text:
Nitrile rubber

Nitrile rubber, also known as nitrile butadiene rubber, NBR, Buna-N, and acrylonitrile butadiene rubber, is a synthetic rubber derived from acrylonitrile (ACN) and butadiene. Trade names include Perbunan, Nipol, Krynac and Europrene. This rubber is unusual in being resistant to oil, fuel, and other chemicals.

NBR is used in the automotive and aeronautical industry to make fuel and oil handling hoses, seals, grommets, and self-sealing fuel tanks. It is also used in the food service, medical, and nuclear industries to make protective gloves. NBR's stability at temperatures from -40 to 108 °C makes it an ideal material for aeronautical applications. Nitrile butadiene is also used to produce moulded goods, footwear, adhesives, sealants, sponges, expanded foams, and floor mats.

Its resilience makes NBR a useful material for disposable lab, cleaning, and examination gloves. Nitrile rubber is more resistant than natural rubber to oils and acids, and has superior strength, but has inferior flexibility.

History
Nitrile rubber was developed in 1931 at BASF and Bayer, then part of chemical conglomerate IG Farben. The first commercial production began in Germany in 1935. The Buna-Werke was a slave labor factory located near Auschwitz and financed by IG Farben. The raw materials came from the Polish coalfields. Buna rubber was named by BASF A.G., and through 1988 Buna was a remaining trade name of nitrile rubber held by BASF.

Production
Emulsifier (soap), acrylonitrile, butadiene, radical generating activators, and a catalyst are added to polymerization vessels in the production of hot NBR. Water serves as the reaction medium within the vessel. The tanks are heated to 30–40 °C to facilitate the polymerization reaction and to promote branch formation in the polymer. Because several monomers capable of propagating the reaction are involved in the production of nitrile rubber the composition of each polymer can vary (depending on the concentrations of each monomer added to the polymerization tank and the conditions within the tank). There may not be a single repeating unit throughout the entire polymer. For this reason there is also no IUPAC name for the general polymer.

Monomers are usually permitted to react for 5 to 12 hours. Polymerization is allowed to proceed to ~70% conversion before a “shortstop” agent (such as dimethyldithiocarbamate and diethylhydroxylamine) is added to react with (destroy) the remaining free radicals and initiators. Once the resultant latex has “shortstopped”, the unreacted monomers are removed through a steam in a slurry stripper. Recovery of unreacted monomers is close to 100%. After monomer recovery, latex is sent through a series of filters to remove unwanted solids and then sent to the blending tanks where it is stabilized with an antioxidant. The yielded polymer latex is coagulated using calcium nitrate, aluminium sulfate, and other coagulating agents in an aluminium tank. The coagulated substance is then washed and dried into crumb rubber.

The process for the production of cold NBR is very similar to that of hot NBR. Polymerization tanks are cooled to 5–15 °C instead of heating up to 30–40 °C close to ambient temperature (ATC). Under lower temperature conditions, less branching will form on polymers (the amount of branching distinguishes cold NBR from hot NBR).

Properties
The raw material is typically yellow, although it can also be orange or red tinted, depending on the manufacturer. Its elongation at break is ≥ 300% and possesses a tensile strength of ≥ 10 N/mm2 (10 MPa). NBR has good resistance to mineral oils, vegetable oils, benzene/petrol, ordinary diluted acids and alkalines.

An important factor in the properties of NBR is the ratio of acrylonitrile groups to butadiene groups, referred to as the ACN content. The lower the ACN content, the lower the glass transition temperature; however, the higher the ACN content, the better resistance the polymer will have to nonpolar solvents as mentioned above. Most applications requiring both solvent resistance and low temperature flexibility require an ACN content of 33%.

Applications
The uses of nitrile rubber include disposable non-latex gloves, automotive transmission belts, hoses, O-rings, gaskets, oil seals, V belts, synthetic leather, printer's form rollers, and as cable jacketing; NBR latex can also be used in the preparation of adhesives and as a pigment binder.

Unlike polymers meant for ingestion, where small inconsistencies in chemical composition/structure can have a pronounced effect on the body, the general properties of NBR are insensitive to composition. The production process itself is not overly complex; the polymerization, monomer recovery, and coagulation processes require some additives and equipment, but they are typical of the production of most rubbers. The necessary apparatus is simple and easy to obtain.

In January 2008, the European Commission imposed fines totaling €34,230,000 on the Bayer and Zeon groups for fixing prices for nitrile butadiene rubber, in violation of the EU ban on cartels and restrictive business practices (Article 81 of the EC Treaty and Article 53 of the EEA Agreement).

Hydrogenated nitrile butadiene rubber (HNBR)
Hydrogenated nitrile butadiene rubber (HNBR) is produced by hydrogenation of NBR. Doing so removes the olefinic groups, which are vulnerable to degradation by various chemicals as well as ozone. Typically, Wilkinson's catalyst is used to promote the hydrogenation. The nitrile groups are unaffected. The degree of hydrogenation determines the kind of vulcanization that can be applied to the polymer.

Also known as highly saturated nitrile (HSN), HNBR is widely known for its physical strength and retention of properties after long-term exposure to heat, oil, and chemicals. Trade names include Zhanber (Lianda Corporation), Therban (Arlanxeo ), and Zetpol (Zeon Chemical). It is commonly used to manufacture O-rings for automotive air-conditioning systems. Other applications include timing belts, dampers, servo hoses, membranes, and seals.

Depending on filler selection and loading, HNBR compounds typically have tensile strengths of 20–31 MPa at 23 °C. Compounding techniques allow for HNBR to be used over a broad temperature range, −40 °C to 165 °C, with minimal degradation over long periods of time. For low-temperature performance, low ACN grades should be used; high-temperature performance can be obtained by using highly saturated HNBR grades with white fillers. As a group, HNBR elastomers have excellent resistance to common automotive fluids (e.g., engine oil, coolant, fuel, etc.).

The unique properties and higher temperature rating attributed to HNBR when compared to NBR has resulted in wide adoption of HNBR in automotive, industrial, and assorted, performance-demanding applications. On a volume basis, the automotive market is the largest consumer, using HNBR for a host of dynamic and static seals, hoses, and belts. HNBR has also been widely employed in industrial sealing for oil field exploration and processing, as well as rolls for steel and paper mills.

Carboxylated nitrile butadiene rubber (XNBR)
An alternative version of NBR is carboxylated nitrile butadiene rubber (XNBR). XNBR is a terpolymer of butadiene, acrylonitrile, and acrylic acid. The presence of the acrylic acid introduces carboxylic acid groups (RCO2H). These groups allow crosslinking through the addition of zinc (Zn2+) additives. The carboxyl groups are present at levels of 10% or less. In addition to these ionic crosslinks, traditional sulfur vulcanization is applied.

title: Nitrile rubber


text:
Template talk:Swl

SWL stands for shared watch list
SWL stands for shared watch list. I created this template with List of chess topics in mind but if there are other pages like that, they can use this template, too. This template removes the need to type everything twice. --ZeroOne 10:54, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Is there a specific reason this template is used and not just link - link - link ? Shinobu 02:01, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

 * List of chess topics tracks the article talk pages too. Thus, the links in there are actually in the form " ". Using this template cuts the page code size (almost) in half and makes adding new links easier, as this template creates both of those links. --ZeroOne 10:26, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Ah. When I looked at it the talk link wasn't there. Check the article's history; it has been removed for a while. Shinobu 12:49, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

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

title: Template talk:Swl


text:
User:Davidcannon/Fiji-2Z

 * Zinck, Kenneth Vincent: Fijian Cabinet Minister. (original)

title: User:Davidcannon/Fiji-2Z


text:
User:Davidcannon/Fiji-2W

 * Waradi, Taito: the President of the Fiji Chamber of Commerce and Industry. (original)
 * Waqabaca, Josaia: Fijian former political organizer; informant about 2000 coup. (original)
 * Waqanisau, Jeremaia: Fiji's Ambassador to China. (original)
 * Waqavakatoga, Taito: President of the Fijian Senate. (original)
 * Wong, Pio: Fijian Cabinet Minister. (original)

title: User:Davidcannon/Fiji-2W


text:
User:Davidcannon/Fiji-2V

 * Ratu Nemia Vainitoba: nonagenarian chief from Ba Province. (original)
 * Vakalalabure, Ratu Rakuita: Fijian politician, imprisoned for treason. (original)
 * Vakalalabure, Ratu Tevita: Fijian chief and politician (1927-2005). (original)
 * Vakatora, Tomasi: Fijian statesman. (original)
 * Vakawaletabua, Ratu Kinijioji (original)
 * Vavaitemana, Bulou Elenoa: Tui Ono, a chieftainess from Kadavu, Fiji. (original)
 * Vayeshnoi, Lekh Ram: Fiji Labour Party politician. (original)
 * Vitusagavulu, Jesoni: Fijian businessman and diplomat. (original)
 * Volavola, Ratu Peni: Lord Mayor of Suva. (original)
 * Vosanibola, Josefa: Fijian Cabinet Minister. (original)
 * Vuetilovoni, Tomasi: Fijian Cabinet Minister. (original)
 * Vuiyasawa, Lagamu: Fijian Senator and businesswoman. (original)
 * Vula, Josateki: Fijian parliamentarian. (original)
 * Vulakoro, Laisa: Fijian musician. (major edit)

title: User:Davidcannon/Fiji-2V


text:
Adrorhizinae

Adrorhizinae is an orchid subtribe in the tribe Vandeae.

Pollination
Pollination by ants, flies, and carpenter bees has been reported.

