Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Japan-related articles/Archive 24

It seems that this manual of style still needs to be clarified in some points. I recently requested the move of "Hokkaidō" to "Hokkaido" since that is the most commonly used form in English reliable sources and even the Japanese government doesn't use the macron. Yet, editors of that article reverted the move because it was considered that the move goes against usage within the body text. I'm quite confident that the problem is in this manual of style, in the point number 10 of the section "Body text". Please take a look at the discussion at Talk:Hokkaidō.

It has been made clear in previous discussions that common usage in reliable sources in the English-speaking world is what should be used to determine article titles. But I believe that editors still believe that body text usage must match the article title and that is conflicting with point 10 of "Body text". I would like to have a discussion to change the text in "Location names" in the body text section, to change macroned form for all locations in favor of common usage in reliable source in English with one mention of the technically correct macroned form. I didn't think that it would be a problem for editors to distinguish between article titles and body text but it seems I was wrong. Jfgslo (talk) 20:40, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Your move was reverted because it was done without any discussion or evidence of a new consensus. The body text has nothing to do with this. Jpatokal (talk) 21:30, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

I've checked the archived discussion that took place in the article's talk page and this was only discussed once and that was four years ago. But that still does not change the fact that the argument about usage within the body text was used and can still be used. In fact, in the former consensus that argument was used and the consensus was against the macroned form so the move was done without consensus. Jfgslo (talk) 21:42, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Your move was controversial and without consensus. Just because the alst move discussion was 4 years ago does not mean that you automatically get to decide the new consensus. There was absolutely no reason for you to have listed it at WP:RM as an uncontroversial move. "Hokkaido" is not a common enough term to override the general consensus that "Hokkaidō" should be the title of the page.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 21:46, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

But that is part of the point. The general consensus was against "Hokkaidō". I don't know why someone moved the article towards that. Jfgslo (talk) 21:54, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

That was four years ago. Clearly a new consensus formed between then and now.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 22:28, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Four years ago is a long time ago. If what you say is true (and I suspect it is), it shouldn't be too hard to find reliable sources to back it up. I understand wanting to change it and you were well within our guidelines to change it, but since someone has reverted it because they disagree, you need to discuss it and show evidence.陣内_Jinnai 22:36, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

That is not a problem. I'll do it. But leaving that aside, what sparked my interest in start this discussion here was not that someone disagreed with the current consensus, but the arguments used citing this guideline. In other words, I think this guideline may need some changes in order to avoid editors confusing body text usage with article titles. As I mentioned, I thought it was clear enough for everybody. But editors seem to be confused when an article title doesn't use the same form within the text.

Specifically, the text where is says: "Location names (municipalities, prefectures, islands, etc.) should include macrons in all cases with the following exceptions (due to how well known they are around the world)." I feel that this text causes confusion because editors seem to believe that this also applies to the name of locations in article titles, even when the text in this guideline specifically says the contrary. It also don't think that it is quite logic to make exceptions for only some locations, if English reliable sources do not use macrons for other locations as well. I believe that it is enough to refer the correct form only once within the article, like with people's name, and it shouldn't be necessary to include the macroned form in every mention within the body text. I think that a change like this would make less common arguments that confuse body text usage to determine an article title. Jfgslo (talk) 22:56, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

That's fine, but changing Hokkaido for that reason is pointy.陣内_Jinnai 23:07, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

I was only moving Hokkaido because that is the most commonly used form in English reliable sources and I truly didn't think it would be a controversial move since there was no consensus in favor of the macroned form and no one raised an issue when it was at WP:RM. I didn't notice that the page was reverted back after the move was done until a few hours ago. When I verified the rationale for reverting the move and found an editor that cited this manual of style, I immediately thought in that text about locations. It was never my intention to disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point. But when I read that rationale, I felt that the problem was with this guideline. And that's why I decided to open this discussion and also because I think that that editor has a fair point about same usage within body text and article titles. That's how other encyclopedias do it. Jfgslo (talk) 00:17, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

A consensus still has to form as to whether or not "Hokkaido" is the preferred English spelling or the page should remain at "Hokkaidō" (Kyūshū is given similar treatment).—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 00:22, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

I think the point number 10 of the section Body text "10. Location names ..." is misleading. It says "Location names ... should include macrons in all cases with the following exceptions..." and "Cities: Tokyo, Kyoto". However, what about Osaka and Kobe? The exceptions here should be examples. We should not determine the exact name by guideline because the usage of names will change over time. ―― Phoenix7777 (talk) 00:09, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

That's a good point. It may be kind of misleading having some exceptions because editors may immediately think that only those places can be used without macrons even if reliable sources do not use macrons. Jfgslo (talk) 00:17, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Only a handful of examples are used on the project page. Clearly "Tokyo", "Kyoto", "Osaka", and "Kobe" are all common enough that they're written without macrons. However, as someone questioned whether or not "Hokkaido" should be given the same treatment with your move, we should start a discussion.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 00:22, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

I am new to this discussion. I've just opposed the move of Hokkaidō to Hokkaido and explained why here. IMO Japanese place names should follow exactly the same rules as non-Japanese. Names that have clearly and obviously been anglicized (e.g. Venice, Munich or Vienna) are given in that form. Those that have not been anglicized remain with accents (e.g. Orléans, Nîmes, Düsseldorf, Saarbrücken etc.). This is simple enough. (It's not a typing/search issue as we have redirects.) --Kleinzach 04:50, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

"Hokkaido" is just as anglicized as "Tokyo", "Kyoto", "Osaka", "Kobe", "Ryukyu", etc.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 05:41, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

That's right - and it begs the question whether they are anglicized at all. --Kleinzach 09:14, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

So basically you're saying "Let's never use common names".—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 09:15, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

You sure like strawmen, don't you? Anglicization is "to alter something such that it becomes English in form or character", and it's highly questionable that not using a macron qualifies. Jpatokal (talk) 09:35, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Stop being such a pain in the ass. We have reliable sources to say that these place names have common usage and there are move requests in place to deal with Hepburn romanizations based on 4 year old consensuses that may no longer apply.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 10:06, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Who is this "we" of which you speak? Jpatokal (talk) 11:12, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

(undent) I don't have a particularly strong opinion on whether it should be Hokkaido or Hokkaidō. I am, however, strongly opposed to changing any names until we have a clear proposal for what the new rule will be and a clear consensus in favor, because otherwise we'll end up "at each others' proverbial throats over every tiny little issue" as Nihonjoe says. As I think we all agree that there are more obscure places that need macrons than well-known places that don't, drawing up a shortlist of those well-known places would be a good starting point.Jpatokal (talk) 09:35, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Consensuses are being made on case by case bases rather than applying a blanket rule to all of them. "Hokkaido", "Honshu", and "Kyushu" have entered English usage as much as "Tokyo", "Osaka", and "Kobe".—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 10:06, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, that is your opinion, but the MOS in its current form disagrees: Location names (municipalities, prefectures, islands, etc.) should include macrons in all cases with the following exceptions: Tokyo, Kyoto, Ryukyu Islands, Bonin Islands, and Iwo Jima. Neither Honshu nor Kyushu are on this list. Jpatokal (talk) 11:12, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

The point of these discussions is to make new exceptions to the rule.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 19:31, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

No that's not the case. It's either to:

1. Find common ground that doesn't conflict with policy
2. See if consensus has changed in how to interpret higher-levelpolicy or guidelines
3. Bring guidelines and lower-level policy into line with higher-level ones.
4. on occasion update policy to reflect new concensensus.

Right now #1 seems to have failed #2 is inapplicable here - the wording clearly goes against policy. So #2 or #3 is what is left and given the longstanding and broad application of WP:ENG, it will be an uphill battle to change it (though its not impossible). While WP:IAR can occiasionally be used to give specific exceptions, usually for technical reasons, for having lower-level guidelines trump higher ones, the higher-level ones are usually eventually changed in those circumstances to allow that level of flexibility.陣内_Jinnai 22:15, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) "Hokkaido" is at least as common as "Kobe". I don't see the macronned usage in most English-language anything other than a few academic texts which use macrons in all cases. I'm thinking people are thumping this guideline as if it were holy writ rather than a style guideline. Yes, it's important to have consistency, but not at the cost of having those with differing opinions at each others' proverbial throats over every tiny little issue. This is getting really ridiculous. We are all here to improve this encyclopedia, not set up little closed-wall fiefdoms.

All of the major islands of Japan should be at macronless forms for their titles as the macronless forms are—by far—the most common form used in news reports, magazines (outside of some academic journals), history books, and general non-fiction and fiction books. The same goes for pretty much every larger city that could be written with macrons. ···日本穣^? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WikiProject Japan! 05:43, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

These damn redirect tagging bots prevent moves from being undone. I've made a requested move for Kyūshū to "Kyushu", and Honshū has been affected by one of those bots.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 05:53, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

So, instead of attempting to find a consensus for changing the MOS, you're once again just doing what you think is right and charging ahead willy-nilly? Jpatokal (talk) 09:35, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

I opened up move requests for Honshu and Kyushu. The only two people who think that anything that I do or that Nihonjoe does concerning the titles of pages are you and Pmanderson. And as I told you above the manual of style has always promoted using a non-Hepburn romanization for the titles of biographies. The only reason there was any dispute over this was because Pmanderson who has been edit warring over various manuals of styles and policies lately came here and decided that the standing consensus of this page as covering Japanese topics was null and void.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 10:06, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Incorrect. The Manual of Style says Location names (municipalities, prefectures, islands, etc.) should include macrons in all cases with the following exceptions: Tokyo, Kyoto, Ryukyu Islands, Bonin Islands, and Iwo Jima. Neither Honshu nor Kyushu are on this list. Jpatokal (talk) 11:12, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

That is also incorrect. Article titles are not part of the body text. It's clearly stated in the manual of style: "Take care with these points regarding usage in article body text (anything that is not the title of the article)" so these requested moves are not in conflict with point number 10 of body text. I think that now Phoenix7777's point about examples instead of exceptions makes more sense. Jfgslo (talk) 15:00, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

As I say in the above section, the point of these requested moves is to develop new consensuses as to what can be exceptions to this rule on location names, Jpatokal.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 19:31, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

User:Pmanderson modified the MOS to state that the "trade name" of modern Japanese individuals should not be the first name when choosing an article title (and also this bit). I reverted him and then he just struck out that part, because of the discussion I started at WT:Article titles#Titles of biographies (and some other pages) where the subject's personal preference as to how their name should be written is disregarded by WP:AT.

I have now modified the manual of style so it does not refer to the "trade name" but rather the subject's spelling of the name in the Latin alphabet for their personal or professional use. Even though some other forms of the names may appear in English media. This only would really affect entertainers, because the fan media will have given them various other versions of their name, which have become common, even though it has been later identified that they personally and professionally parse their name differently.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 21:48, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

I have commented on this at some length at WT:AT. Asian names have nothing to do with it; within English, we use Cat Stevens, not Steven Georgiou nor Yusuf Islam, although the last is certainly the name on his website. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 00:24, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

That is not a good enough comparison. The Japanese language is a special case. That's why we have a whole separate manual of style for it. These people do not have names that are commonly written in English. So we should use the name they use for themselves in English over any other name that may be out there for them in English, because in some cases there is some disparity between common usage in what are English language reliable sources and the primary sources in Japanese.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 00:28, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

The properties of the Japanese language are the proper concern of the Japanese Wikipedia; this page describes how things are done in English; including how it describes people rarely mentioned in English Septentrionalis PMAnderson 00:38, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

And this page describes what to do with people from Japan. What is the problem with having special rules for a completely different language?—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 01:03, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

We do have special rules for Japanese - on the Japanese wikipedia. What these rules would do is impose rules for Japanese - or rather for a romanization of Japanese - on English, producing pages intelligible in neither language. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:17, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

PMAnderson's reasoning seems to be airtight here. In general, if reliable secondary English sources like, for example, Time Magazine, the London Times, the NY Times etc. refer to someone in a certain fashion, that's how we should do it too, even if that person refers to himself differently in English. I don't understand the reasoning to follow that person's own spelling of his or her name in English over what reliable English sources are using just because he or she is Japanese. --Born2cycle (talk) 00:45, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

But there are very often no reliable English sources discussing these subjects. Therefore the only proper way to choose an article title is to go with what the subject calls himself or herself in the English alphabet in reliable Japanese language sources.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 01:05, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

If that were true, there would still be no reason to say any of this. If there is no reliable source for shoujo, that is sufficient reason not to use it. On the other hand, if all reliable sources in English, except a website use it, so should we. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:14, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

This isn't about the ambiguity in the usage of shoujo and shojo. This is about a person's name, generally a living one. If everyone who writes about them in English writes the name a specific way in the English alphabet that is different from what they use personally or professionally, why should Wikipedia be just as inaccurate as everyone else when we have a reliable primary source (their official website, their talent profile, their record label, etc.) that shows us the proper way to parse it?—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 01:19, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

No, it is not. It is not even about a stage name; it's about what is most convenient to have as an article title about them. That's why the governing policy is called WT:Article titles. And WP avoids primary sources. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:25, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

If we're going with what to call a person, why shouldn't he or she or the agent or the publicist be used as a reliable source? And we have redirects for every other variation.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 01:26, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

See WP:MOSTRADE. We try not to do funny names invented for publicity purposes - unless other people use them too. If a name is what people actually call the subject, there will be third-party secondary sources for it. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:31, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

And "but we have redirects" cuts both ways - and is therefore vacuous. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:31, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

But it's not a trademark. It's how they write their name in the Latin alphabet rather than in kanji, hiragana, or katakana. It's not a "funny name" but just a possible difference in spelling from the various standard romanization schema. For example, most people have called the man who was born as 早川俊夫 Hayakawa Toshio but performs under the name 水木一郎 that romanizes (according to this manual of style) as Mizuki Ichirō as "Ichiro Mizuki". However, his official website has "ICHIROU MIZUKI" plastered all over it. That's why the page is at Ichirou Mizuki rather than at Ichiro Mizuki, Ichirō Mizuki, or Toshio Hayakawa on the English Wikipedia.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 01:47, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Does this page have any support other than Ryulong's interminably repeated opinion? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 00:38, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes it most certainly does. And I'm the only one here right now who's a part of the Japanese WikiProject to respond to you. There is absolutely no fucking reason to tag this entire aspect of the manual of style as an essay.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 01:03, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

You've been the only Wikipedian of any kind to defend any of this for days; multiple Wikipedians have objected with various degrees of vigor - although no obscenity - that they disagreed with you. If you don't want this to be an essay, don't revert-war for your sole opinions; which you have now done three times in a few hours. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:09, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

No one has been discussing this particular aspect at all on this page. That's why I brought it up. I am reverting your bold changes to this page and now we're discussing it. And there's nothing wrong with that.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 01:12, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Please read WP:3RR. BRD is not intended to give one doctrinaire his way when everybody else - on this talk page and on WT:AT disagrees with him. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:19, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

But BRD should have happened after my first revert. Instead you continued to edit the page in a way that the people (well, only me currently) who regularly keep up with this page disagree with you.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 01:22, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Not when there is uniform agreement that your novel edits are violating policy. Any of these would be a strike against your edits; all three are true. Only you currently against uniform disagreement is condemnatory. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:28, 11 December 2010 (UTC) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:26, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

I have only been restoring the page before you came along and changed it. The only "novel edits" I've made is to change "trade name" to something easier to understand which still reflects the general practice of people who write about Japanese topics. If the subject of a biography has some non-standard way of transliterating their name into the English alphabet, we pick that above any other romanization. This is why we don't have pages located at Yasuhiro Naitō or Shirō Masamune or Taito Kubo.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 01:37, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

If Kubo is publicly known by Tite Kubo, no problem; that's what independent sources will call him - and they do. That's in the undisputed part of the guidance. What you insist upon is that if Randi from Hokkaido wakes up one day and decides he wants to be called Randi Skeleton-breaker and nobody does, we should call him that anyway. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:50, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

No. If a public Japanese figure has a specific way of spelling his or her name in the English alphabet, we should use that spelling over others, which may or may not be more common. See my example concerning Ichirou Mizuki in the other section.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 01:54, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Agree with Pmanderson: it's quite clear that the current wording goes against WP:MOSTRADE, and Ryulong, as far as I can see, you're in a minority of one supporting it and are (way) in violation of 3RR already. Jpatokal (talk) 01:56, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

It's not a god damn trade mark. It's just how the name is spelled.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 01:57, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

It's a stage name; it might as well be a trademark. And it's not how the name is spelled unless people spell it that way. (A glance at the article suggests they do; if so, this is a tempest in a teapot anyway.)Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:02, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

It's not a stage name (even though in some cases the most common name in Japanese is a stage name). It's just their name parsed in the English alphabet, which may have a letter that other people who write about them in English do not use because they are not aware that it is written otherwise. If we have reliable Japanese sources to state otherwise, why should we use the inaccurate English sources for the information?—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 02:05, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Your facts seem to be flexible; minutes ago you posted performs under the name 水木一郎 that romanizes (according to this manual of style) as Mizuki Ichirō as "Ichiro Mizuki". Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:09, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

