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Jail vs. gaol

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@HiLo48: Greetings! Looking at the totality of MOS:ENGVAR I see that MOS:CONSISTENT makes an exception to the "most commonly used current variant" for quotations and proper names. In "the Melbourne gaol", the second word is a proper noun, but the third isn't because it isn't capitalized. So this appears to violate the MOS. "Melbourne Gaol" would be a two-word proper noun, but it's unclear from the article Old Melbourne Gaol if it was called "Melbourne Gaol" at the time being discussed in the article. (Perhaps you are aware of sources that can shed light on this question?) Using "Old Melbourne Gaol" would presumably be a little anachronistic, but would comply with the MOS. It looks like Beechworth was actually named "HM Prison Beechworth" not "Beechworth Gaol" at the time. Which MOS-compliant alternatives would you prefer? -- Beland (talk) 01:35, 20 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Beland - I live in Melbourne and frequently visit some of the other places whose prison names you have "modernised". The ONLY spelling I have ever seen for their more historic buildings is "gaol". The MOS must not be used to change historical spellings where they are still the only spellings used. The article Ned Kelly shows how this word is used in modern Australian English. HiLo48 (talk) 02:49, 20 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Sure, some writers use "gaol" and some use "jail" in Australian English, but [1] says "jail" is more common in Australian English, and MOS:COMMONALITY requires use of the most common spelling outside proper names. -- Beland (talk) 03:17, 20 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I would argue that Beechworth Gaol, Old Melbourne Gaol, and many other similar ones ARE proper names. HiLo48 (talk) 03:24, 20 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
They are, yes, but only with a capital "G". -- Beland (talk) 03:26, 20 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That's grammatic pedantry taken to an extreme. HiLo48 (talk) 03:47, 20 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It's a basic rule of English capitalization I learned in elementary school. Making pedantic decisions is kind of what the MOS exists to do, so I feel like I'm just the messenger here. -- Beland (talk) 03:53, 20 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, it is a basic rule, but breaking it on Wikipedia doesn't stop a proper name being a a proper name. HiLo48 (talk) 04:06, 20 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I would analyze "Melbourne gaol" as a common noun with a proper noun acting as an adjective. Regardless, this article uses "Melbourne Gaol", so I think the matter is settled? -- Beland (talk) 04:11, 20 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Ned Kelly uses "Melbourne Gaol", which seems to be supported by sources, so I will change this article to use that. HM Prison Beechworth says that "Beechworth Gaol" is an anachronism, so I will change this article to use the former name. -- Beland (talk) 03:27, 20 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Are you claiming that Google ngrams are WP:RS ? Andy Dingley (talk) 21:57, 20 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    They do seem to be a reliable primary source for the printed sources they claim to cover, yes. According to Google Books Ngram Viewer, the site is used in academic research, though of course not being without error or bias due to OCR and sampling issues. I do not rely solely on that source; all the secondary sources I have found on the subject also indicate that "jail" is more common than "gaol" in British English: [2], [3]. Are you aware of any sufficiently modern sources that say "gaol" is more common in British English? -- Beland (talk) 23:00, 20 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
What's the favoured venue for trying to sort this out properly? Andy Dingley (talk) 21:54, 20 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
We already had an RFC on this, archived at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 218#Gaol vs. jail. I don't see a formal close there, but I was going by what Xurizuri wrote here, which was "looks like its wrapped up, with jail preferred except in proper nouns".
In the spirit of WP:RFCBEFORE, I'm interested in figuring out exactly what is disputed between the two of us. For example, are we agreed that "jail" actually is the most common spelling in British English? Is there an assertion that MOS:COMMONALITY does not apply to common nouns and other parts of speech in articles about the past, or that the instances reverted are not common nouns or ? Is there some distinction that requires us to write "Joe went to gaol for five years" but does not require us to write "olde" instead of "old" and "þe" instead of "the" in articles about the 1400s? -- Beland (talk) 22:53, 20 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
You are changing every instance in Cork County Gaol to jail. That is ridiculous.
You are saying that Dic Penderyn was taken to jail. That is an anachronism.
