Wikipedia:Manual of Style (titles)
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This guideline is a part of the English Wikipedia's Manual of Style. Use common sense in applying it; it will have occasional exceptions. Please ensure that any edits to this page reflect consensus. |
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[edit] Italics
Italic type (text like this) is generally used for the following categories of titles:
- Certain scientific names
- Court cases
- Named vehicles
- Trains and locomotives
- Ships
- Ship classes
- Works of art and artifice
- Art exhibitions
- Books
- Cantatas and motets
- Comic strips and webcomics
- Computer and video games (but not other software)
- Feature-length films and documentaries
- Long or epic poems
- Multi-episode television serials
- Musical albums
- Musicals
- Operas, operettas, oratorios
- Orchestral works
- Paintings, sculptures and other works of visual art
- Periodicals (newspapers, journals, and magazines)
- Plays
- Television series
Abbreviations of the above should also be italicized. If the title is also a link, you should usually place the italic markup outside the brackets, but see the Titanic example below for a special case.
[edit] Examples
- Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, DCL Command Language Manual
- ''[[Adventures of Huckleberry Finn]]'', ''DCL Command Language Manual''
- Casablanca, Boccacio '70
- ''[[Casablanca (film)|Casablanca]]'', ''Boccacio '70''
- The Mary Tyler Moore Show
- ''[[The Mary Tyler Moore Show]]''
- Life magazine, Astounding Science Fiction
- ''[[Life (magazine)|Life]]'' magazine, ''[[Astounding Science Fiction]]''
- RMS Titanic, USS Minnesota (BB-22), Apollo 11, The Legend of Zelda series. Only the name is italicized, not the classification or designation. This link will require a pipe character (a "|"), as italics tags will not work within a link.
- [[RMS Titanic|RMS ''Titanic'']], [[USS Minnesota (BB-22)|USS ''Minnesota'' (BB-22)]], ''[[Apollo 11]]'', [[The Legend of Zelda series|''The Legend of Zelda'' series]]
- Escherichia, Escherichia coli, E. coli
- ''[[Escherichia]]'', ''[[Escherichia coli]]'', ''[[Escherichia coli|E. coli]]''
- USS Toledo (CA-133) was a Baltimore class cruiser, HMAS Australia (1911) was an Indefatigable class battlecruiser. Only the class name is italicized, not the ship type. This link will require a pipe character (a "|"), as italics tags will not work within a link.
Note that ship class names are not always italicised, for further information see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (ships).- [[USS Toledo (CA-133)|USS ''Toledo'' (CA-133)]] was a [[Baltimore class cruiser|''Baltimore'' class cruiser]], [[HMAS Australia (1911)|HMAS ''Australia'' (1911)]] was an [[Indefatigable class battlecruiser|''Indefatigable'' class battlecruiser]]
- Mouse Trap, The Incredible Machine, Baldur's Gate: Tales of the Sword Coast, HL2
- ''[[Mouse Trap]]'', ''[[The Incredible Machine]]'', ''[[Baldur's Gate series|Baldur's Gate: Tales of the Sword Coast]]'', ''[[Half-Life 2|HL2]]''
- Symphony No. 9 Op. 95 "From the New World"
- ''[[Symphony]] No. 9 Op. 95 "From the New World"''
- Eldred v. Ashcroft, Plessy v. Ferguson
- ''[[Eldred v. Ashcroft]]'', ''[[Plessy v. Ferguson]]''
- Action Comics, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, The Beano, The Amazing Spider-Man
- ''[[Action Comics]]'', ''[[Batman: The Dark Knight Returns]]'', ''[[The Beano]]'', ''[[The Amazing Spider-Man]]''
- Peanuts, Penny Arcade
- ''[[Peanuts]]'', ''[[Penny Arcade (webcomic)|Penny Arcade]]''
- An Unearthly Child, The Last Sontaran
- ''[[An Unearthly Child]]'', ''[[The Last Sontaran]]''
[edit] Quotation marks
Italics are generally used only for titles of longer works. Titles of shorter works should be enclosed in double quotation marks ("text like this"). This particularly applies to works that exist as a smaller part of a larger work. Examples of titles which are quoted:
- Articles, essays or papers
- Chapters of a longer work
- Entries in a longer work (dictionary, encyclopedia, etc.)
- Short films and documentaries
- Single episodes of a television series
- Short poems
- Short stories
- Songs and singles
[edit] Additional markup
Do not include the quotes in any additional markup. For example, if a quoted title is made boldface for a lead section), the quotation marks should not be boldface. The quotes are not part of the actual title. See Wikipedia:Manual of Style — Punctuation.
[edit] Examples
- "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge"
- "Goober and Gomer Change a Tire"
- "Do's and Don'ts of Dating"
- "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening"
- "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" and "She's Leaving Home" appear on Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
- "The Germans" is an episode of the television programme Fawlty Towers
[edit] Neither
There are a few cases in which the title should be in neither italics nor quotation marks:
- Scriptures of large, well-known religions (see details below)
- Legal or constitutional documents (example: Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms)
- Traditional games (example: hopscotch)
- Software other than games (example: iTunes)
- Commercial products other than media works (example: Cheerios)
[edit] Scripture
Scriptures of large, well-known religions should not normally be italicized. For example, the Bible, the Qur'an, the Talmud, the Bhagavad Gita, the Ādi Granth, the Book of Mormon, or the Avesta. However, references to specific published versions of sacred texts should be italicized, such as the Authorized King James Version or the New Edition of the Babylinian Talmud. Many relatively obscure sacred texts are also generally italicized, particularly if the work is not likely to be well-known to the Wikipedia reader, if the work was first published in modern times and has not undergone substantial changes, or if it might be unclear that the title refers to a book. For example, The Urantia Book, the Satanic Bible, and Divine Principle should be italicized. Norse pagan scriptures, such as Gylfaginning, are also italicized.
[edit] Punctuation
When a title is place in italics or quotes, punctuation not part of the proper title itself should be placed outside the markup.
For example, consider the book Huckleberry Finn. The proper title contains no punctuation. Any punctuation added for purposes of syntax is not part of the title. For example, one might write:
- I first read Huckleberry Finn, my favorite book, in …
Note that the comma is not italicized. The following would be incorrect:
- I first read Huckleberry Finn, my favorite book, in …
The comma is italicized in the above; that would be an error.
Punctuation which is part of the proper title should always be included in the markup. For example:
- I, Claudius (the comma is part of the title)
- O Brother, Where Art Thou? (the comma and question mark are part of the title)
