Template talk:Italic title/Archive 2

Use on comic and journal articles
This template has been added to Template:Infobox comic book title and to WikiProject Academic Journals/Writing guide, and these usages added to Naming_conventions_(technical_restrictions). I can see no evidence there was any discussion of the issues. Whenever editors have removed this from these three pages (and when I removed this template from some pages, only a few of them journals), these edits have often been reverted. &mdash;innotata 22:12, 7 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Let me add that correct typesetting demands that every article in Wikipedia named for the title of a book, etc., should use this template. If you are interested in this and have any energy to address the problem, please have a look at User_talk:Rich_Farmbrough/Archive/2010Jul.  I'm not sure this talk page is a good venue, since the template here seems to have been created by and for biologists, who sometimes have expressed satisfaction if their articles are formatted according to correct usage, while naturally being less interested in whether articles about literature, etc., follow the conventions of well-edited English.  Therefore, the somewhat ancient-sounding reason that "italics look awkward on some screens" has carried the day (to which I say, then correctly typeset English discussion of books on every other website will also look awkward to you!).  There are, however, many projects (WP:BOOK, WP:WikiProject Philosophy, WP:CGR, everything at WikiProject_Literature, etc.), whose editors understand the conventions for books and would love to see this fixed.  But it may require a centralized discussion with all interested parties duly notified.  Note that at this point a Bot has been used to remove italic titles, so it may be an uphill struggle to make these changes stick without bureaucratic steps I don't have the experience or energy to undertake.  In short, while beggars can't be dictators, please do try to get this solution to stick for Wikipedia articles on all subjects that deal with books, if you are willing strong enough... Wareh (talk) 20:44, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Just a small point, but if you read through the archived RfC from last year, you'll note that many of the biologists !voting said they see no problem with using the template on book and journal articles, too. The RfC attracted a lot of attention, and it was mostly non-biologists making the loudest noise against all uses of the template. Rkitko (talk) 21:30, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I regret the over-sweeping generalization. In any case, I hope any future discussions will bring in the book-related projects I linked. Wareh (talk) 22:04, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
 * To state my own opinion: I have no objections to a wider use than just binomial names and mathematical symbols, or to the current situation. However, I think there should be a wider discussion; and that if any articles other than taxa and math ones use it, all with italicised text titles should—if comics and journals use it, so should films and books. &mdash;innotata 22:36, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Agreed. Because there was such strong opposition to it last time for all uses, it shouldn't be implemented for any other use unless there's consensus to do so, which would probably require another RfC. Rkitko (talk) 06:37, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
 * There is an ongoing RFC at WP:TITLE. —Ost (talk) 15:08, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Gosh, it sure would have been nice if someone had dropped a notice of that RfC here earlier, since the last discussion occurred here and the page is probably watchlisted by many of the past participants. --Rkitko (talk) 15:50, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Possible to italicize full title >50 chars?
If anyone can figure out how to use this template (or another one) to italicize the full title of On Youth, Old Age, Life and Death, and Respiration, please edit that article to show me how. Wareh (talk) 17:17, 2 February 2010 (UTC)


 * I'm assuming that's a literary work or show...only the Tree of Life WikiProject has reached consensus to allow the use of this template...you may be able to change some minds, but I'd advise against attempting to use it for that article, as it may trigger an edit war. As for whether it's possible-- I'm pretty sure the DISPLAYTITLE magic word ought to do the trick. Bob the Wikipedian (talk • contribs) 19:06, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

The same problem was brought up here: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Academic Journals/Writing guide. I fixed the problem articles using the "DISPLAYTITLE magic word". Is there any way to fix this template, or is it a more serious technical limitation? Justin W Smith talk/stalk 01:05, 19 April 2010 (UTC)


 * To spell out the fix a little more, here is an example of how to italicize a long article title tab without use of  at the top of the article.  Instead, insert at the top of the article, for example International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, the following:  where ...  (NOT the usual pair of double quotation  marks:  " ... " ) encloses (and thereby italicizes) the article name. --Thomasmeeks (talk) 23:23, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

Issues with this template
I've had a few issues with this template with regard to using it at Infobox album; see Template talk:Infobox album. As I understand from the documentation:


 * should italicise the title at How Will I Laugh Tomorrow When I Can't Even Smile Today, and
 * should italicise the full title at Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)

But neither of these worked when I tried them. Bearing in mind the recent policy change at WP:ITALICTITLE, we could do to have this template working properly. I don't mind saying that I feel a little out of my depth with the code used here, so I would appreciate any input. Cheers! PC78 (talk) 22:05, 26 September 2010 (UTC)


 * For a long title or a title with parentheses, try  . Bob the Wikipedian (talk • contribs) 22:39, 26 September 2010 (UTC)


 * That appears to work, thanks. But can a fix not be implemented here? PC78 (talk) 22:48, 26 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I'll try and figure it out what is going wrong here. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 23:09, 26 September 2010 (UTC)
 * The template has a  parameter that will force the full title to italicize (you should set it to a logical value). Don't try to pass force=false or force=no, though.  Intelligent  sium  23:20, 26 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Well this is a problem: diff for some reason it calculates the length of the string instead of the full title. All titles over 50 chars won't work. I think this has changed because str len was changed to use safesubst, but i'm not really sure yet what is going on. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 23:25, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

And the other use case is: So that is just a small misunderstanding on your part. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 23:31, 26 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Oh wait, the brackets are part of the title. In that case, you will have to use force I think. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 23:33, 26 September 2010 (UTC)
 * It's still not working as the documentation suggests, though. For the purposes of testing I tried, but the behaviour was no different to a plain . PC78 (talk) 14:43, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Was this a rush job?
I know there was an RfC (which I managed to miss) and, apparently, consensus was to italicise all. A couple of examples (and all similarly named articles) this template doesn't cater for would be:


 * List of awards and nominations received by Lost, or
 * Pilot (Lost)

Have things like this been considered, lots of episode articles will have a television series disambiguator. This whole thing was about consistency but is it feasible. I'm guessing we don't want lots of s everywhere. Rambo's Revenge (talk)  00:05, 27 September 2010 (UTC)


 * What's wrong with using
 * or
 * After all, we use the magic word  instead of the template {{Defaultsort|…}}. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 04:59, 27 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, I assume it was understood that in order to make this work, there would have to be lots of DISPLAYTITLES everywhere. Most of them are hidden inside Italic Title templates (and these are often hidden inside Infoboxes), but for articles which don't have the formats supported by those templates, you need an explicit DISPLAYTITLE statement.--Kotniski (talk) 07:53, 27 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Okay, I didn't realise how robust DISPLAYTITLE was to vandalism (no alternatives that do't resolve the same). Is the placement is logical at the top of the page or does it get hidden at the bottom like etc. Rambo's Revenge  (talk)  11:41, 27 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I think it should go at the top (since it concerns the title, and the title is at the top of the page).--Kotniski (talk) 12:03, 27 September 2010 (UTC)
 * If it's necessary to override this feature as implemented by an infobox, DISPLAYTITLE would need to come after the infobox, yes? PC78 (talk) 12:17, 27 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Good point - yes, it looks like it's the last instance of DISPLAYTITLE that takes effect.--Kotniski (talk) 12:59, 27 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Should be OK if the infobox can disable italic title, though. PC78 (talk) 14:44, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Should be OK if the infobox can disable italic title, though. PC78 (talk) 14:44, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

How to remove?
Cinematic Titanic has been improperly italicized by transcluding this template. I can't figure out how to remove it. Any ideas? Robert K S (talk) 03:08, 11 October 2010 (UTC)
 * It appears to me that the template has been forced upon all articles with the film infobox. Take this one up at that template's talkpage. Bob the Wikipedian (talk • contribs) 03:18, 11 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Turns out there was already a parameter in the film infobox for turing italicization off - I've added it to the documentation over there.--Kotniski (talk) 06:36, 11 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Thank you. Can you now also make it so that if italicize title is turned off in the infobox parameters, it also does not italicize the title in the infobox itself? Robert K S (talk) 17:44, 15 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Actually, in some cases, that might not be desired, as in Anyone lived in a pretty how town. There, we want the infobox title to be italicized but not the article title.  in Cinematic Titanic, we want neither to be italicized.  Maybe the solution is to use a different infobox for Cinematic Titanic.  Robert K S (talk) 17:55, 15 October 2010 (UTC)
 * If Cinematic Titanic is not about a film, then it probably shouldn't be using Infobox film. I'm not even sure what that article is about: the lead describes it as a "project", which seems a bit vague. But to get rid of italics in the infobox, try Cinematic Titanic. PC78 (talk) 18:17, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Another issue...
I've found another case in which neither the template nor DISPLAYTITLE works.

