Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2021 April 13

= April 13 =

Do other Europe languages mark work titles by use of italic format?
Do some other Europe languages (i.e. Spanish, French, Portuguese, German and Italian) italic work titles like the English lanugage? I heard that the German language uses „der Spiegel“ instead of italic text. -- Lopullinen 18:43, 13 April 2021 (UTC)
 * French uses italics for names of books, newspapers and the like. Xuxl (talk) 19:05, 13 April 2021 (UTC)


 * For German there is no fixed rule. Often a title is not typographically distinguished from the surrounding text, like here in footnote 277 "Die Leiden des jungen Werthers". Or when quotation marks are used, they may be inward-pointing guillemets, like the single ones seen in the same book in footnote 219. (For the spectrum of choices, see the lines for German in .) When books were commonly typeset in Fraktur, italics were not an option, as the typeface did not have an italic style. In recent years, italics has become more common; for instance, this web page and also this one (and other pages on these two sites) present book titles in italics. --Lambiam 20:34, 13 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Use of italics in titles is customary in Norwegian, Swedish and Danish and officially recommended at least in the first two. Also in Greek italics are commonly used. --T*U (talk) 21:43, 13 April 2021 (UTC)


 * I was going to question your premise, until I realised you meant "work titles" to mean the titles of works (War and Peace, etc), not the names of employment positions (Chief Assistant to the Assistant Chief, etc). --  Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  22:40, 13 April 2021 (UTC)
 * At least you didn't assume it meant working titles, as I did at first! --184.147.181.129 (talk) 22:53, 13 April 2021 (UTC)


 * Also, "italicize" is more common than "italic" as a verb... AnonMoos (talk) 23:04, 13 April 2021 (UTC)


 * Spanish italicises titles of works, whenever the medium has italic types available (otherwise quotation marks may be used). Guerra y paz, Lost in translation, etc. Notice that, unlike English, Spanish prescribes caps for only the first word in the title (though this rule is frequently ignored in practice, with all words capitalized). Pallida  Mors  00:48, 14 April 2021 (UTC)


 * Simple use of Wikipedia shows that various languages use italics for this. I can guess that Madame Bovary is pretty well known outside the French- and English-speaking pedias. So I go there, click on "Suomi", and find that Rouva Bovary says for example "Rouva Bovaryn julkaisu 1857 aiheutti skandaalin ja sitä syytettiin siveettömyydestä", from which I can infer that yes, Finnish can use italics for this purpose. And the same for Turkish, etc etc. -- Hoary (talk) 01:15, 14 April 2021 (UTC)
 * The rules used in other-language Wikipedias may not be indicative for the general use in these languages. In Turkish newspaper obituaries of Adalet Ağaoğlu, who died last year, the titles of her novels can be seen in roman type between quotation marks or not distinguished typographically in any way. --Lambiam 06:39, 14 April 2021 (UTC)
 * I agree that other Wikis should not be used as evidence here. Articles in other languages are often at least partly translated from or at least based on the English article, and the use of a specific typographical style may be "contamination" from English. This is underlined by the fact that many Wikipedia articles in other languages also have adopted the English style of using "Title Case" (with caps in each word), even if this is not commonly used in other langauges. --T*U (talk) 07:29, 14 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Be that as it may, usage can eventually become established to a point where it doesn't really matter if it came from Wikipedia or not. Especially in small countries, Wikipedia is a powerful tool when it comes to language change, for good or for bad. --Theurgist (talk) 23:47, 17 April 2021 (UTC)