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Articles on US and Canadian vehicle registration plates

"Links should not be placed in the boldface reiteration of the title in the opening sentence of a lead:

The Babe Ruth Award is given annually to the Major League Baseball (MLB) player with the best performance in the postseason. (Babe Ruth Award)

Many, but not all, articles repeat the article title in bold face in the first line of the article. Linking the article to itself produces boldface text; this practice is discouraged as page moves will result in a useless circular link through a redirect. Linking part of the bolded text is also discouraged because it changes the visual effect of bolding; some readers will miss the visual cue which is the purpose of using bold face in the first place."

OK, fair enough.

But - without meaning to sound snotty here - there are definitely no rules that say that the descriptions of the plates in the tables should have the state/province/territory names, slogans and years in quotation marks; that the dates of issue should be in the format "(year X)–(year Y)" with no wrapping allowed; and that multiple notes should not be separated using ˂br˃ tags, bullet points or whatever.

That said, not everyone can or ever will entirely agree on how the things that go in these tables should be formatted. Bluebird207 (talk) 23:51, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

@Bluebird207: a few comments:

• Actually, regarding the first sentence of the lead, if the topic of the article doesn't appear in the first line, then nothing should appear in bold, and we should not resort to awkward constructions to force it to appear. Since neither "vehicle registration plates of Michigan" nor "license plates of Michigan" appears in that sentence, then nothing needs to be placed in boldface print at all. See the "Beatles in the United States" in the same MOS section for that rule.
• Items directly quoted off the plates should appear in quotation marks. This is no different than if you directly quoted material out of a book.
• Year ranges are typically written with dashes except when written out in prose in the form of "from X until U". When a year range has two years from the same century, then the first two numbers of the year are the same, they can be omitted.
• As for nowrapping, the column goes quite narrow on my display if we don't force it a touch wider by disallowing one example not to wrap. It's not a good idea to have it wrap at the dash in "1976-78".
• The extra lines in the notes makes table cells unnecessarily large. This is more of an anesthetic concern, but we should be sensitive to readers with smaller displays.

Imzadi 1979 → 00:18, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

• "Items directly quoted off the plates should appear in quotation marks. This is no different than if you directly quoted material out of a book."

...Now that I actually find hard to agree with.

It's definitely wrong to quote material from a book, newspaper or website without putting that material in quotation marks - that is something everyone can agree on.

But with a vehicle registration plate, I hardly see why not putting quotation marks around state/province/territory names, slogans and other similar elements is a crime.

And in any case, can you really compare a book, newspaper or website to a rectangular piece of metal (or, in the case of the Northwest Territories, a polar bear-shaped one) that every motorist has to display on their vehicle by law?

• "Year ranges are typically written with dashes except when written out in prose in the form of "from X until U"."

"As for nowrapping, the column goes quite narrow on my display if we don't force it a touch wider by disallowing one example not to wrap. It's not a good idea to have it wrap at the dash in "1976-78"."

Year ranges not written out in prose (like in the tables) aren't always done so with dashes, though.

I don't see much wrong with using the word "to" instead of a dash. And would that not make the column wider, regardless of whether or not wrapping was allowed?

• "The extra lines in the notes makes table cells unnecessarily large. This is more of an anesthetic concern, but we should be sensitive to readers with smaller displays."

I still think multiple notes as regards a single base should be separated in some way, rather than just be lumped together into one paragraph. Bluebird207 (talk) 15:45, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

@Bluebird207: at this point, I really don't care what you do. Having worked and consulted with our MOS as well as guidance from the AP, APA, and MLA style guides and the Chicago Manual of Style, I feel that the changes I made were done to improve the specific article. Apparently you disagree.

Direct quotations are still direct quotations, whether it is from a printed piece of paper or an embossed piece of metal.

Our MOS specifically says we can use abbreviations to conserve space in tables. Such dashed ranges are common in running prose as well. However, in running prose, various style manuals and our MOS say you can't replace the "to" with an en dash when there is another preposition in front of the years, as in the "from X to Y" example. That prohibition doesn't apply, so we're free to use the dash, which I've found to be common in tables all over Misplaced Pages.

Using "XXXX to YYYY" will not expand the width of the column because the text will wrap with "XXXX to" on one line and "YYYY" on the second, or it will run to three lines with "XXXX" on the first, "to" on the second" and "YYYY" on the third. Column width is determined by the reader's browser dynamically based on the content in the columns. Forcing one example not to line wrap gives the browser a minimum width as a baseline for that column.

As for the multiple notes, I disagree, and this were in running prose instead of in a table, we'd be hollered at for multiple single-sentence paragraphs, or over-usage of bulleted lists. The fact that this is a table doesn't remove the concepts of good writing.

Again, I don't care if other lists articles are using bad practices. Consistency is a good thing, except when used as an excuse to override attempts to improve one article of a set. You should be using this energy to improve the other mediocre examples to match, not tearing apart improvements and driving away interested editors. If that was your desire, to push people away and enforce mediocrity, you've achieved your goal. I'm removing the article from my watch list and asking you to leave my talk page in peace. Imzadi 1979 → 23:34, 5 October 2014 (UTC)