Phylogeny
One study identified this subtribe as the sister group to the subtribes Angraecinae and Aeridinae:

title: Adrorhizinae


text:
M2 proton channel

The Matrix-2 (M2) protein is a proton-selective viroporin, integral in the viral envelope of the influenza A virus. The channel itself is a homotetramer (consists of four identical M2 units), where the units are helices stabilized by two disulfide bonds, and is activated by low pH. The M2 protein is encoded on the seventh RNA segment together with the M1 protein. Proton conductance by the M2 protein in influenza A is essential for viral replication.

Influenza B and C viruses encode proteins with similar function dubbed "BM2" and "CM2" respectively. They share little similarity with M2 at the sequence level, despite a similar overall structure and mechanism.

Structure
In influenza A virus, M2 protein unit consists of three protein segments comprising 97 amino acid residues: (i) an extracellular N-terminal domain (residues 1–23); (ii) a transmembrane segment (TMS) (residues 24–46); (iii) an intracellular C-terminal domain (residues 47–97). The TMS forms the pore of the ion channel. The important residues are the imidazole of His37 (pH sensor) and the indole of Trp41 (gate). This domain is the target of the anti influenza drugs, amantadine and its ethyl derivative rimantadine, and probably also the methyl derivative of rimantadine, adapromine. The first 17 residues of the M2 cytoplasmic tail form a highly conserved amphipathic helix.

The amphipathic helix residues (46–62) within the cytoplasmic tail play role in virus budding and assembly. The influenza virus utilizes these amphipathic helices in M2 to alter membrane curvature at the budding neck of the virus in a cholesterol dependent manner. The residues 70–77 of cytoplasmic tail are important for binding to M1 and for the efficient production of infectious virus particles. This region also contains a caveolin binding domain (CBD). The C-terminal end of the channel extends into a loop (residues 47–50) that connects the trans membrane domain to the C-terminal amphipathic helix. (46–62). Two different high-resolution structures of truncated forms of M2 have been reported: the crystal structure of a mutated form of the M2 transmembrane region (residues 22–46), as well as a longer version of the protein (residues 18–60) containing the transmembrane region and a segment of the C-terminal domain as studied by nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR).

The two structures also suggest different binding sites for the adamantane class of anti-influenza drugs. According to the low pH crystal structure a single molecule of amantadine binds in the middle of the pore, surrounded by residues Val27, Ala30, Ser31 and Gly34. In contrast, the NMR structure showed four rimantadine molecules bind to the lipid facing outer surface of the pore, interacting with residues Asp44 and Arg45. However, a recent solid state NMR spectroscopy structure shows that the M2 channel has two binding sites for amantadine, one high affinity site is in the N terminal lumen, and a second low affinity site on the C terminal protein surface.

Proton conductance and selectivity
The M2 ion channel of both influenza A is highly selective for protons. The channel is activated by low pH and has a low conductance. Histidine residues at position 37 (His37) are responsible for this proton selectivity and pH modulation. When His37 is replaced with glycine, alanine, glutamic acid, serine or threonine, the proton selective activity is lost and the mutant can transport Na+ and K+ ions also. When imidazole buffer is added to cells expressing mutant proteins, the ion selectivity is partially rescued.

Acharya et al. suggested that the conduction mechanism involves the exchange of protons between the His37 imidazole moieties of M2 and waters confined to the M2 bundle interior. Water molecules within the pore form hydrogen-bonded networks or 'water wires' from the channel entrance to His37. Pore-lining carbonyl groups are well situated to stabilize hydronium ions via second-shell interactions involving bridging water molecules. A collective switch of hydrogen bond orientations may contribute to the directionality of proton flux as His37 is dynamically protonated and deprotonated in the conduction cycle. The His37 residues form a box-like structure, bounded on either side by water clusters with well-ordered oxygen atoms near by. The conformation of the protein, which is intermediate between structures previously solved at higher and lower pH, suggests a mechanism by which conformational changes might facilitate asymmetric diffusion through the channel in the presence of a proton gradient. Moreover, protons diffusing through the channel need not be localized to a single His37 imidazole, but instead may be delocalized over the entire His-box and associated water clusters.

Function
The M2 channel protein is an essential component of the viral envelope because of its ability to form a highly selective, pH-regulated, proton-conducting channel. The M2 proton channel maintains pH across the viral envelope during cell entry and across the trans-Golgi membrane of infected cells during viral maturation. As virus enters the host cell by receptor-mediated endocytosis, endosomal acidification occurs. This low pH activates the M2 channel, which brings protons into the virion core. Acidification of virus interior leads to weakening of electrostatic interaction and leads to dissociation between M1 and viral ribonucleoprotein (RNP) complexes. Subsequent membrane fusion releases the uncoated RNPs into the cytoplasm which is imported to the nucleus to start viral replication.

After its synthesis within the infected host cell, M2 is inserted into the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) and transported to the cell surface via trans-Golgi network (TGN). Within the acidic TGN, M2 transports H+ ions out of the lumen, and maintains hemagglutinin (HA) metastable configuration. At its TGN localization, M2 protein's ion channel activity has been shown to effectively activate the NLRP3 inflammasome pathway.

Other important functions of M2 are its role in formation of filamentous strains of influenza, membrane scission and the release of the budding virion. M2 stabilizes the virus budding site, and mutations of M2 that prevent its binding to M1 can impair filament formation at the site of budding.

Transport reaction
The generalized transport reaction catalyzed by the M2 channel is:
 * H+ (out) ⇌ H+ (in)

Inhibition and resistance

The anti-influenza virus drug, amantadine, is a specific blocker of the M2 H+ channel. The drug binds in and occludes the central pore. In the presence of amantadine, viral uncoating and disassembly is incomplete. Mutations conferring resistance to adamantane drugs, including amantadine and rimantadine, occur in the transmembrane region and are widespread. The large majority of resistant viruses carry the S31N mutation. Resistance to adamantanes among circulating influenza A viruses varies by region but has globally increased significantly since the early 2000s. The US CDC has released information stating that most circulating strains are now resistant to the two drugs available, and as of June 2021, their use is not recommended.

Influenza B and C M2 proteins
Influenza B and C viruses encode virion proteins with similar proton-transducing function dubbed "BM2" and "CM2" respectively. They share little similarity with M2 at the sequence level, despite a similar overall structure and mechanism.

BM2
The M2 protein of influenza B is 109 residue long, homo-tetramer and is a functional homolog of influenza A protein. There is almost no sequence homology between influenza AM2 and BM2 except for the HXXXW sequence motif in the TMS that is essential for channel function. Its proton conductance pH profile is similar to that of AM2. However, the BM2 channel activity is higher than that of AM2, and the BM2 activity is completely insensitive to amantadine and rimantadine. The structure of the influenza B channel at resolutions of 1.4–1.5 Å, published in 2020, revealed that the channel opening mechanism is different from that of the influenza A channel.

CM2
CM2 may play a role in genome packaging in virions. CM2 adjusts intracellular pH, and is able to replace influenza A M2 in this capacity.

title: M2 proton channel


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Singles (The UA Years)

Singles (The UA Years) is a compilation album by The Stranglers. It was released by EMI, who had acquired the Strangler's back catalogue from United Artists and Liberty. The compilation was a collection of all the singles released by the band on those labels, between 1977 and 1982 (some of which had not originally been included on studio albums).

The collection peaked at No. 57 in the UK Albums Chart.

Track listing

 * 1) "(Get a) Grip (On Yourself)"
 * 2) "Peaches"
 * 3) "Go Buddy Go"
 * 4) "Something Better Change"
 * 5) "Straighten Out"
 * 6) "No More Heroes"
 * 7) "5 Minutes"
 * 8) "Nice 'N' Sleazy"
 * 9) "Walk On By"
 * 10) "Duchess"
 * 11) "Nuclear Device"
 * 12) "Don't Bring Harry"
 * 13) "Bear Cage"
 * 14) "Who Wants the World?"
 * 15) "Thrown Away"
 * 16) "Just Like Nothing on Earth"
 * 17) "Let Me Introduce You To The Family"
 * 18) "Golden Brown"
 * 19) "La Folie"
 * 20) "Strange Little Girl"

title: Singles (The UA Years)


text:
Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 22

Latin abbreviations
I see the injunction against Latin abbreviations like i.e., e.g., and etc. is gone from the Manual of Style, and I'm glad. There's enough dumbing down going on in the world without forbidding the use of extremely convenient abbreviations on Wikipedia. Thank you to whoever got rid of it. --Angr/undefined 09:10, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
 * I second your sentiments.--Cyberjunkie | Talk 10:17, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

I do not mind that the guideline was relaxed, but I still regard the use of e.g., i.e. and etc. as sloppy and lazy.−Woodstone 12:58, July 27, 2005 (UTC)

 * Certainly it would be sloppy to use the abbreviations mid-sentence, but their use for brevity in brackets shouldn't be prohibited. Personally, I'd never use etc, but would use ie and eg in certain circumstances.--Cyberjunkie | Talk 13:09, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

 * Woodstone, please explain why you regard the use of etc, i.e., and e.g. as sloppy and lazy. I'm not saying you can't feel that way -- you're certainly allowed to, I just have never encountered anyone who felt that way before. I'm interested on why you feel that way. Could you provide an explanation, and maybe an example of the type of usage that irritates you? Thanks. Ravenswood 16:14, July 27, 2005 (UTC)
 * There are few cases where e.g. is appropriate where it wouldn't be equally appropriate to just say for example. It's a convenient abbreviation so long as it is easily understood. The original reason not to use these abbreviations was that not everyone understands them. Just about everybody understands etc. (although I agree that it's sloppy writing to even have to say it at all), but i.e. and e.g. are sometimes confused. The goal is clear communication. -Aranel (" Sarah ") 16:45, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

 * I would assume that the majority of readers know (or could figure out from context) etc and et cetera, i. e., e. g., AM, PM, BC and its bastard cousin BCE, AD, QED, and Ibed. Even ad infinitem and ad nauseum can be figured out by someone who's never encountered them before. If you're using things like a priori then you're going to begin losing your audience. Ravenswood 18:40, July 29, 2005 (UTC)

