Talk:Seattle–Tacoma International Airport: Difference between revisions

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: not moved: insufficient support. DrKiernan (talk) 09:47, 18 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• Seattle–Tacoma International Airport → Seattle-Tacoma International Airport
• Minneapolis−Saint Paul International Airport → Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport
• Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport → Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport or → Hartsfield - Jackson Atlanta International Airport

– An RfC at the Airports WikiProject failed to reach consensus on whether hyphens or en dashes should be used in the names of airports. There's been no activity on the RfC for over a week now, so I'm bringing it here for community attention. I set up this RM to change the dashes to hyphens simply because hyphens are more widely used here on Wikipedia. Depending on which style is accepted by consensus, the title of airports can be moved to standardize them. Relisted. BDD (talk) 18:55, 4 October 2012 (UTC) David1217 ^{What I've done} 23:36, 27 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• Am I missing something? I thought that MOS:ENDASH made this all rather clear. If it's a combining form, not independent; use a hyphen. If the connection might otherwise be expressed with to, versus, and, or between, use an en dash.? Minneapolis–Saint Paul and Seattle-Tacoma would both be an endash as the dash is a replacements for "and". Just my interpretation.--Labattblueboy (talk) 03:53, 28 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • If you take a look at the RfC, you'll see that some people had different interpretations of the MoS... David1217 ^{What I've done} 16:26, 28 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    • These two look like cases where the endash is the appropriate choice because the dash could easily be replaced with either and or between. Other airports could certainly be a different case though.--Labattblueboy (talk) 13:02, 31 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
• Strongly oppose. If the RFC failed to come to a consensus (and I agree it didn't, but more due to confusion than to actual well-structured discussion) then no changes should be made. Powers ^T 01:01, 31 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm sorry if I didn't set the RfC up too well (if you can do better, than please feel free to do so!) However, I think we should try to standardize the names of airports, even if we haven't found a consensus yet. David1217 ^{What I've done} 15:14, 31 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    • I wasn't blaming you; I was referring to the comments, which looked haphazard and in many cases misinformed. Many of them failed to take into account facts previously established, and others made outright incorrect assertions. RFCs often go that way despite the best efforts of the organizers. Anyway, I don't see how we can standardize on a format that doesn't have consensus. Without consensus for a change, we have to stick with the status quo. (It helps that in this case, the dash is clearly correct, IMO.) Powers ^T 20:01, 31 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose: endash is correct here, in my opinion, and the RFC didn't come to any clear conclusion that would justify this change. Colonies Chris (talk) 22:31, 31 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

How about we do this, Google Seattle Tacoma International Airport, find the official website and copy what they use. No standardization on wikipedia like David1217 is proposing because the airports choose what they use not us. Kairportflier (talk) 00:24, 1 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Let's see... They use a hyphen, because it's hard to enter an en dash, and because most people don't know the difference. David1217 ^{What I've done} 22:53, 2 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hyphen. MOSDASH says: By default, follow the dominant convention that a hyphen is used in compounded proper names of single entities, not an en dash.

• Guinea-Bissau; Bissau is the capital, and this distinguishes the country from neighboring Guinea
• McGraw-Hill, a publishing house Tony (talk) 06:33, 2 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Tony, I've been trying to work out why you think MOSDASH recommends a hyphen here. The Guinea-Bissau example only applies if you consider that 'Tacoma' is a qualifier to 'Seattle'; in other words, you're saying the title means 'the airport for Seattle that's located in Tacoma', distinguishing it from 'another airport for Seattle located in some other town'. To my mind – and according to the intro to the article – it actually mean 'the airport which serves both Seattle and Tacoma'. And that puts the two parts of the name on an equal footing with each other, so it should be an endash. Colonies Chris (talk) 10:15, 5 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• Support per WP:COMMONAME. Does our style override the actual name as used by the entity itself in cases like this? I think not. The issue is typographic for the MoS. Given that the airport chooses to not use the endash, why should we? This is not a case where the names are based on the desire to create a unique look for the name. This is simply a selection based on what people are likely to use. Vegaswikian (talk) 23:31, 6 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
• Added Atlanta. Apteva (talk) 05:14, 25 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
• As far as I can tell, the FAA uses hyphen for all of these. See SEA[1], MSP[2], and ATL (Hartsfield - Jackson)[3] Apteva (talk) 06:28, 25 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
• FYI, Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport, uses a minus sign it the WP article title, not an en dash or a hyphen. Apteva (talk) 06:51, 25 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
• Support per WP:HYPHEN which says "Hyphenation also occurs in bird names, such as Great Black-backed Gull, and in proper names, such as Trois-Rivières, and Wilkes-Barre." Farther down it points out that "An en dash is not used for a hyphenated personal name." Airport names are clearly proper names. Apteva (talk) 11:18, 25 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
• Support per Apteva. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 15:31, 25 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose, at least not until we have some better arguments. Another convention is the slash, as in Isle of Wight/Sandown Airport. Either convention distinguishes these names from airports named after hyphenated cities, such as the Sherburn-in-Elmet Airfield. This is exactly what you get with attributive personal names: a hyphen within a single name, but a dash to link two names. — kwami (talk) 23:08, 25 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

