Wikiquote talk:Manual of style

Citations

As I edit the Carl Sagan page, I notice that a previous contributer has used page numbers to locate quotes within a book. This is terribly inadequate. No book is published in a single printed version these days. The previous contributer locates a quote on page 189 that I see on page 157. The difference is merely that I have a softcover version while p.189 must refer to hardcover. Why not just refer to the chapter entitled "The Common Enemy" which is merely 12 pages long? - Stevesliva

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My strong feeling (from having done almost all the recent editing on Stephen Jay Gould) is that both page numbers and editions are fundamental to proper citation. It is usually sufficient to identify format and publisher, but some books (particularly non-fiction) are significantly revised between editions, so if (for example) you are quoting Charles Darwin from The Origin of Species, it is vitally important to specify not only publisher but also which of the 6+ editions published in Darwin's lifetime the text comes from (never mind being able to find the particular page). I'm not so concerned about ISBNs.

As a repository of quotations, I think it should be Wikiquote's goal to cite the earliest widely-available form of publication (for modern English-language sources anyway). For Gould, I've chosen to use the first (collected) editions of his essays, rather than tracing them back to their original sources, for a few reasons:

• The books are much more readily available than back issues of Natural History magazine. (As witness the fact that they books are what I have, and not 300 mouldering magazines.)
• Gould frequently re-edited the essays for the collection.
• They provide a convenient rubric for organizing the page into sections of roughly equal length.

Citing early editions is useful for one of the primary purposes of a quotation reference, recording the temporal priority of well-known phrases. It's also standard academic practice, and for most contemporary publications (with only two or four editions worldwide) not very difficult to do.

I would not object to someone adding to (not replacing) the citations with the specific details of their original publication, provided she also checked the quoted text to be sure that Gould didn't change it between first publication and appearance in the collection.

In the Isaac Asimov article, I cited the original short stories, even though I only have a late collection, because the Foundation books have been through many editions, mine is a late paperback, and I believe the original story titles are more informative than the chapter headings in the collection that I have. Hopefully this will provide enough information for some motivated soul to track down the original magazine appearance and complete the citations. But in general I'm of a mind that you should cite the source you used, even if it's not the first appearance/edition, and let future editors take it back.

Of course, I've been talking about articles named after quotation sources. I'd like to propose the following very-high-level taxonomy of Wikiquote pages:

• Source pages
  • Article title is the name of the source (author, book, film, TV series).
  • Every quotation should be cited (unless marked as "attributed"). Closely-related quotations (e.g., from the same book or series) may share citation information under a common heading. (See Stephen Jay Gould for an example.)
  • These are the only pages where the "Sourced" vs. "Attributed" distinction is meaningful.
  • Should always include WP links in the intro (even if the WP article on this source has not been written yet).
• Proverb pages
  • Consist entirely of unattributable proverbs and other bits of "folk wisdom".
• Reference pages
  • This group would principally include Themes at the moment; I hope that this category will continue to grow.
  • Every quotation or aphorism which is attributed to a specific person should name that person, with a link back to the source page, and give the date (if known).
  • Thus, they need not include citations (since the full citation, if known, should be on the source page).
  • Quotations on these pages may be trimmed down for succinctness from the versions on the source pages, but the wording should otherwise match.

18.26.0.18 04:08, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

<references />

Why are we not using the references function as used on Wikipedia? This method of citation is cleaner than adding a bullet underneath the quotation followed by citation text. Adraeus 21:05, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Well, the short answer is that the ref/references system is only a few months old, and the bulleting style goes back to the origins of Wikiquote. Inertia is a tremendous factor on an 8,000-article project where only a dozen editors make more than 100 edits a month. A more complete answer would have to await a serious, organized discussion on the issue of sourcing, which has, to date, been fitfully strewn all over talk and project discussion pages. It's probably a good idea to start a discussion on sourcing formats on the talk page of our new draft policy Wikiquote:Sourcing. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 21:18, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Links deleted from 'For further information'

Deleted from 'for further information': The following links were pointing to empty pages withing Wikiquote - and the corresponding pages on Wikipedia seem very Wikipedia specific to me. sunny 13:42, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)

• Be bold in updating pages should define your attitude toward page updates.
• Most common Wikipedia faux pas gives a list of common mistakes and how to avoid them.
• Editing policy has even more editing guidelines.
• How does one edit a page will explain the mechanics of what codes are available to you when editing a page, to do things like titles, links, external links, and so on.
• The perfect stub article shows what you should aim for at a minimum when starting a new article.

