Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Titles of works

Two visual arts–related cases which should be removed

The "Minor works" section recommends double quotation marks for "Exhibits (specific) within a larger exhibition". The rationale seems to be that as the titles of (some) exhibitions take italics per MOS:MAJORWORK, the exhibits within them must correspondingly follow MOS:MINORWORK, like chapters within a book or songs within an album. I think this is extending that logic too far. In reality, if an exhibit within an exhibition is a painting the title will take italics per MOS:MAJORWORK, if it's an archaeological artefact it will take neither italics nor quotation marks per MOS:NEITHER, and so on. There's no need to have a guideline for exhibits as there are guidelines for the specific kinds of objects those exhibits are, and they conflict with it.

Also, in MOS:NEITHER, the final clause should be removed from "Names of buildings and other structures, aside from statues (artworks)." Public statues are often treated as having names rather than titles (see MOS:ART/TITLE) and so take neither italics nor quotation marks. Ham II (talk) 19:55, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

Agreed - remove the first, & perhaps weasel the second - many statues do have titles, for example Michelangelo's David, and many of his companions from around 1500 on. Johnbod (talk) 04:32, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

There's been no objection to the first suggestion after a fortnight, so I've removed that item, and also the reference to "individual exhibits" at Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Titles of works § Major works.

I could have been clearer about public statues: the article titles for many of them fall under the "descriptive names" guideline at MOS:NEITHER (Statue of Liberty, Statue of Bruce Lee (Hong Kong), Statue of Mary Seacole) – and that is the general rule for "portrait sculptures of individuals in public places", per MOS:ART/TITLE. Others, however, are treated as having titles: Manneken Pis, The Little Mermaid (statue), Christ the Redeemer (statue). So I would now suggest two changes to MOS:NEITHER: adding "statue of Mahatma Gandhi" as one of the examples in the "Descriptive titles" bullet point, and changing "Names of buildings and other structures, aside from statues (artworks)" to "Names of buildings and other structures, except for any statues covered by MOS:ITALICTITLE". Ham II (talk) 06:36, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

Ok - maybe expand that a bit to explain. Johnbod (talk) 16:09, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

I could try giving the relevant kinds of sculpture their own bullet point in MOS:NEITHER and being more explicit that way, but they don't seem to me like a different enough case from the "Descriptive titles" examples. Unless you mean expanding the "Paintings, sculptures [etc.]" point at MOS:ITALICTITLE to explicitly mention which kinds of statues have titles in italics, but I'm even less keen on tinkering with that one.

It's occurred to me that, in addition to "statue of Mahatma Gandhi" at "Descriptive titles", it would be good to add "Statue of Liberty" to the sub-point on "conventional name that refers to a specific work but is a descriptor", where title case and no italics are used: "Symphony No. 2 by Gustav Mahler, Shakespeare's Sonnet 130", etc. Ham II (talk) 09:30, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

The "Exhibits (specific) within a larger exhibition" means sub-exhibitions named by the institution, not works of art that already had names that are on exhibit. E.g., if my museum has a big show called Punk and Post-punk Fashion, and a subdivision of that is titled "Goth Fashion". The analogy follows Book / "Chapter", TV Series / "Episode", Album / "Song", etc. quite reasonably.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:02, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

That's not a definition of "exhibit" I've ever come across, and it doesn't seem to be in Collins or Merriam-Webster's online dictionaries. I'm aware that in American English the term can be synonymous with "exhibition" while in British it's reserved for something that's exhibited, but I'd never heard this intermediate meaning before. In what I believe is our only featured article on an exhibition, Hajj: Journey to the Heart of Islam, the subdivisions are called "sections" and their titles aren't mentioned, so the issue of how to style those titles doesn't arise. I'd be surprised if there were many instances of articles naming sections of an exhibition; Rebel Girls: A Survey of Canadian Feminist Videotapes 1974–1988 is one that does, I see. Ham II (talk) 19:33, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