  I'm finding four punctuations. Most common is the hyphen, presumably because it's easiest to type. Next is the en dash. Third is the slash, perhaps due to the common use of the slash for the cities of Minneapolis/Saint Paul. Occasionally there is no punctuation at all, as happens to hyphenated words as they become familiar.

  Attestations of Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport with a dash:

  Walking Home: The Life and Lessons of a City Builder (Ken Greenberg, 2012)

  Inside Game/Outside Game: Winning Strategies for Saving Urban America (David Rusk, 2001)

  Reinventing Environmental Regulation: Lessons from Project XL (Marcus, Geffen, & Sexton, 2002)

  The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Best Family Destinations (2011)

  The Change Maker: Preserving the Promise of America (Al Checchi, 2011)

  Collision Course: Ronald Reagan, the Air Traffic Controllers, and the Strike that Changed America (Joseph McCartin, 2011)

  Our Minnesota (Les, Craig, Nadine & Fran Blacklock, 1993)

  Hiking Minnesota (John Pukite, 1998)

  Attestations of Minneapolis/Saint Paul International Airport with a slash:

  Real Estate Market Valuation and Analysis (Joshua Kahr & Michael Thomsett, 2005)

  On Some Faraway Beach: The Life and Times of Brian Eno (David Sheppard, 2009)

  Avenged (Gerald Bosacker, 2006)

  Regional Government Innovations: A Handbook for Citizens and Public Officials (Roger L. Kemp, 2003)

  Outer Darkness (Bart Brevik, 2007) – a spaced slash, presumably due to the space in Saint Paul

  Attestations of Minneapolis Saint Paul International Airport with a space:

  Wake of the Green Storm: A Survivor's Tale (Marlin Bree, 2001)

  — kwami (talk) 23:59, 25 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

  The name of the airport is Isle of Wight/Sandown.[4] It would be an odd convention to change the names of airports that use a slash to a hyphen or vice versa. It is not our job to create names for airports, but use those names. When they named the airport they decided to use a slash. Had they decided to use a hyphen, I would expect our article to also use a hyphen. And yes, if they had decided to use an en dash, I would recommend that we also use a hyphen. But of all the names of hundreds of airports I have seen, none have used an en dash. But I have finished with U.S. airports and will do the same review of other country airports. The few that I checked did all use a hyphen and not an en dash. There are some books that use an en dash for editorial style reasons, but they make the name of the airport look very strange. Apteva (talk) 23:52, 25 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

In other words, your argument boils down to IDONTLIKEIT? — kwami (talk) 23:59, 25 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

My argument is 1) Use English. 2) No original research. 3) Use common usage. If the name is Wight-Sandown, use Wight-Sandown. If it is Wight/Sandown, use that. There are no en dashes that I can find in any airport name. I can find ones with a space before and after the hyphen, such as Atlanta (ATL).[5] It has nothing to do whether I like it or not. Books are typeset, so being easy to type is not a factor. Apteva (talk) 05:18, 26 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You can add a fifth one: Cold War America, 1946 To 1990 By Ross Gregory[6] uses an em dash. Apteva (talk) 05:29, 26 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• Wouldn't WP:COMMONNAME dictate "SeaTac Airport" as the preferred article name? VanIsaac_{WS Vex}^contribs 05:51, 26 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