Capitalization conventions

I'd like to address a problem between our official policy and our actual practice here at Wikiquote: capitalization conventions. We informally borrow quite a bit of style practice from Wikipedia, but our own manual of style explicitly reiterates the general wiki policy of using sentence case in article titles — that is, capitalize only the first letter in the title and of any proper nouns, but use lowercase for all other words. This has less impact on Wikiquote than Wikipedia, since most article titles are either people's names or the titles of works, both of which are considered proper noun phrases, but there are two inconsistencies that crop up:

1. Capitalizing non-proper nouns in theme or topic titles (e.g., Theater Musicals and Plays).
2. Varying capitalization within a title or proper name (e.g., Pirates of the Caribbean vs. Pirates Of The Caribbean).

The first I hope to resolve without much argument, but the second is more complex. — Jeff Q (talk) 08:34, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Non-proper nouns

The first issue is simply a matter of not following our own stated, straightforward policy. I've occasionally changed these problem titles whenever I come across them, but new ones keep popping up, probably because the lack of consistency prevents new editors from intuiting the policy by general observation. To combat this, unless people object strongly, I will be aggressively changing such titles over the next few months, as I have time and opportunity, and changing relevant links so that Wikiquote will be internally consistent. (Redirects can remain in place for the foreseeable future so people won't have problems finding articles under their former titles.)

If anyone has a concern about my aggressive conformance editing, please raise your concerns here. Thank you. — Jeff Q (talk) 08:34, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I support this. I can't say that I have noticed it except in relation to Category titles but I expect that it will be one of those things that once it is called to your attention you suddenly notice all around you. Rmhermen 14:36, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I support we capitalize only the first letter of non-proper name pages; articles, categories and documents. Once I created a document not following this way, and later I had troubles to put a link to it correctly. The simpler rule, the better. --Aphaia 12:39, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Irregular proper-noun practices

The second issue is trickier, as different English-speaking countries have different policies on title capitalization. Wikiquote practice seems to be most commonly following what I, as an American, see as typical "American" practice: capitalize every word in the title of a work except articles (a, an, the), conjunctions (e.g., and), and prepositions (e.g., of, with, through). There are, however, many problems with this practice:

• Many English prepositions are also adverbs, requiring the editor to determine what part of speech the word is acting as in order to know whether to capitalize it or not.
• There seems to be an informal practice of capitalizing long prepositions (e.g., through), possibly because people intuit non-capitalization as applying to all short words (since articles and many prepositions are 1-3 letters long).
• There is also a common habit of not capitalizing some variations on the verb "to be" (e.g., is, are, be). I'm not sure if this is an official variation on English practice, but it may also stem from the short length of these verbs.
• To avoid all these problems, many publishers of works — possibly most, these days — simply ignore variable capitalization by printing titles in all-uppercase, all-lowercase, or all-capitalized (i.e., every first letter uppercase). Many people feel that this practice should be followed in article titles, especially when their copy of the work follows this practice.
• Likewise, some artists and companies deliberately play with conventions for artistic effect (e.g., k. d. lang, iPod). People can get very passionate about respecting the intent of these unconventional practices.

And that's just following this so-called American capitalization. The Wikipedia:Manual of Style claims that British publishers often do more capitalization than Americans (although I've seen the opposite argument as well), and I'm not sure what English practice is outside these two countries (which, as my Canadian, Australian, and Indian friends are quick to point out, leaves a considerable population). There's also the question of following foreign capitalization practice for foreign titles. (You can get a feel for how different those practices are by looking at w:List of Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes, which follows foreign capitalization rules when listing the original foreign-language titles to many "MSTied" films.)

