Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Titles

"WP:MOSTITLE" redirects here. For the policy on article naming, see Wikipedia:Article titles. For the guideline on use of honorific titles for people, see Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Biographies#Honorific titles.

For the style guideline for lists of works, see Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lists of works.

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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This part of the Manual of Style covers the format or style used for titles of things, such as whether the title is placed in italics or quotation marks.

Italics

See also: Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Text formatting – Italic face

Italic type (text like this) is generally used for the following categories of titles:

• Certain scientific names
  • Genera and all lower taxa (but not higher taxa)
  • Genes (but not proteins encoded by genes)
• Court cases
• Named vehicles
  • Trains and locomotives
  • Ships
  • Ship classes
• Works of art and artifice
  • Books
  • Cantatas and motets
  • Comic strips and webcomics
  • Computer and video games (but not other software)
  • Exhibitions on a small scale, such as those hosted by a museum^[1]
  • Exhibition catalog titles, regardless of the size of the exhibition
  • Films (including short films) and documentaries
  • Long or epic poems
  • Musical albums
  • Musicals
  • Operas, operettas, oratorios
  • Orchestral works
  • Paintings, sculptures and other works of visual art
  • Periodicals (newspapers, journals, and magazines)
  • Plays
  • Radio or television series and serials (but not individual episodes; see below)

Abbreviations of the above should also be italicized.

Examples

To display text in italics, enclose it in double apostrophes.

• The New York Times is produced by ''The New York Times''.
• The Mary Tyler Moore Show is produced by ''[[The Mary Tyler Moore Show]]''.

If the title is also a wikilink but only part of it should be italicized, use a piped link to properly display the title.

• Casablanca is produced by ''[[Casablanca (film)|Casablanca]]'' or [[Casablanca (film)|''Casablanca'']].

Without piping, this wikilink would display—and incorrectly italicize—the disambiguation term, which is not part of the film title.

• USS Toledo (CA-133) is produced by [[USS Toledo (CA-133)|USS ''Toledo'' (CA-133)]].

Ship and locomotive names are italicized, but prefixes and ID numbers are not.

• Baltimore-class cruiser is produced by [[Baltimore class cruiser|''Baltimore''-class cruiser]].

Ship class names are often italicized, but ship types are not. For further information, see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (ships).

If the title of a Wikipedia article requires italicization, use a template to properly display the title.

• Place {{Italic title}} at the top of the page.

The titles of Wikipedia articles for genera and species in the Tree of Life Wikiproject should be italicized. For other articles, see the Italics and other formatting guideline for acceptable usage.

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"). It 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.)
• Franchises (including series of books, games, and other releases, other than serials releases such as comics and TV shows, which are italicized)
• Single episodes of a television series or Web-distributed video series
• Single named story lines in comic books or graphic novels
• Short poems
• Short stories
• Songs and singles

Additional markup

If a title is enclosed in quotation marks, do not include the quotation marks in any additional formatting markup. For example, if a title in quotation marks is the subject of a Wikipedia article and therefore displayed in boldface in the lead section, the quotation marks should not be in boldface because they are not part of the title itself. For further information, see Wikipedia:Manual of Style – Punctuation.

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

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)
• World's fairs and other large-scale exhibitions, which are capitalized^[1]

Scripture

Scriptures of large, well-known religions should not normally be italicized. For example, the Bible, the Quran, the Talmud, the Bhagavad Gita, the Adi Granth, the Book of Mormon, and the Avesta are not italicized. Their constituent parts, such as the Book of Ruth, the New Testament or the Gospel of Matthew are not italicized either, as such titles are generally conjectural rather than original ones. However, the titles of specific published versions of sacred texts should be italicized, such as the Authorized King James Version or the New Edition of the Babylonian 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.

Punctuation

Place adjacent punctuation outside any italics or quotation marks unless the punctuation is part of the title itself.

• Johnson spoke often of Huckleberry Finn, his favorite novel. – The comma is not part of the title and therefore is not italicized.
• George Orwell's well-known essay, "Politics and the English Language", condemned the hypocrisy endemic in political writing and speech. – The commas are not part of the title and are therefore outside the quotation marks.
• O Brother, Where Art Thou? is a 2000 adventure film. – The comma and question mark are both part of the title and are therefore italicized.

Notes

1. ^ ^{a b} A small-scale exhibition is generally hosted by, or is part of, an existing institution such as a museum, and would include most art exhibitions. Large-scale exhibitions are major events that typically have their own grounds (such as World's fairs), span more than one building, or have a significant history and widespread notability (such as the Cannes Film Festival or Burning Man).