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Kate Chopin

Kate Chopin (, also ; born Katherine O'Flaherty; February 8, 1850 – August 22, 1904) was an American author of short stories and novels based in Louisiana. She is considered by scholars to have been a forerunner of American 20th-century feminist authors of Southern or Catholic background, such as Zelda Fitzgerald, and she is one of the more frequently read and recognized writers of Louisiana Creole heritage. She is best known today for her 1899 novel The Awakening.

Of maternal French and paternal Irish descent, Chopin was born in St. Louis, Missouri. She married and moved with her husband to New Orleans. They later lived in the country in Cloutierville, Louisiana. From 1892 to 1895, Chopin wrote short stories for both children and adults that were published in national magazines, including The Atlantic Monthly, Vogue, The Century Magazine, and The Youth's Companion. Her stories aroused controversy because of her subjects and her approach; they were condemned as immoral by some critics.

Her major works were two short story collections and two novels. The collections are Bayou Folk (1894) and A Night in Acadie (1897). Her important short stories included "Désirée's Baby" (1893), a tale of an interracial relationship in antebellum Louisiana, "The Story of an Hour" (1894), and "The Storm" (written 1898, first published 1969). ("The Storm" is a sequel to "At the Cadian Ball (1892)," which appeared in Bayou Folk, her first collection of short stories.)

Chopin also wrote two novels: At Fault (1890) and The Awakening (1899), which are set in New Orleans and Grand Isle, respectively. The characters in her stories are usually residents of Louisiana, and many are Creoles of various ethnic or racial backgrounds. Many of her works are set in Natchitoches in north-central Louisiana, a region where she lived.

Within a decade of her death, Chopin was widely recognized as one of the leading writers of her time. In 1915, Fred Lewis Pattee wrote "some of [Chopin's] work is equal to the best that has been produced in France or even in America. [She displayed] what may be described as a native aptitude for narration amounting almost to genius." She was not related to famous Polish composer Frederic Chopin as some may believe but she did have a son named Frederick Chopin, who is probably named after the composer.

Life
Chopin was born Katherine O'Flaherty in St. Louis, Missouri. Her father, Thomas O'Flaherty, was a successful businessman who had immigrated to the United States from Galway, Ireland. Her mother, Eliza Faris, was his second wife, and a well-connected member of the ethnic French community in St. Louis as the daughter of Athénaïse Charleville, a Louisiana creole of French Canadian descent. Some of Chopin's ancestors were among the early European (French) inhabitants of Dauphin Island, Alabama.

Kate was the third of five children, but her sisters died in infancy and her half-brothers (from her father's first marriage) died in their early 20s. They were raised Roman Catholic in the French and Irish traditions. She also became an avid reader of fairy tales, poetry, religious allegories, and classic and contemporary novels. She graduated from Sacred Heart Convent in St. Louis in 1868.

At the age of five, she was sent to Sacred Heart Academy, where she learned how to handle her own money and make her own decisions. Upon her father's death, she was brought home to live with her grandmother and great-grandmother, comprising three generations of women who were widowed young and never remarried. For two years, she was tutored at home by her great-grandmother, Victoria (or Victoire) Charleville, who taught French, music, history, gossip, and the need to look on life without fear. After those two years, Kate went back to Sacred Heart Academy, which her best friend and neighbor, Kitty Garesche, also attended, and where her mentor, Mary O'Meara, taught. A gifted writer of both verse and prose, O'Meara guided her student to write regularly, to judge herself critically, and to conduct herself valiantly. Nine days after Kate and Kitty's first communions in May 1861, the American Civil War came to St. Louis. During the war, Kate's half-brother died of fever, and her great-grandmother died as well. After the war ended, Kitty and her family were banished from St. Louis for supporting the Confederacy.

In St. Louis, Missouri on June 8, 1870, she married Oscar Chopin and settled with him in his home town of New Orleans. The Chopins had six children between 1871 and 1879: in order of birth, Jean Baptiste, Oscar Charles, George Francis, Frederick, Felix Andrew, and Lélia (baptized Marie Laïza). In 1879, Oscar Chopin's cotton brokerage failed.

The family left the city and moved to Cloutierville in south Natchitoches Parish to manage several small plantations and a general store. They became active in the community, where Chopin found, in the local creole culture, much material for her future writing.

When Oscar Chopin died in 1882, he left Kate $42,000 in debt (approximately $ in 2024). The scholar Emily Toth noted that "for a while the widow Kate ran his [Oscar's] business and flirted outrageously with local men; (she even engaged in a relationship with a married farmer)." Although Chopin worked to make her late husband's plantation and general store succeed, she sold her Louisiana business two years later.

Chopin's mother had implored her to move back to St. Louis, which she did, with her mother's financial support. Her children gradually settled into life in the bustling city, but Chopin's mother died the following year.

Chopin struggled with depression after the successive loss of her husband, her business, and her mother. Chopin's obstetrician and family friend Dr. Frederick Kolbenheyer suggested that she start writing, believing that it could be therapeutic for her. He believed that writing could be a focus for her energy as well as a source of income.

By the early 1890s, Chopin's short stories, articles, and translations appeared in periodicals, including the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and in various literary magazines. During a period of considerable publishing of folk tales, works in dialect, and other elements of Southern folk life, she was considered a regional writer who provided local color. Her literary qualities were largely overlooked.

In 1899, The Awakening, her second novel, was published. Some newspaper critics reviewed the novel favorably. However, the critical reception was largely negative. The critics considered the behavior of the novel's characters, especially the women, as well as Chopin's general treatment of female sexuality, motherhood, and marital infidelity, to be in conflict with prevailing standards of moral conduct and therefore offensive.

This novel, her best-known work, is the story of a woman trapped within the confines of an oppressive society. Out of print for several decades, it was rediscovered in the 1970s, when there was a wave of new studies and appreciation of women's writings. The novel has been reprinted and now is widely available. It has been critically acclaimed for its writing quality and importance as an example of early feminist literature of the South.

Critics suggest that such works as The Awakening were scandalous and therefore not socially embraced. Chopin was discouraged by the lack of acceptance, but she continued to write, primarily writing short stories. In 1900, she wrote "The Gentleman from New Orleans." That same year she was listed in the first edition of Marquis Who's Who. However, she never earned a significant amount of money from her writing, instead living off of the investments she made locally in Louisiana and St. Louis of the inheritance from her mother's estate.

While visiting the St. Louis World's Fair on August 20, 1904, Chopin suffered a brain hemorrhage. She died two days later, at the age of 54. She was interred in Calvary Cemetery in St. Louis.

Literary themes
Kate Chopin lived in a variety of locations, based on different economies and societies. These were sources of insights and observations from which she analyzed and expressed her ideas about late 19th-century society in the Southern United States. She was brought up by women who were primarily ethnic French. Living in areas influenced by the Louisiana Creole and Cajun cultures after she joined her husband in Louisiana, she based many of her stories and sketches on her life in Louisiana. They expressed her unusual portrayals of women as individuals with separate wants and needs.

Chopin's writing style was influenced by her admiration of the contemporary French writer Guy de Maupassant, known for his short stories:

"...I read his stories and marveled at them. Here was life, not fiction; for where were the plots, the old fashioned mechanism and stage trapping that in a vague, unthinkable way I had fancied were essential to the art of story making. Here was a man who had escaped from tradition and authority, who had entered into himself and looked out upon life through his own being and with his own eyes; and who, in a direct and simple way, told us what he saw..."

Kate Chopin is an example of a revisionist myth-maker because she revises myth more realistically about marriage and female sexuality of her time. The biggest myth Chopin focused on was the "Victorian notion of women's somewhat anemic sexuality" and "The Storm" is the best example of Kate Chopin using that myth through a character set on fulfilling her complete sexual potential. For instance, in "The Storm", portraits of women were revised by Kate Chopin to obtain consummation in roles other than marriage to evince a passionate nature considered inappropriate by conventional, patriarchal standards of Victorian America.

Chopin went beyond Maupassant's technique and style to give her writing its own flavor. She had an ability to perceive life and creatively express it. She concentrated on women's lives and their continual struggles to create an identity of their own within the Southern society of the late nineteenth century. For instance, in "The Story of an Hour", Mrs. Mallard allows herself time to reflect after learning of her husband's death. Instead of dreading the lonely years ahead, she stumbles upon another realization:

"She knew that she would weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in death; the face that had never looked save with love upon her, fixed and gray and dead. But she saw beyond that bitter moment a long procession of years to come that would belong to her absolutely. And she opened and spread her arms out to them in welcome."

Not many writers during the mid- to late 19th century were bold enough to address subjects that Chopin addressed. Elizabeth Fox-Genovese of Emory University wrote that "Kate was neither a feminist nor a suffragist, she said so. She was nonetheless a woman who took women extremely seriously. She never doubted women's ability to be strong." Kate Chopin's sympathies lay with the individual in the context of his and her personal life and society.

Through her stories, Chopin wrote a kind of autobiography and described her societies; she had grown up in a time when her surroundings included the abolitionist movements before the American Civil War, and their influence on freedmen education and rights afterward, as well as the emergence of feminism. Her ideas and descriptions were not reporting, but her stories expressed the reality of her world.