 * I agree with Woodstone that use of such abbreviations come across as sloppy and lazy. Ravenswood, I suspect that you have encountered many people who feel that way, but you haven't actually asked them; it's just not a good conversation topic. :) Anyway, they feel careless and rushed when I read them in sentences, as if the author didn't have the patience to express his or her thoughts concisely in plain English. If one needs to resort to using abbreviations to reduce the wordiness of one's writing, one might consider trimming the excess elsewhere... — HorsePunchKid → 龜 19:03, July 29, 2005 (UTC)

Yes, only poor, lazy writers use such abbreviations — lazy writers like John Locke, David Hume, Baruch Spinoza, Daniel Defoe, Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope, Ralph Waldo Emerson, most modern academic writers. A sad bunch indeed. --Mel Etitis ( Μελ Ετητης ) 22:49, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

 * Ah, appeal to authority, my old nemesis. We meet again! You have so many guises, but I see through them as through the ether itself... ;) — HorsePunchKid → 龜  09:02, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

 * Your x-ray vision has unfortunately been reflected by the lead plate of inattention; it's not an appeal to authority, but to evidence. The claim was that only sloppy, lazy writers use these abbreviations (and other, related claims were also made); if a large number (actually, most, I suspect) of respected writers use them, then with what criteria for good writing are you working?  If your definition of sloppy writing encompasses many writers whose work is considered to be excellent, should you not consider the possibility that your definition is faulty?  That your aversion to abbreviations is a matter of personal taste? Perhaps you could give examples of writers whose work you consider not to  be lazy and sloppy; that would at least allow others to gauge the relevance and acuity of your position on this issue.
 * (If I'd said that Fowler, or Gowers, or some other writer on language had declared abbreviations to be OK, that would have been an appeal to authority, incidentally.) --Mel Etitis ( Μελ Ετητης ) 10:16, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

 * Ah, assuming a fallacy where none exists, your real old nemesis. The people cited as authorities are all writers. They are all well known. They all used the abbreviations in their works. They are therefore appropriate authorities to cite. Appeal to authority is a fallacy where the authorities cited and/or the situation where they are cited are not appropriate. For example, quoting Michael Moore as an authority on national security and Iraq would definitely by a fallacy. David Newton 19:40, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

 * Ah, assuming a sense of humor when..., oh never mind. :) I guess I'll have to take my own comment more seriously than I intended it. My point, admittedly hidden in my own sarcasm, is that bowing to authorities is not necessarily the way to solve this "debate". (I was taught in school that opinions aren't debatable, but here we are; what other lies has my head been filled with?) I'm sure I could find a large list of respected authors that do not resort to Latin abbreviations to make their writing more concise—if I were better read, anyway. Shall we stack up the volumes and see whose pile is higher? I hear the courts have found this to be a valuable shortcut in legal proceedings... ;) — HorsePunchKid → 龜  06:11, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

 * Finding authors who don't use abbreviations would be very useful if you were arguing against the thesis that abbreviations are compulsory, but not when arguing against the thesis that they're not acceptable. --Mel Etitis ( Μελ Ετητης ) 17:15, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

 * An important distinction; good point! — HorsePunchKid → 龜  06:22, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

 * Ah assuming assumptions, the enemy of us all. - Ta bu shi da yu 07:08, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

 * I'm not so sure Latin abbreviations were at all popular with the classic writers. I just did a search of my entire e-book collection of classics (which, unfortunately doesn't include several of the above examples); i.e. and e.g. were virtually nonexistent, and even etc. was rare (altho Jane Austen and Victor Hugor--or Hugo's translator--loved it). --Tysto 15:08, 2005 August 9 (UTC)

I think that two problems with ie and eg are 1) people carelessly omitting the full stops between them and b) their confusion and misuse. I prefer not to see them and would usually change them, but I do find aka and AKA much worse. violet/riga (t) 10:22, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

 * I dislike "aka" too (though my dislike is aesthetic, and not grounded in any reason). That people misuse or confuse "i.e." and "e.g." can't be a reason not to use them correctly, though.  If it were, we'd have to ban "alternative" and "alternate", "disinterested" and "uninterested", "beg the question" and "raise the question", "flaunt" and "flout", "its" and "it's", "their" and "there", "politician" and "arse", etc., etc. --Mel Etitis  ( Μελ Ετητης ) 10:34, 30 July 2005 (UTC)
 * I think you've hit on the key thing there - aesthetics. That's my main reason for disliking them.  Your point about common confusions with other words is also very valid.  violet/riga (t) 10:49, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

I hate Latin abbreviations. I don't speak Latin. I don't know anyone who does. No one I know has any idea what most of them stand for except me. Few writers use them correctly, which means that few readers understand them. They are an old-fashioned academic affectation that should be avoided in all writing, especially one like Wikpedia, where the extremely broad audience makes clarity and accessibility crucial. --Tysto 05:27, 2005 August 4 (UTC)

While I like Latin abbreviations, most of them have lost their utility (e.g. who needs q.v. when you can hyperlink?)  I have compiled a table of what I would consider the common ones that are both useful and generally understandable and I would appreciate comment. Caerwine 14:02, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Terrific. Why use simple English when both readers and writers can consult a table? I have created a table that looks just like yours, only it eliminates the first two columns. --Tysto 14:45, 2005 August 9 (UTC)
 * Ha Ha. The point of that table is more to be one that would be used to limit the acceptable abbreviations for original Wiki text to those that are actually useful and used.  It also likely should include a link to a larger list oncluding the antiquated ones that either are no longer used or suitable only for paper instead of hypertext. Caerwine 17:26, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

I think an important point that is continually overlooked is that we're talking about abbreviations. The whole purpose of the existence of abbreviations is to save space. Seeing as how Wikipedia is not paper, I don't really see what the point of using space-saving devices is when there isn't any space that needs saving. Furthermore, Latin abbreviations of the sort constantly debated here are pretentious. There are perfectly acceptable fluent English substitutions for every Latin abbreviation. The only point in using the Latin ones is to make the writing look more erudite, and frankly almost everywhere I encounter them in Wikipedia articles they just make the writing pretentious and more opaque. They just scream a sort of intellectual snobbery that says: "I'm so smart that I know Latin so well I don't even have to write out the words, I can just put the initials. Look at how well-educated I am that I can breeze through my writing by substituting long-winded English phrases with short Latin abbreviations." I have never seen a case where an article wasn't improved by removing Latin abbreviations. Regardless of what it says in the MoS, I change them to English whenever I encounter them, and everyone else should too. Nohat 03:35, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

 * I was going to bring up the possibility that they were originally used to save space and reduce the chance of typographical errors, but I didn't have any evidence to support it, so I didn't. Now that you mention it, though, I'll voice my agreement. :) I also agree that in the majority of cases I see here and on real paper, these abbreviations serve only to make text pretentious and inscrutable. Editors should keep in mind that they're not writing for themselves, but rather for the interested, average reader who—if my experience is at all indicative—does not understand how to use i.e. and e.g. correctly. — HorsePunchKid → 龜  06:22, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Unless you know people who say "id est" or "exempli gratia" (or "videlicet"), rather than "i.e.", "e.g." (or "viz"), then I think that you're wrong about the main reasonj for using the abbreviations. --Mel Etitis  ( Μελ Ετητης ) 16:53, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

In bibliographies ibid. and op. cit. have become terms of art, part of the standard format for bibliographic citation according to various manuals of style, and are often used and used correctly by people who neither know nor care about the latin origin. similarly, in copyediting and proofreadign, stet. has become a common piece of jargon, quite divorced from its latin origin. Use of latin abrevs of this sort in these kinds of specialized contexts deos not seem at all pretentions to me. DES (talk) 18:24, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

 * Wikipedia is beholden to no so-called "standard formats" and seeing as how "ibid." and "op. cit." in particular are both merely space-saving devices, I fail to see the point of their use on Wikipedia. Their meanings are certainly obscure to most anyone except dyed-in-the-wool academics. Better to just use English. I didn't know what "op. cit." and "stet." are until I just looked them up, and I know this sounds self-important, but if I don't know what it means, an average user definitely isn't going to know what it means. Nohat 18:50, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Se my comment just above. --Mel Etitis ( Μελ Ετητης ) 16:53, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

 * "In bibliographies..." which are written by scholars for scholars and are indecipherable by ordinary readers, Latinisms are a withered vestige of a decrepit tradition that should be reformed. I agree that certain usages are so common (etc. and v.) that they are recognizable in full and abbreviated form, but that makes them borrowings into English. --Tysto 14:45, 2005 August 9 (UTC)

 * When i went to high school and college, everyone who took an english course had to produce multiple research papers using standard bibliographic formats, very much including "ibid." and "op. cit.". Anyone who went thorough such a course ought to be able to recognize such terms, and this should mean a substantial majority of the population in the U.S., as mine was in no way an unusual or particularly scholarly high-school. I don't know about whether such things are rountinely taught at that level elsewhere. And I belive that MLA foramt (which is widely used, and mandated in several professions) requires the use of these terms. As for "stet." that is a specialized term, but anyone who has done copyediting or professional proofreading will know it, and it probably should be in an article on those fields, just as various latin terms should be in articles on medical subjects. There is no reason for it to be used generally in wikipedia outside of that particular context, however. DES (talk) 15:22, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

 * Both ibid and op. cit are old, no longer used, deprecated bibliographical forms. The version of the MLA Handbook I have (6th edition) says on page 313 "The abbreviations ibid. and op. cit. are not recommended." Nohat 15:45, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

There is no compelling reason to use latin abbreviations for good old English words "that is" and "for example." However fond many writers are of the patina of scholarship that latin abbreviations impart, the abbreviations are widely misunderstood, except by those with graduate-level degrees. Mass communication, not sounding scholarly or crusading against "dumbing down," is the goal here. Often, it's just as easy to use parenthesis to translate or explain a word or phrase:
 * ...because of anthropogenic (i.e., manmade) effects such as carbon dioxide emissions...

