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Stratadrake Dragon Writer Since: Oct, 2009
Dragon Writer
#1: Feb 19th 2011 at 2:13:13 PM

Is it possible to implement this on a technical level? E.g. Articles typed as a works page get their link texts italicized by default.

This would occur when linking them by Wiki Word or curly braces, and extending to their redirects; but not inside potholes.

An Ear Worm is like a Rickroll: It is never going to give you up.
Yamikuronue So Yeah Since: Aug, 2009
#2: Feb 20th 2011 at 6:44:04 AM

Can display titles include markup? That might be the easiest way...

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SilentReverence adopting kitteh from 3 tiles right 1 tile up Since: Jan, 2010
adopting kitteh
#3: Feb 20th 2011 at 6:50:12 AM

Apparently the easiest way to do this would be to assign a special class to links to works (besides the inbuild "twikilink", I think), let's say "worklink", then execute the required italicizing at the CSS level. Effect is immediate (barring ISP caches, if any, somehow) and required changes to the page databases are minimal.

edited 20th Feb '11 6:50:53 AM by SilentReverence

Fanfic Recs orwellianretcon'd: cutlocked for committee or for Google?
Stratadrake Dragon Writer Since: Oct, 2009
Dragon Writer
#4: Feb 20th 2011 at 10:07:19 AM

^^ Display titles (i.e. pothole text) can not include any markup, which is an occasional complaint because if you want to emphasize a single word within the label you have to split it up into 2-3 separate links.

^ Exactly what I was thinking. Links to works pages (excluding potholes) get flagged with a "font-variant:italic" CSS (style or class). Don't forget that you can combine multiple CSS classes into a single element.

edited 20th Feb '11 10:10:11 AM by Stratadrake

An Ear Worm is like a Rickroll: It is never going to give you up.
Yamikuronue So Yeah Since: Aug, 2009
#5: Feb 21st 2011 at 1:02:25 AM

I meant display titles under the ptitle replacement system.

BTW, I'm a chick.
Stratadrake Dragon Writer Since: Oct, 2009
Dragon Writer
#6: Feb 21st 2011 at 9:48:03 AM

No, I don't think they can.

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Micah from traveling the post-doc circuit Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: [TOP SECRET]
#7: Feb 22nd 2011 at 10:08:34 AM

Not all works pages want to be italicized. Some are for short works that want quote marks. Others are unofficial descriptors of series that don't have official titles.

edited 22nd Feb '11 10:09:01 AM by Micah

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SilentReverence adopting kitteh from 3 tiles right 1 tile up Since: Jan, 2010
adopting kitteh
#8: Feb 22nd 2011 at 11:09:13 AM

↑A new page type would easily solve that problem, and ease some minor categorization issues.

Fanfic Recs orwellianretcon'd: cutlocked for committee or for Google?
Haven Planescape Hijack Since: Jan, 2001
Planescape Hijack
#9: Apr 9th 2011 at 12:22:47 AM

Bumping this because I just came in here today thinking the same thing after seeing yet another page filled with unitalicized works titles.

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Unknownlight Since: Aug, 2009
#10: Apr 9th 2011 at 10:26:06 PM

Yes. If this can be done relatively easily, then there shouldn't be any reason not to do it.

VampireBuddha Calendar enthusiast from Ireland (Wise, aged troper) Relationship Status: Complex: I'm real, they are imaginary
Calendar enthusiast
#11: Apr 10th 2011 at 4:32:03 AM

The trouble is that things like songs, poems, short stories, band names, and comic/manga arcs don't take italics.

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StFan Since: Jan, 2001
#13: Apr 14th 2011 at 1:46:00 AM

Titles shouldn't be italicized automatically, because it is very dependant on context.

For example, many works have as titles the name of the main character. When talking about the character and not the work, said name shouldn't italicized.

Italics are specifically used to differentiate a title from the same sequences of words used outside that context. Making it automatic would cause more problems than it would solve.

Ironeye Cutmaster-san from SoCal Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: Falling within your bell curve
Cutmaster-san
#14: Apr 14th 2011 at 2:49:10 AM

I think the idea is the make the wick italicized, not any matching string of text. For example, Death Note would get italics, but Death Note and The Work In Question would not.

edited 14th Apr '11 2:50:47 AM by Ironeye

I'm bad, and that's good. I will never be good, and that's not bad. There's no one I'd rather be than me.
thegrenekni3t Since: Dec, 2009
#15: Apr 17th 2011 at 7:52:57 AM

I agree with Micah and St Fan. There are situations in which it would be useful to link to a work page, but incorrect to italicize the title.

Also, there are some situations where automatically italicizing work pages wouldn't solve the problem: for instance, works in a series whose titles are potholed to the series page, or works where the title of the relevant TV Tropes page is only part of the title of the work, as in "TitleOfSeries and the Subject of This Installment". It seems like it might result in errors if titles usually italicized themselves, and one had to remember to go out of one's way to fix unusual cases.

I think we're better off just encouraging editors to use proper style manually, and correcting non-italicized titles where needed.

edited 17th Apr '11 7:53:24 AM by thegrenekni3t

Yinyang107 from the True North (Decatroper) Relationship Status: Tongue-tied
#16: Apr 18th 2011 at 12:53:23 PM

^^ But what about "I think Angel is a pretty cool guy

", or similar? Examples from the show concerning Angel himself don't go "I think Angel, from Angel, is a pretty cool guy", nor should they.

Ironeye Cutmaster-san from SoCal Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: Falling within your bell curve
Cutmaster-san
#17: Apr 18th 2011 at 1:12:47 PM

They actually should. Maybe not phrased in such an awkward way, but the title of the work should be explicit in the example. The source of an example should be clear without having to mouse over text to see what it links to. You may think that the source is clear (and it in fact will be to many people on this site, including me, who have watched Angel or Buffy The Vampire Slayer), but not everyone is familiar with Angel, and you can't assume that everyone will realize that Angel is from Angel, and not Dexter, Kath & Kim, Nash Bridges, thirtysomething, Profiler, or The Rockford Files. (Admittedly, many of the TV Angels are women, so a gendered pronoun can rule out some of those examples.) Not mentioning the series when it shares a name with the title character will only ever be unambiguous if everyone always listed the series name otherwise. It's something they ought to do, but is often ignored in practice, and even then it would just make such series an exception to the rule for the people who can't be bothered to work on the wording for a particular type of example.

In any case, a better way to write the example would be something like "The title character from Angel is a pretty cool guy."

edited 18th Apr '11 1:14:18 PM by Ironeye

I'm bad, and that's good. I will never be good, and that's not bad. There's no one I'd rather be than me.
Yinyang107 from the True North (Decatroper) Relationship Status: Tongue-tied
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