Template talk:&lit

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float around and {{&lit}}

[[float around]] made me appreciate a weakness of the displayed text for {{&lit}}. I am not sure what the right answer is or indeed if any change can be an improvement.

It now says "Used literally". The problem is that most use of "float" is figurative: "He floated around from job to job." etc. This would not be the only instance in which "literal" is not 100% accurate.

What we intend when using {{&lit}} is something like "Used compositionally" or "Used non-idiomatically". The first is not suitable for normal users and the second is somewhat controversial and subject to the ambiguities of "idiom" and its derivatives. Perhaps we can think of other wording. Mind you, we can certainly live indefinitely with what we've got. DCDuring TALK 18:46, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

Right. I just got this note, but I'll ponder this. (Merely responding to this because I'm responding to the following, and I don't want you to think I'm ignoring this.)​—msh210℠ 14:56, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Also, it would be useful to have pipes for the component terms in {{&lit}}. It is often useful to be able to send the user to the correct PoS. DCDuring TALK 19:29, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

You can use pipes, but then you have to spell out "See foo and bar". (Unless someone's changed the template?) See the documentation.​—msh210℠ 14:56, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

I know, I know. RTFM. I thought I had, but apparently not. It works as you and the documentation said. I don't think my, erm, "usability" problem is worth worrying about.

The other one is somewhat misleading for users and, therefore, worth a bit of thought. "Used non-idiomatically" is still the best I have to offer, but it isn't even all that satisfactory for users. Longman's DCE does not use "literal", "figurative", or "idiom" (or abbreviations) as labels. Perhaps augmented by a hover box or a wikilink? Would "Not as idiom" be better wording than "non-idiomatically"? DCDuring TALK 15:58, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

"Used not as an idiom" sounds okay. "Used other than as an idiom" is more idiomatic, I think. Or were you thinking of just "Not as an idiom" (or even "Not as idiom")?​—msh210℠ 16:27, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Sometimes slightly odd wording cautions people more effectively, but "other than" is better than "not". As the sense line in question will almost always (proverbs?) have a lot of white space, we can use some space for better wording. DCDuring TALK 16:34, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Hm, I've changed template:&lit now to use "Used other than as an idiom" thinking you were agreeing with that, but on rereading what you've just written I now think you were actually arguing for "Other than as (an) idiom". Obviously, feel free to change the template again to whichever of the two possibilities indicated by the parenthetical "an" you prefer.​—msh210℠ 16:41, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Deletion debate

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Template:&lit

This template is redundant to the {{literally}} template. TeleComNasSprVen 00:56, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

No. {{&lit}} is for terms that are sum of parts. {{literally}} is for literal senses that are also idiomatic. (Is that even possible?) -- Prince Kassad 01:21, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

Keep. {{&lit}} is "literally" as opposed to "idiomatic", and is only used at multiword entries (typically when the listed idiom is rarer than other uses of the word-sequence); {{literally}} is "literally" as opposed to "figuratively", and is mostly (but not exclusively) used at entries for individual words. I suppose {{&SOP}} might have been a better name for the former, but regardless, the two are completely different and non-redundant. —Ruakh_TALK 02:26, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

Incidentally, I named {{&lit}} after &lit. Not that the template has anything to do with the term's referent: I just liked the name.​—msh210℠ (talk) 07:42, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

Clever! I was not aware of &lit. Now I like it too. :-)   —Ruakh_TALK 12:26, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

Keep per Ruakh. DCDuring TALK 03:13, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

Keep per Ruakh.​—msh210℠ (talk) 07:42, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

Keep, ditto. --Mglovesfun (talk) 11:26, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, keep. --Daniel. 11:37, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

Kept by early very strong consensus. --Daniel. 11:37, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

Script support

Can this template use better script support? For example, the use at 小人#Mandarin would look better if the words weren't bolded. Can this be automatically suppressed for certains scripts (like {{Hani}})? —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 20:46, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Isn't that what MediaWiki:common.css is for? --WikiTiki89 20:58, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

I guess... CSS is a weak point for me in terms of wiki architecture. How would we fix it there? —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 21:37, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Well that is where the appearance of normal, bold, italic, and all that stuff is defined for each script. If bold doesn't look good with {{Hani}}, then we can (like we did for {{Hebr}}) make the text slightly larger instead of bolding it. I don't know much about the specifics, but I think Ruakh knows a lot about this stuff. --WikiTiki89 21:52, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Moving to a GP thread, then. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 22:33, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

alt malfunction

The documentation example for the use of "altN=" shows that it does not work properly, AFAICT. DCDuring TALK 14:13, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

RFM discussion: December 2017–February 2018

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Template:&lit, Template:&oth

How are they different? I think they should be merged.--Zcreator (talk) 15:29, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

I think the survivor should be {{&lit}}, based on my problem (I think shared with others.) with understanding the display.

What exactly is a "literal context"? (Not obvious to me.) From what does the literalness or inference of literalness derive? (See below.)

Is any use of the term head of state figurative because the sense of head is metaphorical? (I don't think so.)

Do we just mean that some consensus of (native?) speakers reading/hearing a passage using the headword (ie, the context of the headword in question) would agree on whether the term was to be interpreted figuratively or literally? (I think so.)

Does "literal context" convey what we mean without a link to a glossary (or the template documentation)? (I don't think so.)

I think {{&lit}} does not have as many problems and can more readily be fixed (eg, by links to [[idiom]] and [[figurative]]). DCDuring (talk) 16:20, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

Until recently, the former added the entry to Category:Language idioms and the latter didn’t. I agree that they should be merged; having a definition-line template add a category on behalf of a different definition is odd to say the least. Let’s keep the name {{&lit}} but remove the categorisation. — Ungoliant ^(falai) 16:26, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

Merge per Ungoliant. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 18:33, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

Merge per Ungoliant. --Per utramque cavernam (talk) 12:27, 3 January 2018 (UTC)

 Done. - -sche (discuss) 22:18, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

Poor wording? "Used other than with a figurative or idiomatic meaning:"

Is "Used other than with a figurative or idiomatic meaning:" really what we are trying to say here? How about "Used in the literal sense:". Seems more direct. Here's the post where I started thinking about this issue:

from Talk:cunning linguist

@Prosfilaes: Thanks for your comment. I think that both I and walterblue thought that 'literal' was not the antonym of 'figurative or idiomatic'. I admit that I don't really know what categories of meaning there are beside 'literal' 'figurative' and 'idiomatic', but the mere fact that there are three types of categories of meaning or usage seems to indicate that there may be others and hence that 'literal' and 'figurative or idiomatic' are not a pair of absolute antonyms. I might suggest a change to the wording of '&lit' that is more direct- something like "Used in the literal sense:". If you really object to 'literal' here, I totally understand if you remove it. Thanks. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 23:31, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

Parameter

This templet does not have a parameter |nocap=. @Erutuon ·~ dictátor·mundꟾ 16:53, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

@Erutuon: Would that not be okay? For non-English/Translingual entries, the definitions start with a lower case, that’s why I was asking you to do this. Let me know your thoughts. Thanks. ·~ dictátor·mundꟾ 19:10, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

@Inqilābī: You'd better ask some other people what they think. I don't know. — Eru·tuon 19:59, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

|nocap=1 is a standard parameter is such definition templates. Erutuon, Inqilābī, I don't know why this doesn't work; can any of you 2 fix? —Svārtava² • 14:39, 29 August 2021 (UTC)