Wikisource:Title formats

From Wikisource

This page is intended to recommend the way in which articles should be titled. It is important to remember that although it is to be preferred that a standard be followed for presenting page titles so that we can all know what to expect, there will often be times when exceptions must be made.

Please note Comments are particularly requested for the items that appear in italics.

Contents 1 Generalities 1.1 Sentence or headline style 1.2 Disambiguation 1.3 Dependent works 2 Specific types of work 2.1 Books 2.2 Short works 2.3 Works with generic titles 2.4 Magazines and other long collective works

[edit] Generalities

[edit] Sentence or headline style

1. Sentence style is to be preferred for all titles. In this style only the first word is typically capitalized; all other words are begun with a lower case letter unless it is a proper name or other word that is normally written with an initial capital.
2. Headline style may be used for titles in a language that normally use this style. In headline style the first word is capitalized, and so are all other words in the title except articles, prepositions and conjunctions.
3. Certain proper nouns and other expressions should always start with a lower case letter, without regard to where they are in a title. Thus "pH" and "eBay" must always start with a lower case letter.

[edit] Disambiguation

1. Disambiguation is necessary to deal otherwise identical titles for two or more different articles.
2. Two titles may be disambiguated by the use of expressions in parentheses in the form [Title (disambiguator)].
3. No specific recommendation is made at this time about what should be used as a disambiguator. Two pages that would otherwise be titled the same can be distinguished by using their authors' names; in most of these cases the authors' surnames will be sufficient.
4. In other cases other means may be appropriate. If two or more biographies about a person from different sources are to be included then Abraham Lincoln (Britannica) and Abraham Lincoln (Americana) would distinguish articles from those two Encyclopedias.

[edit] Dependent works

1. By this is meant a work which is here as a part of a bigger work, and which would not usually be included alone. It can be indicated as a volume, act, part, chapter or other common subdivision.
2. In the title for a dependent work that may be indicated by a hyphen between two spaces. Thus: The Great Novel - Chapter 1
3. Where there is more than one level of dependence they may be separated in hierarchical order by a comma. Thus: The Great Novel - Part 1, Chapter 1
4. Arabic rather than Roman numerals should be preferred in these titles. (There is a better chance that these will be properly sorted by automatic means.)
5. Author supplied chapter titles should normally be omitted from the page titles. They should be shown on the page itself, and may be shown on the page from which the links are made.

[edit] Specific types of work

[edit] Books

1. Published books should be listed under their title.
2. Where a book as a very long sub-title it is not always necessary to include the whole sub-title. If it is unlikely that there will be any ambiguity with the title, the sub-title may be omitted entirely.
3. A title and sub-title should be separated by a semi-colon.

[edit] Short works

1. Titles for independent short works may be treated in the same way as books.

[edit] Works with generic titles

[edit] Magazines and other long collective works