Wikipedia talk:Article titles

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US-centric common names, or names that only mean something nationally[edit]

Note: I, the original poster, moved thread to Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (events) since it is the more relevant guideline. --Timeshifter (talk) 17:30, 24 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal to resolve nomenclatural confusion between split long lists and parenthentically disambiguated page names[edit]

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (lists)#Fixing disambiguation confusion.  — SMcCandlish ¢ 😼  22:49, 25 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Diacritics and non-English characters[edit]

How strict are we being about characters that aren't normally used in English these days?

For example, should Mānuka honey (the Māori word is pronounced something like a thoroughly anglicized Monica; it doesn't represent the long a sound that most Americans will expect) use the macron, or should the page title by Manuka honey without it? Should Gylfi Þorsteinsson Gíslason use the Icelandic Thorn (letter) or the English transliteration or be at Gylfi Thorsteinsson Gíslason (which I think is the standard transliteration)? WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:32, 19 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think the answer is that it should really depend on the norms of the source language, vis à vis its borrowing into English. As someone who's cleaned up plenty of diacritics used in a maximalist fashion, I do feel bad when I remove their use in the context of languages where they are both commonly seen in English-language sources, and important if one wants to unambiguously represent the original vocabulary in the English loanword—though of course, their utility is inherently limited, as this is an English language encyclopedia.
I think the major thing that's become increasingly clear is that it's largely no longer a rendering issue: the vast majority of devices used by readers are capable of displaying these characters. Remsense 00:48, 19 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
WP:COMMONNAME ought to be the applicable guidelines. On the theory that, as a consumer product, its common name is influenced and/or reflected by its labeling, I looked through a list of manuka honey products on Amazon (US) and it was split, so that didn't help. As for any name with "Þ", I'd say the vast majority of English speakers wouldn't know what to do with that if they saw it, let alone know how to write or print it, so it seems unlikely that the native form is the one we should use here, just as we list the Chinese Communist Party general secretary under Xi Jinping, not under 习近平; nor, for that matter, under Xí Jìnpíng, since English speakers don't by and large reflect Mandarin tones in their rendering of Chinese names and words.
On the other hand, "é" is largely familiar to English speakers, found in words like "café", "née", "divorcée", and "naiveté" (sometimes "naïveté!"), and thus "Beyoncé" is commonly seen and is the title of that singer's article here. Largoplazo (talk) 00:59, 19 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I suggest we apply the same criteria as MOS:CAPS; consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources. BilledMammal (talk) 18:05, 19 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Common name dilemma[edit]

In the article tolon'omby, I have an issue: the current title is said to be the name with broader geographical usage in Madagascar, but the name savika, which is said to be local to the region of Madagascar where this article's topic originates and is most practiced, is the name more commonly used in literature. The French and Malagasy Wikipedias use Savika as their article titles. Neither name is uncommon in literature. Zanahary (talk) 01:31, 7 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Italic title or not?[edit]

Another editor recently italicized the title of the article Cult. I disagree. Debating by edit summaries, and by discussion (Talk:Cult § Italics or not italics for title) has gone nowhere. I think the other editor is reading WP:ITALICTITLE and MOS:WAW too literally because the Cult article starts out, "Cult is a term". However, the article covers far more than just defining a word (unlike how Orange (word) does). Though the article also discusses "cult" as a word, it mainly discusses far broader concepts (my opinion from browsing the article). Also comparing to the previously-discussed-here article Gay which is quite comprehensive though still focused on discussing the word as a word—the article Cult is not focused in like manner.

I'm interested in input by those who frequent this policy article and have more experience in how WP:ITALICTITLE has been applied in the past.   ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 03:25, 10 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I can see how ITALICTITLE can be interpreted to support their argument, but I don't believe it should apply to the 'words as words' section of ITALIC. I'd advocate removing the link from ITALICTITLE to ITALIC:

Use italics when italics would be necessary in running text; for example, taxonomic names, the names of ships, the titles of books, films, and other creative works, and foreign phrases are italicized both in ordinary text and in article titles.