I'd perfer:
 * ...because of anthropogenic (manmade) effects such as carbon dioxide emissions...

Examples can also be given parenthetically without writing "for example": As in many discussions here, I go along with modern newspaper style, which avoids i.e., e.g. and etc. I can't believe a writer who says she hasn't time to type out "for example" rather than "e.g." Of course, I use "stet" and other abbreviations when I'm copyediting on hard copy. Abbreviations are perfect for marginal notes. Face it, ye who support i.e. -- it's shorthand. Strong discouragement of using i.e. and e.g. should be in MoS. I'd like a recount, or a revert. I'd likely change or remove the abbreviations in any article I edited, with the comment unnecessary, widely misunderstood and ugly. -- DavidH 05:35, August 15, 2005 (UTC)
 * Sudden temperature changes are common (on March 21, 2004, the temperature plunged from 67 F. to 34 F. in two hours).
 * Many types of fruit (citrus, mango, pineapple, guava, sapodilla, starfruit and many others) are grown commercially in Florida.
 * I am no big fan of abbreviations like i.e. or e.g., either, at least in article text. I wouldn't even mind explaining the rationale for the benefit of those who are looking for guidance. However, I strongly oppose any attempt to introduce language into the MoS that gives people an excuse to "correct" other people's articles, unless that is really necessary, which is clearly not the case here. For what it's worth, I think the MoS should more clearly differentiate between "when in doubt, how about this" and "this is WP:en style". Both can be useful, but too many editors go on a crusade based on the former. Rl 07:38, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

 * Again, as I've pointed out above, many people say "i.e." and "e.g." in ordinary conversation; their use isn't merely print-based space-saving. The fact is that many of these terms are in common use, and more are in common academic and semi-academic use.  A fair number of objectors are relying upon the basic argument that we should reject them because there's something wrong with using them — they're not inaccurate or unclear, but "old-fashioned".  We're surely not supposed to be setting fashion, but writing clearly.  Few if any of these terms is unclear (except in so far as some people won't understand them — but then some won't understand lots of non-abbreviations either; we have the simple-English Wikipedia for those unable or unwilling to use a dictionary. --Mel Etitis  ( Μελ Ετητης ) 16:53, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

 * I agree that "i.e." and "e.g." are found in conversation. Indeed, they fill a valuable role there as a verbal open parenthesis.  However, the question is do they belong in modern written media such as Wikipedia.  They certainly serve a useful purpose in concisely indicating the nature of parenthetical comments. Despite, DavidH's opinion, that nature cannot always be determined by the reader in context.  Simply dropping them is not good style.  If I were writing his three given examples for Wikipedia, I would have done so as follows:
 * ''...because of anthropogenic effects such as carbon dioxide emissions...
 * Sudden temperature changes are common. (For example, on March 21, 2004, the temperature plunged from 67 to 34 °F in two hours.)
 * Citrus, mango, pineapple, guava, sapodilla, starfruit and many other fruits are grown commercially in Florida.
 * Lest you think that I'm coming out on the side of doing away with latin abbreviations, let me point out that since Wikipedia is not paper, most uses of "i.e." are best turned into links which can give an even fuller explanation than a parenthetical comment, David's first example had a sentence long parenthical comment, while I prefer to restrict my use of "e.g." to clauses or phrases, not items that can be written as full sentences, and it was feasible to rewrite his third example to avoid using a parenthetical comment entirely. On the other hand, if the third example had been using the Florida fruit as a noun phrase instead of an explanitory sentence, I might have done the last as example as follows:
 * Florida commercial fruit (citrus, mango, et al.) are an major component of Florida's agricultural economy.
 * In my opinion, a list as long as the original example deserves a complete sentence while a short incomplete parenthetical list is better off with "et al." than "e.g", with "e.g." being reserved for a single example.
 * However, once parenthetical comments that can be concisely rewritten so as to not be parethetical have been dealt with, the question of whether Wikipedia should allow their use should be decided based on whether their role in English reasonably understood by most native readers of English? I would say yes, despite that probably fewer than 1 in 10 users know the Latin phrase they are an abbreviation for and perhaps 1 in 10 of those actually care. The point is not their Latin origin but their English use. Caerwine 19:30, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
 * People use "i.e." and "e.g." in conversation? I don't hang out with that crowd, I guess. Do these peple speak Elvish too? Besides, conversational usage as a basis for a style guide? Please. Show me a major newspaper that uses "e.g." and I might pay attention. As to the fine recastings of my example sentences, it seems to reinforce that they are best written without the abbreviations (and let's not veer off into discussion of what's wrong with parenthetical clauses.) It also seems a bit strange to state that only 10 percent of readers know the meaning of these abbreviations -- but it doesn't matter, they're just so useful and readers should get the meaning from the context. Then comes a recommendation of yet another Latin phrase (et tu Caerwine -- et al.)? Friends, editors, Latin phrases in general-readership articles are sui generis snobbishness. Be bold, not pedantic. DavidH 07:42, August 16, 2005 (UTC)

 * And how many people know or care that "AD" is an abbreviation for "anno Domini"? My point was that as long as people know what they mean in English, it doesn't matter if people know what they mean in Latin.  Abbreviations in general should be avoided in most formal written contexts, which is the reason why there are few good examples of the usage of "e.g.".  I just don't see any reason to single out abbreviations that happen to be of Latin origin. Caerwine 15:32, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

 * I agree. I have yet to see an example of a usage of "i.e." or "e.g." that wouldn't have been clearer and less awkward after being recast using English. Thus the reason for supporting a recommendation against them. To those who oppose the MoS recommending against "i.e." and "e.g.", show us some examples where they work well, and where they wouldn't be better or clearer after being recast into English.

 * At the very least, the MoS could note that some editors recommend against using them, but there is no consensus to ban them, so editors should use them if they think they are necessary, but (maybe) should consider recasting their prose in English. I don't think that providing no guidance at all is better than providing the facts as they are: some people like them, others don't. The MoS should advise editors to do whatever they think is best, but to consider the arguments for and against. Nohat 08:04, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

 * I think there might be a generational thing here, and also a UK/U.S.(sic!) difference. The use of e.g. and i.e. certainly used to be subject matter taught at school in the UK; it is not lazy, it is a convenience. The main trouble is that they are poorly understood, and i.e. is used for example. In the UK, it is certainly not uncommon to hear it in speech, normally as a form of emphasis - not the most eloquent of speech, but quite common. I didn't think Wikipedia was the domain of the young, nor has it an agenda for language reform, so people need to be careful about asserting viewpoints that may be a reflection of their own circumstances. To be too prescriptive about people using informal English will work against an objective of Wikipedia which is to get everyone contributing. The style enthusiasts can improve as part of that process, but the danger is that valid, if ill-worded, contributions will be discouraged: it is too easy to drift from style guide to style police. The extension of this sort of prescription is that colons and semi-colons become banned as they are becoming vestigal. Spenny 13:12, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

Book quotations
Has anyone considered putting a recommendation about the proper way to make quotations or citations of books ? I witness a considerable amount of citations of the form "The C++ Programming Language, p.224", which are obviously totally useless. Could a format such as "Bjarne Stroustrup, The C++ Programming Language, Special edition, Addison Wesley 2002, p.224" be made an official standard ? Rama 11:13, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

 * Any sensible way of doing it and giving the requisite information is sufficient. You could put the ISBN there instead of "Special edition", jguk 11:37, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

 * There's a guideline for citation at WP:CITE; it's probably not as well-known as it should be, however. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 13:28, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

Links to years
It seems a lot of people put links to years like 2003 or 1945 whenever they see a year referenced. I personally think there is no point in linking to the year. Is there a standard for this this? Bubbachuck 18:12, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

According to Manual of Style (dates and numbers) ''If the date does not contain a day and a month, then date preferences do not work. In such cases, square brackets around dates do not respond to user preferences. So unless there is a special relevance of the date link, there is no need to link it. '' I normally remove such links when i am editing an article that contains them. DES (talk) 18:18, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

 * Many other users, perhaps most, prefer to have the years linked. Feel free to omit links on your own articles, but please don't take it upon yourself to remove links that others have made — its akin to arbitrarily changing spellings to some prefered national variety.. Fawcett5 18:22, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

 * Dates are the most linked articles. They rank highly on:
 * the list of articles with multiple links to the same article.
 * the list of most referenced articles
 * the list of most incoming links
 * Some editors just add links because they can, not because of an encyclopedic benefit to the reader.

 * See also Manual of Style (links): ''An article may be considered overlinked if any of the following is true:
 * more than 10% of the words are contained in links;
 * it has more links than lines;
 * a link is repeated within the same screen—40 lines, perhaps;
 * more than 10% of the links are to articles that don't exist; or
 * low added-value links (e.g., such as year links 1995, 1980s) are duplicated.

 * Adding year links is clearly popular with many editors. But I think it is excessive and makes Wikipedia look silly. I am sure that a misunderstanding of the date preference method is partly to blame. Bobblewik 19:05, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

After edit conflicts, reply to Fawcett5. Well, not quite. The national variety of spelling is independent of Wikipedia style, whereas linking of dates isn't. I have no strong views, and although i don't much like linking every year, I do it, because so many people seem to regard it as important.

