Titles in Wikipedia

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Article Titles in Wikipedia
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An article title is the large heading displayed above the article's content and the basis for the article's page name and URL. The title indicates what the article is about and distinguishes it from other articles.
The title may simply be the name (or a name) of the subject of the article, or it may be a description of the topic. Because no two articles can have the same title, it is sometimes necessary to add distinguishing information, often in the form of a description in parentheses after the name. Generally, article titles are based on what the subject is called in reliable sources. When this offers multiple possibilities, editors choose among them by considering several principles: the ideal article title resembles titles for similar articles, precisely identifies the subject, and is short, natural, distinguishable and recognizable.

This page explains in detail the considerations, or naming conventions, on which choices of article title are based. If necessary, an article's title can be changed by a page move.

Deciding on an article title

Article titles are based on how reliable English-language sources refer to the article's subject. There is often more than one appropriate title for an article. In that case, editors choose the best title by consensus based on the considerations that this page explains.

 
A good Wikipedia article title has the five following characteristics:

Recognizability – The title is a name or description of the subject that someone familiar with, although not necessarily an expert in, the subject area will recognize.

Naturalness – The title is one that readers are likely to look or search for and that editors would naturally use to link to the article from other articles. Such a title usually conveys what the subject is actually called in English.

Precision – The title unambiguously identifies the article's subject and distinguishes it from other subjects.

Conciseness – The title is no longer than necessary to identify the article's subject and distinguish it from other subjects.

Consistency – The title is consistent with the pattern of similar articles' titles. Many of these patterns are listed (and linked) as topic-specific naming conventions on article titles, in the box above.

These should be seen as goals, not as rules. For most topics, there is a simple and obvious title that meets these goals satisfactorily. If so, use it as a straightforward choice. However, in some cases the choice is not so obvious. It may be necessary to favor one or more of these goals over the others. This is done by consensus. For instance, the recognizable, natural, and concise title United Kingdom is preferred over the more precise title United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.


Redirects should be created to articles that may reasonably be searched for or linked to under two or more names (such as different spellings or former names). Conversely, a name that could refer to several different articles may require disambiguation.

Treatment of alternative names

By the design of Wikipedia's software, an article can only have one title. When this title is a name, significant alternative names for the topic should be mentioned in the article, usually in the first sentence or paragraph. If there are at least three alternative names, or there is something notable about the names themselves, a separate name section is recommended. These may include alternative spellings, longer or shorter forms, historic names, significant names in other languages, etc.

Article title format

The following points are used in deciding on questions not covered by the five principles; consistency on these helps avoid duplicate articles:

·    Use sentence case

Titles are written in sentence case. The initial letter of a title is almost always capitalized by default; otherwise, words are not capitalized unless they would be so in running text. When this is done, the title is simple to link to in other articles: Northwestern University offers more graduate work than a typical liberal arts college. Note that the capitalization of the initial letter is ignored in links. For initial lowercase letters, as in eBay, see the technical restrictions page.

·    Use the singular form

Article titles are generally singular in form, e.g. Horse, not Horses. Exceptions include nouns that are always in a plural form in English (e.g. scissors or trousers) and the names of classes of objects (e.g. Arabic numerals or Bantu languages).

·    Avoid ambiguous abbreviations

Abbreviations and acronyms are often ambiguous and thus should be avoided unless the subject is known primarily by its abbreviation and that abbreviation is primarily associated with the subject (e.g. NATO, laser, SCSI). It is also unnecessary to include an acronym in addition to the name in a title. Acronyms may be used for parenthetical disambiguation (e.g. Conservative Party (UK), Georgia (U.S. state)).

·    Avoid definite and indefinite articles

Do not place definite or indefinite articles (the, a, and an) at the beginning of titles unless they are part of a proper name (e.g. The Old Man and the Sea) or otherwise change the meaning (e.g. The Crown). They are noise words that needlessly lengthen article titles, and interfere with sorting and searching.

·    Use nouns

Nouns and noun phrases are normally preferred over titles using other parts of speech; such a title can be the subject of the first sentence. One major exception is for titles that are quotations or titles of works: A rolling stone gathers no moss, or "Try to Remember". Adjective and verb forms (e.g. elegant, integrate) should redirect to articles titled with the corresponding noun (Elegance, Integration), although sometimes they are disambiguation pages, like Organic and Talk. Sometimes the noun corresponding to a verb is the gerund (-ing form), as in Swimming.

·    Do not enclose titles in quotes

Article titles that are quotes (or song titles, etc.) are not enclosed in quotation marks (e.g. To be, or not to be is the article title, whereas "To be, or not to be" is a redirect to that article). An exception is made when the quotation marks are part of a name or title (as in the TV episode Marge Simpson in: "Screaming Yellow Honkers" or the album "Heroes" (David Bowie album)).

