I bring up here in the general tinWiki forum a post by Palzeta:
On wikipedia.org, the convention for article names is that they are stated in the singular. I've noticed that many articles on this wiki are
pluralized. Should we considered making sure that article names are in the sigular form? — Palzeta (How's That?, That's How!) (Inclusionistic
Eventualist ) — 14:50, 1 August 2008 (CDT)
Optimist
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reply to post by Optimist
Some one facny simplifying that.. you've got a very tired half drunk Fox here and my reading skills aint at full speed 
Fox
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Fox,
An example would be "Extraterrestrial" as opposed to "Extraterrestrials". So, one ET, as opposed to many ETs or ETs as a group.
Anyway, this topic is something which I also think about from time to time, perhaps mainly because I, too, have seen that the singular form is used in
Wikipedia. I'm not sure I've understood the difference or reason for choosing one over the other. I have in fact looked a bit at the style manuals
and guidelins in Wikipedia, a couple of times, and may have seen this issue talked about there.
In an encyclopedia, descriptions or information is given about topics/subjects/notions/phenomena/happenings/individuals. Well, that was a long list.
What I mean is, and article such as the one about ETs, should perhaps be written with the intention of clarifying what the "thing" in question
is.
In some cases, I think Wikipedia does use the plural. I'd be interested to know what the thought behind it is, when sometimes the plural is used (as
I at least think it sometimes is).
The trying-to-think paragraph
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I would imagine that, when an article about ETs has the singular form in the title, the article is about the notion or "thing" as such, "what is an
ET?" When the title is instead the plural form, that may be said to really be an article about a slightly different subject, or to take a somewhat
different perspective, perhaps, like it's about their society or about them as a group. Just trying to think a bit out loud here about what the
difference is, and why the one may be better than the other. I should go read the Wikipedia explanations for why the singular is used. I think it
seems to make sense, using the singular, but I want to know more about the thinking behind, before I really say anything specific in this thread.
It's an interesting style or guideline topic, though, and I have thought about it several times.
Optimist
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