Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 22:20, 6 April 2011

This page documents an English Misplaced Pages policy.It describes a widely accepted standard that editors should normally follow, though exceptions may apply. Changes made to it should reflect consensus.

Shortcuts WP:TITLE WP:AT WP:NAME

This page in a nutshell: Article titles should be recognizable to readers, unambiguous, and consistent with usage in reliable English-language sources.

This page describes Misplaced Pages's policy on choosing article titles. It is supplemented and explained by guidelines linked to this policy (see the box to the right), which should be interpreted in conjunction with other policies, particularly the three core content policies: Verifiability, No original research and Neutral point of view.

For information on the procedure for renaming an article see Help:Moving a page, and Misplaced Pages:Requested moves.

Deciding on an article title

Generally, article titles are based on what reliable English-language sources call the subject of the article. There will often be several possible alternative titles for any given article; the choice between them is made by consensus. The principal criteria used by editors when deciding on a title for an article include:

• Recognizability – an ideal title will confirm, to readers who are familiar with (though not necessarily expert in) the topic, that the article is indeed about that topic. One important aspect of this is the use of names most frequently used by English-language reliable sources to refer to the subject.
• Naturalness – titles are expected to use names and terms that readers are most likely to look for in order to find the article (and to which editors will most naturally link from other articles). As part of this, a good title should convey what the subject is actually called in English.
• Precision – titles are expected to use names and terms that are precise, but only as precise as is necessary to identify the topic of the article unambiguously. For technical reasons, no two Misplaced Pages articles can have the same title. For information on how ambiguity is avoided in titles, see the Precision and disambiguation section below and the disambiguation guideline.
• Conciseness – shorter titles are generally preferred to longer ones.
• Consistency – titles which follow the same pattern as those of similar articles are generally preferred. Many of these patterns are documented in the naming guidelines listed in the Specific-topic naming conventions box above, and ideally indicate titles that are in accordance with the principal criteria above.

Most articles will have a simple and obvious title that is better than any other in terms of most or all of these ideal criteria. If so, use it, as a straightforward choice. However, it may be necessary to trade off two or more of the criteria against one another. Consensus on entitling articles in specific fields, or with respect to particular problems, is stated and explained on the guideline pages referenced. When no consensus exists, it is established through discussion, with the above principles in mind. The choice of article titles should put the interests of readers before those of editors, and those of a general audience before those of specialists.

Redirects should be created to articles that may reasonably be searched for or linked to under two or more names (such as different spellings or former names). Conversely, a name that could refer to several different articles may require disambiguation.

Common names

• WP:UCN
• WP:NCCN
• WP:COMMONNAME

Titles are often proper nouns, such as the name of the person, place or thing that is the subject of the article. Misplaced Pages does not necessarily use the subject's "official" name as an article title; it instead uses the name which is most frequently used to refer to the subject in English-language reliable sources. This includes usage in the sources used as references for the article. For cases where usage differs among English-speaking countries, see also National varieties of English below.

Article titles should be neither vulgar nor pedantic. The term most typically used in reliable sources is preferred to technically correct but rarer forms, whether the official name, the scientific name, the birth name, the original name or the trademarked name. Other encyclopedias may be helpful in deciding what titles are in an encyclopedic register as well as what name is most frequently used (see below).

The following are examples of common names that Misplaced Pages uses as article titles instead of a more elaborate, formal, or scientific alternative:

• Bill Clinton (not William Jefferson Clinton)
• H. H. Asquith (not Herbert Henry Asquith)
• Rhode Island (not State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations)
• Snoop Dogg (not Cordozar Calvin Broadus)
• Hulk Hogan (not Terry Gene Bollea)
• Venus de Milo (not Aphrodite of Melos)
• Caffeine (not 1,3,7-trimethyl-1H-purine-2,6(3H,7H)-dione)
• Guinea pig (not Cavia porcellus)
• Nazi Party (not Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)
• United States Code (not Code of Laws of the United States of America)

In determining which of several alternative names is most frequently used, it is useful to observe the usage of major international organizations, major English-language media outlets, quality encyclopedias, geographic name servers, major scientific bodies and scientific journals, and a search engine may help to collect this data. When using a search engine, restrict the results to pages written in English, and exclude the word "Misplaced Pages". (Also exclude inauthor:"Books, LLC" when searching Google Books.) Search engine results are subject to certain biases and technical limitations; for detailed advice in the use of search engines and the interpretation of their results, see Misplaced Pages:Search engine test.

