You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your
edit summary or on
the article's talk page.
Hello Chris, and thank you for your work. You have correctly fixed many spelling errors on pages I've written about plants. But on this occasion, you are not correct.
First, softly-hairy. Your change to "softly hairy ascending or erect branches" implies that the branches are soft. It is the hairs (on the branches) that are soft. "Softly-hairy" is used by plant taxonomists to describe plant hairs.
Secondly, your reference to
MOS:SMALLFONT is not applicable in this situation. The critical words/phrases are "within page elements that already use a smaller font ", "most" and "plain text". You will also notice that the authors of S. prostrata ((R.Br.) Spreng.) are small. (Its done automatically in the taxobox, editors of plant taxoboxes do not need to "small" the authors). The authors of synonyms must be "smalled" - because it is not done automatically. I think it it will be clear to you, that having R.Br. in large font is incorrect. I'd refer you to Featured Articles like Banksia serrata, Banksia ericifolia, Acacia pycnantha, Lambertia formosa and many others, that the authors of synonyms are "smalled".
In
MOS:SCIENTIFIC it says "In the article body, wrap the authority information in {{small}} or <small>...</small>." But the infobox is not part of the article body, and
MOS:SMALLFONT is quite clear that a smaller font should never be used in an infobox. There seems to be a conflict between the actual usage in featured articles and one or the other section of the MoS. You might want to look into squaring the accepted usage with MOS:SMALLFONT, and maybe squaring the two sections of the MOS with each other, or cllarifying them. Meanwhile, the use of "softly-hairy" is quite opposed to
MOS:HYPHEN, no matter what plant taxonomists commonly use: see also
WP:SSF; WP editors determine punctuation style within WP, not plant specialists. Cheers!
Christhe spelleryack04:29, 4 April 2024 (UTC)reply
Sorry Chris, but you have avoided anwering my points. "Softly hairy ascending or erect branches" implies that the branches are soft. It is the hairs (on the branches) that are soft. "Softly hairy ascending or erect branches" is grammatically incorrect as is "softly hairy, ascending or erect branches". Softly-hairy is a
compound modifier. I have edited the article to avoid confusion.
The synonym Astroloma prostratum R.Br. is incorrect, when the binomnial name is Styphelia prostrata (R.Br.) Spreng. however you interpret
MOS:SMALLFONT. Would you be prepared to remove smalled authors in any featured plant article as you have done at Styphelia prostrata?
Gderrin (
talk)
05:28, 4 April 2024 (UTC)reply
"Softly hairy ascending or erect branches" does not imply the branches are soft. I didn't read it that way, and no one applying rules of English grammar would either. "Softly" is an adverb modifying "hairy", so it means the ascending erect branches are hairy in a soft way. That's kind of an awkward way to say the hairs are soft, but if that is common in plant taxonomists' vernacular (and there's no practical way to say it in general English), it works for me. Not all compound modifiers are hyphenated. If Chris had taken the time to be more specific than just to say
MOS:HYPHEN doesn't allow "softly-hairy", I'm sure he would have directed you to the sentence therein that starts, "Avoid using a hyphen after a standard -ly adverb". Basically, because "softly" couldn't possibly modify anything but "hairy", there's no case for hyphenation.
Bryan Henderson (giraffedata) (
talk)
17:07, 4 April 2024 (UTC)reply
Is a taxobox a special case of an infobox, or is it something different? If it's different, and there is consensus to use a smaller font for authority information, then that exception should be noted in
MOS:SMALLFONT. if a taxobox is an infobox, then MOS:SMALLFONT is in direct opposition to the use of small fonts, so something needs to be worked out. Also,
MOS:SCIENTIFIC needs work, as it states "(This need not be done in a taxobox, which handles this automatically.)", and that is apparently not true. This mess should be cleaned up, or I won't be the last editor to step in it. For now, I will refrain from removing small markup from "synonyms" parameters.
Christhe spelleryack20:25, 4 April 2024 (UTC)reply
Chris the speller, please use your browser's Developer Tools / Inspector feature to look at font sizes. You should see that small text inside most taxobox fields results in 85% font size, which is acceptable per MOS. Taxboxes look like infoboxes in form, but they do not produce smaller text by default. –
Jonesey95 (
talk)
17:02, 5 April 2024 (UTC)reply
I noticed you were one of the contributors on the article page, so, you are notified on
Hermann Ehrhardt
I don't agree with your intermpretation of the MOS here. In context, Brigade is a proper name, just abbreviated to avoid redundancy. But since my interest is accuracy & completeness of content, I'm not going to get too excited about it one way or the other.
GHStPaulMN (
talk)
11:17, 7 June 2024 (UTC)reply
You don't have to interpret
MOS:MILTERMS; it speaks clearly. It says that "Formal names of military units" are proper names and therefore capitalized. "Marinebrigade Ehrhardt" is a formal name; "the brigade" is not.
Christhe spelleryack13:49, 7 June 2024 (UTC)reply
This is tricky, because "form factor" is a noun and takes no hyphen. It would be fine to say "I want a PC with a small form factor", or "I want an SFF PC". But if it is expanded to "a small form factor PC", "small form factor" is a compound modifier, so that would indicate that a hyphen should be used between "small" and "form factor". No hyphen after form, because multi-word nouns don't take hyphens, as in "a pre-World War II movie". So "a small-form factor PC" could be considered properly hyphenated, but it does not lead to smooth reading. Maybe this is why newspapers and industry publications generally do not use any hyphens in "a small form factor PC", and trying to stuff hyphens in there will probably lead to unhappiness. The current page name would be better with two hyphens and even better with none. As it is, it looks like it is about a form-factor PC (whatever the heck that is) that is small. The lede defines SFF, and it might be a good idea to use "SFF PC" exclusively in the rest of the article.
Christhe spelleryack03:47, 19 June 2024 (UTC)reply
Are you sure about "a pre-World War II movie"? I thought the rule was to use hyphens throughout a compound modifier, as opposed to between the adjective and noun, because lots of compound modifiers don't even have an adjective and a noun (ease-of-reading considerations, slowly-but-surely strategy, six-hectare-limit rule). The practicality of hyphenating the whole thing is obvious: that way it doesn't read like a movie about the second war over the pre-World. Or a factor relating to small forms.
Bryan Henderson (giraffedata) (
talk)
21:04, 21 June 2024 (UTC)reply
Yes, I'm very sure. Search with DuckDuckGo (which pays attention to hyphens) for "pre-world-war-ii movie" and then "pre-world war ii movie" and see what comes up. None of your examples involve multi-word nouns. I can't think of any unhyphenated multi-word nouns that pick up a hyphen when an adjective is added in making a compound modifier. I admit that my example of "a pre-World War II movie" was not entirely appropriate, as "World War II" is a proper name, and you really can't jam hyphens into it. Back to the original question – "What hyphens should
Small form-factor PC have?" – there is no slam-dunk right answer, and the closest I can come is no hyphens at all, as used in most sources I could find. Apparently, AI has not yet caught up with me; I asked Copilot (at bing.com/chat) about this case of hyphenation, and it said that "I bought a small-form-factor PC" was correctly hyphenated, and then said that "I bought a small form-factor PC" was correctly hyphenated! When I asked about the example with no hyphens, it preferred two hyphens.
Christhe spelleryack01:42, 22 June 2024 (UTC)reply