Talk:United States twenty-dollar bill

Debate

is it ok to move it to United States twenty dollar bill? Any objections? Optim 03:57, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Yes, I object. American is fine. RickK 03:59, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

It has disambiguation problems with North America, Central America, South America etc. Optim 04:01, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

No, it doesn't. "American" is the proper adjective to use to refer to the United States. RickK 04:02, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

With the same logic I suppose it will be ok to use "European" instead of "Greek" when referring to Greece... Optim 04:04, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

This disucssion is boring. It goes on too long. You claim not to be anti-American, but then you show your true colors. RickK 04:05, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I am not anti-American, really. I do not consider it an insult when someone prefers to use Istanbul instead of Constantinople. It belongs to Turkey now, so they can call it as they like, but some Greeks still consider Istanbul as insulting. For this reason somebody could call me Anti-Greek, but I am not. I just want to correct some things. I have got the feeling that the United States citizen thinks the whole American continent belongs to him/her... I Hope I am wrong Optim 04:14, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Optim - there is no continent called "America". There is North America and South America. --mav

Well, true. Optim 04:23, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

What's wrong with U.S. twenty dollar bill? --mav

United States twenty dollar bill or U.S. twenty dollar bill is perfectly fine. I would move this page all all relevant dollar bill pages to the "U.S. XX dollar bill" title format if RickK had no objections. Do you think we can have a poll on this issue and try to achieve a consensus or at least a majority vote? Optim 04:16, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

We are only at step 1 - polls are step 3. --mav

ok, np Optim 04:23, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

By discussing this page move I think I can help the Latin American countries and Canada to protect their culture and identity. I think that a Peruvian feels American, so they wouldn't like to let USA monopolise the American adjective. Actually I don't care so much about this issue, but I am afraid it is not NPOV to use the American adjective in this way, at least in article titles. However, if everybody thinks it's ok then I don't have strong desire to continue the discussion. Optim 04:24, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Uhuh. My point is proven. RickK 04:24, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

No. Next time I may make discussions against Russia. Will you call me Anti-Russian? I am not Anti-anything. I just promote tolerance, equality, internationalism, justice and cooperation. Optim 04:26, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

if a person from Peru, Mexico or any other American country could step in and give us his or her opinion, it would be very interesting and useful. Optim 04:26, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

No, it wouldn't. I am an American. That is the only adjective I will accept to refer to my nationality. RickK 04:28, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

You have the right to call yourself as you like. However, I think I have the same right. So, from now on I will call myself an American too and I will move Drachma to American Drachma (just kidding). Optim 04:30, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Note that the American twenty dollar bill will be kept as a redirect if you agree with the move. Optim 04:29, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

If I was really anti-American I wouldn't consider USA as a possible place to live in the future. Actually I admire USA and its power. However, I think some times we need to consider that a country may use its power to weaken other countries. I don't like that. And I wouldn't like Greece too if it used its power to weaken other Southeastern European countries. The same applies to Turkey, China, Russia, Germany, UK and all countries. Am I anti-American? Optim 04:40, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

An anti-American is a person who discriminates against USA. I don't do that. I am willing to support USA whenever somebody discriminates against it. If I discriminate against something, then I discriminate against discrimination. Optim 04:43, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I am a U.S. citizen and am very patriotic. When I call myself an American I mean that I am from the United States of America. However, American is an ambiguous adjective outside the U.S. Thus to disambiguate we use a less ambiguous term. I'm not at all convinced that American twenty dollar bill is even more common than U.S. twenty dollar bill. For me at least, U.S. twenty dollar bill sounds better - it is also shorter. --mav

We should also note that the article regarding the U.S. currency is located at United States dollar and not American dollar (which is a redirect), so the bill-articles should also follow a similar naming for consistency. Optim 04:50, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

6 Google hits for "United States twenty dollar bill", 105 for "U.S. twenty dollar bill", 62 for "American twenty dollar bill". Optim 04:57, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

The article belongs at United States twenty dollar bill. As mav stated, the main currency page is there and I agree its the more common form. Optim's opinions on the US aren't relevant, Rick. --Dante Alighieri | Talk 05:02, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Please see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (US vs American). This is a good starting point for the nauseatingly repetitious debate over what to call people from the United States. RickK 05:04, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

The bill itself says United States of America and this is how it should be referred to in an encyclopedia, neither America nor United States will do, Mexico is also a "United States". In common usage of course both US and America are taken to mean USA. I suggest USA twenty dollar bill. Bob Palin 05:06, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Nobody seriously means Mexico when they say United States - at least not in English. --mav

