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

Cyrl vs. Cyrs
Can it be made clear that this vote applies only to Cyrl (i.e. modern Cyrillic) and not to Cyrs (i.e. Early Cyrillic)? —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 18:10, 29 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Is it better now? 18:21, 29 June 2014 (UTC)
 * You mean with "If italics look bad in particular fonts, then the fonts are what should be addressed, rather than the italic styling"? No, because that implies we should be encouraging italic-friendly fonts for Cyrs, which we shouldn't be. For Cyrs we should be encouraging fonts that look like the images at Early Cyrillic, e.g. Dilyana, and those are not italic-friendly. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 19:07, 29 June 2014 (UTC)
 * I think CodeCat's change already clarifies that ("Voting on: Whether to allow modern (not old) Cyrillic-script text to appear in italics in the same situations that Latin-script text does."). --WikiTiki89 19:41, 29 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Okay, I missed that. With "modern (not old)" my concerns have been addressed. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 20:15, 29 June 2014 (UTC)


 * I oppose explicitly mentioning technical details such as script codes in the vote. If at some point in the future we decide to do away with script codes in favor of some other system (or to simply rename script codes), we don't want to invalidate this vote. --WikiTiki89 15:41, 30 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Wiki, we could stop using ISO codes, but we cannot change what they mean as of the date of this vote. They are not a technical detail, they are an unambiguous reference to the mentioned scripts – may as well not use the names of the scripts, in case we decide to do away with them. But go ahead and edit the text as you see fit. —Michael Z. 2014-06-30 22:53 z 
 * ISO language codes are almost part of our front end and even serve as universal disambiguators between languages. The script codes are just a technical detail that allow us to pick the correct font for a language. We could even merge Cyrl and Armn, two entirely different scripts, if we found fonts that handle both equally well (which is not so far-fetched). Anyway, are you satisfied with my edit? --WikiTiki89 23:07, 30 June 2014 (UTC)


 * I know what script codes are and how they can be used by software. But I was using their names in English sentences. Anyway, your wordier version says exactly the same thing, so I won’t object. —Michael Z. 2014-07-01 18:05 z 

Reason against
I think the reason we italicize English terms in templates like or  is to indicate they are mentioned rather than used, much like as if we used quotations marks. For terms in non-Latin scripts, a confusion between mention and use cannot arise in this English Wiktionary, and the difference in script is large enough to differentiate the describing language (English) from the language being talked about on the script-level, which is impossible for e.g. Spanish. So I think the reason to italicize does not apply. When this is combined with the principle that text should be typographically simple unless function requires otherwise, this leads to avoiding italics for non-latin scripts in templates like and, including Cyrillic. --Dan Polansky (talk) 19:56, 29 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Cyrillic can easily be confused for Latin: орех. --WikiTiki89 20:01, 29 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Good point. Nonetheless, Cyrillic usually is not confused with Latin, right? --Dan Polansky (talk) 20:06, 29 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Mentioned words are visually distinguished for the reader to clarify, even in Latin text. Without italics, some Cyrillic mentions may look closer to the running text than italicized Latin mentions, potentially slowing the reader down or causing momentary confusion. And then there probably are rare cases where a Cyrillic word or abbreviation is indistinguishable from Latin, where the lack of italics might really perplex. —Michael Z. 2014-06-29 22:58 z 
 * Mentioned Cyrillic words always have language specified, transliteration to Latin and often meaning gloss, so there can be no confusion. Cyrillic орех should never be linked as орех, but instead using one of the intended templates such as or . --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 14:33, 12 July 2014 (UTC)


 * They don’t always, and that doesn’t necessarily eliminate confusion. Glosses don’t help distinguish a term’s script. Terms may appear without transliteration, for example, in repeated mentions in extended etymologies, usage notes, or other explanatory text.