When there is no single obvious term that is obviously the most frequently used for the topic, as used by a significant majority of reliable English language sources, editors should reach a consensus as to which title is best by considering the other criteria identified above.

Misplaced Pages is not a crystal ball. We do not know what terms will be used in the future, but only what is and has been in use, and will therefore be familiar to our readers. However, common sense can be applied – if an organization changes its name, it is reasonable to consider the usage since the change.

The ideal title for an article will also satisfy the other criteria outlined above; ambiguous or inaccurate names for the article subject, as determined by reliable sources, are often avoided even though they may be more frequently used by reliable sources.

This provision also applies when names are used as part of descriptive titles.

Neutrality in article titles

Conflicts often arise over whether an article title complies with Misplaced Pages's Neutral Point of View policy. Resolving such debates depends on whether the article title is a name derived from reliable sources or a descriptive title created by Misplaced Pages editors.

Non-neutral but common names

• WP:POVTITLE

When a significant majority of English-language reliable sources all refer to the topic or subject of an article by a given name, Misplaced Pages should follow the sources and use that name as our article title (subject to the other naming criteria). Sometimes that common name will include non-neutral words that Misplaced Pages normally avoids (Examples include Boston Massacre, Rape of Belgium, and Teapot Dome scandal). In such cases, the commonality of the name overrides our desire to avoid passing judgment (see below). This is acceptable because the non-neutrality and judgment is that of the sources, and not that of Misplaced Pages editors. True neutrality means we do not impose our opinions over that of the sources, even when our opinion is that the name used by the sources is judgmental. Further, even when a neutral title is possible, creating redirects to it using documented but non-neutral terms is sometimes acceptable; see WP:RNEUTRAL.

Non-judgmental descriptive titles

• WP:NDESC

Some topics are best entitled using a descriptive phrase (example: Population of Canada by year). Descriptive titles are often the invention of Misplaced Pages editors, and so should reflect a neutral point of view. The title chosen should be worded so as to not insert, implicitly or explicitly, an editor's viewpoint about the topic. Where possible, judgmental and non-neutral words should be avoided. For example, the term allegation implies wrongdoing, and so should be avoided in a descriptive title (an exception to this are articles where the topic is an actual accusation of illegality under civil, criminal or international law that have been discussed by reliable sources, but not yet proven in a court of law – these are accurately described as "allegations").

However, this does not mean we should avoid using non-neutral but common names (as discussed above) within a descriptive title. Even descriptive titles should be based on sources, and so should incorporate any names and terms that are commonly used by sources. (Example: we would not avoid the name "Boston Massacre" if we wrote an article on its political impact. The descriptive title Political impact of the Boston Massacre would be acceptable.)

Foreign names and anglicization

• WP:UE

The choice between anglicized and local spellings should follow English-language usage, e.g., Besançon, Søren Kierkegaard and Göttingen, but Nuremberg, delicatessen, and Florence.

If there are too few English-language sources to constitute an established usage, follow the conventions of the language appropriate to the subject (German for German politicians, Portuguese for Brazilian towns, and so on). For ideas on how to deal with situations where there are several competing foreign terms, see "Multiple local names" and "Use modern names" in the geographical naming guideline.

Names not originally in a Latin alphabet, such as Greek, Chinese, or Russian names, must be transliterated. Established systematic transliterations, such as Hanyu Pinyin, are preferred. However, if there is a common English-language form of the name, then use it, even if it is unsystematic (as with Tchaikovsky and Chiang Kai-shek). For a list of transliteration conventions by language, see Misplaced Pages:Romanization.

Misplaced Pages generally uses the character æ to represent the Anglo-Saxon ligature. For Latin or Greek-derived words, use e or ae/oe, depending on modern usage and the national variety of English used in the article.

In deciding whether and how to translate a foreign name into English, follow English-language usage. If there is no established English-language treatment for a name, translate it if this can be done without loss of accuracy and with greater understanding for the English-speaking reader.

National varieties of English

The title of an article on a topic that has strong ties to a particular English-speaking nation should use the variety of English appropriate for that nation (as in Australian Defence Force, United States Secretary of Defense). However, sometimes a form which represents only minority local usage is chosen because of its greater intelligibility to English-speaking readers worldwide (e.g. Ganges rather than "Ganga").

