Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Text formatting/Archive 5

Website italicisation
I have been engaged in slightly parallel discussions about italicisation of websites in general at CS1 talk, and on my talk page about the BBC News website in particular. There are two issues at hand:
 * 1) the change to CS1, and the creation of website as an alias of work making a de facto italicisation of any website that is input as data into the parameter.
 * 2) I have been confronted on my talk page about my de-italicising BBC News in citations.

In neither case am I'm not going to rehash the arguments, as anyone interested can read for themselves before commenting. I've asked the question here before and never received an definitive response. Indeed, the discussion at this level is rather limited. Nevertheless, I would appreciate some views. --  Ohc  ¡digame! 05:25, 18 January 2014 (UTC)


 * On the first point, I’m in general agreement with the notion of equating websites to major works–like books, journals, albums, &c., presented in italics (and web-page titles to those of short works: articles, stories, poems, songs, &c., in quotes). On the second point, I’d say the publisher is the BBC, and indeed one might quibble that the site itself appears to be called just BBC, BBC News being in a directory … I don‘t suppose this is the best place to discuss whether or not a large department without its own domain name is a “website“ … Anyway, for example today’s top news story is on a page titled “BBC News - Obama orders curbs on NSA data use”, which is how I’d cite it.—Odysseus 1 4 7  9  08:16, 18 January 2014 (UTC)


 * On the first point, I think the names of websites that are just websites, and not news sources or books, should not be italicised. I agree with Ohc that there should not be a website parameter as well as a work parameter. This is a bit similar to the tiresome situation with publisher and work in "cite news", where publisher is almost always redundant and causes confusion when editors think they have to fill it in because it's there.
 * On the second point, WP:ITALICS says "Online magazines, newspapers, and news sites with original content should generally be italicized (Salon.com or The Huffington Post)". BBC News (when by that we mean the website http://www.bbc.co.uk/news, which used to be called "BBC News Online" but is now just called BBC News) is a "news site with original content" and I cannot see any case for not italicising it if we are going to italicise things like The Huffington Post. I would say the same about CNN.com, NBC News, etc. when we specifically mean their news websites rather than their broadcasting outlets. -- Alarics (talk) 08:56, 18 January 2014 (UTC)


 * I don't understand why people have any difficulty with this. BBC is a , a business entity that publishes (and it broadcasts like NBC does, and so on), just like Houghton Mifflin publishes books, and Metropolis Records publishes CDs and vinyl music releases.  It is not a  , and it is more obviously not an  .  The news site BBC produces, titled by them BBC News just like their TV and radio news shows, in a big logo right there for us to see, with "BBC" aligned vertically over the word "News", is the name of a publication, a  , just like War and Peace is the name of a novel, and Breaking Bad is the name of a TV show, and The Joshua Tree is the name of pop album, all also italicized as  s.  BBC News is not a  , nor an   of course.  In this particular case, BBC News also happens to be the name of an operational division of the BBC corporation, responsible for producing the online, TV and radio BBC News publications/shows, but this is irrelevant for citation purposes; it would not be italicized in that context, any more than we'd italicize "Marketing Department".  Next, "Putin calls Obama to discuss Ukraine" is an article (a  ) at the   BBC News, by the   BBC. The style of that title we would normalize to "Putin Calls Obama to Discuss Ukraine" in source citations here, BTW.  It is a   just like a song on an album, a chapter in a book, a named segment on a news broadcast, an episode of a TV show.  It is not a   by itself, nor is it, obviously, a   or an  .  Authors are individual people, or committees/working groups, or often unidentified (in such case it is good to use   so no one thinks the author was left off by accident and wastes time looking for it.  The   is occasionally the same as the hostname of the site, in the  , but most often that assumption is false; Salon is often called Salon.com, but its actual title really is Salon. This is really simple.  I'm perpetually mystified by the number of times I run into people misusing the   parameter to list the  , as if they can't tell the difference between Apple Records and The Magical Mystery Tour. There are quite literally thousands of cases of this particular error all over Wikipedia. It's maddening.  —  SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ⚞(Ʌⱷ҅̆⚲͜ⱷ^)≼  05:16, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

Italics for names of climbing routes
MOS does not say whether or not climbing routes should be italicised. WikiProject Climbing/Article Guidelines#Routes says "Route names should be italicized". One editor had suggested (somewhat weakly) in 2009 that route names should be italicized. Another editor questioned this in 2010 and got no response. Should they be italicised? I'm surprised to see it myself. Nurg (talk) 00:31, 2 October 2013 (UTC)
 * IMO they shouldn't, and it seems that most aren't. I don't think WikiProject guidelines are enough – WP:ITALICS ought to be amended if this should ever go up. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 06:46, 2 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Wikiprojects' pseudo-guidelines never trump broader consensus, as at MOS. This is matter of policy at WP:LOCALCONSENSUS.  Wikiprojects are not magical fiefdoms with their own rules; they are simply pages at which editors agree to coordinate their collaborative editing on particular topics.  If editors at WP:CLIMBING want to make a special case for italicization of climbing routes, they need to gain consensus at WT:MOS for it.  This would be a much broader discussion that they might realize, since it will also implies rules for hiking and biking trails, among other things.  I'd bet good money that the consensus will be that it's yet another case of the WP:Specialist style fallacy, in which devotees of some particular area insist on trying to impose on a general encyclopedia some precious style only used in their specialist publications, that makes no sense to anyone outside their club. MOS bends over backwards to accommodate quirks of various fields, but  where they do not violate the principle of least astonishment for the largest number of users (i.e. everyone else who speaks English, vs. a tiny minority of specialists).  —  SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ⚞(Ʌⱷ҅̆⚲͜ⱷ^)≼  05:27, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

Italicization of self-refs
The wording at Manual of Style/Text formatting reading:

appears to not represent consensus at all. In fact, it flies in the face of over a decade of consistently italicizing such WP self-references and other instructions to the reader/editor, both in mainspace and in policyspace. This very MOS subpage itself uses the italicization convention! See, e.g., MOS:TEXT:

It is correct that the practice, favored in some academic journals, of italicizing the "see" or "see also" part is eschewed on Wikipedia, and that's an important and valid thing to note.