In the above example, the exhibition would be Punk and Post-punk Fashion. See Wikipedia:Tertiary-source fallacy: the fact that definitions can be found that treat exhibit and exhibition as equivalent words in some contexts does not make them generally synonymous, or erase the fact that they have distinct usage, especially in this sort of context. Cf. also WP:IDONTKNOWIT: Whether you've personally come across a definition is irrelevant, especially if you've not actually looked. Just a few seconds on Dictionary.Cambridge.org: exhibition: an event at which objects such as paintings are shown to the public ...", but exhibit: an object that is shown to the public in a museum, etc. ... a collection of objects that is shown to the public in a museum, etc. (i.e. a discrete part of an exhibition).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:19, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

That is the British usage, which Ham and I are used to. You only have to look at google to see that while the Metropolitan Museum sends out press releases announcing new "exhibitions", the resulting web coverage is largely about "exhibits", meaning the whole thing. I've also never come across this sub-exhibition notion. Johnbod (talk) 15:00, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

"[A] collection of objects that is shown to the public in a museum, etc.": that's saying that "exhibit" is a synonym of "exhibition" in American English. (From SMcCandlish's source, dictionary.cambridge.org: "US (UK exhibition)". The example it gives is "Let's go see the new dinosaur exhibit".) It doesn't say anything about that collection of objects being within an exhibition at a museum, etc. Also, WP:AGF; it should be clear that I did look for evidence of the "sub-exhibition" definition in both an American dictionary (Merriam-Webster) and a British one (Collins). Ham II (talk) 11:01, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

Should all exhibitions be free of italics (or quotes)?

I noted that Camp: Notes on Fashion is italicised, and our guidance here (MOS:NEITHER) says that as an exhibition, it should not be:

* Exhibitions, concerts, and other events: the world's fairs, Expo 2010, Cannes Film Festival, Burning Man, Lollapalooza

I was going to change the article, but I hesitate. While it feels like that line makes sense for the exhibitions that are events, especially collective events like the ones listed, for an exhibition that behaves more like an essay or a thesis—a creative output—italics feel more appropriate. Do editors here have opinions? — HTGS (talk) 21:56, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

It's a bit confusing, but you also have in MOS:MAJORWORK the following: Named exhibitions (artistic, historical, scientific, educational, cultural, literary, etc. – generally hosted by, or part of, an existing institution such as a museum or gallery), but not large-scale exhibition events. So Camp: Notes on Fashion seems to fit this. Gonnym (talk) 22:03, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, an exhibition that is a "work" of someone in a sense gets the italics, but something like Comic-Con International or a trade expo does not. We probably need a cross-reference from that line item at MOS:NEITHER to MOS:MAJORWORK to avoid future confusion. The problem here is that the cross-referencing is just one-way.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:28, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

Agreed. Johnbod (talk) 13:32, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

 Done: [1]. People should feel free to copyedit it, but it seems pretty reasonable.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:58, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

Thank you all! Exactly as my intuition told me it should be, and all is again well in the universe. — HTGS (talk) 03:57, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

Short film title question

Resolved

Short films are italicized.TlonicChronic (talk) 01:13, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

At {{IMDb title}}, the instructions for the quotes parameter claim that MOS:TITLE states that quotes should be used for short films. Can I assume that it did say that at one point, but has since been updated to recommend italics, in which case {{IMDb title}} is in need of an update? If so, I am unable to perform it myself. It seems to be the sole reason for the existence of the quotes parameter. Thanks! 1980fast (talk) 18:55, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

That is incorrect. Short films are still films and use italics. Gonnym (talk) 19:47, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, epsiodes of TV shows (and of similar things, like podcast series) go in quotes. But a short film like Pool Sharks (1915) goes in italics.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:48, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

Thank you both! That is exactly as I would have thought. The incorrect text on the template really threw me for a loop. 1980fast (talk) 01:15, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

Minor note, 1980fast: you are actually able to edit the guidance at {{IMDb title}}, as the documentation (everything in green) is transcluded from Template:IMDb title/doc, and not part of the template structure itself. Not an issue now, but perhaps useful in future. — HTGS (talk) 23:37, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for pointing that out! I didn't know this, and I completely missed the relevant controls, but I see them now. 1980fast (talk) 02:54, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

