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. ( non-admin closure) Calidum ^{Talk To Me} 18:24, 21 June 2014 (UTC) reply

Dana–Farber Cancer Institute → Dana-Farber Cancer Institute – The institute styles its own name with a hyphen, not an en dash. WP:MOSDASH style preferences do not extend to restyling the names of notable institutions so as not to match their styling of their own names. – Quercus solaris ( talk) 14:57, 13 June 2014 (UTC) reply

This is a contested technical request ( permalink). EdJohnston ( talk) 17:10, 13 June 2014 (UTC) reply

• Oppose per WP:NDASH, which says "An en dash is used for the names of two or more people in an attributive compound." ( Charles A. Dana and Sidney Farber in this case.) Armbrust ^{The Homunculus} 15:24, 13 June 2014 (UTC) reply

Professional copyediting doesn't force house style onto the names of organizations with well-established self-styling. You don't change "World Health Organization" to "World Health Organisation" because project style uses -ise not -ize. You don't change "Smith, Jones & Applewood PC" to "Smith, Jones, & Applewood PC" because project style uses serial commas. It's a flawed extrapolation of styling rules. Of course such editing happens out there, but that's simply because a lot of people don't know any better. Quercus solaris ( talk) 16:23, 13 June 2014 (UTC) reply

• Comment Stay cool per Wikipedia:Short horizontal line. Blue Rasberry (talk) 18:31, 13 June 2014 (UTC) reply

Thanks, will do—I totally agree with the point of Wikipedia:Short horizontal line, which is that copyeditorial styling subtleties do not matter in most contexts of life. Nonetheless, there are contexts where they are not considered negligible/superfluous, and Wikipedia pagenaming is an instance. For example, if the WP article for the WHO was at "World Health Organisation", we'd move it to "World Health Organization"—we wouldn't say, "Oh, well, yeah, but because no one cares about styling subtleties, let's just leave it where it is." WP:MOSDASH is fine, no arguments there, but it's not a reason to block this correction. Quercus solaris ( talk) 19:01, 13 June 2014 (UTC) reply

• Oppose per MOS:DASH, which has (after many years and many dramas) been adjudged as applying to titles. See also WP:OFFICIALNAMES. Jenks24 ( talk) 11:12, 21 June 2014 (UTC) reply

• • Comment OK, well that's enough for me to end my effort to move the page, although I will just add a note of protest here (simply in defense of better editing, addressed to the whole Wikipedian community, not to anyone who's posted here on this page in particular). From my skimming of WP:OFFICIALNAMES (which I was not aware of till now—thanks for the link, Jenks24), and based on what Jenks24 just said ("has (after many years and many dramas) been adjudged as applying to titles"), it sounds like Wikipedians have already established a precedent for cases like this one whereby Wikipedia house style can always override an organization's self-styling. While accepting that that's what the precedent is and I can't change it, I will simply point out that such a precedent is flawed and is a rare example of where Wikipedian styling precedent has fallen short of best practice in professional editing. It is one thing to have a principle of WP:COMMON NAME, which is widely known and cited and, in my experience, is completely sound in principle (I've always agreed with it). But there is a difference that is widely recognized among professional editors that apparently some Wikipedians have conflated: (1) choosing a common name (say, South Korea or International Classification of Diseases) over an official name (say, Republic of Korea or International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems) when one is choosing a different group of words because there is a natural proclivity to use a short form (which is an example of a main underlying reason why common names get to be common) is not "the same thing" as (2) cascading house style or project style over top of an organization's orthographic styling of the same group of words. It's a hypercorrective misunderstanding of the purpose of house style or project style—of why it exists. As I mentioned in an earlier comment, by the very same conflated logic, Wikipedia could impose the spelling "World Health Organisation" on its article about the World Health Organization, or impose serial commas on self-styled names that don't use them, or decide to title the article on Britain's Labour Party as "Labor Party", or decide to title the article on Gennifer Flowers as "Jennifer Flowers". "We like our orthographic styling better, and official names and self-styling get overruled when we want them to." And lest anyone argue about the latter 2 instances that "no one would be stupid enough to try that, because the national variety applies, or the autonymic styling overrides, or both", I would agree, and I would then ask you to think critically about why it applies. It's because in the cascading of styles, there are usually reasons why the ranking order of the cascade is what it is. Those reasons are not based on hypercorrection ("our house style uses en dashes in coordinate terms, and that overrules everything else in the world"). I suspect that maybe hypercorrective error won this particular point on Wikipedia because the people who cared the most and shouted the loudest were the most pedantic ones. I'm not saying that -or is the "wrong" way to spell labor. But it's not the way any (talented) professional copyeditor would spell Labour Party when referring to the party in the UK. Not that copyediting is all-important. Who deeply cares if someone writes -s- for WHO in a news story? Of course all sane people realize that that gaff by itself is not important enough to spend lots of time or money on, and that's a reasonable principle. But within the context of copyediting, as long as people are interested in discussing how to do it well (and people who write and read Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style, for example, are interested in that), this comment was worth posting. Quercus solaris ( talk) 19:04, 21 June 2014 (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.