Key passages
Key Passages (Philosophy) are one little nugget of research in which you identify a passage from the reading that you find interesting. It could be as short as a phrase or as long as a paragraph, or longer. Entering key passages both fills out the page and generates raw material for your final papers. Since the whole wiki is public, anyone can weigh in; so use these pages as a place to express your own views and also to discuss them with other people. When the time comes to incorporate this material into your paper, feel free to take advantage of other people's ideas so long as you cite them. That's what learning is all about.
Entering a Key Passage involves three steps: naming the passage, creating the link, and entering the data.
Naming the passage
The smart thing to do would be to have a uniform standard to use with all the philosophers. But there are reasons to do it differently for different philosophers. So here is what I suggest. For Kongzi, start with "Analects," then a space, then the book and chapter separated by a decimal point; so "When entering the Grand Ancestral Temple, he asked questions about everything," is "Analect 10.21." For Laozi, start with "Laozi," then a space, followed by the chapter number. If the chapter is long and you are only talking about one or two lines, put them after the chapter number separated by a decimal point; so "I have the mind of a fool! Listless and blank!" is "Laozi 20.15-16." For Mengzi, say "Mengzi," space, book-letter-chapter. For a short chapter that may be all you need. If you are only talking about a small part of a longer chapter, then count the paragraphs and put the paragraph number after the book-lett-er-chapter, separated by a decimal point. So "Leave this topic for now," is 2A2.25. For Mozi, Zhuangzi, Xunzi, and Han Feizi, use their name, a space, the the page number in our book and the paragraph number on the page, with the page and paragraph separated by a decimal point. If the page starts in the middle of a paragraph, that paragraph is "0." The first full paragraph is "1." So "It's in dung and urine" would be Zhuangzi 249.11. Note that chapter titles count as their own paragraphs, since people might want to talk about them, too. Poems or block quotations, however, are not considered separate paragraphs but are included in the paragraphs that surround them. If two people take the same paragraph, that's fine bu they have to have different names for linking purposes, so name one "a," the next "b," etc.
I'm sorry this is so complex. If anyone can think of an easier system, please tell me.
Creating the link
Under Key Passages first first enter a colon (:) to indent and then the enter the name of your passage in [[double square brackets]] and save.
Note: If you change the name of the link later on, it will create a new page. So you will have to copy the content from the old page to paste to the new one.
Entering content
Back on the main page, click on the name of your passage, which should now be in red, and it will take you to a blank new page. The first time or two you do this, I suggest right clicking on the link (Control click on a Mac). Select "Open link in new window." Then you can have that window open next to this window in order to see the instructions as you fill it in. Before you do anything else, enter the following line and Save:
- {{subst:Key Passage}}
When you save it, you will see a Key Passage template like this.
| Original:
Maecenas condimentum pharetra ex, in sagittis sapien blandit ut. Nulla sit amet purus cursus, suscipit velit nec, sodales purus. |
Transversion:
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Etiam velit lacus, mattis rhoncus sapien quis, sagittis egestas elit. |
| Discussion:
Praesent congue et lectus ut consequat. Cras vitae tortor velit. Praesent sed diam tristique, feugiat tortor ac, fringilla est. Donec eget tellus non est viverra pulvinar. Donec id enim accumsan, tincidunt turpis eu, vulputate eros. Mauris nisi arcu, aliquam a tellus et, condimentum tincidunt risus. | |
| Passages for comparison:
KeyPassageName#Sed imperdiet cursus elit. Etiam aliquam nibh enim, interdum mollis risus facilisis eu. | |
Click on the cell headings ("KeyPassageName#," "Original," "Transversion," etc.) for more information about what goes into each of these setions. Click "Edit" to start filling it in. The editing page will include a lot of confusing mark-up like this:
{| class="wikitable"
|colspan="1" | '''[[Original:]]'''
Maecenas condimentum pharetra ex, in sagittis sapien blandit ut. Nulla sit amet purus cursus, suscipit velit nec, sodales purus.
|colspan="1" | '''[[Transversion:]]'''
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Etiam velit lacus, mattis rhoncus sapien quis, sagittis egestas elit.
|-
|colspan="2" | '''[[Discussion:]]'''
Praesent congue et lectus ut consequat. Cras vitae tortor velit. Praesent sed diam tristique, feugiat tortor ac, fringilla est. Donec eget tellus non est viverra pulvinar. Donec id enim accumsan, tincidunt turpis eu, vulputate eros. Mauris nisi arcu, aliquam a tellus et, condimentum tincidunt risus.
|-
|colspan="2" | '''[[Passages for comparison:]]'''
KeyPassageName#Sed imperdiet cursus elit. Etiam aliquam nibh enim, interdum mollis risus facilisis eu.
|}
But you should be able to identify the different sections pretty easily. Fill it in by replacing the lorem ipsum (i.e. the Latin) with the appropriate content. NOTE: The layout on the Edit page is different from the View page, so the Transversion comes first, though of course you can fill them out in any order you want to. Also, you have to hit Enter TWICE to start a new line.
When you're done, add your name to the Contributors at the bottom.
To add boldface, italics, indenting, etc., click on these links for help with formatting and markup.