Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Pronunciation

☆ Save On Wikipedia ↗

Help with IPA in Italian

I'm asking the community's opinion about an Italian IPA: Margherita Hack.
According to Italian phonology, it should be [marɡeˈriːta ˈak] because in Italian the sound /h/ isn't pronounced. It may be forcedly pronounced in foreign names or words to underline their foreigness, but: 1) not for names of Italian persons (nor for stably naturalised words) even if of foreign origin; 2) a realiable source proving such a possible pronunciation must exist.
Instead, a user has been continuously adding a /h/ between parentheses for the surname Hack: [ˈ(h)ak]. His point was: every /h/ can be either pronounced or not pronounced in Italian. This is false, you can search all the articles of Wikipedia about Italian or the sources cited in the articles and you won't find anything supporting this point. He based his assertion on a footnote of the help page (Help:IPA/Italian) where it's said that "/h/ is usually dropped", which clearly means what I've explained, not what he claims. Note that this sourceless footnote was added by him years ago (and recently modified but still interpreted by him at will), exactly as the /(h)/ added to the original IPA of Hack. But a user himself isn't a source, much less a reliable source (and much less if banned from the Italian Wikipedia for his behaviour incompatible with Wikipedia itself...).
A reliable source is needed to prove that the pronunciation with /h/ is possible, but the user just added once a random YouTube video and a Forvo audio by a random person. Everyone could add any pronunciation of any Italian IPA if he goes cherry picking through the Internet to find an unreliable source which agrees with his POV. Reliable sources are for example the 2 Italian phonetic dictionaries cited in the help page, for example one certifies that "Heidi" can be pronounced with /h/ while "hotel" can't.
All I'm explaining here is explained in a discussion in the talk page of Margherita Hack, where I invited any interested user to say his opinion about this matter (i.e. the Italian pronunciation of "Hack", not the help page containing the foreing sound /h/). After the interested users who joined there had said that they disagreed with the banned user's arguments, he decided by his own to fully remove the IPA which had been there for a decade. Such an attitude is precisely what caused his indefinite ban from Italian Wikipedia, as well as his temporary bans in English Wikipedia (one still active as of today). That's why I've opened a new discussion here, to verify whether a consensus about the IPA of this Italian scientist can be reached and, overall, applied regardless of the banned user's will.
I'd like to thank in advance any user who'll join this discussion and say his opinion. ~2026-61325-0 (talk) 21:39, 28 January 2026 (UTC)
@AjaxSmack, Kelisi, Muchness, Double sharp, Anonymous44, Gawaon, WorldClassChampion, Sol505000, Nixinova, and Wolfdog: ~2026-79308-5 (talk) 20:51, 4 February 2026 (UTC)

