Italicizing work series and "unofficial" titles

I could maybe get behind that, except that short works use quotes instead. That's a well-settled convention, not something that there's debate about. And we do have pages for short works, whether that's a single-issue comic story like "For the Man Who Has Everything", or recap pages for episodes, like its adaptation, Supergirl (2015) S1E13 "For the Girl Who Has Everything". (In the case of recaps, since the series is also part of the title, the episode's quotes can be custom-titled.)

That was one of the proposals made. The negative associated with it is ; the convention does not agree with the many conventions used outside of our site.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Well, I'll cast a vote and say that I'm perfectly happy with the Post #20 rules.

We do not categorize things like any other site as well. Tropes and works are completely different and that difference should be visible at all times in terms of linking things.

Linking things you have works and franchise pages italics and tropes not italics. We have several tropes that share names with works so making it clear on what is what is a must.

In general things like Episode Recaps are not linked anywhere and really should not be linked anywhere since the work itself should be linked thus don't matter.

edited 16th Feb '16 10:07:05 AM by Memers

Wrong. Any wick on a recap page should be Crosswicked on the trope page. This is basic Cross Wicking procedure. Whether it is done correctly or not does not relate to a secondary wicking issue. Episode recaps are the most popular pages on short works of this wiki, but not the only example. We also have songs, poems, short stories, and short films. All of which normally appear in quote marks.

I still consider it a reasonable choice, but it means we are not using the standard rules that "everyone" uses. I'd want to see a lot of votes on the crowner before we made that choice, but it is a reasonable option.

The ["collection of long works without a single storyarc" means Capitalization Only] is the closest I've seen to a consistent rule for the problems presented by novel franchises, music bands, and sacred texts. I haven't seen a good third option presented yet.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Yes, I'd prefer not to break from the rules that "everyone else" uses where possible. The problem with book series and other "collections of long works" is that there is no rule everyone else uses, so we need our own.

Coming back to post #4. After all what's been said here, the title character on Bugs Bunny should not be showing in bold, right?

edited 16th Feb '16 5:40:08 PM by eroock

As far as I am aware, that hasn't changed since your thread on the matter. I used to bold the first instance of any title because of The Other Wiki and because I thought it looked good, then someone directed me to that thread. I held onto the link to use in edit reasons after that.

What about things like Halloween Horror Nights?

Same. No bolding, period.

If I may ask, who came up with the idea not to follow the Wikipedia standard in the first place? If we asked all users of the side if they preferred bold or italic for trope/work titles in the opening paragraph and it turned out bold is preferred, would we ever go to change this rules or is it written in stone?

Bolding and italics don't have the same visual function. The former is to make words stand out while scanning the text, to mark important words or phrases. The latter is to make words different or delimited from the surrounding text, much like quotation marks, but they don't stand out as much while scanning the text. Basically, this is important and this is different, compared to the rest of the text.

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As I understand it, it's not that we're deliberately going against a "standard", it's that Wikipedia has a unique style guide that no other encyclopedias/books/articles use. Wikipedia bolds the first use of the title in the article body, but no one else does that. Everywhere else, normal, plain text is used, and so that's what TV Tropes uses too.

To change this, I suppose someone would have to give an argument for why bolding the article title is valuable enough that it's worth editing every single page on the wiki to do it.

Wikipedia is not alone in using bold font for the first appearance of the search term. They probably have a reason for doing so. Attractiveness would be my guess. Do you know of any other site besides tv-tropes using italic for this purpose?

So you're right! I didn't think to check Encyclopedia Britannica. I've learned something new.

...TV Tropes doesn't use italics for that purpose, though.

edited 17th Feb '16 4:55:51 PM by Unknownlight

There's a difference between using it at the first appearance and using it at every appearance.

Encyclopedias and dictionaries often write the search term for the entry in bold. It's to highlight what the subject of the entry or article is. That's what I meant with the, "this is important" part in my previous post.

However, what we're discussing here is the latter, to use a specific formatting for every appearance. It's similar to how scientific (i.e. Latin) names of flora and fauna are written in italics.

Something that Wikipedia does and we sometimes do is to only link the first mention of a different subject to the page of that subject.

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My bad, let's talk about italic bold for the first appearance. Does it really distract from important bold text below?

I don't mind using bold for the first appearance. Whether it's also italics depends on if it would normally be.

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I don't mind using bold for the first appearance. I like how that looks in articles. However, the problems are:

1. We'd have to edit every page in the wiki to do this, which seems excessive for a small style change.

2. Most tropes don't even use the trope name in the first paragraph. Just hit "Random Trope" and see. I got Animal-Eared Headband.

Markup like bold or italics can be done with the custom title tool but that would affect every use of the link everywhere on the wiki.

No, this isn't for links, this is for the first non-linked use of the article title in the body content. It can't be automated, as far as I know.

edited 18th Feb '16 4:05:30 PM by Unknownlight

Well, it could be automated, but it would require some coding. Probably not particularly difficult, but also not particularly prioritised.

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I've let this discussion lapse since the question is settled as far as my personal posting habits are concerned; I've been following the rules we hashed out in Post #20. But How to Write an Example still has the same confusing language that brought me here in the first place. Are we alright to update it, or do we need a crowner or some other form of documented consensus beyond what's been said?

I agree with the Post 20 suggestion, and with the Post 21 addendum (that characters whose names are also work/franchise names not be emphasized as works when the writer specifically means the character.) That set of guidelines has made the most sense to me so far.

I apologize if I put something in the wrong place; I can't see without my glasses.

Until we get more consensus on what requirements we need to follow, here's my proposed rewriting of the rules:

• Respect the Work Names: When giving an example, it is important to tell our audience where the example comes from. Don't Sink Hole work names under story elements, even if the story element shares a name with the work. (Like a Character Title) We've distilled the various style guides for our userbase here. When in doubt, it is better to use italics, and have it fixed later. Italics help to differentiate the work name from other blue links.
  • Bold: Never use bolding for work emphasis.
  • Italics: Any work of standard/long length is emphasized with italics. Multi-work storyarcs count as a long work.
  • "Quotes": Any work that is considered short or a portion of a standard length work is emphasized with "quotes".
  • Plain: Any page that is an organization of multiple storyarcs without a central theme receives no emphasis aside from capitalizations.

edited 25th May '16 8:11:57 AM by crazysamaritan

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.