Wikisource talk:WikiProject DNB/Style Manual

completed indexes?
Have any of the volume indexes been done? Cygnis insignis (talk) 22:47, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Do you mean the index/ToC per volume in the main namespace, or the indices at the end of each volume in the Page: namespace. The former, less than half a dozen, the latter, none. billinghurst (talk) 03:47, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Their indexes - I roughly started the index in volume 11 for a demo: 1 2 3 of five. Cygnis insignis (talk) 13:10, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Very useful, in fact. Proofing those pages would noticeably reduce the work involved in preparing the ToC. This now occurs to me: is there automation for piping the links? My computer skills stretching to find-and-replace but not much further, I can get from "Smith, John" to *Smith, John (DNB00) format in a list. But to do 500 instances of the change to *Smith, John by hand is really drudgery. Charles Matthews (talk) 15:32, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Total drudgery, but there are a number of solutions to this. I built a regex snippet for this problem then promptly lost it, ab claims to understand these things (and I hope he documents it). I would sub-page the entry to Dictionary of National Biography ("year of edition")/Volume 11/Surname, Jane [!], this full link or /Surname, Jane/ can be done with find and replace like the table outlay; I can supply my solution to that if you want. The latter will redlink in the Page: namespace, but it remains relative in any 'transclusion'; billinghurst has an elaborate solution that detects the name-space and presents the link accordingly. Shall I outline the reasons why this approach, numerous entries in the volumes of a 'document', will make things easier overall? Cygnis insignis (talk) 17:55, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
 * If you wish ... I'll be seeing Magnus Manske tomorrow at a meet-up and I suppose he could write a gadget to do something like this, and place it on the toolserver. I thought I should ask first if there is an existing solution. Charles Matthews (talk) 19:24, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
 * If we have a running list, I can just paste into an excel spreadsheet and worked it from there. I manually typed earlier lists and then did same process.  You will still see some of the ugliness that comes from stripping with see YADDADA.  Like the thoughts on a global list.  Charles whatever Magus can do with his magic is always welcome.  Magic beats hard work everytime. :-)  billinghurst (talk) 20:33, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I did a bit of 11 and pulled a few names off 'All pages with prefix'. I made a few redirects also, some dated did not seem ambiguous; burn them if that is not okay. Cygnis insignis (talk) 13:41, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Please feel encouraged to do more. Charles Matthews (talk) 20:28, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I found some orphans too. Is there a particular volume that would be more useful to index? Cygnis insignis (talk) 20:43, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Any volume where there is no current table of contents would be pretty useful. Where not many articles have been started, it may reflect a poor existing scan, and so you should probably choose some volume that has been popular for article creation. Charles Matthews (talk) 21:37, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Format of entry's first line
I had been formatting the entries titles like this: but I noticed that people had been adding bold: so I looked at the scan again, this is what it gives:
 * BLAKE, WILLIAM (1757-1827), poet and painter, was born on
 * BLAKE, WILLIAM (1757-1827), poet and painter, was born on
 * BLAKE, WILLIAM (1757-1827), poet and painter, was born on