Can't help as I'm not that familiar with Italian, apart from general pronunciation rules and allophony. I don't think bringing up Ivan's ban on Italian Wiki (or his article ban regarding Luigi Mangione) is productive, let's focus on the IPA. I'd err on the side of descriptivism. If hardly anybody pronounces it, let's not transcribe it. Sol505000 (talk) 20:55, 4 February 2026 (UTC)
In my opinion, it all boils down to how Hack pronounced her own name. Do we know about that? I don't speak Italian myself, but I was under the impression that the H is never pronounced in Italian and that its main function in Italian orthography was to show that a preceding C or G was hard before an E or I (for example in gnocchi or Lamborghini). If Hack was italophone, and not a German speaker from the South Tyrol or something, then she likely didn't say /h/ at the beginning of her last name. Furthermore, I would be inclined to expect that some italophones would insert a superfluous vowel sound at the end of the name Hack because – correct me if I'm wrong – a final /k/ sound is not something that happens in Italian phonology. But I shall restate my main point: the defining pronunciation should be the one that Hack herself used. Can we find out what that was? Kelisi (talk) 21:11, 4 February 2026 (UTC)
Guidelines also provide a path, here MOS:IPAINTEGRITY ("[I]f the language you're transcribing has such an IPA key, use the conventions of that key. ... Creating transcriptions unsupported by the key or changing the key so that it no longer conforms to existing transcriptions will confuse readers."). Help:IPA/Italian includes /h/, but as a "non-native consonant." Margherita Hack (and her parents) were Italian, so using a non-native sound for her name is a big stretch unless sources can be found where she uses that pronunciation herself or where it is widely and consistently used by other Italian speakers. —  AjaxSmack  21:33, 4 February 2026 (UTC)
"Hack" is not an Italian word, so we may simply not know how she and her family pronounced/pronounces it? Unless we have reliable sources indicating a specific pronunciation, we shouldn't invent something, so omitting pronunciation information seems the best course of action here, I'd say. Gawaon (talk) 21:42, 4 February 2026 (UTC)
The article says her father is of "Protestant Swiss origin", which would suggest the German pronunciation /hak/. But of course, after coming to Italy they might have dropped the /h/. Or not. Without explicit information on this, we shouldn't guess. Gawaon (talk) 21:51, 4 February 2026 (UTC)
"Origin" does not necessarily mean "born" and the Italian article has a referenced statement of "Florentine of distant Swiss origins". No mention of German is there. Just find a couple of videos like this and be done with it. —  AjaxSmack  03:32, 5 February 2026 (UTC)
Good point, that video certainly supports the pronunciation [marɡeˈriːta ˈak], as does this one. So unless there's conflicting evidence, that's the way to go. Gawaon (talk) 09:40, 5 February 2026 (UTC)
Well, if you'd like to listen to Margherita Hack pronouncing her own surname you can hear her here: (spoiler: she says [ˈak]; she doesn't say [ˈhak]). Her surname might be of foreign origin but it's been "italianised" since her family moved to Italy. Adding /(h)/ is just that vandal's mental w...ell, you know. ~2026-61325-0 (talk) 21:00, 5 February 2026 (UTC)
Alright, that settles it in favour of [ˈak], I'd say. Links to the videos (especially that one) could be added as sources, if needed. Gawaon (talk) 21:11, 5 February 2026 (UTC)
I'm glad to read that! Just a pair of problems: the page is protected so that only experienced users are allowed to modify it, but even if somebody who can do it adds the correct iPA the vandal will immediately remove it (as he's been doing during the last weeks against the consensus expressed by all the other users who joined the discussion in the talk page). Isn't there anything we can do to insert the "correct" IPA? ~2026-61325-0 (talk) 21:00, 6 February 2026 (UTC)
Yeah, okay, call me a vandal with a mental illness. I supposed WP:PA has gone into the dustbin. ~ IvanScrooge98 (talk) 21:57, 6 February 2026 (UTC)
Pardon, since when a user who's been indefinititely blocked, even if not globally but just locally, can't be called "vandal"? I suggest that "you" read Wikipedia:Vandalism instead. Now, is "nord" an Italian word? Is it read according to Italian phonology? And is it a French borrowing, right? Yes. So, according to your argument, we should transcribe it as /ˈnɔr(d)/ because in French the <d> isn't read and the fact that we use this French word in Italian doesn't mean that we must exclude the original pronunciation, even if Italian themselves pronounce it with the /d/. The same goes for "sud". And, being in the English version of Wikipedia, the same goes for "water": in Italian we use this word as a short form of "water closet" and we read it /ˈvater/. Guys, do you think that for this English borrowing in Italian we should transcribe both the English and the Italian pronunciation even if we Italians pronounce it only according to "our" phonology and we'd even laugh at another Italian who pronounces it in English? The vandal (pardon, the user who's been indefinititely blocked on his original Wikipedia after a series of temporary blocks for: reiterated attacks, e-mail insults, abuse of project pages and talk pages, uncooperative behaviour, rejection of ArbCom deliberations; in short "clearly not being here to build an encyclopedia") thinks so... What about you? @AjaxSmack, Kelisi, and Sol505000: ~2026-83667-7 (talk) 08:22, 7 February 2026 (UTC)
Since you ask, I would say that Marzia Garavaglia's video settles it. My contention was that the defining point would be how Margherita Hack said her own last name, and in that upload, we hear her herself say /'ak/. So there. Voilà. Settled. Live with it. I have nothing further to say on the matter. Kelisi (talk) 17:18, 7 February 2026 (UTC)
Thanks ~2026-83667-7 (talk) 18:55, 7 February 2026 (UTC)
Once more, please refrain from personal attacks or you might be the one to find themselves blocked. Also this issue was about one specific name and now broadening it to totally unrelated words is not helpful. Let's stick to the original issue – the pronunciation of Margherita Hack – which is now hopefully resolved or close to being resolved. Gawaon (talk) 09:13, 7 February 2026 (UTC)
I'm sorry if I've gone too far, I thought that talking about "facts" wouldn't be reprehensible. However, I've seen that the issue has been solved correctly, thankfully! I've got nothing more to say about it. ~2026-83667-7 (talk) 12:44, 7 February 2026 (UTC)
Also, congratulations on carefully avoiding pinging me when I obviously should have been involved in this discussion. ~ IvanScrooge98 (talk) 21:59, 6 February 2026 (UTC)
Sorry for that, but it's not too late yet! The case seems pretty clear though, since we have three videos all showing the same pronunciation. So that's the one to use, right? Gawaon (talk) 22:01, 6 February 2026 (UTC)
It wasn’t directed at you, but at the one who opened this discussion, who is most likely the same guy who took it personally from the beginning. As I mentioned elsewhere, of course her own pronunciation is more relevant, but it doesn’t mean other pronunciations are wrong. ~ IvanScrooge98 (talk) 22:03, 6 February 2026 (UTC)
Well since it's her and her family's name, she and her family are calling the shots, right? Plus of course it's the pronunciation one would expect based on the country she was born and lived in. As I pointed out in the discussion above, I too once suspected that maybe she insists on a German-style /hak/, but that conjecture was refuted. So one what basis could we show a pronunciation different from the one she uses herself? Gawaon (talk) 22:09, 6 February 2026 (UTC)
Yeah, it does make sense after all, it’s actually the only reasonable argument for excluding /h/ entirely. I’m just upset the anon tried to play some games to keep me unaware of this discussion. ~ IvanScrooge98 (talk) 22:35, 6 February 2026 (UTC)
Does this mean that you agree with excluding the /(h)/? No-one's yet replied to my comment about possibly changing policy, but if consensus has been reached then there's no need to go that far. [citation unneeded] (talk) 08:18, 7 February 2026 (UTC)
I’m not sure we should change policy, after all the argument in this particular case is that Hack’s name has been treated as Italian for a long time, unlike regular loanwords. ~ IvanScrooge98 (talk) 11:17, 7 February 2026 (UTC)
Yeah, this was not a policy issue. The question, as I see it, was rather to find out which pronunciation is the correct (actually used) one. Gawaon (talk) 12:53, 7 February 2026 (UTC)
If people agree on this, then no (h) obviously follows. [citation unneeded] (talk) 00:14, 16 February 2026 (UTC)
@~2026-61325-0: Indeed, you must not call editors in good standing vandals and you must inform the other people involved if you move a discussion elsewhere. May you learn and do better in the future! Gawaon (talk) 08:19, 7 February 2026 (UTC)
@IvanScrooge98: All right, so are we in agreement now? If I re-add the pronunciation, you won't revert again? Gawaon (talk) 08:21, 7 February 2026 (UTC)
Yes, I guess we could remove the /h/ here now. ~ IvanScrooge98 (talk) 11:14, 7 February 2026 (UTC)
I see you've done it already, thanks a lot! Gawaon (talk) 12:50, 7 February 2026 (UTC)
No worries. I didn’t want it to surface as edit warring. ~ IvanScrooge98 (talk) 13:21, 7 February 2026 (UTC)