I bring this up here because it is a long-term issue, but I'm not particularly concerned about fixing policy on this issue in the near future, since we only have about 3,000 articles right now. However, this may be a good place and time to start such a discussion. I invite the Wikiquote community to post their thoughts on this subject below. Thank you. — Jeff Q (talk) 08:34, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

For proper nouns originally written in latin alphabet, my standpoint is very simple and clear: follow the orignal name in general, but if it is very old (like Medieval works or very early modern) we can modernize it applying the orthography today. As for transcription, I have an opinion only on Japanese: use Hepburn system. I agree with Jeff we don't need to make a hasty decision on this matter, but it is a good time to begin our discussion. --Aphaia 00:35, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

One of the many complications that people don't realize is that publishers (American ones, at least) consider style elements like capitalization, punctuation, and type to be their domain, unless an artist makes a fuss. This means that two people can be holding different modern copies of a work and yelling at each other "it's printed this way!" — "no, it's printed that way!", and both be right. So "original" name capitalization can be hard to determine. Nothing about this subject is as simple as it seems, unfortunately. — Jeff Q (talk) 06:53, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I agree that if the original name is clear, then we should follow it. If it's not clear, then I do think that we should set a clear policy, and I think that this policy should simply be to use as little capitalization as possible (out of the available options that may be considered correct) - I also think that this simple criterion will generate a style which is in fact the one that's considered the most correct usually in the English speaking world (for example, "the Caribbean", "the University of Colorado", and not "The", etc.) - BTW, this policy is not related only to the title of the articles, but also to what appears in the body of the articles. Sams 09:03, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Punctuation

I would like to express my strongest disagreement with the current (copied from Wikipedia) guidelines on punctuation, particularly with repsect to quotation marks. The guidelines are at least arguably reasonable for WP; not so here. It should be the goal of Wikiquote, so far as quotations from written sources go, to accurately reproduce the text of the original, including typography to the extent feasible. All of the important punctuation marks are suppored in Unicode, and nearly all (the ellipsis is the major exception for English-language published works) have standard HTML character entities. While it is possible that the Mediawiki developers will at some point come through with a simplified wikisyntax for meta-ASCII punctuation, as they are apparently doing for em-dashes, it does us no good unless those characters can be properly and unambiguously represented in existing articles with existing syntax, so that they may be converted to any new syntax (or directly to UTF-8) at a future date. Mangling the original punctuation to flat ASCII (without using character entities) does not serve this goal.

Currently editors are encouraged to wrap each quotation in more (ASCII) quotation marks. This guideline seems to be honored in only a small fraction of Wikiquote articles. I know of no other compendium of quotations which uses such a style (certainly my copy of Simpson's Contemporary Quotations does not) and for good reason: it is confusing. Is this a quotation of a quotation (e.g., dialogue)? This also requires editors (if they are conscientious) to then change the marks used for any internal quotation, if any. Should be really be writing:

• "'She said, "What?"'"

? (Yes, that's a strawman example.) I would argue that the guidelines for typography should look more like this:

Written sources

Please do your best to copy the exact style, punctuation, and other typography of the original source. Some important conventions used in printed material, with the appropriate wikisyntax to represent them, can be found in the (insert name of new article). Do not wrap quotations in “quotation marks” (or "ASCII quotation marks" or ‘inverted commas’ or 'apostrophes') unless the entire quotation consists of dialogue, in which case the style of quotation should match that used by the author.

(In the case of a work published in separate editions for North America and Britain, Ireland, or Australia, the style of punctuation may differ significantly between editions. Use the style of the edition you have, and make certain to cite that edition properly, but don't be hurt if another editor "corrects" your punctuation and citations to agree with the edition she has.)

Spoken sources

For speeches, presentations, radio or television broadcasts, and films, try to find out if there is an official written version or transcript which you can cite instead, in which case see "Written sources" above. For sources with no written version available to you, please follow the guidelines for non-sourced quotations, below.

Non-sourced quotations

As with written-sourced material, do not wrap quotations in quotation marks unless the entire quotation consists of a single speaker's dialogue.