Agreed on Mexico but that doesn't change the fact that the bill itself refers to the USA Bob Palin 05:30, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I've already indicated I support the U.S. over Amercian for this title. --mav 06:24, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Google returns zero hits for "USA twenty dollar bill" and suggests "Did you mean: US twenty dollar bill?". Optim 05:19, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

That's because Google is almost completely based on usage of English in the USA, an encyclopedia needs to be technically correct where there is any possible ambiguity.Bob Palin 05:30, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Not at all. Google covers the entire world. RickK 05:38, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Yes, but the vast majority of English language pages on the web are of USA origin and reflect that usage Bob Palin 05:41, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

You're gonna lose this argument, Bob, Wikipedia isn't interested in being correct. That's why we have Occam's Razor instead of the correct title which would be Ockham's Razor. --Dante Alighieri | Talk 03:27, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Wouldn't it be more professional and academic to be more interested in what is correct than what is simpler ? Optim 06:21, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)

As you may have noticed, the people who moved the page and made the disambiguation page, Zanimum and SimonP, are Canadian. I saw it in RC when it happened and I didn't think anything of it either; for us, "American" means US and it never includes Canada. If this is confusing for Europeans, that's strange, but move it wherever you want, I don't really care. Adam Bishop 05:22, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

---

As you may have noticed, the people who moved the page and made the disambiguation page, Zanimum and SimonP, are Canadian. I saw it in RC when it happened and I didn't think anything of it either; for us, "American" means US and it never includes Canada. If this is confusing for Europeans, that's strange, but move it wherever you want, I don't really care. Adam Bishop 05:22, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Maybe we can consider United States dollar twenty dollar bill or USD twenty dollar bill, too. Why refer to nationality when we can just refer to the currency? Optim 05:24, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I agree with Optim. "America" as a synonym for "United States" should be avoided. Move it to U.S. twenty dollar bill. --Wik 05:36, Feb 22, 2004 (UTC)

I think it does make sense to use United States or U.S. rather than America when we mean the States. Mark Richards 05:46, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC) See the comment on the manual of style page about the CIA world factbook - Country name:

conventional long form: United States of America

conventional short form: United States

abbreviation: US or USA

Mark Richards 05:52, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

facts are fun

[1] [2] [3] and of course United States dollar. Sam Spade 05:42, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

If you look at Special:Allpages, you'll notice we tend to use "American" as a title prefix only when it's part of a proper name of an organization or a biological name, and "United States"/"US"/"U.S." for things relating to the government. Since currency is issued by the government, it just seems more self-consistent to attach some form of "U*S*" to it. Stan 05:50, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

When talking about money, it's almost always "U.S." as in "USD". The same should go for the government. I prefer U.S. twenty dollar bill. Why won't wikipedia allow dollar signs? That would be even better.--Jiang

Poll

There's no reason *not* to have a poll.

American twenty dollar bill --

United States twenty dollar bill -- Sam Spade, Optim, Mark Richards, Angela

U.S. twenty dollar bill -- Jengod, Sam Spade, Optim, mav, john, Wik, Mark Richards, Jiang, Mark, Rossami

US twenty dollar bill -- Angela, Optim, Mark Richards

Special note for Optim: I voted on both U.S. and United States. Either is fine for me. I have a personal opinion against abbreviations in encyclopaedias, but this is against the current Wikipedia policy on "most common name in English" so I don't have a real problem with abbreviations. In case you don't want to count me twice, I ask you to consider U.S. twenty dollar bill as my "formal" vote. Optim 07:20, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Same for me! Mark Richards 07:48, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC) dots or no dots is fine Mark Richards 00:53, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Special note 2 for Optim: I just added a third vote for "US" (without dots). The previous votes and the above "Special note" are still valid. In case somebody wants to count only one vote, count "U.S." Optim 00:48, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)

poll comments

(U.S. should link to United States) Sam Spade 07:15, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

It's the U.S. Dollar, so it should be the U.S. twenty dollar bill, as well. john 07:32, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

United States dollar Sam Spade 07:56, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Can't you guys find something more signifcant and controversial to spend your time arguing about? Anyway, I vote for "U.S. twenty dollar bill" - that's the way it would be referred to where I live (Australia). - Mark 10:17, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

If User:RickK had no objections we wouldn't need to argue and spend so much time. I ask him to reconsider his opposition and let us move the article with total consensus. Optim 10:29, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

All right, I'll go along with U. S. ... for all of the American currency, but this isn't a blanket approval of changing all of the Americans to "U.S.", as some have tried to do in the past. RickK 23:46, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

About This Discussion

If we change the name of the article, this is NOT the only page this is to be done to. Each denomination of U.S. currency from the $5 to $100 would have to participate in this change. To be exact there are 5 pages that have to participate, namely:

• The page for the $5 bill
• The page for the $10 bill
• The page for the $20 bill
• The page for the $50 bill
• The page for the $100 bill

Are you wondering about the pages for the larger denominations from $500 to $100,000?? They are all on one page titled Large denomination bills in US currency and this page doesn't need to participate because it doesn't have the word "American" in it.