We should clarify this entire section, and give examples:


 * Correct: At this time France possessed the largest population in Europe (see Demographics of France). – italicization of entire self-ref, including the parentheses (round brackets)
 * Incorrect: At this time France possessed the largest population in Europe (see Demographics of France). – no italics
 * Incorrect: At this time France possessed the largest population in Europe (see Demographics of France). – italicization of "see" by itself

At any rate, the idea that the first of these is suddenly incorrect on Wikipedia is total nonsense. It's how literally hundreds of thousands of such cross-references have been done, surely the vast majority of them. I regularly correct non-italicized ones to italicized, and I don't recall anyone ever, even once, reverting me on that. —  SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ⚞(Ʌⱷ҅̆⚲͜ⱷ^)≼  04:35, 29 March 2014 (UTC)
 * PS: all of the examples of in-article selfrefs like this given at MOS:SELFREF are italicized.  —  SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ⚞(Ʌⱷ҅̆⚲͜ⱷ^)≼  07:03, 29 March 2014 (UTC)
 * PPS: Every single one of the large number of templates for such self-refs (,, etc., etc.) auto-italicize it all.  —  SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ⚞(Ʌⱷ҅̆⚲͜ⱷ^)≼  07:53, 29 March 2014 (UTC)
 * PPPS: List of horse breeds is in severe need of cleanup to fix the "see Criollo horse"-style half-itacization; it has over a hundred misusages in it.  —  SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ⚞(Ʌⱷ҅̆⚲͜ⱷ^)≼  08:32, 29 March 2014 (UTC)
 * After over a month and a half of no objections, and my continued observation that the vast majority of WP pages, bot in and out of mainspace, italicize such "(See whatever...)" parentheticals, I've removed the instruction to not italicize them, as it clearly does not reflect consensus, and I have explained why they're italicized, etc., at the section in question. PS: Note that Hatnote has used this italicization since its inception in 2004, and WP:HATNOTE calls for it explicitly; there is no reason to think that a hatnote should be de-italicized simply because it's been rendered inline instead of as its own .  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  11:36, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

Centralizing MOS material on titles of works
Please see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Titles for efforts to clean up the confusingly scattered nature of our advice on titles of works, including at this page. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  12:19, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

Italics for named automobiles?
Under "Named vehicles", MOS:ITALIC explicitly states that italics should be used for ship names and trains and locomotives. But what about named automobiles? Currently there's a great deal of inconsistency regarding the use of italics in named automobile articles. For example (the first 5 named automobile articles I thought of): I think it be helpful if MOS:ITALIC gave some guidance in this matter. Thanks. DH85868993 (talk) 11:28, 29 January 2014 (UTC)
 * General Lee (car): italics are used for the article title, the lead, the infobox, and most occurrences throughout the article
 * FAB 1: italics are used for most occurrences throughout the article, but not for the lead, the article title or the infobox
 * Popemobile: italics are used in the lead and one image caption but not the article title or throughout the article
 * Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (car): italics are used for the article title but nowhere else
 * Goldenrod (car): Italics are used for most occurrences throughout the article but not the lead


 * No evidence of italicization of land vehicles ("automobiles" is rather too limiting) in most reliable sources. It seems be limited to water vessels and (by analogy) to air- and spacecraft, though it's not as consistently applied to the latter two as to the former, where it borders on universal.  Agree MOS should cover these cases.  Amphibious vehicles, like the hovercraft ferries used in some places, would be treated as per boats, since they are boats that also happen to go up on land a bit.  —  SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ⚞(Ʌⱷ҅̆⚲͜ⱷ^)≼  04:42, 29 March 2014 (UTC)
 * More really obvious carticles:
 * Batmobile – no italics anywhere
 * Knight Industries Two Thousand (KITT) at Knight Rider (1982 TV series) and various associated articles – no italics anywhere
 * Herbie and all associated film/TV articles – no italics anywhere except in titles of works
 * Wonderbug – no italics anywhere except in titles of works
 * Cars (film) and related articles – none of the anthropomorphized car characters' names are italicized
 * It may well be worth looking through edit histories of the previously mentioned articles that do show some italicization, and see if it's the same editor going around italicizing them. It seems weird to me that the individually named land vehicles best known in popular culture are not italicized by anyone, anywhere, as I just demonstrated, yet 5 cases suddenly turn up, on articles much less likely to be watchlisted (seriously, why does General Lee (car) exist as a separate article?), where italics are being used to differing degrees of consistency.
 * —  SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ⚞(Ʌⱷ҅̆⚲͜ⱷ^)≼  17:46, 29 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Since the above discussion, MOS:ITALIC has been substantially revised, and now includes the text:
 * The vessels convention does not apply to smaller conveyances such as cars, trucks, and buses.
 * DH85868993 (talk) 03:09, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

Minimum font size
Regarding and the corresponding one at MOS:ACCESS, please see Wikipedia talk:Signatures, and post comments there. -- Red rose64 (talk) 20:25, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

How to add two apostrophes for all italicized words in Word?
Hi everyone!