Has a style convention been decided? Note also the entry would show as BLAKE, WILLIAM (1757-1827), poet and painter, was born on ...", as i would do it, I don't think there is guideline on that either. Cygnis insignis (talk) 14:38, 9 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Meaning, do we ever link the author namespace from the text. Cygnis insignis (talk) 11:03, 10 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Ah, you are more observant than I am. I agree, after some squinting (later volumes are perhaps printed in a less clear way) that it is surname bold/forename just upper case. So this should be the convention, if anything. We have not set this down yet, I believe. I think we do link the names of authors to author pages, as a matter of practice. To rule on that, though, would be one of those discussions about preferred wikification (as in which namespace, rather than which wiki, in this instance). Charles Matthews (talk) 11:21, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks Charles. I used the jpeg at the source, the slightly heavier font is not as easily discerned in the djvu. Regarding namespaces, there is some work being done on linking and some confusion on what the approach should be. I believe the solution is to link the names to author and the characters  to the article referred. Cygnis insignis (talk) 11:30, 10 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Where the biography is an author, I have been wikilinking the initial author name in DNB articles, and many biographical type works for an extended period, and have done it through all SBDEL without any adverse comment. Mostly took that approach back in 2008 as found that other links (eg. wikilink in section or title) were not readily noticeable. With regard to formatting, I just use upper case, though I initially was exposed to the 1922 compilation which definitely does not bold the names, so that would have influenced my view of the earlier versions. — billinghurst  sDrewth  12:09, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Hyphens, en dashes
Date ranges should use en dashes (–) not hyphens. See, e.g., Chicago Manual of Style and New Hart's Rules (a.k.a. Oxford Guide to Style, Oxford Style Manual), and other mainstream style guides. Use of the hyphen glyph (-) in this construction is something from expediency-driven news journalism style guides like the Associated Press Stylebook, which do numerous typography-simplification things that are ill-advised outside that particular register of English. Use of the hyphen for this is causing problems, e.g. at en.Wikipedia in citation templates correctly linking to articles here. What should probably be done is redirecting hyphen-using versions of the titles to dash-using actual pages. This can be done by a bot. (If you insist, it could be done the other way around, but it needs to work regardless which character is used). SMcCandlish (talk) 08:18, 3 October 2017 (UTC)
 * In the works we reproduce characters as they are in the original works, be they hyphens, em dashes, en dashes or whatever. In our titles they are hyphens and that is a universal style here and has been for many years, they are labels for titles. So at that point they are not part of any style book. At English Wikipedia the site should be identifying our works as they are entitled here, which is what is in your style manual. — billinghurst  sDrewth  10:25, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

see Wikisource talk:WikiProject DNB -- PBS (talk) 10:15, 23 October 2017 (UTC)


 * We hyphens in the article titles. This is our agreed-upon convention and it has been that way since 2008. We did it that way because the article title becomes part of a URL, and (especially back then) URLs are easier to deal with when they are plain ASCII. URLS are not subject to the Chicago Manual of Style or any other manual of style: they are subject to the HTML specifications. -Arch dude (talk) 04:17, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

How to link primary and secondary biographies to Wikipedia articles
Hungerford, Anthony (d.1657) (DNB00) is an example of an article that includes to people of about that same notability. They have separate articles on Wikipaia. At the moment the first person has a link in the header to a Wikipedia biography. Can on link to more than one article in the header? EB1911 has that capability but at the moment DNB00 does not appear to do so.

At the moment the text in the article Hungerford, Anthony (d.1657) (DNB00) includes links to Wikipedia articles. Is this something that ought to be done?

-- PBS (talk)


 * over at template:EB1911 they have overrides for multiple wikipedia subjects. maybe that would be a model for a little template revision. Slowking4 ‽ SvG's revenge 16:39, 23 October 2017 (UTC)


 * Template:EB1911 is an ugly and archaic template which troubles some users as its use is non-standard and doesn't align with the other pages on site in header use and metadata components. The use of a wikilink (as is in the article) seems the appropriate way to progress, as well as the use of anchor, or anchor+, to allow an inbound link. The linking of articles in the header zone was long debated and it was determined to keep headers as lean as possible, and hence they are generic labels. The discussion for this brought about the development of Template:plain sister and we got rid of some very ugly headers. From my recall (which may be false), the community discussed single links as they were replacing the old big fat "wikipedia" templates that were all single links. — billinghurst  sDrewth  21:41, 23 October 2017 (UTC)
 * The problem with links within an article is the danger of overlinking with every possible phrase for which a wikipedia article exists linked. There are some example on EB1911 and EB9 that I have noticed. An example of which is Amphictyony (where the links are to EB9 articles but I have seem similar examples exist for links to Wikipedia). -- PBS (talk) 13:06, 24 October 2017 (UTC)