The legal world moves slowly. Gaol is far from gone from use, even now.
"[ngrams] do seem to be a reliable primary source". Do you appreciate the gulf between WP:PRIMARY and WP:RS ? You clearly haven't looked at WP:RSN on the use of ngrams (or the ongoing arbcom case). Neither support them.
This is not about sourcing. That Dic Penderyn was hung at Cardiff gaol, not Cardiff jail (and not Cardiff prison either, although that's a question for another day) is beyond doubt. The only question here is what we do about accurately reporting per WP:RS (for that's our job) events that definitively took place at gaols. Do we retroactively apply modern terminology to such a word? I see no justification for that. It's an archaic spelling, a word that means old in origin, not obsolete and now unworkable. It's not an unclear meaning either. It's not as if we're asking our hypothetical reader on the Clapham omnibus (an 'omnibus' is an old word for a shared Uber) to spell it; just to read and recognise it.
We should never (and here we are, back at Arbcom) prioritise WP:MOS over WP:RS. Andy Dingley (talk) 23:11, 20 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Not sure what you mean by "gulf". Primary and reliable are orthogonal characteristics - sources can be primary and reliable, primary and unreliable, secondary and reliable, and secondary and unreliable.
If there's an active Arbcom case about Google Ngrams, I can't find it, but would be interested to read more. I'm not sure if you're referring to something specific in the WP:RSN archives, but I clicked through a few different discussions. Sometimes people use them to decide how to spell or punctuate or name something without dispute. In other conversations some editors object to their use for various reasons. Before my first reply, I checked WP:RS/PS, which is where I would expect there to be an entry if there had been a site-wide discussion on the reliability of this source. (There isn't one, but we can make one if you have a pointer to such a discussion.)
Anyway, to take the "gaol" issue one point at a time, even if we consider Google Ngrams to be completely unreliable, there are the two other reliable sources I cited that say "jail" is more common than "gaol" in modern British English. Are those disputed or can we stipulate this or ? -- Beland (talk) 23:36, 20 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
To say "Joe went to gaol for five years" is just to highlight the point that you're not understanding the subtleties of meaning here one bit. Andy Dingley (talk) 23:14, 20 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Are you saying that in British English, "gaol" and "jail" are two different words with different meanings, rather than two spellings of the same word? -- Beland (talk) 23:39, 20 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
For the old WP talk: thread, the most useful comment there is SchroCat's "It's always a bad idea for an OP to try and summarise people's positions and the summary of where the discussion is going. " The least useful would be the one that (yet again!) echoes Arbcom, telling us to choose WP:MOS over accurate content and sourcing. But let's let Arbcom play out there before we say more. Andy Dingley (talk) 23:17, 20 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Primary and reliable are not orthogonal. At least not here on WP, see WP:RSPRIMARY. Primary sourcing is clearly deprecated, especially when it's automated data-scraping like ngrams, without the slightest authorial oversight or sanity checking. See WP:RSN for the several times when ngrams have been questioned and RSN is just not convinced by their authority or accuracy.
But that's not the point. We know that jail is becoming popular against gaol, as part of the inevitable Americanisation of our media, movies and automobiles. But what does this change? Maybe we might use jail in a modern article about modern issues in contemporary British prisons – despite the British legal system and its formalities clearly favouring gaol. But to start applying 'jail' retroactively to articles about the 18th century? No. Just no.
Joe would not be 'sentenced to gaol for five years'. If they spent five years in gaol, that sounds more like a miscarriage of justice. The difference isn't gaol vs. jail, it's gaol vs. prison. Although there are famous exceptions to this in the case of some named gaols and prisons where their name (capitalised as a proper noun) confuses the function or functions that they've spread to cover. Also some, generally 'Newgate' or a couple of 'Loamshire Castles', were notably never called either gaol or prison as part of their proper name, but remained mononymous. Andy Dingley (talk) 11:53, 21 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
OK, I don't see an exception in MOS:ENGVAR for articles about the past. If the proposal is to create one, where would the line be drawn between "gaol" and "þe" (assuming you think we should use "the" and not "þe" in centuries where the latter was unambiguously correct)?