I wrote a text in Word that include a lot of italic words. I would like to copy and paste this (huge) text into a Wikipedia articles. When formatting my text to fit to the Wikipedia style, I really don't want to add the double quotes for italic words manually. Is there by any chance a way to add a double apostrophe before and after all italicized words in Word, so that I can copy and paste my text directly to Wikipedia? Many thanks in advance for your help.--Christophe Hendrickx (talk) 13:08, 13 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Have a look at Help:WordToWiki and Tools/Editing tools. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 13:16, 13 July 2014 (UTC)
 * If those do not provide the desired result, WP:RD/C is a good place to ask. -- Red rose64 (talk) 13:43, 13 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Many thanks for your swift replies Michael and Redrose, I did get what I wanted through WordtoWiki and the "Microsoft Office Word Add-in For MediaWiki". I actually found the old fashion way with Word actually, which consists of entering in the Find What control: (<*>) with italic as a format, and in Replace With control "^&", without forgetting to check the Use Wildcards option. That was tough to find, and the WediaWiki Add-in is an easier way indeed. I now need to find a way to cite sources with Zotero reference that I used in my text, in Word. The only technique I could find is this one: []. This will still take a lot of time to do with the large number of references that I have in my text though. But thanks for your help already, both you! Regards,--Christophe Hendrickx (talk) 15:15, 13 July 2014 (UTC)

Latin incipits
See discussion here: WT:AT --Francis Schonken (talk) 02:23, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

Italicization of quotations again
I've opened an RfC at Template talk:Tq that could affect the unwanted incidence of italicization of quotations simply because they're quotations. See also Template talk:Qq for some related discussion. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  11:39, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

Succession box use of bold
Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Succession Box Standardization proposes removal of bold from succession boxes as that bold is contrary to MOS:BOLD. Comments on that page are welcome. One obvious questions is: should we consider updating MOS:BOLD to include use of bold in succession/nav/info boxes? (I think not, but one must ask the question.) Mitch Ames (talk) 06:02, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

Invitation to comment on VP proposal: Establish WT:MoS as the official site for style Q&A on Wikipedia
There is a proposal at the Village Pump that WT:MoS be established as Wikipedia's official page for style Q&A. This would involve actively guiding editors with style questions to WT:MoS and away from other pages, such as this one. Participation is welcome. Darkfrog24 (talk) 20:22, 17 May 2015 (UTC)

Use templates and HTML markup instead of wiki markup?
Why do the sections on boldface and italic advocate using templates and HTML code instead of wiki markup? I understood that Wikipedia favors use of wiki markup and discourages use of HTML code. Using templates makes editing even more complex for typical people who would like to edit Wikipedia.—Finell 23:42, 23 May 2015 (UTC)


 * Could you point to the sections/paragraphs you object to? I noticed that you replaced the suggested coding of emphasised text,, with wikimarkup for italics, . I agree with the reasoning at Template:Em/doc and suggest you restore the previous guidance. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 03:18, 24 May 2015 (UTC)


 * Template documentation is neither policy nor even a guideline; it is written by the template's author(s), who want to justify their template. MediaWiki wiki markup, like the MediaWiki application, was designed to be used on Wikipedia. The buttons above standard Wikipedia edit box apply wiki markup for bold and italic. Tutorial/Formatting instructs editors to use wiki markup for bold, italic, and bold italic. Contributing to Wikipedia, based on communal consensus, instructs editors to use wiki markup for these attributes. So does the first line of Help:Cheatsheet. None of these sources even mentions using templates instead of the most basic wiki markup. Using templates in place of wiki markup is a needless complication. Complication is the main reason that most new editors quickly give up editing Wikipedia—and that is a serious problem for the project. I edit Wikipedia fairly often, and have done so for many years. I cannot remember ever seeing templates used for italic or boldface.—Finell 07:55, 24 May 2015 (UTC)


 * Could you point to the sections/paragraphs you object to? Where are templates advocated to create bold or italic output? Note that, , are not templates to achieve italics – they have a special meaning although they might, or might not, render text in italics. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 11:27, 24 May 2015 (UTC)


 * Before I changed it, § 2.2 ("Emphasis") said to use HTML markup  or Template:em. However, § 1.4, which said to use italic rather than boldface for emphasis, showed only wiki markup. However, § 2.2 ("Emphasis") in the main MOS said to use italic sparingly for emphasis, with no mention of using a template or HTML. On this page, § 1 ("Boldface") says that boldface "is usually created by surrounding the text to be boldfaced with triple apostrophes: , but can also be done with the   HTML element." No reason exists for the MOS to mention HTML as an alternative to wiki markup.