I am aware that Mr. Hayakawa has a stage name which is 水木一郎. But no one, Japanese, English, French, Thai, Indonesian, South African, or otherwise, refers to him as "Toshio Hayakawa". He is Ichir(o|ou|ō) Mizuki. Whether or not to use "Ichiro", "Ichirou", or "Ichirō" is what falls under the umbrella of this manual of style. Reliable Japanese sources point to using "Ichirou" (there is no reason his official website cannot be used as a reliable source; and it is used on this CD booklet which also has a name written in revised Hepburn), even though his name is erroneously and often spelled without the u in English language sources. If it's verifiable that his name is written as "Ichirou Mizuki" professionally and personally, then why should we default to the incorrect usage in a language not native to the original subject?—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 02:33, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Because you're pretty much the only person who thinks that most Japanese genuinely give a fuck about the variant of romanization used to spell their name in Latin characters and/or that the spellings used by designers and PR flacks actually reflect these deep desires? The "trade name" rule was originally put there for cases like Yasuhiro Nightow and Kotoōshū. Jpatokal (talk) 03:26, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

So why doesn't that cover Ichirou Mizuki or Shin-ichiro Miki or Shoko Nakagawa as well?—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 19:53, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

You're asserting that the spellings used on PR material are a conscious choice and the "correct" version, and flatly asserting that other spellings used in English language sources are "erroneous" -- but this is just your view, not The Truth(tm). I could just as easily assert that English materials written by professionals get it right and random Japanese CD cover designers are the "erroneous" ones. Or you could apply common sense, conclude from this that his name can be romanized in multiple ways, and default to Wikipedia's standard Hepburn. Jpatokal (talk) 21:34, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't know. If the spelling "Ichirou Mizuki" comes up in liner notes and on his official website, I'd say the Anglophone fandom who doesn't actually buy the CDs got it wrong.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 22:33, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

According to WP:RS, a third-party publication (say, Wired) is more reliable than self-published material (like a CD liner note). Jpatokal (talk) 07:13, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

"水木一郎" is "Ichiro Mizuki" on ANN and a news media. Surely, he'll be written "Ichiro" such as "小沢一郎"([1][2]etc.) on other news medias. At least, I cannot find "Ichirō Mizuki" in reliable or self-published source.--Mujaki (talk) 16:20, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Being "Ichirou Mizuki" on his official website and in his liner notes serve as better reliable sources for how to spell his name than Anime News Network (which is fan-oriented and has its own internal manual of style). Different people with the name 一郎 will spell it differentely in English (Suzuki of the New York Yankees is of course "Ichiro"), much like how the surname Satō has multiple variations.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 18:28, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

By the way, as a general rule, news medias spell romaji irrespective short vowel or long vowel. So, "佐藤" is almost certainly spelled "Sato" on news medias.--Mujaki (talk) 19:18, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

News media, yes, but not all media.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 21:18, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

(undent) Ryulong, I think moves like this are verging on bad faith on your part. The article has already been moved from Ohmoto to Ōmoto twice (log), isn't it a bit rash of you to move it again in the face of opposition (see Talk with no discussion whatsoever when we're discussing precisely this topic here? Jpatokal (talk) 07:20, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Material published by the subject does not count as "self-published material". "Self-published material" concerns fan-created media, not primary sources. And CD liner notes are always used as sources, if at least for the music release itself. There is no reason the page should have been moved back to "Ōmoto". If it's the person writing about themselves, we should use that name as Ms. Ohmoto clearly does. And even with yours and Pmanderson's opposition to the use of the subject's preference as being the primary source for how to write the name, using the Hepburn romaji form is still the last choice to go through.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 07:40, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

And let me point out that the Hepburn romanization form to more common usage/official usage by the subject is not under discussion here (yet). What is under discussion here is the use of the subject's spelling (which could be "ou", "oh", or "ow") over what might be the more common spelling in the self-published material you are currently abhoring (which could most often be just "o").—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 08:17, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

I think the following priority for commonness of romaji spelling is good (extended from Names of modern figures section);

1. Use the official trade name or pseudonym if available in English/Latin alphabet;

2. Use the form found in a dictionary entry from a generally accepted English dictionary;

3. Use the form found in a English reliable sources;

4. Use the form found in a self-published source if available in English/Latin alphabet;

5. Use the form publicly used on behalf of the person in the English-speaking world;

6. Use the form found in a dictionary/reliable sources in any other language (French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, German, and Dutch, or variations);

7. Use the form publicly used on behalf of the person in any other popular Latin-alphabet-using language (French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, German, and Dutch, or variations); or

8. If none of the above is available, use the the xx (xx:revised Hepburn, folk Hepburn, modified Hepburn or kana spelling) form.

In short, a spelling is fundamentally based on external sources, and a spelling transrated by editors is the last resort. I'm sure that Hokkaidō and Tōru Takemitsu should be moved to Hokkaido and Toru Takemitsu per reliable sources because WP:V and WP:AT are the highest priority in enwp.--Mujaki (talk) 16:35, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

I think that the "English reliable sources" one should not need to be mentioned, because other forms will likely be found in said reliable sources. Also, this only covers biographies. Not locations like Hokkaido.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 01:43, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

Are you read WP:IRS(WP:RSEX,WP:V)? A dictionary is only one of reliable sources. Other sources are journals, books, newspapers and so on. A self-published source is more less reliable than them.--Mujaki (talk) 15:28, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

Once again, you are confusing the nature of primary sources and self-published sources. Primary sources are primary accounts or information directly from the subject matter (be it a blog posting by the subject of an article or the events of a television program or film). Self-published sources are those written by people like you or me. Also I think the dictionary one is too high in the priority. And now that I think about it, the "self-published source" one is entirely wrong. So it should be

1. Use the spelling used by the subject (in primary sources to the subject), if available in the Latin alphabet
2. Use the form used on behalf of the subject in the Anglophone world
3. Use the form used on behalf of the subject in a language that uses the Latin alphabet
4. Use the form used in English-Japanese dictionaries
5. Use the form used in other languages to Japanese dictionaries
6. If none of the above are available, utilize the standard romanization schema as described by this page.

—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 19:41, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

Both of you are wrong. You always use the most commonly used name by reliable sources - primary, secondary and tertiary - first. If its unclear or there is none, then you go down the list.陣内_Jinnai 01:03, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

There are plenty of situations where the most commonly used name is wrong (at least due to the proliferation of self-published sources). Using romanization directly associated with the subject (the primary source) is better than using a name that is incorrectly used by the media (secondary, tertiary, and self-published sources). It does not make sense to defer to other sources as to what to call the subject of an article.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 02:05, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

"There are plenty of situations where the most commonly used name is wrong" — that's right, but only because the Japanese rarely put effort into consistent romanization and because most English media cover Japanese topics omit, ignore or are technically unable to reproduce diacritics like macrons. Jpatokal (talk) 10:28, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Also it doesn't matter; we are not the Romanization police. We have to go by what reliable sources tell us at the end of the day. We can note the correct spelling, but we have to have the common spelling as the default. We don't get to pick and chose winners and losers - that would be original research. RSes do that and if there are reliable sources listing a romanization of a name that takes precedent over general naming conventions when they conflict, unless another RS disputes that; then we have to decide between those sources what is correct even if none of them use a form this guideline says to use by default. Reliable SPSs are still RSes and still count for deciding what the correct spelling is.陣内_Jinnai 14:27, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth. No one can publish original research in Wikipedia even if the subject is true, and every thing in articles must be verifiable with third-party source (Anyone can remove the explanation with OR, no source or unreliable sources). WP:AT refers to reliable sources too. Tertiary sources such as dictionaries and encyclopedias are very valid as reliable sources, and published sources such as journals, books, newspapers and so on are often handled as secondary sources. English source should have priority over other langage source. And, Self-bublished source is permited on some restricted conditions such as "the material is not unduly self-serving" and so on (WP:SELFPUB follow WP:SPS and WP:BLPSPS in WP:BLP).--Mujaki (talk) 19:38, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

@Jpatokal: I am talking about how there is often a discrepancy between usage by the subject vs. usage by the English (fan) media at large (e.g. Ichirou Mizuki, Shin-ichiro Miki).

@Jinnai: These correct spellings are supported by reliable sources (primary ones). Again, there is no reason not to use the subject of the article as a source as to what the article's title should be, just because everyone else online (generally the fans) has their own method of dealing with romanization that makes other names more prevalent.

@Mujaki: The subject's preference is still verifiable and a reliable source, and I don't know why you're bringing up WP:OR. Anyway, my main issue is that you are putting too much weight on "English reliable sources" in your original proposal. If Japanese reliable sources provide a name in the Latin alphabet, that is an even better source than an English one.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 20:19, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Let's put it this way:

1. If an English/Latin alphabet spelling appears in reliable Japanese language sources (e.g. the subject's official website, written publications by the subject, liner notes if the subject is a musician), utilize that form first
   • If it can be shown in reliable sources that the subject of an article has used more than one spelling in the English alphabet, move onto the next criterion
2. If no idiosyncratic form (compared to the revised Hepburn romanization) can be found as used by the subject in reliable sources in Japanese, utilize the form used to refer to the subject in reliable English language sources
3. If no form can be found in English language reliable sources, use the form used to refer to the subject in reliable sources in other languages that utilize the Latin alphabet (e.g. French, German, Portuguese, Danish, Dutch, etc.)
4. If no form can be found in reliable sources, utilize the revised Hepburn romanization scheme.

How does this work?—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 20:36, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Ryulong - sorry it isn't OR, you are right, but it is NPOV. I'm not saying that we should ignore official sources, but you are also placing too much deference to the original source when its clear that is not how NPOV works. Sure, if its unclear which spelling is dominant because they are used inconsistantly, I would say that the offical translation should be given weight. However, if its clear that the official translation is not used often then the most common one should be. Japanese is not so special it can ignore what other guidelines must do and go with the most commonly used name (while noting the official name and any other commonly used names).陣内_Jinnai 15:59, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

Um, no it's not NPOV either. Having a neutral point of view means that both sides of a topic are given equal coverage, which means including criticism rather than only praise. The dominant spelling should be the spelling utilized by the subject. This isn't an issue like Cat Stevens (who has a new name now) or Muammar al-Gaddafi (for which there is no common spelling). The official translation seems to be utilized in all other aspects of Japanese media despite what may be the common usage, so why not the name of a living person?—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 19:07, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

That's not what NPOV means. It means giving the appropriate, not equal, weight to each item based on coverage by reliable sources. The way you are making it may actually violate WP:BLPPRIMARY because you are using it to trump all other uses.陣内_Jinnai 20:33, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

I think BLPPRIMARY can be ignored when it comes to how to spell a name.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 20:53, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

Ryulong - Non-English sources in WP:V: Because this is the English Wikipedia, English-language sources are preferred over non-English ones, provided that English sources of equal quality and relevance are available. What is reliable source you say? How do you secure your proposal-2&3 without source such as dictionaries, encyclopedias, journals, books, newspapers and so on? For example, though there is a this arbitration, the result of internet serch is less reliable than other reliable sources because it is one of primary source fundamentally.--Mujaki (talk) 01:58, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

WP:NOENG is iffy when it comes to this. Seeing as we are writing biographies on living Japanese persons, the best reliable sources would be those written in Japanese, rather those in English or French or Korean or Finnish or anything. And there is really no purpose to defer to some other dictionary or encyclopedia or whatnot, when they have their own manual of style separate from our own. And I really doubt that arbitration case has anything to do with this discussion. My proposal is simple and precise: Japanese language sources first for information on Japanese biographies, then English, then other languages, and if all else fails go with the Hepburn romanization. It's effectively using an official translation over a fan one.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 02:16, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

WP:NOENG is not restricted for special article.--Mujaki (talk) 04:11, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

If we're writing about Japanese people, English language sources shouldn't be the first ones we're looking at for information. The section at WP:NOENG says "English-language sources are preferred over non-English ones". Not "only use English-language sources".—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 04:15, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

I said "English source should have priority over other langage source." per WP:NOENG, you know?--Mujaki (talk) 05:55, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

That would be the case if the subject of an article were international or from an Anglophone world. English language sources should not be the first sources when working on subjects of articles that are not English.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 06:11, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

But living person is special. The self-bublished source on some restricted conditions is permited as source in enwp (by the way, it has priority under reliable third-perty sources in jawp), and it would be safer to spell pseudonym with one's official spelling if it is made public.--Mujaki (talk) 01:58, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

Again, you are mixing up self-published sources with primary sources. Self-published sources are user oriented (e.g. some random person's Blogger or Tumblr or Twitter). Primary sources are written by the subject (the subject's official website, blog, etc.). We cannot use a blog posting (for example) by you or I as a reliable source for an article. However, if the current emperor Akihito had a blog we could use it as a reliable source for content in his article.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 02:16, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

Your opinion means you should not use official site as a sources per WP:PRIMARY. - Reliable sources means reliable, third-party, published sources. Source by person involved is one of self-published source too.--Mujaki (talk) 04:11, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

No. There is nothing in WP:RS that says primary sources are forbidden. And there is also a good bit of policy under WP:ABOUTSELF which means that self-published sources can be used as sources of information about themselves. I don't know where you're synthesizing that I'm saying primary sources should not be used.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 04:14, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

Um...You do not systematically understand the policies and guidelines. WP:PRIMARY(WP:OR) is one of core content policies and the primary sources are forbidden per WP:OR. Moreover, "WP:IRS#Primary, secondary, and tertiary sources" depends on "WP:PRIMARY"("WP:OR#Primary, secondary and tertiary sources").--Mujaki (talk) 08:18, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

Primary sources are not forbidden by WP:OR.

"Unless restricted by another policy, primary sources that have been reliably published may be used in Wikipedia... A primary source may only be used on Wikipedia to make straightforward, descriptive statements that any educated person, with access to the source but without specialist knowledge, will be able to verify are supported by the source."

I don't see anything that says I'm not allowed to use someone's official website for the spelling of his name in English.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 09:22, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

Primary sources are not forbidden, however, especially for BLPs they need to be used with care. If we used them exactly we'd end up with articles like Poyoyon♥Rock which violates WP:TITLE. Even inside the article, where using the symbol is okay, they should only be used the first time.陣内_Jinnai 15:02, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

As I have been saying over and over, using primary sources to determine how to spell the name of the subject of a biography is not going to be a WP:BLP issue.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 19:46, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable, published secondary sources and, to a lesser extent, on tertiary sources. and "WP:BLP#Reliable sources" depends on "WP:PRIMARY" (WP:OR) too - In short, primary source unpublished by secondary source or tertiary source should not be used on your opinion; in other words, you need not primary source because infomations in primary source are evident by secondary source or tertiary source.--Mujaki (talk) 05:40, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

Mujaki, please stop quoting snippets of policies that I've explained over and over do not apply in this situation. A primary and/or self-published source (whichever you want to call sources published by the subject) are perfectly fine when we are using them to determine how to spell the subject's name in English.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 06:11, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

if that's what you believe, then perhaps we should confirm on WT:BLP?陣内_Jinnai 16:13, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

Why would how to spell the fucking name of the subject of a biography be such an issue?—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 20:38, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

Why should we ignore other policies and guidelines that are followed by all other language-based Wikiprojects? The naming conventions are also followed by WP:CHINA, WP:RUSSIA, WP:KOREA and all the other language-based Wikiprojects. If you want to change the current guidelines so that this manual of style give extra weight to primary sources disregarding common usage in secondary and tertiary reliable sources in English, you should bring this discussion to WP:AT, WP:EN, WP:V and WP:MOS and reach a consensus to change them. Skimming through the discussion here, I see no reason for WP:IGNORE. Jfgslo (talk) 04:29, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

It's the closest analog to the "official translation" reasoning for titling pages. Why should an official translation be ignored merely because English language sources (generally not ones considered reliable) spell the name differently? If we are given an official translation or spelling or whatever, why should we eschew it in favor of inaccurate information? The only thing I am proposing we give more weight is Japanese language sources rather than English ones. If there's a common romanization amongst Japanese sources, it should be used before any common romanization in English ones. Also, this isn't a WikiProject. It's a style guide. Neither the Chinese or Korean languages have established manuals of style, anyway.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 04:37, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia does not follow such a thing as official translation for article titles. I point you out to WP:COMMONNAME. Even for English names, like US presidents, Wikipedia uses common names. The official names are normally mentioned once within the body text and that's it.

The real question is, why should this manual of style ignore English reliable sources? There is no real reason to favor an official translation, regardless of how accurate it is, if it is not used in the English-speaking world. This is also the standard for other encyclopedias, not only Wikipedia.

And just because those Wikiprojects don't have a manual of style means that they don't follow the other guidelines to favor their own needs. And even if they are only proposed, in Wikipedia:Manual of Style (use of Chinese language) and Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Korean) note how English usage is emphasized in both of them.

If a Japanese person or topic is only covered by fansites, then you could argue about using his official name, but if there are reliable English sources, as determined by WP:SOURCES, they should always be followed. This is the English Wikipedia. English reliable sources will always be favored over Japanese sources unless there aren't reliable English sources available, and even then other Latin-character-based reliable sources are favored over Japanese sources when determining common usage of names. Texts in Wikipedia are written for everyday readers not for academics, that's why article titles reflect common usage, not official translations. The same applies for WP:EN. It would be ridiculous to call Christopher Columbus Cristoforo Colombo just because Italian sources referred to Columbus with his real name or to call Ikuhisa Minowa with his "official" trade name Minowaman when he's rarely referred in the English-speaking world with Minowaman. So, I don't think that giving more weight to Japanese language sources over English reliable sources is acceptable at all, just as I wouldn't expect a non-English language Wikipedia to favor English reliable sources when reliable sources about a topic exist in their own language.

