Template talk:R:L&S

Provision of publisher

I prefer to omit the publisher ("Oxford: Clarendon Press") from

“term” in Charlton T. Lewis & Charles Short, A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1879.

Does anyone else agree? --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:38, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

No. That's unacademic. Serious books and articles always include the publisher and the place of publishing in their references. --Vahag (talk) 13:37, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

Admission: I have checked the references sections of multiple English books that I have, and they do provide publishers in their references. --Dan Polansky (talk) 13:47, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

@Dan Polansky: I'm remarkably close to agreeing with you on the presentation for this template; as you might know, this is my preferred format. We seem only to differ with regard to the wikilink to w:A Latin Dictionary…

@Vahagn Petrosyan: They do, but I don't really know why. An ISBN would be more useful. There's also another problem with including a publisher in this template: it was simultaneously published by the OUP at the Clarendon Press in Oxford and by Harper & Bros. in New York City; if we include both, the template ends up looking something like this, which format was widely objected to.

 — I.S.M.E.T.A. 17:13, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

Please don't add ISBN; that is the visual analogue of noise. --Dan Polansky (talk) 17:15, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

I do not know why we are trying to reinvent the bicycle. There are well-established and documented styles of references. There is even a standard specifically for linguistic literature: see here, § 16. I am sure the question of multiple publishers is addressed somewhere. --Vahag (talk) 17:47, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

@Dan Polansky: I wasn't advocating adding ISBNs; I was just saying that the ISBN would be better for tracking down a given work than the publisher and printing location would be.

@Vahagn Petrosyan: The only bit about publishers in § 16 is in § 16.8, viz. “If a publisher is associated with several cities, only the first one needs to be given, e.g. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, or Amsterdam: Benjamins.”, which isn't really relevant. § 16.2 states “There are four standard reference types: journal article, book, article in edited book, thesis. Works that do not fit easily into these types should be assimilated to them to the extent that this is possible.” A dictionary doesn't really fit into any of those four types, but if we take a dictionary entry to be analogous with an article in an edited book, then it is closest to that type. For this authority, then, those Generic Style Rules prescribe this format (for, in this example, pȳramis):

• Lewis, Charlton Thomas. 1879. Pȳrămis. In Lewis, Charlton Thomas & Short, Charles (eds.). Harpers’ Latin Dictionary: A New Latin Dictionary Founded on the Translation of Freund’s Latin–German Lexicon edited by E.A. Andrews, LL.D., 1497/1. New York: Harper and Brothers, Publishers & Oxford: At the Clarendon Press.

(The way I treated the publishers is analogous with the Generic Style Rules' prescription for multiple authors.) IMO, that format is ugly and unnecessarily lengthy.

 — I.S.M.E.T.A. 21:10, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

I agree that the above format is ugly and too lenghty. The above shows that these style guides should be taken with a cup of salt (grain won't do, obviously). --Dan Polansky (talk) 21:14, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

The style guide does not mandate the use of that lengthy format. A dictionary should be treated as a book, not as an article in an edited book. The title can be just A Latin Dictionary. The rest is a subtitle. I find not no "Harpers’ Latin Dictionary" in the print edition. As for multiple publishers, use only one, because you are referencing a particular book which is on your desk and it is published by one of the publishers. --Vahag (talk) 09:20, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

@Vahagn Petrosyan: § 16.2 does state “A reference consists of the standard parts given in Table 1 (some of them are optional): author list, year, article title, editor list, publication title, volume number, issue number, series, page numbers, city, publisher.” [emboldenment my emphasis]; however, at no point that I've found does it state which parts are optional. If we omit the subtitle, why not the printing city and publisher? This is the scanned print copy I refer to when I need page numbers or whatever, and you'll see that the first line of the frontispiece reads “Harpers’ Latin Dictionary”, whilst the bottom of the f.p. lists both of those printing-city–publisher pairs; ditto these three copies. — I.S.M.E.T.A. 11:12, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

Because subtitles are irrelevant for finding a book, publishers and printing cities are not. You are only thinking about major references about major languages. I often reference an obscure book for Armenian which in real world you literally cannot find if you do not know the publisher and the place of publication. This book can only be bought from its publisher. There are many others. For some books even the publisher has no stock left. You have to contact the publisher and ask in which god-forsaken bookstore can the book be found. Referencing the publisher and the place of publication is good academic practice 101. Show me a single serious paper or book which does not reference them. --Vahag (talk) 11:43, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

@Vahagn Petrosyan: Hmm. Point taken. I'll mull this over. BTW, a subtitle is sometimes necessary to distinguish similarly entitled works; A Latin–English dictionary, Un dictionnaire latin-français, and Ein lateinisch-deutsches Wörterbuch are not titles with unambiguous referents. — I.S.M.E.T.A. 18:08, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

I don't deny that publisher is sometimes useful, but that should be judged on a case-by-case basis rather than requiring publisher as mandatory wholesale. Style guides, being books of "rules", often take the easy approach of over-regulating. --Dan Polansky (talk) 18:37, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

Malfunctioning link

Hiya. I'm having a hard time getting this template to link to the entry for γυνή at http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0057:entry=gunh/. When I try {{R:L&S|γυνή|γυνή}} it links instead to http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0059:entry=%CE%B3%CF%85%CE%BD%CE%AE which gives me an error message. Can anyone tell me if I'm doing anything wrong? —Pinnerup (talk) 12:36, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

@Pinnerup: use {{R:LSJ|gunh/}} — Ungoliant ^(falai) 13:08, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

@Ungoliant MMDCCLXIV: D'oh, major brain fart on my part. Thank you and sorry :) —Pinnerup (talk) 21:35, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

Reasonably simple appearance

I support the long-standing appearance:

• “R:L&S”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press

I oppose the new appearance that is much longer while adding nothing of value, and does not match usual academic practice as far as I can tell. I oppose the use of the quotation marks around the term. I would like to drop the publisher, but there will not be a consensus for this, and providing publisher is fairly common; it is completely useless since we link to the source and there is no chance of confusion of sources, but there will probably be no consensus for dropping the publisher.

• “R:L&S”, in Charlton T[homas] Lewis; Charles [Lancaster] Short (1879) […] A New Latin Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.; Cincinnati, Ohio; Chicago, Ill.: American Book Company; Oxford: Clarendon Press.

I have no idea how anyone can possibly think the above is an improvement, but some peope obviously do; some people seem to be most happy when the identification is as long as possible; they seem to drive some irrational kick from it. It is utterly useless for the reader. I have no idea where the angle brackets come from except that Sgconlaw used to use them, and I have never seem them in references in academic literature. Please avoid all this excess that no publications are using in their identification of references, or at the very least, show that this is not just your irrational pleasure-seeking and that this proposed format sees some actual use in literature.

By reverting, I may have removed some functionality; please add the functionality back, but do not add all the excess that does not match the usual academic practice. --Dan Polansky (talk) 17:17, 14 August 2022 (UTC)

On A Latin Dictionary vs. A New Latin Dictionary: Wikipedia article is W:A Latin Dictionary and the linked source identifies the work as "Charlton T. Lewis, Charles Short, A Latin Dictionary". Same title is in this openlibrary.org link. The same title is given to the same edition in archive.org.

On the second publisher: Why does the reader need to know that there was a second publisher of this work? If the American publisher used the title A New Latin Dictionary, why should that title be used rather than the title used by the linked web source, referring to the Clarendon publication? --Dan Polansky (talk) 17:33, 14 August 2022 (UTC)