I realize there might need to be some additional work done to make that an all-inclusive list (not just ships, but air and spacecraft; court cases; some mathematics), but I think it's currently overbroad and, to keep it meaningful, should be reserved for a limited set of circumstances. Star Garnet (talk) 04:31, 10 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Star Garnet: I think I see. So you're recommending not italicizing titles of "words" articles, as well as "clarifying" the current ITALICTITLE wording. Here's an idea, how about where WP:ITALICTITLE currently links to the entire section MOS:ITALICS, change it to be more clear which of the ITALICS subsections ITALICTITLE it is meant to include.
For example,
  • include the sections: Names and titles, Foreign terms, Scientific names
  • and exclude the sections: Emphasis, Words as words, Quotations, Variables
Clarifying something like this might well help to reduce all the talk page 'asking' while not needing to have an exhaustive list at ITALICTITLE (because all the detail is already exhaustively covered at ITALICS).   ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 18:42, 10 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I believe that something along those lines would be a good outcome. Star Garnet (talk) 19:29, 10 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Grorp My opinion: The article is about cults, not about the word cult, though it has a section about the word. The article title identifies the subject of the whole article, not just the subject of a section. So treating the title as words-as-words would imply that all the material that's about cults themselves is off-topic. I don't see how it can possibly belong in italics. Musiconeologist (talk) 14:33, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, that should have gone on the article's talk page. I'll just note here that even dictionaries don't generally italicise the titles of their entries, every one of which is about a word or phrase. Musiconeologist (talk) 15:58, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I checked the 3 discussions as mentioned in the footnote "h" [1], and no one was arguing for or against "words as words". They debated ship names, book titles, and foreign words. Examples such as "orange", "gay" and "cult" were not even on anyone's radar. The result of the discussions was to make this edit to WP:ITALICTITLE which is substantially similar to what we see today, but without the wikilink to MOS:ITALIC. Even in the flurry of microedits in the week that followed, a link to MOS:ITALIC was not part of the paragraph at the time (September 2010).

However, 4 months later (December 2010), an editor made an edit which inserted the wikilink to what is now known as MOS:ITALIC but no one seems to have noticed it at the time. A month later, that editor was indef blocked for disruption (nonresponsive, and too many edits too fast, such as using an indiscriminate bot). They reverted his last 300 edits [2] which wasn't enough to catch this one. (That editor was averaging over 300 edits per day!)

I can conclude, therefore, that "words as words" was never intended to be included in the meaning of ITALICTITLE through consensus process. Possibly the link to MOS:ITALIC also wasn't intended, and certainly there was no active consensus to make the edit.

I recommend the wikilink be removed. It might well reduce the number of "asks" on this talk page, and might reduce some of the debating on individual pages. At any rate, removing the wikilink would be closer to the original consensus results.   ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 07:58, 11 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Star Garnet: I just re-read your original comment and that's what you said, too. (blush) I missed that, but we both came to the same conclusion in separate ways.   ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 08:02, 11 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Star Garnet: Do you think we should make that change (remove the wikilink)?   ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 13:12, 17 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'd certainly be on board, but I don't know how wide of consensus would be needed for that change. It wasn't added by consensus, but it's stayed for over a decade. With that said, nobody else watching this page seems to have a strong enough opinion to chime in. Star Garnet (talk) 20:22, 17 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I strongly feel that no change is needed here or to MOSITALIC. The change is needed in any article that begins "Foo is a term for..." Articles should almost never start that way. "A cult is a..." That's how you start that article. "Orange is a colour..." etc. Italicising words as words is very useful and taking that out of the MOS would be highly detrimental to so many articles. Primergrey (talk) 00:45, 18 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Primergrey Strongly agree. Without it, people will be "correcting" italics to quote marks, or to roman type with no typographical indication at all, and anyone who wants to use italics that way will have a constant battle on their hands to keep the text properly formatted. "Some instances of the word word were in italics and some weren't, so I've made them all the same". Or you write "In that sentence, a plural is singular" and it gets turned into "a plural is singular" and subsequently has its grammar erroneously repaired . . . Musiconeologist (talk) 16:28, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]