Wiktionary:Votes/2014-06/Allowing Cyrillic to be italicized

Allowing Cyrillic to be italicized

 * Voting on: Whether to allow modern Cyrillic-script text (corresponding to script code "Cyrl") to appear in italics in the same situations that Latin-script text does. This proposal does not affect the old Cyrillic script (corresponding to script code "Cyrs"), used by languages such as Old Church Slavonic.

Currently, all scripts except Latin and Armenian have italicness inhibited, so that they never appear italic even with templates that would italicize text, such as. For the majority of scripts, this is desirable, as they are not written natively in italics, and would therefore look odd and unnatural. However, for Cyrillic the situation is different; it is written in italics natively, much like Latin script. It is proposed to remove the inhibition of italic styling on Cyrillic text.

Rationales:
 * Wiktionary writes languages in their usual scripts to follow native use conventions. For Cyrillic, the use of italics is also a native use convention, so it makes sense to follow these conventions so that text appears more natural.
 * Italic Cyrillic may confuse non-native readers who are not familiar with it, but for non-native readers we already offer transliterations. If the unusual appearance of italic Cyrillic is a problem, it can be argued that the appearance of Cyrillic itself (or any other script) is equally a problem to those who cannot read it.
 * Using the native script is useful to language learners, as it helps them get used to seeing the language written as it would normally be. As the normal written form of Cyrillic-script languages includes italics, allowing Cyrillic text to be italicised on Wiktionary also helps language learners, by exposing them to the typographical variety that can be expected in native text.
 * If italics look bad in particular fonts, then the fonts are what should be addressed, rather than the italic styling. Wiktionary currently exercises little control over fonts; some users may see text in very different fonts, and there is no guarantee that things will look right regardless of script.


 * Vote starts: 00:01, 12 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Vote ends: 23:59, 10 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Vote created: 17:54, 29 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Discussion:
 * [[Image:Wikt rei-artur3.svg|20px]] Grease pit/2014/June
 * [[Image:Wikt rei-artur3.svg|20px]] Beer parlour/2013/July
 * [[Image:Wikt rei-artur3.svg|20px]] Wiktionary talk:Votes/2014-06/Allowing Cyrillic to be italicized

Support

 * 1)   14:01, 12 July 2014 (UTC)
 * 2)   --Vahag (talk) 14:10, 12 July 2014 (UTC)
 * 3)  --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 14:18, 12 July 2014 (UTC)
 * 4) Support, my rationale being mostly "Cyrillic has italic type too, learn it if you do not know it yet and get used to it". — Keφr 14:28, 12 July 2014 (UTC)
 * I do not think a rationale proper can have the form of an imperative. The tone of the rationale is one of an arrogant bureaucrat who can tell users to adapt (at their cost) or sod off without taking their genuine interests and problems into his account, such as lack of proper font support. --Dan Polansky (talk) 22:48, 25 July 2014 (UTC)
 * 1)  Even though it is not entirely necessary to maintain use-mention distinction, it still helps maintain use-mention distinction. I do not see any strong enough reason against italicization, such as those applying to the Hebrew, Arabic, or Greek scripts. Regardless of the outcome of this vote, I think italics should be allowed in quotations of text that use italics. --WikiTiki89 15:34, 12 July 2014 (UTC)
 * It doesn't help anybody because nobody will confuse ordinary Cyrillic for Latin. Reasons against are illegibility and lack of fonts, and there are zero reasons for. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 15:39, 12 July 2014 (UTC)
 * For words like, the only thing that sets it apart from the Latin text is the transliteration in parentheses, and the fact that for some reason our Cyrillic font is slightly larger than the Latin one, but this might (and should) change. The hypothetical illegibility is not a strong enough reason for me, and the lack of fonts is simply a myth. --WikiTiki89 22:32, 13 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Cyrillic words always have language name prepended and transliteration specified - to suggest that e.g. "Russian " would be misinterpreted by naive readers as two consecutive Latin-script letters is to insult intelligence of the reader. Even if they thought for a fraction of the second that "а" is a Latin-script word, the language name and the italicized transcription - a scheme widely used on the Wiktionary would dispel that notion faster that it can penetrate into higher level of consciousness. In other words, even if it is mistaken by plain visual automatism, it's ignored once the entire sentence is understood.
 * For fonts - pray tell how to properly italicize Serbo-Croatian б г д п, т. Serbo-Croatian combining accent marks on non-italicized Cyrillic are already placed wrong (not above the letters where they should be), when italicized words look completely illegible. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 07:54, 14 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Be careful with the word "always". Consider the hypothetical usage note: This word is often replaced with . As for fonts, point taken. However, I do not think this is a reason to block the italicization of all the other languages that are fully supported. Perhaps Serbo-Croatian and whichever other languages have the same problems (Macedonian?) should have a temporary exception until proper fonts are available. (Side note: I often find in SC Cyrillic texts that б is italicized the same way as in Russian, however this does not apply to the other letters.) --WikiTiki89 14:34, 14 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Hypothetical usage note applicable to 0.000001% of all words in Cyrillic. It should be turned off by default for all languages except for those that are specifically voted. These kind of votes that introduce substantial changes into many unrelated languages are illegitimate. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 10:20, 15 July 2014 (UTC)
 * 1)  — Ungoliant (falai) 17:01, 13 July 2014 (UTC)
 * 2)  Ƿidsiþ 16:55, 15 July 2014 (UTC)
 * 3)  really, I don't see a reason to not do it. If you can't read italicized Cyrillic, why are you even bothering with it? -- Liliana • 11:33, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

