Tech, emailconfirmed, Administrators
38,093
edits
Forum:Etc. vs et al.: Difference between revisions
From Tardis Wiki, the free Doctor Who reference
no edit summary
m (Protected "Forum:Etc. vs et al." ([Edit=Allow only administrators] (indefinite) [Move=Allow only administrators] (indefinite))) |
No edit summary Tag: thread closure |
||
| Line 1: | Line 1: | ||
{{ | {{archive}} | ||
== Proposal == | == Proposal == | ||
Policy currently says, | Policy currently says, | ||
| Line 93: | Line 93: | ||
:::: See, to me, their "view" ''is'' explaining conventional usage? And due to that I find it far more intuitive, whereas the usage of "etc" in citations seems confusing to me. I wonder if this is a dialectal thing… [[User:Chubby Potato|Chubby Potato]] [[User talk:Chubby Potato|<span title="Talk to me">☎</span>]] | :::: See, to me, their "view" ''is'' explaining conventional usage? And due to that I find it far more intuitive, whereas the usage of "etc" in citations seems confusing to me. I wonder if this is a dialectal thing… [[User:Chubby Potato|Chubby Potato]] [[User talk:Chubby Potato|<span title="Talk to me">☎</span>]] | ||
== Conclusion == | |||
<div class="tech" > | |||
There's too much prescripting going on around here, and not enough describing. There is widespread precedent that our policies take a kind of "descriptivism with guardrails" approach; indeed, at a broader scale than mere grammar, it's the essence of the spirit of the updated [[T:BOUND]]. Our manual of style takes notes of what our editing base ''naturally trends'' towards doing, and then codifies that in a coherent way that can then be applied consistently. That's how we got many of our foundational policies, from [[Tardis:Doctors]] to [[Tardis:Italics]], and it seems to me wholly unacceptable to suddenly turn to dour-faced, dictionary-worshipping prescriptivists in the face of an extremely widespread, bespoke usage. | |||
In short '''this thread, and others like it, should not ever ask "what do grammatical authorities say is the correct style?" but "what do ''we'', the sole authority which matters here, say is correct for our purposes?"'''. If the sole argument against "et al." is that some people in Oxford would frown at it, let them strain their eyebrows 'till they drop off. I frankly don't believe that using "et al." for inanimates (which, on top of everything else, ''is'' correct in the eye of the Vaunted Authorities on the basis of the ''et alibi'' thing! either you're pedantically sticking to the letter of the law in the face of common usage, or you aren't!) is going to be confusing to the casual reader. It's an imaginary problem. We've never had a complaint saying "but why do you say (TV: ''Thing'', ''Anothe Thing'', et al.) as if you're citing people as well as stories? I thought you only cited stories here?". It's not a real misunderstanding. | |||
The important thing however is that '''we don't have to choose'''. As per [[User:NateBumber]]'s original OP and [[User:Chubby Potato]]'s discovery, one common descriptive rule-of-thumb about how ''et al.'' and ''etc.' are used gives the two different, ''distinvt'' meanings: | |||
* '''"etc." should be used to mean "and so on and so forth", "and more of the above"'''; the reader either knows, or can easily figure out with a bit of digging, what additional sources we are alluding to, because they form a continuity with the few we do cite. | |||
:::''For example:'' "The [[First Doctor]] then began to travel with [[Ian Chesterton]] and [[Barbara Wright]] through Time and Space. ([[TV]]: {{cs|An Unearthly Child (TV story)}}, {{cs|The Dead Planet (TV story)}}, {{cs|The Edge of Destruction (TV story)}}, etc." | |||
* '''"et al." should be used to mean "and various other sources"'''; the sources are scattered and eclectic, and although they are too numerous to name, have nothing more in common than that they all support the claim being cited (something which, I hasten to establish, it would be ''entirely'' too tautological to use as grounds to say they form a coherent class and are thus worth the "etc"). | |||
:::''For example:'' "The Doctor faced [[vampire]]s on many occasions. ([[TV]]: {{cs|State of Decay (TV story)}}, [[COMIC]]: {{cs|Blood Invocation (comic story)}}, [[PROSE]]: {{cs|Goth Opera (novel)}}, et al.)" | |||
These are genuinely different use cases! We might use one somewhat more frequently than the other in practice, but Nate's OP, having gotten this far, entirely fails to make a case for why this should be considered an unacceptable "hodgepodge" as opposed to two different kinds of citations which each have their rightful use-cases. '''We shouldn't ban "etc." any more than we should keep "et al." ''verboten'''''; [[T:CITE]] will be uploaded to outline that each has its own whens and when-nots, codifying the intuitive rules which most of the editing base is already following. | |||
(The idea of linking to appearances section and whatnot ''instead'' of either etc. or et al. is, it should go without saying, rejected with prejudice. I respect the out-of-the-box thinking, but this is miles away from common practice and would break up sentence flow something awful.) --[[User:Scrooge MacDuck|Scrooge MacDuck]] [[User talk:Scrooge MacDuck|<span title="Talk to me">☎</span>]] 14:14, 8 September 2024 (UTC) | |||
</div> | |||
[[Category:Policy changers]] | |||
