Is there some good reason why "windshield wiper" re-directs to "windscreen wiper", and not the other way around? It's about 6:1 ratio in terms of Google hits.

Is this the British cabal?

Is this a reasonable barrier, considering how re-directs work?

The article started as "Windscreen wiper", and it's standard practice to leave regional usage variations alone unless there's some good reason to change them. This isn't ideal -- as you note, it creates inconsistencies -- but it's better than the alternative: endless raging battles between factions of narrow-minded idiots who have nothing better to do than ensure that the site uses the One True English.

As I understand it, the policy is to stick with whatever version of English the article was originally written in, except on articles that specifically about a single country. Short of a "Conservapedia policy" of working only in American English, I don't know what else would be workable.

I'm not sure if this is a British thing or not, but if it is these things go in cycles. For a while everything was CE and BCE, now there's more articles using BC and AD; Umlauts and other little squigglies are all the rage at the moment - see Anstrom and the pitiful reasoning on the talk page to not use English spelling (heaven forbid that the English Wikipedia should use English). Even with a manual of style over a million words, it's still individual personalities pushing their own pet causes that win the day. Whenever you have an editor that tries to bring consistency to the project along these lines, they get driven off.

Redirects enable incoming links to work regardless of what the title is. That guy who wants to change all the incoming links to remove the redirects is wasting his time. Poetguy used to do that mindless work, marking edit summaries of "bypass redirect" or "avoid redirect" on at least three of his sockpuppet accounts.

Whether it's "windscreen wiper" or "windshield wiper" is not of consequence to me. As an American reader, I prefer "windshield wiper" and haven't known any other name, but it's not worth fussing about. (It is worth starting a discussion to see if the Americans can pwn the British editors, but that's not for me to do. ) As a chemistry student, I have never seen element 55 spelled any way other than "cesium" except on Wikipedia. Some of the naming conventions on Wikipedia are just plain weird.

Nonetheless, because of the way redirects correct for odd article titles, this is a minor problem if any. Ignore it.

A Shiny Metal WR Beanstar to the first person who moves the whole article to either one of the following:

• Arsewiper
• Asswiper

Jon

Yeah, there doesn't seem to be any more logical way out. I mean, the Foundation is an American organization. American dollars outkick British pounds in terms of donations to the WMF, by a long margin. And, as I said, the Google hits are at a 6:1 ratio in favor of the American terminology.

First author, final format... seems to be the perfect Wikipedia solution!

Yes. I noticed that phenomenon of "first author, final format" in the titles of articles about a "rail accident" or "train crash" or "railroad disaster" or "train derailment" or "level crossing accident" or a dozen alternatives. I tried to fix the problem, but the same Eva Destruction who posts to this thread said I was "disruptive."

And still maintains it's disruptive. You only have to look at the permanent revert-war on "color" to see the chaos that comes when people try to "fix" this; either we pick an "American English/British English only" policy and stick to it, go with the "two separate wikipedias" solution implemented in Norway (no.wikipedia and nn.wikipedia) or we go with what we have now. And remember it's not a case of American vs British English only – there's also Canada, Australia, Hong Kong, South Africa, India, Ireland, Singapore et al, who tend to use British, rather than American, spelling.

The "American English only" solution is a lot harder than it sounds in practice, given that most people outside the US won't even know what the American spellings are, and every spellchecker is permanently telling you you're wrong. Even the ultra-American Conservapedia dropped its American English only policy and adopted the "Wikipedia solution" after less than four months of operation, precisely because it was proving unworkable and unenforceable.

Train wrecks tend to occur in a specific geographic location. If it's a matter of one location preferring a specific term, then it should be based on where it happened.

If it's NOT - as I suspect is the case - then it's completely outside the "jurisdiction" of WP:ENGVAR to begin with, and it should be standardized. We've got dozens of pages on naming conventions, a rule for this isn't going to kill us.