Title of an article about a song

There is currently a discussion about the proper formatting of the title of an article about a song. It's at Talk:Sex (I'm A...)#Proposed rename. Interested editors are encouraged to contribute their views on this question. Please post there instead of here, to keep the discussion all in one place. Thanks. — Mudwater ^(Talk) 11:16, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

Capitalizing compound prepositions

The rule on compound prepositions is not a part of any style guide outside of Wikipedia that I've seen, and I believe it should be removed. The example given, Time Out of Mind, seems incorrect to me: it implies a noun phrase "Time Out" that is "of Mind". I believe the correct capitalization should be "Time out of Mind". It seems like someone possibly misremembered a rule they were taught on compound prepositions, which can either mean a preposition that is a compound word consisting of two prepositions (such as "within"), which are generally capitalized as they are longer than four letters. "Compound preposition" here is being used to refer to any to adjacent adpositions, in which case normal title casing rules should apply. NYT has an exception for emphasized words, but in cases such as "Time out of Mind" or "Fish out of Water", out is not emphasized. TlonicChronic (talk) 01:11, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

It does seem off to me, but because I claim no expertise, I found from this Stack Exchange question, the following point, which seems true, and may well be the goal of the rule:

If you lower-cased all phrases people have called compound prepositions, you'd have The World according to Garp, which is clearly wrong. – Peter Shor Jul 25, 2018 at 21:02

— HTGS (talk) 00:34, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

"According" is an adverb (-ing words aren't ever adpositions), and should always be capitalized. Either way, it doesn't matter, as "according" is over four letters, which isn't a rule I love, but is standard most places. TlonicChronic (talk) 14:37, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

To be clear, this is about the titles of works. Most reliable source do capitalize these words in the titles of works. I'm not sure what style guides might have to say about it, but it seems to be the common practice. older ≠ wiser 15:03, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

I agree most sources do for the Bojack episode, but I think a lot of times the first preposition is actually in a verb phrase "Climb Up with Grace" or a noun phrase, etc., or they're just capitalizing every word. Either way, that should fall under common reference, it shouldn't have it's own rule on Wikipedia. I don't intend to fight you on every page, for what it's worth. I mostly think the rule is incorrect, and I would like to change the Charles Lloyd record, as I'm standardizing the ECM pages. TlonicChronic (talk) 15:18, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

I might be wrong here. I looked up articles titled "fish out of water" and they do all seem to capitalize "out". TlonicChronic (talk) 15:26, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

I think I figured out what's going on: this has nothing to do with compound prepositions; some editorials capitalize "Out" and "Up" even when used as a preposition. But typically "out" and "up" are only capitalized in a verb- or noun-phrase, not a compound preposition. TlonicChronic (talk) 15:46, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

I dunno about these arcane grammatical distinctions, but if you look at reliable sources (i.e., prose with editorial review, not just list and headlines or fanzine-type materials), they will typically capitalize these in titles of works. older ≠ wiser 15:50, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

I suppose that makes sense; "out of" implies a verb-phrase "(to) be out". I could see all compound prepositions implying an inherent verb after the noun. I no longer feel competent to make a decision on this. TlonicChronic (talk) 16:16, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

If you look up the Charles Lloyd album, ECM album capitalizes every word in English, AllMusic capitalizes the Out always, and a lot of the jazz publications with lower case "out" and "of" as they are short prepositions. TlonicChronic (talk) 15:47, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