Also, this manual of style can't go against other guidelines and policies, so giving more weight to Japanese sources over reliable English sources is not a subject exclusively within the scope of this guideline. Jfgslo (talk) 07:59, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

Let's put it this way: figures of some Japanese biographies are never going to receive coverage in reliable sources in any language other than Japanese so there is no common name in English usage. In the primary case I have been using as an example, I can tell you that Ichirou Mizuki is commonly known in sources that are not reliable as "Ichiro Mizuki" because that is how people have been treating the ō at the end of his name for years now in the English fan community. His website has "ICHIROU MIZUKI" plastered across it and that same spelling appears in CD jackets for albums he has released, and this spelling has appeared in a BBC television programme. So even with all of this professional usage, you are saying that we should go with the spelling the English fan community has used because it is the most common?

I only include the English language and other language sources after Japanese, because it's incredibly rare that reliable sources are going to exist in these other languages when it comes to some Japanese subjects of biographies. Official translations are used as article titles for everything else, so why not biographies?

And again, I am trying to change the wording from "Trade name" to "spelling used personally or professionally". I don't even know what should be done in the case of Minowa, but it is not the issue at hand here.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 08:24, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

If said "English fan community usage" is from sources considered reliable by the involved WikiProjects, then yes, it should be favored over professional usage. But this particular case doesn't have that problem because it has always been located at Ichirou Mizuki and no one seems to be contending that. He is even referred like that in one of the two in-line references within the article, so I don't think it is a good example.

And it is not true that it's rare to have reliable sources for Japanese subjects in non-English languages, particularly when they have media that is known in non-English-language countries. For example, Ichirou Mizuki is known in Spain and has been in France.

Also, I don't understand why change trade name for spelling when spelling is already mentioned in the first line of that section ("Spelling, including macron usage, of the name of a modern figure should adhere to the following, in order of preference.") Under the current text it is clear that Ichirou Mizuki is the option favored in this manual of style. If something should be added at all, it could be a note that says that when there are not reliable sources in English and the subject uses an official romanization then we should use the official romanization. But this is redundant. I think that the current text is already clear enough.

As long as this is the English Wikipedia, it will always be favored common usage in secondary and tertiary English-speaking reliable sources over non-English reliable sources. As I understand it, your main contention is that when there is no common usage in reliable sources in English or in other Latin-based-language, editors will use fansites or other non-reliable sources over the official trade name, claiming that they are using common usage. This guideline and all the others will always favor reliable sources. If editors do it, they are ignoring the policies and guidelines. Jfgslo (talk) 15:39, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

Why shouldn't sources in the native language of the subject of the biography be used before any other language sources? My proposal is only a new way to find a reliably sourced Latin alphabet spelling in order to determine the best choice for an article title. And as I said, it's going to be fairly rare to find reliable English language sources for some biographies. It's better to see if there are reliable Japanese sources that utilize a known romanization rather than ones in English or any other language.

And as a side note, the article for Mr. Mizuki was originally located at Ichiro Mizuki (as well as an unintentional fork at Ichirou Mizuki) due to the common name in unreliable sources until reliable sources (that feature on Wossy's Japanorama, his official site, his CDs, etc.) were discovered (by me).—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 17:51, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

Once again, for any topic, using native language sources over English reliable sources that also cover the topic would be against recognizability and against WP:V. The best choice for article titles and names in the English Wikipedia is always common usage in reliable sources from the English-speaking world because this Wikipedia is written for the general English-speaking users, not for specialists. Your proposal essentially means that English reliable sources should be overridden by Japanese primary sources in the English Wikipedia. If a person is covered in English reliable sources then that person is already a notable topic in the English speaking world and, therefore, his name has recognizability as it is used in said English sources. The current text of this manual of style already gives preference to the official name when there is no common usage in reliable English sources so I don't really see any need to modify it.

If there were no reliable sources to verify the original romanization of Ichirou Mizuki then that only means that it didn't fulfill the criteria of WP:V, not that using that romanization was acceptable. Jfgslo (talk) 19:16, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

How is it against WP:V to use Japanese language sources for Japanese article subjects? If people can read the language, then its verifiable. English language sources are preferred but not required of any topic. Just because some people cannot read Japanese does not mean that they should not be the first choice for references on a Japanese topic. And I severely doubt that in any situation, any particular individual who has been covered in English language reliable sources will have a different romanization than they do in Japanese (e.g. Tite Kubo). I am getting tired of being told that the subject cannot be a reliable source for how to spell his name or how references in Japanese should not be the primary ones used for Japanese articles. It just defies common sense.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 20:53, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

Per WP:COMMON, your common sense may tell you something, but that is not necessarily shared by other Wikipedia editors ("When advancing a position or justifying an action, base your argument on existing agreements, community foundation issues and the interests of the encyclopedia, not your own common sense.") Your opinion is as valid as it's the one from all other editors and it is the current consensus that English reliable sources are preferred over Japanese sources in the English Wikipedia. As for WP:V, read WP:NOENG "Because this is the English Wikipedia, English-language sources are preferred over non-English ones, provided that English sources of equal quality and relevance are available" and also "Translations published by reliable sources are preferred over translations by Wikipedians, but translations by Wikipedians are preferred over machine translations." Jfgslo (talk) 21:29, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

WP:NOENG is retarded. And anyway, you quoted an important point. English language sources are only preferred if they exist for the topic at hand. In the multitude of cases where this aspect of the style guide is concerned (modern figures), reliable sources don't exist in English. So why should we look for them first when determining the name?—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 22:25, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

• I believe that Japanese language sources ought to come first when it comes to determining the page title of the subject of biographies. The use of a non-English source should be perfectly allowed. Basket of Puppies 22:37, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

Jfgslo is right on current policies. We can perhaps find romaji spelling for the subject in English, reliable, third-party and published source if the subject is notable or notable-like. Moreover, the source such as official site is generally a kind of internet advertisement (not third-party source). For example, "小沢一郎" is "Ozawa Ichiro" (family name + given name in fork Hepburn) in romaji on his official site. Do you think "Ozawa Ichiro" is the most right in enwp? What is authority (policy and/or guideline) for your view? I find spelling "Ichiro Ozawa" in many English news medias.--Mujaki (talk) 23:00, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

But the current policies are getting in the way of making the encyclopedia more accurate and verifiable. And I don't know what policies you're quoting, but I am only suggesting that the Japanese sources for these names be sought out first before any other language. Why is that such an issue? And in your example "Ichiro Ozawa" should probably the the article title, rather than the revised Hepburn form. It's currently located at.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 23:28, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

If you don't like WP:NOENG, generate a consensus to change it at Wikipedia talk:Verifiability. Otherwise, it is the current consensus and it cannot be overridden by your personal opinion since it is not shared by the majority of editors, so any other editor that cites it can revert any change done when the policy is ignored. The same applies for WP:AT and WP:EN.

If reliable sources don't exist in English, why would we be looking for them in the first place? If someone were to move Ichirou Mizuki towards Ichiro Mizuki, the change would be undone if that editor did not show that Ichiro Mizuki is commonly used in reliable English sources. The burden to prove that there is common usage in English reliable sources is on the editors that want to change an article title towards that supposed common usage in English reliable sources.

It is your personal opinion that the current policies are getting in the way of making the encyclopedia more accurate and verifiable, not a fact. I personally do not share your opinion nor do I think that the majority of regular editors agree with your position. And it is such an issue because this is the English Wikipedia, therefore English reliable sources should always be preferred if they are available and are of the same quality, and also primary sources should not be given extra-weight over secondary and tertiary sources when determining article titles because recognizability is the main threshold for article titles not personal preference of the subject of an article. Jfgslo (talk) 23:57, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

You have yet to say, other than randomly quoting WP:NOENG, as to why Japanese language sources should not be looked at first to determine a common Latin alphabet spelling for subjects of biographies of modern figures. I don't want to hear the same shit over and over as to why WP:NOENG should be adhered to when it comes to writing about people outside of the Anglosphere.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 00:04, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

I have already explained to you that this is the English Wikipedia and therefore common usage in reliable English sources will always be favored just like any other encyclopedia, also that the articles are meant for everyday readers and that the current consensus is that reliable English sources are always preferred when they are available over other languages reliable sources. If you don't agree and don't want to accept Wikipedia polices, guidelines and current consensus, it's up to you. That doesn't mean that this guideline should change to favor you personal preferences in this matter, particularly when your position is not widely shared by other editors. Jfgslo (talk) 00:30, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

But there aren't going to be English sources for this shit, so why attempt to seek them out first? Unless the subject of an article is a politician, is an author of some manga released in English, or has become a native of a western country, all of the reliable sources are going to be in Japanese. Mizuki is a rare instance where he has appeared in Anglophone media. Others have not.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 02:46, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

What is concrete Japanese sources you said for romaji? Japanese news medias? Japanese books? Japanese magazines? Other?

English reliable source has priority over other language reliable source per current WP:NOENG (WP:V) and Japanese romaji is not given special treatment. Romaji are needed for not only living persons (there is a special policy WP:BLP) but also all names such as places, characters, settings and so on. As Jfgslo said, if you want Latin spelling in local (non-english) source and/or official (not third-party) source for the subject has priority over English source, WP:NOENG should be changed probably, bcause WP:V is one of top priority policies and MOS-JP (this guideline) is only a guideline.

However, there is a way with both spelling - e.g. Huga Hoge (also written as Fuga Hoge) (ほげふが, Hoge Huga) in case of "Huga(Hoge)" and "Fuga(Hoge)" are verifiable by some reliable source.--Mujaki (talk) 13:58, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

Primarily, the subject's official website or other media officially released by the subject. And I know the policies so you can stop quoting them.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 19:33, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

@Ryulong You do not know that. Each article is defined by the sources added by editors. If at some point English reliable sources are found to use a more commonly form or the subject is well known in other countries with Latin-based characters then the article will reflect that. The same would apply to revert the article if the English sources are found unreliable. And if there is no common usage in English reliable sources, this manual of style already gives preference to the official trade name. There is no point in changing the current text in my opinion, much less to favor Japanese primary sources over English secondary and tertiary reliable sources when available for article titles from the beginning. Jfgslo (talk) 15:39, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

Jfgslo: The issue of the trade name was brought into conflict when Pmanderson came here because the "trade name" is a violation of WP:TRADEMARK or something and also violates WP:AT for supposedly not being the common name. I just want to reword the section so that instead of "Trade name" it says "spelling used personally or professionally", but then Mujaki started up this section which I only recently merged with all of the others. I have only suggested a new method for determining the most accurate and verifiable English language article title, but you and Mujaki are saying I'm wrong because I'm giving preference to Japanese language sources (the subject's official website, CDs released by the subject, books released by the subject, etc.) before looking at English language sources (e.g. the Japanorama feature, British or American news) or any other language, if they even exist. Why is this so intensely wrong? Why can't we just ignore the WP:NOENG section and merely adhere to the rest of WP:V? If they're reliable sources and they're verifiable by the majority of people who are writing the page, why the fuck should it matter?—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 19:33, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

Trade name or business name is not directly related with WP:TRADEMARK, which is mainly for objects. The stylizations used on a CD, which is a copyrighted product, are regulated by WP:TRADEMARK. But names are regulated by WP:AT and WP:EN. You are trying to give preference to a subject's stylization preference over how he is commonly known in reliable secondary and tertiary sources, which is how we determine a subject's notability, not by primary sources. Why do you insist on ignoring WP:AT, WP:NOENG, WP:EN and other guidelines when you haven't convinced other editors that it would benefit in some way Wikipedia and therefore WP:IAR does not apply? I'm certainly not convinced that your proposal benefits Wikipedia in any way and the way that your are insisting on ignoring other rules it's closer to what is expressed in WP:WIARM#What "Ignore all rules" does not mean. Jfgslo (talk) 22:07, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

It is not a "stylization used on a CD". It is how his name is spelled on the CD jacket. This is not having the name in all caps or all lower case or alternating case or having capital letters at the beginning and end or other keyboard input characters like $ or ! in the middle of the name. This is a way to determine the correct god damn spelling of the name in the English alphabet for which redirects can be used for any other informal spelling that has become fairly common. It's an OU instead of just an O or a C instead of a K or a hyphen instead of an apostrophe. I am not ignoring WP:AT and WP:EN, just WP:NOENG because English language sources are not going to exist for most of these topics and what English language sources that may exist could very well be misinterpreted as being reliable when they are more than likely not. And WP:IAR is a policy. WP:WIARM is a nonbinding essay.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 00:14, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

This, again, is your point of view which the majority of editors do not share and which is as valid as the point of view of other editors. You also keep saying that these topics are not going to exist but that's up to editors of each article to find out, not you, neither are you the one that should predict and judge how they are going to be used. You are merely arguing in circles, without adding anything significant to your arguments. Don't forget that WP:AT, WP:V and WP:BLP are also policies and that you were the one that originally cited WP:COMMONSENSE. Jfgslo (talk) 03:31, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

The three people who have bothered to respond here is not a "majority of editors". And the only reason I'm arguing in circles is because you and Mujaki keep bringing up the same points that I've refuted over and over again.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 04:22, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

If you believe that a majority of editors will support your proposal then bring it to the relevant polices to generate a consensus and change them. Otherwise, you are only arguing for yourself because you have not refuted anything, you are only refusing to accept arguments that do not agree with your position. Jfgslo (talk) 06:25, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Ryulong, not to be blunt, but I don't think anybody in this discussion agrees with you -- which also indicates that you have not convincing refuted the arguments made against your proposal.

And my two cents, since you're apparently asking for additional opinions: this is the English Wikipedia and we're arguing about how certain names should be represented in English, so yes, English sources should have priority in determining that representation. As a simple example, Hirohito is at that name because that's what he's called in English, even though the official page at Imperial Household Agency (it doesn't get much more reliable than that, no?) uses the name "Emperor Showa". Jpatokal (talk) 10:47, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Hirohito is an entirely special case because he has a common name in English reliable sources (and we have a separate section describing what to do with the emperors' names). My proposed changes to this section concern people do may not have a common name in English language reliable sources. How is that so fucking hard to understand?—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 21:32, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't have to bring it anywhere else because it only affects this manual of style. Every policy you or Mujaki have brought up has leeway in it that allows my suggested changes to this manual of style. Foreign language sources are not forbidden to be the first sources sought out for foreign language topics. The most common English alphabet name should be found be found in said sources, and as biographies of living persons are in question we should use the most accurate information possible.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 07:21, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

It affects those policies because you want to modify this manual of style to directly go against them and other guidelines with the argument that it would be better, although you haven't shown that. And you insist on applying WP:IAR without good reasons, only to modify this guideline without the consensus of other editors. Jpatokal has summed it up well, so I don't think that more replies to your comments are needed since you haven't added anything to your arguments. Unless you bring a good reason why the names of Japanese people need to be treated with different types of sources than those used for the names of people from other non-English countries in Wikipedia, you can keep arguing the point over and over again, but you will not generate the consensus needed to change this manual of style. Jfgslo (talk) 15:01, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Fine then. "Trade name" still should be changed to something else, though, because that is what started this whole fucking mess.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 21:32, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

In the "Names of modern figures" section, I believe that "trade name" should be changed to "English language spelling used personally or professionally by the subject if alive". How does this sound?—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 21:36, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

I believe the consensus of the above discussion (violently opposed by you, obviously) is that the "trade name" rule should be moved to the end of the order of preference (that is, last place after reliable sources in English and other languages). If (and only if) so, I'd be fine with changing the wording as you suggest. Jpatokal (talk) 22:12, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

That is only because you, Mujaki, and Jfgslo do not have any idea what the general practice is and do not work on the biographies of living persons of Japanese extraction. The only person who has suggested that the "trade name" thing be moved to the end of the priority (or removed entirely) is Pmanderson because he likes getting into disputes over article naming and has been blocked several times recently over this issue. And you reverted my revert because you automatically think he is correct. You also summarily opposed the requested moves on Honshu, Kyushu, and Hokkaido also because you do not know when there can be exceptions or changes to the rules. You've made that abundantly clear in this topic as well.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 22:17, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

This topic is about the names of modern figures. Why are you ranting about macrons for place names? Jpatokal (talk) 04:08, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm bringing up your grasp of how the guideline in general is treated.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 04:25, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Also I think the "Use the form found in a dictionary entry from a generally accepted English dictionary" should not be used, because this would generally be the revised Hepburn form.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 21:39, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Which is precisely why it should stay. Jpatokal (talk) 22:12, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

No. There is not going to be a form in any English dictionary, so why use it as a criterion when we have the other ones which are much better?—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 22:17, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

On closer reading, yes, it's odd to tell people to look up names in dictionaries, because dictionaries don't have biographies. I presume the rule is supposed to refer to encyclopedias, which do? Jpatokal (talk) 04:08, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Possibly.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 04:25, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