Stephen Colbert's book I Am America (And So Can You!) doesn't display fully in italics. I first did a preview with "italic title", and as expected, it only italicized I Am America. I then used DISPLAYTITLE, but it produced exactly the same result as "italic title".

Is there any way to display the entire title in italics? — Dale Arnett (talk) 20:29, 22 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Put DISPLAYTITLE after the infobox like this. It takes the last use so if you put it before it goes back to the italicistaion coming from the infobox. Rambo's Revenge (talk)  20:37, 22 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Problem is the implementation in Infobox book. If you add DISPLAYTITLE at the top of the article, the infobox will override it. You can add DISPLAYTITLE after the infobox, but it would be better if the infobox had an option to disable italics. PC78 (talk) 20:39, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Related discussions
For reference, here are links to places where italic page titles have been discussed:

--David Göthberg (talk) 03:41, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (technical restrictions)/Archive 1
 * Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Biology
 * Requested templates/Uncategorized
 * Template talk:Taxobox name
 * Templates for deletion/Log/2008 July 1
 * Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Films/Archive 24
 * Village pump (technical)/Archive 56
 * Village pump (technical)/Archive 58

Bob the Wikipedian (talk • contribs) 04:27, 13 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tree of life

Another somewhat related discussion related to title styling: — Edokter • Talk  • 12:08, 27 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Village pump (proposals)/Styling disambiguated titles

Lowercase?
Would it be possible to add a lowercase option to this template, for article titles that need to be both italicised and with the first letter decapitalised? PC78 (talk) 19:21, 10 November 2010 (UTC)
 * There's probably a different template for that purpose. I'll go verify that now that I've said it. If there's not, I'll make one. Either way, I'll be back. Bob the Wikipedian (talk • contribs) 02:31, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Here you go: lcfirstitalictitle. Enjoy! Bob the Wikipedian (talk • contribs) 02:49, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Very nice! Is this based on the lowercase or italic templates?  That is, will it take parameters, like "title=" in the lowercase template?  It seems redundant, but it would be nice if it does, for ease of replacing one template call in an article with another.  Personally, I think we need a simple template for replacing a title with an arbitrary string that can include wiki markup.  --Lance E Sloan (talk) 17:55, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Use ; see Page name. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 06:25, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

List of X episodes
We've been having a discussion at Template_talk:Infobox_television regarding articles which are named "List of X episodes", such as List of House episodes. For these it is not necessary for the whole article to be italicised, just the series name. So, for the example it would be "List of House episodes". There aren't any times when the whole of a "List of X episodes" article needs to be italicised (tell me if I'm wrong). This can be achieved using the DISPLAYTITLE magic word, but it would be great if this could be implemented within this template too (since this template is widely used, particularly in many infoboxes). This would then prevent the need to disable infoboxes from italicising the title on these articles, instead they would automatically be given the correct italicisation. I don't even know whether this is possible or not, but I was wondering if there's any way either this template (or italic title infobox) could be modified so that articles in the format "List of X episodes" are italicised in the correct manner? Mhiji (talk) 22:05, 18 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Disabling italics when the first 7 characters are "list of" might be fairly easy. Making the XXX italic in "List of XXX episodes" is probably much harder to do with the limited string functions we have available. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:49, 19 November 2010 (UTC)
 * It ought to be possible, though. With a specialized template that starts the italics after "List of" (like is done in Infobox ship begin) and ends them on reaching "episodes" (rather than on reaching a parenthesis).--Kotniski (talk) 10:44, 19 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Although I hadn't seen the above two responses, I effectively did what Martin suggested using a conditional parser for articles starting with "List of" to not be italicised. Per Kotniski you could probably use to not italicise episodes at the end but I think you'd then get examples like List of The Office (U.S. TV series) episodes instead of List of The Office (U.S. TV series) episodes. One could probably make a rule to excluse brackets within (like italic title) but it would be more complicated. Rambo's Revenge  <b style="color:#FFA500;">(talk)</b>  14:10, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

str len|PAGENAME < 50???
Seriously? This thing uses str len to find out if the page title is less than 50 characters long?

Please change it to use Str ≥ len so that this massive waste can be avoided. Thanks. --Yair rand (talk) 05:02, 19 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Good idea. I used Template:Str ≤ len instead. Please check my code. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:32, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Latin phrases
Is there an automated or semi-automated way to implement italic titles on articles in Category:Latin words and phrases? Or, even further, through most of Category:Words and phrases by language? Thanks, -M.Nelson (talk) 23:43, 22 November 2010 (UTC)


 * You could find someone who knows how to write a bot and ask them to do it...sounds like it would be a fairly simple task. Bob the Wikipedian (talk • contribs) 01:41, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Can this be italicized?
R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots), the title of a play. My attempt does nothing. Varlaam (talk) 06:12, 3 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Done (I don't know what attempts you made - I couldn't see any in the history). But I've also proposed renaming that article - see its talk page.--Kotniski (talk) 11:30, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Jim Neversink
Why is the title of this article italicised? I can't work it out. I assume it's something to do with the album infoboxes. J Milburn (talk) 00:12, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Indeed; all the invocations of Infobox album on that page need the parameter no to avoid italics in the article's title. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 00:57, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
 * I tried- what am I doing wrong? J Milburn (talk) 01:12, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Hmmm, I've no idea why adding the no didn't work... I've fixed it by adding  underneath the infoboxes though. Mhiji (talk) 04:12, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
 * The documentation is partially mileading; Infobox album requires the parameter no with a capital "I" in the word "Italic".
 * Side observation: some "date" parameters in that article's "cite" templates are patently wrong. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 06:14, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
 * I've updated the doc at Infobox album to reflect that a capital "I" needs to be used. Mhiji (talk) 06:44, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Incompatibility with Template:Lowercase title
Please see the thread I just started at Template talk:Lowercase title.  Giftiger Wunsch   [TALK]  16:56, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