This doesn't look too big a deal - I'll help move these and the links to them. Mark Richards 21:42, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

m2 Optim 23:03, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Guess what??

Recently, a page for the $2 bill was added and its article title was United_States_Two_dollar_bill, not American_two_dollar_bill. If you can, however, you may make clicking on American_two_dollar_bill get re-directed to United_States_Two_dollar_bill, as well as making it so that the above articles for the $5 to $100 bills can get re-directed as well.

Move completed

• I performed the move. I am starting correcting links. Optim 23:54, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

What the hell?

And just where was it decided to use banknote? That terminology is decidedly NOT common usage, regardless of its accuracy. Anyone ELSE object? --Dante Alighieri | Talk 03:33, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)

After asking another person I got the impression that bill is unencyclopaedic and too amateurish or laical (meaning: "non-academic, only the common people use it"). I checked some lexicon and found that banknote is much better than bill since bill has so many other meanings. Bank and financial websites seem to prefer banknote too. Banknote, I think, is more professional, academic and official. But feel free to move to U.S. twenty dollar bill if you think it's better. Optim 03:55, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Why bother? The antis will just win. RickK 03:35, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Truth and justice prevails. Optim 03:55, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)

If Bill Clinton is good enough for us, then "bill" is too. When I see "banknote" I think "oh, must be one of those weird kinds of currency that regular people never see". Always go with the most common usage that's not actually wrong. Stan 05:43, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)

An encyclopaedia should follow academic standards and stick to more traditional and correct language usage. Even wondered why I use encyclopaedia and not encyclopedia? Because Encyclopedia is wrong. Encyclopaedia is the Greek word "Egiklopaideia". E in Greek in this word is written as Ai which transliterates in ae. So I find Encyclopaedia more correct, professional and academic than encyclopedia, which is just what the common people used to write. Encyclopaedia also reminds me of the Greek influence over the English language, which no English speaker should forget since even half of the English words may be of Greek or Latin origin. Also, another example, is the Latin word Forum which many English speakers write as Forums in plural, which is wrong because the correct plural form in Latin is Fora. A similar situation exists with American English and British English. Modernisation of language is not bad, but we shouldn't forget the heritage and the correct form of the language; Let's not destroy the language by "modernising" it because it is the thing which makes all other things possible (science, education, etc). Anyway... It's just a personal preference... I have to say that I am influenced by a similar language debate in Greece and this is not the place to write my essays. - Do you want me to move all "banknote" articles to "bill" articles? I can do that if everybody thinks "bill" is better than "banknote". Of course you can also perform the move by yourself. Actually if I could imagine someone objecting the use of "banknote" in the title, I wouldn't do this move. Optim 06:05, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Another reason I like "banknote" more is because it makes the life of translators easier since it has more focused meaning than "bill". A translator from China or Japan who translates this article into Chinese or Japanese language (who may even be a Wikipaedian) may get confused by "bill" which has so many different meanings. Optim 06:12, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Optim, I don't care about what you like, or prefer. Keep talking about how banknote is more "correct". It's completely irrelevant. My point is that you unilaterally made a decision contrary to consensus. Consensus was to move the page to U.S. twenty dollar bill. Too bad you decided that you knew better than everyone else. If you cared about the Wikipedia process as much as you cared about having things your way (i.e., the way you've decided is correct) you'd at least have asked first. But hey, what do I know. --Dante Alighieri | Talk 08:25, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I will move all "banknote" articles to "bill". Optim 09:12, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)

By the way, "encyclopedia" isn't wrong, its a listed spelling, check the OED. Plus, the variant you're discussing is "encyclopædia", not "encyclopaedia"; ash, represented as the ligarure of a and e, is distinct from a simple conjunction of the vowels. Anyway, "Egiklopaideia" isn't even the best transliteration of the pseudo-Greek word "εγκυκλοπαιδεια", which is believed to be an ancient Latin misreading in any event.