Otherwise, all national varieties of English are acceptable in article titles; Misplaced Pages does not prefer any national variety over any other. American spellings should not be respelled to British standards, and vice versa; for example, both color and colour are acceptable and both spellings are found in article titles (such as color gel and colour state). Very occasionally a less common but non-nation-specific term is selected so as to avoid having to choose between national varieties: for example, Fixed-wing aircraft was selected to avoid the choice between "Aeroplane" and "Airplane".

Standard English and trademarks

Article titles follow standard English text formatting in the case of trademarks, unless the trademarked spelling is demonstrably the most common usage in sources independent of the owner of the trademark. Items in full or partial uppercase (such as Invader ZIM) should have standard capitalization (Invader Zim); however, if the name is ambiguous, and one meaning is usually capitalized, this is one possible method of disambiguation.

Exceptions include article titles with the first letter lowercase and the second letter uppercase, such as iPod and eBay. For these, see the technical restrictions guideline.

Precision and disambiguation

• WP:PRECISION
• WP:PRECISE

When additional precision is necessary to distinguish an article title from other uses of the topic name, over-precision should be avoided. Be precise, but only as precise as necessary. For example, it would be inappropriate to title an article "United States Apollo program (1961–75)" over Apollo program (given that the year range refers to the whole of the program, not a portion of it); or "Queen (London, England rock band)" over Queen (band). Remember that concise titles are generally preferred.

However, because pages cannot share the same title, it is not always possible to use the exact title that may be desired for an article, as that title may have another meaning. As a general rule:

• If the topic of the article is the primary topic (or only topic) for a desired title, then the article can take that title without modification.
• Otherwise that title cannot be used for the article without disambiguation. This is often done by adding a disambiguating tag in parentheses (or sometimes after a comma); however in certain cases it may be done by choosing a different form of the title in order to achieve uniqueness. If there is a natural mode of disambiguation in standard English, as with Cato the Elder and Cato the Younger, use that instead.

Often there is no alternative to parenthetical disambiguation, and it does have the advantage that the non-parenthesized part of the title may most clearly convey what the subject is called in English. On the other hand, such disambiguations may be longer or less natural than an alternate but unambiguous form, when there is one.

The disambiguation guideline also contains advice on how to title disambiguation pages when they need to be created.

Sometimes titles of separate articles have different forms, but with only minor differences.

Examples:

• Diacritics: canon vs. cañon
• Capitalization: WASP vs. Wasp; Red Meat vs. Red meat

In such cases, remember that a reader who enters one term might in fact be looking for the other, so use appropriate disambiguation techniques (such as hatnotes or disambiguation pages) to ensure that readers can find all possible target articles.

Explicit conventions

Misplaced Pages has many naming conventions relating to specific subject domains (as listed in the box at the top of this page). Sometimes these recommend the use of titles that are not strictly the common name (as in the case of the conventions for flora and medicine). This practice of using specialized names is often controversial, and should not be adopted unless it produces clear benefits outweighing the use of common names; when it is, the article titles adopted should follow a neutral and common convention specific to that subject domain, and otherwise adhere to the general principles for titling articles on Misplaced Pages.

Considering title changes

• WP:TITLECHANGES

In discussing the appropriate title of an article, remember that the choice of title is not dependent on whether a name is "right" in a moral or political sense. Nor does the use of a name in the title of one article require that all related articles use the same name in their titles; there is often some reason, such as anachronism, for inconsistencies in common usage. For example, Misplaced Pages has articles on both Volgograd and the Battle of Stalingrad.

Editing for the sole purpose of changing one controversial title to another is strongly discouraged. If an article title has been stable for a long time, and there is no good reason to change it, it should not be changed. If it has never been stable, or unstable for a long time, and no consensus can be reached on what the title should be, default to the title used by the first major contributor after the article ceased to be a stub.

Any potentially controversial proposal to change a title should be advertised at Misplaced Pages:Requested moves, and consensus reached before any change is made. Debating controversial titles is often unproductive, and there are many other ways to help improve Misplaced Pages.

While titles for articles are subject to consensus, do not invent names as a means of compromising between opposing points of view. Misplaced Pages describes current usage but cannot prescribe a particular usage or invent new names.