force parameter
I know this template has a "force" parameter, but it is undocumented and its purpose remains unclear. Can someone who knows please document the parameter's purpose and use? thanks. --Muhandes (talk) 13:30, 6 January 2011 (UTC)
 * AFAICT, it forces the italicisation of the whole title, so Talk:Wicked (musical) becomes Talk:Wicked (musical) rather than Talk:Wicked (musical). <b style="color:forestgreen">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange">melon</b> 13:45, 6 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Are you sure that's all it does? I was under the impression that it is also required when the title is over some length. --Muhandes (talk) 16:16, 6 January 2011 (UTC)
 * That's the effect it has. Whether or not that represents a change in behaviour may well be dependent on other factors. <b style="color:forestgreen">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange">melon</b> 17:07, 6 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I added what I think it does to the documentation, feel free to correct it. --Muhandes (talk) 18:03, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Using too many Str_find and 50? million of padleft
28-Jan-2011: I see now that {Italic_title} is using 4 {Str_find} and hence, 5 {Str_len} for each name having a left parenthesis "(" in the title. Meanwhile, {Str_find} has not been optimized, and always uses 99 calls to parser function {padleft:|}, regardless of title length. That comes to 450 calls to {padleft} for each name with "(" in the title. So, with over "353,026" pages using Template:Italic_title to italicize films, books, albums (etc.), that uses over 35,302,600 (35 million) calls to {padleft}, plus 350 calls for each name with "(" in the title. Perhaps more than 50 million {padleft}. I think we need to rewrite Template:Italic_title to use fewer calls to {padleft}, as a step towards conserving resources, some day. Meanwhile, let's handle titles longer than 50 characters (perhaps 70?), while rewriting the template markup as more efficient. An easy step would be to make {Str_find} invoke a choice of new subtemplates {Str_find/20}, {Str_find/40} or {Str_find/60} depending on {str_len} of the title, rather than always check {padleft} repeated 50*2-1=99 times for shorter titles. More later. -Wikid77 19:52, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
 * In order to streamline Template:Italic_title and allow longer titles with "(xx)", I have created 3 optimized string-handling templates: Template:Strfind_short, Template:Strlen_quick and Template:Strloc_insert. Those templates provide the specialized processing to insert the italic-font codes into a title, with minimal string processing, as optimized to run 10x times faster than before. -Wikid77 15:12, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Rewriting 10x faster with longer titles
02-Feb-2011: I have created a proposed, streamlined version as Template:Italic_title/sandbox2, to process titles 10x faster, while allowing longer titles to have "(xx)" such as up to 70 characters long (or perhaps 99). I realize other people are also busy, so this is just an announcement of the proposed new version. The optimization is based on passing the string location of the parenthesis "(" into optimized string-handling templates, to avoid the repeated steps which would re-find the "(" and re-count the length of a title. If a parser function is added as "{Italicname:xx}" than that can be used instead. This new version is an interim step, to quickly provide 10x times faster processing. -Wikid77 15:12, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Show me the proposal and I'll support in a heartbeat-- I've been excited about this for awhile now. <span style="font-family:linux libertine o, times; font-variant:small-caps">Bob the WikipediaN (talk • contribs) 16:43, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Proposal: As shown in version Template:Italic_title/sandbox2, for the #switch branch "101" (expecting parenthesis, non-forced, length<50), the #switch will use new Template:Strloc_insert to insert the end-italic tag "&lt;/i>" at the location of "(" or append to end of title, when no "(" is found. The new markup logic, using {strloc_insert} is: '' That starts with italic font using "&lt;i>" and then inserts the end-italic tag before "(" or at end of the title. It uses new template to find the "(" only once, but 3x times faster by only checking the actual string length (such as 15 long), not the always 50-length search in {str_find}, which had been used 4 times. Plus, it counts title length by new to count the length 2x times (twice) as fast, using #switch branches prioritized by common title lengths, knowing most titles are 17/18 long. The actual article title lengths are typically 8-29 long, almost never 1-3 characters, so length 9 is checked earlier, being 19x more common than length 3; similarly, title length 5 is checked later, as almost as rare as length 31, 32, 33, etc. A length > 90 occurs only 1-in-10,000 titles, such as rare title "Astro Creep: 2000 – Songs of Love, Destruction and Other Synthetic Delusions of the Electric Head". Combining all those improvements, the speed will average 10x faster, although some short titles might italicize 20x faster. If the length is increased (from 50) to 70 or 99, then a suffix of "(film)" can be processed easier. Perhaps only 35 titles are over 90 characters long, so they could default to all-italic. -Wikid77 16:31, 4 February 2011 (UTC)


 * should be processed at most once per page, per parse. Does this provide a tangible performance improvement?  <b style="color:forestgreen">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange">melon</b> 16:58, 4 February 2011 (UTC)


 * There are multiple "performance improvement(s)" such as handling longer titles, not just 10x faster. Based on counts among 10,000 titles, expect over 2,300 titles (of 353,000 total) to be longer than the current 49-length limit. For someone working on those 2,300 titles, longer is "tangible": for example, title of comedy "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (film)" is 53 long (over 49), but that article is viewed over 300 pageviews (per day) and must use DISPLAYTITLE, repeating the long title a 3rd time, as a tangible annoyance when editing for 300 readers. The new version could auto-italicize that title and 2,300 other long titles (to avoid repeat in DISPLAYTITLE). Meanwhile, I fear {Italic_title} has used over 65 million calls to {padleft}, so this will reduce that to less than 5 million {padleft}. Suppose someone is checking {padleft} usage counts and wants it removed due to "abuse" of too many: that would be tangible to avoid. Some people use padleft to actually pad zeroes "001". The figure of 5 million uses would be less extravagant: as searching titles only once, for the length of the title, not using 450 {padleft} when "37" {padleft} would suffice. For people planning wiki-server resources, such as authorizing use of string functions, the lower figure of 5 million would be more realistic of what articles really need. So, there are likely multiple cases of "tangible" improvements. -Wikid77 08:53, 5 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Improving functionality to support longer titles is definitely a tangible benefit. But the number of   calls in use on the Wikimedia cluster (don't forget that as far as the sysadmins are concerned, all 850 WMF wikis are just slightly varied manifestations of the same software instance, they all run on top of one another) is probably well into the billions, so this is not a particularly noticeable reduction in that sense.  Optimising in order to provide new functionality, however, is unquestionably beneficial. <b style="color:forestgreen">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange">melon</b> 10:54, 5 February 2011 (UTC)
 * 👍Support. Italictitle is referenced by templates such as the taxobox/core, which currently functions very slowly in its implementation at automatic taxobox. Any performance improvement to a template referenced by the taxobox core template, provided there are no downsides, is one I am obligated and excited to support. <span style="font-family:linux libertine o, times; font-variant:small-caps">Bob the WikipediaN (talk • contribs) 22:28, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

Problem title
Template:Italic title does not appear to italicize the title for the article: Guillaume Tell (Grétry). Could the diacritic in the parenthetic expression be a problem? There aren't any similar examples of this problem that I have been able to find. --Robert.Allen (talk) 04:49, 1 April 2011 (UTC)
 * FWIW, I believe the problem is that Str index does not recognize the entire character set. returns . I just checked locally and it can be solved by replacing the call to str sub with a call to Substr any which supports a larger charset. --Muhandes (talk) 07:01, 1 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Can somebody fix this? I'm not familiar enough with template programming to be mucking about with this one. --Robert.Allen (talk) 01:36, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
 * I think the easiest solution is to just use directly.  I believe the issue with the string templates may be not solvable without serious changes.  I will see if I can track down to core issue.  Thanks! Plastikspork <sub style="font-size: 60%">―Œ <sup style="margin-left:-3ex">(talk)  01:49, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Do you see any reason why the solution I suggested will not work? --Muhandes (talk) 08:37, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
 * That could work. I don't know if the pre/post-expand sizes of that template is significantly larger than the other, but given that this template should only be used once per page, that's probably not a major issue.  Thanks! Plastikspork <sub style="font-size: 60%">―Œ <sup style="margin-left:-3ex">(talk)  15:16, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Per the explanation here the performance impact is minimal since it is implemented with a switch-expression, which exits on the first match. --Muhandes (talk) 07:12, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
 * It does add some have some impact on performance, but not much. I copied that particular section of the switch statement into the article in question, then viewed the source in preview mode.  I then changed the "str sub" to "substr any" and the results were as follows


