[Wikipedia-l] Re: City, state convention

[tarquin]

  Daniel Mayer wrote:

>On Saturday 13 July 2002 12:01 pm,  tarquin wrote:
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>>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)".
>>    
>>
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>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

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