Using Merriam-Webster?

There is a request to add an IPA pronunciation to Castilleja. So far I have been unable to find a source, it is not in Collins or Cambridge. There is a pronunciation guide in Merriam-Webster for the genus name, but it is not IPA. Is there a way to use M-W to make a standard IPA pronunciation or does that cross over to synth? Or does anyone have another possible source? 🌿MtBotany (talk) 01:22, 6 February 2026 (UTC)

@MtBotany: It's tricky to map "kastəˈlē(y)ə" into the set at Help:IPA/English, and there would, I'm sure, be ENGVAR issues. For example, I think I would usually pronounce the first part as /kæstɪl/, whereas I'm sure others would use /kɑːstə l/. So I think to produce IPA would be synth. Peter coxhead (talk) 16:30, 6 February 2026 (UTC)
Thanks, I suspected that would be the case, but needed to ask because I'm still learning about IPA. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 17:20, 6 February 2026 (UTC)
There's also an issue with the pronunciation of scientific names derived from personal names. Kniphofia is a notorious example. Some people try to pronounce such names as if actually (botanical) Latin, others closer to the origin of the name. See Talk:Kniphofia. Peter coxhead (talk) 20:26, 6 February 2026 (UTC)
Good point. Since I know a little Spanish, like many Coloradans, I default to a more or less Spanish pronunciation of Castilleja, no idea of if I get close to "correct" since I'm sure I have a strong accent to my Spanish. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 21:14, 6 February 2026 (UTC)