 * So, in the greater context of the entire page, I would say the impact is not significant. I will go ahead any make the change soon, unless there are objections.  Thanks for the suggestion. Plastikspork <sub style="font-size: 60%">―Œ <sup style="margin-left:-3ex">(talk)  01:16, 6 April 2011 (UTC)


 * I found a second example: Primera fila (Thalía album). --Muhandes (talk) 17:23, 10 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Since this template is being used more and more on the Wikipedia, I hope somebody with the correct privileges will be able to fix the problems we discussed here and below sometime soon. Thanks for all the help! --Robert.Allen (talk) 18:25, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Substitute calls with  as comments above, to support diacritic chars after brackets to be correctly italicized. —Fitoschido // Leave me a shout! 16:07, 11 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Done. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 19:26, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Discussion about the use of this template
There is currently a discussion about the use of this template at Village pump (policy) --Robert.Allen (talk) 22:57, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Restricting to main space
Is there any reason why we shouldn't restrict this to main space? I can't currently think of a case in other name spaces where we would want to put the title in italics using this template. Thanks! Plastikspork <sub style="font-size: 60%">―Œ <sup style="margin-left:-3ex">(talk) 01:27, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Is there any harm in using it elsewhere? I like seeing how the title of articles I create in my user space will look before moving them to the main space. --Muhandes (talk) 08:37, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Since the unwanted italics are a mainly problem in templates that call this one, we could just turn article italics off in template space, but it would be most efficient to turn it off in this template, rather than turn it off in the multiple templates call this one. --Robert.Allen (talk) 09:52, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
 * I still don't understand what's the harm cause by not restricting this template to main space. As I understand it, it has nothing to do with how it will work when transcluded into another template which is then used in the main space.--Muhandes (talk) 10:08, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Here is just one of numerous examples: Template:Strauss II operas --Robert.Allen (talk) 10:17, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
 * I see, so it bothers you that the template name is in italics. It can be made not to italicize in the template space. --Muhandes (talk) 10:55, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Also in Wikipedia and Wikipedia talk space, when someone posts it to a help desk. There are probably other namespaces as well. Plastikspork <sub style="font-size: 60%">―Œ <sup style="margin-left:-3ex">(talk)  15:13, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Perhaps the easiest solution would be to restrict italics to the article space unless a new parameter, e.g., "any_namespace=true" is specified. --Robert.Allen (talk) 21:16, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
 * I guess I have no problem with that. All I needed was a way to check what the final result will look like before going live, and this satisfies this requirement. --Muhandes (talk) 07:05, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

can't get it to work
at Explanatory Dictionary of the Living Great Russian Language (59 characters). — kwami (talk) 02:09, 17 May 2011 (UTC)
 * As Infobox book states, if you want it to work with more than 50 characters you need to use  (as I just did). --Muhandes (talk) 07:23, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Can't get it to work
Hi, I've been trying to get this template to work on The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (radio series) (currently today's featured article) to get it to display as The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (radio series), but I can't get it to work. I assume it has something to do with having greater than 50 characters, but I've tried the suggestions in the documentation and even tried using DISPLAYTITLE and I still can't get it to work. I assume I'm probably missing something obvious, but any help would be appreciated. Cheers, Jenks24 (talk) 08:17, 25 May 2011 (UTC)
 * I suspect the reason the template wasn't working was the presence of the apostrophe (the string handling functions only support a limited character set, thanks to developer intransigence). Using DISPLAYTITLE was the right solution, but it again needs to go after the infobox.--Kotniski (talk) 08:44, 25 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Ah (I was so close!), thanks very much for helping. Cheers, Jenks24 (talk) 09:09, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Italicization issues
I am trying to fix the italicization of the article Enteng Kabisote 2: Okay Ka Fairy Ko: The Legend Continues, Enteng Kabisote 3: Okay Ka, Fairy Ko: The Legend Goes On and On and On, and Enteng Kabisote 4: Okay Ka Fairy Ko...The Beginning of the Legend but no matter what ways it don't works. Please HELP ME! j3j3j3...pfH0wHz 14:05, 18 June 2011 (UTC)
 * OK, it looks like someone (you, in fact) has added the italicization function to the Philippines-film-stub template. Not sure if this is a good idea, but anyway, it means that if you have an article containing that template and you need to override the default italicization (like in this case, where the titles are too long for the templates to do it correctly), then you have to put the DISPLAYTITLE right at the end of the article text, after that stub template.--Kotniski (talk) 15:00, 18 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Adding italic title to stub templates is a bad idea especially because of that. The infobox already does this, and even stub articles can have a very simple infobox. I removed it from the template. --Muhandes (talk) 22:59, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

Formatting issue with Wikipedia books
When an article with an italic title is displayed in a Wikipedia book, the whole title is italicised, including anything in brackets. Is there any way to fix this?  McLerristarr &#124;  Mclay1  09:14, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Markup for italic titles appearing as entity encoded text in Firefox, but not Chrome
When I load a Wikipedia article that has an italicized title in Firefox 8, the title flashes for a split second correctly (showing bold and italicized) then shows the angle brackets etc. of the  ...  tags around the title, in bold, but no longer italicized.

Is this merely a browser quirk or is there an underlying flaw in the template?

Infoaddicted (talk) 16:08, 22 November 2011 (UTC)


 * My Firefox 8.0 doesn't do that. I suspect it has something to do with a local stylesheet in your configuration. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 04:03, 23 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Mine does. I recently upgraded to FF 8.01 (I'm using a MacBook Pro running OS 10.6.8), and I'm not aware of any local stylesheets.Dave Ayer (talk) 03:52, 13 December 2011 (UTC)


 * I just tried it (Firefox had already upgraded automatically to 8.0.1) and checked Don Carlos. The italic title displays correctly. --Robert.Allen (talk) 07:50, 13 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Mine has the same problem (Firefox 9.0.1 on Mac OSX 10.6.8). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.246.127.212 (talk) 16:20, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Already sounds like a Mac OS problem; I don't have the problem in 9.0.1 using Windows 7. --Izno (talk) 17:18, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I have Mac OS X 10.6.8 and just upgraded my Firefox (which I do not routinely use) to version 9.0.1 and checked Don Carlos and a couple of other italicized titles. The italic titles display correctly, so I doubt there is a problem with either Mac OS X or Firefox. --Robert.Allen (talk) 05:01, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm using Firefox 9.0.1 on Ubuntu 11.04 and the italic tags appear for me, too., It's exactly like the above post says, ---"When I load a Wikipedia article that has an italicized title in Firefox 8, the title flashes for a split second correctly (showing bold and italicized) then shows the angle brackets etc. of the  ...  tags around the title, in bold, but no longer italicized." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 184.100.245.167 (talk) 20:40, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
 * This seems to call for a major investigation! --Robert.Allen (talk) 22:05, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Since my message above from November 2011, I updated to Firefox 9.0.1. Under Windows 7 or XP/SP3, italic titles display as expected, not in their literal HTML tags. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 04:03, 27 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I noticed that in my case the problem was caused by the StumbleUpon plugin I was using with my Firefox.--  Forty two  14:03, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Not working on a particular page
I'm not sure if this is an Template:Infobox album issue, but considering that it involves italics, I figure I should come here.