Chopin took strong interest in her surroundings and wrote about many of her observations. Jane Le Marquand assesses Chopin's writings as a new feminist voice, while other intellectuals recognize it as the voice of an individual who happens to be a woman. Marquand writes, "Chopin undermines patriarchy by endowing the Other, the woman, with an individual identity and a sense of self, a sense of self to which the letters she leaves behind give voice. The 'official' version of her life, that constructed by the men around her, is challenged and overthrown by the woman of the story."

Chopin appeared to express her belief in the strength of women. Marquand draws from theories about creative nonfiction in terms of her work. In order for a story to be autobiographical, or even biographical, Marquand writes, there has to be a nonfictional element, but more often than not the author exaggerates the truth to spark and hold interest for the readers. Kate Chopin might have been surprised to know her work has been characterized as feminist in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, just as she had been in her own time to have it described as immoral. Critics tend to regard writers as individuals with larger points of view addressed to factions in society.

Early works
Kate Chopin began her writing career with her first story published in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. By the early 1890s, Chopin forged a successful writing career, contributing short stories and articles to local publications and literary journals. She also initially wrote a number of short stories such as "A Point at Issue!", "A No-Account Creole", "Beyond the Bayou" which were published in various magazines. In 1890, her first novel "At Fault" about a young widow and the sexual constraints of women was published privately. The protagonist demonstrates the initial theme of Kate Chopin's works when she began writing. In 1892, Kate Chopin produced "Désirée's Baby", "Ripe Figs" and "At the 'Cadian Ball" which appeared in Two Tales that year, and eight of her other stories were published.

The short story "Désirée's Baby" focuses on Kate Chopin's experience with interracial relationships and communities of the Creoles of color in Louisiana. She came of age when slavery was institutionalized in St. Louis and the South. In Louisiana, there had been communities established of free people of color, especially in New Orleans, where formal arrangements were made between white men and free women of color or enslaved women for plaçage, a kind of common-law marriage. There and in the country, she lived with a society based on the history of slavery and the continuation of plantation life, to a great extent. Mixed-race people were numerous in New Orleans and the South. This story addresses the racism of 19th century America; persons who were visibly European-American could be threatened by the revelation of also having African ancestry. Chopin was not afraid to address such issues, which were often suppressed and intentionally ignored. Her character Armand tries to deny this reality, when he refuses to believe that he is of partial black descent, as it threatens his ideas about himself and his status in life. R. R. Foy believed that Chopin's story reached the level of great fiction, in which the only true subject is "human existence in its subtle, complex, true meaning, stripped of the view with which ethical and conventional standards have draped it".

"Desiree's Baby" was first published in an 1893 issue of Vogue, alongside "A Visit to Avoyelles", another of Kate Chopin's short stories, under the heading "Character Studies: The Father of Desiree's Baby – The Lover of Mentine." "A Visit to Avoyelles" typifies the local color writing that Chopin was known, and it is one of her stories that shows a couple in a completely fulfilled marriage. While Doudouce is hoping otherwise, he sees ample evidence that Mentine and Jules' marriage is a happy and fulfilling one despite the poverty-stricken circumstances that they live. In contrast, in "Desiree's Baby", which is much more controversial, due to the topic of interracial relationships, portrays a marriage in trouble. The other contrasts to "A Visit to Avoyelles" are clear, but some are more subtle than others. Unlike Mentine and Jules, Armand and Desiree are rich and own slaves and a plantation. Mentine and Jules' marriage has weathered many hard times, while Armand and Desiree's falls apart at the first sign of trouble. Kate Chopin was talented at showing various sides of marriages and local people and their lives, making her writing very broad and sweeping in topic, even as she had many common themes in her work.

Martha Cutter argues that Kate Chopin demonstrates feminine resistance to patriarchal society through her short stories. Cutter claims that Chopin's resistance can be traced through the timeline of her work, with Chopin becoming more and more understanding of how women can fight back suppression as time progresses. To demonstrate this, Cutter claims that Chopin's earlier stories, such as "At the 'Cadian Ball," "Wiser than a God," and "Mrs. Mobry's Reason" present women who are outright resisting, and are therefore not taken seriously, erased, or called insane. However, in Chopin's later stories, the female characters take on a different voice of resistance, one that is more "covert" and works to undermine patriarchal discourse from within. Cutter exemplifies this idea through the presentation of Chopin's works written after 1894. Cutter claims that Chopin wanted to "disrupt patriarchal discourse, without being censored by it." And to do this, Chopin tried different strategies in her writings: silent women, overly resistant women, women with a "voice covert," and women who mimic patriarchal discourse.

In 1893, she wrote "Madame Célestin's Divorce," and 13 of her stories were published. In 1894, "The Story of an Hour" and "A Respectable woman" were published by Vogue. Bayou Folk, a collection of 23 of Chopin's stories, was a success to Kate Chopin in 1894, published by Houghton Mifflin. It was the first of her works to gain national attention, and it was followed by A Night in Acadie (1897), another collection of short stories.

The Awakening
Published in 1899, her novel The Awakening is considered ahead of its time, garnering more negative reviews than positive from contemporary sources. Chopin was discouraged by this criticism, and she turned to writing short stories almost exclusively. The female characters in The Awakening went beyond the standards of social norms of the time. The protagonist has sexual desires and questions the sanctity of motherhood. The novel explores the theme of marital infidelity from the perspective of a married woman. The book was widely banned, and it fell out of print for several decades, then was republished in the 1970s. It now is considered a classic of feminist fiction. Chopin reacted to the negative events happening to her by commenting ironically:"I never dreamt of Mrs. Pontellier making such a mess of things and working out her own damnation as she did. If I had had the slightest intimation of such a thing I would have excluded her from the company. But when I found out what she was up to, the play was half over and it was then too late." According to Bender, Chopin was intrigued by Darwin's The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex. Although she agreed with the processes of evolution, Chopin however disagreed with Darwin's theory of sexual selection and the female's role, which can be exemplified in The Awakening, in which Bender argues that Chopin references The Descent of Man. In his essay, Darwin suggests female inferiority and says that males had "gained the power of selection." Bender argues that in her writing, Chopin presented women characters that had selective power based on their own sexual desires, not the want of reproduction or love. Bender argues this idea through the examples of Edna Pontellier in The Awakening, Mrs. Baroda in "A Respectable Woman," and Mrs. Mallard in "The Story of an Hour."

Martha Cutter's article "The Search for a Feminine Voice in the Works of Kate Chopin" analyzes the female characters in many of Chopin's stories. Cutter argues that Chopin's opinion of women as being "the invisible and unheard sex" is exemplified through the characterization of Edna in The Awakening. Cutter argues that Chopin's writing was shocking due to its sexual identity and articulation of feminine desire. According to Cutter, Chopin's stories disrupt patriarchal norms. Today, The Awakening is said to be one of the five top favorite novels in literature courses all over America.

Legacy
Kate Chopin has been credited by some as a pioneer of the early feminist movement despite not achieving any literary rewards for her works.

Critical reception
Kate Chopin wrote the majority of her short stories and novels from 1889 to 1904. Altogether, Chopin wrote about 100 short stories or novels during her time as a fiction writer; her short stories were published in a number of local newspapers including the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. A large number of her short stories were published in national magazines,such as Youth's Companion and Harper's Young People. Bayou Folk was well-reviewed, with Chopin's writing about how she had seen 100 press notices about it. Those stories were published in The New York Times and The Atlantic. Readers particularly liked how she used local dialects to give her characters a more authentic and relatable feel. She also published two novels: At Fault and The Awakening. Her novels were not well-received initially, compared to her short stories. Her 1899 novel The Awakening was considered to be immoral due to the overt themes of female sexuality, as well as the female protagonist's constantly rebuking gender roles and norms. There have been rumors that the novel originally was banned, which have been disproved. Local and national newspapers published mixed reviews of Chopin's novel with one calling it "poison" and "unpleasant", going on to say it was "too strong a drink for moral babes", while another newspaper published a review calling the novel, "A St. Louis Woman Who Has Turned Fame Into Literature." The majority of the early reviews for The Awakening were largely negative. Emily Toth, one of Chopin's most well known biographers, thought she had gone too far with this novel. She argued that the protagonist Edna's blatant sensuality was too much for the male gatekeepers. So much so that publication of her next novel was cancelled.

The poet Orrick Johns was at least one strong advocate of Chopin and The Awakening. "An influential modernist poet and progressive journalist originally from St. Louis who was popular in Greenwich Village literary circles," in 1911 he wrote in Reedy's Mirror: "To one who has read her as a boy and come back to her again with powers of appreciation more subtly developed, she breathes the magic of a whole chapter in his life." "...[C]redible evidence exists that Johns shared his positive views of Chopin with his literary peers, a tight-knit group that included feminist writers Susan Glaspell and Edith Summers Kelley..." Through Johns's personal friendship with Kelley and his fierce advocacy for The Awakening, it has been argued that Kelley read and was influenced by The Awakening, a book once thought of as a literary dead end in terms of influence on the next generation of feminist writers. Textual comparisons between specific texts in Kelly's Weeds and The Awakening point toward an argument for its wider influence.

By the 1950s, Kate Chopin was all but forgotten. Her books were all out of print, only her story "Désirée's Baby" was in print in numerous American short story anthologies. That started to change in 1962, when noted literary critic Edmund Wilson included her as one of 30 authors discussed in Patriotic Gore: Studies in the Literature of the American Civil War. Unhappy that he had to read some of her works on microfilm at the Library of Congress, Wilson urged Per Seyersted, a Norwegian who had written an article on her and who was studying in America, to focus his studies on her. Seven years later, in 1969, Seyersted published The Complete Works of Kate Chopin and a full-length biography. These two books formed the scholarly support for a rediscovery of Chopin.