I've come across a couple of editors who became offensive when I unlinked the names of months. When I pointed out that information about, say, March wasn't relevant to the article about a pop single, I was aggressively contradicted. Admittedly, those editors have shown repeatedly that they never follow their own links, and clearly hadn't read March. --Mel Etitis ( Μελ Ετητης ) 19:16, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

I agree with Bobblewik above. I think many people have mistakenly gotten the idea that such links are somehow important from misunderstanding how date preferences work. If anyone says that they routinely follow such links and will explain why he or she finds them of value, I will be interested to hear it. In the mean time, while I am not on a mission to hunt down and destroy such links, I will more or less routinely and automatically remove such links if I am editing an article where they occur, although I will not nornally edit an article just to remove such links. Many editors fail to put the subject of the article in bold in the first paragraph, or to put birth and death dates in parens after the name on biographical articles too -- and i routinely correct those style violations when I happen to notice them. i put this in pretty much the same class. DES (talk) 21:20, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

 * I don't feel particularly strongly about this issue, but I do tend to linkify year links when the year is relatively far from other date references. I rarely follow the links, but I find that they help me in scanning documents for a rough timeline, particularly when articles fail to give a brief history. Of course years do tend to stick out a bit already, but the extra highlighting does help a little. — HorsePunchKid → 龜  06:06, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

 * If that is your purpose, you could bold or italicise them, or use color, to emphasize them, rather than creating a link just to highlight information in the display of a page. DES (talk) 17:07, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
 * You could, but that would pretty much fly in the face of standard conventions for bold, italics, and color. Which wouldn't really be an improvement. -Aranel (" Sarah ") 17:11, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Don't like year links. It struck me as silly as soon as I followed some and found they had nothing to do with the article. I wondered if there was something in the Wiki software that required them. If there's a link to 1872, say, in the Chicago, Illinois article, I expect to find an article about Chicago in 1872 if I follow the link. That said, I won't remove them unless the article is overlinked -- which is often the case. -- DavidH 05:31, August 15, 2005 (UTC)


text: Category:User batch

title: Category:User batch


text:
User:Davidcannon/Fiji-2Y

 * Yabaki, Akuila: Fijian human rights activist and former Methodist minister. (original)
 * Yabaki, Konisi: Fijian Cabinet Minister. (original)
 * Young, Ted: Fijian Cabinet Minister. (original)

title: User:Davidcannon/Fiji-2Y


title: User:Davidcannon/Fiji-2X


title: User:Davidcannon/Fiji-2O


text:
User:Davidcannon/Fiji-2U

 * Udal, John Symonds: Attorney General of Fiji (1889-1899) and Chief Justice of the Leeward Islands (1900-1911). (rewrite)

title: User:Davidcannon/Fiji-2U


text:
User:Davidcannon/Fiji-2J

 * Sir Derek Jakeway: British Colonial administrator and penultimate Governor of Fiji. (original)
 * Jalal, Imrana: Indo-Fijian lawyer. (original)
 * Jale, Anare: Chief Executive Officer of Fiji's Public Service Commission. (original)
 * Jenkins, Sir (Edward) Enoch: Attorney General of Fiji (1938-1945), Chief Justice of Nyasaland (1944-c.1950). (original)

title: User:Davidcannon/Fiji-2J


text:
User:Davidcannon/Fiji-2H

 * Hamilton, Robert Wilson: American and first Attorney-General of Fiji (1872). (original)
 * Hatch, Hector, Fijian former Cabinet Minister. (original)
 * Heffernan, Angie, Director, Pacific Centre for Public Integrity. (original)
 * Howell, Charles Gough, Attorney General of Fiji (1931-1933) and Attorney-General of Singapore (1936-1942). (original)
 * Huggett, Stuart, British-born Fijian architect and civil servant. (major edit)
 * Hughes, Andrew, Fiji's former Commissioner of Police. (original)

title: User:Davidcannon/Fiji-2H


text:
User:Davidcannon/Fiji-2E

 * Ehrhardt, Albert: Attorney-General of Fiji (1903-1914). (original)

title: User:Davidcannon/Fiji-2E


text:
Augustus Charles Pugin

Augustus Charles Pugin (born Auguste-Charles Pugin; 1762 – 19 December 1832) was an Anglo-French artist, architectural draughtsman, and writer on medieval architecture. He was born in Paris, then in the Kingdom of France, but his father was Swiss, and Pugin himself was to spend most of his life in England.

Pugin left France during the Revolutionary period for unclear reasons about 1798 and later entered the Royal Academy Schools in London, England to improve his skills. Shortly afterwards he obtained a position as an architectural draughtsman with the architect John Nash. After considering and abandoning a career in architecture Pugin married and settled on a career as a commercial artist working primarily for publishers of illustrated books. He was a skilful watercolourist as well as an accomplished draftsman.

Drawings
Pugin produced views of London, jointly creating the illustrations for the Microcosm of London (1808–1811) published by Rudolph Ackermann, followed by plates for Ackermann's books about Westminster Abbey, Oxford and Cambridge universities, and Winchester College. He often collaborated with other artists, notably Thomas Rowlandson. His later works included illustrations for Specimens of Gothic Architecture (1821–1823), The Royal Pavilion at Brighton (1826), Architectural Antiquities of Great Britain (1826), Specimens of the Architectural Antiquities of Normandy (1827), Illustrations of the Public Buildings of London (1825 to 1828), Paris and its Environs (1829 to 1831), and Examples of Gothic Architecture (1831). He also produced a book of furniture designs called Gothic Furniture, and assisted architects with detailing for their gothic designs. He ran a drawing school at his house in Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury. His students included W. Lake Price, James Pennethorne, Talbot Bury, J. D'Egville, B. Ferrey, the architect Francis T. Dollman, and the comedian Charles James Mathews.

Pugin, along with J. Morgan, also designed the diorama building in Regent's Park in 1823, to house and display the Dioramas of Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre (1787–1851), a year after the debut of his Paris original in 1822. These exhibitions in London displayed eight of the Daguerre Dioramas (1823–1832), which were also exhibited on tour in Liverpool, Manchester, Dublin and Edinburgh (1825–1836).

Pugin married Catherine Welby of the Lincolnshire Welby family of Denton and his developing interest in the Gothic was to be magnified in the career of their son Augustus Welby Pugin, an architect who was the leading advocate of Gothicism in 19th century England and the designer of the Palace of Westminster, home of the United Kingdom Parliament. Catherine Welby's brother Adlard Welby was great-great-grandfather to Joyce Lussu and Max Salvadori. His son also sometimes assisted him in some of his publications.

title: Augustus Charles Pugin


text:
Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 23

Image description guideline
I see no guideline on the description of images, so if such a protocol exists, please forgive me. I notice a great disparity in the description of images on Wikipedia, and would appreciate if this matter was even loosely regulated, be it for the sake of consistency.

Usually, image captions aren't ended with a period, however they may contain several sentences. Following are several examples of captions using commonly accepted rules. As for the image summary, unique to Wikipedia, perhaps it should follow the same rule, with the image source indicated in italicized parentheses, if applicable. See the following example. Picture of Wikipedia's possible mascot. It is reading books and a Web site (Wikipedia) Thank you for your input,

Grumpy Troll 21:39, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

 * I don't see a need for instruction creep here, jguk 21:47, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Ideally a caption should be a complete sentence that ends with a punctuation mark. See Captions. These guidelines already exist; they're just recorded elsewhere. -Aranel (" Sarah ") 13:30, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
 * I thank you for your answer. Grumpy Troll (talk) 13:44, 9 August 2005 (UTC).

Proper hyphen/mdash usage?
Is there a Wikipedia standard to proper use of the — character? Is it... I personally favor the first convention but I'm not convinced that I am correct for doing so. --Bletch 23:01, 7 August 2005 (UTC)
 * 1) Lorem ipsum — dolor sit amet
 * 2) Lorem ipsum—dolor sit amet
 * 3) Lorem ipsum - dolor sit amet (i.e. use the normal vanilla hyphen)

 * Manual of Style (dashes) — boredzo (✍) 05:32, August 8, 2005 (UTC)

Movie/DVD easter egg inclusion?
I was thinking it would be cool if we had a section at the end of a movie's article stating wether it has easter eggs and if so what they are. -Indolering

Reversion war
There seems to be something of a battle over whether to refer to U.S. usage/UK usage or American usage/British usage. I have added in what I think is correct term, which neither of the combatants were using. That is American english and British english. BTW Irish usage actually is called Hiberno-English!!! I've added it in too. That way readers of the page can go to the actual pages and find out what those darn things actually are. FearÉIREANN\(caint) 17:41, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

 * Did you intend to lowercase English? If so, why? Maurreen (talk) 19:45, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

Pronouns beginning sections
One point of bad style that I've seen in a number of articles is the failure to reintroduce subjects properly in new sections. For example, they might do like this:

Face
Chickoomunga's face is big. He likes to eat cherries.

Social standing
He's very elite in his society. (Better: Chickoomunga is very elite in his society, or Society has given Chickoomunga an elite position.)

