Misplaced Pages

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Underlining

May I ask you to do the same with the óther sections in the article? And also with Bulgarian lexis? Or at least to tell me how I can do it myself, I am not really a formatting genius... VMORO 15:35, Mar 20, 2005 (UTC)~

Could I ask why you're adopting underlining? The Misplaced Pages standard when referring to a word rather than the thing it denotes is to use italics. Underlining looks ugly and could mislead people into thinking that it indicated a link - and even in the case of links, many users set their browser to suppress the underlining, for aesthetic reasons. Maybe the problem is that you think the "italic" version of Cyrillic looks too different from the upright version, but many other articles use it. rossb 10:41, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I've used underlining in this case because of the Cyrillic script. I've been reading and writing Cyrillic for longer than most people have been alive, so for me italicized Cyrillic presents no problem. However, italicized Cyrillic is difficult for anyone who is new or unaccustomed to it. We've already discussed this on Talk:Bulgarian_language, including possible solutions. Notice, for instance, how these Cyrillic letters appear in italics and other formats: вдигятопол, вдигятопол, вдигятопол, вдигятопол, вдигятопол.

We did the Bulgarian language page using italics at first, but the result was terrible ... and unreadible. You are welcome to do it a different way if you can think of a better one, but my opinion as a long-time professional typographer is that underlining is a vast improvement over italics in this case.

That other articles use Cyrillic italics does not strike me as a valid argument. Any article intended to be read by people who do not regularly use Cyrillic should not use Cyrillic italics, unless it's a discussion about Cyrillic italics. All those other articles should be changed.

As to users who set their browser to suppress underlining ... then they will simply see regular Cyrillic in contrast to the surrounding Roman text. It will be still much easier for them to read, and the appearance of the page will still be superior to one filled with a lot of Cyrillic italics.

The same holds true for words in any other language that uses some unusual letters. Italics tend to make them unreadable. For example, the Azerbaijani name for their own country: Azərbaycan Respublikası vs. Azərbaycan Respublikası ... italics kill the schwa. —Stephen 12:06, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I take your point about the unfamiliarity of italic Cyrillic. The m for T is pretty confusing, and on holiday in Ukraine last year I was quite puzzled as to what the backwards s might be. But I wonder why you rejected bold as an alternative? Certainly whenever I see underlining on a web page, I have an urge to click on it. More generally, since you're proposing something potentially affecting a number of articles, shouldn't this be discussed on Misplaced Pages:Village pump (policy)? By the way the italic schwa looks fine on my browswer (the much-maligned MSIE)rossb 13:19, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Well, the second thing we tried on the Bulgarian page after rejecting italics was ... bold. It was certainly an improvement as far as legibility, but it was grotesque ... too ugly for words. As far as I can see, the choice is between underlining and a font change.

It won't hurt anything if you click on an underlined word, and the lack of action will be a good indication that it's not a link. People quickly learn not to click on RED links (because they don't go anywhere worthwhile), and they will figure out underlined words just as quickly.

You must have a really good font if you can see an italic schwa. The fonts that came with my Windows 2000 and Word 2000 don't have that letter, or any other unusual Roman italics.

I have never visited the Village Pump, but I agree that it should be discussed, so that something can be done about the other pages. One page in particular that I've noticed is the Common phrases in various languages ... all those italics make it illegible and unusable, besides the way it looks. Italics on a monitor are even worse than italics on paper, and even on paper they should be used with extreme discretion and vanishingly seldom. Underlining is a far better tool, both for legibility and for esthetic appearance.

—Stephen 16:52, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Killer language

Hello, Stephen. I'm hoping you can take a look at Killer language. That article was marked for cleanup in mid October, but it isn't showing on October's cleanup list. I'm not sure if it ever was listed. Google gives 1,090 hits for "killer language," so I assume it is a term that is in actual use. Is there useful material in that article? Should it be cleaned up or should it redirect elsewhere? Thank you. SWAdair | Talk 06:50, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I had not seen this article before. It's an interesting outlook, if a bit strained. It discusses a problem that is both real and very serious, but I don't see how this view (of ascribing the death of one language to the "actions" of another, rather than to the laws, policies and practices of governments and societies) could be useful or effective. To solve the problem of dying languages, attitudes and laws have to be changed, and blaming English seems pointless to me. And in recent years, attitudes have indeed been changing (I'm not sure why), and minority dialects and languages are suddenly becoming respectable.