It's tricky to map "kastəˈlē(y)ə" into the set at Help:IPA/English

Not at all! The MW key is well-defined. This would be /ˌkæstəˈliː(j)ə/. For comparison, /ɑː/ would be written ⟨ä⟩ and /ɪ/ would be written ⟨i⟩. — W.andrea (talk) 18:44, 8 February 2026 (UTC)
For plant names, there a good many topical pronunciation guides out there. I have the 3d edition of A. T. Johnson's Plant Names Simplified and Ross Bayton's The Gardener's Botanical and... they disagree. It reminds me of the Ashkenazi vs Sephardic pronunciation arguments I hear sometimes. Is mapping to IPA that difficult, though? I have boldly added these to the article. Change or remove them if you see fit. Let me know if you want a pdf copy of the latter ref which does not have the relevant page viewable on Google Books. —  AjaxSmack  01:40, 7 February 2026 (UTC)
@AjaxSmack: I only have an earlier edition of Plant Names Simplified. Does the later edition actually have IPA versions? The earlier one doesn't. Does the other source? Whether it's WP:SYNTH to construct IPA from 'respelling' representations was the issue that started this thread. Peter coxhead (talk) 07:49, 7 February 2026 (UTC)
I'd say it's not really SYNTH if there's a clear and unambiguous mapping from respelling key to IPA given somewhere (say at the start of the guide). If not, however, it would be problematic. Gawaon (talk) 08:16, 7 February 2026 (UTC)
​​​The later edition of Plant Names Simplified does not have IPA; it has something like WP's respell, with "kas-STIL-e-a" in this case. I look at converting these to IPA as being in the spirit of WP:CALC ("Routine calculations do not count as original research, provided there is consensus among editors that the results of the calculations are correct, and a meaningful reflection of the sources."). English has a limited number of phonemes and pretty regular patterns of how they are applied, so I don't feel this is a stretch. —  AjaxSmack  23:22, 7 February 2026 (UTC)
If they are close enough to one of the variants listed in Pronunciation respelling for English that that can be accomplished without ambiguity, that sounds reasonable. Gawaon (talk) 09:22, 8 February 2026 (UTC)
Whether a source uses the IPA has no bearing on whether we can use it as a source. Each publication has its own system of respelling, IPA-based or not. If converting a non-IPA respelling to IPAc-en is OR, so is converting an IPA transcription to IPAc-en because no one uses the exact same scheme as ours (see Help:IPA/Conventions for English, Pronunciation respelling for English). Nardog (talk) 11:22, 7 February 2026 (UTC)
@Nardog: Converting an IPA transcription to ours can use the table at Help:IPA/Conventions for English, so is traceable if not exactly sourced. But if I convert the respelling in my edition of Plant Names Simplified to our version of IPA, that does seem to me to be problematic, particularly since the explanation in the book's introduction only gives very general pronunciation advice. My edition doesn't contain Castilleja, so I'll use Kniphofia, for which it has "nif-of-e-a". Stressed o is said to be short when just preceding a consonant, so I would pronounce this respelling as /nɪfˈɒfiə/, but I certainly can't show support in the source for the other vowels, and /ɒ/ is particularly problematic between English dialects. Peter coxhead (talk) 18:29, 7 February 2026 (UTC)
Most works provide a key for pronunciation, and even if one doesn't, you can usually find words common enough that other dictionaries include and you can go from there. As for Plant Names Simplified, though, its respellings contain so little detail (it's unclear e.g. a is supposed to represent /æ/, /eɪ/, /ɑː/, or /ə/) I agree converting them to IPAc-en is impossible without some OR. But that's an issue with the source, being of too low quality. Nardog (talk) 05:28, 8 February 2026 (UTC)
@Nardog: I wouldn't quite use the term "low quality". It's very much a British English source, and if its respellings are pronounced with a 'standard' southern British accent, they are as unambiguous as the authors intend. They are clear in the introduction that there's no one way to pronounce the scientific names of plants, and the authors are only offering a guide. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:30, 8 February 2026 (UTC)
Well, it's useless for sourcing pronunciations on Wikipedia at least to the standards this MoS expects. (Being a British English source has never stopped a publication from being an RS. That and your comment about /ɒ/ make me wonder if you are aware of the MOS:DIAPHONEMIC nature of our English key.) Nardog (talk) 10:05, 8 February 2026 (UTC)
@Nardog: Oh, yes, I'm well aware of the attempt of our English key to represent multiple dialects. I was intending to reflect the tendency of US English speakers to use /oʊ/ in some positions where British speakers would naturally use /ɒ/.
The question remains as to what is a sufficiently reliable source for IPA representation of scientific names. The first source at Castilleja clearly isn't. Personally I'm not in favour of attempting to show how scientific names are pronounced, and certainly not in the opening sentence. Peter coxhead (talk) 12:10, 8 February 2026 (UTC)
"I'm not in favour of attempting to show how scientific names are pronounced..." I'm curious why not. —  AjaxSmack  02:22, 13 February 2026 (UTC)
@AjaxSmack: because there's simply no consensus for most scientific names on how they should be pronounced, even within a country, let alone between different English-speaking countries. "Castilleja" discussed earlier is a good example. It can be pronounced as a particular English speaker would expect given its spelling (for me that would be /kæs tɪ ˈleɪ jə}}), or as Neolatin (as per the guidance in Stearn's Botanical Latin for example, which I won't attempt here), or to reflect its etymology from the Spanish surname Castillejo, in which case I suppose it should be something like /kɑs ti ˈʎeɪ xa/ depending on how far you go towards Spanish. For an amusing example, consider Pinus. A Latin-based pronunciation would be "PEE-noose" (see e.g. Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Plants/Archive23#Question), but who seriously uses this?
The topic has been repeatedly discussed at WT:PLANTS (search for "pronunciation" in the archives), but as far as I can tell no real consensus has ever been reached. If you use one particular sourced pronunciation, you need to include others across the range of ENGVARs to maintain neutrality. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:47, 13 February 2026 (UTC)