The concept is that a section shouldn't really read like a continuation of previous stuff; to some extent, it should stand on its own. I don't think the use of pronouns beginning section should be strictly disallowed, but at least recommended against. Deco 21:18, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
 * I agree that starting a new section with a pronoun is bad writing style. Have you found others disagree with you? I don't think the point of the MoS is to detail English language "best practices". The point of the MoS is to provide guidance where there might be multiple approaches which would be "OK" in English, but where the community finds value in standardizing on a single approach. Chuck 22:57, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

 * Actually, I reckon it's both. There's a guideline in headings that basically says keep headings simple.  This is a similar concept, I reckon.  btw, I agree with the pronoun not starting a section.  Neonumbers 08:21, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
 * My point was that the MoS is not a place to provide writing lessons, it is a place where we agree on things that may provide dispute. If Deco is finding people reverting him when he changes pronouns back to nouns at the beginning of sections, then we might need it mentioned in the MoS. If he is just pointing out a standard on which there is no debate, then we probably don't need it cluttering the MoS. The MoS doesn't, for example, discuss noun-verb agreement. Chuck 16:26, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

Economist style guide
Has a lot of good pointers. Good resource.

http://www.economist.com/research/StyleGuide/ Jacoplane 02:25, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

"See also"
This was recently added: "+	Notice that, consistent with the policy of Lists, See also list items are not capitalized unless the word normally would be, such as, in the above example, Internet." Was there any discussion about this? Maurreen (talk) 03:06, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

 * It was already implied by the example already in use on the page for many, many months:

 * and also, policy should be consistent with each other, so Manual of Style should be consistent with the policy of Lists, which is a Wikipedia guideline that has long been in place. —Lowellian (reply) 10:53, August 18, 2005 (UTC)

Contractions
The Manual of Style states:

 * In general, formal writing is preferred. Therefore, avoid excessive use of contractions — such as don't, can't, won't, would've, they'd, and so on — unless they occur in a quotation.

Every manual of style I have seen has outright banned contractions (except within quotations) in formal writing. What does "excessive" mean? Two contractions? Three contractions? Four contractions? Suppose we said that it is four. Then three contractions are allowable within an article? Personally, I think that just makes the rare contractions within an article look even more glaring, hurting the stylistic presentation of the article even more, to have one or two contractions scattered throughout an article. Would people object to an outright ban on contractions to clarify the issue? When are contractions ever useful in encyclopedic writing? —Lowellian (reply) 11:10, August 18, 2005 (UTC)

 * This was discussed recently, see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive_15. Susvolans (pigs can fly) 11:23, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

Hmm, okay, I see. A note: looking through the history, I see now that the language was changed from:

 * In general, formal writing is preferred. Therefore, avoid contractions — such as don't, can't and won't, except when you are quoting directly.

to:

 * In general, formal writing is preferred. Therefore, avoid excessive use of contractions — such as don't, can't, won't, would've, they'd, and so on — unless they occur in a quotation.

on a July 6 edit. —Lowellian (reply) 19:03, August 18, 2005 (UTC)

German eszet
I can't find any discussion to settle a question that arose on United States of Europe and occurs elsewhere. Is there a policy on the use of German eszet (AKA ß, AKA szlig) in English Wikipedia? I understand that many Latin characters with diacritics are used in English texts, but the use of eszet seems gratuitous. It's my understanding that it's not used in all forms of German. I've never seen it in an English text except where eszet itself is being explained. English users will not use it to search for Strauss, for example, and how man native English speakers know how to pronounce it? 2%, maybe? The capper is the opening of Franz Josef Strauß: "Dr. h.c. Franz Josef Strauß (spelled Strauss in English)..." This is English. --Tysto 21:37, 2005 August 22 (UTC)

 * I say use the dominant name for that person, and link the ß. There's precedent for this, isn't there? N (t/c) 22:02, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

 * No accented characters in en: without a damn good reason. — Xiong 熊 talk * 22:53, 2005 August 22 (UTC)

 * ß is not an accented character. I'm very much for using ß and redirecting from the ss version of the name, simply because it's *wrong* to write words with ss instead of ß. Regarding "It's my understanding that it's not used in all forms of German.": Granted, the Swiss Germans don't use it, but that's their choice, and frankly - there's just a lot more Germans and Austrians than Swiss Germans, anyway. ;) — [[Image:Flag of Austria.svg|15px]] ナイトスタリオン ㇳ–ㇰ — 06:40, 23 August 2005 (UTC)
 * So Swiss who speak German would never use eszet, but we English speakers are obliged to? --Tysto 18:38, 2005 August 23 (UTC)

 * There is an easier rule: Swiss names are spelt with double s, German names with ß (where that is correct). The Bavarian Franz Josef certainly is a Strauß and should be spelt that way. Richard Strauss wrote his name with a double s, but Johann Strauß used an ß. So should we. Arbor 07:02, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

We should use English names in the English Wikipedia. Johann Strauss is the spelling used in English - therefore the English Wikipedia should use that spelling. Otherwise we'll get to the absurdity that all Greeks, Russians, Arabs, Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, etc. have their articles at places that are meaningless squiggles to an English-reader, jguk 07:42, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

 * The current official spelling rules in Germany do not longer use ß. It is replaced by ss. −Woodstone 07:45:55, 2005-08-23 (UTC)
 * That's simply wrong. Read ß or German spelling reform of 1996 for more information. Arbor 09:03, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

We should no more use non-English letters like ß than we should use Chinese characters in ordinary text or article titles. The initial paragraph of an article can (and should) give the name as it was used the name's owner, but the title should be the English name, and although it is debatable whether certain diacritics can be counted as English, ß is decidedly on the side of not English. For precedent, þ was recently moved back to thorn (letter), and þ has a much stronger claim to being an "English letter" than ß does. Nohat 07:50, 23 August 2005 (UTC)
 * If it doesn't have an ß, does that mean it's mißpelled? --Wetman 08:31, 23 August 2005 (UTC)
 * My perſonal preference would be to uſe long S's wherever þey belong, in Engliſh text or in German. On þe oþer hænd, until ſuch time as þey cæn be ædded directly from a ſtændard keyboard, þey probably ought not to be made compulſory in þe Engliſh Wikipedia.  I generally favour unæccented characters over æccented ones and Engliſh over foreign ſpellings, and find þe impoſition of foreign names ænd ſpellings ræþer annoying. -- Smerdis of Tlön 19:22, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

ß proposal
Based on these comments, virtually none of which called me dirty names, I propose this as a standard:

 * When referring to German words that use the eszet (ß), render it in English as "ss" and follow the first time with the German form of the word: "Franz Josef Strauss (spelled Strauß in German)." Note that the use of ß is not universal in the German language (see Switzerland and Liechtenstein under ß), that its usage has changed in recent years (see German spelling reform of 1996), and that not all versions of the same name use it (Franz Josef Strauß, but Levi Strauss), so be sure of your usage. Where such a word appears in the title of the article, use the English form (ss) for the main page and create a redirect from the German form (Franz Josef Strauß --> Franz Josef Strauss).

This naturally raises other questions (Goebbels v. Göbbels; Mueller v. Müller) which must be dealt with in the same section, but should not be a consideration in your comments at the moment. Also, I should have mentioned before: Basil Fawlty rules are in effect. --Tysto 14:54, 2005 August 25 (UTC)

 * First, a tweak: We could just follow the shorter style used at (say) Lenin or Mao: "Franz Josef Strauss (German: Strauß) was the …"However, I am in the “allow ß” camp. I prefer the German spelling (it is in roman type, unlike Mao and Lenin), obviously with a pronunciation (which is needed anyway—pronouncing the first S is no easier than pronouncing the last ß). That would come out as "Franz Josef Strauß (/ʃtraʊs/) was the…"On a related note, Goebbels should not be moved to Göbbels (that is not how he is spelt) and Richard Strauss should of course remain where he is, too. Likewise, not all Muellers are Müllers or vice versa. Why throw away all that wonderful information? It is easy to “dumb down” the data for a user agent and display all Müllers as Mueller or Muller or whatever transliteration is desired (there are web browsers who do that for you). But we cannot go the other way. So the data needs to distinguish Richard Strauss and Franz Josef Strauß, and we should be happy that there are editors who care about such things. Arbor 07:33, 26 August 2005 (UTC)
 * ß is not a latin character, it is a modified latin character not used in english, the language of this encyclopedia. My opinion is that it does not belong in the primary title of a page, or anywhere on the page except when referencing the original german spelling.  Redirects are OK, since we use them to improve accessibility (increase the odds that when someone searches a variant, they end up at the right page.) Chuck 16:25, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

 * I agree with Chuck. To a vast majority of English readers, ß is just a meaningless squiggle. See my proposal at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (use English). As for in the text itself, the German name should be given in the first paragraph, but the English name should be used throughout the text. This is in line with the convention used for names in non-Latin writing systems, and seems applicable here, as the concern about non-Latin writing systems being inscrutable to most English readers also applies to ß. Nohat 20:51, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

My vote is for ss in the title, correct spelling given as soon as possible in the text. We are trying to write an encyclopaedia for English-speaking non-specialists: we aim to be accurate (object=encyclopaedia), but we are not necessarily normative (audience=non-specialists). The information we convey is in the article text and images, not the title. Let us expend proportionate amounts of work per word on article text and title! Physchim62 02:44, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

I agree with Chuck, Nohat, and Physchim62 -- do not use ß in article titles -- do provie the speeling using ß (where appropraite) promptly near the start of the article. Possibly provide redirects from the fom using ß. DES (talk) 00:07, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

 * I seem to be in the minority here (no big deal). Some comments: (1) The rule shouldn't be specific to article titles—it should appeal to body text as well. So the rule should be to “Transliterate ß to ss. Where this concerns an article title, provide the German spelling near the start of the page.” (2) I would still much prefer to see this solved by Mediawiki. Serving up all ß as ss for English clients by default is easy, but those who care can switch it off. (3) Playing around with google's search engine indicates that it changes Gauß to Gauss tacitly (lots of pattern matching packages can do that automatically). Does Mediawiki do this as well, or can it easily be coerced into this behavior? (There aren't enough Wikipedia pages to test this on, so I don't know.) This would avoid the need for redirects (and a MOS entry to that effect). Arbor 06:02, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

 * I don't think we want to do this. For example, we should be able to have an article ß on the character itself; that should not be interpreted as SS. Bad enough that we are stuck with all initial letters becoming capitals, let's not do something that makes even more titles impossible. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:53, August 29, 2005 (UTC)

