At 10:29 AM 7/13/02 +0100, Tarquin wrote:
I agree with Lars:
"Sydney, Australia" and "Stockholm, Sweden" just sound silly in any
text. It would be as strange as "floppy, computer device" or cheese, food item". Writing [[Sydney, Australia|Sydney]] is not a good solution.
I've suggested before that for countries which do not have an existing disambiguation nomenclature, we use standard Wikipedia format: "Paris (France)"
Someone just created "Shikoku, Japan" -- AFAIK there is no other "shikoku". There may be a need for "Shikoku, Japan" to exist, should another writer link to it, but the article should be on "Shikoku".
In general, like Lars said, phrases such as "Paris, France" are poor style. If the context is not already clear from the article -- "French composer, born in Paris" for instance -- it is better to write "Paris, in France" or even "Paris (France)".
I agree that "Shikoku" is sufficient, assuming it's the only place of that name. But by what standard is "Paris (France)" better style in an English sentence than "Paris, France"? If there's need to specify what city called Paris you mean, "Paris, France" is normal English usage. "Paris (France)" is not common English usage, and in fact, taken as a model, risks other confusion: someone might reasonably write that "So-and-so was born in Christiana ([[Oslo]])", meaning not that Christiana is in Oslo, but that the two names refer to the same place.
Vicki, who lives in New York, New York, not in New York (New York).