When browsing tonight, I discovered that the title for The Boys (Girls' Generation album) is not italicized using  italicizes the whole thing rather than just the portion outside of brackets, but such a short title should be italicized anyway. What's wrong with the coding there? I've even removed the infobox and just put in this template and it still does nothing. I had to do this to fix it, but I should not even have to have done that.— Ryulong ( 竜龙 ) 12:07, 3 February 2012 (UTC)


 * My only guess is that the apostrophe is messing it up somehow. Powers T 15:40, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Oh, duh. See #Can't get it to work above.  Powers T 15:41, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Use on other wikis
Is it possible to use this code on other wikis? I have tried copying the code into my own "Template:Italic title", but suspect that I need a number of other templates (perhaps far too many) as it isn't working at the moment. Google hasn't had any useful results, and I have had similar problems trying to get slightly advanced features to work on another wiki. Hoping someone with the know-how will be willing to help. --xensyriaT 02:26, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
 * UPDATE: I've now copied over a lot of the str templates (following the red links at the bottom of the edit page). Strangely it worked in some cases and not others until I put it at the top of the infobox code I was including it on. PROBLEM SOLVED :! --xensyriaT 04:21, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Edit request on 25 November 2012
Hello, Can you please change the title of "I Dream of Jeannie: 15 Years Later" to  "I Dream of Jeannie...Fifteen Years Later" because I watched some of it recently and the latter is the correct title. Thanks, Joemcphilly1960

Joemcphilly1960 (talk) 00:13, 25 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: You need to propose this on Talk:I Dream of Jeannie: 15 Years Later, not here. Also, you should use a requested move to do it. Regards — <span style="color: #194D00; font-family: Palatino, Times, serif">Mr. Stradivarius  (have a chat) 03:17, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

Rcats needed
The template shortcut, Italictitle, that resulted from a page move, needs redirect categories. Please edit the shortcut as follows:
 * from this...


 * to this...

"Redr" is a shortcut for the This is a redirect template. Thank you in advance! – P AINE E LLSWORTH  <sup style="font-size:x-small; color:blue; font-family:Arial;">C L I M A X !  08:54, 24 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes check.svg Done -- Red rose64 (talk) 14:59, 24 February 2013 (UTC)
 * – P AINE E LLSWORTH  <sup style="font-size:x-small; color:blue; font-family:Arial;">C L I M A X !  16:14, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

This seems unusual
While editing, I came across an article titled Redemption (2012 film), about a short documentary film. The title wasn't italicized, so I proceeded to edit the article. I found this template (Italic title) already on the page, but it was placed down below the categories. I placed this template at the TOP of the edit page, but it still would not italicize the word "Redemption" in the article title. I tried to use and that worked; the word "Redemption" was italicized in the title. From there I performed three brief experiments: So there must be something in that article title that is disabling this template. I just can't figure out what it is. Even if you type in the article title, plain keyboard letters, numbers and parentheses (no apostrophes or other special characters), this template does not italicize it. What's up with that? – P AINE E LLSWORTH  <sup style="font-size:x-small; color:blue; font-family:Arial;">C L I M A X !  07:42, 24 February 2013 (UTC)
 * 1) I copy and pasted the contents of the article to my sandbox page.  As can be seen, there was no trouble with this template there, even before I disabled the categories and stub template.  This means there is nothing in the content of the article that disables this template.
 * 2) Then I created this user subpage by copying and pasting the article title after my username.  As can be seen, this template would no longer italicize the title of the page.  I tried  with this edit, and it italicized the word "Redemption" with no problem.
 * 3) I wanted to see if I could just type (rather than copy and paste) the article title and get this template to work, so I created this test subpage.  Even typing the article title, "Redemption (2012 film)", after my User talk: pagename would not get this template to work.
 * I checked the version of, and the various versions of User:Paine Ellsworth/Redemption (2012 film) and User talk:Paine Ellsworth/Redemption (2012 film), and they all use italics for the page name, and straight type for "(2012)"; in other words, everything works fine for me and the page titles are shown as intended. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 07:15, 25 February 2013 (UTC)
 * PS: I just noticed that the template Italic title has been since your misadventure, so my observations are meaningless. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 12:36, 25 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, it works now thanks to Dragons flight! – P AINE E LLSWORTH  <sup style="font-size:x-small; color:blue; font-family:Arial;">C L I M A X !  13:44, 25 February 2013 (UTC)
 * PS. It was a change to Lua script that did it.

Template:Auto italic title
Hi. Given this edit, I've updated Template:Auto italic title to no longer warn about the old 50-character restriction. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:06, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

RfC at Talk:Wikipedia
There is an Rfc at Talk:Wikipedia#RfC: Wikipedia in italics? that may interest you. Please come and read the summary, then include your !vote if you would like to do so. Thank you in advance for your consideration. – P AINE E LLSWORTH  <sup style="font-size:x-small; color:blue; font-family:Arial;">C LIMAX !  18:40, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

Edit request on 4 September 2013
This is nit-picky, but something I stumbled over. Italic title/doc inconsistently used the word "brackets" (and variations) to mean "parentheses". Unless I misunderstand, since brackets [], braces {}, and "angle brackets" <> cannot actually be part of titles – the only issue being dealt with in this template is the presence of parentheses. I fixed the template doc, but the comments (and variable name) in this Module may still cause confusion if someone reads them. I suggest editing as follows:
 * bracket => parenthesis
 * brackets => parentheses
 * bracketed => parenthesized

—&#91;  Alan M 1  (talk) &#93;— 08:56, 4 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes check.svg Done. This is a regional variation thing - in the UK, at least where I'm from, common usage is "brackets" for and "square brackets" for []. Still, we want it to be unambiguous, so I agree that your suggestion is best. — <span style="color: #194D00; font-family: Palatino, Times, serif">Mr. Stradivarius  ♪ talk ♪ 09:12, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

Why can this template produce unwanted whitespace?
I wanted to use the template on the Rahona page (actually to side-step a larger issue about how the  was working). If I put after the taxobox, as suggested here, it works fine. But if I put it before, I get a large amount of extra whitespace. Why should this make any difference at all? All this template should do is cause the title to be italic. There should be no side effects whatsoever or it is a bug. Is Mediawiki really designed such that there's no easy way too accomplish that without hacking together a solution that will have side-effects? Jason Quinn (talk) 05:14, 13 March 2012 (UTC)


 * I was hoping one of the more knowledgeable folks would respond, but I think I noted this issue a while ago. See Template talk:Automatic taxobox/Archive 1. Martin indicated he had no idea why it produced the unnecessary newline. The template coding is beyond my comprehension so I couldn't begin to tell you why it behaves that way. Perhaps someone else will chime in. Rkitko (talk) 01:17, 18 March 2012 (UTC)


 * The template still produces an extra carriage return. Would someone please be kind enough to fix this?—DocWatson42 (talk) 03:12, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Does it only happen if the next line is  or does it happen with other constructs? If the latter, please give examples. -- Red rose64 (talk) 13:47, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I've only seen it occur with Automatic taxobox. It has never produced an extra carriage return for me with the regular Taxobox. I've never tried another infobox. Here's a current example where the is first, then a carriage return, then {{Automatic taxobox begins: Psammotermes allocerus (revision link).
 * But I initially set up the article with the arrangement,  all on one line to avoid the extra carriage return. (revision link). Rkitko (talk) 15:08, 5 April 2013 (UTC)


 * I believe I fixed {{tl|automatic taxobox}}. Dragons flight (talk) 17:32, 5 April 2013 (UTC)


 * The template still produces additional white space as of July 2013. --Qwerty Binary (talk) 18:03, 6 July 2013 (UTC)