Out is more often an adjective or adverb; as a preposition, it's a contraction of the prepositional phrases out of ("run out the doorway") or out in ("I'm going out back"), and in many constructions leans toward colloquial/dialectal ("took my groceries out the car"). I've read almost every style guide ever, and I don't recall one suggesting to lower-case compound prepositions in this sense of that term (i.e. multi-word prepositional phrases) as a particular class. Those styles that lower-case all prepositions, even long and uncommon ones like alongside, would lowercase these as well, simply as members of the prepositional class. Whether an argument can be made in a particular case that Out in a title is being used prepositionally (alone or as part of a prepositional phrase) and so should qualify for lower-casing under MOS:5LETTER's general principle, there is simply no community appetite for such hair-splitting, as I've learned the hard way over the years in a lot of contentious RMs. This clearly falls under an enumerated exception anyway: Apply our five-letter rule (above) for prepositions except when a significant majority of current, reliable sources that are independent of the subject consistently capitalize, in the title of a specific work, a word that is frequently not a preposition, such as "Like" and "Past". The use of those two words was as examples not as a complete list, and out is "a word that is frequently not a preposition", and in most work titles we're going to encounter is going to qualify under "a significant majority of current, reliable sources that are independent of the subject consistently capitalize [it] in the title of [that] specific work". That is to say, the MoS rules already have this covered, and they defer to independent RS usage regarding a specific work, even if some of us would have preferred a more hard-line consistency being imposed on short prepositions. That horse is simply long out of the barn (or "out the barn" if you prefer).

Testy aside: This "follow the sources" exceptionalism sometimes has stupid results when applied to style instead of to facts, like Spider-Man: Far From Home with an over-capitalized from, which happened only because almost all the "reliable sources" are not truly independent, but are entertainment press, beholden entirely to the entertainment industry's advertising money, and who bend over backward to mimic stylizations preferred by trademark holders. It's dumb because if this were a work of great cinema, it would garner coverage in film and media and other academic journals, and they would near-universally render it Spider-Man: Far from Home. The "From" result we're stuck with at least for now is a classic WP:Common-style fallacy, of mistaking the style of one tiny segment of sources, mostly following the same style guide (AP Stylebook) or derivatives that track it closely, while ignoring all other style approaches across all other publication types, and doing so simply because the head-count number of such publications in that one sector that bothered covering the subject more often is larger. This is closely related to the WP:Specialized-style fallacy, under the confusion of which, as just one example, birders tried to force Wikipedia to capitalize all common (vernacular) names of bird species because it was typically done that way by ornithological publishers, never mind that nearly no one else (newspapers, dictionaries, encyclopedias, not even general-science journals when publishing ornithological papers) did so. And that was 8 solid years of drama and disruption. People like to complain that "style doesn't matter" and "this MoS stuff is a distraction" and "it's all just trivia", but the ones who do so are usually the first to latch onto a personal style pecadillo and fight half to death to get their way. End screed.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:53, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

Thank you TlonicChronic (talk) 18:35, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

Sorry for the disruption. I'm used to Chicago, which doesn't capitalize any, and I outside the NYT, which always capitalizes out, up, off, and a couple others, I have never seen anyone capitalized out when used as a preposition outside a verbal phrase before today. If you have happen to a minute, could you fill me in on why multi-word prepositions get capitalized or point me in a good direction? I was never taught about it in college and I only have Chicago on me and S&W on me, not blue book, and I can't find anything online, and you've definitely read more style guides than I have. TlonicChronic (talk) 18:50, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

If I could ask one more (unrelated) question, does the whole possessive noun get linked, or should the "'s" stay unlinked? You seem like a good person to ask. TlonicChronic (talk) 19:26, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

@TlonicChronic: Well, I don't really have the time for poring over oodles of style manuals to quote them, and these days I only keep a few current ones around (my old hobby of trying to collect them all and update to new editions of each was expensive and took up a lot of room). I'm not sure that a "style guide X says this but style guide Y says that" analysis would mean much on this (though they can be useful on some questions). The facts we have to deal with in this particular matter are that 1) in most titles of works (at least modern ones) most non-academic publishers (magazines, newspaper, blogs, popular-culture book writers, etc.) are going to capitalize "Out" because frankly most of the writers of such material can't tell when it's a prepositional use of the word in the first place; 2) for this kind of question in particular, there was an RfC that concluded to permit upper-casing of words like Out and Past (those that are often not used as prepositions or recognized as them by the average reader) if most sources about a particular work capitalized them in the case of that work. This was the decision because so many sources capitalize these words in so many titles of works, that editors were rebelling and readers probably surprised at titles being in forms like Bat out of Hell when they expected Bat Out of Hell and all the sources we were citing used the "Out" spelling, too. That is, the consensus was to forgo total rule consistency in favor of less astonishment. Not everyone's happy with that, but that's what compromise is, really: neither side gets everything they want [the other side here really wants nothing short of the close mimicry of every nuance of every title and other trademark], but both get a middle ground they can more or less live with.