It took a brief commentary by novelist Linda Wolfe in the September 22, 1972 issue of "The New York Times" to kickstart the rediscovery of Chopin by the general public. In "There’s Someone You Should Know- Kate Chopin," she described how she encouraged friends disappointed with contemporary fiction to discover Chopin and how The Awakening spoke to her today. The last step required to bring the novel to general awareness happened almost immediately. Before the year was out a major mass-market paperback publisher, Avon Books, had the first mass-market paperback publication of the book heading to drug stores, supermarkets, and bookstores. A blurb from Wolfe's comments was featured prominently below the title and author's name at the top of the cover: "'Speaks to me as pertinently as any fiction published this year or last. It is uncanny, nothing else . . . A masterpiece.' Linda Wolfe, The New York Times". Within a few years all of the major mass-market paperback publishers had editions of The Awakening in print, making it widely available for anyone to buy.

Per Seyersted's rediscovery of Chopin caused her work to be seen as essential feminist and Southern literature from the 19th century. Seyersted wrote that she "broke new ground in American Literature." According to Emily Toth, author of a recent Chopin biography, Kate Chopin's work rose in popularity and recognition during the 1970s due to themes of women venturing outside of the constraints set upon them by society, which appealed to people participating in feminist activism and the sexual revolution. She also argues that the works appealed to women in the 1960s, "a time when American women yearned to know about our feisty foremothers"." Academics and scholars began to put Chopin in the same feminist categories as Louisa May Alcott, Susan Warner, and Emily Dickinson. Parallels between Alcott and Chopin have been drawn to point out how both authors wrote about women who departed from their traditional roles by dreaming of or striving for independence and individual freedoms, also described as a dramatization of a woman's struggle for selfhood. A reviewer for Choice Reviews stated that it was ultimately a struggle doomed to failure because the patriarchal conventions of her society restricted her freedom. Karen Simons felt that this failed struggle was perfectly captured by the ending of the novel, where Edna Pontellier ends her life due to her realization that she cannot truly be both the traditional mother and have a sense of herself as an individual at the same time.

Representation in other media
Louisiana Public Broadcasting, under president Beth Courtney, produced Kate Chopin: A Reawakening, a documentary on Chopin's life.

In the penultimate episode of the first season of HBO's Treme, set in New Orleans, the teacher Creighton (played by John Goodman) assigns Kate Chopin's The Awakening to his freshmen and warns them:

"'I want you to take your time with it,' he cautions. 'Pay attention to the language itself. The ideas. Don't think in terms of a beginning and an end. Because unlike some plot-driven entertainments, there is no closure in real life. Not really.'"

Works

 * "Bayou Folk" Read "Bayou Folk"
 * "A Night in Acadie" Read "A Night in Acadie"
 * "At the Cadian Ball" (1892) Read "At the Cadian Ball"
 * "The Story of an Hour" (1894) Read "The Story of an Hour"
 * "Désirée's Baby" (1895) Read "Désirée's Baby"
 * "Emancipation: A Life Fable" Read "Emancipation: A Life Fable"
 * "The Storm" (1898) Read "The Storm"
 * "A Pair of Silk Stockings" Read "A Pair of Silk Stockings"
 * "The Locket"
 * "Athenaise" Read "Athenaise"
 * "Lilacs" Read "Lilacs"
 * "A Respectable Woman" Read "A Respectable Woman"
 * "The Unexpected" Read "The Unexpected"
 * "The Kiss" Read "The Kiss"
 * "Beyond the Bayou" Read "Beyond the Bayou"
 * "An No-Account Creole" Read "An No-Account Creole"
 * The Awakening, and Selected Short Stories
 * "Fedora"
 * "Regret" Read "Regret
 * "Madame Célestin's Divorce" Read "Madame Célestin's Divorce"
 * At Fault (1890), Nixon Jones Printing Co, St. Louis Read "At Fault"
 * The Awakening (1899), H.S. Stone, Chicago Read "The Awakening"
 * "An Egyptian Cigarette" (1900)

Honors and awards

 * Her home with Oscar Chopin in Cloutierville was built by Alexis Cloutier in the early part of the 19th century. In the late 20th century, the house was designated as the Kate Chopin House, a National Historic Landmark (NHL), because of her literary significance. The house was adapted for use as the Bayou Folk Museum. On October 1, 2008, the house was destroyed by a fire, with little left but the chimney.
 * In 1990, Chopin was honored with a star on the St. Louis Walk of Fame.
 * In 2012, she was commemorated with an iron bust of her head at the Writer's Corner in the Central West End neighborhood of St. Louis, across the street from Left Bank Books.

title: Kate Chopin


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Journalist

A journalist is a person who gathers information in the form of text, audio or pictures, processes it into a newsworthy form and disseminates it to the public. This is called journalism.

Roles
Journalists can be broadcast, print, advertising or public relations personnel. Depending on the form of journalism, "journalist" may also describe various categories of people by the roles they play in the process. These includes reporters, correspondents, citizen journalist, editors, editorial writers, columnists and photojournalists.

A reporter is a type of journalist who researches, writes and reports on information in order to present using sources. This may entail conducting interviews, information-gathering and/or writing articles. Reporters may split their time between working in a newsroom, from home or outside to witness events or interviewing people. Reporters may be assigned a specific beat (area of coverage).

Matthew C. Nisbet, who has written on science communication, has defined a "knowledge journalist" as a public intellectual who, like Walter Lippmann, Fareed Zakaria, Naomi Klein, Michael Pollan, and Andrew Revkin, sees their role as researching complicated issues of fact or science which most laymen would not have the time or access to information to research themselves, then communicating an accurate and understandable version to the public as a teacher and policy advisor."In his best-known books, Public Opinion (1922) and The Phantom Public (1925), Lippmann argued that most people lacked the capacity, time and motivation to follow and analyze news of the many complex policy questions that troubled society. Nor did they often experience most social problems or directly access expert insights. These limitations were made worse by a news media that tended to oversimplify issues and to reinforce stereotypes, partisan viewpoints and prejudices. As a consequence, Lippmann believed that the public needed journalists like himself who could serve as expert analysts, guiding 'citizens to a deeper understanding of what was really important'."

In 2018, the United States Department of Labor's Occupational Outlook Handbook reported that employment for the category "reporters, correspondents and broadcast news analysts" will decline 9 percent between 2016 and 2026.

Modern overview
A worldwide sample of 27,500 journalists in 67 countries in 2012–2016 produced the following profile:
 * 57 percent male;
 * mean age of 38
 * mean years of experience, 13
 * college degree, 56 percent; graduate degree, 29 percent
 * 61 percent specialized in journalism/communications at college
 * 62 percent identified as generalists and 23 percent as hard-news beat journalists
 * 47 percent were members of a professional association
 * 80 percent worked full-time
 * 50 percent worked in print, 23 percent on television, 17 percent on radio and 16 percent online.

In 2019 the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism Digital News Report  described the future for journalists in South Africa as “grim” because of low online revenue and plummeting advertising.

In 2020 Reporters Without Borders secretary general Christophe Deloire said journalists in developing countries were suffering political interference because the COVID-19 pandemic had given governments around the world the chance “to take advantage of the fact that politics are on hold, the public is stunned and protests are out of the question, in order to impose measures that would be impossible in normal times”.

In 2023 the closure of local newspapers in the US accelerated to an average of 2.5 per week, leaving more than 200 US counties as “news deserts” and meaning that more than half of all U.S. counties had limited access to reliable local news and information, according to researchers at the Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications at Northwestern University.

In January 2024, The Los Angeles Times, Time magazine and National Geographic all conducted layoffs, and Condé Nast journalists went on strike over proposed job cuts. The Los Angeles Times laid off  more than 20% of the newsroom. CNN, Sports Illustrated and NBC News shed employees in early 2024. The New York Times reported that Americans were suffering from “news fatigue” due to coverage of major news stories like the Hamas attack, Russian invasion of Ukraine and the presidential election. American consumers turned away from journalists at legacy organizations as social media became a common news source.

Freedom
Journalists sometimes expose themselves to danger, particularly when reporting in areas of armed conflict or in states that do not respect the freedom of the press. Organizations such as the Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Borders publish reports on press freedom and advocate for journalistic freedom. As of November 2011, the Committee to Protect Journalists reports that 887 journalists have been killed worldwide since 1992 by murder (71%), crossfire or combat (17%), or on dangerous assignment (11%). The "ten deadliest countries" for journalists since 1992 have been Iraq (230 deaths), Philippines (109), Russia (77), Colombia (76), Mexico (69), Algeria (61), Pakistan (59), India (49), Somalia (45), Brazil (31) and Sri Lanka (30).

The Committee to Protect Journalists also reports that as of 1 December 2010, 145 journalists were jailed worldwide for journalistic activities. Current numbers are even higher. The ten countries with the largest number of currently-imprisoned journalists are Turkey (95), China (34), Iran (34), Eritrea (17), Burma (13), Uzbekistan (6), Vietnam (5), Cuba (4), Ethiopia (4) and Sudan (3).

Apart from physical harm, journalists are harmed psychologically. This applies especially to war reporters, but their editorial offices at home often do not know how to deal appropriately with the reporters they expose to danger. Hence, a systematic and sustainable way of psychological support for traumatized journalists is strongly needed. Few and fragmented support programs exist so far.

