Unclear Description: Long Title

The trope is about works which have a "long title," but the idea of what exactly constitutes a long title is vague at best and seems to be left entirely to the description of whoever's adding the example. Most people probably wouldn't argue that something like My Gay Dad Always Steals My Boyfriends Even Though They Say They're Straight; They Promise Me They Won't Fall For Him But They Always Do Everytime Because He's So Irresistible They Can't Help Themselves And I Hate It wouldn't constitute a long title. However, there are examples such as "The Greatest Show in the Galaxy" or The Completely Mental Misadventures Of Ed Grimley which really aren't much longer than something like, say, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, which most people probably wouldn't think of as a "long title" and isn't listed. It feels like maybe there could be a trope in here, but the way things are now, it just seems like random tropers' opinions of what they happen to think is long.

Edited by JMQwilleran on Oct 23rd 2018 at 11:54:47 AM

Ah, the ambiguity of natural language.

Just noting that Short Title: Long, Elaborate Subtitle suffers from the same problem.

There definitely can be some subjectivity to this, especially if one is used to very short titles with one to three words.

Sort of a soft check but I think any title, when read aloud, that makes you pause for breath would be one that qualifies. Extrapolating from that we could say that a title needs to be either one exceptionally long sentence or at least two sentences.

We would need to be careful with the two sentence rule as we might accidentally get overlap from Short Title: Long, Elaborate Subtitle.

In editing, and grammar in general, a "long sentence" isn't objective in the sense that you can get the word count and say that "yup that's long." Some long-by-count sentences wouldn't seem to be "long" due to structure; meanwhile, some short-by-count sentences would due to structure.

My point being that something like "[Harry Potter] and the [Order of the Phoenix]" doesn't seem long because it's essentially two proper nouns linked by a conjunction, and we typically don't recognize "non-content" words (e.g. the, of, by, etc.), making it feel like a two-ish-word title.

Something like "The Completely Mental Misadventures Of Ed Grimley" tends to seem longer because of the chain of content words (i.e. adverbs, adjectives, nouns, and verbs), making it feel like a four-ish-word title. "Lengthening" it still is the fact there's a chain of modifiers. Chains of anything tend to tire readers faster and is generally considered poor structure that an editor ought to address if not change outright.

EDIT: Maybe adding to the description to help clarify what it is meant by "long title." The description is on the small side.

Edited by WaterBlap on Nov 12th 2018 at 9:52:07 AM

Maybe something like:

• Longer than five words, excluding conjunctions and particles (required)

• Title forms a complete clause

• Title includes a noun phrase with 3 or more modifiers to the noun.

This would exclude most Character Name and the Noun Phrase titles but include things like Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day which feels long because of the unusual clumping of modifiers.

Edited by naturalironist on Dec 15th 2018 at 8:32:32 AM

Clock is up; closing.