As for the link question, I think you're asking whether to do [[Einstein]]'s versus [[Einstein's]] versus [[Einstein|Einstein's]]; it's the first, because the second won't work for most names (depends on someone having created a redirect for that case specifically), and the third is redundant markup. Same with basic plurals: [[cat]]s not [[cats]] or [[Cat|cats]]; complex plurals, where the base word changes, have to be piped: [[Dichotomy|dichotomies]]. Other suffixes are supported by the short format: [[patron]]ize.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:27, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

thank you! TlonicChronic (talk) 03:33, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

Tools for adjusting capitalization in citations?

While not the norm, it is common for published materials to have titles and the names of subdivisions in all caps. Are there wiki tools for changing such text in citations to sentence case? If such tools exist, should this article mention them? -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 14:57, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

I use User:WikiMasterGhibif/capitalize.js which converts a selected string to lowercase. Far from perfect (it doesn't deal with diacritics), it at least decreases the amount of manual adjustments. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 00:52, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

I use an add-on called TitleCase in Firefox. I did a while ago make a Phabricator request for the function in AWB (phab:T337483). A few subscribers may help, though I may need to cut some code to make it happen :-) Neils51 (talk) 06:19, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for both those hints. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 13:06, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

Competing proposals for change to MOS:THETITLE

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#"The" and periodicals. There are at least four different change proposals floating around in that not very coherent thread, all predicated on the notion that it's confusing to use The New York Times but Los Angeles Times to match the actual titles of the publications (plus a claim that it's somehow too hard to figure out what the actual title of the publication is).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:15, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

MOS:TITLECAPS footnote to handle symbols substituting for words

Resolved

 – Implemented

MOS:TITLECAPS says (in part):

Always capitalized: When using title case, the following words should be capitalized:

• The first and last word of the title (e.g. A Home to Go Back To)

The proposal here is to add a foonote to address unusual cases that MOS presently does not account for, leading to some confusion about what "word" means in the above instruction:

Always capitalized: When using title case, the following words should be capitalized:

• The first and last word of the title (e.g. A Home to Go Back To)

[... rest of page ...]

Notes

[... other footnotes ...]

This follows on from a fairly extensive discussion at Talk:Sex (I'm A...)#Proposed rename – to "Sex (I'm a ...)" and "Talk:Sex (I'm a ...)", to comply with both MOS:ELLIPSIS and the actual intent of MOS:TITLECAPS (which was never to capitalize mid-sentence usage of the indefinite or definite articles, or short prepositions). It is desirable to clarify the MoS on this point before the WP:RM discussion, since MoS's lack of clarity on the question would likely result in the RM's failure to come to consensus in the first place, though the pre-RM discussion there has been productive. I've attempted to account for every variation of this sort of thing, so that no other edge cases come up without MoS addressing them already (including emoji, which are increasingly showing up in titles of songs, videos, social media posts, even articles).

The one thing it does not do is recommend that a title that starts with an ellipsis should treat that ellisis as the first word: "... and Justice for All". This is because "... And Justice for All" clearly dominates in independent source material (when it bothers to include the ellipsis at all) [2], most likely because it is more recognizable as a title that way, and it does not lead to the problem of lower-cased "... and" beginning a sentence about the song. Someone has already semi-researched matters like this [3] with Chicago Manual of Style, AP Stylebook, and usage in The New York Times, which all agree on the "What in the Name of ...?" format given above, i.e. treating "the" as not the last "word" – but without addressing a leading ellipsis. The author of that particular article suggested using "...and Justice for All". However, the case for doing that seems very weak when independent source usage is examined; the only thing it has going for it is a rather artificial consistency with ellipsis at the end (which no one would notice except in a weird two-ellipses title like "... The Lambs, and Sloths, and Carp, and Anchovies, and Orangutans, and..."), but coming at the very high cost of consistency with all other titles which of course start upper-case (even in sentence-case citations, in which a final word in a title would not). PS: Our own article on the Metallica song is at "...And Justice for All (song)", but should move to "... And Justice for All (song)", with a space, to comply with MOS:ELLIPSIS.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:53, 26 December 2023 (UTC)

