Talk:third-person singular

Deletion debate
Sum of parts, no better than masculine plural, masculine singular etc. I think these might have already been at RFD but they are used in a lot of pages that use conjugation templates. I'd advocate a bot going round and changing them to [[first-person]] [[plural]]. PS will tag some more of these now. Mglovesfun (talk) 23:23, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep, set phrase; though maybe an only in glossary would be adequate. Conrad.Irwin 23:25, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
 * We could start an article for first-person dual for languages that have that. Mglovesfun (talk) 23:34, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
 * No other one-look dictionary has them. But here Anything Goes unless a newbie does it. DCDuring TALK 23:57, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep all - no other dictionary has them because we are better than other dictionaries (or, at least, we have the potential to be). SemperBlotto 08:28, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
 * But what's the advantage over [[first-person]] [[plural]] as two links? Mglovesfun (talk) 15:33, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Firstly the definitions are much clearer than trying to juggle first-person (took me a while to work out that all it meant to say was "alternative form of first person") with singular; secondly these phrases appear all over the place, it is very likely someone will look them up together. What is the advantage of [[first-person]] [[plural]]? Conrad.Irwin 15:43, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Both words meet our CFI, this seems not to (not even close). Mglovesfun (talk) 15:45, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Common sense always overrules ``policy´´ (and ideally fixes the policy at the same time, but not so much at the moment), the policy was written by people like you and me who, with finite capacity for correctness are liable to have made mistakes. So, I ask again, what is the advantage of having only the two words separately? Conrad.Irwin 15:51, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
 * To put it another way, do either you or SemperBlotto think that these meet our criteria for inclusion? Because neither of you has said that. Mglovesfun (talk) 13:49, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes. It's a word or phrase that someone would come across and want to know what it means. To me, it somehow seems to mean more than the sum of its parts (but I don't know why). SemperBlotto 13:54, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I have no idea whether it actually does, I haven't read that page in detail for ages, but, if it doesn't the policy is at fault and not the word (which to my mind clearly conveys a distinct meaning, is frequetnly used and is (as I've heard used in previous RFD debates, though never defined) a "set phrase"). For further reading see WT:IDIOM, a list of words that have passed RFD, but no-one's entirely sure why. Do you believe it would be better for the dictionary to delete these words, if so, why? Conrad.Irwin 13:58, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Basically because we shouldn't keep stuff that's not dictionary material just because it would be difficult to remove all links towards. It's hard to be neutral when you know that. If I created first-person dual, nominative singular and common plural would you want to RFD them or not? Not rhetoric, please answer. Mglovesfun (talk) 14:02, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't know what these terms mean - please define them SemperBlotto 22:31, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
 * I would not RFD them, obviously they fall into the same category as this word which I want to keep... Conrad.Irwin 22:36, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Delete all. SoP. --Yair rand 23:50, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, delete. &#x200b;— msh210 ℠ 17:00, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Kept all, no consensus. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:35, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

Initialism
The initialism of "third-person singular" is "3PS". --User123o987name (talk) 08:22, 2 February 2019 (UTC)

RFD discussion: June 2022–July 2023

 * See Talk:first-person singular.