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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Chiswick Chap (talk | contribs) at 09:12, 13 September 2022 (→"Ainu" vs "Ainur": "sparingly"). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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"Ainu" vs "Ainur"

An editor is seeking to use the rare term "Ainu" for a member of the "Ainur". The plural term is moderately well-understood by Tolkien readers; "Ainu" is a rarely-used singular, and however correct it might be, it just makes the article harder to read, which is undesirable. I suggest we leave it as it is, which is correct in British English, and more readable to boot. There certainly should not be repeated edit-warring attempts to insert "Ainu" against consensus. Chiswick Chap (talk) 14:26, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

Hello from that "an editor",

sure both terms are accurate if one get fit them in. And yes, the singular is not quite as well-known as the plural. So I take your point of better readability (a point that should apply in other articles as well) - a reasoning not clear from the edit history - but I wonder why you want to eliminate the penultimate occurences of that word but let the final one stand. Could you explain that? If that final one stands, then the reasoning "we shouldn't be using that obscure form" falls flat.

NB: "repeated edit-warring attempts" and "against consensus" is way overstating the matter. I made one change once - that's not edit warring. Nor can you claim consensus for either version. Str1977 05:06, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for discussing. On the technical matter, I'm really not sure that increasing the number of uses of a term like "Ainu" is moving the article in the right direction. We are writing for the general reader. In the "Ainulindale" section, I suppose the average person will put two and two together and connect "Ainu", "Ainur", and "Ainulindale". However, such a philological approach does not come easily to many people, and relying on that sort of Tolkienesque thinking is open to the charge of being overly technical. Of the three terms, "Ainu" is certainly the most obscure; we can avoid it (most of the time, at least) by writing "one of the Ainur", or to use a better-known term, and one that is actually more specific in Morgoth's case, "one of the Valar" – this has the advantage that it is actually used in The Lord of the Rings, which has a readership around 100 times as large as The Silmarillion.

The guiding principle must be readability and comprehensibility. That does not forbid us from using rare terms like "Ainu", but it does enjoin us to be careful with such things; and I'd say that in any article except Ainur (Middle-earth) itself, we should certainly not use it in the lead section, or without a wikilink or explanatory gloss. Whether the term should be used in the body at all is debatable; reading the article through again now, I don't find its repeated use too obtrusive; equally, I don't see a need to use it more often.

I'm sorry to mention this, but since you've raised the matter, I feel obliged to say that even one repeated re-insertion without discussion is tending towards edit-warring, as the policy in fact makes clear; there actually wasn't even an edit comment, and I'd remind you that the onus is on the person who wants to make a change to start the talk page discussion, i.e. the default is the status quo ante and discussion is required. So, I'm glad you are now joining the discussion. There is not a great distance between our positions here - the term is legitimate but obscure, and I think we can find a way to use it sparingly. Chiswick Chap (talk) 09:12, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

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