This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Chinese characters article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.
The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that according to legend, the invention of Chinese characters(examples pictured) caused grain to rain from the sky and ghosts and demons to wail in frustration?
This article falls within the scope of WikiProject Writing systems, a WikiProject interested in improving the encyclopaedic coverage and content of articles relating to writing systems on Wikipedia. If you would like to help out, you are welcome to drop by the project page and/or leave a query at the project’s talk page.Writing systemsWikipedia:WikiProject Writing systemsTemplate:WikiProject Writing systemsWriting system
This article is within the scope of WikiProject China, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of China related articles on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.ChinaWikipedia:WikiProject ChinaTemplate:WikiProject ChinaChina-related
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Japan, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Japan-related articles on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the project, participate in relevant discussions, and see lists of open tasks.JapanWikipedia:WikiProject JapanTemplate:WikiProject JapanJapan-related
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Southeast Asia, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Southeast Asia-related subjects on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Southeast AsiaWikipedia:WikiProject Southeast AsiaTemplate:WikiProject Southeast AsiaSoutheast Asia
@Remsense: Greetings! I'm writing about the recent revert keeping the   HTML entity. MOS:MARKUP has a general directive to keep markup simple. Was there a specific reason why U+2004 is preferred over a simple ASCII space? As far as I can tell from the chart on Whitespace character, the widths are pretty indistinguishable. -- Beland (talk) 22:55, 3 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Mere typesetting concerns. I was going to make sure to replace it with {{pad}} before I went to sleep tonight—thanks for reminding me, I'm going to go ahead and do that now. Remsense ‥ 论22:59, 3 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Comparing the two versions, the "pad" version looks in my browser like it actually puts in too much space, wider than a normal ASCII space. If the version with brackets (I assume you mean round parentheses) looks good to you, I think it would be preferable to use that than non-standard whitespace. -- Beland (talk) 00:14, 4 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This is all due to historically having a more distinct presentation for components, which used small caps and no brackets. Small caps were then objected to, and I guess at this point the distinction is not at all clear between glosses of characters and names of components, so I should just use brackets for both. Remsense ‥ 论00:20, 4 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
A headache, but you are right to raise the question. I should have left an explanation. I started to get Wilkinson 6th page numbers, but realized that it would take a lot of time and not add much value, since the old edition is still a Reliable Source. But reference notes also have the second function of telling readers where to look if they want to see more on a topic, in this case, the 6th edition.
So it would be great if you want to get the 6th edition page numbers (though Wilkinson is getting ready to issue a "final" edition), but meanwhile the admittedly awkward but useful hack would be to leave the 6th edition reference in its present uncomfortable but useful position.
There are other things on this page to work on, such as style, accuracy, and consistency. Readers don't get much guidance on what to read at their level, since the notes often, correctly, cite specialized, erudite, scholarship that only a few libraries will have. It's not clear why we have the "Primary and media sources" section. Again, does not guide readers.
The helpful thing would be to list the appropriate selected works in "Further reading," but Policy discourages listing an item in both "Works cited" and "Further reading." Thus important works appear in the notes but can't appear there and others are lost in the clutter.
I'll leave it as is, thanks for the lore! No, I really appreciate it, actually. Not to be a sycophant, but I've been meaning to ask how you feel about the article in general, given your background. Remsense ‥ 论21:52, 25 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
level-3 vital article is rated FA-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.