  Google Books: About 2,590 results for SeaTac Airport, 8,740 for Sea-Tac Airport, and 7,290 for Seattle-Tacoma Airport, most of which use a hyphen (three used a space, nine used a /, one an en dash, and 47 with a hyphen in the first six pages of search results). If a 47 to one ratio is not convincing enough I do not know what to say. The ones using a hyphen are: Apteva (talk) 15:58, 26 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• Air Pollution by Jet Aircraft at Seattle-Tacoma Airport Front Cover Wallace R. Donaldson
• Intermodal Transportation: Potential Strategies Would Redefine Federal Role in Developing Airport Intermodal Strategies - Page 93
• Calculus: Early Transcendental Functions - Page 345
• Insiders' Guide to Seattle - Page 13
• Climatic Studies for Proposed Landing System for Seattle-tacoma Airport, Seattle, Washington (note lower case "tacoma")
• Climatological data: Washington: Volume 77 - Page 116
• Climatological data - Page 50
• InfoWorld - Jul 9, 2001 - Page 30
• Official register of the United States - Page 420
• Local climatological data: Seattle, Washington. National Weather Service
• A Saint in Seattle: The Life of the Tibetan Mystic Dezhung Rinpoche - Page xxviii
• Storm King - Page 28
• Strategies for Improving Public Transportation Access to Large Airports - Page 35
• The Code of federal regulations of the United States of America Volume 12 - Page 2299
• Over My Head - Page 206
• Adventure Guide to the Pacific Northwest - Page 209
• Seattle - Page 225
• Satellite transit at Seattle-Tacoma Airport
• Pacific Northwest Adventure Guide - Page 209
• Heat - Page 144 (uses "airport")
• Vancouver and Victoria Colourguide - Page 171
• Way Beyond Compare: The Beatles' Recorded Legacy, Volume One - Page 231
• Washington for Kids - Page 48
• The Seattle GuideBook, 12th - Page 59
• USA by Rail - Page 46
• University of Puget Sound College Prowler Off the Record - Page 99
• The Encyclopedia of Unsolved Crimes - Page 91
• Life and Death in the Central Highlands - Page 251
• The Memoirs of John F. Kennedy - Page 22
• Calculus of a Single Variable - Page 308
• 2004 Pacific Boating Almanac: Pacific Northwest - Page 305
• Seattle-Tacoma Airport master plan update low streamflow analysis
• Summary of Hourly Observations: Seattle-Tacoma Airport, Seattle, Washington
• Congestion pricing at Seattle-Tacoma airport
• The Social Impact of the Seattle-Tacoma Airport on the Community
• The Tampa and Seattle-Tacoma Airport Transit Systems
• Black Planet: Facing Race During an NBA Season - Page 198
• Hiking Mount Rainier National Park, 2nd - Page 6
• Yoga Journal - May-Jun 1996 - Page 18
• Effective Cycling: 6th Edition - Page 448
• Worth More Dead: And Other True Cases - Page 46
• Fodor's USA, 28th Edition - Page 972
• Ski Snowboard America: Top Winter Resorts in USA and Canada - Page 409
• The Shurtleff and Lawton families: genealogy and history - Page 356
• New Scientist - Oct 2, 1975 - Page 25
• Cruise Travel - Sep-Oct 1999 - Page 54
• The Stranger Beside Me - Page 215

Plus thousands more... Apteva (talk) 15:58, 26 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

As to Atlanta, the correct, actual name, as given by the Atlanta City Council in an ordinance in 2003 to change the name to "Hartsfield - Jackson International Airport", concludes "is hereby re-named Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport",[7] using two spellings within the same ordinance, and nobody makes Jackson bold. The FAA uses space hyphen space [8] but not a majority of writers (including the airport website itself). As far as I can tell the airport signs use spaces.[9] Apteva (talk) 20:44, 26 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose per MOS and proper typography, these are all instances where an en dash it correct. In all three cases the dash is used in the meaning of "and" (Seattle and Tacoma, Minneapolis and Saint Paul, William Berry Hartsfield and Maynard Jackson), which dictates the use of a dash. Arsenikk ^(talk) 20:57, 4 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • And per your argument, no one who publishes books knows what an endash is (yet does use them where they do belong) but somehow Wikipedia editors do??? Please think about what you are saying. Apteva (talk) 03:46, 5 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
• Support for ease-of-use. This is an online encyclopedia. People type these names. My keyboard has a handy hyphen key, as I would gess most do. (In fact, mine has two. Both are simple hyphens.) Let's use the character most people can easily type. I don't see a compelling enough argument to increase difficulty or obfuscation here. --Nouniquenames 04:58, 5 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose—agree with Kwami. Tony (talk) 07:54, 6 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Who, as I read it, said "Most common is the hyphen", and who, as I read it basically said that we should make up whatever spelling we wanted regardless of how many thousands of sources used a hyphen... Books are typeset, as I previously noted, so ease of typing has nothing to do with the choice of characters used. I personally think that pilots use hyphens for that reason, but not books. Books use whatever they think is correct, and so should we. Not because our style guide says "Hyphenation also occurs in bird names such as Great Black-backed Gull, and in proper names", but because they are correct. Apteva (talk) 02:44, 7 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