(at this point insert a two-paragraph condensation of the existing punctuation guidelines copied from Wikipedia)

121a0012 03:06, May 19, 2005 (UTC)

Seems like it was voted on at Wikiquote:Quotation_marks, long before I came here. I'm personally in favor of wrapping each quote with quotation marks: it seems more accurate in order to make it clear that it was a direct quote that was said or written by its author. I agree that if you buy a book like the one you mentioned above, then the people who designed the book can make everything look clear without quotation marks by using a uniform layout, but a wiki project on the internet is more messy than a printed book, in terms of random contributors who edit the pages etc., so I think that using quotations marks is better here in order to remove possible doubts about whether something is a direct quote. Seems like there're de facto exceptions, like dialogs, and proverbs it seems... And regarding the quote inside quote issue, I agree that this is a problem, in fact I bumped into it at least twice in quotes that I transcribed - but I didn't change " to ' because I use ' for paraphrases-style quotes inside a quote, so I just used an extra space, like, "She said, "What?" " - not sure what's the best option here, perhaps the simple "She said, "What?"" is best... Sams 11:21, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

Personally, I don't really want to get into a debate on punctuation here yet, as there are many pressing problems on Wikiquote that aren't controversial. But I'll just make the following points for now:

1. The most compelling reason to use ASCII quotation marks rather than proper ones is that, for a system that encourages and even requires the participation of the masses, making people use Unicode character entities rather than the keys on their keyboards for something as common as a quote mark is an unreasonable barrier to participation. I'll be happy to switch to “standard quotes” — right after Microsoft takes over world government and mandates new keyboards with these quotes on the keycaps, and the old keyboards have mostly been discarded.
2. I fully agree with the superfluity of requiring quote marks around each quotation when many publishers use their standardized typography to make the quoted material clear (although Sams makes a good point). I think many newer contributors (i.e., since the last vote on this issue) also feel this way, which is one reason there is so little conformity with official policy. If people feel it is time to revisit this issue, it should brought up as a separate topic and voted anew. I, for one, would greatly prefer to put such a vote off until we build up enough policy infrastructure so that our increasing user base doesn't have to get lost between Wikiquote and Wikipedia to figure out what our policies are.
3. The vast majority of Wikiquote users aren't participating in any of these policy discussions. That's their prerogative, of course, but it means that there are currently only a dozen or so people making policy here. Some policy issues can't wait for broad support, but I'm reluctant to press on any issues that require a massive effort to change existing practices, because we just don't have the committed personnel to accomplish the tasks.

— Jeff Q (talk) 12:41, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

P.S. I notice that, in my Firefox 1.0.3 browser using the MediaWiki Monobook skin, the left and right Unicode double quotes I used above display exactly like ordinary ASCII double quotes; i.e., straight vertical ticks without either left or right slant. I'm not sure why this is, as WebRef's HTML Character Reference page shows them accurately, but it suggests that the MediaWiki developers have chosen a font for the default Monobook skin that defeats 121a0012's admirable goal, at least for some browsers. This problem is much bigger than Wikiquote. — Jeff Q (talk) 12:48, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

I would argue that, whether or not they use additional typography to make it clear, the reason that printed compendia of quotations do not use quotation marks is that they are superfluous: someone who consults a book of quotations does not need to see quotation marks to know that everything in the book is a quotation from something else! So it is with Wikiquote: someone who is searching here will know (or at least have a very good inkling) what to expect from the material. (If they don't, then there's a problem that should be remedied by editing the boilerplate. The boilerplate already has problems on the copyright front.)

As for Jeff Q's post-scriptum: that's not what I see, and I'm also using the default style. (I have no idea what sort of fonts the style asks for, if any; a good style should use the generic names "serif" and "sans" and let the user's or system's defaults prevail.) I fully expect that MediaWiki will eventually have wikisyntax support for typeset quotation marks (they are really a necessity to make decent printed output, as is ultimately desired for Wikipedia), probably using ``TeX syntax'' which is fairly common and well understood. If we want to have our work today be compatible with whatever is implemented in the future, then it behooves us to make an effort at representing the proper characters in the syntax we have available (HTML character entities), which are at least unambiguous, and can be easily transformed into whatever the official syntax turns out to be without making a hash of unrelated text. This could be made substantially easier for Joe Random Editor if we had the same "palette" of non-ASCII characters in the edit window as Wikipedia does. 18.26.0.18 21:37, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