Complicating the matter is that these are different things: "rail accident" would be generic. "train crash" I think should mean a train hits another train. "railroad disaster" is another generic term. "train derailment" - a train goes off the tracks. "level crossing accident" - a train hits a car or a pedestrian - probably some such incidents wouldn't rate a "disaster", but any notable enough to have an article probably would.

I'm basically agreeing with Random832 here. I have no issue with specific titles, such as "derailment" and "level crossing accident", but I would prefer to standardize one generic title for such events, such as "rail accident," "train accident" or similar. Given the preponderance of existing titles and the name of the template infobox, and lacking input at the RFC on Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (events), I chose "rail accident."

There was no American English versus British English usage in this case. If there is a difference whereby Brits call it "rail transport" but Americans call it "train transport" or similar, I wasn't aware of it, and it did not factor into my thinking. I also proposed a more general system for naming accident articles other than trains - I just started there because it's the discrepancy I noticed when I was learning about a train accident in my city last June.

I started an RFC, but I was unaware that not all RFCs get any kind of attention. I would have been better to seek out individual editors or a WikiProject talk page instead of assuming that nobody cares because nobody responds. However, as a matter of principle, an action is only disruptive if either the person doing it knows and intends for it to be disruptive, or if he has been asked not to do it and does it anyway (e.g. an edit war). I had a situation where I made a change unopposed because nobody responded to my proposal. That's WP:BOLD. In the end, nobody cares whether the title is "rail accident" or "train crash," as long as the contents of the article are informative. But that goes both ways - it's an argument not to change the titles, but it also argues that changing the titles is not inherently disruptive.

All of these other countries do not simply use British spelling, rather a mix of the two - that is, if UK and US English are even considered to be the opposite extremes of all possible versions of the English language, which is probably not correct.



Just because the English invented cricket, it doesn't mean that they should always win.

Ran into this problem when I was still editing on articles related to woodworking. Except there there's US and Canada on one side, and Britain and Australia on the other. Worse, in many cases it's not just different spellings, but actually using the same word to refer to completely different things. For example, in the US and Canada "timber" refers to either standing uncut trees, or logs cut but not yet milled, but in Britain and Australia the word also refers to milled wood more than 2 inches thick in all three dimensions. In the US and Canada we call that "lumber". Similar problems occur for "planer": what the UK and Aussies call a "planer" we in North America call a "jointer", and what us Americanadians call a "planer" woodworkers in the UK and Australia call a "thicknesser". Wikipedia's woodworking articles (which are a sorry lot to begin with) are nearly incomprehensible as a result of this confusion.

It's by no means a great article, but I've always thought Timber framing has the potential to be a really good article.

Sorry, just had to nitpick that one. There is no such thing in British English as a thicknesser - I presume you mean a plane (no r). I think you might also have mentioned a router, which is a thing for making grooves. I'll have you know that I came top in woodworking before the nasty teachers made me do music because I played the violin for a term then dropped it.

However, that does make the point very well: we are aware of famous cases of each others' dialects of English, but we do not know enough to be able to write fluently in them.

The other point to me is that it is not trivial to have mis-spelt and sometimes misleading articles because of language issues. Americans still have this love affair with the unusable feet, pounds and acres that crops up as well. I remember that the word gas got some American's very upset when there was a bombing at Glasgow Airport and someone complained that the article was misleading for using British gas canisters, not meaning petrol cans but, well, gas canisters.

I think there is a solution which would be to allow for arbitrary sections of the article to be split by language. You have a single document, and if needs be, someone provides alternative words and phrases, on the assumption that the majority of differences in the articles are trivial.

Of course, when it comes to 1776, we would need two entirely separate articles for British and American versions of freedom fighters/terrorist separatists, in the same way that English/Irish views on the Troubles are probably irreconcilable in the short to medium term. Rather than trying to force a quart into a pint pot (roughly 1 litre into a 500ml container for the more modern members of this forum).