This all makes perfect sense to me. I think the way you've written this is comprehensive enough to cover all the cases, or at least all the ones I can think of, so thanks for putting in the effort. I hope other editors agree with this suggested enhancement to the style guide. — Mudwater ^(Talk) 01:08, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

SMcCandlish, I sign off on this also, it's well-reasoned and well-written. Remsense留 17:57, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

I would like to encourage other editors to take the time to read through SMcCandlish's proposal above. It's actually pretty straightforward. An example would be the article title that started this discussion. "Sex (I'm A...)" should be renamed to "Sex (I'm a ...)", with a lowercase "a", and a space after the "a". The three periods stand in for a word, so it's as if "a" is not the last word of the title. The rest of the proposal elaborates on this and covers other, similar situations. — Mudwater ^(Talk) 23:25, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

No one seems to have issues with or questions about it, but it's still mid-holidays for a lot of people, and there is no hurry. I figure let this sit for a week or so longer, before implementing it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:56, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

Okay, waited another week with no issues raised, so I've implemented this, exactly as given above.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:36, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

Weird exception (that we don't need to codify a rule about)

I recently ran across a permissible (call it WP:IAR) exception to not capitalizing "a" "an" or "the" in mid-title: It is Index, A History of the, in which the first word has been transparently moved to the middle for humorous effect. Per WP:MOSBLOAT, we have no reason to codify this in MOS:TITLES even as a footnote, since there is not likely to be another case of this any time soon, and there's no evidenced dispute about it. Just thought it worth mentioning here "for the record".  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:15, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

The case for newspaper articles

What case should the titles of newspaper articles be in - title or sentence? And does it make a difference if they are quoted in an article or used as a source? Examining MOS:TITLECAPS hasn't helped me decide, so perhaps that could be tweaked, to help those like me who are slow of wit. Thanks. Gog the Mild (talk) 16:46, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

Either is acceptable (aiming for consistency within the article); see MOS:ALLCAPS: "Reduce newspaper headlines and other titles from all caps to title case – or to sentence case if required by the citation style established in the article." Doremo (talk) 17:50, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

Example does not match article

§ Neither lists "Dangerous World Tour" as an instance where the word "Dangerous" should be italicised, but the Dangerous World Tour page does not italicise it. This page or the DWT page should be edited to reflect the other. LightNightLights (talk • contribs) 18:55, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

Software titles

Current guidance is MOS:NEITHER italics nor quotation marks for software other than games and MOS:ITALICTITLE for video gaming software. There is an old undiscussed complaint about the arbitrariness between the two software types. The current guidance is insufficient because often software titles are common or short words that need special formatting for proper interpretation, such as in compress: "Files compressed by compress..." Without a reasonable guidance, we're seeing other types of formatting being adopted in practice, such as in traceroute (using code tags) or ed (using small letters). I'd like to propose amending the style guide to recommend using {{codett}}, which is less visually intrusive that {{code}} and semantically richer than {{mono}}: compress, tracerout, ed. fgnievinski (talk) 14:57, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

"Mos:TITLES" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect Mos:TITLES has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 April 25 § Mos:TITLES until a consensus is reached. Utopes _{(talk / cont)} 21:49, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

Websites

The article states "Website titles may or may not be italicized in running text depending on the type of site and what kind of content it features." Well, that couldn't be more vague! I am editing an article with a website that is mentioned many times. I don't want to mention which one because I don't want us to get off on my singular situation. However, one editor italicized and as you might expect, another simply wrote it plain with capital letters. Can we get some clarification, or if that was a bit of a throw-away statement because policy has not yet been established, can we have that discussion now and come up with a consensus to establish policy on how to handle websites? I have no opinion (which is very rare), but I am a black/white kind of person. I like rules to be established and then I like to follow them, whatever they are. Who wants to start the conversation? MarydaleEd (talk) 02:00, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

Punctuation and spacing in non-English titles

MOS:CONFORM says:

When quoting text from non-English languages, the outer punctuation should follow the Manual of Style for English quote marks. If there are nested quotations, follow the rules for correct punctuation in that language.