So, to attempt a summary: the current style manual prioritizes the subject's own rendering of their name (rule #1 for the "trade name", which we all agree is a terrible word for it) above the common name of the subject. Ryulong likes this and wants to keep it that way. More or less everybody else thinks the current rules go against WP:COMMONNAME and that general usage (rules #2 and #3, I presume) should go first, although there's not much agreement about the wording (I, for one, don't like the currrent phrasing of #2 and #3 at all). Do we agree on at least this much? Jpatokal (talk) 04:08, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, move #1 behind #4. Should still be used before we come up with our own version.陣内_Jinnai 04:19, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Only you, Pmanderson, and Jfgslo have said anything about this violating COMMONNAME. Mujaki just has arguments about using Japanese language sources first, as Mujaki's proposal to change this uses the "trade name" bit as well. And no one has come up with a reason that the "trade name" as it is currently stated has ever been determined to be different from the common name as it appears in any reliable sources. This isn't going to be as drastic a difference as Cat Stevens' name being "Yusuf Islam" or even be a stylization with some weird non-letter character being used in the person's name in place of an English letter (Ke$ha, P!nk). This is a single letter difference between what may have been accepted as the common name in unreliable sources and what has been determined to be the spelling used by the subject ("Ichiro Mizuki" vs. "Ichirou Mizuki"). I don't understand why you and everyone else are assuming this is bad. Perhaps if you could actually provide an example where a common name exists in English (outside of the Showa and Heisei Emperors, which have their own separate section on this guideline) where a reliably sourced common name would conflict with the reliably sourced official spelling, then I might be able to consider your side. But as of right now, none of you have ever come up with this because you do not work on Japanese biographies. There is no reason the most verifiable spelling (one coming directly from the subject) should come after any other spelling because there is no reason the subject cannot be taken as a reliable source on his or her own name. The "trade name" criterion should remain as the first criterion, but simply be reworded.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 04:25, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

If celebrity is using a specific spelling on all official merchandise, press releases, promotional materials, etc., it's not a stretch to assume that is going to be the most common usage since most reliable sources in the media are going to use whatever the celebrity is using. This was discussed several years ago and determined to generally be the case. ···日本穣^? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WikiProject Japan! 05:28, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Of course. The problem is apparent exceptions like ja:水木一郎, where the official site seem to use "Ichirou Mizuki" (9270 hits on Google), while most everything else uses "Ichiro Mizuki" (27,700 hits). Ryulong is quite vehement in his insistence that the article should be at the former, while the common name appears to be the latter. Jpatokal (talk) 06:31, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

WP:COMMONNAME is still dependant on reliable sources. I have yet to see any that refer to the man as "Ichiro Mizuki", while I have provided multiple examples of the name with the U (his official website, his CD jackets, a BBC interview).—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 06:40, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

And you, Ryulong, please stop edit warring. Obviously Jpatokal has some sort of issue with the section, so please stop pouring gas on the flames by reverting him. ···日本穣^? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WikiProject Japan! 07:24, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Well, the placement of the tag broke the formatting of the section. I retagged the section (and all others) with {{underdiscussion}} rather than {{disputedtag}}.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 07:32, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

There will always be exceptions to the guidelines, Jpatokal, and those can be discussed when they come up on those individual talk pages. What the MOS-JA needs to be is a general guidelines about how to treat the majority of Japan-related articles, and then we'll let the exceptions play out as necessary. If you want something that is 100% applicable in 100% of the cases, then you may as well leave now because no MOS anywhere is ever going to have specific rules for absolutely every possibility. This continued rehashing of the same old arguments over and over and over again serves no useful purpose. The change I made to the MOS-JA was in accordance with policy, and was making it more clear that this MOS supports that policy by invoking it directly. In fact, it basically gets rid of your persistent and obnoxious complaining about how the MOS-JA allegedly doesn't support policy on this point. Why do you insist on beating this desiccated corpse? You complain about it not being clear enough for you, then complain about it when the wording is changed to make it more clear. You're contradicting yourself. ···日本穣^? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WikiProject Japan! 07:20, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

I just discovered that the handful of lists on these pages use the Surname Given Name order. I went through half of 2005 Japanese television dramas before I just gave up because the entire page and 2007 Japanese television dramas and 2006 Japanese television dramas all have the names in this order.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 01:09, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

This seems to be more something for WT:JA than MOS-JA. Just something to work through, and also something to remind those who created the articles to put the names in the correct order. ···日本穣^? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WikiProject Japan! 04:58, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Derp. Good point.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 22:40, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

The previous consensus as still spelled out in "Article names" is:

Titles should use macrons as specified for body text except in cases where the macronless spelling is in common usage in reliable sources in English-speaking countries.

However, the Body text section was just changed by Ryulong and Nihonjoe to state:

Japanese terms should be romanized according to most common usage in English-language reliable sources.

There is a subtle but very important difference here. The first states that macrons should be used unless the term is so common that it has effectively entered English, which is quite rare. The second in effect states that macrons will never be used, since for any given word in Japanese, you'll find more English-language sources without macrons than with macrons. I, for one, am not at all happy to accept this change. Jpatokal (talk) 06:43, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

I didn't change anything. I merely updated it with the new exceptions (Hokkaido, Kyushu, Honshu, Osaka, etc.). And I am fairly certain that the forms with macrons are going to only appear in dictionary entries that utilize revised Hepburn. Again, you are the only individual who appears to have an issue with these islands' names having entered common usage in English and thus not requiring the macron in the article's title.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 06:46, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm concerned with the change in policy in general, not the islands. (And as I've said a number of times already, I'm entirely OK with removing the macrons in the specific cases of Hokkaido, Kyushu, Honshu and Osaka.) Jpatokal (talk) 07:48, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

I've reworked the WP:MOS-JA#Article names section to get rid of the apparent semantic difference as none was intended. Does the new wording work for you, Jpatokal? ···日本穣^? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WikiProject Japan! 07:37, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Not really, since the intent of the policy is still changing pretty dramatically. Is your intention really to effectively stop using macrons for Japanese across en-WP? If not, can you give examples of some terms that would retain their macrons, and explain how they would do so under the new policy? Jpatokal (talk) 07:48, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Okay, now I see what your concern is (I couldn't figure it out before). No, my intention is not to stop using macrons across enwiki. My intent is to allow for those words where the macronless form has obviously become so common that it would be absurd of us to continue using it in article titles and in the body text of an article (outside of the initial romanization given in the third field of the {{nihongo}} template). What we need to do, then, is determine where that threshold is for stopping the use of the macrons for a particular word. Do you have any ideas about where that threshold should be and then how to word the MOS-JA to indicate that in a clear and concise manner? ···日本穣^? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WikiProject Japan! 08:17, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Carrying on from that, I've reworked that section a little to make it consistent as far as making it more clear. Does that work better for you? ···日本穣^? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WikiProject Japan! 08:45, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

I think bishojo game is a good threshold as the only macron uses are in a few academic sites and sites related to the fan community. The academcic sources use macrons inconstantly and mainstream RSes do not use them at all.陣内_Jinnai 14:45, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Okay, so can you define and word that in simple and concise terms? ···日本穣^? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WikiProject Japan! 18:48, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

A random suggestion, not necessarily in line with Jinnai's threshold: "If other modern encyclopedias from the English-speaking world (e.g. Britannica, Columbia Encyclopedia and similar) use a particular form of romanization for a term or topic, consider it as being in widespread use in the English-speaking world and give preference to that romanization in article titles and body texts unless consensus or further investigations on the topic determine otherwise." Is this the type of text that you are looking for Nihonjoe? Jfgslo (talk) 19:08, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I think something like that would work. Anyone else have thoughts on this? ···日本穣^? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WikiProject Japan! 22:49, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

That's definitely along the right lines, but the "consensus or further investigations on the topic" bit is much too vague for my liking and will continue to cause friction. If a word is so new or obscure that it hasn't made it into mainstream encyclopedias or dictionaries, then I don't think it's WP's role to unilaterally anoint it a part of the English language.

This is the core principle here: words in Japanese should be rendered in Japanese (=revised Hepburn), words in English should be rendered in whatever crazy form they became English (kudzu etc). This is why I like making this call based on encyclopedias and dictionaries, because they are normative sources of the English language, while merely appearing in print a couple of times does not mean the word has become English. Jpatokal (talk) 01:45, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

It was only a random suggestion because terms that have made into encyclopedias normally are widely covered, like Japanese locations. I do believe that some topics in said encyclopedias may be outdated and that's why I left that part about consensus and further investigation.

But my suggestion does not take into consideration the fact that there may be several topics that are commonly treated by mainstream media and other non-scholarly sources, like news organizations, that are also reliable sources per WP:RS and that also are used to fulfill the criteria of the general notability guideline. I feel that this may be an issue with topics related with popular culture, like the example given by Jinnai. Per WP:AT, if there are English reliable sources available for one of these popular culture topics and said sources use a particular form of romanization, that one should be used in the article title, even if in the body text a more correct one is used. I don't think there is a need to stress that more in here. Also, article titles should not be technically correct but recognizable, so my suggestion isn't meant to ignore WP:AT, but merely to provide a quick, simple and concise threshold.

So, in order to avoid possible conflicts, perhaps it would be better to rephrase it. Here is another phrasing of the same idea: "To determine if the romanization of a Japanese term has entered in common usage in English-speaking countries, check other modern encyclopedias from the English-speaking world (e.g. Britannica, Columbia Encyclopedia and similar) and consider the romanization used in them as being in widespread use in the English-speaking world. Give preference to that romanization in article titles and body texts unless consensus or further investigations on the topic determine otherwise. For topics not covered by other encyclopedias, remember that article titles are determined by the related policy while body text should use Hepburn romanization." The problem with this suggestion is that I feel that it starts to get complicated, which defeats its original purpose. And while I think it works great for locations and Japanese loanwords, it might also create conflict with material that is commercially distributed in the English-speaking countries. For example Tenjho Tenge, which, with my suggestion, may be argued that it has not entered into common usage since it's not covered in encyclopedias and therefore only the article title should follow that romanization while body text should use Tenjō Tenge. I'm not saying that this will happen, I'm just trying to find possible shortcomings of this suggestion. Jfgslo (talk) 22:53, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

The Tenjho Tenge issue is different, because it's an official translation/transliteration/romanization.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 23:39, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

The problem I see in that is that you are putting too much weight in other encyclopedias and completely discounting any other reliable source for determining the title of the article. This is especially an issue with items in popular culture (anime, manga, books, music, etc.) as most of them will never have an entry in a standard encyclopedia, yet are covered extensively in other reliable sources. Also, we can't have inconsistency between the romanization used in the title and that used in the body of the text. If the title is "Tenjho Tenge" (to use the example you gave), then the usage in the body text (outside of the first mention in the article within romanization field of the {{nihongo}} template) should be the same. To do otherwise would only confuse people. ···日本穣^? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WikiProject Japan! 00:20, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Precisely my worries with those suggestions. "Tenjho Tenge" should not be treated in the same way as Hokkaido, but the manual of style can easily be abused if it doesn't have the right wording. Ideally, a minimum number of reliable sources in English should suffice to determine common usage but I don't think that would work easily. Here is another suggestion with more precise wording: "For Japanese locations (e.g. Hokkaido), if other modern encyclopedias from the English-speaking world (e.g. Britannica, Columbia Encyclopedia and similar) use a particular form of romanization, consider it as being in widespread use in the English-speaking world and give preference to that romanization in article titles and body texts unless consensus or further investigations on the topic determine otherwise." This way usage of encyclopedias is limited to locations, although it still gives too much weight to encyclopedias.

Here is another one which depends on the references used in an article: "If an article uses reliables source from the English-speaking world and those sources use a particular form of romanization to name a topic, give preference to that romanization in the article title and body text. If an article uses only reliable sources in Japanese, use the romanization given in them. If no romanization is given by the reliable sources used in an article, use Hepburn romanization." Jfgslo (talk) 15:52, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Unfortunately that doesn't solve the actual issue of deciding between multiple competing romanizations. Jpatokal (talk) 01:49, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

The problem essentially lies with the quality of the English sources. But I believe that is a matter of creating a hierarchy. For example, if an article uses as sources encyclopedias, mainstream publications, scholarly sources and specialized publications, the romanization that should be given preference would be, first, the one used in encyclopedias, then mainstream publications, then scholarly sources and finally specialized publications. If an article only has specialized publications, then that will be the romanization used. If an article has English sources but they aren't reliable third-party publications that treat the topic in detail, then the romanization used in the Japanese reliable sources of the article is given preference. If those Japanese sources aren't reliable then Hepburn romanization should be used.

Alternatively, it could be established a minimum number of reliable third-party publications that treat a topic in detail to define if a topic has a commonly used form. Let's say, if at least 10 mainstream publications use a particular form of romanization, then that romanization should be used. If less than 10 mainstream publications are available, then the topic should be romanized according to the Japanese sources. Jfgslo (talk) 02:26, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Why can't we just have the simple "If there's an official translation, use it" as a rule?—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 22:43, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

WP:COMMONNAME. Jpatokal (talk) 01:49, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

And why wouldn't the official translated name of a piece of modern media not be the common name?—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 02:23, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Not our business. The question whether the "official translated name" of a piece of media is what it is commonly called is a question of fact, to be determined by consulting independent reliable sources in English; doing so for other languages will quite often find that the answer is no - and I see no reason for assuming Japanese is different. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:46, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

As per usual, there has never been any sort of example brought up for a situation as to where the official translation is not the most common. The only thing close has been using Hirohito as an example, but the emperors are special cases because they are known by one name for all of their life and are renamed posthumously. There is no reason to assume in any other case that the most common name in reliable sources is not also the official translation because there is no current situation where this is the case.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 02:57, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Well I can think of at least 1 case where the official translation title was not used, by any independent reliable sources, but it doesn't really matter for what romanization to use. Also back before before Funimation started translating One Piece the official name of Roronoa Zoro was Roronoa Zolo, yet it was determined most independnant RSes continued to use the r instead of the l.陣内_Jinnai 23:14, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

• If there is no example of divergence, then we don't need any rule.
• If there is an example, we don't need this rule, which is contrary to English usage, contrary to policy, and unhelpful to the English reader. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:16, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

The examples of divergence do exist, just in sources that are not reliable sources. It is therefore important to state that reliable sources should be used for any and all article titles. And the official translation of a Japanese title would indeed be found in reliable sources.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 03:42, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Current MOS-JP adopts the "revised Hepburn", but there are some issues;

1. "Revised Hepburn" is a minority - it is so difficult or impossible for we to find the macron spelling such as Bishōjo, Ichirō (Ozawa), Hokkaidō etc. in modern reliable sources.

2. It's a hassle to enter a character with macron such as "ō".

3. What is called "revised Hepburn" is very old dictionary.

3.1. Extended katakana such as she(シェ) and ti(ティ) are not included in "revised Hepburn".

3.2. It is a little difficult to understand genuine "revised Hepburn" rightly. We can see some interpretive article about "revised Hepburn", but there are some variations; the current MOS-JP includes some elements such as aa in non-revised Hepburn.

3.3. It seems to be a little difficult to distinguish between long vowel and short vowels in translation Japanese term into romaji (see link).

So I think "revised Hepburn" should be replace with "folk Hepburn" such as "Tokyo", "kana spelling" such as "Toukyou" (or "modified Hepburn" such as "Tookyoo"). Of course, they are not perfect. But I think they are better than "revised Hepburn".--Mujaki (talk) 16:43, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Do you have references where it is shown that revised Hepburn is not the first option in other reference works? The article Hepburn romanization doesn't have a whole lot of sources to verify that revised Hepburn is the primary option. Reading the article, revised Hepburn is used by the Library of Congress, so I believe that is the reason why it was favored over modified Hepburn or any of the other variations which appear to be more widely used. It appears to me that other reference works seem to be favoring the macronless variants but I can't find a specific study where that is mentioned, it's only my perception. Fan pages and other Internet material appear to favor wāpuro style, but they aren't reliable sources. Mainstream media, on the other hand, does not use revised Hepburn at all. But even if it's a hassle, I think it's a plus that the general public is able to read the approximately correct pronunciation like it's presented in the article Tokyo, since the alternative, the International Phonetic Alphabet, is even more complicated than macron usage. Having said that I also think that, for the body text of articles, we should use the romanization used by other reference works. But before taking other actions, we should first verify that revised Hepburn is no longer favored by scholarly sources and reference works. Also, if, as you mentioned, revised Hepburn is anachronic, we should confirm that it is no longer the standard romanization for the English-speaking world. Jfgslo (talk) 01:36, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

"Folk hepburn" isn't a real thing and "Toukyou" or "Tookyoo" would never be used, anyway. Also, leaving macrons in for certain items is fine, as redirects are cheap and there's always a box below the "Save page", etc. buttons that allows you to enter however many Latin letters with đĩāçṝįťıċš one could ever wish for. Wāpuro and kana spelling are used solely by fan media.

Unless your entire argument is on article titles. The revised Hepburn system is fine when we're using it as the third parameter in the family of {{nihongo}} templates. However, as the manual of style currently states (at least for subjects of biographies), the revised Hepburn form of the name should be the last possible choice.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 01:49, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

Pg 179-180 - there lists that the original hepburn is the most commonly used (latest print is 1992 though) I will have to check for RSes on Wapuro usage as i don't think anyone has really done that yet. However, I doubt with pcs not having macron letters, revised hepburn would have increased in usage since 1992.陣内_Jinnai 17:58, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

[3] Some more info on romanization usgae. Hepburn, specifically original, is used most commonly. Modified Hepburn was abolished as the standard in 1994 in place of the older form. Modified is still in wide use, because it was taught for some time, but its no longer taught.陣内_Jinnai 17:28, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

info on Wapuro usage. Beyond that, I can't really find much for English usage except to say that anime/manga translations tend to favor wapuro over modified hepburn at least (going by official translations of names and titles here). Very few titles use modified hepburn and then only for the titles themselves (not the names).陣内_Jinnai 17:56, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

I have seen instances where the revised Hepburn system (macrons) is used in the original Japanese production. I saw them in promotional materials for the Engine Sentai Go-onger show and also it's on all of their wardrobe.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 19:41, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

• English (here) (Japanese characters rōmaji) or rōmaji (here) (Japanese characters)

The first part (topic) is generally used in body and title, and articles are normally titled using the name which is most frequently used to refer to the subject of the article in English-language reliable sources. But macron style is not common.