 * It looks fine to me. What User:Dragons flight did fixed the problem where I see it. I even implemented the fix in {{tl|Speciesbox}}. Can you give an example of where you see extra white space now? Cheers, Rkitko {{sup| (talk) }} 02:47, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

{{od}}Hello template gurus. I have a recent example from that diff. Any ideas? Ping to User:Redrose64 perhaps! Best. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) when u sign ur reply, thx 15:59, 16 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Just put {{tlx|Use dmy dates}} {{tlx|Italic title}} or both in the last section, where any superfluous blank space doesn't matter. Somewhere between the navboxes and the {{tlc|DEFAULTSORT}}, see WP:FOOTERS - that is, among the other items that produce nothing visible at the point of inclusion such as {{tlx|coord}} and {{tlx|persondata}}. -- Red rose64 (talk) 16:14, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

Edit request on 20 August 2014
change

if title.nsText and title.nsText ~= "" then result = title.nsText .. ':' .. result end

to

if title.nsText and title.nsText ~= "" then result = title.nsText:gsub('_', ' ') .. ':' .. result end

because normally shown title has no underscore (e.g. User talk:Nullzero/sandbox), but title.nsText has underscore in it (e.g. User talk:Nullzero/sandbox2).

Thank you --Nullzero (talk) 15:44, 20 August 2014 (UTC)


 * ✅ – Pages may need to be purged to see the difference. –  Paine Ellsworth   <b style="font-size:x-small; color:blue;">C LIMAX !</b> 06:59, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Cover templates in Category:Correct_title_templates
Could you extend the module so that Italic_title_prefixed, Lcfirstitalictitle can be switched to use this module instead? Thank you --Nullzero (talk) 17:46, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Placement of template
This template's documentation says it should be placed "normally at the very top" of an article. It isn't mentioned in the list of "Order of article elements" at WP:ORDER. I've started a discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Layout: do join in if you have views. Thanks. Pam D  14:54, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

Edit request on 22 August 2014
Please apply this change to the module because prior to lua implementation, there was a parameter called  (which now is renamed to  ). The 'force' parameter is still in use, such as in Deaf Dumb Blind (Summun Bukmun Umyun), so it's better to restore its functionality back.

Thank you --Nullzero (talk) 16:53, 22 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Hmm, sounds like we should stick with only one parameter for this job. Thinking about it, "force" may be a better name for it than "all". How about we add a tracking category to find pages that use either parameter? — <span style="color: #194D00; font-family: Palatino, Times, serif">Mr. Stradivarius  ♪ talk ♪ 04:34, 23 August 2014 (UTC)


 * That's a good idea. You might want to add a tracking category for  -   as well. These parameters are deprecated as there is no limit of the length of title anymore. --Nullzero (talk) 08:59, 23 August 2014 (UTC)


 * While you have included a specific request, it appears that some discussion as to the best way to implement the changes for this extremely high use module are still being discussed. I've deactivated the tag for now, once the changes are ready here please reactivate. —  xaosflux  Talk 13:48, 30 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Any progress/idea? --Nullzero (talk) 03:54, 4 March 2015 (UTC)
 * I've been doing some work in the sandbox, yes - but it's not ready just yet. I also think the new syntax I chose for the p._main function in the main module may not be the best, and that it might be better to use named arguments. — <span style="color: #194D00; font-family: Palatino, Times, serif">Mr. Stradivarius  ♪ talk ♪ 04:30, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Partially italicising titles without parentheses
Seems to me that The Man and The Journey should be italicised in the The Man and The Journey article, but "and" shouldn't be. Is there a way to do this? Popcornduff (talk) 19:22, 6 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Not with this one. I personally believe that Italic title is a very useless template.--Mishae (talk) 01:23, 16 February 2015 (UTC)
 * The Man and The Journey does it with . The point of Italic title is for a template to automatically italicise and that works well for hundreds of thousands of uses so it's far from useless. There is no way a template can guess on its own that "and" shouldn't be italicised in The Man and The Journey. If you could specify it with a parameter then you may as well use DISPLAYTITLE directly. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:13, 16 February 2015 (UTC)
 * I think we were talking about two different templates.  is a very useful one, but italic title in taxons is not. For the past 4-5 years I was trying to figure out why should it be used in taxons if the title there is already italicized. I came up with the filling that with or without it, the title remains italicized.--Mishae (talk) 23:46, 16 February 2015 (UTC)
 * We do have a Template:DISPLAYTITLE but  with a colon is a magic word listed at mw:Help:Magic words. italic title works by using  . Some infoboxes automatically italicise the title in some or all cases, see for example Template:Taxobox. And guess what: They do it by calling italic title, because that's a practical template. Most of the around 600000 pages using italic title probably do it via an infobox. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:02, 17 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Guess what: In my case it doesn't work that way. And guess what else: Its only English and Vietnamese Wikipedias that use this template, others I checked don't. So your 600000 is only English and Vietnamese pages. Lol.--Mishae (talk) 02:30, 17 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Templates cannot be transcluded on other wikis. 600000 is for English only but Template:Italic title shows many languages have a similar template. I'm not sure what you mean about useless for taxons. Can you give an example of a page with a problem you want fixed? PrimeHunter (talk) 03:02, 17 February 2015 (UTC)
 * For example Chicken article doesn't use Italic title template, and yet everything in taxobox is italicized. Same thing goes with all of the articles on farm animals and monkeys. I don't have a problem, I just don't see the point in it. If the taxobox already have  in its genus and species I don't see a point of using it.--Mishae (talk) 03:43, 17 February 2015 (UTC)
 * I tried to explain this to you a while ago but clearly failed. italic title does not italicize words within the body of the article or the taxobox. It only italicizes the article's title - the part at the very top. It wouldn't be used on the chicken article because we don't want the title to be italicized. It is used on species and genus articles titled at their scientific name, however, where the taxobox's italicization parameters (e.g. pagename = genus or binomial input and the  parameter is absent) aren't met, often because there's a reference included in   or the name parameter has a vernacular name displayed. I assure you that it is quite useful on these kinds of articles about taxa. Rkitko (talk) 04:06, 17 February 2015 (UTC)
 * That's exactly why I am saying that its useless. You see, article's title is already italicized without that template.--Mishae (talk) 05:03, 17 February 2015 (UTC)
 * The article's title is usually italicised already because that template is used. It's just used by an infobox template in most cases and not by an editor adding  directly to the article. For example, Taxobox uses Taxobox name which has   in its code as you can see by clicking "[//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Taxobox_name&action=edit View source]". If italic title was deleted then hundreds of thousands of page names would suddenly lose their italics. And there are also many articles which do add the template directly and not via an infobox, for example articles which don't have an infobox at all. I get the impression your definition of "useless" is "I don't understand how it's used". Trust us, it's not useless. PrimeHunter (talk) 05:23, 17 February 2015 (UTC)
 * No. What I am saying is that it is useless with taxons because the articles title is already italicized. If as you say it is used by an infobox template in most cases and not by an editor adding it, then that proves its uselessness because the article title is already italicized and so is the taxobox even without that template. Can you give me an example of an article that uses that template instead of taxobox? I honestly haven't seen any, but I guess its because Wikipedia is huge.--Mishae (talk) 06:12, 17 February 2015 (UTC)
 * An American in Paris. -- Red rose64 (talk) 13:27, 17 February 2015 (UTC)
 * It's not useless. There are several situations in which the italicization of the article's title won't work with the Taxobox. The Taxobox will only italicize an article title (by use of italic title as PrimeHunter noted) if: 1) the page name = the genus or binomial parameter text and 2) the name parameter is empty. Often, the name parameter will contain a vernacular name and the article's title won't be italicized unless you add italic title to it or remove the name. Other times, such as with Lilium philippinense, there's a reference given within the binomial parameter, so the Taxobox code doesn't recognize page name = binomial parameter because of all that extra reference text and thus doesn't italicize it. That article would not have an italicized title if not for the presence of italic title. Here's a version of that article where I removed italic title -- note that the title is no longer italicized. This is all clearly stated, much more succinctly, in the Taxobox documentation: Template:Taxobox. It's true that the template has been placed on many articles where it is redundant since the Taxobox is correctly italicizing the article title -- I believe a discussion somewhere concluded it was the best option because moves or vandalism to the taxobox might disrupt the article title's italicization. On those articles where page name = genus, species, or binomial and the name parameter is unspecified, think of the presence of italic title as a back up system. Rkitko (talk) 13:30, 17 February 2015 (UTC)
 * You have an odd interpretation of useless. You apparently mean that it's useless if it doesn't make a difference to add it directly a second time to articles where it's already added indirectly (via an infobox) and already causes the page name to be italicized. The large majority of taxons have an infobox by now but if they don't then they need italic title to be added directly. And as pointed out above, they also need it sometimes even when they do have an infobox. If you want to test its usefulness then add it to Lilium kelleyanum where it's needed but currently missing. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:50, 17 February 2015 (UTC)
 * O.K. Lets use it only if there is a problem like with Lilium kelleyanum article. In such case a backup system is fine. However, for example Lilium martagon doesn't use that template, yet despite being created in 2005 and having 2 vandalic attempts in 2010 and 2012 respectively the article remained italicized. My point is, that we should use this template sparingly and only on those articles that need it. Because really, what's the chance that for example small stubs on beetles will get vandalized? Like, the odds of it is 1% comparing to much more popular articles like biographies and pop culture which are being attacked far more then a taxon. Besides, vandalism that do occur in taxons is quite different. Usually its a mistake on someone's part or a copyvio.--Mishae (talk) 18:10, 17 February 2015 (UTC)
 * As they tried explaining to you, the italic title template isn't useless at all and is used even if YOU do not notice or understand how it works. Taking your example of Lilium martagon which is in italics without using the italic title template (directly, as it does). That article is using the Taxobox template, which has in its code, the Taxobox name template, which has in its code the italic title template. Hope this clears up this issue for you.--Gonnym (talk) 17:40, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

