Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Text formatting

Beatles RfC

You are invited to participate in an RfC at Wikipedia talk:Requests for mediation/The Beatles on the issue of capitalising the definite article when mentioning that band's name in running prose. This long-standing dispute is the subject of an open mediation case and we are requesting your help with determining the current community consensus. Thank you for your time. For the mediators. ~ GabeMc ^{(talk|contribs)} 21:36, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Book series style

Which style should be used for the name of a series of books? Clearly an individual book in the series should be in italics as stated, but it's not clear whether the title of a series should also be in italics or plain (or something else). There's not a lot of consistency - for example The Forsyte Saga mostly uses italics, while Aubrey–Maturin series uses unformatted text. --David Edgar (talk) 11:28, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

I too, have had this question.

My simpleminded gut reaction is that a series of books should be treated much like a class of ships. In ship classes, the class name is italicized when the class is named for a member of the class: the Valiant-class tugboat of tugboats gets its name from the tugboat USS Valiant (YT-802). All other class names are unadorned. Following this simple reasoning, neither The Forsyte Saga nor Aubrey–Maturin series article titles should be italicized. There are book-series articles in Wikipedia that are named for a book in the series – I've seen them, but at the moment, I can't think of any.

–Trappist the monk (talk) 13:51, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

I suppose one such example would be the Foundation series, named after Foundation.

This is certainly a possible solution, but I'm not sure it answers the question raised by works such as In Search of Lost Time or The Lord of the Rings, both of which are commonly regarded as novels themselves, even though their component volumes could also be viewed (and are sometimes published) as individual works. --David Edgar (talk) 16:32, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

There is a difference between a series of books and a multi-volume novel.

I guess I don't see the problem with In Search of Lost Time or The Lord of the Rings – both are very long novels published in multiple volumes. In these examples, each volume may be printed as a separate physical book and given a distinct name. My copy of another rather long book, Les Misérables, was published as two physical books but these were not given distinct names except to identify which volumes (I–III and IV–V) each book contained.

As I understand it, Wikipedia styling is to a large extent guided by styling in the real world. How does the real world deal with this issue? If it's like other style issues, there is some general consensus but always outlying differences of opinion so the answer to that question may be of no help.

It occurs to me that this place might not be the proper location for the discussion of this question. Ultimately, the question is about book series titles. Shouldn't this conversation be moved to the WP:MOSTITLE talk page? In the far dim past, there was a brief and inconclusive discussion in Archive #1. There doesn't seem to be much help there.

If that trend continues, which looks likely given the limited participation in this conversation, perhaps you and/or I should simply craft a new guideline, add it to MOS:TITLE, and see what happens then. Someone who is bold and does that almost always gets a reaction from those who could not be bothered to join the conversation before the change was made.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:09, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

Underline

The <u>...</u> element was reintroduced in HTML5, and redefined: "represents a span of text offset from its surrounding content without conveying any extra emphasis or importance, and for which the conventional typographic presentation is underlining; for example, a span of text in Chinese that is a proper name (a Chinese proper name mark), or span of text that is known to be misspelled."

The only guideline for underlines is currently at MOS:BADEMPHASIS, which basically state not to use if for emphasis. Should we take another look at this? --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 18:40, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

I don't see any contradiction there. BADEMPHASIS says "don't underline things", not "don't use <u>...</u> tags". Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 13:36, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

I meant, there is no other guidance on underline. --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 02:01, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Well, <u>...</u> isn't supposed to be used simply to stick lines under things if I'm following things correctly, so there's no contradiction there. The guideline is still "don't underline things": I suppose a corollary could be added to the effect that "the <u>...</u> element can be used to note that text should be offset, as underlining would be used in a book, but don't expect for the text to actually be underlined in user agents"? Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 12:09, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Novelette

Hello,

you should note that short fiction and novelettes should be put in quotes. Regards.--Tomcat (7) 13:47, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia

I know this has probably been discussed before, but it's come up again, and CCC and all that. What are your opinions on italicisation of "Wikipedia"? drewmunn talk 11:42, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

(For the history of the MOS issues associated with the italicization of online encyclopedias, I've laid out a history at the Wikipedia talk page section linked above.)--Bbb23 (talk) 13:18, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

• Support. Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia that italicizes the names of other online/book encyclopedias. It might not only go counter to this guideline not to italicize Wikipedia, it may also go against the NPOV policy, in that non-italicization lends undue weight – it sets Wikipedia apart from other encyclopedias and makes it seem like we, as Wikipedians, feel that all other reference works are on a different level from Wikipedia. Personally, that's exactly how I feel; however, what any of us feel does not necessarily lead to unbiased treatment of article titles. The title of the Wikipedia article should be italicized in accordance with this Manual of Style. – PAINE ELLSWORTH ^CLIMAX! 14:10, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose. I don't really understand why but it does not appear that "Wikipedia" is commonly italicized throughout the Internet. It's very easy to confirm this by Googling. So, the best course of action seems to me to just note "Wikipedia" and some other online encyclopedias such as "Citizendium" are exceptions to the "italic title" rules. -- Taku (talk) 20:21, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

  (edit conflict) Strongly oppose: An exception should not be made for Wikipedia unless there is a very good reason to do so. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and its title should be italicized in the same manner as Britannica, Americana or any other major reference work. – PAINE ELLSWORTH ^CLIMAX! 22:27, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

• Support italicization where the reference is to the encyclopaedia per se—as a publication that happens to use the Internet, rather than ink on paper, for a medium. Oppose italicization for the project or community in its character as an organization, and in ambiguous cases where both referents are equally applicable. (I suppose the organization proper is actually the WMF, of which en.WP and the other communities are divisions or organs, but “Wikipedia” is commonly used in a kind of metonymy.)—Odysseus1479 (talk) 22:23, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

RfC at Talk:Wikipedia

There is an Rfc at Talk:Wikipedia#RfC: Wikipedia in italics? that may interest you. Please come and read the summary, then include your !vote if you would like to do so. Thank you in advance for your consideration. – PAINE ELLSWORTH ^CLIMAX! 18:36, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

Should website names be italicized?

According to the CMOS (16th edition, pp.752–753 14.244–5): "Titles of websites are generally set in Roman without quotation marks and capitalized headline-style ... Specific titles of blogs—which are analogous to periodicals—should be set in italics". Headline style would be no italics, so why does the current MOS state:

"Website titles may or may not be italicized depending on the type of site and what kind of content it features. Online magazines, newspapers, and news sites with original content should generally be italicized (Salon.com or The Huffington Post). Online encyclopedias and dictionaries should also be italicized (Scholarpedia or Merriam-Webster Online). Other types of websites should be decided on a case-by-case basis."

Any thoughts? GabeMc ^{(talk|contribs)} 23:38, 9 May 2013 (UTC)