 * WP:MOS, like every published style guide, prescribes specific uses of italic, boldface, and small caps. Neither WP:MOS nor any other published style guide prescribes typeface conventions that distinguish among multiple levels of emphasis. You can immediately spot text created using MS Word's styles for subtle emphasis, emphasis, intense emphasis, and strong, each with its own combination of italic and bold and, by default, color(!)—and you immediately know that whoever did this has no idea what a published document should look like.—Finell 02:03, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

Revisiting MOS:ITALICS
As someone brought up on my talk page, our examples, esprit de corps and praetor, of what to italicize when it comes to foreign borrowings are both actually italicized at each of their respective articles! D'oh. I bet that a review of all major style guides that happen to include praetor or comparably familiar ancient Roman titles, like legatus, lictor and quaestor (i.e. less familar than centurion, consul, and prefect, but much more so that obscure ones like cubicularius, praefectus urbi and signiferi), will not italicize them, nor other familiar ones in other languages (czar/tsar, caliph, kaiser, etc., vs. Feldwebel, shàngjiàng and kuningatar). For the French phrase, in question, esprit de corps, I'd bet that a significant number of style manuals do still italicize that phrase. It's mid-way on the adoption curve. Like force majeure, éminence grise, and enfant terrible, it's not nearly as familiar as everyday terms like laissez-faire, tour de force, ménage à trois, carte blanche, cordon bleu, but much more familiar to most people in most contexts that adoptions that are almost always still italicized, like fait accompli, coup de grâce, noblesse oblige, etc. Dance and cooking terms like folie à deux and soufflé are almost never italicized any longer. A similar "adoption curve" would be easy to come up with for Spanish, German, even Japanese. We need to more clearly spell out that super-familiar, fully-assimilated things like zeitgeist, macho, chic, and samurai don't need italics (nor German capitalization of common nouns), but uncommon ones (Weltanschaaung, Sagrada Familia, objet trouvé) do, and need to better convey that uncertain cases should be based on what sources are doing (not specialist sources, which will either italicize nothing, ever, that's familiar in that field, or conversely italicize everything as a form of overcorrection and emphasis). "Sources" here means modern (e.g. last 25 years) a) style guides intended for general English language writing, b) examples of general English-language writing like usage in major newsweeklies, and c) dictionaries that do italicize some of these phrases, when uncommon, and do not when common (some dictionaries italicize no entries at all, and others probably over-italicize virtually all modern borrowings, no matter how well-assimilated they are. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  14:28, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

In a recent edit, you changed the text to say that some non-Latin scripts shouldn't be italicized. This implies that some can be italicized. As far as I know, all non-Latin scripts should not italicized, and I can't think of any exceptions, so please explain. — Eru·tuon 22:35, 16 March 2015 (UTC)


 * We have a Russian source as a reference, that's an article in a journal. The article title would be placed in quotation marks, and the journal title would be placed in italics.  That would be true whether we gave them in Cyrillic or in Latin transliteration.  — kwami (talk) 22:48, 16 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Not sure what you're saying: that journal titles in non-Latin alphabets are given in italics? If so, that is an exception relating to refs. In other situations, Cyrillic is not presented in italics, as in the intro of Fyodor Dostoyevsky or the examples throughout Russian phonology. — Eru·tuon 02:55, 17 March 2015 (UTC)
 * It's not really even an exception. Rather: You add the Cyrillic (which happens to be a title, but this rule doesn't care), and do not italicize it, being Cyrillic. But you then (under a separate rule that doesn't make exceptions) italicize it because it's a title. So, I think that "some" addition needs to be reverted. Instead add and note about "except when italicized as the title of major creative work". Simple solution.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  00:56, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Italicization of space vessels again
The discussion about whether to italicize the names of spacecraft, per MOS:TEXT, has been reopened at Village pump (miscellaneous)/Archive 48. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  16:25, 20 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks for opening this, SMcC. I think User:Philosopher got it right in the linked discussion.  I think its clear that the names of individually named spacecraft should be italicized (e.g., Eagle (Apollo 11 lunar lander), Columbia (Apollo 11 command module; also space shuttle), Challenger (space shuttle)), following the accepted precedent of italicizing individually named sea vessels (e.g., U.S.S. Enterprise) and individually named aircraft (e.g., Spirit of St. Louis).  Numbered space missions (e.g., Apollo 11, STS-124) should not be italicized when the spacecraft was given a separate name different from the numbered mission.  To my way of thinking, it is far less clear what to do about numbered space missions/spacecraft that were not individually named (e.g., Ranger 8), the key question being is "Ranger 8" a mission, a spacecraft, or both?  Perhaps someone else has already thought through this last example.  Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 16:38, 20 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Both; depends on context. "Ranger 8 passed the orbit of ..." vs. "As a Ranger 8 mission control technician, she ...".  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  01:00, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Applicability to citation styles
I propose adding the following to the "Other text formatting concerns" section:


 * Citations
 * Text formatting in citations should follow established citation styles. The formatting applied by citation templates, such as Citation Style 1 and Citation Style 2 templates, should not be adjusted. Parameters should be accurate and should not be omitted if the formatting applied by the template is not in agreement with the text formatting guidelines above.

The reason is that the formatting applied by many citation templates do not match the guidelines set forth on this page. Nonetheless, the formatting applied by many citation templates is the result of broad consensus for how citations should be formatted, non-Wikipedia guidelines (eg. MLA style), or technical reasons. This issue has been the subject of several discussions, particularly in relation to italicization of works, such as (ordered somewhat in order of depth/relevance):


 * Italicized work parameter
 * Website italicisation
 * Italicisation of websites in references
 * Consistency between work and publisher parameters in citation templates
 * Help with template: website?
 * Non-italicized news sources
 * Italics in citation references?