Doesn't italicize an initial apostrophe
A minor limitation: The template doesn't currently italicize an initial or ending apostrophe. Compare '47 (magazine) [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=%2747_%28magazine%29&oldid=673497357 before] and [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=%2747_%28magazine%29&oldid=673499928 after] a fix with. nowiki was used to avoid clashes of apostrophes. Other of the articles at Special:PrefixIndex/' has the issue, for example 'Round Midnight (Kenny Burrell album). If there is both an initial and ending apostrophe (this appears very rare except for redirects) then nothing is italicized. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:14, 28 July 2015 (UTC)
 * This should be fixable since I believe we can use HTML in DISPLAYTITLE. Using <i ></i> instead of  for marking these things in italics would fix it probably. --Izno (talk) 18:22, 28 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes,  also works when previewing '47 (magazine). PrimeHunter (talk) 12:49, 30 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks for fixing this. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:37, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

Resolve bug for pages which have an apostrophe as lead character
Per this discussion, I made this change to the sandbox. It resolved the bug as expected (tested on '47 (magazine)). (It could also use mw.html but I didn't see a need for that here since the is not complex.) --Izno (talk) 17:44, 30 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes check.svg Done Alakzi (talk) 17:58, 30 July 2015 (UTC)

Poor formatting outside mainspace
In talk namespaces with a space, Italic title displays an underscore. On subpages the whole title is italicised. This gives poor formatting on many pages, for example AfC pages where Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Chulo Magazine displays as Wikipedia_talk:Articles for creation/Chulo Magazine. Maybe italic title should simply be ignored in some namespaces. PrimeHunter (talk) 04:12, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

Bug: Template talk → Template_talk
I have added italic title here: and now the title of this page is template_talk:. It should not add the _ Christian75 (talk) 12:05, 30 July 2014 (UTC)
 * I can't see a need to italicise the title of a template or module talk page. However templates are often transcluded on them for discussion purposes. Could this feature be disabled on these namespaces? (Or alternatively, on all namespaces except mainspace?) &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:20, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

I see this issue has been reported several times in the past. (Merged thread with User:PrimeHunter's.) Pinging module creator Mr. Stradivarius to see if these namespaces can be excluded by default. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:30, 19 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Fix the ping User:Mr. Stradivarius, as he doesn't seem to be notable enough for his own article yet ;) As a stopgap measure, we could at least stop the module putting in these incorrect underscores. Regards &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:31, 19 April 2016 (UTC)
 * This was a simple fix, and I've now implemented it. Thanks for letting me know about it. — <span style="color: #194D00; font-family: Palatino, Times, serif">Mr. Stradivarius  ♪ talk ♪ 23:07, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

Shortcuts of this template
The shortcuts Template:Italic and Template:Italics are currently being discussed at Redirects for discussion. Uanfala (talk) 00:53, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

Italics only in disambiguation
I suggest an optional parameter like  to only apply italics to a disambiguation, i.e. inside ending parentheses if there are any. It would for example be useful for television episodes like Epic Fail (House) and fictional characters like John Black (Days of Our Lives). Such cases currently use DISPLAYTITLE directly but a recent feature adds an ugly red warning if a DISPLAYTITLE doesn't match the page name due to a move or whatever ([//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=John_Black_%28Days_of_Our_Lives%29&oldid=719915029 example with our/OUR]). A template would be simpler and more reliable. A new template like italic dab would be even simpler. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:57, 24 May 2016 (UTC)
 * The red warning is only shown in preview now after a software change. Another idea would be a parameter to specify a substring to italicize, for example to display List of Numbers episodes (season 5) as "List of Numbers episodes (season 5)". A hard coded DISPLAYTITLE is always broken when a page is moved or the code is reused on a similar article. This feature would keep it working in many cases. If the string is not found then the template could add a maintenance category like Category:Pages using italic title with no matching string. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:52, 14 June 2016 (UTC)
 * comments? -- Edgars2007  (talk/contribs) 16:16, 7 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Might there be a situation where the title and the dab are both italicised, but not the parentheses? (i.e. . If so, I think we might want to consider two parameters, title for the title and dab for the dab, both of which can be set to   or  . (Of course, if they are both "no", there's no need to use DISPLAYTITLE in the first place.) — <span style="color: #194D00; font-family: Palatino, Times, serif">Mr. Stradivarius  ♪ talk ♪ 23:29, 7 July 2016 (UTC)
 * I have never come across it and needed some searching to find an example where it could be used: Union (Star Wars). It's so rare that I don't think it matters whether DISPLAYTITLE must be used directly. I have fixed numerous articles in Category:Pages with disallowed DISPLAYTITLE modifications where only the disambiguation or only another substring should be italicised. There have been a few cases like Henry IV, Part I and Part II (film series) where two substrings had to be italicised. Using DISPLAYTITLE in these rare cases is fine. If both a title and dab parameter are available then I would want the default for title to be no when dab is yes, but the default for title is yes when there are no parameters, so such a title parameter could be confusing. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:46, 8 July 2016 (UTC)
 * That sounds fair enough to me - I agree that leaving rare cases to DISPLAYTITLE would be a good idea. I'm not so keen on dab as a parameter name for what you are suggesting, though, as to me it would indicate that both the title and the dab text would be italicised. How about something like dabonly? — <span style="color: #194D00; font-family: Palatino, Times, serif">Mr. Stradivarius  ♪ talk ♪ 01:48, 8 July 2016 (UTC)
 * dabonly sounds fine. Do you support the suggested string parameter to specify the italicised substring? Another name with the same functionality would be OK. It would enable nearly all cases that aren't covered by the yes parameters. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:34, 8 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes, the string parameter sounds like a good idea. I'll have a go at implementing both of those in the sandbox now. — <span style="color: #194D00; font-family: Palatino, Times, serif">Mr. Stradivarius  ♪ talk ♪ 02:40, 8 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Great! I will be away for 8 hours and don't know Lua anyway. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:51, 8 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Ok, the sandbox is updated and italic dab has been created. Still need to write the docs for it, but that will have to wait until tomorrow. — <span style="color: #194D00; font-family: Palatino, Times, serif">Mr. Stradivarius  ♪ talk ♪ 13:37, 8 July 2016 (UTC)
 * The docs are now all updated, and the new module is up live. — <span style="color: #194D00; font-family: Palatino, Times, serif">Mr. Stradivarius  ♪ talk ♪ 00:57, 13 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks a lot! I have started using it.[//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions/PrimeHunter&offset=201607130143&limit=10&target=PrimeHunter] PrimeHunter (talk) 01:48, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

