Wikipedia:Long titles

This guideline is an effort to bring unity to the style of titles on the English Wikipedia. It conforms to the Chicago Manual of Style, 14th ed., 15.252 and 7.132 and the 2003 Oxford Style Manual, p.512. It should be appended to MOS:TITLE, where it would read as the following:

Long titles
Works with long titles need not continuously use the full title in articles and links if a commonly-used shorter title may be used. Best practices suggest that the full title should appear at least once in the article about the work with spelling, punctuation, and capitalization intact.

For example, "The Tragedy of Cymbeline, King of Britain" may be shortened to "Cymbeline" (In this case, italics should be sufficient to differentiate between the character and the work). For works with especially long titles such as the 69-word full title of Robinson Crusoe, it may be better not to have the full title in the first sentence. If, however, the shortened title is used before the full title, this fact should be noted.

Subtitles
Titles of works which are published a subtitle should treat the subtitle and any conjunctions as part of a long title. This is especially true of works where the subtitle is not intended to be considered independently of the main title (e.g. Candide) or where the subtitle is intended as a play on the subtitling phenomenon (e.g. Dr. Strangelove). The main title may still be used as a shortened version of the full title.


 * For example, the article Through the Looking-Glass might begin with either


 * Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There is a book by Lewis Caroll.
 * Through the Looking-Glass is a book by Lewis Caroll.


 * It should not begin


 * Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There is a book by Lewis Caroll.


 * but subsequently may refer to the book like the following:


 * The book Through the Looking-Glass begins with a kitten.
 * The full title of the book is Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There.

In works where the title was not originally published with a subtitle, the title and subtitle should be considered as separate entities, unless a specific printing of the book is being referenced.


 * For example:


 * Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass
 * The Book of Going Forth by Day, or The Book of the Dead
 * An edition of the book printed on 30 February 1900 incorrectly gave the title as The Book of Going Forth by Day, and through the Looking-Glass.


 * rather than


 * Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass
 * The Book of Going Forth by Day, or The Book of the Dead