Speaking as one who spends some time every day adding the most basic wiki markup (e.g., bold, italics, bulleting, indenting, headers) to many quote pages, I would say that believing that knowledge of TeX syntax is "fairly common" among this user base is grossly delusional. I spent 15 years administering and programming Unix systems, and although I learned to hand-code PostScript programs and craft webpages by without HTML tools, I never once felt the need to learn TeX. And most people contributing to Wikiquote are neither programmers nor HTML experts; sure one doesn't expect them to know TeX? I can think of no better way to limit contributions to Wikiquote than to insist that people use fancy markup for basic material. — Jeff Q (talk) 22:55, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

TeX markup is already used for equations in Wikipedia, so it's nowhere near as far-out as you describe. In any case, no, I don't expect Wikiquote editors to know TeX, but I do expect MediaWiki programmers, when looking for a syntax to use for proper quotation marks, to use a syntax that both intuitively obvious and already familiar to them. I expect Wikiquote editors to click on the "Editing help" link at the bottom of the edit page, or to select a character from a palette provided for that purpose, to get the right characters. Nor, for that matter, do I expect most people to do this—I want to recommend good practice, not require it, and certainly not prohibit it. If editors want to do the objectively Right Thing, we should facilitate and not obstruct that desire. Typography matters. 121a0012 02:45, May 20, 2005 (UTC)

Quoting verse

It seems to me that treatment of form for quoting verse is absent from this manual, as song lyrics and poetry are enormously common source materials here. carriage returns are clumsy and spaced too far apart, and reading left to right through forward slashes obscure the rhythm too dramatically. any insights or direction on this matter? Popefauvexxiii 18:41, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

You can create a new line of verse by using <br>at the end of a line to separate the lines in a stanza. You can use <br><br>at the end of a line to make a break between stanzas, like this:

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

and so on. - InvisibleSun 18:55, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

cool. what about the bullet though? any way to flush up the lines in front of it? Popefauvexxiii 19:04, 20 June 2006 (UTC) oops, nevermind :) ~

One thought. Can you ask developer to make a newfeature to treat such works? If I recall correctly, Wikisource people have been worried about that, and somewhere - perhaps foundation-l or other wikimedia mailing list - proposed such ... like "gallery" for sorting images. Our c0urrent way works for getting apperence we hope but the source is hardly readable. --Aphaia 19:37, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

I discussed this somewhere on Wikipedia and/or Meta-Wiki a couple of years ago (I forgot where off-hand), but was greeted with a total lack of interest. However, MediaWiki has evolved since then, and if other projects are clamoring for more flexible display of non-prose text, the developers may be more prepared to consider it. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 03:00, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

I've discovered that the only way I can quote certain poems with indentations is not to do them in bullet fashion, as can be seen on such pages as George Herbert (especially the "pattern" poems like "The Altar" and "Easter Wings"), William Carlos Williams (see the last two quotes) and W. H. Auden. - InvisibleSun 07:54, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Typography preferences

A recent edit to a page where I had "straightened" the quotes to conform to what used to be standard Wikimedia guidelines prompted me to look at the latest version of the section in the Wikipedia Manual of Style on the matter:

Quotation marks

With quotation marks we split the difference between American and British usage. Though not a rigid rule, we use the "double quotes" for most quotations — they are easier to read on the screen — and use 'single quotes' for nesting quotations, that is, "quotations 'within' quotations".

Note: if a word or phrase appears in an article with single quotes, such as 'abcd', the Wikipedia:Searching facility considers the single quotes to be part of the word and will find that word or phrase only if the search string is also within single quotes. (When trying this out with the example mentioned, remember that this article is in the Wikipedia namespace.) Avoiding this complication is an additional reason to use double quotes, for which the difficulty does not arise. It may even be a reason to use double quotes for quotations within quotations.

When punctuating quoted passages, include the punctuation mark inside the quotation marks only if the sense of the punctuation mark is part of the quotation ("logical" quotations). When using "scare quotes", the comma or period always goes outside.

