Minor Suggestion: Italicize work titles

I know this is a minor thing, but perhaps we could follow Wikipedia and italicize the titles of all pages that are categorized as works to increase coherence between page titles and page descriptions. Titles in the descriptions themselves would still need to be italicized manually, but the titles of work pages should be auto-italicized.

What would be done with the existing italicized titles then? What about Character Titles where the link to the work is just referring to the character?

I said that the titles in the descriptions themselves would still have to be italicized manually.

The titles of the pages on the other hand, need to have programming work in order to have them italicized.

edited 21st May '13 4:03:59 PM by WaxingName

Why do we have to be Wikipedia? We have markup for italics, just make sure it's done correctly.

Another issue with this would be that not all work pages ought to have their titles italicized—I'm thinking of musicians, in particular.

We also have pages for short stories (like "Its A Good Life") and those shouldn't be italicized.

I think he's talking about the automatically generated title at the top of the page, which isn't displayed by markup, and thus can't have markup added.

That said, the fact that some works aren't supposed to have italics does complicate matters. As someone who regularly fixes the misuse of italics for short stories, I definitely do not want to see their names appear with italics at the top of the page, as that will encourage ongoing misuse.

I think it could basically only work if it was something manual, like either a page property you'd have to set, or a special tag, like the [[noreallife]] one. It'd still mean it'd be a rather major job to get all work pages correctly italicised, or if it was easier, do it automaticall for all pages and remove it where it shouldn't be. I don't think it'd be worth it, though.

Is there a guide for what should be in italics and not? I don't think most people get the difference between short stories and other works.

edited 22nd May '13 3:40:49 PM by AnotherDuck

I don't think there's a guide on the wiki, but we follow standard English practice for what to and what not to italicize.

Xtifr's right. I'm talking about the title that's displayed on the top of the page

I believe the standard practice is that books, films, and music albums get italics while poems, songs, articles, episodes, and short stories or films in an anthology get quotes.

A case-by-case deal would be good.

I like the idea of the title being italicized. The standard is long works are italicized (e.g. novels, films, magazines, etc.) while short works get quotation marks (e.g. short stories, poems, essays, etc.). There might be one or two exceptions to the rule (since it seems like there always is), but that's what I was taught.

Also, this would likely need to be a tool—having markup akin to [[noreallife]] would make it easier for misuse, I think.

I also approve, with the caveats about short stories and music as indicated.

This is something we've talked about in the past, but we've ruled that there are far too many exceptions for a one size fits all solution. We already italicize works on wiki pages. It's four key strokes. You can do it yourself and make sure it's right.

Not in the articles themselves. The actual title that appears above the article, which you cannot change with four apostrophes.

Is there really no way to italicize page titles on the wiki? Not even an easy way to do a case-by-case deal?

Nobody said it's impossible, just impractical. Eddie can code anything for the article header that he wants to; the problem is that not all work titles should be italicized. So you need some way to distinguish the ones that should be from the ones that should not be. Any suggestions?

Title templates.

So... something like the [[noreallife]] tag?

edited 6th Jun '13 9:36:32 AM by videogmer314

Yes. Though to account for titles with disambiguations like author name or publishing year, I'd say to do not just [[italictitle]] but [[italictitle:''Title Display'']]. However, that might lead to problematic interaction with custom titles.

I'm not particularly bothered either way, by the way. It'd be a nice thing, but I don't see it as mattering much.

Short stories shouldn't be italicized? O_o

Short stories go in quotes without italics.

I think the same is standard for individual chapters, episodes, poems, and songs.

The consensus has also been that Sacred Literature like The Bible don't get italics.

edited 12th Jun '13 8:21:55 AM by ArcadesSabboth

What about pages like Aladdin (Virgin Games) where part of the page name is the title, and part is a disambiguating descriptor?

EDIT: Telcontar has noted this problem already.

In any case, I personally don't mind either way, though I think it wouldn't look too good.

Literature: The Iliad

Hm. Something like this, on the other hand...

Literature
The Iliad

edited 14th Jun '13 7:11:13 AM by Korodzik

Maybe Wiki Markup should be coded into custom titles.

eg.: Submitting something like ''Avatar: The Last Airbender'' would make the custom title italicized.

But then people would have to remember not to use italic marks when writing that name.

Well, people already forget en masse to use italics anyway, so I'm thinking that wouldn't be too much of an issue.