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This page falls under the contentious topics procedure and is given additional attention, as it closely associated to the English Wikipedia Manual of Style, and the article titles policy. Both areas are subjects of debate. Contributors are urged to review the awareness criteria carefully and exercise caution when editing.
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The case for newspaper articles
What case should the titles of newspaper articles be in - title or sentence? And does it make a difference if they are quoted in an article or used as a source? Examining MOS:TITLECAPS hasn't helped me decide, so perhaps that could be tweaked, to help those like me who are slow of wit. Thanks. Gog the Mild (talk) 16:46, 12 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Either is acceptable (aiming for consistency within the article); see MOS:ALLCAPS: "Reduce newspaper headlines and other titles from all caps to title case – or to sentence case if required by the citation style established in the article." Doremo (talk) 17:50, 12 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Current guidance is MOS:NEITHER italics nor quotation marks for software other than games and MOS:ITALICTITLE for video gaming software. There is an old undiscussed complaint about the arbitrariness between the two software types. The current guidance is insufficient because often software titles are common or short words that need special formatting for proper interpretation, such as in compress: "Files compressed by compress..." Without a reasonable guidance, we're seeing other types of formatting being adopted in practice, such as in traceroute (using code tags) or ed (using small letters). I'd like to propose amending the style guide to recommend using {{codett}}, which is less visually intrusive that {{code}} and semantically richer than {{mono}}: compress, tracerout, ed. fgnievinski (talk) 14:57, 3 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The article states "Website titles may or may not be italicized in running text depending on the type of site and what kind of content it features." Well, that couldn't be more vague! I am editing an article with a website that is mentioned many times. I don't want to mention which one because I don't want us to get off on my singular situation. However, one editor italicized and as you might expect, another simply wrote it plain with capital letters. Can we get some clarification, or if that was a bit of a throw-away statement because policy has not yet been established, can we have that discussion now and come up with a consensus to establish policy on how to handle websites? I have no opinion (which is very rare), but I am a black/white kind of person. I like rules to be established and then I like to follow them, whatever they are. Who wants to start the conversation? MarydaleEd (talk) 02:00, 21 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
When quoting text from non-English languages, the outer punctuation should follow the Manual of Style for English quote marks. If there are nested quotations, follow the rules for correct punctuation in that language.
Does this apply to non-English titles of minor works (including in citation templates?). For example, see this discussion about whether a French title in a ref should have spacing before colons and use guillemets (« ») instead of single quotes? --YodinT13:23, 20 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In cs1|2 citation templates ({{cite web}} in this example – should be {{cite news}}) the use of html entities is discouraged because such use corrupts the citation's metadata; see Template:Cite web § COinS. As it reads in the current version (permalink), the value in |title= corrupts the citation's metadata because it includes multiple   entities:
Aya Nakamura : " On dit que je suis hautaine. Moi, je vois ça comme de l'assurance "
The example template appears to have been added at this edit 28 November 2023. In that addition, the source article title is:
Aya Nakamura : « On dit que je suis hautaine. Moi, je vois ça comme de l’assurance »
That agrees with the title provided by the source. I can see no reason for the removal/replacement of the guillemets. The only change that needs be made to that title is to convert the curly apostrophe to typewriter apostrophe per WP:CURLY.
Insert non-breaking and thin spaces as named character reference ( or  ), or as templates that generate these ({{nbsp}}, {{thinsp}}), and never by entering them directly into the edit window from the keyboard – they are visually indistinguishable from regular spaces, and later editors will be unable to see what they are.
In keeping with that, cs1|2 checks |title= for nbsp and other invisible characters. When found, cs1|2 emits an error message:
{{cite book|title=Title with nbsp}}
Title with nbsp. {{cite book}}: no-break space character in |title= at position 6 (help)
I was surprised, while doing a GA review where the article had titles of podcasts in quotation marks, to find that the MOS contains no mention of the word podcast anywhere that I could point the nominator to. {{Infobox podcast}} and common usage italicize the titles of these works. I don't generally think this would be controversial, but I shouldn't be the one to add it or similar.
My proposed edit would change
Television and radio programs, specials, shows, series and serials
to
Television and radio programs, specials, shows, series and serials, including podcasts
I agree that this shouldn't be controversial. A podcast is a major work which contains episodes which are minor works. Gonnym (talk) 17:19, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Italicising short advertisement films
What's preferred as far as italics vs quotes when it comes to, say, 30-60 second films made for use as advertisements? The manual isn't exactly clear on this and I'm not either; they could most likely be considered "minor works" since they're just commercials, but some could also be considered "short films" depending on how artistic they're considered. There aren't a huge amount of those with their own articles, but the ones there are seem very inconsistent, half of them are italicised while half are in quote marks. Whether or not they could be considered part of a series seems to have no influence on this. Ringtail Raider (talk) 06:02, 17 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't have an answer for you, but just want to comment on they could most likely be considered "minor works" since they're just commercials, a minor work is classified as works that exist as a smaller part of a larger work. So if the commercials are part of a bigger campaign then I guess they are a minor work, but the commercial is a stand-alone one, then major. A bit strange, I guess. Gonnym (talk) 12:29, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That seems to be a named film. Short or long, film titles are italicized. This includes such shorts as cartoons, many of which are just a few minutes long. Again, I think it comes down to named works or unnamed works. Is "Daisy" the actual name of the advert? If so, probably should be italicized. Randy Kryn (talk) 03:33, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It says: Retain the style of the original for modern works. But it does not say that in reference to translating, say, from French into English. "Retain" there means don't change the original form. English sources invariably use title case for news articles etc. When not applying title case, the result is highly unnatural. Translating changes the original from one language to another. The logic is different. When translating a title of a French newspaper article, and French does not have English-style title casing, should the result be title-cased or not? This is not particular to French, I am just taking French as an example. —Alalch E.16:00, 25 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
italics within italics
Some titles of major works will reference other titles of major works; some of the former will even go so far as to literally italicize the latter on their covers and cover pages. For example:
Rindsberg, Ashley (c. 2021). The Gray Lady Winked: How The New York Times's Misreporting, Distortions & Fabrications Radically Alter History.
When it comes to using italics within italics, I know we do it inside hatnotes (WP:ITHAT), but this MOS page doesn't describe whether we also do so in articles' references or body. I didn't find anything by searching this page's archives, but maybe I missed it? Assistance and codification would be appreciated. Thanks, all, — Fourthords | =Λ= |21:54, 20 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