I suppose we could keep the article around for a while, since it seems to be popular. I'll clean it up a bit. —Stephen 09:32, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Thank you. That article has been on my 2Bchecked list for a while. I'm just now getting around to working on the 2Bchecked list. Thank goodness you edit regularly -- it wasn't difficult to find you when I went looking for a linguist. Happy editing! SWAdair | Talk 09:44, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thanks

Hi Stephen,

I just wanted to quickly thank you for your attentiveness in the Azerbaijan entry not allowing vandal Rovoam to get along with his sneaky vandalism. He introduced his "traditional" vandalism in this edit () (just above the "Line 66"), which unfortunately went unnoticed by User:Picapica (), but you fixed it promptly ). In the past Rovoam tried to introduce similar sneaky vandalisms in Azerbaijanis (e.g. ), Azeri (e.g. ) and many other Azerbaijan-related and even unrelated entries, such as Ottoman Empire (e.g. ) or Ottoman Turks (e.g. ).

This person has been literally terrorizing various Azerbaijan and Turkey-related entries in WP, adding sneaky and blatant vandalisms of anti-Azeri and anti-Turk character. I am grateful to you along with many other editors, who track down and neutralize all his spurious edits.--Tabib 13:35, Jun 21, 2005 (UTC)

• You’re welcome, Tabib. We’re experience similar problems with some of the Slavic pages, especially those concerning the languages and peoples of Bulgaria and former Yugoslavia. Where I’m from, such ethnic and cultural bigotry was dealt with and virtually eliminated decades ago, and today we find it difficult to believe that these attitudes are still rampant in large parts of the world. —Stephen 06:46, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Unicode fonts

There has been a lot of discussion about {{unicode fonts}} and the order in which the fonts should be listed. What happens is that the browser (usually IE) scans the list and uses the first font it finds which is currently installed. This is why the rarer fonts are listed first: if a user has installed one of these it will be used. If you front-load the list with the more common, less populated, fonts then those users who have installed the less common better-populated fonts do not gain the benefit.

The article you asked about, Bulgarian language, looks fine to me. I note with interest that it actually uses {{unicode}} for "(Ѣ, ѣ)" and "(Ѫ, ѫ)": how do those now look to you?

That must be because you have some of those unusual fonts installed. I inserted the {{Unicode}} template into the Bulgarian page precisely so I could see the letters. Since the fonts were switched around, all I see in the above four letters are big, blank boxes. —Stephen 7 July 2005 13:12 (UTC)

If you are working extensively in cyrillic, there might be benefit in co-opting {{cyrillic}} (which currently REDIRECTs to {{Cyrillic alphabet}} for some reason) to specify fonts which are rich in cyrillic characters (as with {{polytonic}} for greek): would that help? HTH HAND --Phil | Talk July 7, 2005 10:59 (UTC)

Hmm. Perhaps I will make a new template using the "Unicode fonts" font order before they got switched around. The problem will be finding all of the instances of {{Unicode}} that I have inserted. I think there are quite a few of them...it will take a long time to find and change them.

As I understand it, Windows (or whatever program it is that handles this) only considers the first couple of fonts in a list. Fonts deep in the list might as well be taken out, because they are ignored. If you don’t have a font that comes early in the list, then you get the default font, which I believe is usually Times New Roman. However it works, these lists do not work on my machine unless my fonts are at the head of the list...and I only have the standard Windows set. —Stephen 7 July 2005 13:12 (UTC)

I have Code2000 which appears fairly close to the front of the list: maybe this would help since it claims to have good coverage of Cyrillic. You could also try here. --Phil | Talk July 7, 2005 15:39 (UTC)