Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Lead section

Bold the quote marks or not?

Regarding WP:Manual of Style/Lead section#Alternative names...

This "Largest Bug" is an example article title, not a real one. My question is, should the quote marks be bolded like this? These would be alternative names and thus redirects (without quote marks):

• The Largest Bug is often referred to as the "Big One", "Biggest One", or "Huge One" in media reports.

Valjean (talk) (PING me) 15:05, 13 April 2026 (UTC)

I wouldn't bold them, since they aren't actually a part of the alternative name, plus the bold quotation marks look too heavy. Gawaon (talk) 17:18, 13 April 2026 (UTC)

Yes, I understand. I was wondering if the MOS addresses this situation. Also, are the quote marks even necessary? -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 18:18, 13 April 2026 (UTC)

Found it! It's in MOS:BOLDQUOTE: "Quotation marks not part of the article title should not be bolded." Gawaon (talk) 20:08, 13 April 2026 (UTC)

Why don't people like citations in the lead?

MOS:LEADCITE doesn't require citations in the lead (assuming the assertions in the lead are supported by the body), but it also doesn't prohibit them or even recommend against them. I assumed when I first read MOS:LEADCITE that its purpose was mostly to let editors know that it's okay if something isn't cited in the lead, and that you shouldn't add {{citation needed}} tags without checking if the claims are cited in the body.

It's become increasingly clear to me that other editors think the lead generally shouldn't contain citations except in unusual circumstances. It makes sense to me that we don't require them, but I don't understand why we should actively avoid them.

To make it a little more concrete, here are the times when this has come up for me recently:

1. In my experience, biographies of living persons usually don't do a good job of following WP:BLP when it comes to birthdays. (I could go on about this problem, but that's a different discussion.) Recently, while patrolling recent changes, I had an idea: whenever I saw a new user changing or adding a birthday in the lead of a BLP, while I was verifying that birthday, I would also add an inline citation in the lead. That way, the next time somebody changed the birthday, it would be very easy to check whether the change was correct. I quickly learned from @Mellk that not everyone would be happy about this.
2. Today, at William Luther Pierce, a new user was trying to remove the word "neo-Nazi" from the lead, saying in the edit summary that there was no proof. After reverting the change, I added citations from the body to the lead, figuring that would make it more difficult for the user to claim that there was "no proof". @PARAKANYAA reverted it with this message: unnecessary per WP:LEAD - material is contested by no one except neo-nazis, there is not a single reliable source that disagrees. Which is true, of course, but since I don't see citations in the lead as a huge cost, I didn't see any harm. (Plus, we unfortunately live in a world with plenty of neo-Nazis around to contest those claims.)

To be clear, I'm not at all trying to pick on the editors who reverted me. I'm just trying to understand what seems to be a widely held view that there's a big downside to citations in the lead. Cadddr (talk) 07:20, 29 April 2026 (UTC)

The cost is that it, as lead cite says, redundant. It also a visual eyesore, prone to desyncing with the body of the article, and encourages people to add material to the lead rather than the body, when the lead should only ever be a summary. If the lead contains unique material and citations it needs to be moved or at least copied to the body. Birthdays should not be in the lead unless they are in the body of the article, there should not be any information in the lead not in the body of the article.

Also, any material can be contested by anyone, so there's no reason to have lead cite as a guideline if have to we add citations the moment it gets removed - that's already the basic verifiability guidelines. There is technically no mandate to add citations unless someone challenges it. If every single source calls someone a neo-Nazi and they are a self avowed National Socialist (he literally ran a magazine called National Socialist World; does he contest the "neo"?) it is not in any way "contentious" information. I'm sure neo-Nazis think the Holocaust didn't happen but it is conceding ground to them to treat that as "contentious" when it isn't contentious that the Holocaust happened, in the reliable sources. The user in question also removed cited descriptors, so that wouldn't even make a difference. PARAKANYAA (talk) 07:38, 29 April 2026 (UTC)

