Category talk:English terms spelled with …

Category:Thai terms spelled with …
None of these terms are actually spelled with an ellipsis. Entries like and  use the ellipsis as a placeholder to indicate where a word would go, but that doesn't have anything to do with how these terms are spelled. Binarystep (talk) 00:46, 19 June 2022 (UTC)


 * Delete, and potentially also delete Category:Translingual terms spelled with … too - it only has 3 members and they are already well linked among themselves. This, that and the other (talk) 03:05, 19 June 2022 (UTC)


 * Unless any have a genuine term that is spelt with an ellipsis, then delete (so keep the Translingual one). Theknightwho (talk) 16:28, 19 June 2022 (UTC)
 * These category names could be read by a normal human as, eg, English terms spelled with [any character|any string]. We could either rename the ones we choose to retain as, eg, English terms spelled with "..." or make them hidden categories. DCDuring (talk) 16:43, 19 June 2022 (UTC)
 * I have been considering that we need to rename some of these anyway (e.g. any that are for certain combining diacritics, because the category name becomes difficult to read/select properly due to the character's behaviour). Theknightwho (talk) 16:51, 19 June 2022 (UTC)


 * Delete the categories as they currently exist/are populated (with phrases that don't actually contain ellipses when used, as Binarystep says), but if there later prove to be any terms which are actually spelled with ellipses, this RFD shouldn't be a barrier to (re)creating the category for that. I agree that we should rename some of these, maybe spelling out the name of the character wherever the bare character itself would be confusing or pose a technical problem ("English terms spelled with combining e above", etc)? - -sche (discuss) 08:42, 21 June 2022 (UTC)
 * I'd be inclined to agree with you, as I've seen terms like that would qualify if they prove to be attestable, but it feels like it'd be speculative on our part to claim they're specifically using the "…" character as opposed to three ordinary periods, especially when the latter is far more common. Unicode's single-character ellipsis is a stylistic choice, which I feel we should disregard for the same reason we don't have  as an alternate form of . Binarystep (talk) 12:28, 21 June 2022 (UTC)
 * @-sche I would suggest that we use the dotted circle that's usually used rather than spelling out the names, because that circumvents naming issues. For example, "English terms spelled with ◌̀" or whatever. Theknightwho (talk) 14:55, 21 June 2022 (UTC)
 * @Binarystep I agree with you. I don't think it's a good idea for us to be fixated on specific Unicode codepoints, which is something I've noticed people can be in these discussions from time to time. What matters is intent of use, rather than whether they specifically meant to write "…" or "...". There might be WT:MOS reasons to use one codepoint over another, but that's a totally separate issue. We ignore "ff" ligatures and such for the same reason. Theknightwho (talk) 15:11, 21 June 2022 (UTC)
 * The elephant in the room here is the fact that we're using a completely different naming format. Our infrastructure is built around pages that are named pretty much as the term is spelled in use, with the exception of removing diacritics and occasional regularization of non-alphabetic characters such as apostrophes and quotes. Normally we reserve things like placeholders to the Appendix or Reconstruction namespaces- that's the main reason we don't have snowclones in mainspace. In a way, this category is the canary in a coal mine telling us something is wrong. It's true that we're more lenient with phrasebook entries on some of the rules, but I think we should at least discuss whether this is a good idea. Chuck Entz (talk) 13:53, 21 June 2022 (UTC)
 * This also applies to affixes as well. It might be conventional for dictionaries to do it that way, but they're still an exception to the conventional naming rule. It creates two issues:
 * Ambiguity with standalone terms that actually use the hyphen. For example, is not an infix.
 * Ambiguity as to whether the hyphen is part of the affix itself (or optional). For example, differs from  in this respect. Theknightwho (talk) 15:05, 21 June 2022 (UTC)
 * It may actually not be that absurd to place affixes into a separate namespace. That would allow us to have both Affix:ex as well as Affix:ex-. &mdash; Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 15:09, 21 June 2022 (UTC)
 * I like this, particularly given that affixes occupy a slightly awkward position anyway in that they can never be used in a standalone way. I question whether they're words, but they absolutely do warrant inclusion.My main concern would be that taking them out of the mainspace would cause them to become less well-supported, and would potentially mean they get less attention.
 * Another alternative would be to use a different Unicode codepoint that is orthographically the same (i.e. has the same identity from a lexical point of view), but uses a different codepoint to prevent cross-contamination. U+2011 is the non-breaking hyphen, which feels suitable. For example: . The obvious downside being that people would make mistakes, but there is probably better choice. I've applied a similar logic to, but that doesn't have the possibility of confusion. Theknightwho (talk) 15:25, 21 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Regarding your second point, nearly any affix can be written with or without a hyphen, with the former being more common for newer or more unfamiliar terms (compare and ). Hyphens are also used a lot to avoid lowerCamelCase (see  and, which aren't often spelled  and ). Binarystep (talk) 06:08, 26 June 2022 (UTC) (edited)
 * Not really. You can't write psycho-logy, for instance. Theknightwho (talk) 06:13, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
 * That's because isn't a new or unfamiliar word, though. You can, however, write "bitch-ology" or "Star Trek-ology" (I'm aware these are one-off nonce words, but that's sort of the point I'm making). Binarystep (talk) 06:38, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
 * The point is that its etymology is still +, but it's mandatory to exclude the hyphen. Theknightwho (talk) 21:15, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
 * My point isn't that any word containing an affix can be spelled with a hyphen (which is demonstrably false), but that any affix can be written with a hyphen depending on the word. Binarystep (talk) 06:05, 28 June 2022 (UTC)
 * My point isn't that any word containing an affix can be spelled with a hyphen (which is demonstrably false), but that any affix can be written with a hyphen depending on the word. Binarystep (talk) 06:05, 28 June 2022 (UTC)

I think you guys are missing the key point. Some module somewhere is putting items in these categories. Surely we should be discussing the generation of them, and deciding what to do. Perhaps we need to change the categories to " phrase structures" or some such. That is what we should be discussing. The categories being RfDed will then naturally be deleted for being empty. --RichardW57 (talk) --19:59, 10 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Delete English, German, and Thai categories per nom, and modify whatever module is populating the categories accordingly. - excarnateSojourner (talk | contrib) 23:51, 13 November 2022 (UTC)
 * In fairness, that's more of a logistical question, whereas the discussion here is about whether we should be creating them in the first place (irrespective of the method). Theknightwho (talk) 04:53, 17 September 2022 (UTC)
 * I removed entries out of the Thai category. The “…” is the blanking points to be filled with other words; many languages here use these. (Thai has around 10s of them.) As RichardW57 said, we don't have specific category for blanking terms. I see English have “snowclones” using X/Y/Z but it yields problems: (1) The blanking terms are not always idioms (to be snowclones). They have their own specific meanings. (2) Languages just cannot use X/Y/Z because they are written in another script. --Octahedron80 (talk) 06:06, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

RFD-deleted by someone else This, that and the other (talk) 00:23, 28 September 2023 (UTC)