This is also an issue that seems to arise often at featured content reviews. There really needs to be something in the MOS to reconcile the differences between the text formatting guidelines on this page and the formatting style used by citation templates. Since most citation pages aren't part of the MOS, I think this page is a good location for such a guideline. AHeneen (talk) 21:36, 17 June 2015 (UTC)


 * Overall, I agree. We do need to allow for the fact that some external citation styles do things not conscionable under MOS normally. With externally-derived citation styles, I guess it's just a lost cause. We need to allow for the fact that some externally-derived citation styles do things not conscionable under MOS normally.  This exception would not apply to CS1/CS2 when used to generate WP's own internal citation style, which would always be normalized to MOS (or MOS tweaked to account for the citation variance). In a related thread at WT:CS1, I went into this in more detail, and I think this approach resolves all these issues:



— SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  02:32, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

A specific rewording, addressing several needs at once, might run like this:
 * Text formatting in citations should follow, consistently within an article, an established citation style or system. Options include either of Wikipedia's own template-based Citation Style 1 and Citation Style 2, and any other well-recognized citation system . The formatting applied by citation templates should not be evaded.[fn] Parameters should be accurate, and should not be omitted if the formatting applied by the template is not in agreement with the text formatting guidelines above. Those guidelines do not apply to any non-Wikipedia citation style, which should not be changed to conform to them.
 * fn. In unusual cases the default formatting may need to be adjusted to conform to some other guideline, e.g. italicization of a non-English term in a title that would otherwise not be italicized.
 * fn. In unusual cases the default formatting may need to be adjusted to conform to some other guideline, e.g. italicization of a non-English term in a title that would otherwise not be italicized.

[What footnote system is used doesn't matter, of course, or it could be done not as a footnote at all. Any way you like.]

This provides more information and links, reinforces consistency within the article, distinguishes between WP and off-WP cite styles, permits necessary adjustments, and warns against alteration of non-MOS styles in externally-derived cite styles (important because some of them are quite jarring and frequently inspire "correction", especially to remove smallcaps). — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  03:36, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

PS: See also Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Titles, on when and when not to italicize website titles. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  04:01, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Boldfacing of inline headings in lists
Please see WT:MOS. This was first raised at Village Pump, and I suggested moving it to WT:MOS. It shouldn't result in any site-wide changes, but rather document how people are already styling lists, and offer some pointers on doing it sensibly and consistently. Still, lists are basic enough to how we write articles that centralizing the discussion at the main MOS page seemed wise. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  22:43, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

MOS:BOLD and WP:ACRO for incoming redirects
See current discussion at Village pump (policy). Please comment there, not here. --Francis Schonken (talk) 09:27, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

BOLDTITLE / BOLDSYN dispute
Please see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Lead section – vying proposals for addressing when to not boldface alternative names in the lead section. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  06:39, 6 March 2016 (UTC)

Utterances and sayings
Either I've missed it, or this MOS says nothing about them. Maybe they fall under "Words as words"? Anyway, should they be italicised, quotation-marked, both or neither in articles specifically about such a saying? Example pages are The king is dead, long live the king! and Mashallah, both of which have italicised titles, so I'd say they have to be italicised. Would be nice though if the MOS mentioned this. - HyperGaruda (talk) 19:54, 31 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Why would we italicize them? When we're discussing them as utterances, they can be given in quotation marks or italicized as words as words, but they would not be otherwise, including in the topic sentence, where the boldfacing is sufficient.  Our articles like Irregardless are the model to use. Mashallahh is being italicized as a non-English. Quotation marks should logically be used for something like "long live the king!", to semantically isolate the "!" as being part of the quoted expression, or reader confusion is likely. A words-as-word analytical example might be something like: Despite the construction of the French expression, the English version is long live the king, since live the king is not idiomatic in this language.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  06:50, 6 March 2016 (UTC)

Boldface as stylisation of company name
See pmdtechnologies, where an editor with possible COI has written it as "pmdtechnologies" whenever the company name occurs throughout the article. Presumably this is the company's preferred format. I've removed bold from the article display title: should the bolding be removed in the article text? Pam D  14:34, 17 July 2015 (UTC) '' BURGER KING ''. How about "no, no, a thousand times no"? — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  07:07, 6 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes. For reference, see WP:TRADEMARK.  15:57, 17 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Agreed; following WP:TRADEMARK's MOS:TMRULES, it should be stylised as "Pmdtechnologies". &#8209;&#8209; mjgilson T 16:03, 17 July 2015 (UTC)
 * in the intro, use it once with textual explanation of "stylized as pmdtechnologies", but not thereafter. We are not here to promote vanity typeface usage. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom  03:51, 26 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Exactly as TheRedPenOfDoom says. (And the article should be moved to PMD Technologies, or maybe PMDTechnologies if all RS really do elide the space, which I doubt; RM now open here.) Why do people keep asking this?  I don't mean that to pick on PamD, I mean it literally: What is the failure point in the guidelines, such that after over a decade of MoS being seemingly clear about this, in more than one place, that the message is somehow not being understood?  We have to revisit this "should I bold/italicize/all-cap/small-cap this trademark to match the logo?" question every other day, if not here then at RM.  My thought is that it is because WP:COMMONNAME doesn't say explicitly that it's about what the name  (e.g. PMD Technologies, however styled, vs. QMD Technologies, or PMD Design), not about how to  it. Until we resolve that problem, people are never going to stop asking this, and stop giving articles unencyclopedic names that serve no purpose but helping companies brand themselves in the marketplace, using WP as free advertising, at the expense of our readers's comprehension and WP's own credibility. If we allow "pmdtechnologies" then we're also bound to allow SONY and BURGER KING. Excuse me, make that:

Boldface redirects
Can someone find the rule used here at William Sloane Coffin, Sr. that when a redirect is mentioned in the text, it to be bolded. I can't find any such rule. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 19:47, 8 November 2015 (UTC)
 * In the lead section, maybe (see MOS:BOLD); but not in the body. -- Red rose64 (talk) 20:09, 8 November 2015 (UTC)
 * That’s not exactly what it says, rather “… the first couple of paragraphs of an article, or at the beginning of a section …”.—Odysseus 1 4 7  9  04:47, 9 November 2015 (UTC)


 * I reverted it once, if you feel strongly, please take action. I find it confusing, as if it has extra importance. I do not see it as a useful synonym. BMK has very strong opinions. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 04:53, 9 November 2015 (UTC)
 * I understood that it only applied to redirects from sub-topics or alternative names. S a g a C i t y (talk) 08:16, 9 November 2015 (UTC) : updated S a g a  C i t y (talk) 15:33, 9 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Those subtopics. (A subtopic is not a subheading, though it may have one; it's something that, not having its own article, is covered at an article that is not entirely about that topic.)  The bolding would make more contextual sense if there was a "Companies founded" heading or something.  It's highly unlikely any of the companies is notable enough to have its own article, so the William Sloane Coffin Sr. article will probably always remain the article on those companies, too. It  "extra importance", being noteworthy but not quite notable things associated with this figure that people thought were encyclopedically important enough to create redirects for and to write about in the article.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  07:28, 6 March 2016 (UTC)

Use of italics plus quote marks for song lyrics and poetry
In a recent GA review, it was noted that the use of italics plus quote marks is common for song lyrics and poetry. Also, it was pointed out that this construction is sometimes necessary to distinguish the actual lyrics being quoted from quotations relating to those lyrics. For example, "Discussing the lyrics, particularly the line "Show me that I'm everywhere, and get me home for tea", MacDonald considers the song to be "the locus classicus of English psychedelia"."

MOS:NOITALQUOTE states "It is normally incorrect to put quotations in italics. They should only be used if the material would otherwise call for italics, such as for emphasis or to indicate use of non-English words. Quotation marks alone are sufficient and the correct way to denote quotations."

Should the guideline be amended to allow for song lyrics and poetry to use italics plus quote marks? —Ojorojo (talk) 16:39, 12 March 2016 (UTC)


 * I'd like to see the guideline changed to allow for the option. Italicising inside quote marks does make it easy to differentiate between three elements that otherwise all receive the same rom + quotes treatment: the lyrics/verse being discussed; quoted critical commentary or interpretation; and titles of songs/poems with which the work might be compared. Admittedly, it's fairly unlikely that a single sentence might contain all three; on the other hand, we can have a paragraph or more containing consecutive sentences with different permutations.


 * Aside from that, it is an approach I've seen used in many books. An example, citing the same lyric that Ojorojo mentions above, appears in Nicholas Schaffner's book The Beatles Forever, published by McGraw-Hill:


 * … "It's All Too Much", whose highlights include some searing Velvet Underground feedback and an unusually witty epigram that just about sums up the Spirit of '67: "Show me that I'm everywhere, and get me home for tea."


 * JG66 (talk) 03:19, 20 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Short quotes of lyrics or poems go in quotation marks; long one quotes, in block quotation markup. Neither are italicized. The convention of italicizing refrains and such within an otherwise non-italic presentation can be respected in the block quotation, but only if found in the original publication of the lyrics/poem (which is a WP:RS, specifically a WP:PRIMARY source that qualifies for WP:ABOUTSELF), not lyric sites or poetry blogs (WP:UGC, unreliable). Per WP:NOT, WP:NOT, etc., Wikipedia is not bound by the unusual house styles of music journalism publications, or the particular stye choice of individual music book writers. Show us a preponderance of mainstream style guides on writing formal/academic English that prefer this style, or even a preponderance of humanities and music-specific style guides that recommend doing this (i.e. prove that this is a consistent, recognized, real-world convention), or there is no case for MoS adopting something like this.  Doing so would be "dangerous" here, because we already have a widespread problem of people (lots and lots of them) unfamiliar with punctuation and style rules, and confused (naturally) by MediaWiki's use of quote/apostrophe characters for italics markup, who incessantly italicize  in quotation marks. It's one of our biggest style maintenance headaches. If we make some "official" exception that actually recommends this for a particular case, the problem will become totally unmanageable. The evidence in favor of this practice would have to be overwhelming, and we could still rejected it on internal WP maintenance grounds; WP is not obligated to accept any style even if it's the majority one (it's often very difficult to get consensus to do so, as evidenced by two recent WP:VPPOL RfCs about style matters with overwhelming source support that were nonetheless controverted).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  21:49, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

"Article title terms" is somewhat misleading
Currently, it states here:

"The most common use of boldface is to highlight the first occurrence of the title word/phrase of the article, and often its synonyms, in the lead section. This is done for the majority of articles, but there are exceptions."

I find this to be somewhat misleading, especially when it made me jump to the conclusion that words outside of the lead sections should not be bolded, not to mention that I have been told by the reviewer of the Xbox One article not to bold something therein which was outside of the lead section. Perhaps, the last sentence ought to be revised as "This is done for the majority of articles, but there are exceptions, such as highlighting text in bold that are subjects of redirects.", which may sound repetitive because it does become rementioned later in the page, but I feel less upset in that way. Gamingforfun 3 6 5 ( talk ) 05:44, 14 June 2016 (UTC)


 * I think you read it correctly the first time around; some articles are exceptions to the "bold type at start of lead for the subject of the article" (e.g. today's featured article 2003 Sri Lanka cyclone). What you're referring to could be added to the first sentence, like this:
 * "The most common use of boldface is to highlight the first occurrence of the title word/phrase of the article (and often its synonyms) in the lead section, as well as terms that are redirected to the article or its sub-sections. This is done for the majority of articles, but is not a requirement."