I am sure that there are versioning solutions that could be used to solve a number of issues (like adult content) and it would not be rocket science to adapt the editor to support editions. If they were really interested in producing an automatic, press button X to print the new edition, genuinely saleable encyclopedia, then this is the sort of thing that someone would want to fix. I think though, that the WMF or Jimbo, whoever, does not really believe in an end product, because if someone produced a GDFL final form, fit for purpose encyclopedia, anyone under the sun could make money off it, aside from WMF who would not have the publishing skills to release it profitably, unlike other organisations who could dress it up.

I'm afraid you are mistaken. There definitely is a thing in British English called a thicknesser; here is an example of one for sale in the UK. Contrast this which is virtually the same thing, for sale in the US.

Routers are the same thing in British English and American English.

(Edited to fix link, d'oh)

Ah, I see. It is a neologism or slang, as the item is a plane (albeit in a specific form). Sounds like a joke that has stuck. Not in any dictionary I have and now Wikipedia seems to be the main Internet definition for it, aside from such well known authoritative sources as eBay listings.

A jointer is a British English usage - a plane that is designed for preparing one edge to be fixed to another, though it is a specialist term - again, it is a specific form of a plane, but is a dictionary word.

Do you rely on the Internet by any chance?

So a big NOR and {{fact}} for those articles.

Actually, I rely on my woodworking journals and books. This particular linguistic silliness is well-known to woodworkers (Karl Champley, of DIY to the Rescue fame, even makes fun of it from time to time). No woodworker would refer to a planer, jointer, or thicknesser as a "plane", as a plane is a hand tool and those are all machine tools.

I dislike British English in general, because I'd rather read American English or any form of English other than than English English. Further still, I wish I could speak better in non-English languages...

But yeah, I notice that Wikipedia, for an American website, has a strangely large amount of Britishness to the way it is written... that can go to hell for all I care.


Lol, MBisanz protected them against creation. He's clearly watching this forum...

With my linguistic hat on, an argument could be made to scrap British English spelling from Wikipedia altogether, and I'm saying the point of view of a British person.

I say this because American English is, in many ways, merely British English from 300 years ago.

But, in any case, does it really matter if we end words with -ize or ise? Or -or rather than -our? Not really.

The only real difference arise with the likes of aluminum/aluminium.

Interesting example above regarding the Glasgow Airport and the gas/petrol confusion. Without creating a British fork, I can't see how this can be resolved. Or whether it really needs to be!

I am not averse to the idea that someone invents Universal English. I think local culture and dialects are over-rated. However, I think it is supposed to be agreed that Wikipedia is not a tool to make these changes.

Does it need to be? To be honest, I read a lot of stuff from America and never have an issue (I have had complaints from Americans at lectures that they could not understand me, although I have a very straightforward English accent without much local colour). Wikipedia seems to generate more issues perhaps because it highlights the difference and people, like in the woodworking stuff happen to know some little difference and make a big deal out of it.

The argument that Wikipedia is American therefore it should be written in American is another one of the failures to understand that nobody has defined who it is being written for. If the dusty child lives in a British English environment (or indeed an American English one), should Wikipedia be creating an unnecessary hindrance to their understanding?

While people are just editing stuff for their own amusement, then does it need to be resolved - who cares? If you are wanting to make a product to be sold in the UK, then it would make sense to write it in British English or people will distrust it - if the spelling is wrong and some words don't make sense, are you going to trust it as a reliable source?

Another localisation issue comes up with one of my interests - Guide Dogs.* I thought about updating the article, because there was stuff in there that looked plain wrong. However, I can't tell whether some of it is wrong globally or just for the UK. In the main, it's just a badly written article: there is that funny bit of writing that seems to say that dogs can't read signs because they are colour blind, it is a "here is an interesting 'fact' that I know" piece of writing. I wouldn't want to re-craft it because I can't tell which things might be wrong only in the UK. (Simple answer is that it needs sources, but it is likely that you need sources for every country referenced to avoid generalising).


*Our dog, pictured, went off to Leamington to start her formal training yesterday (hence the caption). She demonstrated our high calibre of training just before leaving by snaffling by Rice Krispies when my back was turned.