Does this apply to non-English titles of minor works (including in citation templates?). For example, see this discussion about whether a French title in a ref should have spacing before colons and use guillemets (« ») instead of single quotes? --Yodin^T 13:23, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

In cs1|2 citation templates ({{cite web}} in this example – should be {{cite news}}) the use of html entities is discouraged because such use corrupts the citation's metadata; see Template:Cite web § COinS. As it reads in the current version (permalink), the value in |title= corrupts the citation's metadata because it includes multiple   entities:

Aya Nakamura : " On dit que je suis hautaine. Moi, je vois ça comme de l'assurance "

The example template appears to have been added at this edit 28 November 2023. In that addition, the source article title is:

Aya Nakamura : « On dit que je suis hautaine. Moi, je vois ça comme de l’assurance »

That agrees with the title provided by the source. I can see no reason for the removal/replacement of the guillemets. The only change that needs be made to that title is to convert the curly apostrophe to typewriter apostrophe per WP:CURLY.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:05, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

Thanks @Trappist the monk: would using actual non non-breaking space unicode character " " be acceptable (as French Wikipedia recommends), or would the HTML renderer turn these into HTML entities anyway, and break the COinS metadata in the same way? --Yodin^T 15:03, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

This is the English Wikipedia. MOS:NBSP applies:

Insert non-breaking and thin spaces as named character reference (  or  ), or as templates that generate these ({{nbsp}}, {{thinsp}}), and never by entering them directly into the edit window from the keyboard – they are visually indistinguishable from regular spaces, and later editors will be unable to see what they are.

In keeping with that, cs1|2 checks |title= for nbsp and other invisible characters. When found, cs1|2 emits an error message:

{{cite book |title=Title with nbsp}}

Title with nbsp. {{cite book}}: no-break space character in |title= at position 6 (help)

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:26, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

Mention of podcasts?

I was surprised, while doing a GA review where the article had titles of podcasts in quotation marks, to find that the MOS contains no mention of the word podcast anywhere that I could point the nominator to. {{Infobox podcast}} and common usage italicize the titles of these works. I don't generally think this would be controversial, but I shouldn't be the one to add it or similar.

My proposed edit would change

• Television and radio programs, specials, shows, series and serials

to

• Television and radio programs, specials, shows, series and serials, including podcasts

Thoughts welcome. Sammi Brie (she/her • t • c) 16:26, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

I agree that this shouldn't be controversial. A podcast is a major work which contains episodes which are minor works. Gonnym (talk) 17:19, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

Italicising short advertisement films

What's preferred as far as italics vs quotes when it comes to, say, 30-60 second films made for use as advertisements? The manual isn't exactly clear on this and I'm not either; they could most likely be considered "minor works" since they're just commercials, but some could also be considered "short films" depending on how artistic they're considered. There aren't a huge amount of those with their own articles, but the ones there are seem very inconsistent, half of them are italicised while half are in quote marks. Whether or not they could be considered part of a series seems to have no influence on this. Ringtail Raider (talk) 06:02, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

Case when translating MOS:NONENGTITLEs

It says: Retain the style of the original for modern works. But it does not say that in reference to translating, say, from French into English. "Retain" there means don't change the original form. English sources invariably use title case for news articles etc. When not applying title case, the result is highly unnatural. Translating changes the original from one language to another. The logic is different. When translating a title of a French newspaper article, and French does not have English-style title casing, should the result be title-cased or not? This is not particular to French, I am just taking French as an example. —Alalch E. 16:00, 25 September 2024 (UTC)