 * We can consistently compare the near-homographs mope and море, but potentially confuse the reader by juxtaposing cop and сор, which visually contrast for no discernible reason. —Michael Z. 2014-07-14 15:39 z 


 * We also italicise text in usage examples, so this proposal applies to them as well. 20:08, 29 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Right, but it is part and parcel of the proposal as currently written that it applies also to (via "modern (not old) Cyrillic-script text to appear in italics in the same situations that Latin-script text does"). --Dan Polansky (talk) 20:10, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

Quotations
I presume that this proposal would not affect quotations of Cyrillic text, where a source’s original formatting should be reproduced. Perhaps this should be mentioned explicitly. —Michael Z. 2014-06-29 22:59 z 
 * The vote specifically mentions the inhibition of any italic text, so it's implied that anything that's currently marked up as italic will be displayed so. 23:16, 29 June 2014 (UTC)


 * It’s not implied. The proposal is to remove the current suppression of italics by templates. As far as I know, this doesn’t affect quotations in any practical way.


 * But if the proposal is unclear, then its failure to pass could be interpreted to contradict WT:QUOTE, which specifically mentions the reproduction of “most typography as it is in the source” and says “If a word or phrase appears italicized in the original text, then replicate that styling.” Although it is not implied at all, I’m sure some editors would infer it and we would have endless arguments. —Michael Z. 2014-06-29 23:37 z 
 * The suppression is done by CSS, templates have no part in it. With that knowledge, it's implicit that any change to the CSS will affect Cyrillic text anywhere on Wiktionary regardless of how it's produced. 23:59, 29 June 2014 (UTC)


 * But language-specific CSS in Wiktionary usually depends on templates to tag text according to its language. Do quotations get put into such templates? I’ve looked at some Russian and Serbo-Croatian citations, and most seem to be just naked text.


 * I don’t think our current convention of avoiding Cyrillic italics is meant to apply to quotations. —Michael Z. 2014-06-30 06:10 z 


 * I think what Michael is getting at is that currently italicizing words in quotations is impossible for Cyrillic: печатный, курсив (the second word should be in Italics). --WikiTiki89 15:40, 30 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Yes, although from my 5-minute survey it looks far more likely that a quotation will look like “печатный, курсив,” because it is in no template at all. So what’s impossible is making all Cyrillic quotations render consistently, unless this vote passes. —Michael Z. 2014-06-30 23:14 z 

native use convention
It's absurd how the rationale suggests that italicization is a native use convention, when failing to mention that it does make sense to italicize mentioned Cyrillic words inside Cyrillic text, but it doesn't make sense to italicize mentioned Cyrillic words inside the running English text. I've looked up some dozen books on Cyrillic-written languages in English on Google Books, and Cyrillic words are never italicized when mentioned. Is there any precedent for this large-scale attack on legibility of Cyrillic on Wiktionary? --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 14:48, 12 July 2014 (UTC)
 * This book is in my possession and it does use italic Cyrillic when mentioning Slavic words in an English-language text, but inconsistently. The author can't quite decide between italic Cyrillic, roman Cyrillic, and italic Latin transliteration. I think the reasoning is that italicizing Cyrillic doesn't reduce its legibility, since anyone capable of reading Cyrillic at all is capable of reading it in italics. I'm not sure that that's true, but that's what the reasoning is. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 16:28, 12 July 2014 (UTC)
 * I wonder, does Carlton's book properly italicize Serbo-Croatian б г д п, т ? They should look like this. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 00:42, 13 July 2014 (UTC)
 * I don't think he ever presents Serbo-Croatian in Cyrillic, only Latin. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 06:03, 13 July 2014 (UTC)