Also still curious if you have a pointer to an active Arbcom case on Ngrams. -- Beland (talk) 16:22, 21 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
What is 'þe' ? The definite article ? A definite article used in reference to Olde Tea Shoppes ? A thorn ? The way we treat it is going to depend an awful lot on the context in which we're discussing it. Articles on Early English are going to look a bit silly if you replace everything with 'deez'. Likewise an article on Cork County Gaol calling it a jail.
You seem insistent on taking an Australian article as an authority [4]. But what does it actually say?
  • "Both forms existed in English"
  • "the form gaol was the one that had been taken on by British law."
  • "Webster opted for jail" Webster. Not Johnson or Murray
  • "The spelling gaol was the accepted spelling in Australian English until the 1990s,"
  • "But if we are talking about the historical prisons then we need to keep the historical spelling."
Nobody claims that jail isn't common today for new use. But why force it into historical articles on historical topics, or even current British legal topics where gaol is still the term being used formally? We don't do that unless it's importantly necessary to achieve any clarity, and this is anything but.
The ANI / Arbcom trail is the one where Dicklyon has been using ngrams to justify decapitalisation of proper nouns, and now faces a ban for it. Andy Dingley (talk) 17:19, 21 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with all the passages you quote. There is no dispute when using the actual name of a facility like "Parramatta Gaol" the original spelling should be kept. The question is what to do in other cases where "gaol" is not capitalized because it is not part of a proper noun.
Ah, I see your comments at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Article titles and capitalisation 2/Evidence. Certainly a naive reading of the raw counts can give misleading answers if the question is "should X be capitalized?" but there is another word with the same lowercase spelling but with a different meaning. That's a user error that can be made even with the most reliable and representative corpus.
You used the word "term" to describe "gaol" as opposed to "jail"; I'm not sure if that was casual or precise. The MOS does require us to use period-appropriate words, but not spellings. Following that distinction, "jail" is in fact the same term historically and currently used by the British legal system; it's just not the same spelling. I'm still curious if you agree with that assertion that "gaol" and "jail" are two different spellings of the same word.
By "þe", yes, I'm referring to the definite article. The word "deez" is not a part of any national variety of Standard English (which is what is required by MOS:ENGVAR) so of course it would be silly and out of place in an encyclopedia. As a clarifying example, we can take the article Middle English. Some places in that article talk about the written form of the definite article "þe" itself, and those obviously have to stay that way. But what about the rest of the article where the definite article is used? For example, the first sentence starts out:
Middle English (abbreviated to ME) is the forms of English language that were spoken after the Norman Conquest of 1066...
If there's a general desire to use period-appropriate spellings, or to maintain consistency within an article, that would need to change to:
Middle English (abbreviated to ME) is þe forms of English language that were spoken after þe Norman Conquest of 1066...
...among other changes. What rationale should there be for not doing that? -- Beland (talk) 18:43, 21 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Why do you cite ENGVAR here? You're the one looking to go against it. We have existing articles using gaol in a context where gaol was the relevant form for them, set in Britain or Ireland. If you want to change this, it's up to you to provide some justification for it. An Australian dictionary might (might) do this for Australian articles but it's simply irrelevant to Britain. The whole point about ENGVAR is to favour stability over subjective churn.
There are cases where words are changed deliberately for clarity. Soccer vs. football vs. whatever that Aussie one is. But gaol and jail do not give rise to any confusion (and we play fast and loose with prison, which does). Readers might use one or the other when writing for themselves, but they're able to read either equally well and come to the same result. There is nothing in MOS:COMMONALITY supporting this change. Andy Dingley (talk) 19:54, 21 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It's part of WP:ENGVAR that says: "When more than one variant spelling exists within a national standard variety of English, the most commonly used current variant should usually be preferred".