Treatment of alternative names

By the design of Misplaced Pages's software, an article can only have one title. When this title is a name, significant alternative names for the topic should be mentioned in the article, usually in the first sentence or paragraph. If there are at least three alternate names, or there is something notable about the names themselves, a separate name section is recommended. (see Lead section). These may include alternative spellings, longer or shorter forms, historical names, significant names in other languages, etc. There is also no reason why alternative names cannot be used in article text, in contexts where they are more appropriate than the name used as the title of the article. For example, the city now called Gdańsk is referred to as Danzig in historical contexts to which that name is more suited (e.g. when it was part of Germany or a Free City).

All significant alternative titles, names or forms of names that apply to a specific article should be made to redirect to that article. If they are ambiguous, it should be ensured that the article can at least be reached from a disambiguation page for the alternative term. Note that the exact capitalization of the article's title does not affect Misplaced Pages search, so it is not necessary to create redirects from alternative capitalizations unless these are likely to be used in links; see Naming conventions (capitalization).

Piped links are often used in article text to allow a subject with a lengthy article title to be referred to using a more concise term where this does not produce ambiguity.

Article title format

• WP:TITLEFORMAT
• WP:LOWERCASE
• WP:SINGULAR
• WP:NOUN
• WP:DEFINITE

• Use lower case, except for proper names: The initial letter of a title is almost always capitalized; subsequent words in a title are not, unless they are part of a proper name, and so would be capitalized in running text; when this is done, the title will be simple to link to in other articles: Northwestern University offers more graduate work than a typical liberal arts college. For initial lower case letters, as in eBay, see the technical restrictions page. See also the special rules on capitalization in bird naming.
• To italicize a title, add the template {{italic title}} near the top of the article: Use of italics should conform to WP:ITALICS.
• Use the singular form: Article titles are generally singular in form, e.g. Horse, not Horses. Exceptions include nouns that are always in a plural form in English (e.g. scissors or trousers) and the names of classes of objects (e.g. Arabic numerals or Bantu languages).
• Avoid abbreviations: Abbreviations and acronyms are generally avoided unless the subject is almost exclusively known by its abbreviation (e.g. NATO and Laser). The abbreviation UK, for United Kingdom, is acceptable for use in disambiguation. It is also unnecessary to include an acronym in addition to the name in a title.
• Avoid definite and indefinite articles: Do not place definite or indefinite articles (the, a and an) at the beginning of titles unless they are part of a proper name (e.g. The Old Man and the Sea) or will otherwise change the meaning (e.g. The Crown).
• Use nouns: Titles should be nouns or noun phrases. Adjective and verb forms (e.g. democratic, integrate) should redirect to articles titled with the corresponding noun (Democracy, Integration), although sometimes they will be disambiguation pages, as at Organic. Sometimes the noun corresponding to a verb will be the gerund (-ing form), as in Swimming.
• Do not enclose titles in quotes: Article titles which are quotes (or song titles, etc.) are not enclosed in quotation marks (e.g. To be, or not to be is the article title, while "To be, or not to be" is a redirect to that article).
• Do not use titles suggesting that one article forms part of another: Even if an article is considered subsidiary to another (as where summary style is used), it should be named independently. For example, an article on transportation in Azerbaijan should not be given a name like "Azerbaijan/Transportation" or "Azerbaijan (transportation)" – use Transportation in Azerbaijan. (This does not always apply in non-article namespaces: see Help:Subpage.)

Special characters

There are technical restrictions on the use of certain characters in page titles. The characters #, <, >, , |, {, and } cannot be used at all and there are certain restrictions on titles containing colons, periods, and some other characters. Technically all other Unicode characters can be used in page titles. However, the following should be noted:

• Provide redirects to non-keyboard characters: If the use of diacritics (accent marks) is in accordance with the English-language name, or other characters not present on most standard keyboards are used, provide a redirect from the equivalent title using standard English-language keyboard characters. In particular, provide a redirect from the equivalent hyphenated form to any title using a dash (for English usage of these, see en dash and em dash).
• Avoid characters resembling quotes or accent marks: Accent-like and quote-like characters (e.g. ʻ, ʾ, ʿ, ᾿, ῾, ‘, “, ’, ”, , combining diacritical marks with a "space" character) should be avoided in page names. A common exception is the apostrophe ' (e.g. Anthony d'Offay), which should, however, be used sparingly (e.g. Shia instead of Shi'a).
• Do not use symbols: Symbols such as "♥", as sometimes found in advertisements or logos, should never be used in titles. This includes non-Latin punctuation such as the characters in Unicode's CJK Symbols and Punctuation block.
• Consider browser support: If there is a reasonable alternative, avoid symbols which are so rare that many browsers will not render them. For example, the article on Weierstrass p carries that title rather than the symbol itself, which many readers would see as just a square box.