 * &#8209;&#8209; Yodin T 09:46, 14 June 2016 (UTC)
 * That would make much more sense because, then, it would not seem as though we should either not highlight text in bold outside of lead sections or highlight such text only in rare exceptions. Gamingforfun 3 6 5 ( talk ) 20:10, 14 June 2016 (UTC)

When should edition names be treated as names?
There is an RFC concerning the formatting of names like “special editions” and “remasters” of major works at WT:MOS. Please contribute. —67.14.236.50 (talk) 23:57, 14 June 2016 (UTC)

Consolidating advice on titles of works
Please see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style for discussion of merging composition-titles-related material from this sub-guideline into the main WP:Manual of Style/Titles (MOS:TITLES) sub-guideline with the rest of that material, then just summarizing the key relevant points here and cross-referencing MOS:TITLES. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  08:50, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

Clarifying the formatting of Voyager, Pioneer, and other space probes
I've only been on Wikipedia for a little while, but I've noticed that the formatting of the names of the Voyager and Pioneer spacecraft is inconsistent. This is visible on the Voyager 1 and Voyager program pages.

A concise (and the most recent) discussion I could find concerning the issue was this talk page, where no consensus seems to have been reached. Here were the main arguments, in summary:

1. Voyager 1 and others like it are spacecraft, and therefore should be italicized.

2. The NASA style guide says not to italicize probe names, and thus we shouldn't either. They aren't true spacecraft.

3. Voyager and Pioneer are class names, and thus it should be "Voyager 1", etc., with only the class being italicized and not the number.

I'm not sure which side I personally prescribe to, thought the third option does seem to make the most sense, however bold it may be. Regardless, I believe we need a clear rule about whether and what to italicize. Thoughts? Jgfceit (talk) 21:39, 12 September 2016 (UTC)

Discussion at Talk:Unknown Pleasures
You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Unknown Pleasures. —&thinsp;JJMC89&thinsp; (T·C) 04:39, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

WP:WORDSASWORDS
See related discussion at Wikipedia talk:Article titles on whether or not (and if so: how) this type of italicisation can be applied to article titles. Please discuss there, not here. --Francis Schonken (talk) 08:05, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Explicitly limit italics usage
Currently MOS:BOLD says (with my underline for emphasis) "Boldface ... is common in Wikipedia articles, but only for certain usages." but MOS:ITALICS says "Italics ... are used for various specific purposes in Wikipedia ..". In particular MOS:ITALICS does not say that italics are only for those purposes (as MOS:BOLD does).

I propose that MOS:ITALICS should changed to "Italics ... are used only for various specific purposes in Wikipedia .." for consistency with MOS:BOLD.

The problem with not including the word "only" is that any editor can use italics for any arbitrary purpose and legitimately says that there's no guideline against it. (Example:, Template talk:Western Australian elections.) If italics can be used arbitrarily, it defeats the purpose of enumerating specific purposes, reduces the value of italics (because it's harder to know what the italics formatting means in any given usage) and reduces the consistency of the text formatting in general. Mitch Ames (talk) 03:05, 19 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Oppose Seems to be a classic case of using a hammer to crack a nut. Italics have been used on election templates to signify future elections for at least a decade without objection. One editor suddenly deciding they don't like it doesn't mean they should be removed. Also, disappointing to see no effort to notify editors at WikiProject Elections and Referendums given that this is an attempt to force changes to election and referendum templates. I will do this now. Number   5  7  13:14, 21 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Oppose for the same reason; italics are consistently being used for this purpose in election link templates. — Nightstallion 13:35, 21 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Oppose for the same reason: in this list of elections, this reader asks himself 'why do I see an election that hasn't yet happen?' and the italics are quite then quite clear for this emphasis. Wykx  (talk) 13:42, 21 January 2017 (UTC)
 * and the italics are quite then quite clear for this emphasis — I suggest that it is not "quite clear" what the italics mean. It would be much clearer if we just said so explicitly. Mitch Ames (talk) 13:11, 22 January 2017 (UTC)
 * You mean with an explanation at the end of the template like in Template:Earthquakes_in_2017? Wykx  (talk) 13:25, 22 January 2017 (UTC)
 * I note your recent addition to Template:Western Australian elections - but no, I mean explicit inline text per my comment on Template talk:Western Australian elections. Mitch Ames (talk) 13:36, 22 January 2017 (UTC)
 * No matter how explanation is done (at the end or just after), that doesn't prevent to use italics in such particular cases. Wykx  (talk) 14:03, 22 January 2017 (UTC)