On 8 August 2023, Iran's Journalists' Day, Tehran Journalists' Association head Akbar Montajabi noted over 100 journalists arrested amid protests, while HamMihan newspaper exposed repression against 76 media workers since September 2022 following Mahsa Amini's death-triggered mass protests, leading to legal consequences for journalists including Niloufar Hamedi and Elaheh.

Relationship with sources
The relationship between a professional journalist and a source can be rather complex, and a source can sometimes have an effect on an article written by the journalist. The article 'A Compromised Fourth Estate' uses Herbert Gans' metaphor to capture their relationship. He uses a dance metaphor, "The Tango", to illustrate the co-operative nature of their interactions inasmuch as "It takes two to tango". Herbert suggests that the source often leads, but journalists commonly object to this notion for two reasons:
 * 1) It signals source supremacy in news making.
 * 2) It offends journalists' professional culture, which emphasizes independence and editorial autonomy.

The dance metaphor goes on to state:

A relationship with sources that is too cozy is potentially compromising of journalists' integrity and risks becoming collusive. Journalists have typically favored a more robust, conflict model, based on a crucial assumption that if the media are to function as watchdogs of powerful economic and political interests, journalists must establish their independence of sources or risk the fourth estate being driven by the fifth estate of public relations.

Safety
Journalists can face violence and intimidation for exercising their fundamental right to freedom of expression. The range of threats they are confronted with include murder, kidnapping, hostage-taking, offline and online harassment, intimidation, enforced disappearances, arbitrary detention and torture. Women in journalism also face specific dangers and are especially vulnerable to sexual assault, whether in the form of a targeted sexual violation, often in reprisal for their work. Mob-related sexual violence aimed against journalists covering public events; or the sexual abuse of journalists in detention or captivity. Many of these crimes are not reported as a result of powerful cultural and professional stigmas.

Increasingly, journalists (particularly women) are abused and harassed online, via hate speech, cyber-bullying, cyber-stalking, doxing, trolling, public shaming, intimidation and threats.

Most dangerous year
According to Reporters Without Borders' 2018 annual report, it was the worst year on record for deadly violence and abuse toward journalists; there was a 15 percent increase in such killings since 2017, with 80 killed, 348 imprisoned and 60 held hostage.

Yaser Murtaja was shot by an Israeli army sniper. Rubén Pat was gunned down outside a beach bar in Mexico. Mexico was described by Reporters Without Borders as "one of world's deadliest countries for the media"; 90% of attacks on journalists in the country reportedly go unsolved. Bulgarian Victoria Marinova was beaten, raped and strangled. Saudi Arabian dissident Jamal Khashoggi was killed inside Saudi Arabia's consulate in Istanbul.

Commemoration
From 2008 to 2019, Freedom Forum's now-defunct Newseum in Washington, D.C. featured a Journalists Memorial which honored several thousand journalists around the world who had died or were killed while reporting the news. After the Newseum closed in December 2019, supporters of freedom of the press persuaded the United States Congress in December 2020 to authorize the construction of a memorial to fallen journalists on public land with private funds. By May 2023, the Fallen Journalists Memorial Foundation had begun the design of the memorial.

Education
In the US, nearly all journalists have attended university, but only about half majored in journalism. Journalists who work in television or for newspapers are more likely to have studied journalism in college than journalists working for the wire services, in radio, or for news magazines.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Journalist


text:
Talk:Rhotic consonant

Rhotics in IPA
The article says the IPA supplies a complete set of rhotic symbols but http://classweb.gmu.edu/accent/nl-ipa/czechipa.html says that the IPA provides no symbol for the Czech alveolar trill fricative "ř" - which is correct? — Hippietrail 12:48, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)

 * It's true that, due to an incredible oversight, IPA has no convenient symbol for "ř" or, for that matter, for the similar but not identical voiced alveolar rhotic fricatives in some Latin American accents of Spanish (the Czech sound is really postalveolar). Makeshift combinations of r with IPA diacritics are used by some authors, but perhaps the simplest solution would be to accept the Czech letter as a legal IPA symbol. Piotr Gasiorowski 09:27, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)

 * No, it's not an incredible oversight, but an incredible decision the IPA took several years ago. There does actually exist an individual IPA symbol for Czech ř, but they decided to drop it from their chart in the 1989 revision for who knows what lame reason. This now obsolete IPA symbol is included in the Unicode (U+027C, or 636 in decimal) and looks like a long-legged r (ɼ). On a different matter, the Czech "postalveolars" (š, ž, ř) are not like English postalveolars, but hissing-hushing sounds like some sibilants in Ubykh . Uaxuctum 17:33, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I think they dropped the symbol because it was so rarely used (even in phonetic descriptions of Czech it was rarely used). The best symbol for the fricative trill of Czech is. --Angr/undefined 22:16, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Ever since IPA dropped that "long-legged r" in 1989, I, for one, have found the current substitute, r with an up-T subscript, particularly unsatisfactory because the fricative effect isn't really due to a raised tongue (the meaning of that diacritic). This subscript diacritic has the added disadvantage of blocking a subscript ring for voicelessness, a common variant of this fricative trill in Spanish. Actually, the more widespread Czech hacek-r was the IPA's original symbol (1912 and 1926 versions), replaced by long-legged r because of the aversion to diacritics back then. It should be pointed out that another common rhotic symbol is macron-r for the apicoalveolar trill (Spanish carro when not fricativized), extremely useful for specifying this sound when "r" is being used as broad transcription for any rhotic or for rhotics in general (likewise permitted in the IPA). This makes sense, since the trill is longer in duration than a flap/tap and the macron is still permitted for length. By adding the same macron to the IPA's retroflex r symbol (with a right-swinging tail), a retroflex tap/flap and retroflex trill can be distinguished the same way, and the hachek can be added for a fricative version of that too. So, cycling back to the first comment above, no, without such modifications and diacritics (often ad hoc), the current IPA does not provide well for rhotics, especially for linguists of languages like Spanish that show quite a few distinct variants of them. A comment on English /r/: yes, there was there a rounded (wr-) type in older English, but it's seldom pointed out that many (if not most) English speakers today round a prevocalic /r/ in general, perhaps to reinforce the weak approximant. SteveRoper (talk) 03:40, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

I miss long-leg R. I have that sound in one of my conlangs... 187.131.32.251 (talk) 05:05, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

IPA stuff cited
"an r rotated 180° [ɹ] for the alveolar approximant, a small capital R [ʀ] for the uvular trill, and a flipped small capital R [ʁ] for the voiced uvular fricative."

I believe that kind of things should be left to the main IPA page. Anybody disagree? --logixoul 01:35, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

 * The main IPA page is already overloaded, and someone interested in this information will be hard-pressed to find it there, unless they read the entire page and look carefully. Here, however, it is presented all together. Why remove the information? It's not like there is some rule that there can be no overlap of information from article to article... Nohat 02:00, 12 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Yes, indeed there is not such rule, we have to rely on common sense. I do not agree with you, but since I've been a Wikipedian for a shorter time than you have, I suppose I ought to trust your judgement. On the other hand, the current condition of the page reflects nicely the "self-containing pages" guideline, so probably it should really be left as is. --logixoul 10:47, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

Defining rhotic
If rhotic consonants, or "R"-like sounds, are non-lateral liquid consonants, then why are uvular fricatives included? --Ptcamn 20:07, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

 * And taps or flaps, uvular trill, alveolar trill. Seriously, I second your view. I'd think in most cases those are thought of as rhotics, so it's the definitions that should definitely get some modification. 石川 (talk) 12:52, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Rhotism
Isn't rhotism supposed to be the subject on the different articulation of the letter "r", or what was the same phoneme "r", among various languages, especially languages of the same origin? Bestlyriccollection

"Rhotic" and "nonrhotic" are common terms in English linguistics for dialects that (respectively) preserved vs. deleted /r/ in a syllable coda: car rhotic [kɑɹ], nonrhotic [kɑ]. Is that what you were referring to? Rhotacism is also used in historical linguistics when another sound becomes /r/, e.g. Latin honos → honor. SteveRoper (talk) 03:51, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Why is the uvular trill grouped with the alveolar trill?
Yeah, I know, they're both trills, but acoustically the uvular trill seems more similar to the uvular fricative. FilipeS 18:16, 15 October 2006 (UTC)
 * I think because the two trills represent the same phoneme (as opposed to related sounds). This is clearly seen when two speakers of the same language (sometimes in the same community) differ, one using the alveolar R and the other the uvular R in the same words. It is useful to collect in one place the different ways of “realizing” the phoneme /r/ in different languages.
 * (Personally, I have trouble with the various guttural R’s. I am glad to see that alveolar R’s are still prestigious enough to be used in television and radio in many countries. Maybe I am old enough to get away with saying them that way, too.) — Solo Owl (talk) 18:47, 12 December 2010 (UTC)
 * A pure uvular trill sounds very close to the alveolar trill and these are the two easiest/most common trills you can make. I think you'd be hard-pressed to find a language in which they contrast; in European Portuguese, (often a fricative ) contrasts with a tap, maintaining the historical length difference between the trill  and the tap . Sol505000 (talk) 12:14, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