Besides all that, surely you must realize that language evolves over time... despite however much certain prescriptive grammarians would like to keep things the same. I think it's refreshing to see things modernized now and again, even if that disturbs some people who think that the evolution of language is somehow "bad". --Dante Alighieri | Talk 08:54, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Evolution of language is not bad. To prove that I believe this, I will tell you that I am a supporter for the introduction of the Latin alphabet in the Greek language. I didn't use æ because ae is easier to write in my computer keyboard (now I just copied-pasted it). The transliteration was not the best. Latin and Greek were very intermixed in the past, so it doesn't matter much whether a word is of Latin or Greek origin. Optim 09:12, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)

In the spirit of being congenial (I honestly don't know why I was so upset by this last night) I'll give you a little tip. Check out the US-international keyboard layout as opposed to US layout. It takes a bit of getting used to (because you have to double-press the ' and " keys sometimes) but it lets you type all sorts of useful characters VERY easily, such as æ, ©, ç, ö, ², ½, ®, ß, ñ, etc... There are a few webpages out there on the layout, including some with printouts of the key combos for the extra characters. I use that layout exclusively now. Again, sorry for blowing my top last night, I wasn't being as reasonable as I might normally be. Try not to hold it against me. :) --Dante Alighieri | Talk 21:37, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Thank you for the tip! Don't worry about the discussion above :) May you have Peace Profound and be Happy. Optim 22:43, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Moved (again)

All "X banknote" articles moved to "X bill". Optim 09:40, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Proposed: Move to "X banknote"

• Who agrees and who disagrees to move all "X bill" articles to "X banknote"? See above for discussion. Optim 09:45, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Agree

1. Optim
2. Mark Richards (moved from don't care - still don't care much)
3. Bob Palin
4. Dante Alighieri | Talk - Optim's argument about translation issues is convincing
5. -Sean 08:18, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)
6. Bryan
7. Nico
8. Fennec (with redirects, of course)

Disagree

1. RickK, for what it's worth
2. Angela.

Neutral / Doesn't care

1. Rossami
2. It's up to the Americans - it's their money not mine.Secretlondon 22:36, Feb 23, 2004 (UTC)

Discussion

• discussion goes here.

Mildly prefer 'Banknote', as it doesn't have ambiguity problems, but not enough to want to debate it. Mark Richards 16:43, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)

"Bill" sounds more natural to me in the context of American money, but "banknote" sounds more natural in reference to paper currency in general. So I'm in favor, but either way, redirects are probably in order for at least some of the other option (bill -> banknote or vice versa). YMMV. -Sean 08:18, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

It really isn't important. Both need to be early in the 1st paragraph, and both link to the same page, thats whats important. Everybody uses "dollar bill" and nobody uses "banknote" in my personal experience tho. Sam Spade 08:29, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I was reading this and I noticed that there isn't a U.S. Banknotes article. Sam Spade 08:32, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

There doesn't seem to be an article for U.S. currency in general, either. -Sean 08:56, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I'm guessing this is the closest that there is United States dollar Mark Richards 01:49, 26 Feb 2004 (UTC)

It looks like the decision from this poll was to move it, but I for one don't have the enthusiasm to do it - anyone else?! Mark Richards 23:59, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)

George Washington $20 bill

Various Internet sites talk about a really old $20 bill with George Washington. When was it printed?? I believe it was out of the history range on this page by at least a decade. User 66.32.64.190

This needs updating?

68.167.191.152 05:03, 27 Apr 2004 (UTC): I just updated the article for the U.S. fifty dollar bill (as 67.100.123.21 and 68.167.191.152). Perhaps someone could do the same for the $20 and the rest of the denominations? Much of the text from the $50 page can be leveraged, though there are picky details about when designs are updated that need to be checked for on the Treasurey BEP website...

• Be very careful with updating these pages. Make sure you know that 1914 or 1918, depending on the denomination, is the beginning of Federal Reserve notes, and this is not to be confused with 1928 being the beginning of small-sized notes. For the $10, $20, and $1000 (the large bills are all on one page titled Large denomination bills in US currency) the portraits were different; please don't remove this. 66.32.136.74 23:23, 27 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Uh oh! Time to move again??

Can we move the bill pages to pages of this kind: Federal Reserve twenty dollar bill?? After that, we can make pages like U.S. twenty dollar bill into dis-ambiguation pages for Federal Reserve twenty dollar bill and United States notes twenty dollar bill, the latter of which is for bills of the given denomination that were before the Federal Reserve began issuing bills in 1914. (Be careful not to confuse this with the time the sizes were reduced in 1928.) For a reference, you may use http://www.currencygallery.org. 66.245.66.44 20:11, 29 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Uh, no. Just add all that info into this one article - there is a lot of room. --mav 06:46, 30 Apr 2004 (UTC)