Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Lead section

Discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Biography § Discrepancy between MOS:BOLDREDIRECT and MOS:NICKCRUFT (and other problems)

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Biography § Discrepancy between MOS:BOLDREDIRECT and MOS:NICKCRUFT (and other problems). —Myceteae‍🌈 (talk) 17:18, 2 June 2026 (UTC)

clarification on MOS:BOLDLINK

does MOS:BOLDLINK, in combination with MOS:BOLD#OTHER, implicitly apply to all links in an article? (that is, no links should be bolded?) i was under the impression that this is the case, but in an off-wiki discussion SevenSpheres was of the opinion that MOS:BOLDLINK applies to the lede only, as its current wording only mentions the lede. >>scourgezoned (it/its) 00:49, 15 June 2026 (UTC)

For context, this is about the list of minor planets series, which uses bold to highlight the relatively few entries with articles; see e.g. the discussion at Talk:List of minor planets/Archive 2#Bolded entry. It's true that MOS:BOLD lists only a few cases in which bold should be used and this isn't one of them, but MOS:BOLDLINK doesn't say that links should never be bold, only that the bold text in the lead section shouldn't contain a link. I think there's a reasonable case for the use of bold in these lists, but in any case a mass edit to hundreds of articles needs to be discussed first (at the list's talk page, not here). SevenSpheres (talk) 01:11, 15 June 2026 (UTC)

Shouldn't the links being blue be enough of a difference/stand out from the ones that are unlinked/red? Traumnovelle (talk) 05:50, 15 June 2026 (UTC)

they seem to have been bolded since some sublists also contain minor planet links that are redirects, though i'm pretty sure that's also against WP:SELFRED >>scourgezoned (it/its) 13:53, 15 June 2026 (UTC)

I think MOS:BOLD#OTHER is quite clear, as it says, Use boldface in the remainder of the article only in a few special cases. I do not see how that can be taken as allowing bolding of links in cases not specifically listed as allowed. Donald Albury 01:51, 15 June 2026 (UTC)

As I already said in the earlier discussion at Talk:List of minor planets/Archive 2#Bolded entry, I think WP:IAR applies here. The bolded links serve a purpose, and unless a replacement is implemented that's at least as visible, I am against removing it. Being able to recognize which blue links are articles and which are redirects is very useful in my opinion. Renerpho (talk) 17:08, 15 June 2026 (UTC)

Comment -- the same format is used in many lists about asteroids that were discovered by individual astronomers. Compare, for example, the bolded entries in Marc Buie#List of discovered minor planets. Whatever change is made to the lists of minor planets in general should probably be made to those "individual" lists as well. Same for List of trans-Neptunian objects and List of unnumbered trans-Neptunian objects (including its sub-lists). Renerpho (talk) 17:29, 15 June 2026 (UTC)

There aren't, or at least shouldn't be, any links to redirects in the list of minor planets. SevenSpheres (talk) 17:36, 15 June 2026 (UTC)

IAR only works if the community agrees that the edit(s) improve the encyclopedia. It should be invoked very sparingly. If you think the bolded links serve a purpose, propose a change to the guidance. Donald Albury 19:00, 15 June 2026 (UTC)

I am looking at how the situation has changed in recent years. We may not actually need the bold links. Getting rid of them entirely will be a bit of work though, beyond simply removing the bolded links themselves.

Both the Lists of minor planets and the List of trans-Neptunian objects no longer have "normal" (as opposed to bolded) links, so removing the bold links in those cases seems fine. If we decide to remove the bold links from lists such as Marc Buie#List of discovered minor planets then an alternative is needed. We could change the table format, such that links to the list entries are moved to a separate column. That would remove the need to link the designations, unless there is actually an article to link. In some cases, such as in Marc Buie's article, such a column already exists, making the change a bit easier. In some articles, such as Satoru Otomo#List of discovered minor planets, the extra column may have to be added.

I think the idea used to be to have normal links for all named asteroids, and bolded links for those with a standalone article. That's how Marc Buie's article currently handles it, but overall this is far from consistent. Some articles simply have normal links to all the named asteroids (possibly because the bold links got removed at some point), regardless of whether an article exists or not. That's a bit of a mess! Renerpho (talk) 07:28, 16 June 2026 (UTC)

I suggest we move this entire discussion to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Astronomy. Any objections, Scourgezoned, SevenSpheres? Renerpho (talk) 08:16, 16 June 2026 (UTC)

seems like MOS:BOLDLINK stuff here is done, so no :] >>scourgezoned (it/its) 18:45, 16 June 2026 (UTC)

Per WP:CONLEVEL, a decision there cannot override BOLDLINK. Donald Albury 21:38, 16 June 2026 (UTC)

A decision there can decide what to do about it. Renerpho (talk) 16:51, 17 June 2026 (UTC)

Bold and Foreign Languages

As currently written, MOS:BOLDALTNAMES reads "Do not boldface non-English names not normally used in English." This implies that non-English names normally (almost always, always) used in English should be bolded as well. However, there are no examples of foreign-language names that should be bolded when provided as alternatives, which I think makes it less intuitive when citing the MOS. Are there any examples worth providing, or highlighting explicitly when foreign language alternatives should be bolded?