    Just to be clear, I think that if the correct punctuation was an endash, which it is not, pilots would still use a hyphen. It is merely a coincidence that what pilots use is correct, just like on talk pages there is no way that I am going to worry about using a dash in a sentence - like this one, that if in a book - or in an article would use a dash. Apteva (talk) 06:05, 7 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose – these airport names are styled in accordance with our MOS, and are not without support in sources. The proposal to move back to a style contrary to the MOS is a bad idea. The "ease of use" argument is nonsense; that's what redirects are for. Dicklyon (talk) 03:03, 8 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

  Actually, our MOS says that proper names use hyphens, so our MOS says to move them. Saying the incorrect spelling is not without support is misleading. We do not normally say gee one person spelled this name wrong does that mean that we can use it for the article name, instead of the 10,000 books that spelled it correctly? Ease of use is not an unimportant issue. There at least were reasons a few years ago for not using endash in titles. I am not sure those reasons are not still valid. But that to me is not the compelling reason for using a hyphen, nor is the guideline the compelling reason. The 10,000 books that use a hyphen is. And if the MOS did not already say that proper names use a hyphen, it would need to be corrected. Apteva (talk) 06:36, 8 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

  "Proper names use a hyphen"? Where does that rule come from? Proper names use hyphens in the exact same situations we use them with other sorts of words. One exception case of which you might be thinking involves hyphenated personal surnames, but that has nothing to do with the names of these airports. Powers ^T 00:37, 9 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

  That rule comes from the same place as all rules. In the development of English as a language certain conventions became commonplace. These conventions can be found in style guides, dictionaries, and in common usage. There are hundreds of thousands, millions probably, of examples of using a hyphen in a proper name, and our MOS states that there are three situations where a hyphen is used. Item three includes the text "Hyphenation also occurs in bird names such as Great Black-backed Gull, and in proper names such as Trois-Rivières and Wilkes-Barre." It is trivial to verify that that is a valid statement. Look up any proper noun in a dictionary or in common usage and it uses a hyphen. Our rules are not made up to make us look goofy. They are made up to make us look like we are professional. Using Seattle–Tacoma International Airport, while not as "goofy" as Great Black–backed Gull, is just plain not supported by common usage. One editor thought there were "many" examples of proper nouns that use an endash, but outside of Wikipedia articles that are misnamed and need to be moved I am waiting to see even one. Apteva (talk) 01:38, 9 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

  Comet Hale–Bopp. Guillain–Barré syndrome. Mexican–American War. Michelson–Morley experiment. Fodor's Pacific Northwest uses "Seattle–Tacoma" but "Sea-Tac", interestingly. However, I'm beginning to see the point. MOS:HYPHEN and MOS:ENDASH do indeed tend to point in the direction you indicate. I think they're wrong, however; conjunctions such as that joining Seattle and Tacoma should be dashes unless they've become idiomatic as hyphens (as Wilkes-Barre has). Powers ^T 14:03, 9 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

  It is not Wikipedia's place to say what "should be", but only "what is". Evidently stronger arguments have been made for using only hyphens. Since syndrome and experiment are not capitalized, those are not proper nouns. Mexican-American War is correctly spelled only with a hyphen, and there are 10,000 books that use a hyphen. As to comets, I find clear and convincing evidence that our article is misnamed - do a google book search - 10 of the first 10 entries use a hyphen. Going farther is not needed. Apteva (talk) 17:26, 9 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

  Looking to sources can be evidentiary, but it need not be conclusive. We routinely change capitalization in our article titles to match our style guide; punctuation should be treated no differently. In other words, it doesn't matter how many people hyphenate "Hale-Bopp" if our MOS asks us to use a dash. Powers ^T 21:24, 9 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

  I could not disagree more strongly. Choosing a name is a policy not a guideline, and which is more important, a policy or a guideline? Life always involves choices. We make those choices on the basis of which is more important all the time. Apteva (talk) 23:21, 9 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

  Capitalization is not the issue. Our style guide uses sentence capitalization and not title capitalization. Punctuation is very different from capitalization. But our MOS does not ask us to use a dash, it asks us to use a hyphen, and in one edit of our MOS, Hale-Bopp is erroneously used as an example of using an endash. That error has been noted, and hopefully will soon be corrected. Apteva (talk) 23:26, 9 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

  Hale–Bopp is not an error; it's a good example of how the en dash is used to connect parallel items, in this case the names of two discoverers. Many sources use the en dash in Hale–Bopp this way for this reason (like the ones I linked on your talk page); this confirms that it is a styling choice. Dicklyon (talk) 00:57, 10 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

  That is being discussed at Talk:Comet Hale–Bopp, but the evidence supports that it be moved back to Comet Hale-Bopp. In that case some references do not capitalize comet, making it a common name, not a proper noun, and in that case using an en dash is correct. Endashes are used in common names, not in proper names like airport names. Apteva (talk) 01:29, 11 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.