Pharyngeal approximant in Danish a rhotic?
See Talk:Voiced pharyngeal fricative. Does this mean that a pharyngeal consonant can also be a rhotic? Then the pharyngeal place of articulation should be mentioned in the article, too. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 18:11, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

yes. and there are rhotic vowels too that are not mentioned. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.86.104.165 (talk) 23:01, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

Liquid consonants
Why are they defined as liquid consonants? Most given examples are not liquids. Derivation from Greek is vague too. It sounds like languages not connected to Greek can't have rhotics. If someone can't pronounce the R and someone stupid child laugh at them for it, what does that actual mean? R is just a letter, not a sound. A language could totally use the letter R in its writing and not have the sound you expected. It could as well have this sound, but have it represented by another letter. --2.245.96.60 (talk) 00:37, 26 September 2016 (UTC)

Characterization of Rhotic
Is rhotic consonant an etymological concept or phonetic concept? There seems to be an inconsistency because this page classifies Indo-European rhotics by origin and non-Indo-European rhotics by modern sound value. (Were it not for the historical reason, the French r wouldn't be classified as a rhotic.) This page classifies Chinese Mandarin  (日母) and Vietnamese [z] (spelled d, gi) and [ʐ] or [ɹ] as rhotics, as well as  in Japanese and Korean. However, if we has to pick a rhotic for Sinic culture sphere, the best choice will be 来母: /l/ in Chinese and Vietnamese and Middle Chinese,  in Japanese and Korean, all of which eventually come from alveolar trill [r] in Ancient Chinese. On the other hand, 日母 is nasal in Ancient and Middle Chinese and many language today (inclucing Wu dialect and Japanese), while Vietnamese [z] comes from two sources: spelled as gi, it comes from Middle Chinese 见母 [k]; spelled as d, it comes from 喻母四等 ([ð] in Ancient Vietnamese, [d] in Chinese, see the Chinese page 喻四归定 https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%96%BB%E5%9B%9B%E6%AD%B8%E5%AE%9A). 67.194.233.86 (talk) 18:32, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

Wrong theory
(in French) "Final R is generally not pronounced in words ending in -er"

It's totally wrong, the "r" is pronounced with the "e", the "er" makes a "é" sound. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.91.51.235 (talk • contribs) 15:42, 16 December 2019 (UTC)

 * Giving a cue as to the pronunciation of a preceding vowel is not the same thing as being pronounced. There is no "r" sound in those suffixes, only the vowel sound. Largoplazo (talk) 01:49, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

Variable rhoticity
I just placed an expand section tag at the top of the "Variable rhoticity" section, indicating that the section needs 'an introduction explaining what "variable rhoticity" means in terms that summarize the rationale for binding all of its subsections under it, clarifying what they have in common'.

I could have taken my own stab at it but the question of what to write seemed murky. As of the beginning of the section, "rhoticity" hasn't even been defined, let alone "variable rhoticity". There seemed to be several possibilities: The section, as currently constructed, is missing some necessary foundation and possibly some pertinent details in the subsections, more than I'm able to fill in on my own. The treatment of this content begs for discussion. Largoplazo (talk) 01:45, 6 May 2020 (UTC)
 * The usual application of the concept of rhoticity to English is in distinguishing between the speech of speakers who speak what are classified as "rhotic" and "non-rhotic" varieties of English: varieties that do and don't pronounce word-final or syllable-final /r/, along with the detail that some of the non-rhotic varieties keep the pronunciation when another vowel follows at the start of the next word.
 * But "variable rhoticity" could also refer to the variation in the realization of /r/ within a given speaker's speech, such as the fact that in "non-rhotic" varieties of English, /r/ is realized as, say, [r] when not syllable-final and not pronounced when syllable-final.
 * The treatment in each of the language subsections of the section is restricted to the question of syllable-final or word-final pronunciation, mostly concerned with distinctions between speakers. However, why stop at finals? In Spanish and Portuguese (at least, in the prescribed pronunciations I've learned), initial /r/ is pronounced differently for example, as a trill in Mexico City and as, I think, [x] in Rio de Janeiro) from both medial /r/ (a flap in both cities) and (at least in Brazilian Portuguese) syllable-final /r/. So if "variable rhoticity" is understood expansively to mean "all variation both within a speaker's speech and across speakers within a language of the realization of its basic rhotic phoneme", then all these variations should be covered.

French
Of course, French is generally rhotic and I don't mean to deny that. But I've heard speakers who had a vowelised /r/ in word-final position, e.g. première, sûre. I can't say whether it's regional or idiolectal, whether it's a new thing or not, but I've certainly heard it in several different speakers. 178.4.151.68 (talk) 20:32, 20 March 2021 (UTC)

Was the term invented by Dixon?
I was reading "I Am a Linguist" by Robert M. W. Dixon earlier today and I came across this passage: "Without thought, I wrote on the board that there is a series of rhotics (on a par with stops, nasals and laterals). People had previously talked of rhoticisation (based on the Greek letter ρ, called rho), but this may have been the first use of 'rhotic' to describe a family of sounds. Some of my colleagues who were present - and some of the students - began using 'rhotic'. I at first tried to dissuade them, saying that it wasn't an established term, just something I'd made up on the spur of the moment. But they persisted and, lo and behold, it did become an established term." (p. 164) Should we add this bit of information to the article? Maybe a different reference is needed. Gnothidichselbst (talk) 15:32, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

 * That would be a primary source, we'd prefer a secondary source if one exists.--Megaman en m (talk) 19:53, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

 * It seems from this blogpost (also a primary source though) that the term was actually coined by John C. Wells. --GinormousBuildings (talk) 06:59, 25 March 2023 (UTC)
 * What Wells termed "rhotic" was what was theretofore known as "r-ful", i.e. an English accent's characteristic of allowing /r/ in syllable coda. Wells says Dixon's A Grammar of Yidiɲ (1977) was the earliest use of "rhotic" he could find for the class of sounds, in his expansion of that blog post in the book Sounds Interesting (2014: 78). Nardog (talk) 00:47, 26 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Right, so Wells coined the term but Dixon was the first to use it in this particular sense. I see now. --GinormousBuildings (talk) 01:14, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

The term "non-rhotic"
In both German and Danish, -diphthongs form a separate class of sounds, all of which can be traced to the historical and the consonant resurfaces in inflected forms in German (not in Danish, or at least not always). The syllable-initial is very weak in both languages, being a uvular approximant, which is very similar to. The is vocalized (turned into a vowel) but does not disappear - thus, I maintain that those are not examples of non-rhoticity, which is the disappearance of the historical  (look at the noun non-rhoticity), meaning that it does not appear in any way, shape or form (except perhaps vowel length). German and  and Danish  are examples of that, but such examples are the minority. There's an additional complication that only certain idiolects or regiolects feature proper non-rhoticity in German, as varies with  and  (however you realize the consonant) in Standard German and other idiolects/regiolects. This means that German is not non-rhotic because this, again, implies no trace of the historical in pronunciation. The underlying form of Dorn is. Sol505000 (talk) 15:00, 7 April 2023 (UTC)
 * It seems this article discusses three rather separate things: rhotics (the class of sounds), (non-)rhoticity (phonotactic constraints), and r-vocalization. I think it would benefit from being split into at least two. Nardog (talk) 15:16, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

title: Talk:Rhotic consonant


text:
Wikipedia talk:Writing better articles/Use colour sparingly

Supporters of this rule include:
 * 1) StefanRybo
 * 2) drj (strongly)
 * 3) sjc
 * 4) GWO (strongly)
 * 5) tbc
 * 6) Damian Yerrick
 * 7) Josh Grosse
 * 8) AxelBoldt
 * 9) Enchanter
 * 10) 24 (strongly)
 * color should be added by the user interface for other things, it should never be part of the text itself
 * 1) Rotem Dan
 * 2) Noldoaran (Talk)
 * 3) Angela
 * 4) Eequor
 * 5) Martin (strongly - but "sparingly" does not mean "never")

Opponents include:
 * 1) maveric149
 * In general I agree; especially with regular old wikipedia articles. However, in many cases the use of color adds additional very useful information to a table or chart. See Periodic table, talk:isotope and Beryllium for examples. The colors have to be chosen carefully and some thought must go into their logical use. See discussion at talk:periodic table and talk:isotopes. Color should never be used just for the sake of using color.
 * 1) cprompt
 * Shading on a table can make it stand out, and it adds some nice contrast to the rest of the article. We should be using color about as much as print encyclopedias do, which is to say, not much. For special features like photos and tables, I'd say that colors should be used. Nothing too loud though, and the color should not be visible on the Printable version (for readability when printing in black and white).

