Needs Help: Definite Article Title

Definite Article Title is for works with titles that begin with a definite article (the word "The"), as opposed to indefinite articles ("A" and "An") or no article, implying that the trope is to demonstrate a "specific, individual instance of that noun". However, most examples don't provide any context for what exactly is noteworthy about having a definite article in the title. A wick check demonstrated that 49 out of 50 examples either had no context at all or simply stated the title of the work without saying anything about why it has a definite article in the title. This trope may need a better definition.

Previous thread

I'm not sure how one can fix ZCE's on a Title Trope. Meanwhile, I'm not sure if it's even worthy of being called a trope.

I've felt like for a while now that most title tropes are better off just being indices. Context is near impossible for them.

+ : Well, the easiest way would be "What's the thing in the title"?

This trope is about title construction as a hint at importance. Its actual meaning as it relates to the Story... Well, that's MacGuffin Title, The Place, or Job Title or something usually.

Edited by Malady on Oct 10th 2021 at 4:46:46 AM

Previous TRS that renamed it from The "The" Title, fwiw.

Some title tropes are perfectly contextable, but I'm not sure this is one of them (or if it is, it involves a lot of stretching and head-scratching). For example, WesternAnimation.King vs. Film.The King. While both works involve a male royal leader, I suppose the latter tells me there is a specific one involved vs. the general concept of kingliness, but I don't think that's a trope, just...grammar.

to deindexing too; I don't think it's a useful index. Voting for a hard cut.

Edited by Synchronicity on Oct 10th 2021 at 6:51:29 AM

- Why can't that grammar be a trope? When I saw "King", I wasn't sure if it was a "Last Name-type Character Title" of some sort...

Like this book...

Where as The King implies its not a person...

Edited by Malady on Oct 10th 2021 at 4:59:14 AM

Well then that would be just down to the specific word. Examples on Family Title shows it is effective with or without the "the", Series.Borgia vs. Series.The Borgias both tell me it is about the family name Borgia in some capacity.

Edited by Synchronicity on Oct 10th 2021 at 7:03:15 AM

- If I didn't know that "Borgia" was a surname, or even if I did, by itself implies just one person, unlike the plural of "The Borgias".

And "Borgias" doesn't as clearly define a family by its surname as much as "The Borgias".

Because it could be a demonic Antagonist Title, Bor-gias, instead of Bor-gia-s

Edited by Malady on Oct 10th 2021 at 5:26:11 AM

If you don't know what "Borgia" refers to, an indefinite article or a plural version of the word isn't going to make it any clearer. The most it will tell you is the number.

And that, by itself, is not a trope. It's just how the English language works.

I've said it before, but I'm not convinced that most "title tropes" are even tropes in the first place — they're more along the lines of Search-Generated Indices than anything affecting the actual story or the expectations thereof, and their meaning almost never goes deeper than "this is how language works."

Anyone who passed second-grade English knows what "the" means, so this is a particularly difficult index to defend.

I personally agree with cutting.

Either we redefine it to its old definition (excess use of "the" in a single title) or to works that use "the" in their titles a lot (like Idiosyncratic Episode Naming) or we cut it.

Well, I'm in favor of cutting it. I don't see anything tropeworthy about it. It's just "a work's title starts with "the" article".

Same.

Y'all do realize that "meaning" is not a component of the definition of "trope", right?

Just because People Sit on Chairs uses it as a shorthand to define things that are tropes and not mere coincidences does not mean that it is actually part of the definition. It's a rule-of-thumb, not the key aspect. The actual key aspects are "a conceptual figure of speech, a storytelling shorthand for a concept that the audience will recognize and understand instantly...a trope is a convention. It can be a plot trick, a setup, a narrative structure, a character type, a linguistic idiom... you know it when you see it. "

In that case, couldn't it just... not have examples? Like do we really need to slap Definite Article Title on every work that features a "The" in the name? It's redundant and doesn't tell the reader anything they didn't already know about the work just by being on the page in the first place, and in most cases the only context to provide would just be rehashing the title of the work with more words added.

If it's a trope, it feels too common to really bother having examples of. Same with other title tropes. (Not all of them, but a good amount of them. One-Word Title also comes to mind as being pretty pointless for the same reason.)

As other's have pointed out, if I'm on a page for a work called The Snowman, then I know the work is about a specific snowman. I don't need to be told that fact on the exact same page, and I certainly don't need to be reminded of the fact that it contains the word "the". It comes off as Viewers Are Goldfish to an extent.

Something like Protagonist Title though, that's a fair case, as people aren't expected to automatically know when a work is named after the protagonist, especially if it's an alias or something.

What it boils down to for me is, "is this information at all interesting to the reader? Does it tell them anything new about the work?" In this case, the answer to both questions are no.

Edited by WarJay77 on Oct 11th 2021 at 4:35:53 AM

An exampleless trope page might be the best compromise.

- I'm okay with that.

My claim from before: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=1517097975055231700&page=4#comment-81

The "The" Title Confusion is the basis for why I don't think this exists as a meaningful pattern in storytelling.

This is not a meaningful pattern or a concept to have a page for, even if kept exampleless. It's like trying to trope "protagonists with orange hair"; it's very common but it's not an actual pattern.

Actually, that one is: You Gotta Have Blue Hair

That was worded badly, what I wanted to say is when people try to trope things like "orange haired protagonists" in particular or "titles with the letter y" without it having any significance other than the troper seeing it a lot in fiction.

I prefer to cut this, but making it a definition only page isn't bad either.

- And as a counter to that... The Definite Article has linguistic / grammatical significance that a trope can be tied into, and orange hair has warm color / energy significance for the same...

Where as "ending in 'y'"... Your example is an Apples and Oranges situation, not the Apples to Apples comparison you're trying to make...

Edited by Malady on Oct 11th 2021 at 10:30:18 AM

I think this would work as a Definition-Only Page.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Oct 11th 2021 at 12:33:59 PM

Well, yes and no. A heroic red-head can be a Fiery Redhead, a Dark Skinned Redhead, or just a general representation of Red Is Heroic, but "red haired hero" is just as untropeworthy as "words that end in Y"- because by itself, a hero having red hair conveys nothing and means nothing without the extra context. Sure, you can try and squeeze meaning out of it, but in a lot of cases you're just inventing that meaning for yourself.

These titles do convey something, but I feel like what they convey is so obvious to anyone with a passable understanding of English that specifically noting it every time is an exercise in redundancy. It's more akin to a trope being about, say, a title being in a specific language. That conveys information too, but it's useless to note because everyone will know that the Japanese work has a Japanese title unless it's been translated or had Gratuitous English.

Edited by WarJay77 on Oct 11th 2021 at 1:37:40 PM

If it's made definition-only, can we add the type list from Sandbox.Definite Article Title?