Using British dictionaries and looking at British English only, it seems we agree that "jail" is the "most commonly used current variant"? Many articles about historical prisons already do that; this MOS guideline provides consistency across articles and is supposed to prevent the churn of people changing "jail" to "gaol" and then other people changing it back again. -- Beland (talk) 21:04, 21 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
except where the less common spelling has a specific usage in a specialized context,
Cork County Gaol is pretty obviously a context that has already specialized into gaol.
"Using British dictionaries" Dictionaries do not generally give frequencies. Nor are there many comprehensive adult dictionaries of British English that don't include gaol. If you're claiming that one does, then you get to cite it.
Yet again (and we're deep into WP:IDHT now) MOS does not overrule RS. Nor is this the Simple Wikipedia. We do not change sourced content simply to enforce a meaningless consistency across it. Andy Dingley (talk) 21:38, 21 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
By way of British dictionaries, I found for example this Cambridge University dictionary entry which says "gaol" is "old-fashioned for jail". I cannot find any sources that say that "gaol" is more common than "jail" in modern British English or that "gaol" isn't considered dated. Are you aware of any? -- Beland (talk) 22:02, 21 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
"Connexionalism" is clearly scoped to Methodist doctrine, and does not include plumbing or social connections generally. If the idea is that "gaol" falls into the "specialized context" exception, what is the scope of that context? It appears that both "jail" and "gaol" are used in British English to refer to prisons in the UK. This includes references to buildings constructed in the early 1800s, such as Inveraray Jail. -- Beland (talk) 22:08, 21 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
We absolutely do change spelling to be inconsistent with reliable sources to enforce consistency across Wikipedia. For example, if an American source on chemistry says "a neutral cesium atom has 55 electrons" we change that spelling to "caesium" per MOS:ENGVAR unless we are making a direct quotation. We even change typography in direct quotations per MOS:CONFORM. -- Beland (talk) 22:16, 21 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
'old-fashioned' is not the same as 'no longer usable'. Nor is 'dated'. That is to some extent the point: Dic Penderyn was hung at a gaol, because that was the contemporary term. We have to have a strong reason to move it and you have failed to give one. If we were discussing Blues singers or iPhones, it would be a completely different matter.
Nobody is talking about 'connexionalism' and certainly not about plumbing. Yet there you have a perfect case of MOS:COMMONALITY stating explicitly that when we are dealing with an 18th century concept, we retain the 18th century spelling. The 'specialised context' is that it's a page about a specifically named Gaol, discussing gaols. Which is pretty obviously a context for gaol. Inveraray Gaol always operated as Inveraray Gaol (during its construction) or more usually as Inveraray Prison when in service, even though it operated as both prison and gaol. It closed a long time ago and Lowland Scots favoured jail over gaol even before English did. So when it re-opened as a museum it renamed itself as Inveraray Jail. Something similar happened at Littledean Jail[5], which always operated as Littledean Gaol[6], but now does tourism as a jail. WP's Inverary article is only called 'Jail' because of a drive-by request by a disposable editor account claiming to be the governor! An account most of whose other edits were to change -ize spellings to -ise, directly against ENGVAR. There are good reasons why WP is canonically not WP:RS.
Nor do we rename chemical elements because of ENGVAR. We do that because of IUPAC and WP:CAESIUM. For chemistry there is an international standards body mandating standard naming conventions. A strong reason to make the change. Note that even then we regularly don't rename 'aluminum' in non-technical article in American English. Which is following ENGVAR over WP:SULFUR. Andy Dingley (talk) 23:31, 21 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The "most commonly used current variant" standard does not require a spelling to be "no longer usable", only that it is no longer the most popular. Would you not agree that an "old-fashioned" or "dated" annotation means a spelling is no longer the most popular in current usage? -- Beland (talk) 00:09, 22 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I just noticed this question has already been researched, and Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Spelling § English spelling comparison chart explicitly tells us that "jail" is more common in British English and all five of the other dialects listed. -- Beland (talk) 00:41, 22 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I would agree that I don't give a damn about it, because it's irrelevant. I also wish that you would drop this particular stick and stop hitting the horse with it.
It does not matter if one is 'more or less popular than' the other. Only the much more stringent condition that one is now 'so obscure as to be unusable' and requiring intervention to correct it. We are nowhere near that. You have shown no reason to think that.