I'm actually pretty ambivalent about this one. Sure, there's nothing worse than obnoxious gee-whiz angry-fruit-salad mishmash of color without reason, but we shouldn't be afraid to use the medium when it's called for either. If an occasional use of color in a table or something makes it easier to read, I have no objection to it. -- Lee Daniel Crocker

I should note, BTW, that the colors on the tables over in Talk:Isotope are currently provisional and will be muted somewhat in the final product. I really should get back to work on that now that my exams are over... :) Anyway, I agree that color can be quite good and decent and useful, under the proper circumstances. Angry fruit salad, on the other hand, will be edited out by people with more taste. Bryan Derksen

Proposal to consolidate advice on writing better articles
At present there are many articles in the Wikipedia namespace that seek to give guidance on how to write better articles. I propose consolidating these into a much smaller number. On User:Jongarrettuk/Better writing guide I propose how these could be consolidated. The proposal is not to change advice, just to consolidate it. If I have inadvertently moved what you consider to be good advice that is currently in the Wikipedia namespace, please re-add it. I'm hope that the proposal to merge all these articles, in principle, will be welcomed. Of course, it may be preferred to have 2, 3 or 4 inter-connected articles than just one and would welcome advice on how this could be done. (In particular, perhaps all the guidance on layout should be spun off into one consolidated article on layout.) I'm also aware that putting lots of different bits of advice together may throw up anomalies or bits that people now disagree with (including bits that I myself disagree with:) ). I ask for support for the consolidation. Once the consolidation has happened, the advice can be changed in the normal way. Please feel free to improve on the current draft consolidation, but don't remove or add advice that is not currently on the Wikipedia namespace. If all goes well, I'll add a new Guide to writing better articles page on the 19th, though maybe some bits of the new article will need to be phased in over a longer period. I'll also take care to preserve all the archived discussion in one place. jguk 19:56, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

What about neutral colors?
Can shades of gray be used safely in articles, especially for table backgrounds? Denelson83 03:22, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)


text:
Wikipedia talk:Use subheadings sparingly

support/opposition
Note: this rule was adapted and modified for the new software, so I didn't copy the old supporter list. -- Lee Daniel Crocker, 23 April 2002

using subheads is good
Although they shouldn't be used for every line, I think using subheads is good. As an encyclopedia is made to find information, I think this should be made easier. Even for small articles, I find it convenient if there's a heading indicating in which part of the article I may find a short history, a collection of external links, or a simple example, or the specific detail I'm looking for. Also, subheads can help making it clear for a writer what he's writing about in that part of the article. jheijmans, 23 April 2002

single-line paragraphs with bolding
Is there a reason why many pages use single-line paragraph with bold character formatting instead of the "==" wiki syntax? -- user:Tarquin, 25 May 2002

wiki heading
bold heading

table of contents
While surveying the encyclopedia as a newcomer, I noticed that small articles (fit on the screen) with a heading or two seemed 'disrupted' or even a bit ostentatious, because of the automatically generated contents-table. The TOC takes top-space, bottom-space, and full-width. If content wrapped around the skinny TOC table, this issue would disappear. The TOCs made some articles in a preliminary stage of development (small) look top-heavy, but later when the piece fills out it will then be valuable. -- Ted Clayton, 27 August 2003

evaluation needed
Given how much Wikipedia has grown since this was written (April 2002), we need to have it renamed and expanded to explain all the relevant cases. For example, today it's not at all uncommon to see a table of contents with a dozen entries, but this is normally fixed by having a good lead section and placing an image to the right of the ToC. This guideline still applies to shorter articles, but it needs elaboration. --Joy [shallot]   13:34, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

 * I agree with Joy [shallot]  .  Headings, subheadings, and subsubheadings are extremely valuable in long articles.  The reader who has a specific area of interest should be able to look at the TOC and go directly to the relevant section.  In that context, I have no problem with a particular section that's fairly short.  For example, an article that's been criticized as overlong is John Kerry (currently 83kb).  I don't think it's overlong, because it has good structure.  Suppose a reader has heard that there's been controversy over Kerry's first Purple Heart.  The reader who wants to know the basics of that incident will find, in the TOC, a heading for Kerry's military service, a subheading for the time he spent commanding a Swift boat, and a subsubheading for the first Purple Heart.  That section has only one paragraph, but I think that's the correct organization. JamesMLane 10:47, 4 November 2005 (UTC)


text:
Wikipedia talk:Use short sentences and lists

Supporters if this rule include: StefanRybo, tbc, Arthur (The advice, use short sentences and use short lists, is more often good than not--as long as they're not shortened beyond usefulness. The New York Times grade level reading score is usually about 6th grade these days, but only because of the modern use of short sentences and paragraphs. And short lists are nice too. On Japanese cuisine, I broke a list of 28 Japanese foods into an organized list of eight or so types of dishes with 3 to 5 examples each. It's so much more clear now. I believe that a good writer who edits his or her work with an eye to shorter sentences and better grouping of lists is bound to improve it.)

Opponents include: AxelBoldt (strongly). ("Short sentences", "Seven items"?? Are we writing a powerpoint presentation?) JHK (what Axel said), 24 (strongly - the topic is as complex as it is, period. That said, likely you are putting too much in one article if you find you have just long laundry lists, which probably should only apply to names...also multiple layers or subheadings helps), LDC (The study that came out with the "7 +/- 3" statistic was fatally flawed, and it's basically nonsense. Einstein said it best: "Things should be as simple as possible, but no simpler.")

On the fence include: Tarquin. Lists are good when there's a clear need for one. Short sentences are not necessarily good, nor do they guarantee readability. Writing well and clearly is more than following a list of rules -- otherwise we'd all be able to do it. User:Vicki Rosenzweig: Several short, choppy sentences aren't better than one longer one. Commas and clauses are a fine part of the English language. Most sentences benefit from verbs. Also, longer sentences can be better if they use familiar words and offer connections to things the reader already knows. Vicki Rosenzweig

Sounds like dumbing down to me. Do we have to comply with USA educational standards (sorry Portland).jimfbleak 14:22 Mar 10, 2003 (UTC)

Tarquin's recent change (reversion) on this page actually reintroduced misinformation that I tried to remove. Human short term memory capacity is not 7 +/- 3. Indeed, the title of George Miller's (1956) paper reads, in part, "The magical number seven, plus or minus two".

Nor does Miller's magic number have anything to do with effective sentence length or list length in an encyclopedia. Our readers aren't trying to memorize the words that make up the sentences. They aren't trying to hold the list items in short term memory. And even if they were, shorter sentences don't equate to fewer items to process. Because of "chunking", a 40 word sentence may still have only seven "memory items".

Why all this pseudo-psychologizing in an article entitled Use short sentences and lists? And keep in mind, I'm a fan of the article's advice. It makes bad writers better writers. And it makes good writers pay attention. But George Miller got squat to do with it.

And why, in an article that advises the use of short sentences do we find:

 * Longer lists, unending prose and unwieldy sentences are uncomfortable for most readers to process, especially on a computer monitor screen.

Doesn't that really mean "Long lists, passages, and sentences are hard to read"? And wouldn't it be sufficient to say, "especially on a computer"?

The article Use short sentences and lists, as it now stands, is effective testimony that the advice is needed. This is a clumsy article in many ways.

 * Use all kinds of grouping instead sounds like Engrish to me. Perhaps "Use more grouping techniques"

 * Use lists, sublists, paragraphing? Shouldn't that be Use lists, sublists, and paragraphs?

My, now entirely erased, revision described the rule Use short sentences and lists in a simple manner. Now we're back to an article full of misinformed talk about information processing and awkward prose.

Arthur 20:21 Mar 10, 2003 (UTC)

 * Arthur, I apologize. Your version is not lost -- follow the "older versions" link on the page, find your version. You can edit it to copy chunks of what you wrote to a bew version, or you can restore your version entirely -- up to you. -- Tarquin 20:24 Mar 10, 2003 (UTC)

 * wow! That was graceful. You've taught me how to be a better participant here. I'll try to follow your model. Arthur 20:47 Mar 10, 2003 (UTC)

Isn't it funny that I, a proponent of the rule, feel that the rule has been overextended now in this article? Fewer words is not always better. Telling words are important. Oh, maybe I'll go back and lengthen a few sentences here later. Arthur 23:27 Mar 11, 2003 (UTC)

Proposal to consolidate advice on writing better articles
At present there are many articles in the Wikipedia namespace that seek to give guidance on how to write better articles. I propose consolidating these into a much smaller number. On User:Jongarrettuk/Better writing guide I propose how these could be consolidated. The proposal is not to change advice, just to consolidate it. If I have inadvertently moved what you consider to be good advice that is currently in the Wikipedia namespace, please re-add it. I'm hope that the proposal to merge all these articles, in principle, will be welcomed. Of course, it may be preferred to have 2, 3 or 4 inter-connected articles than just one and would welcome advice on how this could be done. (In particular, perhaps all the guidance on layout should be spun off into one consolidated article on layout.) I'm also aware that putting lots of different bits of advice together may throw up anomalies or bits that people now disagree with (including bits that I myself disagree with:) ). I ask for support for the consolidation. Once the consolidation has happened, the advice can be changed in the normal way. Please feel free to improve on the current draft consolidation, but don't remove or add advice that is not currently on the Wikipedia namespace. If all goes well, I'll add a new Guide to writing better articles page on the 19th, though maybe some bits of the new article will need to be phased in over a longer period. I'll also take care to preserve all the archived discussion in one place. jguk 19:57, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)


text:
Zebu

The zebu (Bos indicus ), sometimes known in the plural as indicine cattle, Camel cow or humped cattle, is a species or subspecies of domestic cattle originating in South Asia. Zebu, like many Sanga cattle breeds, differs from taurine cattle by a fatty hump on their shoulders, a large dewlap, and sometimes drooping ears. They are well adapted to withstanding high temperatures and are farmed throughout the tropics.

Zebu are used as draught and riding animals, dairy cattle and beef cattle, as well as for byproducts such as hides and dung for fuel and manure. Some small breeds such as Nadudana also known as the miniature zebu are also kept as pets.

In some regions, zebu have significant religious meaning.

Taxonomy
Both scientific names Bos taurus and Bos indicus were introduced by Carl Linnaeus in 1758, with the latter used to describe humped cattle in China.