 * Oppose per Number 57. The Drover&#39;s Wife (talk) 19:28, 21 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Comment: I agree that we should write guidelines and policies so as to not allow loopholes like this. I've been told that MOS:NOBOLD's " Avoid using boldface for emphasis" does not tell you not to use it for emphasis. I'm similarly bugged by WP:PSEUDOHEAD's wording: " Do not make pseudo-headings using semicolon markup and try to avoid using bold markup", which arguably prohibits the former but not the latter. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 20:22, 21 January 2017 (UTC)
 * It's prohibited because using semicolon markup to make pseudo-headings creates an accessibility problem. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 23:52, 21 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Comment I would support the proposal in principle, however there are clearly current usages that are not enumerated in the specific purposes at present. The usage that made me notice this proposal is in a navbox template of past events (elections in this case), any future ones are displayed in italics. The discussion that led me here also mentions that water bodies are displayed in italics in a table of neighbouring (implicitly land-based) locations. There may be others, so the set of specific purposes needs to be completed before banning extra uses. --Scott Davis Talk 10:41, 22 January 2017 (UTC)
 * water bodies are displayed in italics in a table of neighbouring (implicitly land-based) locations — per, listing an ocean as a suburb is just wrong. Fix the root problem instead of using italics to emphasis the error. Mitch Ames (talk) 13:26, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

the proposed change is to WP:ITALICS in general; not just election templates. If there is a legitimate case for using italics in election templates — then, as suggests, add that usage to the list of "certain usages". (I disagree with that usage; we should instead explicitly state that the election hasn't happened yet.) But even if we add that usage to the list, I still think we should explicitly state that italics are only used for the listed purposes, otherwise there's no point in listing the usages at all. Mitch Ames (talk) 13:22, 22 January 2017 (UTC)
 * This kind of unhelpful pedantry needs to be stopped generally, so yes, I oppose any such change as suggested. The Drover&#39;s Wife (talk) 22:34, 22 January 2017 (UTC)


 * Oppose For many of the reasons expressed above. Seems to not improve the Project beyond mere 'show' rather than substance. Never a good sign. doktorb wordsdeeds 00:34, 30 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Oppose. MoS is a guideline not a policy. Much of the strife surrounding it over the last several years has been one or another editors' creeping insistence on trying to word it like a code of law instead of a guideline, but gradually making what it says more and more emphatic and less (intentionally!) flexible. Yes, there will always be WP:JERKs who try to inappropriately game the system by pretending that our guidelines have a strict and formal Must, Should, and May distinction like an IETF technical standard. When you encounter people like this, point them at WP:POLICY, WP:GAMING, WP:LAWYER, and WP:COMMONSENSE.  Also agreed with the above comments in many respects, especially the observation that italics are used by convention for too many things for us to list them all. The instant we thought we were done someone would dig up another.  We are not here to write a perfectly complete list of what Wikipedians may use italics for, but to work on an encyclopedia.  MoS exists to help provide a consistent and professional-looking product, and to short-circuit recurrent editorial conflicts over the same style matters again and again; if a particular dispute is uncommon, we do not and should not add it to MoS, or MoS would be 10x longer than it already is.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  21:27, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

Not bold-setting non-Latin scripts
"Text in non-Latin scripts (such as Greek, Cyrillic or Chinese) should neither be italicized as non-English nor bolded, even where this is technically feasible; the difference of script suffices to distinguish it on the page." Should this apply to non-body-text instances where text is bold-set by default, e.g. in section and table headers? Adding &#123;&#123;nobold&#125;&#125; to every such instance seems like an unnecessary hassle, and doesn't seem in line with the spirit of the recommendation, which is to avoid unnecessary formatting (in fact, it overly distinguishes the foreign script, making it appear thin when everything else is bold). --Paul_012 (talk) 15:57, 7 March 2017 (UTC)
 * No. Don't try to override what MediaWiki does by default, without a good reason. If you did this, then it would have the opposite effect anyway: If you have a bold heading that includes a Russian or Greek string, then de-bolding that part will serve to emphasize it, just as bolding or italicizing it in regular prose would.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  21:29, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

Article title terms
To quote MOS:BOLD: "The most common use of boldface is to highlight the first occurrence of the title word/phrase of the article (and often its synonyms) in the lead section." And often its synonyms? Once we go down that path, it calls to question whether the WP:COMMONAME that we had chosen was the correct one. Perhaps we can do without the "(and often its synonyms)" and simply have only the common name highlighted? Regards, William Harris •   (talk) •  04:25, 16 April 2017 (UTC)


 * Disagree. I dislike (and remove) excess boldface, but here are three cases where IMO boldfacing alternate names is the right thing to do because it helps the reader. They are not exhaustive.


 * 1) The alternate name is the target of a redirect, e.g. Adrianople.
 * 2) The common name is ambiguous, e.g. Kreutzer Sonata.
 * 3) An ambiguous initialism is piped, e.g. MP.
 * Narky Blert (talk) 20:59, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

— SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  21:40, 19 June 2017 (UTC)
 * Disagree. Common name does not means correct name, its selection can be very contentious, dependent on the means of measurement, and the other names can still be valid and extremely popular. Take bellis perennis aka the English daisy or common daisy for example - OK maybe most books use the scientific name but I'd bet that daisy is way more frequent in common speech. Difficult to measure that though. Batternut (talk) 21:46, 11 June 2017 (UTC)
 * That doesn't really relate to whether it should be bolded or not. If it redirects to that article, or is (not necessarily "the") common name for the subject (whether it is also a common name for some other subject or not), then bold it.  An exception would be when something has a whole lot of common name in different regions; if you're bolding more than maybe 5 alternatives, it's no longer helpful to the reader in any way, and just looks like a river of shouting . There is no provision in the guidelines for boldfacing things just because they're ambiguous; I don't know where Narky Blert got that idea from. I'm unaware of it in any other style guide, either.
 * A fine example of shouting is Ajuga reptans, to which blue bugle, bugleherb, bugleweed, carpetweed, common bugle and also carpenter's herb either redirect to, or disambiguation page redirect to. Yes, hmmm, do dab page redirections officially qualify for bold? Batternut (talk) 22:56, 19 June 2017 (UTC)