Editing Ruhr (section)

== Etymology ==
{{Original research|date=May 2017}}
The 1911 edition of ''[[Encyclopædia Britannica]]'' has only one definition of "Ruhr": "a river of Germany, an important right-bank tributary of the lower Rhine". The use of the term "Ruhr" for the industrial region started in Britain only after World War I, when French and Belgian troops had [[Occupation of the Ruhr|occupied the Ruhr district]] and seized its prime industrial assets in lieu of unpaid reparations in 1923. In 1920, the [[International Labour Office]] published a report entitled ''Coal Production in the Ruhr District''. In 1923, the ''Canadian Commercial Intelligence Journal'', Volume 28, Issue 1013, includes the article, "Exports from the Ruhr district of Germany". In 1924 the English and American press was still talking of the "French occupation of the Ruhr Valley" or "Ruhr District". A 62-page publication seems to be responsible for the use of "Ruhr" as a short form of the then more common "Ruhr District" or "Ruhr Valley": Ben Tillett, A. Creech-Jones and Samuel Warren's ''The Ruhr: The Report of a Deputation from the Transport and General Workers Union'' (London 1923). Yet "The report of a deputation from the Transport and General Workers' Union which spent a fortnight examining the problems in the Ruhr Valley", published in ''The Economic Review'', Volume 8, 1923, is still using the traditional term. In the same year, "Objections by the United States to discriminatory regulations on exports from the occupied region of the Ruhr" was published in ''Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States''.

The 1926 ''Encyclopædia Britannica'', in addition to its article on the river Ruhr, has a further article on "RUHR, the name given to a district of Westphalia, Germany". Thus the name "Ruhr" was given to the region (as a short form of "Ruhr District" or "Ruhr Valley") only a few years before the publication of this edition of the ''Encyclopædia Britannica''. Even after World War II, the term "Ruhr" may not have been in general use for the region: it was defined in ''Documents on American Foreign Relations'' (1948): "For the purposes of the present Agreement: (i) the expression 'Ruhr' means the areas, as presently constituted, in Land North Rhine–Westphalia, listed in the Annex to this Agreement."<ref>Samuel Shepard Jones and Denys Peter Myers, ''Documents on American Foreign Relations'', Volume 10 (1948), p. 125: "Part IX: Definitions Article 29".</ref> However, Lawrence K. Cecil and Philip Hauge Abelson still write in 1967: "In the first place, the average person uses the term 'Ruhr' indiscriminately as the Ruhr River or the Ruhr district, two entirely different things. The Ruhr River is only one of half a dozen rivers in the Ruhr district, in addition to the Rhine. The Rhine itself runs through the heart of the Ruhr district."<ref>Lawrence K. Cecil and Philip Hauge Abelson, ''Water Reuse'' (American Institute of Chemical Engineers, 1967), p. 122.</ref> According to ''Merriam Webster's Geographical Dictionary'', a standard reference on place names around the world, the name "Ruhr" refers to the river. The name preferred for the region in this dictionary is "Ruhrgebiet", followed by "Ruhr Valley".