Proposal: deprecate pronunciation respelling

  1. Pronunciation respelling is unnecessary as we already have the IPA.
  2. Having two different pronunciation schemes in the same article adds clutter and may be confusing: readers may assume they represent different things. This is a problem because pronunciation respelling is only meant to be present in addition to an IPA transcription, never on its own.
  3. It is intended to be readily understandable, so that, unlike with the IPA, readers don't have to click on a link which leads to a complicated chart which they must decipher, but it does not accomplish this: symbols like ⟨dh⟩ and ⟨uu⟩ are still alien – the average English speaker wouldn't be able to guess their pronunciation and may even assume they represent /d/ and /uː/ or /ʌ/, respectively. It is perhaps somewhat more intuitive, but it still requires readers to consult a chart. If we are going to require this level of effort, we might as well do it properly and use the IPA.
  4. Since it looks familiar (that being the entire point), its ambiguity can easily mislead, as with the above examples, or ⟨ow⟩, which can easily be misinterpreted to represent /oʊ/. This is less of a risk with the IPA as most of its symbols are less familiar, and a string that contains both familiar and alien symbols can't be "partially" interpreted: readers will check the key and find out what every symbol represents, even more familiar ones with unintuitive pronunciations such as ⟨j⟩. The strange appearance is a feature, not a bug.

Un assiolo (talk) 18:00, 30 March 2026 (UTC)

