, accepted, expected, and understood, much like how the reader does not assume that the original text necessarily had the same font or font size. You will find that most professional style guides have lists of permissible changes that writers may make to direct quotes.
I don't have access to the AP Style Guide right now, but this style guide for Park Science and National Resource Year in Review, which is available online, offers a list of permissible changes on pages 20 and 21. It includes changing archaic spelling to modern, fixing obvious typographical errors, changing lowercase letters to capital under specific conditions, and several other things that I'm sure you'll find bigger in magnitude than a properly tucked-in comma.
I hope this puts your mind at ease that you do not have any ethical or journalistic responsibility to alter punctuation the way you have altered it in this article and can be considered to have a good-writing responsibility not to. Darkfrog24 (talk) 22:30, 28 December 2017 (UTC)Reply
Darkfrog24, your priorities are built into your argument. For my part, it has no bearing on my position because I don't share those priorities. I care about information content; style for me is merely a servant thereto. (Btw, as a matter of curiosity, I have an AP style guide on my shelf, as well as a Chicago Manual of Style, both somewhat out-of-date; I'm not rushing to consult them on this point because what they say about it, though interesting and potentially useful, has no power to change my position.) --Pi zero (talk) 22:53, 28 December 2017 (UTC)Reply
I don’t work for those companies to follow their guidelines. For me, changing one character is also altering the facts. Just like the tweet by spokesperson of Saudi Arabia’s embassy in the US had no space after period because she had reached 280 character limit. No matter how many links you share, every single byte of data is important for me and I would not deviate from that. We aren’t supposed to correct someone else’s typo, nor are we supposed to share something that was altered. There is a difference between those news organisations and Wikinews and this also is important.
•–• 05:51, 29 December 2017 (UTC)Reply
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