Examples:

• Arthur said the situation was "deplorable". (Only a fragment is quoted; the full stop [period] is not part of the quotation.)
• Arthur said, "The situation is deplorable." (The full sentence is quoted; the period is part of the quotation.)
• Martha asked, "Are you coming?" (Inside when quoting a question.)
• Did Martha say, "Come with me"? (Outside when there is a non-interrogative quotation at the end of a question.)

Similarly, when the title of an article requires quotation marks in the text (for example, the titles of songs, poems, etc.), the quotation marks should not be bolded in the summary, as they are not part of the title:

"Jabberwocky" is a nonsense poem by Lewis Carroll.

Longer quotations may be better rendered in an indented style by starting the first line with a colon or by using <blockquote> </blockquote> notation (see Direct quotations), which indents both left and right margins. Indented quotations do not need to be marked by quotation marks. Double quotation marks belong at the beginning of each paragraph in a quotation of multiple paragraphs not using indented style, though at the end of only the last paragraph.

Use quotation marks or indentation to distinguish quotations from other text. There is normally no need to put quotations in italics unless the material would otherwise call for italics (emphasis, use of non-English words, etc.).

Look of quotation marks and apostrophes

There are two options when considering the look of the quotation marks themselves:

• Typographic “text”, ‘text’
• Typewriter "text", 'text'

As there is currently no consensus on which should be preferred, either is acceptable. However, it appears that historically the majority of Wikipedia articles, and those on the Internet as a whole, follow the latter style. If curved quotation marks or apostrophes appear in article titles, ensure that there is a redirect with straight glyphs.

Never use grave and acute accents or backticks (`text´) as quotation marks or apostrophes.

Comments and ideas

Previously, to keep things simpler, and to avoid some older software problems, there was strong encouragement on the Wikimedia projects to use typewriter apostrophes and quotation marks (' & ") rather than typographical ones (‘ & ’ & “ & ”) but relatively recent changes have occurred in Wikipedia policies, and consideration of what our policies should be are among a few ideas I am currently beginning to deal with a bit more vigorously. I would support the general adoption of typographically correct punctuation as a preference and recommendation, but I don't think it should be insisted upon, nor that there need be any sweeping program of "cleanup" of articles which use the older "typewriter" punctuation. ~ Kalki 03:42, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

I would also propose that styles used should have consistency upon a page, even if not across all pages, and that where they are mixed they should be shifted to all of one style or the other. ~ Kalki 04:29, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Our guidelines for quotations from written sources state that the spelling and punctuation should follow that used in the original source. Historically, most subjects are published in only one medium, and the only variance in the style of quotation marks is attributable to differing countries of publication. In the future, however, it may not be unusual for a notable subject to be published in multiple media; even for written sources, conventions may still differ among blogs and other Web pages, Usenet and mailing-list posts, traditional dead-tree media, and online analogues of traditional media. Add to that the possibility that famous authors now frequently appear on radio and television, for which different styles are currently preferred, and the issues multiply.

There is also the issue of quotation marks used in non-quotation boilerplate, such as citations. It is traditional that individual works in a collection (like stories in an anthology or articles in conference proceedings) get quotation marks. I think most editors use "typewriter" punctuation for this. (If someone can think of a good way to hide this behind a template, while still providing for the common case here of putting bibliographic data in a section heading or intro, it would be worth adopting.) 121a0012 05:06, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

A concrete example of a multi-medium subject: Charles Stross is a notable British SF author. His books, as published in Britain, presumably use the British style of quotation marks; likewise the American style when issued by a U.S. publisher. But in his blog, he uses "typewriter" style, and likewise in his frequent postings to the SF newsgroups. Our policy currently suggests that this inconsistency should remain—the written source, after all, is authoritative as to what it says. You seem to be suggesting that editors should change the style of quotations from his blog to match that of his books (UK or US?), or perhaps vice versa. I don't think this is a good idea. 121a0012 05:15, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