·    Do not create subsidiary articles

Do not use titles suggesting that one article forms part of another: even if an article is considered subsidiary to another (as where summary style is used), it should be named independently. For example, an article on transport in Azerbaijan should not be given a name like "Azerbaijan/Transport" or "Azerbaijan (transport)", use Transport in Azerbaijan.

·    Follow reliable sources for names of persons

When deciding whether to use middle names, or initials, follow the guidelines , which means using the form most commonly used by reliable sources (e.g. John F. Kennedy, J. P. Morgan, F. Scott Fitzgerald), with few if any exceptions.

·    Special characters

There are technical restrictions on the use of certain characters in page titles. The following characters cannot be used at all: # < > [ ] | { } _  There are restrictions on titles containing colons, periods, and some other characters, which may be addressed through Template:Correct title. Technically, all other Unicode characters can be used in page titles. However, some characters should still be avoided or require special treatment:

Characters not on a standard keyboard (use redirects): Sometimes the most appropriate title contains diacritics (accent marks), dashes, or other letters and characters not found on most English-language keyboards. This can make it difficult to navigate to the article directly. In such cases, provide redirects from versions of the title that use only standard keyboard characters.


Quotation marks (avoid them): Double ("...") and single quotation marks ('...'), as well as variations such as typographic quotation marks (“...”), "low-high" quotation marks („...“), guillemets («...»), grave and acute accents or backticks (`...´) and <q> HTML tags (<q>...</q>) should be avoided in titles. Exceptions can be made when they are part of the proper title (e.g. "A" Is for Alibi) or required by orthography ("Weird Al" Yankovic).


Similarly, various apostrophe(-like) variants (’ʻ ʾ ʿ ᾿ ῾ ‘ ’ c), should generally not be used in page titles. A common exception is the apostrophe character (') itself (e.g. Anthony d'Offay), which should, however, be used sparingly (e.g. Quran instead of Qur'an). If, exceptionally, other variants are used, a redirect with the apostrophe variant should be created (e.g. 'Abdu'l-Bahá redirects to `Abdu'l-Bahá).


Symbols (avoid them): Symbols such as "♥", as sometimes found in advertisements or logos, should never be used in titles. This includes non-Latin punctuation such as the characters in Unicode's CJK Symbols and Punctuation block.


Characters not supported on all browsers (avoid them): If there is a reasonable alternative, avoid characters that are so rare that many browsers cannot render them. For example, the article on Weierstrass p carries that title rather than the symbol itself, which many readers would see as just a square box.

Italics and other formatting

Use italics when italics would be used 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.

Italic formatting cannot be part of the actual (stored) title of a page; adding single quotes to a page title will cause those quotes to become part of the URL, rather than affecting its appearance. A title or part of it is made to appear in italics with the use of the DISPLAYTITLE magic word or the {{Italic title}} template. In addition, certain templates, including Template:Infobox book, Template:Infobox film, and Template:Infobox album, by default italicize the titles of the pages they appear on; see those template pages for documentation.

Other types of formatting (such as bold type and superscript) can technically be achieved in the same way, but should generally not be used in Wikipedia article titles (except for articles on mathematics). Quotation marks (such as around song titles) would not require special techniques for display, but are nevertheless avoided in titles; see Article title format above.

Titles containing "and"


Sometimes two or more closely related or complementary concepts are most sensibly covered by a single article. Where possible, use a title covering all cases: for example, Endianness covers the concepts "big-endian" and "little-endian". Where no reasonable overarching title is available, it is permissible to construct an article title using "and", as in Promotion and relegation, Balkline and straight rail, Hellmann's and Best Foods, and Pioneer 6, 7, 8, and 9. (The individual terms – such as Pioneer 6 – should redirect to the combined page, or be linked there via a disambiguation page or hatnote if they have other meanings.)

It is generally best to list topics in alphabetical order, especially those involving different countries or cultures, as in Canada–United States border. However, if there is an obvious ordering, such as at Life and death, that ordering should be followed instead. If one concept is more commonly encountered than the other, it may be listed first. Alternative titles using reverse ordering (such as Relegation and promotion) should be redirects.

Titles containing "and" are often red flags that the article has neutrality problems or is engaging in original research: avoid the use of "and" in ways that appear biased. For example, use Islamic terrorism, not "Islam and terrorism"; however, "Media's coupling of Islam and terrorism" may be acceptable. Avoid the use of "and" to combine concepts that are not commonly combined in reliable sources.