I’ve seen “×” (the multiplication symbol) being used frequently to replace the letter “x” when it’s used as “versus”. Like “Artist A × Artist B”, I even use it myself sometimes because I see other editors doing so. But is this even correct?
From what I understand, “×” is only used for mathematical operations, like in this recording. It reads “Me Times Seven”, like a multiplication operation, not “Me Versus Seven”, so shouldn’t it be “Me × 7” instead of “Me x 7”? Whereas for these join phrases separating two or more artists, shouldn’t the letter be used?
It’s also often used for collaborations.
And also rarely to hide some words or letters.
And what is the letter “X” used for, alone, like this, outside of word?
I think the letter X is more rarely intended.
But anyway, I also often just follow what’s printed, in general.
For collaborations, it’s often (if not always) multiplication sign that is intended, too.
In Japan they read it as “cross”, or sometimes “by”, like in English.
Here’s what X - Wikipedia says for the “versus” meaning:
In art or fashion, the use of X indicates a collaboration by two or more artists, e.g. Aaron Koblin x Takashi Kawashima. This application, which originated in Japan, now extends to other kinds of collaboration outside the art world.[12] This usage mimics the use of a similar mark in denoting botanical hybrids, for which scientifically the multiplication × is used, but informally a lowercase “x” is also used.
(I personally usually just preserve the lowercase ‘x’, but maybe I’ll switch to replacing it with ‘×’.)
I saw an editor doing this and instinctively voted no (and to start a discussion), but I found this and it seems like it’s fairly agreed that it’s okay to standardize (English releases, at least) this way?
If so, would it be okay to have this as another explicit example in the docs (like with ’) @reosarevok? It seems non-obvious to me, whereas stuff like quotation marks is implied by the apostrophe example.
Well, I think multiplication is clearly intended and can be preferred when there’s actual multiplications involved, or if you know the culture usually uses it, or of course when it’s used originally. I wouldn’t mandate it though; in Spanish hip hop I’ve never used it because I’m not sure anyone even thinks of it as a multiplication or as a symbol for hybrids, I’ve always thought of it as “an x letter” and I expect so do the artists.
That said, if there’s a general consensus that people would rather have the multiplication symbol, then we can just add that to the list of suggestions.
on the forum “Wikidata is better than Wikipedia” I am posting this: