Talk:Gasoline

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This article has previously been nominated to be moved. Please review the prior discussions if you are considering re-nomination.

Discussions:

The primary dispute has been whether the article should be moved to Petrol. Many arguments were presented for both sides, but after all else failed, consensus was to keep the original editor's title, as per the relevant style guideline:

"If an article has evolved using predominantly one [national variety of English], the whole article should conform to that variety, unless there are reasons for changing it based on strong national ties to the topic. In the early stages of writing an article, the variety chosen by the first major contributor to the article should be used."

Please review the prior discussions if you are considering re-nomination::

Move discussion: Gasoline → Petrol, 2005: Opposed. (Discussion)
RM: Gasoline → Petroleum-based fuel, 7 November 2007, Withdrawn. (Discussion)
RM: Gasoline → Petrol, 24 August 2019, Not moved. (Discussion)
RM: Gasoline → Petrol (gasoline), 22 March 2023, Withdrawn. (Discussion)
RM: Gasoline → Gasoline also known as petrol, 7 August 2023, Procedural close. (Discussion)

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molecular expansion

i had in mind that the rafinage off pertroleum into petrol/gasoline coused an volume expansion with a ratio up to 1:4. If i look at the refraction list from 42 gallons, 37 remains which is clearly less. are the gasoline molecules larger or not at all? is there an "popcorn effect" in the molecule build??

Requested move 7 August 2023

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: speedily uncontroversially closed per WP:SNOW. Paintspot Infez (talk) 22:34, 7 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Gasoline → Gasoline also known as petrol – Lots of the world calls it petrol. We should have both words in the title to avoid confusion. No one else has suggested this yet. Sure some articles use different spellings like color instead of colour or litre instead of liter but that doesn't cause confusion in the way that gasoline or petrol does, which are completely different words, not merely spelling variants. Alternatively gasoline, petrol or gasoline or petrol Marsbar8 (talk) 18:38, 7 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. Petrol redirects to this article, and petrol appears as the third non-parenthesized word in the article, so there is not a strong case that the title causes confusion. Moreover this "also known as" construct seems to be a new invention, not mentioned anywhere in WP:TITLE, not used at other contentious topics such as football v soccer. I will allow that it might be useful to mention "petrol" in the short description (currently "Liquid fuel derived from petroleum"), but that does not require a move. --Trovatore (talk) 18:47, 7 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose None of the terms the nominator mentioned are used and I see no valid case for petrol being forced in the title. I also don’t see a case for confusion since there is no other meaning for gasoline. The only argument I’ve seen for confusion was the fact that gas can also refer to Liquefied petroleum gas however that was demoed irrelevant for a move request because gasoline doesn’t.--65.93.193.235 (talk) 19:10, 7 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding something the nominator later added, while it is true that gasoline and petrol are different words, petrol is is mentioned in the opening sentence and on the same line gasoline is. This should be enough for anyone with basic reading comprehension to avoid being confused meaning we don’t need to add petrol to the article title to deal with the possibility of confusion.--65.93.193.235 (talk) 19:34, 7 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Further, Petrol is already a redirect to Gasoline, so a simple search will return the correct article. General Ization ^Talk 22:16, 7 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose and speedy close. Dual article titles of this sort are a terrible idea. There are plenty of examples of words that are different in British English and American English that aren't simple spelling differences (Maize/Corn, Waistcoat/Vest, Cookie/Biscuit, French fries/Chips, Trousers/Pants, Apartment/Flat, Elevator/Lift etc.) and none of them have dual article titles. Moving this article would set a dangerous precedent and would open up dozens of article titles to fights over switching to a dual title. MOS:RETAIN is clear and is there for a reason, to prevent this sort of endless debate about which version of English to use in an article. This article was started as "Gasoline" and that it where it should remain based on our policies. Rreagan007 (talk) 19:38, 7 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose we don't use dual names like Derry also known as Londonderry etc so per WP:RETAIN just keep as is. Crouch, Swale (talk) 20:28, 7 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Speedy close per above. O.N.R. ^(talk) 22:08, 7 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose and support speedy, for reasons previously mentioned and because we just had the same discussion in March of this year. General Ization ^Talk 22:16, 7 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

"Petrol" is not exclusively used for gasoline, and should be indicated as a colloquialism, as "Gas" is.

"Petrol" is short for "petroleum" and as a result "petrol" is used to indicate a whole range of petroleum based products in the world, not just gasoline.

While it is most commonly used in reference to gasoline, it is not exclusively used as such, and is also commonly used to refer to other petroleum distillates.

The only proper name for gasoline is gasoline. Both "Gas" and "Petrol" are colloquialism and should be indicated as such. 142.189.17.53 (talk) 18:29, 18 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

This is news to me. To be fair, petrol is not in my active vocabulary at all, so I'm not the best judge, but I don't ever recall hearing it used to mean anything but gasoline. Can our British/Australian/other-commonwealth-minus-Canada friends weigh in here? --Trovatore (talk) 23:06, 18 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

In Australia, "petrol" is the stuff you put in your car with an internal combustion engine. It doesn't refer to anything else. HiLo48 (talk) 02:23, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

That was my understanding as well. 142.189.17.53 can you give any examples of "petrol" being used to mean other petroleum products? Nothing relevant seems to be mentioned at petrol (disambiguation) either. --Trovatore (talk) 18:50, 20 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

As another Australian, my understanding is identical to that of the previous Australian: “petrol” is used exclusively to describe… well, I want to say “petrol”.

I would never refer to petroleum jelly as “petrol” — and if I did, people would have no idea what I meant. Foxmilder (talk) 06:12, 16 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The Wikipedia page Biofuel in Australia, for example, refers to “petrol (gasoline)”, suggesting these terms refer to the same thing. Foxmilder (talk) 06:19, 16 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

It suddenly occurs to me, incidentally, that the name of a well-known American petroleum jelly product rhymes closely with “gasoline”.

Is that a deliberate marketing device? If so, some of the secondary connotations of “gasoline” and “petrol” may differ between the American and Australian terms. I can’t imagine an Australia in which the name of a popular skin care product is named so as to bring to mind motor-vehicle fuels. Foxmilder (talk) 06:23, 16 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Split proposal

The article has a large section devoted to the use of gasoline in WWI and WWII with particular emphasis on the US. I propose to shift this content to its own article (maybe Gasoline in World War II or Petrol in World War II?). But readers who seek general info on gasoline are unlikely to be so focused on the military angle and the US. --Smokefoot (talk) 16:34, 20 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]