Jfgslo: I see some sources - "駅名とローマ字表記と,オ段長音表記の国際化" written by Taro Takahasi in "国文学 解釈と鑑賞" January, 1997 issue published by gyosei, Comprehensive Database of Japanese Name Variants by The CJK Dictionary Institute and so on.

I think rōmaji can follow revised Hepburn, but revised Hepburn is not suitable for the topic due to minority.

Editors (transtraters) in external source commonly write with consistent style. Library of Congress translates "東京" into "Tōkyō", "弘法大師" into "Kōbō Daishi" and so on with few exception (Latin name etc). Encyclopædia Britannica adopt "Kyōtō", "Dōshisha University" etc., though there are some exceptions such as "Tokyo", "Hokkaido" and so on. Columbia Encyclopedia etc. follows macronless style.

However thare are mix of common usage, official name and translation per MOS-JP in enwp. And someone often persists in MOS-JP in case of moving proposal into common usage. But "revised Hepburn" (macron style) is minor; thorefore "revised Hepburn" for topic should be replaced with more common Hepburn manner.

Ryūlóng: Well... "Toukyou" and "Tookyoo" are examples for "東京" in each style (see article Hepburn romanization). "Folk Hepburn" is one of names for style ignorring long vowel such as "Tokyo", and it is also called "English style" etc. But the name is not important because it is a way for classification in this section. Incidentally, "Tookyoo" (or "To^Kyo^") is valid if diacritical mark such as macron is not able to be used in writting.

I think you have a preconception about Hepburn -e.g. Guide by Agency for Cultural Affairs, Guide by Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

And official transration you said in other section is mostly romanized name per Hepburn family, though there are exceptions such as SION (Kunre-siki (or Nihon-siki)), Naoki Shinjyo (mixed Hepbuen-shiki (jo) and Kunrei-siki (zyo)) Yasuhiro Nightow (original). e.g. "Ichirou Mizuki" is permitted in passport Hepburn and kana spelling.

Jinnai: They mean Hepburn style including traditional, revised and other variations is the most popiler in romanization styles (Hepburn, Kunrei, Nihon, JSL etc.). It is verified by many sources. And wapuro style is usually handled as one of Hepburn style family. Incidentally, some manners in original Hepburn (1867) changed or went out of use. e.g. "h'" ("h'to") in original Hepburn bacome "hi" ("hito") in second version or later. And "Japanese school children now learn Hepburn when they first begin to learn the English alphabet in junior high school" is wrong; Japanese children learn Kunrei-siki style and Hepburn style at 4th grade in elementary school.[4]--Mujaki (talk) 05:13, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Mujaki, I did not say that revised Hepburn is always used in the original Japanese productions. I only mentioned one instance where I came across the revised Hepburn system in one particular television program. While it is good that you are trying to reform our practices here, please remember that we are using a system that appears in English language academia on the Japanese language. We are not looking to use a system that is primarily used in Japan, but a system that is easily conveyed and the pronunciation can be easily inferred and is used in English language sources. Kunreisiki omits the actual pronunciation of the し, ち, つ, and ふ kana, and the other Hepburn systems make it difficult to differentiate between long O's and o-u.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 05:35, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

If they consider wapuro to be a branch of Hepburn then it may be quite hard to find statistics for use in English. The most I can say is that the only times I usually see it are title names, in some academic texts (although those rarely follow the macron rules consistently) and occasionally a person's name. For titles of works, the characters in them, do not use macrons and only a handful of titles use macrons. Therefore I'd say macron usage is in the minority for English-speaking world. Beyond that, I can't really say. As mentioned, there hasn't been a comprehensive study for English world on which form of Hepburn romaization is the most common.陣内_Jinnai 16:32, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

What is general guidelines in MOS-JP based on? Long vowel and Syllabic "n" in MOS-JP are diferrence from revised Hepburn style family such as standard style (Hyōjun-shiki Rōmaji by Rōmaji Hirome Kai in 1908; "revised Hepburn" in article Hepburn romanization) and BS 4812:1972.

• Long vowels
  • Long vowels, including "ああ" and "ええ" in kana/kanji term, are generally written with macrons in revised Hepburn style family. - e.g. "kāsan"(secondary) for "母さん", "nēsan" for "姉さん".
  • Long vowels are also written with circumflex in standard style. - e.g. "kâsan"(primary) or "kāsan"(secondary) for "母さん", "nêsan" or "nēsan" for "姉さん".
  • Long vowel "i" in kana/kanji term is also writen as "ii" in standard style. - e.g. "nîsan", "nīsan" or "niisan" for "兄さん".
  • Long vowel "i" in kana/kanji term is always writen as "ii" in BS and ANSI. - e.g. "niisan" for "兄さん".
  • Long vowel "e" writen as "えい" in kana is writen as "ei". - e.g. "Tokei" for "時計".
• Syllabic "n" (ん)
  • "n" is written as "m" or "n" before "b", "m" and "p" in standard style. - e.g. "Namba" or "Nanba" for "難波".
  • "n" is always written as "n" even if it is before "b", "m" and "p" in BS and ANSI. - e.g. "Nanba" for "難波".

Incidentally, "Bonin (Islands)" in "Determining common usage" section is not Japanese term, but English word of Japanese origin (Bunin (Jima or Tō; 無人(島)) in Edo period). "ボニン(諸島)" is a loanword in Japanese.--Mujaki (talk) 05:13, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Would you mind making new sections instead of making these sections longer with different discussions in them in the future?—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 05:41, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Mujaki has extensively rewritten Hepburn romanization to fit his rather idiosyncratic ideas of what the various flavors of Hepburn are. I think the changes go ahead established practice (eg. traditional Hepburn is "desu", not "desz"!) and will try to clean them up later today, but other opinions and assistance are welcome, since there is a lot of confusion over the labels and what they mean. (See also the talk page.) Jpatokal (talk) 21:24, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps it should just be blanked reverted. Like what I'm about to do. It's simple to go back to the previous version and clean it up, rather than having Mujaki's fringe point of view on Hepburn as the current focus.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 21:31, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

As usual, you're being too rash -- Mujaki has brought up some valid points and they should be integrated, not reverted wholesale. Jpatokal (talk) 23:50, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

They can be reintegrated after the fact.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 23:51, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Please cite new sources and don't remove {{fact}} tag without any source, if revert (remove sources).

I based the edit on Hyōjun-shiki Rōmaji along the introduction because the theory exists and it is verifiable with cited some sources (dictionary, book, etc.). And I supplemented other views per WP:NPOV. At least, the explanations reverted by Ryulong are not consistent in the article, and there are a little source.--Mujaki (talk) 16:12, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

In this very recent edit, Nihonjoe adds a general guideline telling people to use the rules of English capitalization for titles.

In recent educated use, there are, simply, two different approaches to capitalizing titles in English. With an admirable lack of pretentiousness, the Chicago Manual of Style (14th ed [the latest I have on me], §7.1) calls them the up and the down styles; they're exemplified by, respectively:

• The Chicago Manual of Style
• The Chicago manual of style

Each has its minor merits and minor drawbacks. Certain stylesheets demand the one for some purposes; others demand the other.

Nihonjoe and his new guideline clearly want us to use the up style. But while the down style has its minor complications (e.g. some stylesheets say that the first letter of a subtitle must be capitalized, others that it needn't be), the up style has rather more, often involving questions of parts of speech and the counting of letters (or syllables). (And there's more besides: A book that happens to be in front of me is titled How Languages are Learned, showing that, at least in book design, OUP's up style downgrades the copula.)

To my mind, one or other of quotation marks and italics is adequate to set off titles. I'm reluctant to extend the up style, with its requirement for parsing, to Japanese. Take the example that's now given of good use: Otoko wa Tsurai yo: this clashes with the very guideline that's being pointed to:

. . . capitalize:

* the first and last word; [. . .]

* prepositions that are [. . .]

** the first or last word of the title (e.g., "Walk On");

Yes, the last word should be capitalized. Why is this lowercase? Because it's a "particle" -- syntactically, a curious grab-bag of stuff whose list includes postpositions (made) and postposition-casemarker pairs (made ni), but (rightly) not strings such as no mae ni, whose close English analogue is I all lowercased in certain variants of the up style. But not in the WP variant:

. . . capitalize: [. . .]

* prepositions that are [. . .]

**the first word in a compound preposition (e.g., "Time Out of Mind", "Get Off of My Cloud");

Yes, the ni in made ni is a case particle, but (controversially) the of of "time out of mind" is merely a case marker too; arguably, all of this would imply capitalization of the first half: Made ni. To which the answer might be: No, made ni is a listeme; it's a single particle that just happens to be spelled with a space in the middle. (Which would be wrong, but that's another matter.)

Et cetera et cetera. If you simply point people to the English instructions and say "do likewise", you'll soon run into snags. So you either allow for "common sense" (discretion, guesswork, slack) in application, or you write a set of guidelines, which people may or may not then read and follow.

Now, if others want to develop these rules and apply them, I have no particular objection. But I'm not going to develop them, and I'm not going to apply them -- not while an alternative as simple as the down style is also available. It's a style I've used for years in "my" articles here, and nobody had complained about lack of consistency, difficulty of comprehension, until just the other day.

I recommend the down style. But, unlike the writer of this guideline, I don't particularly want to push anyone to use it. And if I did suddenly want to make such a push, I'd invite comments first. -- Hoary (talk) 07:39, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

(quoting what I just posted in answer to your comments on my talk page) Ironically enough, the main discussion I can see was initiated by you back in 2006. While you initially started the discussion talking about foreign language titled using all caps, part of the discussion included my referencing the same Wikipedia:Manual of Style (capital letters) referenced now in the MOS-JA (search for "normal capitalization"). It was also discussed briefly here, here, and here.

So, this isn't anything new, and it wasn't done without comments (as you can clearly see above), but rather just clarifying what has already been discussed and in practice for a long time (except, of course, with "your" articles, as you pointed out—I will note that "your" articles aren't the only ones I've corrected over the years to meet what I thought was already mentioned in the MOS-JA). ···日本穣^? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WikiProject Japan! 08:42, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

For starters, that much earlier discussion that I started was (as you point out) about WACKY STUFF LIKE THIS and not about More Tolerable Stuff Like This. Well, what do you think about the syntactic complications of the up style, Joe? Are you planning to flesh out the rules? (E.g. is ni yotte a compound particle, a pair of particles, a particle and a verb?) -- Hoary (talk) 10:10, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

I've never seen wa, e, o, no, ni, ga, na, ja, ka, kana, desu, yo, etc. ever capitalized. If it's not a noun, verb, or adjective (adverbs in my experience are just adjectives appended with ni anyway), it shouldn't be capitalized in a romanization and as a practice isn't anyway.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 09:09, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Well, there are words such as yukkuri. But here you're appealing to Japanese-specific convention or to what might be termed common sense. I don't disagree with you, and indeed common sense (as it seems to me, though clearly not to Nihonjoe) would extend to skipping far more capitals; basically, everything other than names. Easy to understand, easy to implement. -- Hoary (talk) 10:10, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Yukkuri would be subject to WP:MOSCAPS where anything longer than five (or some other number) letters is capitalized. And I don't think you're interpretting Nihonjoe's stance correctly.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 10:28, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Time permitting, I'll make a fresh attempt at interpreting it tomorrow. -- Hoary (talk) 11:59, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

"Desu" is a verb, so would be capitalized, and "ni yotte" would be a particle and a verb for our purposes. ···日本穣^? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WikiProject Japan! 19:02, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

My mistake.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 23:29, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

That underlines Hoary's point pretty nicely. If obsessive pedants like us, whose idea of a good time is hanging out on MOS-JA debating capitalization rules, can't get the "up" rule right for Japanese, how can we expect normal users to? Jpatokal (talk) 01:54, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

That's what page moving is for.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 01:59, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Redirection? But this works equally well in any direction. -- Hoary (talk) 02:41, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Well, once we determine what should and should not be capitalized in titles outside of nouns, all we have to do is explain it clearly on this page and point to it whenever we have to enforce it. That's pretty much how any manual of style works.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 02:53, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes indeed. How's this: "Capitalize the first letter of the title, subtitle, or any proper name; use lowercase for everything else." That's the down style. Shorter, simpler, and I think more likely to be read and understood than a description of the up style. -- Hoary (talk) 10:43, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

But that would mean that a slew of words that look like they should be capitalized (to the eyes of an English language reader) are not. The "up" style is what is used most commonly on this project.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 19:41, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Is there a reason not to use the "down" style? To my eye things like "Otoko wa Tsurai yo" just look weird, since it makes "Tsurai" feel like a proper noun. Jpatokal (talk) 21:41, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

But "Otoko wa Tsurai yo" is a proper noun as it is a film title. Also the "down" style isn't used by anything. I don't think I've ever seen any piece of media (other than subtitles of scientific papers) that only capitalizes the first word and any subsequent proper nouns.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 22:29, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

A quick Google indicates a fairly even split between the two styles, with perhaps a slight advantage to the "down" style -- hard to tell since Google doesn't provide comparative counts, and the "up" style gets a boost from Wikipedia and its mirrors.

And re: proper-nouniness, "Otoko wa Tsurai yo" could feasibly be parsed as "The man is [Mr.] Tsurai". "Otoko wa tsurai yo", on the other hand, is unequivocally "[being] a man is tsurai". Jpatokal (talk) 23:25, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Well the down style also probably gets a boost from a lot of normal sentances in everday speech that are properly translated without capitalizing them. That is a legitimate phrase people use in everyday conversation and we wouldn't capitalize every major word in normal speech.陣内_Jinnai 23:33, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I've seen the down style used when the title is a complete question per English grammar (a subject and verb).陣内_Jinnai 23:28, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

I don't see a single reference to anything other than the movie in the search above; besides, any everyday conversation regarding the tsurainess of otokohood would in Japanese, not romaji. Jpatokal (talk) 23:37, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Well desu can be with or without a capitalization as it is a common verb. In addition to articles and prepositions in English, we don't always capitalize the "to be" verbs because they are short and very common. I would say desu is classified as that and I know I've seen titles where it wasn't capitalized.陣内_Jinnai 04:02, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Hoary's whole point was that, if we adopt the "down" style, we sidestep this problem entirely. Jpatokal (talk) 23:42, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

I understand. I don't think we should adopt either style since they both seem to be used about the same. For the up style we should not common exceptions and for the down, we should restate the obvious (because it never hurts to be clear when your talking about general terms like up/down), that it doesn't include proper nouns. As I said with the google results, those can be twisted either way so its best to use them as is or not use them at all.陣内_Jinnai 23:47, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but although I have read this comment of yours twice, I do not understand what you are recommending. (Me, I am recommending the down style. This comes in a variety of trivially different flavors and we can decide among these later.) -- Hoary (talk) 00:15, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

I mean to support neither becauce evidence of usage doesn't support one over the other.陣内_Jinnai 15:27, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes, this was indeed my point. Incidentally, my hunch is that forms of BE evade capitalization in certain varieties of the "up" style not because they're short ("was" is no shorter than "cut") but instead because of this or that additional specific rule for BE. But if in Japanese we lump the copula together with "particles" and if we also get into letter-counting (as seemingly recommended above), then perhaps we'll end up with the combination of non-capitalized "da" and capitalized "Deshita". How about ある [and いる]? "Wagahai wa Neko de Aru"? "Uchi no Nyōbō nya Hige ga Aru"? (And is nya in The List of Particles?) Yes, because "Aru" is the final word. But in "Go-en ga A/aru Yo", "Yo" is the final "word", so "a/Aru" no longer is. Uh, unless you want to say that no, "yo" is not a word but instead a clitic. However, the eyes of the huge, grammar-uninterested majority of editors will have glazed over by this point. -- Hoary (talk) 00:15, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

What is this "BE" that you are throwing about? Also, neither "Aru" nor "Iru" are particles so they would be capitalized. "Yo" would not in your example.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 02:53, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Apologies for the throwing around; I hope that you dodged each one as it flew toward you. By "BE" I meant "the verb 'to be'" in any of its forms. (I put it in all-caps as a simple substitute for all-small-caps, which I'd have used for the verb as a lexeme.) I believe that WP's rule for the capitalization of English titles calls for capitalization of the last word, regardless of which part of speech it is; if you don't want Japanese to do this, your style sheet will have to explain. ¶ I don't understand this list of "Japanese particles", which includes such miscellanea as what I'd consider closed-class suffixes (the mono of tabemono; closed-class because I don't think that you can say for example sutemono) -- and I can't then appeal to grammatical particle as that article is more confused. -- Hoary (talk) 10:43, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Well, the easiest way to do things now would be to leave any romanicized singular kana (or dual kana if one of the vowels is merely being lengthened as in the rare naa and saa cases) uncapitalized. Another thing currently in practice that is easy to explain.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 19:41, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

So we'd have "Kore wa Hon Desu", but no caps at all for "Uo no yō na e da"? Or "Uo no Yō-na e da", perhaps? Jpatokal (talk) 23:18, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

"Yō" would be capitalized because it is not a particle. Although I do not think a hyphen would be used. I mentioned that "naa" and "saa" are the only multi-kana cases that should probably not be capitalized because they're usually な and さ, except when it is being emphasized with an あ or ぁ. That would be "Uo no Yō na e da". Any of these that consist of only one kana would not be capitalized.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 23:32, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

But surely e (絵), a noun, should be capitalized? Why is the copula "Desu" capitalized but the copula "da" is not, even though they mean the same thing? Is "Yō" capitalized when spelled 様 and not capitalized when spelled よう? Do you realize that your "easy to explain" rules keep changing whenever someone points out exceptions, and that down this way lies madness? Jpatokal (talk) 01:29, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

If it is a single hiragana character, it is not capitalized. If it is a kanji that consists of only one mora, it is capitalized. And "yō" is capitalized if it is 様 or よう. And the rules I have put forward are simple, but every exception you think there is is because apparently my rules aren't simple enough.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 02:50, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

In this case, "E" would be capitalized because it is a noun. In titles, all nouns are capitalized, regardless of length. ···日本穣^? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WikiProject Japan! 05:47, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

See? Even you two can't agree on what the rules are supposed to be! Jpatokal (talk) 21:56, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

If e is 絵, it should be capitalized. If it is へ, it should not be capitalized. I think my proposal covered that.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 21:59, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

Yesterday, I modified Hepburn romanization, Hiragana, and Katakana to modify the treatment of the above two kana. I added the letter W to each page. Today, I was reverted on all three pages by User:Unnecessary stuff because my edits were unsourced, despite the fact that we clearly refer to both as the wi and we kana, rather than deferring to the supposed Hepburn romanization that does not pronounce the W, yet we still refer to を/ヲ as wo.

As these are archaic characters is it really required that we only refer to these characters as i and e in tables when we include the IPA pronunciations and a small footnote pointing out that the w is not pronounced in these kana?—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 19:28, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

We don't pronounce the w in wo, yet it's still part of the w syllables. As are the two archaic characters. The w should be included. However, I understand that this could lead to people saying, well, then why not say tu, or si, or ti? But the thing is, those aren't ambiguous. There are no other si, or shi, etc. characters on the chart, and wi is fundamentally different from i, and it would confuse our readers, I think, to pick the more accurate pronunciation (of an archaic character) rather than to elaborate on its etymology by including the w. And I seem to recall in my class actually pronouncing the w from time to time, at least perhaps when learning it. --Golbez (talk) 19:38, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

In addition, they are among the w kana in the Gojūon. And the shi, tsu, and chi characters are utilized as such in the extensions of katakana to approximate shounds like in "shame", "change", and "tsar". The primary issue is that in Hepburn romanization, the w is not even bothered with and apparently this is the form that appears in books on Hepburn. It's better to have a footnote that explains the practice than it is to simply ignore that these are in the W group and they don't have W's when they are referred to.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 19:45, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes, they are indeed in w- row and you don't need to source or prove that. But romanization is a different issue. Just because they belong to w- row doesn't mean they must have a w; as you know, Hepburn romanization is not 100% systemic.

I have looked up Hepburn's works, and not a single one of them romanized them as wi and we. Yet I actually provided the source few months ago (that romanizes ゐ and ゑ as i and e, respectively), you are still pushing your point of view. For the particle を, Hepburn actually romanized it as wo on his work and that is why I'm keeping it as it is. If any of the future versions of Hepburn romanization uses o, I will agree with romanizing the particle を as o.

If confusion is the matter, we can call them as wi kana, and we kana, only as an individual letter; if we say wi kana combination and we kana combination, then they would be ウィ and ウェ. If someone does not understand the difference between kana and kana combination, then we could refer them as w-row i kana and w-row e kana. Also, what about ji and zu? Aren't they confusing as well because there are じ/ぢ and ず/づ? --Unnecessary stuff (talk) 20:21, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes, the ji and zu kana are also confusing, but the latter of each of those pairs rarely ever appear. And yes, we know that most reliable sources romanize ゐ as i and ゑ as e, but this is for uniformity in a table. If we are already including the w for を when in practice it is always romanized as o, the thing is that we are still pointing out that they are not used in modern usage, and we should refer to the kana name if we already have the IPA pronuniation, particularly in tables just for katakana and hiragana rather than the table of Hepburn romanizations.

I am not pushing any point of view. I am merely trying to make the tables easy or anyone to understand, and by having i and e in a row with wa and wo (and wu on katakana) makes no sense, despite what reliable sources tell us about the romanization scheme we use on this project.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 20:30, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

"Rarely appear" doesn't mean they're not in use though. I'm pretty sure that ji and zu would be much less confusing than i and e, because ゐ and ゑ are not in use anymore but ぢ and づ are still in use.

Yes, wa wi (wu) we wo would make more sense, but I'd like to say that you don't really need uniformity, and it's not always guaranteed. If that's the matter, then we should use Nihon-shiki romanization that guarantees perfect uniformity. And if we are going to use Hepburn, we should understand that there is no perfect uniformity and give up on having one.

If we are going to use one system, then we should stick to that one only; mixing two or more systems would only be confusing and misleading. Romanizing wi and we while having ta chi tsu te to would be mixing two systems, and that would be more confusing and misleading. --Unnecessary stuff (talk) 21:03, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

But we're already mixing up the systems by leaving を as wo. In nearly all systems, を is o, yet according to your reading of the latest edition of the Hepburn books, を was wo and o, but ゐ was never wi and ゑ was never we. We're already pointing out that these are no longer in use and my recent edits of Hepburn romanization point out that in practice that they are i and e, but named wi and we for uniformity with the other related kana. ぢ and づ are already lacking uniformity because their non-dakuten forms are slightly different from the rest of the T kana. Leaving the name rather than the romanization for two obsolete characters is not going to harm the project and actually provides more information to the reader.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 21:09, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

I totally agree with the last part, above - that leaving the name helps, and gives better info. When I was personally learning the alphabet, I wondered a lot about the 'missing letters'. Having them in the appropriate locations in the table makes it make a great deal more sense.  Chzz  ►  21:48, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Leaving を as wo is not mixing up systems. For を, Hepburn used o when it was not a particle and used wo when it was a particle. Since after the kana spelling reform, を is only used as a particle and so wo is the only form that remains. If a proper noun uses を, then it would be romanized o because it's not used as a particle.

You seem to be concerning about uniformity a lot. But it's okay even if we don't have one. The Gojūon itself is already lacking uniformity, and we don't need to try fixing that. --Unnecessary stuff (talk) 06:37, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

But in Hepburn, を is o when it is a particle.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 06:59, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

I suggest we return to the status quo we had a while back: the table lists them as "(w)o, (w)i, and (w)e", a footnote explains that the kana are obsolete, Hepburn used o/i/e, and the wo/wi/we forms are also used for disambiguation. Jpatokal (talk) 22:01, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

I think that would work at Hepburn romanization, but I believe the wi/we/wo forms should still be used at hiragana and katakana.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 22:10, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

Please cite source for your view per WP:IRS, Ryulong. Then we can disscuss easily on each source.

Well...

• Unnecessary stuff's edit is verifiable with his/her cited source - ゐ/ヰ and ゑ/ヱ in historical kana orthography are written i and e(ye) in some Hepburn style (Hepburn's dictionary(ye), Romajikwai(e), Japanese passport standard(e), Japanese railway standard(e) etc.).
• ゐ/ヰ and ゑ/ヱ are undefined in some Hepburn style (Kenkyusha's japanese English dictionary, Kojien, etc.).
• ゐ/ヰ and ゑ/ヱ in wa column are undefined, but katakana ヰ and ヱ for loanwords are defined as wi and we in some Hepburn style (ANSI Z39.11-1972, BS 4812:1972 etc.). In case of this, ヰ(wi) and ヱ(we) should be written in "extend katakana" section.
  • There is a way that all kanas are included in the same table with notes (ja:Wikipedia(i,e), de:Wikipedia(wi,we), RÔMAJIBUN no TEHODOKI(wi,we) etc.).

--Mujaki (talk) 16:18, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

My personal view on how the tables should be formatted does not require reliable sources to back them up. If these two kana are universally known as "wi" and "we", we should not ignore that just because an archaic version of the Hepburn system ignores the W.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 19:02, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Um... I reverted your edits per WP:V. Jimmy Wales said the following:

There seems to be a terrible bias among some editors that some sort of random speculative "I heard it somewhere" pseudo information is to betagged with a "needs a cite" tag. Wrong. It should be removed, aggressively, unless it can be sourced. This is true of all information, but it is particularly true of negative information about living persons.[5]

This edit is perhaps OR; Wu is undefined in almost Hepburn style or refered "ウゥ" in Hyōjun-shiki.--Mujaki (talk) 07:40, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

Quoting Jimbo isn't really policy. And none of the table on Hepburn romanization is really sourced to anything. It can be verified that ゐ/ヰ and ゑ/ヱ are wi and we and are rarely used at all in modern Japanese and are referred to as wi and we and not i and e and that ヴ is used for V, ヷ and its similar symbols are never used in modern Japanese (WP:COMMONSENSE). If we have を/ヲ as "wo" in the table, then there's no reason why the obsolete characters cannot be "wi" and "we", considering the W is dropped from all three in Hepburn for whatever reason. We do not need to give the archaic out of use Hepburn romanization for these characters when we can simply make an exception considering they're rarely ever used in the language. And the issue of wu is unrelated to this discussion.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 07:54, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

Sorry for the late reply.

For を, Hepburn used o when it was not a particle and used wo when it was a particle.

This is based on the 3rd and later editions of Hepburn's dictionaries. If in doubt, analyze his works.

"But in Hepburn, を is o when it is a particle."

If so, source this. Then I will agree to を = o when it's a particle.

Hepburn's works are not archaic. And even if they are, just because they are archaic doesn't mean they should be ignored.

You keep saying that you don't need a source, but yes, you do need a source. I have no idea why my sourced edits have to be reverted by you who do not even have a source and only believes in uniformity. I already said that you don't need uniformity, and it's not always guaranteed. If you think uniformity is more important than a source, then please explain why.

BTW, this source is primarily based on Nihon-shiki and Hepburn in parentheses. Or it could be based on Wikipedia's Hepburn romanization page. --Unnecessary stuff (talk) 03:39, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Um, Hepburn romanization and this manual of style have always had pointed out that を = o in every instance and never wo as a particle. And it is clear that American and British Hepburn standards (as of 1972) say を is o as a particle and wo as a kana, ヰ is wi, and ヱ is we. So do not blindly revert me on every single page and remove content that is sourced and believe that your form is the only possible correct one. And this publication from this past December seems to agree that these two kana include the W in romanization.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 03:53, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

But how do we know halcat.com is a reliable source? Unless we have access to the actual printed copy, we can't know that it's an accurate transcription.

Also, 外来語の表記につかわれる特殊なカタカナ means "special katakana (combinations) that are used for writing foreign words," which corresponds to Mujaki's "ゐ/ヰ and ゑ/ヱ in wa column are undefined, but katakana ヰ and ヱ for loanwords are defined as wi and we in some Hepburn style. In case of this, ヰ (wi) and ヱ (we) should be written in 'extend katakana' section."

That publication is extended Hepburn system, but that can't really be used as a source because it gives different romanizations for certain kana, and it is based on historical kana orthography, not on pronunciation. --Unnecessary stuff (talk) 05:01, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Halcat publishes various other forms of romanizations, so it is very unlikely that they are making anything up. And the Extended Katakana publication still shows that ヰ is not i and ヱ is not e, and that can be applied to their hiragana forms. It's still pointed out all over that the pronunciation is identical to i and e. So rather than go against the practice in every other system and omit the w for the ゐ and ゑ, why not go with said systems?—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 05:16, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

They would not be making things up, but those transcriptions might contain errors. As I pointed out, it has si in the text and shi in tables. And if we are following the Extended Hepburn system, then we should romanize じ as zhi, not as ji. --Unnecessary stuff (talk) 05:31, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

The "extended Hepburn" system is only used for the extended foreign language transcriptions.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 05:48, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

I am surprised to find myself agreeing to a large extent with User:Ryulong.

If we want to be scientifically accurate – and we should –, we need to clearly distinguish between transcription (or transliteration) of phrases and words, which sometimes consist of a single character, on the one hand and talking about characters (letters, symbols, glyphs, graphemes, syllabograms, …) on the other, especially in articles on scripts and writing systems (i.e. scripts used with a certain language). We must also distinguish (prototypicall) pronunciation hints from character names and transcriptions, especially since the phoneme-grapheme correspondence is weaker in all actual writing systems than most laypeople think.

In many scripts the symbols have well-known, often language-dependent names (e.g. Alpha / alfa, Beta / vita, …). Two distinct symbols within a script never have the same name, except when they are case pairs or are other, non-semantic glyphic variants of each other. For the syllabograms of the kana script[s], too, there can only be one (at most) I, Ji etc. Still, several kana syllabograms (monographs or digraphs) can be transcribed (depending on the transliteration system used) into the roman alphabet or the English writing system with the same letter sequence, e.g. 〈i〉 or 〈ji〉, and likewise several (phonic) syllables, e.g. /i/ and /ji/ or /uː/ and /wu/, can be transcribed with the same (complex) syllabogram, likewise one spoken syllable can be transcribed with two (or more) different syllabograms, e.g. ジ or ヂ for /dʒi/, depending on (usually morphologic) context. And we have not even actually touched words, e.g. jin or gin, yet.

I prefer symbol (character, letter, …) names to be written with an uppercase initial letter as is common for other proper names in contemporary English orthography, but this convention is not strictly followed among linguists. Phonologic information is usually enclosed in slashes when it is a phrase or word (/wɜːɹd/) and in square brackets when it is a phoneme or (allo)phone ([iː]). Lexemes (word paradigms) in the roman script (and often the greek and cyrillic script, too) are italicized (word), whereas those in other scripts are usually just kept in their native unmarked typographic style; word forms, on the other hand, are sometimes also put in italics, but just as often (and when the difference matters) they are put inside matching quotation marks, just like short quoted phrases, but usually simple ones (‘words’), not double ones (“words”), although these are also used to provide the semantics of a word. Foreign glyphs and graphemes are sometimes kept as is, just like words, but at least where metalanguage matches object language angular brackets are employed (〈x〉, ‹x› or <x>).

I digressed into linguistic typography, sorry for that. To conclude, kana syllabogram lemmas in articles and tables should be based on gojūon rows and columns, i.e. conform to the Kunrei system. Where Japanese words and phrases are transcribed a revised Hepburn system is fine for the English Wikipedia. Phonemic information employing IPA has no place in articles on scripts, and it should be avoided in articles on writing systems. — Christoph Päper 14:13, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

This was resolved when it was discovered that wi and i and we and e are used interchangably for these glyphs in the Hepburn system, which is what the issue revolved around.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 18:47, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Would somebody please comment about "wu" for "ウー" at Talk:Hepburn romanization#About my edit on extended katakana.--Mujaki (talk) 17:55, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Ugh. If ウー is being used to approximate the "wu" sound in various languages, then it probably isn't meant to be read as ū in those situations. How is that so fucking hard to comprehend Mujaki?—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 19:59, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Stay civil, please. (Especially when you are demonstrably in the wrong, as in this case.) Jpatokal (talk) 21:54, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm not demonstrably wrong if I have proof that ウー is used for the wu phoneme.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 22:05, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Hepburn is a system of romanization, so you would need to provide proof that "wu" is an accepted Latin transliteration of the Japanese kana "ウー". Jpatokal (talk) 10:58, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

I've removed ウー = wu from everywhere on the project that I am aware of its usage.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 18:40, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for finally bowing to the obvious — an apology to Mujaki might be in order. Jpatokal (talk) 23:02, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

• This is merely another case of kana being imperfect at rendering foreign names, since e.g. nobody in Japan ever invented a kana equivalent of the Indian virama as a vowel-canceller. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 23:45, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

  No. I was suggesting that in specific cases, ウー which is normally the long U sound, could be romanized into the WU sound in words that we know are read with the W sound in other languages. However, Mujaki cannot understand the concept of exceptions it seems.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 20:37, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

The last discussion got archived because someone thought that the page was getting too long.

Basically, I believe that we should end the practice of removing tildes, hyphens, wave dashes, etc., from article titles, as the English-language media does not have any preference as to how to format these items, and as all reliable sources (which are of course Japanese in nature), retain these items.

Why shouldn't we, as an encyclopedia, retain these punctuation marks as well? It is not a trademark quirk. It is not necessarily a relict of Japanese printing. It is a method of marking a different aspect of the song's title, and really gets in the way if there is a song which has both a tilde and a set of parentheses in the title.