The zebu was classified as a distinct species by Juliet Clutton-Brock in 1999, but as a subspecies of the domestic cattle, Bos taurus indicus, by both Clutton-Brock and Colin Groves in 2004 and by Peter Grubb in 2005. In 2011, Groves and Grubb classified it as a distinct species again.

The American Society of Mammalogists considers it part of the species Bos taurus in analogy to Sanga cattle (Bos taurus africanus Kerr, 1792). The International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature has not yet published a ruling on the classification of domestic derivatives and no scientific body advocates the abolition of the Biological Species Concept for domestic animals.

Currently (2024s), it is not correct to describe Zebu animals as Bos taurus indicus, but rather as Bos indicus, because they are a different species from Bos taurus.

Origin
Zebu cattle were found to derive from the Indian form of aurochs and have first been domesticated between 7,000 and 6,000 YBP at Mehrgarh, present-day Pakistan, by people linked to or coming from Mesopotamia.

Its wild ancestor, the Indian aurochs, became extinct during the Indus Valley civilisation likely due to habitat loss, caused by expanding pastoralism and interbreeding with domestic zebu. Its latest remains ever found were dated to 3,800 YBP, making it the first of the three aurochs subspecies to die out.

Archaeological evidence including depictions on pottery and rocks suggests that humped cattle likely imported from the Near East was present in Egypt around 4,000 YBP. Its first appearance in the Subsahara is dated to after 700 AD and it was introduced to the Horn of Africa around 1000.

Phylogenetic analysis revealed that all the zebu Y chromosome haplotype groups are found in three different lineages: Y3A, the most predominant and cosmopolitan lineage; Y3B, only observed in West Africa; and Y3C, predominant in south and northeast India.

Characteristics
Zebu, but also many Sanga cattle have humps on the shoulders, large dewlaps and droopy ears.

Compared to taurine cattle, the zebu is well adapted to the hot tropical savanna climate and steppe environments. These adaptations result in higher tolerance for drought, heat and sunlight exposure.

Behaviour and ecology
Studies on the natural weaning of zebu cattle have shown that cows wean their calves over a 2-week period, but after that, continue to show strong affiliatory behavior with their offspring and preferentially choose them for grooming and as grazing partners for at least 4–5 years.

Reproduction
Zebu are generally mature enough to give birth when they are 29 months old. This is based on the development of their bodies to withstand the strain of carrying the calf and lactation. Early reproduction can place too much stress on the body and possibly shorten lifespans. The gestation period averages 285 days, but varies depending on the age and nutrition of the mother. The sex of the calf may also affect the carrying time, as male calves are carried for a longer period than females. Location, breed, body weight, and season affect the overall health of the animal and in return may also affect the gestation period.

Health and diseases
The zebu is susceptible to nagana as it does not exhibit trypanotolerance. It is said to be resilient to parasites.

Breeds and hybrids
Zebu are very common in much of Asia, including Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bangladesh and China. In Asia, taurine cattle are mainly found in the northern regions such as Japan, Korea, northern China and Mongolia. In China, taurine cattle are most common in northern breeds, zebu more common in southern breeds, with hybrids in between.

Geneticists at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) in Nairobi, Kenya and in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia discovered that cattle had been domesticated in Africa independently of domestication in the Near East. They concluded that the southern African cattle populations derive originally from East Africa rather than from a southbound migration of taurine cattle. The results are inconclusive as to whether domestication occurred first in Africa or the Near East.

Sanga cattle breeds is considered to have originated from hybridization of zebu with taurine cattle leading to the Afrikaner, Red Fulani, Ankole, Boran and many other breeds.

Some 75 breeds of zebu are known, split about evenly between African and Indian breeds.

Other breeds of zebu are quite local, like the Hariana from Haryana, Punjab or the Rath from Alwar district, Rajasthan.

Zebu, which are adapted to high temperatures, were imported into Brazil in the early 20th century. Their importation marked a change in cattle ranching in Brazil as they were considered "ecological" since and their meat was lean and without chemical residues.

In the early 20th century in Brazil, Zebu were crossbred with Charolais cattle, a European taurine breed. The resulting breed, 63% Charolais and 37% zebu, is called the Canchim. It has a better meat quality than the zebu and better heat resistance than European cattle. The zebu breeds used were primarily Indo-Brazilian with some Nelore and Guzerat. Another Charolais cross-breed with Brahmans is called Australian Charbray and is recognised as a breed in some countries.

From the 1960s onwards, Nelore which is an off breed of Ongole Cattle became the primary breed of cattle in Brazil because of its hardiness, heat-resistance, and because it thrives on poor-quality forage and breeds easily, with the calves rarely requiring human intervention to survive. Currently more than 80% of beef cattle in Brazil (approximately 167,000,000 animals) are either purebred or hybrid Ongole Cattle which is originated from Ongle region of Andhra Pradesh.

Uses
Zebu are used as draught and riding animals, beef cattle, dairy cattle, as well as for byproducts such as hides, dung for fuel and manure, and horn for knife handles and the like. Zebu, mostly miniature zebu, are kept as pets. In India, the number of draft cattle in 1998 was estimated at 65.7 million head. Zebu cows commonly have low production of milk. They do not produce milk until maturation later in their lives and do not produce much. When zebus are crossed with taurine cattle, milk production generally increases.

In Madagascar, zebu outnumber people, and there are an "astonishing" 6,813 Malagasy proverbs, common sayings, and expressions referring to zebu in parlance on the island. Zebu are wrestled by young men in a competitive ritual of courtship called tolon'omby.

In 1999, researchers at Texas A&M University successfully cloned a zebu.

Hindu tradition
Zebu are venerated in Hinduism of India. In the historical Vedic religion they were a symbol of plenty. In later times they gradually acquired their present status. According to the Mahabharata, they are to be treated with the same respect 'as one's mother'. In the middle of the first millennium, the consumption of beef began to be disfavoured by lawgivers.

Milk and milk products were used in Vedic rituals. In the postvedic period products like milk, curd, ghee, but also cow dung and urine gomutra, or the combination of these five panchagavya began to assume an increasingly important role in ritual purification and expiation.

title: Zebu


text:
Wikipedia talk:Writing better articles/Balance parts of a page

Supporters of this rule include: tbc
 * StefanRybo, sjc,

Opponents include:
 * 24 (strongly--some topics are so controversial this is the best you can do.)
 * maveric149 (mildly; some people have lots to say about a single aspect of a topic -- should they not contribute all they can just because the other parts of a topic have not been filled in yet?)
 * 63.192.137.21 (agree with maveric149. Writers should not refrain from writing what they know best because other aspects on the same page are lacking. An encyclopedia is a compilation of information, i.e. the more the better. If someone writes a lot of details on one aspect, other writers should add to other aspects to achieve the balance.  Never balance an article by reducing one aspect.)

Other opinions:
 * Martin -- I think there's a middle ground to be struck here. We should strive for the ideal of a complete, balanced article, but in the process of getting there the article will often be unbalanced - and that's a good thing.

"in 1000 years"? Give me a break! The language of English Wikipedia will sound like Old English to them. Changed to fifty. --Damian Yerrick

 * Will it? The invention of the printing press and now mass means of communication has greatly standardized English. I don't forsee nearly as much change in the language in the next 1000 years as has occurred in the last 1000. It will probably become more technical and internationalized and sure certain words will fall into disuse and be replaced by others but unless there is another dark age in that time period or English becomes a marginalized language, then I don't forsee revolutionary changes - just evolutionary ones. That said I don't mind the text change. --mav 00:54 16 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Proposal to consolidate advice on writing better articles
At present there are many articles in the Wikipedia namespace that seek to give guidance on how to write better articles. I propose consolidating these into a much smaller number. On User:Jongarrettuk/Better writing guide I propose how these could be consolidated. The proposal is not to change advice, just to consolidate it. If I have inadvertently moved what you consider to be good advice that is currently in the Wikipedia namespace, please re-add it. I'm hope that the proposal to merge all these articles, in principle, will be welcomed. Of course, it may be preferred to have 2, 3 or 4 inter-connected articles than just one and would welcome advice on how this could be done. (In particular, perhaps all the guidance on layout should be spun off into one consolidated article on layout.) I'm also aware that putting lots of different bits of advice together may throw up anomalies or bits that people now disagree with (including bits that I myself disagree with:) ). I ask for support for the consolidation. Once the consolidation has happened, the advice can be changed in the normal way. Please feel free to improve on the current draft consolidation, but don't remove or add advice that is not currently on the Wikipedia namespace. If all goes well, I'll add a new Guide to writing better articles page on the 19th, though maybe some bits of the new article will need to be phased in over a longer period. I'll also take care to preserve all the archived discussion in one place.


text:
Wikipedia talk:As of/dated

Poll
Supporters of this rule include:
 * drj,
 * GWO ("now", "recently"),
 * Damian Yerrick (instead of sixties say 1960s),
 * tbc (ditto),
 * 24 (strongly),
 * Lee Daniel Crocker,
 * maveric149,
 * Eclecticology (It's an appeal to common sense),
 * Arvindn (No reason to use "now" rather than, say, "in 2003", though I think "the sixties" is OK),
 * Catherine
 * JTD (recently should be banned. If I come across another 'recently' meaning 2001 I'll scream!)
 * Rotem Dan (I oppose "now" and "recently", though I think writing contemporary beliefs and speculations is fine, especially on ongoing events or "trends")
 * Kaihsu 15:55, 7 Aug 2003 (UTC)
 * Angela