This question comes from Indonesian Painters Association, where I've reinserted bold twice because the phrasing of MOS:BOLDALTNAMES suggests that the Indonesian-language equivalent should be bold because the native language title of the organization is always used in conjunction with a translation on first mention, but without a firm example it is hard to really point to the MOS aside from that one line. (In this case, The Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism uses the Indonesian title as its article title, which would avoid that issue here)  — Chris Woodrich (talk) 11:48, 25 June 2026 (UTC)

MOS:BOLDLEAD tweek - Basename

Is it worthwhile to tweek the instructions on the MOS:BOLDLEAD to indicate that this applies to the basename / non-dabbed version of the article title? both Delta Phi Epsilon (professional) and Delta Phi Epsilon (social) exist and it appears that MOS:BOLDLEAD as currently written would indicate that only "Delta Phi Epsilon (professional)" would be bolded in the first sentence of Delta Phi Epsilon (professional), but there is no reason to include the dab term there. I don't think this falls into the WP:IAR, but I'm not quite sure how (or if) to add that to a fairly succinct current policy.Naraht (talk) 12:36, 3 July 2026 (UTC)

I'd consider it common sense that BOLDLEAD applies to the actual name of the article subject, not to whatever disambiguation terms may follow in parentheses. Gawaon (talk) 13:38, 3 July 2026 (UTC)

Agreed. WP:COMMONSENSE. GiantSnowman 14:13, 3 July 2026 (UTC)

Unfortunately, War in Iraq (2013–2017), Raqqa campaign (2012–2013), Mamadapur (KL), Kabalapur (Bharmyanatti), Pattihal (K.B.), Shindholi (K.H.), Treaty of Bucharest (1918), Queen's Royal Regiment (West Surrey), USS Nevada (BB-36), etc. Naraht (talk) 08:48, 6 July 2026 (UTC)

Well, if the full article title, including the disambiguator, is repeated in the first sentence, why shouldn't all of it be bolded? That seems COMMONSENSE too, or at least highly plausible. Your original question seemed to be about whether, if the disambiguator is not included in the lead sentence, the actual article name should still be bolded – to which I'd say, "of course". But if the full article title happens to be repeated literally in the lead sentence, I'd say that BOLDLEAD applies to all of it, naturally enough.

More interesting would be the case where the terms are split, say something like, "The War in Iraq was an armed conflict between Iraq and its allies and the Islamic State, lasting throughout 2013–2017." In that case, I'd say only the actual name should be bolded, not any disambiguation terms (here, 2013–2017) that occur elsewhere in the sentence. Otherwise, the result could look decidedly odd. Gawaon (talk) 09:20, 6 July 2026 (UTC)

Is our "lead" actually a lead, and if not, why are we calling it that?

Right off we have that the lead section "is located at the beginning of the article, before the first heading. It is not a news-style lead or 'lede' paragraph".

But so if it's not a news-style lead, why are we using the term "lead" at all? There isn't any other kind of lead. The term's not used outside the news business. There are terms like "forward" or "summary" or "abstract" or "introduction" that are used for starting parts of some writings, but the term "lead" is not used. New Yorker articles don't have anything people call leads. Der Spiegel articles don't have anything people call leads. Wikipedia articles don't have anyth... but wait. We apparently do.

It is idiosyncratic and also confusing. Why don't we call our first sections "first section" or "opening summary" or "introductory section" or whatever? It's like we're inviting editors to confuse our opening sections with a newspaper story lead/lede. Herostratus (talk) 03:15, 27 July 2026 (UTC)

What do you feel the consequence of such "inviting" would be if editors were to take it as such? The page covers what should appear at the beginning of articles on Wikipedia and how it should be composed. The guidelines would be the same, and editors would presumably follow them to the same degree, regardless of the term that had been chosen.

A computer was a person employed to make calculations, but now we use it to refer to a machine. But we aren't inviting anyone to confused a Univac or a PC with a person. Words' meanings often expand by analogy or metaphor. "Lead" is the term that was adopted for Wikipedia's purposes. Largoplazo (talk) 04:09, 27 July 2026 (UTC)