Talk:Hudhayfa ibn al-Ahwas al-Qaysi

Diacritics

I object to the removal of diacritics.And I don't see where the MOS requires it. I follow the Encyclopaedia of Islam usage (except for underlining digraphs). This creates greater consistency within articles. We are not talking about a famous individual here. The sources used are all academic, why shouldn't academic usage be followed? Does there exist a single source in English that uses "Hudhayfa ibn al-Ahwas al-Qaysi" without diacritics? Srnec (talk) 01:43, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

Hi Srnec, well, the point is, we don't normally use diacritics for transcribing any language, be that Arabic, Chinese, or Greek. The use of diacritics for these languages may be widespread in scholarly usage, and is crucial to properly pronouncing a name, but usually only serves to confuse the average reader. MOS:DIACRITICS cautions against excessive use of diacritics but does not prohibit it, true; but the arguments in WP:MOSAR about the "basic transcription" are still valid and pertinent: a) the reason why there is a Ḥ instead of H or Ḳ instead of Q (which is a perfectly valid way to romanize qaf as you know) will be lost to most people (including my fellow Arabic class students, as I recall) and b) the article titles must always be available as hyperlinks for any browser (the WP:TSC argument). Of course, it is not "wrong" from the question of whether it is a valid transcription, and I am not going to start an edit war if you move it back. But I find it hard to accept an argument based on consistency, when common practice, not only on WP, is not to use the diacritics in most transcriptions. Constantine ✍ 20:16, 1 December 2018 (UTC)