Wikipedia:No pet peeve wars

This is an essay on civility and style guidelines. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints.

Shortcuts WP:STYLEPLURALISM WP:NOPETPEEVES

This page in a nutshell: Pluralism in style issues is necessary for Wikipedia to work, as stubbornly enforcing one's pet peeves is likely to lead to conflict In English a lot of style "rules" are considered antiquated by many grammar professionals and no longer enforced, although some writers and editors still enforce them, sometimes as pet peeves. If a usage can be shown to be used by competent English writers and to be accepted by professional editors, it should not be deprecated in Wikipedia, and whether to use them should be left up to consensus among the authors of a given article.

Wikipedia is a collaborative encyclopedia, involving the work of English speakers from all walks of life and from across the globe. In order for collaboration to work it requires everyone to act constructively and to try to avoid needlessly antagonizing or annoying both the readers and other editors.

Many writers have pet peeves. Phrases or words that annoy them or which they consider to be inferior or incorrect usage. Sometimes such pet peeves are based on widely accepted norms for language use, and sometimes they aren't. Many grammatical and style pet peeves are actively contested among competent English writers, with some writers considering the rules prohibiting them to be antiquated or silly, and others considering them to be sensible and important to maintain.

Grammatical rules that are under discussion by competent English writing professionals include, but are not limited to, "split infinitives", "prepositions at the end of a sentence", the phrase "comprised of", the phrase "due to", "singular they", the phrase "he and she", the use of generic masculine pronouns, the passive voice, etc.

Some editors may argue that employing a grammatical usage that is actively contested is a potential affront to readers who may consider it to be among their pet peeves. This would mean that any usage of a contested phrase should be removed since it might cause discomfort in some readers. This argument is reasonable, but accepting it means that all potential pet peeves should be considered reasonable and be enforced. It also begs the question about when to accept potential annoyance to the reader and when not. And also the question of what to do when both usages may be potentially annoying: Some readers, for example, are annoyed by the use of gender neutral constructions such as singular they or "he and she", whereas others are equally annoyed by the use of the masculine as a generic. This argument also ignores that writers are frequently annoyed by having their language "corrected" when by their own view the usage in question is not wrong. In fact enforcing one's pet peeves on others frequently cause conflicts, that are potentially disruptive among editors - so not choice is neutral.

This means that we need a set of rules of thumb for how to approach the question of style and grammar corrections and pet peeves in order to avoid that these issues evolve into conflict and disruption. This essay suggests the following rules of thumb as a commonsense approach to avoid conflict over conflicting pet peeves.

1. If your pet peeve is one of the contested grammar rules, you should avoid enforcing it on articles you haven't contributed to.
2. Style changes that are contested also require consensus, don't editwar to enforce your pet peeve
3. It is courteous to respect the style choices of the main contributor of an article. If your change is reverted, you should not introduce it again without consensus on the talkpage.