Oppose

 * 1)  The purpose of italicization is to mantain use-mention distinction, which there is no need for when Cyrillic words are  embedded in English text. Armenian should be deitalicized as well. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 14:28, 12 July 2014 (UTC)
 * 2)  to automatic italicization, for the reason just explained, and because it may make it less legible to some people. But manual italicization should be allowed nonetheless, because there are exceptions, e.g. 1. when the word seems to be written in the Latin script when not italicized, 2. when there are italicized words in a quotation, italicization should be kept. Lmaltier (talk) 15:49, 12 July 2014 (UTC)
 * 3)  --Dijan (talk) 16:29, 15 July 2014 (UTC)
 * 4)  Seemed an obvious "support" when I came along, but reading the discussion, I'm inclined to say "no" for the moment, in the absence of stronger modern evidence. This, that and the other (talk) 10:07, 17 July 2014 (UTC)
 * What is "stronger modern evidence"? --WikiTiki89 13:42, 17 July 2014 (UTC)
 * 99% of recently published works don't italicize Cyrillic when mentioned in English. It's an early 20th-century convention still practiced only by old, nostalgic folks. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 11:49, 20 July 2014 (UTC)
 * 1)  -- Maria Sieglinda von Nudeldorf (talk) 18:08, 20 July 2014 (UTC)
 * 2) . Serbian Cyrillic Italic.svg Avoid italics especially where Cyrillic appears in lists of cognates in terms written in Latin. I expect there to be many people with only basic knowledge of Cyrillic who can fairly easily read non-italic Cyrillic (e.g. in lists of cognates in entries of their native language) but who cannot easily read italic Cyrillic. As for the provided rationale:
 * Re: "If the unusual appearance of italic Cyrillic is a problem, it can be argued that the appearance of Cyrillic itself (or any other script) is equally a problem to those who cannot read it.": It seems to be saying that if Cyrillic is already hard, making it even harder is therefore okay. (If a car is already expensive, making it even more expensive is therefore okay? If a piece of user interface is hard to use, making it even harder to use is therefore okay?) That is rather unconvincing.
 * Re: "If italics look bad in particular fonts, then the fonts are what should be addressed [...]": The proposer has no way of ensuring that the font problem actually gets solved; this is just a cheap dismissal of a real problem. It's like a programmer who chooses a library and when it does not work, ships the program anyway, and when the users complain, the programmer claims innocence and blames the library. It's simply irresponsible.
 * --Dan Polansky (talk) 17:14, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

Abstain

 * 1)  As long as Early Cyrillic is not italicized, I don't care one way or the other whether Modern Cyrillic is italicized or not. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 14:19, 12 July 2014 (UTC)
 * 2)  I’m fine with either way. --Æ&#38;Œ (talk) 19:34, 13 July 2014 (UTC)

Decision

 * Fails 8–6-2 (50%). --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 14:42, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
 * It's actually 57%. Abstains don't count towards the decision. —CodeCat 14:43, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Correct, 57%. --Dan Polansky (talk) 14:45, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
 * If this fails, please advise a code to force italic Cyrillic in my personal css. --Vahag (talk) 15:52, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
 * We also need to make sure that quotations of Cyrillic support explicit italicization. --WikiTiki89 16:06, 12 August 2014 (UTC)