New dates/numbers/measurements section

I've written a first pass at Wikiquote style on these elements, based on current practices. I did this mainly because there has been more activity — and controversy — lately about how to format dates, and whether or not to use preference-based date formatting links or Wikipedia year links. I invite everyone to review it and suggest or make changes as needed. Thank you. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 11:46, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Interwiki

Please add Hebrew interwiki: [[he:ויקיציטוט:המדריך לעיצוב דפים]] Thanks, 84.229.202.114 23:17, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Done. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 00:00, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Source links

I would like to propose adding the following to the section Wikiquote:Manual of style#Citation style:

"Adding web links to the sources of quotations can be helpful; these links, however, should not be substitutes to providing source information on the Wikiquote pages themselves. Links may become broken over time. If source information does not accompany a quotation, the quotation will no longer be sourced if the link should fail. In addition, readers should not be required to click web links and scan other pages to discover sources. It is a courtesy as well as a convenience to our readers that this information can be found in our articles."

- InvisibleSun 00:12, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Wikiquote:Manual of style#Spelling style typo

Please can someone with the necessary rights change anarchonistic to anachronistic? Mirokado 18:04, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Y Done. ~ Ningauble 18:29, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Entire quotes should not be bolded

I've seen the use of bolding for the most salient part of a quote, and that's fine. But I don't see the use of bolding entire quotes, like here. As this seems to occur rather often, I thought I'd ask here, rather than embarking on a ronin's crusade: Could we please add a section on the use of bolding that mentions these two points? Paradoctor (talk) 14:17, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

Citation style

I am new here, but have always had quite a bit of interest in Wikiquote. The main issue I'm running into is citations. According to the Manual of Style, Wikiquote uses the same citation style as Wikipedia, but all pages on this project show that this isn't the case. GreenMeansGo (talk · contributions) explained to me on my talkpage that citations are always presented in full in the prose itself. According to I would like to discuss this issue in a more public forum such as this. In particular, I would love if multiple different citation styles could be used on Wikiquote, as I definitely understand why you wouldn't want to change all pages on this entire project. Completely disallowing footnotes for sources seems downright absurd to me, but if there is a specific reason why this is done, I would love to know it. Per the very first discussion on this talkpage, it seems to only be done this way on Wikiquote due to initial intertia. Maplestrip (talk) 12:23, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

I do not believe that UDScott (talk · contributions)'s change on a page I created today — [1] — is at all an improvement. In fact, I believe this change makes the entire page more cluttered and makes it more difficult to read. It makes it less clear who is the quoted person and who is the author of the article, and it causes some citations to be doubled and tripled. Maplestrip (talk) 12:23, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

I just moved this discussion to Wikiquote:Village pump#Citation style, after being informed that that forum is more active than this talk page. Maplestrip (talk) 07:32, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

More than one citation/source

Some editors are removing citations when there are more than one citation or source for a given quote.

I can understand to remove additional citations when there are too many (more than three or four), but 2 or 3 citations or sources for a quote should be fine.

Additional citations can be used for online verification (if it is a online source), to help the reader find additional context and discussion about a quote. Sometimes the removed source is the source from where the quote was found before added to wikiquote. It is also a matter of fairness to acknowledge this source. --დამოკიდებულება (talk) 10:57, 23 May 2020 (UTC)

Looking for a Template:Quote

With hope for the correct place here for my search, please.
The german wikiquote has a Template:´quote´: (translated to english) http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fde.m.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FVorlage%3AZitat%23Beispiel
Is there one in english, please ?
Thank You very much.
(I also ask the question there: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wikiquote:Village_pump#Looking_for_this_german_Template:Quote_(Zitat)_in_english)
--Visionhelp (talk) 11:04, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

Question about punctuation style

Greetings and felicitations. I'm an experienced editor on Wikipedia, but a novice on Wikiquote. Wikiquote:Manual of style#Punctuation style is relatively sparse compared to what I'm accustomed to. Is there anything else I should know? In particular, I've noticed spaced em dashes, which Wikipedia prohibits. —DocWatson42 (talk) 04:49, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

Bumping. This is particularly in regards to "Laurence Olivier". —DocWatson42 (talk) 03:19, 19 March 2023 (UTC)