 * To sum up (and ignoring my own dissenting voice, which seems to be singular), we just need to be precise about what a letter in the roman alphabet is, and what a diacritic is (the current discussions at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (use English) seem to simply overlook ß, which is certainly in the roman alphabet, but whose meaning seems to be too opaque for the English reader. So, while in general we should be happy to include (natively) correct spellings as long as the extra dots and squiggles can be ignored (preferring Erdős over Erdos), this does not apply to ß, which we transliterate to ss (but suggest redirection and correct spelling of proper names which are article titles in the first paragraph, as with all other transliterations). While mulling this over, at staying with the Strauß example, a minor point about pronunciation struck me as well. I think the following is proper:

"Franz Josef Strauss (German: Strauß /ʃtraʊs/) was the…" But should there be an English pronunciation as well? I don't think anybody in the anglosphere says /ʃtraʊs/, do they? Would that mean we ought to write something like this: "Franz Josef Strauss (/strɔ:s/, German: Strauß /ʃtraʊs/) was the…" I quite like this. (It really doesn't have much to do with ß… sorry) Arbor 09:23, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

 * FWIW, Merriam-Webster gives /ʃtraʊs/ first (including an audio pronunciation), followed by /straʊs/. OED doesn't have Strauss, but gives Strausian as /straʊsɪən/. I can't find any English dictionaries that give /strɔ:s/. But the point in general is valid, and English pronunciations should, in general, be given separately from native pronunciations. A particularly alarming trend is the inclusion of audio files of a native pronunciation of various words names, with the implied assumption that English speakers should attempt to imitate this. Nohat 17:07, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

Pronunciation guides aside, I think we do have consensus on the use of "ss" in titles and articles, followed by the German in parentheses (with Arbor's tweak. I'll add it to the MoS. --Tysto 07:04, 2005 August 30 (UTC)

 * Interesting detail: have a look at Strauss, a disambiguation page. I would assume that here, the various ßs serve a good purpose, don't they? (There is an explanatory first paragraph noting that -ss is the common English spelling.) I don't think we want to transliterate those. Well frankly, I am confused as to what to think. Arbor 08:34, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

 * An anonymous user and AxSkov have now twice changed the ß on the disambiguation page for Strauss to ss. Look at the ss version and the ß version. As I explained in the previous paragraph, I have no strong feelings about this, but I assume that for disambiguation purposes the variant spellings contain useful information that oughtn't be removed. For example, I always disambiguate between the two famous Strauss and Strauß composers using their spelling, not their first names (or their birthdays). I know that Strauss wrote Salome and Strauß wrote An der schönen blauen Donau, but I don't always remember which of them is Johann (actually, there are two Johanns...). Others may use other methods of disambiguation, but since the page is supposed to be a navigational aid, I cannot see what we win by removing information that would be valid for the task. (Moreover, the introductory paragraph makes it clear that the original spelling is given “to facilitate disambiguation”) Anyway, I would be happy to see some opinions on this. Clearly, some pages need the ß, like ß itself, and I am unsure about Strauss. Arbor 07:40, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

 * (Copied from User talk:AxSkov)
 * I've been discussing this issue on Naming conventions (use English). From what I've read on Proper names my changes adhere to those rules mentioned in that article. I also made those changes due to the fact that many of the Strauss article names listed use 'ss' rather than 'ß' in their titles. (Note: I have also made some other minor changes to the Strauss article.)
 * The letter 'ß' is a meaningless character to an English speaker. Regarding the spelling of the two Strauss names Arbor mentioned, they are both always spelt with 'ss' in English, and hence English doesn't differentiate between the names by using 'ss' in one and 'ß' in the other. The article still mentions that some German speakers spell some of those names with 'ß'. If someone reverts the Strauss article without fixing the wikilinks, then all I'll do is fix those wikilinks until this issue is resolved (which it may never be). – AxSkov ( ☏ ) 09:09, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

 * Maybe we could do something like this: ”Johann Strauss I (German: Strauß) Senior, the Elder, Father (1804–1849)”. Thus we would inlude the original spelling for those who actually use it to disambiguate. Arbor 10:44, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

 * OK. This idea sounds good, so as far as I'm concerned go ahead and make the changes. – AxSkov ( ☏ ) 11:08, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

Extended ß proposal

 * Let's stir up the hornets' nest a bit more. The bit about the German eszett (currently in the « National varieties of English » topic, weirdly) should be extended to other ligatures. You see, the eszett isn't a letter per se, it is a ligature, a standard way of combining two letters (in this case two 's') in a single glyph. Whether ligatures are treated separately or not in lexicographic ordering seems to be a varying national preference. Some ligatures are universally considered to be purely typographical, such as "fi", "fl", "ffi", "ffl". But that is not so for others.
 * Breton has no "c" but has the ligatures "ch" and "c'h". The order is as quoted: « chug, c’hoar » (juice, sister). Oddly, there are no Unicode slots for those, it seems, which makes it a non-problem.
 * Croatian uses the DZ (Ǳ, ǲ, ǳ), DŽ (Ǆ, ǅ, ǆ), LJ (Ǉ, ǈ, ǉ) and NJ (Ǌ, ǋ, ǌ) ligatures, which each come in three forms!
 * Danish and Norwegian use the AE ligature (Æ, æ). It is treated as a letter coming right after Z: "...Z, Æ, Ø, Å". Danish also uses the AE-acute (Ǽ, ǽ) and there is an AE-macron out there (Ǣ, ǣ). Since English also uses that ligature, it is a non-problem.
 * Dutch uses the "IJ" ligature (Ĳ, ĳ), but different dictionaries place it in various slots —almost never after the I, however. Proper case is « Ĳmuiden, Ĳpolder, Ĳmeer, Ĳssemeer ».
 * French uses the Æ and Œ ligatures, the latter much more frequently than the former. Lexicographic ordering breaks them down, so you have « caducée, cæcum, cafard » (caduceus, cæcum, cockroach). Proper case is, for example, « Œuvre ». Since English also uses those ligatures (although the œ is rare), they are a non-problem.
 * German, as already mentioned, uses the eszett to represent the "ss" ligature, which is particularly problematic in English because it doesn't even look like a double-s.
 * Several languages use the "AA" ligature (Å, å). Danish and Norwegian place "Aa" along with "Å" as the last letter in the alphabet. In Swedish, the sequence is "...Z, Å, Ä, Ö", where Ä serves as the Danish/Norwegian Æ.
 * Spanish, until the 1987 reform by the Real Academia Española, has the "ll", "ch" and "rr" ligatures. The alphabet runs "...C, CH, D...L, LL, M, N, Ñ, O..." —note that the rr ligature is not treated as a separate letter. Neither of the three ligatures warrants a Unicode slot, which makes them a non-problem.
 * So, to sum up, the German eszett bit should be broadened as follows:
 * When referring to Latin-alphabet foreign words that use a non-English ligature such as the Dutch Ĳ or the German eszett (ß), render it in English as the un-ligatured form (e.g. "IJ", "ss") and follow the first time with the foreign form of the word: "IJmuiden (Dutch: Ĳmuiden)...", "Franz Josef Strauss (German: Strauß)...".
 * The English ligatures Æ and Œ are fine and should not be un-ligatured for the article title (e.g. Æthelred, fœtus).
 * Note that the use of some ligatures is not universal (see Switzerland and Liechtenstein under ß, for example), that its usage may have changed in recent years in some cases (e.g. German spelling reform of 1996, Spelling reform of the Spanish language), and that not all versions of the same name use it (e.g. Franz Josef Strauß, but Levi Strauss), so be sure of your usage.
 * Be careful of case when the broken-down ligature leads a sentence or link; the Dutch Ĳmeer, for example, should be IJmeer and not Ijmeer (although a redirect from the latter is also needed).
 * Where such a word appears in the title of the article, use the English form (e.g. ß --> ss) for the main page and create a redirect from the foreign form(s) (Franz Josef Strauß --> Franz Josef Strauss).
 * Urhixidur 17:11, 2005 August 31 (UTC)
 * Where such a word appears in the title of the article, use the English form (e.g. ß --> ss) for the main page and create a redirect from the foreign form(s) (Franz Josef Strauß --> Franz Josef Strauss).
 * Urhixidur 17:11, 2005 August 31 (UTC)

 * I've got a better idea for a guideline: "Use English in the English-language Wikipedia", jguk 18:17, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

 * Yes! If we decide to be explicit and generalize the guidance for ß to include all non-English characters, then that's fine with me also. By the way, either Urhixidur or the Wikipedia is confused about the difference between letters and ligatures. According to the ß article, for example, it is not a ligature, although it is descended from a ligature. Also, the English Æ is not a ligature, it is an archaic letter (also descended from a ligature) no longer used in the language. We shouldn't use Old English in the wikipedia any more than we should use German. Chuck 19:41, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

 * The confusion over the ligature-ness of the German ß would be mine. Still, as far as Wikipedia titles go, it is treated like a ligature, is it not? We could rephrase the first bullet slightly to accommodate the point, I guess (« ...that use a non-English ligature or ligature-like character such as... »). We have no choice to keep using English archaic characters such as the Æ since it is still in use (e.g. Encyclopædia Britannica), and stands for things that need entries, such as George William Russell's pen name. All that the MoS guidance does is help in the correct transcription of ligature-like characters, and in particular the non-obvious German eszett. Urhixidur 17:13, 2005 September 2 (UTC)

 * I have tried to collect some information about diacritics and other funny symbols (like ß) at Proper names. Please have a look at it. There is some clean-up left to do, since I cribbed the information from various places on Wikipedia-EN. As to “Use English”—it's really not such an easy rule as some of the contributors here suggest. Is Encyclopædia Britannica English? Is Ægir? I have several English maths text books and books about the history of maths that set Paul Erdős with the Hungarian double acute accent. Should Wikipedia do this as well? I don't say I know the answers to those questions, or that they are obvious. But they are fair questions, and the axiom “use English”, though helpful, doesn't resolve them. Arbor 06:01, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

I don't see how the use of an Old English letter in a 250 year old trade name should influence our discussion about what letters are used in English today. We should write it "Encyclopedia Britannica", just like we don't use all caps or the trademark sign when referring to REALTORs, although we do discuss the all caps version in the article. The English language alphabet people learn in school does not contain ß, æ, or ő, because they are not english letters. I don't see why this seems such a problem to you: ß and ő have never been used in English. Æ is no longer used. Chuck 07:02, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Incidentally, and to keep with the Monty Python-references User:Tysto started this thread with, we do set SPAM in all caps. (::starts humming::) Arbor 07:49, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

German spelling is for de:articles. Same for the rest of the raft. Mao is Mao, Aesop is Aesop. This is en:, which should be renamed am: and restricted to American spelling; let the Brits have their own project, then we can each establish actual consistent styles. As soon as you cross the line from talking about the man to talking about how his name is properly spelled, you are no longer in an American-language reference work; you're in a cross-language project. I would endorse, though not actively support, a multilingual gadget that did all sorts of nifty translations, transliterations, and spelling in different alphabets and character sets, with nice big bold highlighting of proper names in the language in which they originate.

