Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 14:28, 4 January 2007

Welcome!

Hello, The undertow, and welcome to Misplaced Pages! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

• The five pillars of Misplaced Pages
• How to edit a page
• Help pages
• Tutorial
• How to write a great article
• Manual of Style

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Misplaced Pages:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Again, welcome!  -Harmil 18:05, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Punctuation

Italics aren't quotes, and there's no particular reason to make other punctuation italic, so you don't need to change text like this:

the dog ''ate my homework''.

with this:

the dog ''ate my homework.''

In both cases, the wiki text may look like it is surrounded in quotes, and so you might be tempted to follow the same rules as for quotes (at least in the most common American English usage), but there is no need because it appears to the user pretty much exactly the same. So, if you come across text like this, you can safely leave it whatever way the author entered it, and no harm is done. Especially for popular articles, this removes the need for potentially dozens of editors to check to make sure that the edit was valid.

Thanks, and happy editing! -Harmil 18:05, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Actually, you are incorrect, but your assertion that you had not used italics made me go back and check, and I noticed that what you did was obviously just a mistake, as you did not realize you were dealing with italics at all.

For example, you changed:

* '']'' is one of ]'s '']''.

which has no quotation marks at all, only italic wiki markup – which is denoted by two single-quotes directly next to each other – to:

* '']'' is one of ]'s '']."

which contains a single quotation mark. This is actually broken wiki markup, and not just a style problem, but it's an easy mistake to make, so I certainly understand.

Ok, now let's move on to scare quotes. When these are used in a section like this:

language as a synonym for "large".

the Misplaced Pages Manual of Style on quotes says that the punctuation is correctly left outside of the non-quotation use of quotation marks. You moved the period inside of the quotes, which is only correct for actual quotations. There are several schools (which diverge widely by country) on how quotation marks should be used. This is the particular school of thought that Misplaced Pages subscribes to for uniformity. Please, help us keep Misplaced Pages helpful and clear to its readers by not changing such usage. Thanks! -Harmil 04:33, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

I think the problem that you will have with most style guides is that they tell you to avoid scare quotes, so it is difficult to assert a standard of usage for their punctuation. In general, the best thing to do with scare quotes is to either replace them with italics or simply remove them enitirely, rather than trying to force them into usage more suited to true quotations. -Harmil 05:14, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Re: 23 (numerology)

Nice catch! From the history, it looks like we're reverting similar stuff on that article. Nice to know I'm not alone. Thanks! -- weirdoactor 19:48, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree. As I do believe 23 is important in a certain 'weird' context, not every 23 is significant :) The LOST issue seems arbitrary, as it is one of five numbers. Cheers.The undertow 19:58, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Adoption Request

Hi. I see you have requested adoption and I am seeking to adopt. Please take a look at my userpage and see if I am a good fit to be your mentor. If you agree to be adopted by me, then let me know on my talk page by clicking the "+" symbol at the top of the page and letting me know. If not, I would still be glad to answer any questions you have at any time. Welcome to Misplaced Pages! --MECU≈talk 15:49, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Great! I've changed your userpage adoption request to show I've adopted you. Please feel free to leave any question, comment or concern on my talk page at any time, no matter how small you believe it is, or how much you feel you are bugging me. I'm here to help you with anything you need. Nothing is too small or too big for you to ask or tell me. My first question for you is: Is there anything specific you wanted me to help you with? Perhaps you want to get more involved with Misplaced Pages but don't know how? Anyways, again, please contact me at any time for any reason. I am also available on IRC on the #wikipedia and other channels. --MECU≈talk 15:14, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Yup, you can edit legal secretary even though you get redirected to Paralegal. The 'trick' is after you get redirected, underneath the article name (in this case, Paralegal) it will say and underneath that it says (Redirected from Legal secretary). The Legal secretary here is a link and if you click that, it will take you back to the legal secretary article, without being redirected! You can now edit the page just like any other. Be sure to remove the redirect code on your first edit though. Also be sure to cover the topic more than just a dictionary reference. You could "copy" the para legal article content and headers and provide the information that applies for a starter, or starting from scratch is fine too. This is a fairly common question from beginners too. As a side note, I don't mind an email from you at all, but it is generally more common to contact people here by using the talk function on their user pages, as it's easier to reply and such. No big deal though. Good luck with your new article! --MECU≈talk 14:51, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Hi. How are things going? Having any problems I could help you with? Be sure to always use an edit summary: A small, quick, short summary is better than no summary! --MECU≈talk 20:56, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Put it out there! There's no reason to think you have to write an entire featured article by yourself, and others may come along and help you! You can put whatever you want on your userpage, but "working" articles should go on a subpage, in your userspace. See Misplaced Pages:User page for how to create a subpage and what you can do and not do with your userpage. But, just put the article out there, many others can then come along and help you and you can still work on it as well. Good luck! --MECU≈talk 14:28, 4 January 2007 (UTC)