Daniel Mayer wrote:
On Saturday 13 July 2002 12:01 pm, tarquin wrote:
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've never seen "Paris in France" used a noun before. And the chances of [[Paris (France)]] being linked to without using pipes is about nil. This perhaps isn't a good example because [[Paris]] redirects to [[Paris, France]] since the city in France is far and away the most widely used meaning of simply [[Paris]].
That's because "Paris in France" isn't a noun. "Paris" is a noun, "in France" is an adjective phrase. I think we are in the throes of culture shock here. "Paris, France" seems normal to Americans because that's the nomenclature system you are accustomed to for US cities. I don't know if it's the case, but to me it seems that that Americans are used to considering the "city, state" expression as a complete name. Like Lars said, to Europeans it feels very bizarre.
Something like "Paris in France" or "Paris (France)" indeed wouldn't be seen, it's a bad example. The context of the article should make it clear. In both France and the UK, places have their county or departement specified in parentheses: "Courgenard (Sarthe)", for example, or "Southampton (Hampshire)"
I guess we're stuck with the "," style for cities now it's prevalent, but let's not say it's for consistency: true consistency would be "( )" for ALL disambiguation pages.
Also, when a person visits [[Paris, France]] the disambiguation block at the top of the article makes it very clear that [[Paris]] redirects to that article (a link to other uses is provided there too).
As I said, why waste the "Paris" page on a redirect?
The trouble is, that new contributors tend to first follow famous examples before looking into [[wikipedia:naming conventions]]
perhaps it would help if the naming conventions weren't such a mess. I spent ages there looking for information when I first started writing, as I was anxious to follow the established conventions -- hence my recent suggestions to refactor that area -- which I'm still mulling over.
tarquin