Edit request: Replace with
is deprecated. Please replace it with:

It doesn't need proteced; "protection levels are automatically sensed, described and categorized." and the current template has "Fully protected" twice. Christian75 (talk) 17:20, 11 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes check.svg Done —&thinsp;JJMC89&thinsp; (T·C) 20:14, 11 March 2017 (UTC)

Please consider removing space
Hi, could someone with permissions to edit this template please consider removing a space that is transcluded onto every page with this template? This causes the text in the lead section/lede to start one line lower compared to other pages. Thanks. --Qwerty Binary (talk) 07:41, 3 October 2016 (UTC)
 * There isn't a space in the template. Please give example where you are seeing such behaviour. -- Red rose64 (talk) 07:47, 3 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Oh, ok. Something seems to be playing up on, for instance, Drudge Report. --Qwerty Binary (talk) 08:09, 3 October 2016 (UTC)
 * The problem is that when the two templates at the top of the page are expanded, they leave a blank line, which causes the MediaWiki software to insert the extra space at the top. If I take the wikitext from the top of Drudge Report:


 * And expand it using Special:ExpandTemplates, I get this:

tag directly before italic title. (There is some documentation about the latter technique at WP:NOWIKI.) Hope this helps. — <span style="color: #194D00; font-family: Palatino, Times, serif">Mr. Stradivarius  ♪ talk ♪ 08:53, 3 October 2016 (UTC)
 * The first approach seems simplest, which I have now done. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:59, 3 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks! --Qwerty Binary (talk) 09:07, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

Talking for a Template used in 759,000+ pages about how to trick the MediaWiki parser is not so productive. The problem will persist since the Template may be used later by tens or hundreds of other templates or modules included (later) in many of these 759,000+ pages. (ok I exaggerate a little -about hundreds- but I think I still have a point here...) --Xoristzatziki (talk) 04:56, 25 July 2017 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 4 January 2018
Please remove the italics from the title of the article Ultimate Marvel. Ultimate Marvel is not the name of a specific publication, but is an imprint, and imprints are not italicized. Nightscream (talk) 02:03, 4 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: this is the talk page for discussing improvements to the template . If possible, please make your request at the talk page for the article concerned. If you cannot edit the article's talk page, you can instead make your request at Requests for page protection. —&thinsp;JJMC89&thinsp; (T·C) 02:18, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 4 September 2018
Please remove this from the article ResurrXion. That name refers to a relaunch of comic book series, and is NOT the name of any particular book. It therefore should not be italicized. Nightscream (talk) 03:33, 4 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: this is the talk page for discussing improvements to the template . Please make your request at the talk page for the article concerned. —&thinsp;JJMC89&thinsp; (T·C) 03:48, 4 September 2018 (UTC)

how the hell do you remove italic title?
Why is is there no obvious way to remove the italic title once it has been installed? This article about author Mark Tavener is in incorrectly displaying in italics and I cannot fix it. <b style="color: #0066cc;">—Мандичка</b><b style="color: #6600cc;">YO</b> 😜 20:44, 12 February 2019 (UTC)
 * The problems at Mark Tavener were because Infobox media franchise automatically makes article titles italic, and your DISPLAYTITLE use was being overridden by them, as the last use of DISPLAYTITLE in an article takes precedence. I've fixed it for you. Best — <span style="color: #194D00; font-family: Palatino, Times, serif">Mr. Stradivarius  ♪ talk ♪ 22:16, 12 February 2019 (UTC)
 * This is documented at the top of Template:Infobox media franchise. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 23:09, 12 February 2019 (UTC)
 * The override attempt with DISPLAYTITLE [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mark_Tavener&diff=next&oldid=883024700] displayed MediaWiki:Duplicate-displaytitle. Maybe it should add a help link to a page explaining that the cause is often an infobox which adds italics by default but usually has a parameter to disable it. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:09, 13 February 2019 (UTC)

Needs some additional features
First, needs to be support string2 and perhaps string3. Second, it is always taking the last occurrence of the string as the one to italicize, and this may not be correct. For example, it is not possible with this template and module to correctly italicize a title like "WP:In versus of in article titles", which will come out as "WP:In versus of in article titles", which is doubly wrong. One like "WP:in, of, and from in article titles" is an example that would use three italicized parameters. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:59, 18 May 2018 (UTC)
 * The template uses DISPLAYTITLE. Just use it directly in such cases, e.g. . It's usually easier than it would be to call Italic title with multiple parameters, and separate italic strings are so rare you had to make up an example (WP:In versus of in article titles is red). I have only seen it once or twice and don't recall ever seeing an italic string occur twice. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:15, 18 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I think it's worth doing as very few contributors are familiar with . I just ran into this issue myself (at Pars destruens and pars construens) and would have been completely stuck were it not for finding this thread. 142.160.89.97 (talk) 05:32, 9 June 2019 (UTC)
 * I still think DISPLAYTITLE is better for complicated cases. I have mentioned it in the documentation.[//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Italic_title/doc&diff=901094670&oldid=878564357] PrimeHunter (talk) 17:34, 9 June 2019 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 13 August 2019
Australian Museums and Galleries Association somehow got an italicised title after a page move, I think. I can't work out how to undo this, so am hoping that this is the place to ask! Laterthanyouthink (talk) 03:54, 13 August 2019 (UTC) Laterthanyouthink (talk) 03:54, 13 August 2019 (UTC)
 * There is nothing to do here. Adding no to infobox magazine is the fix for that article. —&thinsp;JJMC89&thinsp; (T·C) 04:30, 13 August 2019 (UTC)

Related TfD
Template:Lower case first letter italic title has been nominated for deletion. Comments are welcome in the TFD. – Uanfala (talk) 18:00, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

Updating the documentation
I've updated this outdated documentation that still told editors that the template should be placed "normally at the very top" of the article. That was correct originally, but has not been accurate since the introduction of short descriptions to all articles. MOS:ORDER explicitly puts the short description template, where it exists, right at the top. Admittedly, the MOS does not consider Italic title to be important enough to state explicitly where that should go, but other (recent) documentation makes it very clear that now short description always takes first position: see for example the guidance at Short_description and the template documentation at Template:Short description which says "at the very top of the article, above everything else". MichaelMaggs (talk) 11:51, 10 April 2021 (UTC)