Opponents include:
 * sjc,
 * GWO, ("the sixties". Other things will date much faster),
 * Enchanter (It's easy for us to stay up to date)
 * Stevertigo (I agree in principle, but Enchanter is right, too. Using the word "recently" on occasion, is harmless, as it's often broad; proper to use for months or years. Also, when writing articles, exact dates may not be handy;)

Wikipedia can be updated quickly
But the point of wiki is that it can easily be amended... sjc

 * In my opinion, it depends on what is called quickly. I would certainly not want to hold the thousand years rule, but information that has to be refreshed weekly also does not belong here. Information should be dependable for at least about one year, in my opinion - although for subjects that are in current actuality a shorter period would also be ok, that is part of being a developping article. Of the statements mentioned, there is none that I would want to avoid always, but some I would want to avoid in a context. For example, China might soon become the world's major economic power I regard acceptable, but Vice-president Dick Cheney is in the hospital, but will soon be released not, because the first soon means within a few years/decades and the second within a few days/weeks. I would especially not like to live without is now considered - if a scientific theory is regarded plausible by most scientists, but not considered part of the scientific standard, I want to write is now considered the leading theory in the field or is now thought to be correct by most scientists. -- User:Andre Engels

 * Well, there are many good points here, clearly I was being a bit extreme. Part of the problem is that words like "now" and "soon" are contextual and it not easy for me, the reader, to tell what you mean when you say "might soon become the world's major economic power".  Does that mean in a week's time or a decade's time?  I'm no expert, so I don't know the relative economic growths of various countries or how quickly various economies grow over a variety of time scales.  To pick an example which I know something about and you probably don't, if I said "the bolting policy for the rock climbing areas in the Wye Valley is soon to be revised" would you know whether I meant next month, next year, or next decade?

 * "is now considered" for scientific theories seems reasonable to me, probably because it (the theory in question) is largely accepted and likely to remain that way for a long time (though in many cases not as long as a thousand years). But if I say "the wearing of coloured zinc oxide cream is now considered unfashionable" then I think that would be bad.  It's all a matter of scale.

 * "The Sixties" is more interesting. There was a cultural and sociological phenomenom that occurred roundabout the 1960s (free speech, feminism, psychoactive drugs, rock music, ecology, the green movement, space race; you know, all that).  Scholars commonly and reasonably refer to that as "The Sixties".  It seems to me just lazy, in an encyclopedia, to say things like: "DEC invented the PDP-1 in the sixties" instead of "DEC invented the PDP-1 in the 1960s".

 * Obviously things like the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack article are a Good Thing and everyone would expect high use of relative and contextual terms whilst it was being built. Still, notice the forsight of the original author in using the full date.

 * Phew.

 * -- drj

 * My only strong opinion on this subject is that, whenever we make statements about what's going on "now" (whenever exactly that is), we do not use ambiguous terms like "now," "yesterday," "tomorrow," "soon," and the like, but instead dates or other non-contextual ways of referring to time periods. Anybody can change any article at any time, but there are zillions of articles here that haven't seen the light of day in months, and that's probably not going to change.  Besides, there's no big deal about trying to be more precise about when you're talking about--it's not difficult or inconveniencing. --User:Larry Sanger

 * 1000 years? Give me a break!

By then, the language of the English Wikipedia will look like Old English to readers. I changed "1000 years" to "fifty years", long enough for most slang to fall out of use but not long enough for a Great Vowel Shift. "Fifty to 200 years" may be better. --Damian Yerrick

 * I agree with the point of avoiding language that dates easily. Yes we can update it, but who will remember to? Will an outdated reference just sit there until someone stumbles into it? I've come across a few sites where we are told, for example: 'the next general election is due in September 2001' but nothing has been updated since. I like Catherine's idea. It makes great sense and is workable. I must start doing that myself. JTD 05:11 Feb 21, 2003 (UTC)

 * Right. The problem isn't that Wikipedia can't be updated easily, it's that it very frequently is not updated. I encounter 2-years-outdated statements in articles here all the time. —  SMcCandlish  [talk] [cont]  ‹(-¿-)› 04:33, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Scale

 * Mentioning the time context will usually imply a time scale, too, as a side effect. E.g. compare "China is expected to become a large market in the 21st century", "In 2001, Java has not reached its stated target of a highly portable medium", and "Currently (September 2001) airline security even small knifes will not be tolerated on flights." These all convey an idea of how fast things are expected to change.

It may be useful to stick to a handful of standard phrases. This way we can search for them and find all statements that are on their way to obsolescence. User:--Robbe

"As of" links
In general, I agree that dated statements should be avoided -- it's not that hard to do. In some areas though (political change, legislation, artistic and music releases, etc), it's worthwhile to note "current" or "impending", but soon to be "past" facts. I think authors who do this should take ownership of that date, however -- add it to their watchlist or to do list or whatever so that it DOES get updated eventually.

Personally, I liked the idea I encountered recently -- apparently begun by AstroNomer and seconded by Brion in Talk:As of 2002. The notion is to use As of 2003 to hyperlink "2003" or "currently" or "this year" in your text. The "As Of" page redirects to 2003, allowing context. And at the end of the year, or whenever you feel like making sure the 'pedia is up to date, you can use "What Links Here" from the "As Of" page to find articles that need updating. Works for me. Catherine

 * Should AstroNomer's "As of" idea be added to the article's guidelines then? Catherine 19:16 Feb 28, 2003 (UTC)

 * I believe so: for more info, visit As of. --Nelson 16:18 17 Jun 2003 (UTC)

 * See my "This page is scheduled for review in 2005" suggesion at the bottom of the article.

 * If this sounds workable, I'd suggest replacing or supplementing the current "As of xxxx" pages with a set of "Review in xxxx" pages. One could then simply type "This page is scheduled for [[Review in xxxx]]" at the bottom of the page, followed by a source code comment describing sections which definitely need review.  --Scott. 03:25, 2004 Feb 10 (UTC)

Replaced with WP:ASOF
Years later, this turns out to not be a good idea, for precisely the same reason that date autoformatting has now been deprecated: It creates links to "articles" that are simply lists of unconnected trivia, which serve no purpose for the reader. This older method has been superceded by WP:ASOF. —  SMcCandlish  [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 04:33, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

"Recently"
I agree with banning "recently," but I'm less gung ho about this than I used to be -- for instance, my opposition to "X is PM of Elbonia" (as opposed to "X was PM of Elbonia at the time") has evaporated as I realized the full implications of the "Edit this page" link -- to wit, when X is replaced/deposed/assassinated/whatever, the article can be changed.

And if you see "the next election will be in 1972" and it hasn't been updated since, well, be bold. --Charles A. L. 21:38, Dec 15, 2003 (UTC)

Proposal to merge page
I propose to turn this page into a redirect to Manual of Style (dates and numbers) and merging the policy (suitably reworded) into that page. Please let me know what you think. jguk 11:04, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)

 * At MOSNUM talk, there's a major overhaul underway. I propose to include a summarised version of this page in the revised MOSNUM, and a summary at what we're now negotiating will be inserted into MOS central. Please object here if you have issues with this course of action. We plan to act at the end of next week. Tony 00:43, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Update after ready for testing
As a partial replacement for As of, the Update after template appears to be ready for testing, review, and approval. The visible parts have been simplified to the point that they do not need any maintenance; all that is needed is that editors click on the links at Updating information and update the articles listed. There are links for articles needing update today, yesterday, this month, last month, this year, and last year; that should be plenty of time to get a page updated one way or another. Documentation for using the template is in the template itself, at Update after. If you see any problems or think of any improvements, please report them at Wikipedia talk:As of. --Scott McNay 07:32, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Update to Template:Update_after
I've made changes to Template:Update after (it now links to Category:Wikipedia articles in need of updating and As of), and made significant changes to the documentation at Template:Update_after (including documenting the built-in ability to add a comment, and a changes in where it's allowable to be used); please review, and provide comments at Template talk:Update after if you think any are appropriate. Thanks! --Scott McNay 04:15, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

WP:ASOF up for deletion
If the deletion of WP:As of goes through, then the second part of this guideline page will be wrong and the first part is already covered better by WP:MOSNUM. I'll wait and see what happens with the MfD. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 04:05, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Page was just added to style guidelines
The reason I demoted that page a half-year ago was because there was a discussion about another page that would have superceded it. That discussion didn't work out, but I'd still prefer to hear a rationale for adding this to the style guidelines, if we're going to do that. Generally, we're working to keep the list of style guidelines from looking overly scary, and one thing that makes it look scary is a lot of short, outdated pages. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 20:48, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Indeed. The fact that this of all guidelines was outdated is particularly ironic. Note no smiley here. —  SMcCandlish  [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 04:33, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm reverting the style cat; the merge proposal below should cover it. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 11:29, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Merge redux
This should definitely be merged into Manual of Style (dates and numbers) since this is nothing but a dates issue, and the page is so short (and can be compressed further) that there is no reason for it to stand alone here where virtually no one sees it. —  SMcCandlish  [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 04:33, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Archived
This talk page was previously located at Avoid statements that will date quickly, which has since been jointly merged into WP:MOSNUM and WP:As of. The page is archived here for ease of access from the most relevant project – Ikara talk → 00:36, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

title: Wikipedia talk:As of/dated