So I don't agree with deprecating respelling, but I do agree that it doesn't make much sense if it's just going to be a remapping of IPA.
What respelling should be is a way for competent readers of English to understand how a word is pronounced without having to learn details of English phonology. That means we should leverage aspects of English spelling even when they don't map one-to-one with phonemes. For example, if a syllable is pronounced, say, /ˈkeɪk/, we should respell it CAKE, or conceivably KAKE, but definitely not KAYK. --Trovatore (talk) 19:47, 30 March 2026 (UTC)
That's not pronunciation respelling, though. If you want to invent a fully new system, go ahead, but I suspect its chances of being adopted by Wikipedia in the foreseeable future will be tiny. Gawaon (talk) 07:29, 31 March 2026 (UTC)
It's not really a system. It's just, write it so that a competent, literate native speaker would read it how it sounds. My view is this is the way people should write respelling pronunciations, now. --Trovatore (talk) 03:53, 1 April 2026 (UTC)
What do you mean by "deprecate"? Per MOS:RESPELL its usage is already circumscribed and secondary. Jahaza (talk) 01:07, 1 April 2026 (UTC)
Remove it from all articles, delete the template and help page, remove mention of it from the MOS, etc. --Un assiolo (talk) 17:58, 1 April 2026 (UTC)
This is a bad idea and the respelling guidelines provides multiple examples where respelling more useful than IPA and iTS equivalents. Carwil (talk) 11:05, 2 April 2026 (UTC)
By "respelling guidelines", do you mean Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Pronunciation#Other_transcription_systems? Because I'm not seeing any examples where pronunciation respelling is better. Are you referring to things like The Motorola Razr (styled RAZR, pronounced "razor")? I'm not suggesting deprecating that, only the pronunciation respelling system with {{respell}}. --Un assiolo (talk) 16:38, 2 April 2026 (UTC)
I'm more in favour of the opposite: we should use IPA spelling really judiciously. Something that maybe 1% of readers understand should not be on Wikipedia. Wiktionary is a better place for this. Respelling is the better option of the two and I don't understand why we typically don't do this with the cryptic IPA first. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 18:57, 5 April 2026 (UTC)
But – as described above – pronunciation respelling requires a user to click on the link to help page, just like the IPA, so in terms of how widely understood it is, it is no better than the IPA. --Un assiolo (talk) 14:00, 6 April 2026 (UTC)
Presumably many people will know or "get" it without having to follow the links. That's true for both, IPA and pronunciation respelling, though admittedly for the former the learning curve is considerably higher. Gawaon (talk) 16:47, 6 April 2026 (UTC)
No, I strongly suspect that most readers of Wikipedia are likely to be more familiar with IPA as a form of beer or an abbreviation for isopropyl alcohol than as a tool to express pronunciation, and very few will make head or tail of IPA hieroglyphics. Respelling is really useful for the majority of our users: people with high fluency in English language but no background in linguistics/phonetics. The template is merely a way to express respellings. Elemimele (talk) 11:52, 7 April 2026 (UTC)
The "table" version of respelling is pretty useless. We should do IPA plus common-sense respelling, where the latter has no table, but is just "spell it so a competent English reader can read it".
I don't agree with removing IPA; it's the most well-accepted, precisely defined standard. Common-sense respelling is never going to be completely precise, and "table respelling" is inventing our own standard, which we probably shouldn't do.
But for some purposes, an imprecise, common-sense version fills a hole. --Trovatore (talk) 00:06, 10 April 2026 (UTC)

Guys just get a native speaker to record the right pronunciation then upload and add it - it's easy. Even though other editors came back and recluttered the first sentence the little loudspeaker icon we added is still there on Göbekli Tepe Chidgk1 (talk) 06:35, 10 April 2026 (UTC)

Doesn't help deaf people who'd like to know how a word is pronounced. Or in other use case for articles such as printed versions. Jahaza (talk) 15:47, 10 April 2026 (UTC)
For example if a deaf person wants to know if Houston, Texas and Houston Street are homophones. Jahaza (talk) 15:49, 10 April 2026 (UTC)
I've nothing against recordings too, but they're harder to include, and there's a subtle benefit to the respelling version: a recording must reflect the accent of the native speaker who recorded it, while a respelling will sometimes allow the reader to say the word in the way that others with their regional accent would say it. Elemimele (talk) 11:43, 14 April 2026 (UTC)
... and in my part of the world, "Here" and "Hair" are homophones, and a ten pound note could be a very heavy amphibian ("Note" and "Newt" are both pronounced NOOT). Elemimele (talk) 11:45, 14 April 2026 (UTC)
This gets to the issue with "common sense" respelling - it's heavily dependent on a speaker's accent. As a speaker of a non-rhotic hybrid English accent, intuitive and obvious respellings for me may be completely incorrect for many speakers with North American accent - for example "sore" and "saw" are homophones for me but "cot" and "caught" are not, likewise "more" and "maw" but not "pin" and "pen". Thryduulf (talk) 12:32, 14 April 2026 (UTC)

A mess

The beginning of Shipton's Arch is a mess. All of this should be in a note:

I'm not sure which page to ask for help. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 14:47, 11 April 2026 (UTC)

Why do you need help? Just move it into a note, like you said. Gawaon (talk) 15:56, 11 April 2026 (UTC)
Okay, I'll do that. I was hoping there was some fancy standardized way of doing it. I think the MOS mentions this, but can't find exactly where. How would you label the note? -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 16:55, 11 April 2026 (UTC)
I think you're looking for MOS:LEADCLUTTER. Why would you label it? I'd just add an ordinary unnamed {{efn}} and a corresponding {{notelist}} section for it. "Notes" should work as name of the section in this case, since it's not yet used. Gawaon (talk) 17:04, 11 April 2026 (UTC)
Perfect. Thanks. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 17:44, 11 April 2026 (UTC)
It looks much better now. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 23:36, 11 April 2026 (UTC)