I asked Hrach Martirosyan about the accepted practice in academic linguistic literature. He says some authorities, such as Lubotsky (the editor of the IEED series), Gamkrelidze/Ivanov, Beekes, claim Greek in English text should not be italicized for the reasons given above. On the other hand, he himself and many others (Mallory/Adams, Szemerenyi, Clackson, Olsen, etc.) prefer to italicize Greek because of uniformity and because there is no reason not to. The same goes for Armenian. I agree with this. For a native reader the non-uniformity of style is throwing off. --Vahag (talk) 17:02, 12 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Greek doesn't have italics. There's no such thing as italics in the Greek alphabet. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 17:18, 12 July 2014 (UTC)
 * This vote is about Cyrillic not Greek. I've never seen Cyrillic words italicized in English text. Wiktionary should adopt the established practice in the literature and not invent its own set of conventions based on intangible goals such as uniformity. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 00:42, 13 July 2014 (UTC)


 * Yeah, Greek is kind of irrelevant. Cyrillic has letterforms and typographic conventions strongly influenced by Latin in ways that Greek and other scripts do not. —Michael Z. 2014-07-14 17:20 z 

Some English texts do italicize Cyrillic mentioned terms and letters:


 * Kubijovyč’s Ukraine: A Concise Encyclopædia, in its articles on language and orthography.
 * Rudnyckyj’s Etymological Dictionary of the Ukrainian Language (available for download in .djvu), has Ukrainian headwords set in bold, alternative forms in roman, but italicizes mentions of words in various languages in Latin and modern Cyrillic script. Mentions of Old East Slavic and Middle Ukrainian words are set in modern Cyrillic font (presumably for lack of Slavonic types), but not italicized (italics would be alien to these languages). Greek mentions are rendered in italicized transliteration. (Only the first volume and part of of the second are typeset; the remainder is a mix of typescript and clippings.)

Anectodally, when reading the Encyclopædia I was initially puzzled by one unfamiliar italic Cyrillic letter. But if not for this, I would still have no clue what the small letter yat (Ѣ, ѣ) looks like in proper italics.

Also, incidentally, many other academic publications romanize old Slavic languages in italics, including italicized Cyrillic ь and ъ for the reduced vowels (the yers. —Michael Z. 2014-07-14 17:20 z 
 * Yet another reason that yat is my favorite letter. I've been practicing my Russian cursive with pre-reform orthography and still can't get my yats to look natural. Also, I do not think your last point is of any relevance, but incidentally, we do this to for Proto-Slavic: . --WikiTiki89 17:45, 14 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Both sources are from 1960s. Anything modern? Can we safely conclude that italicization of mentioned Cyrillic words in English text is not an established scholarly and non-scholarly convention? --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 10:17, 15 July 2014 (UTC)


 * Rudnyckyj was published over the period 1962/’72/’82.


 * Ivan, it’s difficult to find any relevant examples at all. Most English writing mentions foreign-script words in transliteration, and style guides give little help (the Chicago Manual shows cursive Cyrillic in its table of Russian letters, but doesn’t give advice on italicizing it).


 * The usage varies widely. Some set example text in ordinary upright letters, others by bolding it or putting it in brackets or guillemets, or both. And even fewer sources mention both Latin and Cyrillic terms. But I am seeing examples of Cyrillic script mentions in italics:


 * Timberlake (2004) A Reference Grammar of Russian, p 23: “Despite the spelling «ся», palatalization is now rare in the reflexive particle in the present tense and the masculine past (рвётся [ryó̡tsə], бра́лся ‘undertook’ [brálsə]).”
 * Kempgen (2008), “Unicode 5.1, Old Church Slavonic, Remaining Problems – and Solutions, including OpenType Features, p 7–8: “Let us give an example: The famous Rila Monastery (Bulgarian: Рилски Манастир) is called Рыльский монастырь in Russian. [...] As you can see here, although Рыльский certainly is one single word, its encoding actually consists of two strings of characters broken up by a punctuation symbol, if the curly quote is being used to transliterate the soft sign.


 * It’s not true that Cyrillic is never mentioned in italics, although it often is not. —Michael Z. 2014-07-17 17:39 z 
 * Yeah, one book out of 100 does it. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 11:51, 20 July 2014 (UTC)