This practice is particularly obtrusive when the title of the original subjectis already parsed in grammatically correct English. It does not make sense to have to change the title to eliminate these punctuation marks and have to explain the original "stylization" of the title in the lede when we could just use the title as it appears in all reliable sources anyway.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 08:34, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure that the entirety of Titles of books and other media needs an overhaul. If something is written as "B-E-S-T" or "B·E·S·T" and it is read as "Bee E Ess Tee", why should we remove the hyphens or middle dots?—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 08:49, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

As I said, I'm neutral on this aspect. I would suggest an RfC on it because from what I remember of the discussion there was some serious concerns.陣内_Jinnai 16:51, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

One of the main concerns was that the practice simply isn't English, but then again the subjects being discussed and in most cases the reliable sources being used for these articles aren't English anyway. My examples for the shortcomings of this aspect of the style guide is WBX (W-Boiled Extreme), which in all reliable sources is called "W-B-X ～W-Boiled Extreme～" (except on iTunes where it is "W-B-X ~W-Boiled Extreme~".

By removing this aspect of the style guide, it can make it easier for us to deal with song titles such as "On The Painted Desert - Rampant Colors", "Round ZERO～BLADE BRAVE", or songs like "～それから～".—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 19:15, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

On the English Wikipedia, standardized rules are employed for dealing with special characters and capitalization. Manual of Style (trademarks) says "Avoid using special characters that are not pronounced, are included purely for decoration, or simply substitute for English words (e.g., ♥ used for "love"). In the article about a trademark, it is acceptable to use decorative characters the first time the trademark appears, but thereafter, an alternative that follows the standard rules of punctuation should be used" and "Using all caps is preferred if the letters are pronounced individually, even if they don't stand for anything. For instance, use SAT for the (U.S.) standardized test."

Meaning: The stylized form should be included in the article on the subject, but in normal prose text, standard English formatting and capitalization is to be used. Prime Blue (talk) 19:11, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

The ～ is not decorative, though. It is merely the way chosen to represent subtitles or whatever other part of the song such items are relegated to rather than a colon or parentheses or any other puncutation mark, and in several instances parentheses are also used in the title of a song, so simply throwing out the ～ is unhelpful.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 19:35, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

I guess that way you can dismantle pretty much every guideline. Good day. Prime Blue (talk) 19:47, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

PB, the point about them not being decorative is valid; it is a legitimate form of punctuation. That said, I do understand the problems this would create. Better would be to bring this up at WP:MOS as WP:PUNCT is the appropriate place for this and it is silent on this issue.陣内_Jinnai 21:29, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

But it's still an issue on this particular manual of style.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 21:36, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Jinnai, as I posted: "Avoid using special characters that are not pronounced, are included purely for decoration, or simply substitute for English words (e.g., ♥ used for "love")." But I am sure with the amount of pettyfoggery these guidelines are read when it comes to opposing them, it won't really make a difference. Prime Blue (talk) 09:41, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Exactly, ♥ is a special character as are a number of others. I don't believe that is the case for tildes in Japanese for how they are in use. I believe the practice has them being used as standard punctuation for titles in the same way semicolons and dashes are used in titles. There is nothing on dealing with nonstandard English punctuation in the MOS. That's why I am neutral. It shouldn't be outright rejected as a special character like the heart symbol because it isn't. On the other hand, its only really used with Japanese and only for titles and taglines.陣内_Jinnai 05:27, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

I think for what this proposal suggests (just use what's used outside of Wikipedia), the guideline is pretty clear-cut: "Follow standard English text formatting and capitalization rules, regardless of the preference of trademark owners." One can argue about hearts, then tildes come up. One can argue about tildes, then interpuncts come up. And so on. It's an endless argument, but pretty much irrelevant to the purpose of keeping formatting consistent across the encyclopedia. Taking into consideration that the stylization is mentioned in the respective articles anyway, I don't think this would have any use. Prime Blue (talk) 17:09, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

A heart being used for the word "Love" is one thing. Tildes and interpuncts, both of which are punctuation marks in English, are another. This isn't a stylization. It's how they're intended to be written out. It's better than forcing articles to use a different name and then need to explain that the original name is a "stylization" when it is just the name.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 19:01, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Tildes still are far from being standard English formatting for subtitles, though – that would rather be a colon or a hyphen. Though I have to admit I don't quite understand what you are proposing. Where do you draw the line of what is acceptable and what isn't? I think it would help if you elaborated on that. Prime Blue (talk) 19:15, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

• All tildes and hyphens used in the titles of Japanese media are not to be removed or replaced by colons or parentheses unless an official English title of the media exists and does not utilize these items. Examples are W-B-X ~W-Boiled Extreme~ and ja:On The Painted Desert - Rampant Colors.
• Interpuncts (or similar items used to separate parts of the names of media) are also to be retained unless they are used to stand in for a word break in an English translation. Example is Che.r.ry, and feasibly m.c.A·T.
  • When the name is written entirely in Japanese such as 涙・抱きしめて, the name could be parsed as "Namida·Dakishimete" or "Namida · Dakishimete" or possibly "Namida - Dakishimete".
• Any other characters such as stars or hearts should not be used in the article title, particularly if they are not pronounced in some form in the name. However, if the name is written entirely in non-Japanese characters, the symbol should be used when referring to the title in the article. An example would be the Queen & Elizabeth song "Love♡Wars"; if it were made into an article it would be at Love Wars (Queen & Elizabeth song) but the name would be parsed as "Love♡Wars".

This is the general idea I have in mind. Not sure on the interpuncts in Japanese part, though.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 19:42, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

If tildes and hyphens were considered standard English formatting for subtitles, then they would be acceptable – otherwise, WP:MOSTM forbids them. The Chicago Manual of Style suggests that colons are normally used to mark a subtitle, though they also mention em dashes (which seems to be a very rare case, though). For cases like "～それから～", WP:MOSTM forbids the tildes anyway as, there, they are clearly decorative. All in all, the hyphen looks debatable (possible to be replaced by an en or em dash, as hyphens are not generally used that way), while the tildes should be flat-out converted to a single colon.

The second point is again covered by WP:MOSTM and also by WP:ABBR. "Che.r.ry" is to be converted to "Cherry" and "m.c.A·T" to "MCAT". Same goes for "W-B-X" which needs to be "WBX". For the interpunct example "涙・抱きしめて", preserving the interpunct as is (or as "·") would be forbidden as it is not standard English formatting, but converting it to an en or em dash would again be up for discussion.

WP:MOSTM is also to be used on the "Love♡Wars" example (again decorative), which needs to be rendered "Love Wars" unless the "♡" is pronounced somehow, in which case it would be written "Love Love Wars" or something along the lines. Prime Blue (talk) 10:06, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Are you talking about "Avoid using special characters that are not pronounced, are included purely for decoration, or simply substitute for English words"? That's the closest I can see and if that's the case, then it clearly doesn't fall within that as it is not "subsistitue for English words" nor is it a "included purely for decoration". Finally, as a tilde is on the standard 101-keyboard and it isn't a "special character" like a ♥. If you claim it is, I can start claiming pretty much any character outside of A-Z and 0-9 is a special character.陣内_Jinnai 16:34, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

I have already explained in great detail (several quotes and explanations!) how WP:MOSTM dictates the usage of standard English formatting, which – as far as I am aware – tildes for subtitles are not. Prime Blue (talk) 18:01, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

You keep bringing up WP:MOSTM. This isn't a trademark. It's their name. We don't follow the Chicago Manual of Style. That's why we have all these other manuals of style to deal with these little quirks. And we do not have to follow every MOS on the site. We can clearly suggest that there be an exception for these song titles to show that they are Japanese and not have to spend another fifty words explaining that the original title is only a stylization when it is the actual title.

The Manuals of Style on Wikipedia are ultimately way too restrictive in that all of a sudden people are not allowed to use periods (or in the case of the W-B-X song hyphens) to demarcate initialisms. Then why the hell do we have articles on American artists such as B.o.B and N.E.R.D? This was one of my problems with the move request for the band "m.o.v.e" to its current title Move (Japanese band). And by the standard set by k.d. lang, "m.c.A·T" (or "m.c.A.T"), angela (with {{lowercase}}), and other bands who had to be renamed because of all of these conflicting manuals of style should be allowed, but because they're Japanese and we have style police who do nothing but move and edit articles so they are in line with the manuals of style, they all are not allowed to be at the various names they should be.

The Interpunct exists in English, so it should be a perfectly viable substitution for the nakaguro. The tilde exists in English, so it should be allowed, especially if the rest of the name is in English lettering. And finally, there should not be such a disparity in how ignoring specific aspects of the manual of style is allowed for Western musicians, but completely forbidden for Eastern musicians, just because they are Japanese and not British or American.

And also, it is not going to harm Wikipedia to leave the heart in the name "Love Wars" when it is discussed in the body of the article, rather than having to explain over and over again that the title originally includes said heart.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 19:31, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

MOSTM has no juridiction here because its not part of the trademark name. Its standard punctuation.陣内_Jinnai 19:39, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, but Prime Blue is arguing that because the tilde, hyphen, interpunct, etc. are not standard English punctuation (and that there are various other guidelines that seem to forbid us from even using them), that it's not allowed.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 19:54, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Disregarding that you are aggressively exaggerating here (50 words to explain a stylization? Employing The Chicago Manual of Style on Wikipedia?), you can keep trying to dance around the guideline by introducing special cases and semantic intricacies, but it does not change its spirit. "It exists" does not equal to "it is a standard way of using it". Not to mention that "it exists" and "it does no harm" (the latter is not even the case, giving editors a free pass to write work titles in a stylized form wherever they deem necessary causes a lot of harm – this is an encyclopedia, not a trademark library or database for stylization curiosities) is a fairly weak rationale for a change that would, in the long run, affect thousands of articles. That's what the Manual of Style is about: Keeping formatting consistent across Wikipedia. And per WP:MOSTM, you mention the stylization once in the article on the subject, otherwise use standard English formatting across the encyclopedia. And that makes a lot sense, because else Wikipedia would be drowning in hearts and kawaii flashy neon signs.

If you think these proposed exceptions find support, you can always start a Request for Comment to clarify the status of WP:MOSTM.

As for B.o.B and N.E.R.D.: These are not in line with WP:ABBR, so by all means, if you wonder "why the hell" we have articles with those names, move them. Americans sure don't deserve to have full stops in their band names on Wikipedia if the Japanese do not either! Prime Blue (talk) 20:32, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Fine. The tilde, hyphen, et al., are the standard methods of writing out the names of Japanese songs in the English language. If you feel the tilde/wave dash/whatever it is to be wrong, maybe we should go with how various online retailers parse the names. I know that the Japanese iTunes Store (when it is parsed in English) uses hyphens rather than the other dashes, as do these various retailers (even though I don't particularly agree with it).—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 20:41, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Oh, and as a note I missed out on before where you say "tildes should be flat-out converted to a single colon", even this guideline currently proscribes that if it is a song title, these items should be modified to open and close parentheses/brackets. However, this discussion is currently on the merits of throwing out that particular part of the MOS.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 20:44, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

[User:Prime Blue|Prime Blue]], you are misinterpreting MOSTM is. Special characters do not include the basic keyboard characters. Thus no one here is trying to "dance around the guideline"; instead you are trying to broaden a guideline to include something it was never menat to be used with. The tildes are not part of the trademark anymore than a colon is the part of most titles with subtitles attached to them when we want to describe them in prose (such as Star Trek: The Next Generation). That is what the tilde is used for and thus MOSTM, which is specifically only about the trademark's official name, has no jurisdiction here. WP:MOS would, but it is completely silent here.陣内_Jinnai 03:47, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict)I'm not sure if someone pointed this out yet, but the Article titles policy states:

Do not use non-language characters: Non-language characters such as "♥", as sometimes found in advertisements or logos, should never be used in titles.

I have added this to WP:MOS-JA#Article titles in order to be clear on policy. ···日本穣^? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WikiProject Japan! 09:52, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

The heart is not planned on being used in the title. However, you have summarily outlawed the wave dash which was under discussion in this thread as being shifted to the tilde (~) to demarcate the subtitles (or hyphens such as in "On The Painted Desert - Rampant Colors") example. It would also solve the issue of what to do with songs that begin and end with the wave-dash/full width tilde or simply only have one such tilde in the middle of the song (see ja:Round ZERO〜BLADE BRAVE). I think it would benefit the reader to not have to go through the extra step of explaining a "stylization" when it is not a stylization and just one of the various ways the subtitle is marked in Japanese media.

Also "WBX (W-Boiled Extreme)" is still the worst possible title for that page. If the title is written entirely in English, even if it is a Japanese song, it should not have to be renamed on the English Wikipedia.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 11:16, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Well, the nami-dash is a non-language character, and it should never be used in the title per the Article titles policy. Language characters (in the case of English) would be the 26 letters of the alphabet as well as standard English punctuation. The nami-dash is not any of those. ···日本穣^? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WikiProject Japan! 03:19, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

The only place I see it as the nami-dash is on ja.wiki. Everywhere else uses a full or half width tilde. Surely we can utilize the tilde rather than throwing whatever the symbol is in favor of unverifiable names.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 04:22, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

How come most of the examples under the "Titles of books and other media" section involve Kumi Koda?—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 09:49, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

I have rewritten the section to where it does not use five examples of Kumi Koda's music. I am using the following examples now:

• ja:LØVE (中島美嘉のアルバム) --> Love (Mika Nakashima album)
• ja:i spy i spy --> I Spy I Spy
• ja:CHE.R.RY --> Cherry (song)
• ja:m・a・z・e --> Maze (Kumi Koda song)
• ja:BEST〜first things〜 --> Best: First Things
• ja:I miss you 〜時を越えて〜 --> I Miss You (Toki o Koete)

This is still using mostly female musicians though.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 03:46, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

It has been brought up multiple times in this discussion that the full width tilde/wave-dash is not a non-language character but a punctuation entity, if at least in Japanese orthography. It should not currently be listed in a group of characters to be avoided in article titles, as we are discussing it here. It is better to have actual characters which we know should not be used (the star and the heart) rather than one that we could decide has some encylopedic merit.

The only place the wave dash is ever used in the ways that are currently described on this page is on the Japanese Wikipedia. Everyone else (record labels, retail outlets, etc.) use the full width tilde. I have never seen a wave dash anywhere other than at ja.wiki.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 02:35, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

The term "non-language character" is quite bizarre and seems to have been invented at WP:TITLE. I've proposed changing it to "symbol", which is a technical term clearly defined at Unicode symbols, and explicitly extending the overall rule to cover non-Latin punctuation. U+301C WAVE DASH is arguably a bit of both, as it's in Unicode's "CJK Symbols and Punctuation" block. Jpatokal (talk) 09:26, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes, but it can still be approximated with a piece of Latin punctuation.

Any of these "dashes" should no longer be deprecated, but merely approximated with their QWERTY keyboard counterparts: the hyphen and the tilde (e.g. "Round Zero ~ Blade Brave" for "Round ZERO～BLADE BRAVE", "On The Painted Desert - Rampant Colors", "W-B-X ~W-Boiled Extreme~" for "W-B-X ～W-Boiled Extreme～", "Splash Gold -Natsu no Kiseki-" for "SPLASH GOLD-夏の奇蹟-").

"Nakaguro-style dots" should be approximated with the interpunct (·) if it acts as a break between pronunciations (musician "m.c.A·T", song "Namida · Dakishimete" for "涙・抱きしめて", "A·A·Aiyaiya·A·A!" for "あ・あ・あいやいや・あ・あ!").

Anything else (Hearts, stars, male symbols) should be replaced by parentheses should they be used to separate parts of the song title or not be retained (e.g. "Age Age Every Night" for "アゲ♂アゲ♂EVERY☆騎士"). If the song's title is otherwise in English and contains these other characters, the article title should not retain this symbol per WP:AT, but the symbol should be used when referring to the title of the media in prose (e.g. "Love♡Wars" in text, "Love Wars (Queen & Elizabeth song)" as the page title) and not say "originally stylized as" in the first sentence. It is unnecessary prose to say "originally stylized as" when it's just the original name of the song before we tore it apart.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 09:41, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Tildes and, even worse, interpuncts are not a part of standard English punctuation, and neither can hyphens be used for anything other than joining words or separating syllables in a word. Using them willy-nilly is bizarre and liable to misinterpretation. Consider "Splash Gold -Natsu no Kiseki-": the average English speaker would read that as "Splash Gold-Natsu no Kiseki", with "Gold-Natsu" a compound word (金玉?) and the hyphen at the end a typo.

English has a perfectly good standard way of separating subtitles: the colon. It also has an excellent replacement for the nakaguro, namely the space. Jpatokal (talk) 12:18, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

One, these are songs that possibly do not have subtitles but just different parts of the title separated by these characters. And the average English reader would not mistake "Splash Gold -Natsu no Kiseki-" as "Splash Gold-Natsu no Kiseki" because there is a space in the first one there. I think we can give English speakers more credit here. Tildes and interpuncts at least exist in English puncuation. Just because they're not standard does not mean that they're not used at all. The project utilized tildes and hyphens and whatever other symbols prior to Hoary's original editing of the page. We can make exceptions Jpatokal. I don't see why you can't understand that.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 19:40, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

The tilde is never used for punctuation in any language. The wave dash is, but not in English. And the interpunct is simply a Japanese representation of a space: how does "A·A·Aiyaiya" differ from "A A Aiyaiya" in pronunciation? Jpatokal (talk) 21:41, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

It does not. And it is a poor example, I realize that now.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 22:37, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

I have to admit that I have problems seeing why an exception should be made. The only case where a wave dash or wave dashes could come in handy, I think, is when a work has two subtitles (unless we already have a style guideline on what to do then, but I'm not aware of its existence), though I'd still be in favor of using more standard English methods of separating the second subtitle then (i.e. a semicolon or an en dash). Prime Blue (talk) 20:45, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Again, the "subtitle" thing only appears in album titles or larger pieces of artistic work. In songs, it is very often the case that it will have another portion of the song's title with parentheses in it, usually if it is being designated as an instrumental or karaoke version or remix of one of the other tracks. So rather than going through the entire list of brackets usable in this case, we can just turn the wave dash into a tilde in all cases and not have to worry about having to make exceptions for certain cases along the line.