That makes sense, thank you for the explanation. Cadddr (talk) 07:46, 29 April 2026 (UTC)

And yeah, that's quite ridiculous if he's a self-avowed National Socialist but denies being a neo-Nazi. Cadddr (talk) 07:52, 29 April 2026 (UTC)

I think it may be fine to add citations in the lead if it is used to support potentially controversial statements (or statements that may be changed by driveby editors without any regard to sourcing), but this varies by case. The Donald Trump article for example is very high-profile and every change to the article is monitored by a large number of very active editors. The talk page has a "current consensus" list, so there are no citations in the lead, but most other articles have very few or no active editors watching the page. For something that is not really controversial (like the date of birth) and can easily be checked in the body, then I think it is redundant to include citations in the lead (and I agree that it can be a bit of an eyesore). Then again, for more controversial statements, I am not sure if adding citations would make a difference (perhaps it may help recent changes patrollers who cannot easily verify the statement to some extent?). Mellk (talk) 18:37, 30 April 2026 (UTC)

Given that citations in the lead do not obviate the need for them in the body, there is a strong argument that they are at best pointless. I generally neither add nor remove them, except when they don't actually support the claim. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 19:46, 30 April 2026 (UTC)

I would say yes, they are generally pointless, but it feels like there are times where there is too much on the lead (perhaps this is more so the case in contentious topics) and of course this is not ideal. Mellk (talk) 22:29, 30 April 2026 (UTC)

Adding a citation leaves you with too much. The solution to an oversize lead is to move material to the body and add any missing summary in its place. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 14:03, 1 May 2026 (UTC)

There is another reason for avoiding citations in the lead: the lead often summarizes more concisely material that is spelled out in separate sentences with separate citations in the body of the article. To properly cite these summarizing statements in the lead you would end up with ridiculous WP:Citation overkill like "Leonhard Euler (/ˈɔɪlər/ OY-lər;^[1][2][3] 15 April 1707^[4][5][6] – 18 September 1783^[7][8][9]) was a Swiss^[10][11] polymath^[12][13] who was active as a mathematician,^{[14][15][16][17]} physicist,^{[18][19][20][21]} astronomer,^[22][23] logician,^[24] geographer,^[25] music theorist^[26] and engineer.^{[27][28[29][30]}." That may please the little-blue-clicky-number worshipers but isn't actually helpful to readers. They're better off finding the relevant sections of the article that this sentence summarizes and looking at how the detailed claims there are sourced. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:38, 30 April 2026 (UTC)

Lists in the lead?

Are lists in the lead section allowed? In my experience they are, at least, very rare, and my preference is to avoid them altogether, but I haven't found anything in the MOS that addresses this explicitly. (Asking because of a conflict with another editor about this issue.) Gawaon (talk) 07:19, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

I do not see how a list can be part of a summary, which is what the lead is supposed to be. I would not have thought an explicit statement was needed for that. Donald Albury 13:41, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

Seems reasonable, but it may be hard to convince people who see this otherwise if there's no explicit statement. Gawaon (talk) 14:45, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

Are there any real-life examples you can supply? Largoplazo (talk) 15:37, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

See Expansion of Major League Soccer. CUA 27 (talk) 17:27, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

I don't see anything wrong with having that list there. It still fits within the confines of the lead being a summary. Change of mind: that there are several criteria can be delayed until after the lead. If anything needs to be said, it can be that multiple factors are involved, without listing them. Largoplazo (talk) 19:33, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

How much participation has there been in the discussion? Donald Albury 16:13, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

I come from AC power plugs and sockets: British and related types where another editor insisted in adding a list to the lead and complained about me being a "disruptive editor" when I reverted that. They haven't replied further, so there hasn't been much discussion yet. Gawaon (talk) 17:39, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

And you were edit warring with him. I understand how that can happen, but you need to avoid it. I have given the TA a formal warning. As you haven't reverted him the last time, I hope that is an end to it. If the two of you cannot agree, there is always dispute resolution. Donald Albury 23:12, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

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)