(By the way, I have three different IPA fonts installed, and I still can't read IPA pronunciations on WP.)

Meanwhile, this is not de:. — Xiong 熊 talk * 08:17, 2005 September 1 (UTC)

I strongly agree with Chuck and Xiong above, characters not in normal english use should not be used in article titles. This includes Æ, Œ, ß, and ő and most of the other non-standard-english glyphs discussed in this thread. DES (talk) 17:28, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

 * I'd like to point out that the proposed extended guideline matches pre-existing usage, as far as I can tell. Most of the responses seen here seem objections to the already-in-the-MoS guidelines concerning the eszett. What of the proposed extension to Ĳ, Æ, and Œ? Please respond by either a) spelling out the modified extended guideline, or b) stating your preference for the MoS remaining mum on the subject.

Urhixidur 16:33, 2005 September 5 (UTC)

I honestly can’t believe it! The (almost complete) lack of diacritics in modern English seems to make native speakers thereof quite ignorant. It’s a matter of politeness and respect to write proper names in their native form, if possible (that’s no problem with Unicode) and understandable (i.e. in the same script). A foreign name is not an English word. That means names in Latin script should remain unchanged and be used in that form for the article titles (redirects mandatory). Therefore it should read:
 * Franz Josef Strauß (/ʃtraʊs/, English: Strauss) …
 * Vladimir Putin (Russian: Владимир Путин) …

Eszett is hardly more a ligature than ä, ö and ü in German. The umlauts were vowels with small es on top originally and are still decomposed thusly. Therefore, if you used ss instead of ß, you would consequently also have to write e.g.
 * Gerhard Schroeder (German: Schröder) …

because otherwise clueless people would incorrectly write “Schroder”. (There are border cases like Händel.) Of course the Swiss don’t use ß anymore, but there a still proper Swiss names containing it.

One transliteration or rather transcription method has to be selected for each script other than the Latin, of course, where only transcriptions are also language-dependent. If you started to do so for Latin-script names you would open a can of worms for you would have to transcribe more than just diacritics, e.g. *“Shvartsenegger”, *“Ineshtine” or *“Novittski”, although the English orthography is quite etymological in general (the correct spelling is still “doppelgänger” AFAIK). In return the rest of us¹ keeps writing “Bush” instead of “Busch”, “Buch(e)”, “Busz” or “Buš”. Centuries ago it was common to use local variants of (latinised) names throughout Europe, though, which can still be seen with place names and the pope (e.g. Ioannes, Johannes, Joan, Jonas, János, Giovanni, John, Jean, Juan, Jan, Ivan, João, …).

¹ Actually there are some East European languages/countries where it is common to transcribe foreign names like “Džordž Buš”, which is probably due to a very phonemic use of the script—something that can’t be said about English. Christoph Päper 02:39, 27 September 2005 (UTC)


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Undertakers sketch

The Undertakers sketch (written by Graham Chapman and John Cleese) is a comedy sketch from the 26th episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus, entitled "Royal Episode 13". It was the final sketch of the thirteenth and final episode of the second season, and was perhaps the most notorious of the Python team's television sketches.

Plot
The sketch begins when a quietly spoken man (Cleese) takes his dead mother to an undertakers' office. The tactless undertaker (Chapman) suggests they can "burn 'er, bury 'er, or dump 'er in the Thames", but rules out the last option after Cleese confirms that he liked his mother. Of the other two, the undertaker says both are "nasty" and describes the sordid details. When the son shows the undertaker his mother's body, which is in a sack, he sees that the dead woman "looks quite young". He tells his assistant, Fred (Eric Idle) that he thinks they've "got an eater", to which Fred responds that he'll get the oven warm. The grieving son is shocked by the idea of eating his mother's corpse, but eventually succumbs to "feeling a bit peckish". He still feels uneasy, but when the undertaker suggests digging a grave for him to throw up into (in case he feels "a bit guilty afterwards"), he agrees. Midway through the sketch, the audience begins to jeer at the cast (alongside people laughing), and by the end, a number of audience members storm the stage as the camera pans to a machine displaying the ending credits. As it does so, the national anthem of the United Kingdom begins to play, and the crowd stands at attention.

Production
The BBC were wary of the sketch, and reluctantly agreed to let it go ahead on the condition that the studio audience were heard to protest loudly, then invade the set at the sketch's conclusion. This was poorly executed: the audience began booing and shouting too early (those who were not heckling were laughing), and because of studio fire regulations, only a limited section of the crowd were allowed to rush onto the studio floor; the rest simply sat there looking awkward. (As Roger Wilmut pointed out in the book From Fringe To Flying Circus, a genuinely shocked (British) audience would have reacted with an embarrassed silence.)

Following its initial broadcast of the sketch in 1970, the BBC wiped the sketch from the master tape and replaced it with the "Spot the Braincell" sketch from episode 7 of the second series ("The Attila the Hun Show"). However, when the second series was released on BBC Video in 1985, episode 13 was "restored", thanks to the discovery of a (low quality) copy of the sketch that appears to be sourced from either an off-air recording of a foreign duplicate of the original show, or possibly Terry Jones' own home tape copy. This restored episode was finally shown again on television in 1987 as part of a complete (if frequently interrupted) run of second and third series repeats.

Context
The sketch was part of a longer running joke within the episode, which was that they expected Queen Elizabeth II to watch the show at some point. This would be indicated by the playing of "God Save the Queen", which occurs during the "Insurance Sketch", where it was stopped when they hear she switched to ITV, followed by a shot of ITN’s Reginald Bosanquet presenting News at Ten when the anthem plays and Bosanquet stands at attention while continuing to read the news. The final scene, after the desultory audience invasion, has the entire studio coming to a halt (including the portion of the audience that had rushed the stage) and standing at attention while "God Save the Queen" is played, and the end credits roll.

To juxtapose the joke that the Queen would be watching, the episode also deliberately featured many of Monty Python's most tasteless sketches. This sketch, the last in both the episode and the second series, immediately followed the "Lifeboat sketch" (also about cannibalism, and which also had the audience jeering in disgust at the end), followed by a letter from a military man concurring with their disgust where the punchline was that it was the Royal Air Force that was suffering from cannibalism, some graphically cannibalistic animation from Terry Gilliam, and an appeal for decency by Terry Jones. Nevertheless, it was this sketch which was most notorious for its tastelessness, and Cleese made specific reference to it alone in his eulogy for Chapman, when recalling Chapman's talent for pushing the boundaries of bad taste.

Miscellany
This sketch should not be confused with the "Undertakers film" from episode 11 of series 1. The Undertakers film showed, in several snippets throughout the episode, a team of increasingly fatigued undertakers struggling to carry a coffin through the streets.

An audio version of the sketch, minus audience interruptions, was recorded in 1971 for the team's second album Another Monty Python Record.

title: Undertakers sketch


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Cromwell in Ireland

 * This is an article about a documentary. For the actual event, see Cromwellian conquest of Ireland.

Cromwell in Ireland is a two-part RTÉ docudrama broadcast in September 2008. It is produced by Irish television production company Tile Films and is described as an examination of "that great nemesis of Irish history: Oliver Cromwell". The series stars Owen Roe as Oliver Cromwell, Declan Conlon as Hugh Dubh O'Neill and Catherine Walker as Elizabeth Price. The show's airing coincided with the 350th anniversary of Cromwell's death on 3 September 1658 and began on Tuesday 9 September at 22:15 on RTÉ One. It was broadcast on the History Channel in November.

It is directed by two-time IFTA-winning director Maurice Sweeney and presented by the leading historian, Dr Micheál Ó Siochrú. The series consultants included John Morrill, professor of history at University of Cambridge, Jane Ohlmeyer, professor of history and vice provost at Trinity College Dublin, Pádraig Lenihan, lecturer in history at University of Limerick, Nicholas Canny, professor of history at NUI Galway and Ronald Hutton, professor of history at University of Bristol.

Cromwell in Ireland was commissioned by RTÉ Television in association with The History Channel, supported by the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland. It was produced by Tile Films. The series was shot on high definition with large-scale reconstructions combined with CGI, provided by Sue Land and Warren Osbourne of the UK's Red Vision visual effects company, recreating the sieges and battles that took place in that era. Composer and Stellarsound producer, Steve Lynch teamed himself with the Bratislava Symphony Orchestra to record the soundtrack for the series.

title: Cromwell in Ireland


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User:Feldthaus

My name is Morten Feldthaus.

I'm from Denmark living in Lyngby and studying at the Technical University of Denmark.

title: User:Feldthaus