Sinking Those Shipping Puns: Shipping Tropes

With the new ease of punctuated titles, I've been wondering whether it would be a good idea to take a lot of the Shipping tropes and custom title them so that take have an abbreviation apostrophe. E.g. 'Shipping, 'Ship to 'Ship Combat, 'Ship Mate.

...have pun-indicating quotation marks e.g. "Ship" To "Ship" Combat. In retrospect this is a better idea than apostrophes.

There are so many boat/relationship pun titles and yet also many perfectly good tropes about the navy that, avoiding any issue about renaming this things, we would just benefit by adding this extra little clue.

Even in cases where the context of the entire trope name makes it more obvious, it would just help my brain make the connection a little bit faster if I saw the apostrophe there.

edited 12th Aug '11 8:26:58 AM by SomeSortOfTroper

What is 'shipping short for?

I don't think I even know.

I don't think the apostrophe's standard use anymore, if it ever has been.

edited 11th Aug '11 9:32:26 AM by annebeeche

Relationship.

Interesting idea but potentially confusing. Common usage omits the apostrophe in my (limited) experience, while proper grammar would include it. But we are not grammar pedants.

Grammar pedantry is an offense up with which we shall not put.

In all seriousness, while I appreciate the theory of trying to make tropes about pairings distinct from tropes about vessels, I think the apostrophe in such cases is in such seldom use that it would only serve to cause confusion for those looking for tropes about pairings... either causing a rash of complaints about the custom title, people putting pairings in tropes about vessels, or both.

Well I don't think anyone would be confused because they know it is short for something and with most knowing what it is short for. In fact if someone doesn't know, this would be a little indicator. And of course the beauty of our new system is that we're not trying to get people to change how they type and I don't think somebody is going to be looking for Ship-to-Ship Combat, see 'Ship To 'Ship Combat and think "Oh well, no way am I going to click on that, it just can't be what I'm looking for".

To be honest, screw grammar, I've just been bamboozled by these puns more than an intelligent man wants to admit but I'd rather not make 18 trope repair shop threads.

edited 11th Aug '11 9:42:36 AM by SomeSortOfTroper

I'd love 18 TRS threads. I hate these stupid puns.

I agree with that motion. Seems a simple solution to avoid potential confusion. I mean, I don't think there is a history of people getting confused, but this change is so simple I can't see a good reason to not do so.

I also don't think people who knows the term "shipping" will be confused by " 'shipping".

edited 11th Aug '11 12:15:14 PM by Heatth

Would support the motion.

Don't see why we can't just make this a display name change.

We'd have to — you can't put an apostrophe in a standard title.

I think its unnecessary. It's not spelled that way anywhere else, so why bother?

I've never seen the pairing-term "ship" used with an apostrophe, and personally I think it's a waste of time and pixel space.

I'm not really sold on the necessity of this; like , I've never seen the apostrophe used in any place that ships or shipping is being used.

edited 11th Aug '11 2:08:37 PM by Willbyr

Which isn't really a good argument for not doing so, because one of the reasons it's being suggested is that Ship-to-Ship Combat isn't distinguished enough from, say, Failed To Pay Shipping Charges

I wouldn't mind. It would at least show that it's not related to actual ships.

I think it looks awful with the apostrophe; please don't do this.

It's supposed to look awful. Shipping is an awful thing.

That... doesn't really make sense.

And I've never seen "shipping" with an apostrophe on it, so I don't see why we should add it.

+1 for no apostrophe, here.

While "used that way outside this wiki" isn't an absolute defense (see "trope" ), that the pre-existing term doesn't use the apostrophe does support the argument against putting it in front of the trope names used here.

I strongly support this. The argument that "it's not used that way elsewhere" doesn't seem relevant, since the places it is used also don't usually bother to use proper punctuation (or grammar or spelling). We do.

We don't really want to scare off the mundanes and limit this place to Tru Fans. That's why we take the time to check our spelling, punctuation and grammar. "Shipping" without an apostrophe is confusing, and we should stop using it that way.

Having said all that, I'm sure Muphrys Law has just bitten me somewhere...

OH god yes. Each time i see the boat puns my burning dislike of fanfic soars to new heights.

At this point "shipping" is a standalone word and should be treated like one. Yes, the boat puns are horrible, but sticking an apostrophe where it doesn't belong isn't going to sink them.

Shipping IS a standalone word. It means to send to something to a recipient!

Even if it is a standalone word in that context (and I personally agree that it is, for the record), context is the problem. You can't guess the context very often from a list of tropes or the google site search blurb.

Now maybe we don't want apostrophes. Maybe we need full quotes enclosing it. But some kind of differentiation would be helpful.