For example, we have Namida (Kokoro Abaite). There is currently nothing to suggest that the song's title (not full title) is not "Namida Kokoro Abaite" but the "Kokoro Abaite" part has been separated with the wave dash/full width tilde, resulting in what could be an English language name of "Namida ~Kokoro Abaite~". It's not like (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction or other similar songs in English, where the song is referred to only as "Satisfaction". In the Japanese press they don't call the song "NAMIDA", but by the whole title every time. There's a completely different system of naming in Japan and referring to these other parts of the songs as "subtitles" is just an easy comparison to make.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 20:49, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Sounds like a good reason to move it to Namida: Kokoro Abaite then.Jpatokal (talk) 21:41, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

That is not how song titles are ever formatted.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 22:37, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Got reference? Jpatokal (talk) 02:24, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

I don't need a reference. It's general practice that song titles do not include colons in them in order to differentiate between a title and subtitle. Look at (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction, Pleasure (Pleasure), Eh, Eh (Nothing Else I Can Say), etc.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 02:46, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

It is also general practice that song titles in English do not include Japanese punctuation. I find the colon to be the lesser of two evils. Jpatokal (talk) 10:14, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

The colon is not what is used in song titles at all. While it may separate the title from the subtitle in other pieces of media, it is not what is used in English, Japanese, French, Chinese, or any other language to demarcate two different parts of a songs' title. And I am tired of going in fucking circles arguing this with you of all people.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 10:36, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

So "Kokoro Abaite" is the subtitle of "Namida ~Kokoro Abaite~". Why shouldn't it be written that way, seeing as the full name of the song is referred to in all Japanese language reliable sources as such, when English language sources only mention the title, rather than the title and subtitle? Whenever someone refers to (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction it's just "Satisfaction". However when it's "NAMIDA～ココロアバイテ～" it's always "NAMIDA～ココロアバイテ～" and not "NAMIDA" or "ココロアバイテ" on their own.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 10:43, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

In a discussion concerning other aspects of article titles at WT:MOS#Hyphens in article titles, it has been pointed out that WP:MOSTM (and WP:ABBR) do not apply to the titles of compositions. So it is clear that the only issue is a stylistic one here (and possibly with WP:MUSIC or WP:MOS-ALBUM). Unpronouncable characters like hearts, stars, and horseshoes aside, the wave dash/swung dash/full width tilde is a character that by no other general manual of style is explicitly forbidden from use in the title of any piece of media. And as it stands, this manual of style conflicts with WP:MOSTM anyway in that it states "editors should choose among styles already in use (not invent new ones)".—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 10:37, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Okay, this got archived. Can we get some new input with this new discovery?—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 08:33, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

I like the suggestion to use ":" or "()" as the appropriate English punctuation substitute. In Japanese, for intellectual property purposes, if you use capital letters it's a different word then if you use lower case. If you use katakana it's a different word then if you use hiragana, and it's a different word then if you use kanji. This is how bands can have the same name by just writing them differently. Technically speaking, this means that the capitalization of things like band names are not always decorative, but have legal implications for the band to distinguish themselves from another band. Those differences simply do not translate well into English, so we standardize the names to romanji, as well as standardizing the capitalization, because it is easier to understand and improves article flow. Why use Japanese punctuation instead of using English punctuation which would be easier for readers to understand? It fits WP:MOSTM where it states: choose the style that most closely resembles standard English, regardless of the preference of the trademark owner. Denaar (talk) 04:40, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Discussion on WT:MOS ended up with the revelation that songs are not trademarks and are not subject to WP:MOSTM. And anyway, WP:MOSTM states very clearly that "editors should choose among styles already in use (not invent new ones)". So therefore, if there is nowhere that refers to these songs and album titles the way Wikipedia does, we're violating our own guidelines.

Also this is not about band names, even though that was also discussed (where it was effectively decided that if they fall under WP:MOSTM, then it's the same "editors should choose among styles already in use (not invent new ones)" issue).—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 04:48, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

If you argue that the guideline does not apply, then you can't argue the guideline isn't being applied correctly. Song titles should reflect standard English punctuation on Wikipedia, because that is what most closely resembles standard English. We shouldn't have one guideline for Japanese band names and a separate guideline for Japanese song titles, the standardization should be consistent. The "Wave Dash" should be translated into English punctuation. See the article tilde for info on how it's used in Japanese, even there it's suggested to translate it as a colon. Denaar (talk) 05:15, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

You're right. WP:MOSTM does not apply to song titles, band names, or the rest and therefore we should use the form that exists in common usage, which utilizes the "Wave Dash" which can be easily approximated with the tilde, regardless of what our own poorly sourced article on the subject says. So therefore, this manual of style should be modified to where it does not actively prohibit the use of this punctuation mark which actively has no exact universal analog in the English language.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 06:36, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

WP:MOSTM does apply to band names. "アヤビエ", "彩冷える", "AYABIE", are all pronounced the same, but the trademark belongs to the label so the band name changes every time the switch labels. On the English Wikipedia it's all "Ayabie".

We translate 「」 into English punctuation, so ～～ subtitle notation should also be translated into English punctuation to be consistent. I think it's clear that consensus about that was already reached, I'm just confirming that I also agree with the consensus. Denaar (talk) 15:16, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Okay. If MOSTM applies to band names, then if no one on earth calls the band "Ayabie" and it is only ever parsed in latin text as "ayabie" then that is what the article should be styled as. If a singular musician styles his or her name in all lowercase letters that's perfectly fine according to Wikipdedia. See will.i.am, k.d. lang, apl.de.ap. There's no reason this should not apply to names of bands and that was decided here.

And 「」 are the analog of quotation marks. ～ or - can be parentheses or a colon or whatever other options there are. Because there is no consistent way of dealing with them and because according to WP:MOSTM "editors should choose among styles already in use (not invent new ones)". Therefore, this manual of style should not actively prohibit a style that is overly common and does not contain any characters that cannot be adequately duplicated on a QWERTY keyboard.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 18:21, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

I've already explained why your arguments are invalid above, and you're just making circular arguments now. I stand by my statement - we should not use wave dashes or tildes on the English Wikipedia. Denaar (talk) 19:20, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

If WP:MOSTM applies as you say it does, then we are violating it by changing the Wikipedia articles into using a style that is not used anywhere other than the English Wikipedia. If 彩冷える calls themselves "ayabie" then we should too. If a song is titled "W-B-X ～W-Boiled Extreme～" then our article on it shouldn't be at WBX (W-Boiled Extreme).—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 20:11, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

WP:MOSTM applies to Band Names. W-B-X ～W-Boiled Extreme～ isn't a band name. I think we are talking about two different issues. Number one is songs with subtitles like "SinAI〜右手のカッターと左手のドラッグと薬指の深い愛と〜". It makes sense to change it to "Sin Ai (Migi Te no Cutter to Hidari Te no Drug to Kusuriyubi no Fukai Ai)" or something similar in English.

Your example is, in my opinion, a different issue. It has the same name repeated twice in a song title (and is the perfect example of a superfluous decorative song title). WBX means Double-Boiled Extreme, the W being used to be cute/funny/etc. Wouldn't it make more sense to just call it "W-Boiled Extreme" or "W Boiled Extreme" and then have an explanation of the name in the article? The song "舐 ～Zetsu～" is usually reported in English sources as simply "Zetsu" in English, not "Zetsu Zetsu" or any variant there of. It's not pronounced Zetsu Zetsu in Japanese either, just Zetsu. I'd stylize "C\C (シンデレラ\コンプレックス)" simply as "Cinderella Complex (Song)". I'd suggest keeping the guildeine about wave signs, but consider when the subtitle is just a restatement of the original title, that a simpler title can be used if there is consensus at the article to do it, that way people can find the article. Denaar (talk) 21:15, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

The song's title is read in full, much like that other one you brought up is. "W-B-X ～W-Boiled Extreme～" is read as "Double-Bee-Ex Double Boiled Extreme" just like "SinAI〜右手のカッターと左手のドラッグと薬指の深い愛と〜" is read as "Shin'ai Migite no Cutter to Hidarite no Drug to Kusuriyubi no Fukai ai to"; "舐 ～Zetsu～" is just "Zetsu". There are clear instances where the item between ～'s is the pronunciation of the former, but in the case of the first two it's a separate pronunciation. However, this discussion is primarily about song and album titles and the retention of the ～ on the English Wikipedia. The way that this manual of style has been terribly misapplied is that "W-B-X ～W-Boiled Extreme～" is entirely written in the English alphabet and there should not have been any reason to rename it if this manual of style had not been changed against the basic tenets of WP:MOSTM which states that we should not make up stylizations that only exist for use on Wikipedia because doing so is effectively original research.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 21:22, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

"～" is not an English character, and it's not the equivalent of "~". Again, you can't use WP:MOSTM for this discussion, but let's play that game for a moment. You also can't argue that they should be kept as "~" because that is how it is written normally in English, because the song title isn't written in English in multiple English Magazines, Newspapers, and other reliable sources. Fan sites do not count. The only sources I could find about the topic are in Japanese. The description at WP:MOSTM states that it should be standard English, unless the standard in reliable English sources do otherwise. When there are no reliable English sources, you can't follow the standard of reliable English sources. Denaar (talk) 21:45, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

~ is still the closest thing we have to ～ such that we do not make up our own styling. And there is no universal standard way of dealing with songs named "AAAA ～ BBBB", "AAAA -BBBB-", "AAAA ～BBBB～ (CCCC)", so it would just be a hell of a lot easier just to use the closest approximation with the ~ or the - over throwing those out and just using colons and brackets for everything.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 21:50, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

There is no universal standard way of dealing with Japanese song titles - exactly, that is the point. Therefore we need something standard, and I agree with what has been suggested.

PS - I haven't found anywhere where WBX W Boiled Extreme is pronounced "Double U Bee Ex Double Boiled Extreme" - it's either Double Boiled Extreme or WBX Denaar (talk) 22:41, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

The standard could be to just use what the Japanese do for the titles, because a song formatted like "AAAA ～ BBBB" should not be restylized into a format that is used the same for "AAAA ～BBBB～" or "AAAA -BBBB-". And on the (Internet) radio shows where they play the song, its title is always referred to as "Double Bee Ex Double Boiled Extreme" (the W is never read as "Double-U"). And I don't know why they shortened it to just "Double Bee Ex" in that second video you linked. And there is no reason to exclude Japanese language sources for how to format the name just because there are no English sources discussing the subject. If they write it a particular way and use the English alphabet o do so, there is no reason why we should change it.

And before you respond again I would like an outside opinion because this shit is going nowhere again. I have discussions where it has been decided that the more general manuals of style are being misapplied here and there is no reason that we cannot turn ～ and 〜 into ~ for use on the English Wikipedia as it was several years ago before this manual of style was modified.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 23:10, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Then stop responding to me - and please don't use terms like "shit". BTW - the link you give doesn't give anyone pronouncing the name of the song out loud. "W-B-X～W boiled extreme～" is not English. I approve of the standard as it is currently written. Denaar (talk) 01:20, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

The link provides a phonetic pronunciation of the song title in katakana (ダブルビーエックスダブルボイルドエクストリーム). And the title "W-B-X ～W-Boiled Extreme～" is most definitely in English. The only thing that could be argued as not-English are the ～'s, but those can be switched with ~'s which are English. They're not standard English, but they're still English.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 01:24, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

But it doesn't have someone speaking it, out loud. When people speak it do they pronounce the full title or a shortened version? As for the wave sign = tilde argument, if we replaces wave signs with tildes, they would cease to be punctuation and would be come decoration. That is why they should be replaced with actual punctuation. Denaar (talk) 01:29, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Scroll all the way to the bottom and listen to the first audio posting. The DJ calls the song by its full name. Also, why do you automatically equate the closest analog for the wave dash on a QWERTY keyboard as being decorative? If it's used as a punctuation mark, it's still a punctuation mark. It's how the name is formatted in Japan and in all reliable sources. If not the tilde, then perhaps a mere hyphen as some Japanese sources use when referring to the item in English.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 01:38, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Ok, so you've proven that there are conflicting sources on the usage of the song title. However, none of the sources either of us found meet WP:RS. So we should follow WP:MOS Observe the style adopted by high-quality sources. Unless there is a clear reason to do otherwise, follow the usage of reliable English-language secondary sources on the subject. If the sources can be shown to be unrepresentative of current English usage, follow current English usage instead—and consult more sources. This is from the Manual of Style that governs all of Wikipedia. Right now, most these articles have NO reliable English Language Secondary sources that confirm how something should be written in English. They will, most likely, never have reliable English Language sources for the title. So, we follow current English usage instead - and that's from the very top Manual of Style here at Wikipedia.Denaar (talk) 05:01, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

I would say that the Internet radio station directly related to the song at hand (it's run by the record label and/or the production company that is making the TV show that the song was used as the opening theme to) is a reliable source for how to name the song. The fact that one live performance of the song was referred to by another name is not conflicting enough when it comes to how everyone else parses the name of the song. The next thing you're going to tell me is that a band or musician is not a reliable source for how their name is spelled or written in English, as we went over on this page a couple of months ago and as you went over this week with Ayabie it seems.

What you are telling me though is that we should ignore a name that is clearly parsed in what is 99% English text for a name that in no way resembles or is reliably sourced as being the name. WBX (W-Boiled Extreme) should not be at that title. That is in no way the name of the song anywhere.

However, that is not the main focus of this discussion. The English language does not have an adequate format for dealing with the titles of Japanese musical media. There are songs with only one wave dash in them (e.g. Round ZERO～BLADE BRAVE), songs that begin and end with wave dashes (e.g. ～The STAR Bridge～, ～それから～), songs that include wave dashes and parentheses/other brackets (e.g. any instrumental track of a song that falls under the previous two items), songs that utilize other punctuation marks (e.g. On The Painted Desert - Rampant Colors). This can be easily solved by following WP:MOSTM which says "editors should choose among styles already in use (not invent new ones)" and utilize a style as close as possible to the Japanese title, which may not appear in reliable sources, and which means not removing any punctuation marks unless there is absolutely no analog for the character in English typography. And there is nothing at WP:MOS or any other manual of style other than this one that proscribes making up a new style merely because there are no English language sources discussing the subject of any particular article.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 05:27, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

But the English Language does have an adequate format for dealing with the titles of musical media. That would be following styles already in use. That format is already a part of the guideline here. The WP:MOSTM article doesn't say "utilize a style as close as possible to the Japanese title" - in fact the it states the opposite. Also, per WP:MOS - "If the sources can be shown to be unrepresentative of current English usage, follow current English usage instead—and consult more sources." No Japanese source can be conclusive to prove proper English usage. Denaar (talk) 05:45, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

But the Japanese language is so diverse/inconsistent with usage that it doesn't make sense to turn it into a single format for albums and a single format for songs, particularly when it's not a pair of dashes around a phrase. And that sentence you'r picking out of WP:MOS does not say "Force an English language formatting when English language sources are non-existant for a subject in determining the most common style".—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 05:55, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Having read the discussion it currently stands.

• For converting wave dashes to tildes: Rylong, Megata Sanshiro
• For keeping the guideline as written: Jpatokal, Hoary, Jinnai, KrebMarkt, Prime Blue, Nihonjoe

Six to Two - I think consensus is pretty clear. The discussion tag can be removed. Denaar (talk) 14:50, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Most of that took place before I consulted general manual of style editors who determined that there is nothing wrong with the proposal. Nearly everyone who was opposing months ago was misapplying WP:MOSTM and the basic tenets of WP:MOS by saying A) that MOSTM applies to songs (which the discussion at WT:MOS that I linkd to said it doesn't) and B) we need to come up with a style that is not in use when regarding these items.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 18:17, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

In other words, "Yes, but everybody else is wrong and I am right". For the record, I remain entirely unconvinced by your wikilawyering. Jpatokal (talk) 06:05, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Well whatever the case, you did not have the consensus to modify WP:AT regarding this discussion to win your end in the dispute, claiming a consensus when there was no outside input from anyone else regarding the wave dash, and especially modifying the policy so you have some sort of edge in the discussion by explicitly pointing out how I should be wrong.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 08:21, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Aren't you arguing in favor of using the Latin wave dash "~"? (You certainly seemed to be earlier.) If so, my edit to WP:AT about non-Latin symbols and punctuation has no bearing whatsoever on this discussion. Jpatokal (talk) 11:23, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

I am arguing for that, yes, but your change seemed entirely unnecessary, lacking consensus, and seemed to be made to inflame this dispute, even if it is not inherently at stake.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 18:39, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

And also, Jinnai was not opposing the proposed change as far as he has said.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 18:52, 18 February 2011 (UTC)