In the US, we would say that she "snarfed" the Rice Krispies.

And wise beyond his years...

Furthermore, on top of the 6:1 Google hit ratio, within the Wikipedia pages themselves, "windshield wipers" is found on 97 pages, to "windscreen wipers"' 57 pages.

It's just stupid, and perfect for Wikipedia and David Gerard and Guy Chapman.

Oh, get yer own language yer lard-arsed, bible-bashing bunch of foreign meat-heads, and then you can call a windscreen anything you like to your hearts content without getting all offended by a different term.

And David Gerard is Australian. He probably calls a windscreen a boogabong.

We don't actually have a word for windscreen (other than "windscreen"), yet.

Fair dinkum, cobber.

haha "windshield wipers"...

So "snarfed" is the equivalent of "to steal"?

LOL. And here all this time I thought British English was "merely" American English from 300 years ago. As in, American has changed more, and in American and British spelling differences it is the Brits that have more often kept the funny æ and œ diphthongs from the Greek and retraining various Anglo-French -our endings which have long since been nativized in American English to the -or (though I see it does occasionally happen the other way around, as the Americans retain the French naivete, while the Bits put a y on the end.).

Not that there's anything wrong with doing either thing, really. Language changes are matters of taste and utility, which vary, and silly things to take great moralistic stands about. But it's hilarious to imagine that American is somehow British preserved in aspic from the time of the Revolution. If anything, it is modern British English which is closer to British as preserved from those times.

I'd move it to Wipers (car) and be done with it.

Eh, he's only about the same age as me I think. He sure does look a lot older than his years, for one thing. Check out his photo gallery. Looks-wise, he reminds me more of my grandfather than anyone else.

It's an interesting one. In the period when literacy expanded from the aristocracy and the church, "z" was often used as an "s" - rules were not hard and fast. Examples are easy to find (okay, {{fact}}!) of -ize throughout British English of the 1600s.

"-ize" is still the "official" British English spelling (although not in general use) – check your Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press or Britannica style guides – although the European Commission recommends always using "-ise". (To preempt the inevitable {{fact}}).

The move from z to s I am sure is a late 20th century change. I'm sure that when I started spelling, it was with z's. Nothing authorative pops up to explain the migration, but I think in the 60s I was a happy zedder, and by the 70s I was an esser.

In part, having a spelling rule that depends on someone knowing whether it was a Greek or Latin root to the word is rather stupid, but such are the joys of our rich and diverse language.

So I was right the first time

I'm sure the case is that -ize and -ise are both acceptable in British English, while only -ize is in US English. That, to me, suggests US English retains at least one original component of "older" British English.

It's almost impossible to convince anyone the -ize is acceptable British English, though. I wanted to use the dual nature last year on an election leaflet, but was overruled by my agent.



In a similar way, "y" and "i" were interchangeable.

But this is drifting off topic. The key thing is that a British or American person could read a Wiki article and understand what is being said (even if it is wrong!).

Yes, although it is more commonly used to mean "to devour".

Actually, I think you will find that most of the regular Brit contributors are fully capable of understanding US spellings, idioms and the like - the influence of US television series, films, books (Stephen King and Tennessee Williams write/wrote in the local idiom, I should love to see an American try to read a book written in a regional British vernacular) - and can often write in a reasonable facsimile - I doubt if anything approaching a minority of the US editorship could write in UK-EN.

Ludicrous! That's rubbish!

Whisht lad, had yer gob.

Oi divvin knaa, lorra septics din' ken juz t'differn t'BBC English oon t'telly ist'wat folks gab

There is a standard English English, call it the Queen's English or BBC English (though increasingly the BBC doesn't use it). However, there are many legitimate regional variants, and of course increasing illiteracy.

Aye, you're a canny lad.

Isn't Eva female, or am I being naive?

I spend my life being baffled about that here - and having rebuffed one of our red blooded males here who got entirely the wrong idea about me... no, not naive at all. See above

Well, it's a long story: during the week I'm a male statistician at the department of health, and during the weekend I…