You argue that MOS:CONSISTENCY requires an article about an Irish court building to be switched to use 'jail' throughout, so as to be consistent with popular usage two centuries after it was built, in Australia. I am far more interested in maintaining consistency with the title of the same page that the article is on, where it's clearly named as Beaumaris or Cork County Gaol. For new articles on current legal subtleties, I don't know. Gaol is still the standard form (that means the most popular form, within the context) for legal matters in the UK, AFAIK. IANAL, I just do building history. For new articles, take your pick. For Australia, do whatever you and the drop bears think is best. Andy Dingley (talk) 00:44, 22 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm glad we can agree on this question of fact. The only reason I pursued that question was that you seemed to doubt it and seemed to be arguing against any sources that indicated that. If it was in fact not true, then that would undermine my main argument.
Where do you see the "so obscure as to be unusable" standard in the MOS? -- Beland (talk) 00:52, 22 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
(And no, MOS:CONSISTENCY is a disambiguation page, not a guideline. I'm arguing based on MOS:COMMONALITY and British usage, not Australian.) -- Beland (talk) 00:57, 22 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
According to the comments from the governor on Talk:Inveraray Jail, it was always known as "Inveraray Jail", and doing a quick web search that appears to be the case, even though the UK legislation uses the spelling "Gaol" in the title and body.[7] If we were following the spelling in this source, we would also need to change instances of "courthouse" in the article to "Court-Houſe", which uses long s and the rule that all nouns are capitalized.
It appears that "gaol" was not the exclusive spelling even at the time when talking about 19th century British prisons, so that does not support the idea that "gaol" is referring to a specialized concept distinct from "jail". -- Beland (talk) 00:36, 22 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
comments from the governor on Talk:Inveraray Jail
Are you actually serious here? Andy Dingley (talk) 00:47, 22 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Of course. It's entirely possible that they are an impostor, but that's why I did a web search. Do you see any sources that indicate this assertion is incorrect? -- Beland (talk) 00:53, 22 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
You expect me to prove that the Governor of a Gaol that closed in 1889 isn't still posting to WP in 2016? Andy Dingley (talk) 00:58, 22 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Presumably it's the governor of the building that has operated as a tourist attraction since 1989. The identity of that person is not the relevant question; what we care about are what spelling contemporary sources used for this establishment in the 1800s. -- Beland (talk) 01:03, 22 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Searching Google Books from the 19th Century, I see "Gaol" in the journal of the British Parliament, but otherwise "jail". The official site of the tourist attraction [8] always uses "Jail" and "jail", even when talking about the prison and the 19th century. -- Beland (talk) 01:09, 22 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi all, I was brought here from my brief talk page discussion after changing county jail back to county gaol. Interesting to see a variation on my point about compound nouns. 'Melbourne gaol' is a compound noun so treat it as one word, which is capitalised at the start. It is also a proper noun. Therefore we do not change it to Melbourne jail. The same logic will apply to numerous other uses of the word gaol. Jail should only be preferred over gaol when the word is used in a different context, such as 'Brenton was sent to jail for life.' Most of these uses of gaol are also about historic places in which the spelling is set (for eternity and a day). We don't change the Diet of Worms just because it would not call it that if it took place now. Changing gaol to jail is an example of reductio ad absurdum. Insidentally, this has nothing to do with so-called Australian English or any other regional use of English-it's about English. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 21:13, 21 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If "Melbourne Gaol" is a proper noun, then it should be written with a capital "G"; that fits nicely within the proper name exception and I agree it should not be changed to "Melbourne Jail". This distinguishes it from the proper noun Melbourne (referring to the city) being used as an adjective to the common noun "jail", essentially meaning "the jail at Melbourne" without giving the name of the institution. "Diet of Worms" is what it is still most commonly called, and it is also a proper noun, so there are two reasons in the MOS to spell it like that. I agree about "Brenton was sent to jail for life". That implies that reverts like Special:diff/1306987349 should be undone. Would you support doing that? -- Beland (talk) 21:33, 21 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
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