User talk:GSLikesCats307

Hello! This page is for anyone that for some reason or other wants to discuss anything on my page! So if you do, just fire away!

Ok, someone has done that then.

I apologise for making this the first Talk for you...

Hi there, just thought that since you've now established your Talk page, I could finally chat directly to you about an edit I just edited.

Firstly, you're keen on using ampersands, I note. But can I persuade you to spell out 'and' in prose like that? It's not like you're trying to keep the character count down, and stylistically it's a bit jarring (to me, at least). At least outside of some scenario where space (or the time needed to jot something down) actually is at a premium, and two less characters.

They have their place, like "/” in leiu of "or" also does, but I've been redoing them 'in full' a few times (and have seen others update it, too, clearly with the same idea in mind) a few prior times that you've applied. Ampersands rather draw the eye, disproportionately, at least for me. YMMV.

Secondly, the convention for the {{Citation needed}} tag (and aliases for that, and also the {{Actual citation needed}} ones, etc) is to follow the punctuation. Follow the link I just gave to see the examples.

As for using "cn" versus "Citation needed" template name (and other abbreviated or case-adjusted versions), the former redirects to the latter and gives the same resulting appearance wherever either is embedded. I wouldn't normally go in and expand it out, as a lone edit, but as I was in there shuffling the "." position (and spelling out "and"), I took the liberty. Again, no real need to spare the (markup) space, and I only made that change to spare the need to evaluate a redirect and be more obvious to hypothetical future editors. I'm much less personally worried about "cn" vs "Citation needed" vs "Citation Needed" or any of the other various aliases ({{fact}} used to be one!), so am not suggesting you stop using the 'wrong' version in anything like as strong a term. But thought I'd at least explain why I also made that alteration, along the way.

But, otherwise, let me congratulate you on your contributions, over the last month or so. You've been a decent contributor (the above points notwithstanding), and this little note (which isn't anything but my own individual opinion on the matter) is by no means intended to detract from your generally good style and authorship! 82.132.238.56 21:31, 22 April 2026 (UTC)

As mentioned above.

Could you please not do that? 81.179.199.253 20:11, 13 May 2026 (UTC)

Force of habit I guess. Out of curiosity though, why does everyone get so riled up over the ampersand? It's also a valid way to write 'and', so why does no-one like that? I just want to know. GSLikesCats307 11:04, 14 May 2026 (UTC)

U cn abrvi8 thngz 4 ur txtspk / 1337-5p34k, natch. Bt s! gd 4 wel4md ⇨ing & ↳st&ing…

There's just no need for the universal use of it in 'normal' grammatical composition. It has some examples of acceptable usage, which then intentionally stand out as special cases within the text. Speaking from my own experience, using it for every single 'and' disproportionately draws my eye to it, making it look and read more like a "quoted gluing character" than the more flowing conjunction between wider clauses or (top-level) list-items that it ususually should be.

Just like there are(/there're) times to use other abbreviations, when it is(/it's) useful, and other times when it is not(/it's not/it isn't) that are often useful to give different impressions and stresses to the surrounding text.

To provide a more practical check, I've just intensely scanned through several books (fiction and non-fiction; including coding manuals) and a number of web-pages (wikipedia pages on various subjects, a rather lengthy blog, a local-government site's pages on planning aplications, the extensive rules and regulations of a sporting organisation... and more) and there is zero 'everyday' use of the ampersand anywhere. (Grammatically-atomic examples such as "Fish & Chips" do exist, as special cases. And the coding book uses it in code snippets, because then it's (part of) a literal operand or other special character.)

This is just my opinion, I cannot speak for anyone else who seems to be bothered. But it impedes reading due to the stop-go implications as the text is scanned and parsed. 82.132.212.205 15:49, 14 May 2026 (UTC)