UESPWiki:Archive/CP Full Stops on Captions

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Full Stops/Periods/Stops

Discussion moved here from my talk page for general discussion. --Nephele^Talk 12:40, 22 December 2007 (EST)

Nephele, I have noticced on the Recent Changes that you are deleting full stops on images descriptions (The majority placed there by Playjex). Why is this? Grammar rules condone that all short phrases (Save isolated one-word sentences or titles) should have stops to accompany them? Is this a particular rule on the UESPWiki or something similar? --HMSVictory 12:05, 22 December 2007 (EST)

The grammar rules that I checked all said that periods/full stops are not appropriate in places such as headers and figure captions. Note that figure captions are not the same as short phrases that may appear within a paragraph, where a period is necessary to separate the phrase from a subsequent sentence. I checked a dozen sites yesterday where the rules all stated that periods should not be used at the end of figure captions. Most relevant probably is Wikipedia where it states "Most captions are not real sentences, but extended noun phrases ("The Conservatory during Macquarie Night Lights, a summer festival"—noun phrase, no final period"—compared with ""The Conservatory was spotlit during Macquarie Night Lights, a summer festival."—real sentence with final period)."

Furthermore, existing practice on the site shows that 99% of our existing figure captions do not have any periods at the end of the captions. Similarly, 99% of the headers on the site do not have any periods. I'm not particularly enthusiastic about a project that seems to consist of going through and changing what's currently accepted on the site when there is no grammatical requirement to make the change. --Nephele^Talk 12:28, 22 December 2007 (EST)

I've decided to move this discussion to the community portal so that the community members can contribute their opinions and, if necessary, we can make a general decision about what is preferred for UESPWiki: should figure captions on the site that consist of phrases (not full sentences) have periods at the end or not? --Nephele^Talk 12:40, 22 December 2007 (EST)

We certainly don't need a period at the end of every phrase caption on the site. The rules say it isn't appropriate, it looks funny, and it seems like an unnecessarily large undertaking to go through and make all these tiny changes for no particular reason. In my opinion, it's all time best spent working on something else. --Eshe^talk12:56, 22 December 2007 (EST)

Well, I do agree with you concerning sentence fragments, but many image descriptions are longer and comprise actual sentences. It is however, fruitless to try and eliminate all the stops that are currently in place as it is a common reaction to place one whenever a conceptual scripture has been finished. In this case, a short phrase or fragment. While it may be pointless trying to add them everywhere, that conclusions implies that it is also pointless to take them all away. --HMSVictory 13:12, 22 December 2007 (EST)

Just for clarification: I have not started any campaign to remove all periods from the site's figure captions. The only such changes I've made have been to cleanup Recent Change edits that had just added periods and needed to be patrolled. I had assumed that was obvious, but since your comments seem to be directly solely at my choice to undo the recent changes rather than at the choice to make the edits in the first place, perhaps it's not so obvious. --Nephele^Talk 13:28, 22 December 2007 (EST)

Sorry --HMSVictory 13:34, 22 December 2007 (EST)

Agreed. I WILL discontinue to put periods on all short phrases. I apologise that I have obstructed the grammar "rules" per se. Thank you for all of your opinions. Take care, and Happy Holidays to all! --Playjex 09:59, 23 December 2007