Italics and other formatting

• WP:ITALICTITLE

Use italics when italics would be used in running text; for example, taxonomic names, the names of ships, the titles of books, films, and other creative works, and foreign phrases are italicized both in ordinary text and in article titles.

Italic formatting cannot be part of the actual (stored) title of a page; a title or part of it is made to appear in italics with the use of the DISPLAYTITLE magic word or the {{Italic title}} template. In addition, certain templates, including Template:Infobox book, Template:Infobox film, and Template:Infobox album, will by default italicize the titles of the pages they appear on; see the pages for those templates for details. For details, see Italics and formatting on the technical restrictions page.

Other types of formatting (such as bold type and superscript) can technically be achieved in the same way, but should generally not be used in Misplaced Pages article titles (except for articles on mathematics.) Quotation marks (such as around song titles) would not require special techniques for display, but are nevertheless avoided in titles; see Article title format above.

Titles containing "and"

• WP:AND

Sometimes two or more closely related or complementary concepts are most sensibly covered by a single article. Where possible, use a title covering all cases: for example, Endianness covers the concepts "big-endian" and "little-endian". Where no reasonable overarching title is available, it is permissible to construct an article title using "and", as in Acronym and initialism; Pioneer 6, 7, 8, and 9; Promotion and relegation; and Balkline and straight rail. (The individual terms – such as Acronym – should redirect to the combined page, or be linked there via a disambiguation page or hatnote if they have other meanings.)

If there is no obvious ordering, place the more commonly encountered concept first, or if that is not applicable, use alphabetical order. Alternative titles using reverse ordering (such as Initialism and acronym) should be redirects.

Titles containing "and" are often red flags that the article has neutrality problems or is engaging in original research: avoid the use of "and" in ways that appear biased. For example, use Islamic terrorism, not "Islam and terrorism"; however, "Media's coupling of Islam and terrorism" may be acceptable. Avoid the use of "and" to combine concepts that are not commonly combined in reliable sources.

Proposed naming conventions and guidelines

Proposals for new naming conventions and guidelines should be advertised on this page's talk page, at requests for comment, the Village Pump and any related pages. If a strong consensus has formed, the proposal is adopted and should be listed on this page.

New naming conventions for specific categories of articles often arise from WikiProjects. For a list of current and former proposals, see Proposed naming conventions and guidelines.

See also

• Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style (article titles)
• Misplaced Pages:Name mush by culture (essay)
• Misplaced Pages:Non-unique personal name

External links

• ngrams viewer; a graphic search engine by date.

Notes

1. Article title: the part of the URL that also appears as a large bold heading above the editable text of an article.
2. Some on-line encyclopedias use arbitrary numbers to distinguish pages, hence article titles do not need to be unique, but Misplaced Pages uses a system whereby no two pages can have identical titles. It is technically possible to make articles appear to have the same title, but this is never done, as it would be highly confusing to readers, and cause editors to make incorrect links.
3. Where the term "common name" appears in this policy it means a commonly or frequently used name, and not a common name as used in some disciplines in opposition to scientific name.
4. LLC "publishes" printouts of WP articles
5. This paragraph was adopted to stop move warring. It is an adaptation of the wording in the Manual of Style which is based on the Arbitration Committee's decision in the Jguk case.
6. This was decided during a July–September 2010 poll on the article talk page. See Misplaced Pages talk:Article titles/Archive 29#Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment:Use of italics in article titles as well as the discussions that led up to the poll at Misplaced Pages talk:Manual of Style/Archive 116#Italicised article titles and Misplaced Pages talk:Manual of Style/Archive 116#Request for comment: Use of italics in article names

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• Misplaced Pages naming conventions
• Misplaced Pages content policy