Talk:Style Guide

Style for titles

What about style for Song Titles and Album Titles? On Wikipedia (I know people hate when they read this), albums are italicized and song names are double-quoted. This follows a lot of print style guides as well and it would help with readability as well. The rules are listed here on Wikipedia:Manual of Style (titles).

Here's an example:

Regular	Consistent style
The Else, Venue Songs, The Spine Hits The Road and The Spine (with Renew My Subscription as a bonus track) have been added to the UK and Canadian iTunes. Go get 'em, chaps!	The Else, Venue Songs, The Spine Hits The Road and The Spine (with "Renew My Subscription" as a bonus track) have been added to the UK and Canadian iTunes. Go get 'em, chaps!

I'm sure that most people could go either way, but is there any support for this style suggestion? —Fitch 08:17, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

It looks nice, but it would probably be a lot of work. I can go either way on this. Anyone feel strongly one way or the other. --Duke33 14:17, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

I like the regular myself even though it isn't proper. -Nosaj56 15:04, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

I think it's not a big enough deal to make proper titles a consistent standard at the wiki. The fact that an album or song becomes blue and underlined lets it stand out enough, and I don't think it makes it that sloppy-looking to have some albums italicized and others not. BUT, if someone would like to go through and do that, then it would be great-- it's just not important to me. ~ magbatz 15:16, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

I feel strongly about italicizing albums, it's a nice form of consistency. Song titles in quotes is way too much to wish for, though. They should at least be in quoted in the Current Events, though. -CapitalQ ♫ talk ♪ 22:39, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Since nobody opposes, and there are some who agree but think it's too big an undertaking, I will put it on the main style guide, hopefully, we'll slowly move in that direction! —Fitch 01:02, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

I rolled back some of your changes, until we come to a consensus...I think that we were talking about making it a standard, when in the context of a sentence. I don't know that it makes sense to do that in say, a tracklisting. Anyone else? --Duke33 15:59, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

I think the italics looks alright, if a tad unnecessary, but the quotes look pretty cluttered. Plus I figured if it was agreed upon, a bot would implement it. There's no way on of us would/could do it for every page an album or song is mentioned. Every album page, single/ep page, show page, new archives, discussion page, and tons more. This place is huge. o_O --Luke 16:24, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

The track listing quotations may be unnecessary, but don't forget that Wikipedia does it. ;] I could pretty easily have Q-Bot implement that. However, I feel like having every song title in quotations for every instance on TMBW would just be a nightmarish process and something of a nightmare to constantly keep up to style. I really dunno about that idea. I'm fine with having Current Events and album pages (maybe even song page trivia sections) having quotation marks around songs and italicized album titles, but I dunno if it needs to exist anywhere else. -CapitalQ ♫ talk ♪ 18:08, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Cool, so we saw how it looks, it's a bit much. I don't know how easily a bot could be implemented, so I figured it was good to start somewhere. I guess I'm just thrown off when reading body text that has albums and songs and podcasts all named quirky, TMBG-y things and I can't tell judging from the context what is what. Since I use the wiki to keep up with TMBG, it's nice to know what's a song and what's an album.

So, along with what CapitalQ said, only when in a sentence/paragraph/other section that has albums and song titles, but not when used in info boxes or lists, etc? Whattyda think? And I'm sitting here thinking why am I writing so much on this? OCD much, Fitch? ;) —Fitch 06:41, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree on making album names italicized. Pretty much everywhere. Especially in pages that consist of paragraphs. If we can get Q-Bot to do that somehow (it might work better with names like Factory Showroom than They Might Be Giants, but I would leave that to Mr. Q), then well gee that would be swell. But if not, I am bored enough to do some of it. ~ magbatz 16:33, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

I say it's pretty much essential to put albums names in italics and song names in quotes. I'll look myself later, but how far along are we in doing that? Drew 20:05, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

There was a time when I'd make sure to italicize and quote on any bio page (or any page like that) that I happened to be editing. But I fell out of that. I think proper punctuation is only really needed in "articles proper", i.e. pages with paragraphs. On song pages I could go either way. And in our many lists, I don't think quotes around song names are becoming at all. (I have italicized albums on lists among songs just to differentiate, though.) I know this is pretty arbitrary, but it's how I feel. ~ magbatz 21:40, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Guitar tab formatting

Sorry if this has been brought up already-- is there a way to get tabs to preserve whitespace (like the pre tag in html). Often there is lot of information that can only be conveyed with spacing. I've noticed some tabs have the spacing in them already (in the code), but you can't see it in the article. —Loniousmonk 03:03, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Can you give me an example of one, and I'll take a look? --Duke33 13:22, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Sure, Guitar_Tab:Someone Keeps Moving My Chair and Guitar_Tab:The Mesopotamians are a couple that I noticed. Thanks, --Loniousmonk 02:03, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

capitalization

why do we capitalize words in song titles that properly shouldn't be capitalized unless they're at the beginning of the title (i.e. A, The, An, etc.)? AGR 00:18, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Page titles are always capitalized all the way through for simplicity and ease of wiki-surfing. So it's become custom to do the same with titles for the purpose of linking, etc. I wouldn't complain if someone did The Proper Capitalization of Titles uniformly on any given page, but I also don't see the point in diversifying our 'grammar style' even more. And to change the whole wiki's text to do that would be equally pointless. The "proper" title is usually in the "Song Name" field anyway. ~ magbatz 00:30, 1 May 2011 (UTC)