Forum:Italics or Quotation marks?

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I think I may have asked this somewhere two years ago, but I don't remember the answer. How do we resolve the difference between TARDIS:Manual of Style#Capital letters#Italics#Series and episode names and TARDIS:Manual of Style#Citation#In-universe articles? One tells us "An Unearthly Child" is correct; the other, An Unearthly Child. It seems to me like serial names are far more commonly italicized, so should we make a move to delete that part of the MOS that says differently? I've got other thoughts about this subject, but let's get past the serial names first. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 09:04, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Ah...yes. This has been on my to fix list for some time. (It just comes from how this wiki started and how it developed and the changing styles as it all grew, bits of the manual of style based on various things here and there). I'll now fix it to state that story names are italicised. --Tangerineduel 13:25, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Well, I'd hasten to point out that it's not, strictly speaking, grammatically proper to italicize names of episodes or short fiction (like short stories and most comic stories). The solution given by the DW group at Wikipedia is that episode names — as dominates the new series, and is occasionally found in various BFAs) is to italicize serials, books, multi-episodic BFAs — and put everything else in quotes. This is a stylistic choice that confirms the general Wikipedia edict on text formatting, which is in turn a confirmation of standard English rules. I know we're not Wikipedia, and that we're at liberty to set our own conventions. But we do use the English language. I admit It'd be a pain to go back and convert everything, but it's "good English". CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 02:32, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

While not grammatically accurate (and while I would prefer to have everything mostly grammatically correct) it does follow continuously, through in and out of universe referencing. Anything in in-universe articles that is referenced is (prefix italics title /italics) out of universe mostly doesn't use the prefix. (We could do the reverse of the wikipedia MOS and put "Doctor Who" like this and have the story titles italicisd, or would that be going even further outside the grammatical shark net?)

Just to clarify you're not suggesting we go back through all 13,000 pages in and out of universe and change, for example DW: An Unearthly Child to DW: "An Unearthly Child" (someone I'd be totally opposed to) or are you suggesting just changing out-of-universe styling? --Tangerineduel 15:36, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

Well "An Unearthly Child" would be episode 1 of An Unearthly Child, in strict grammatical terms. This in-universe/out-of-universe thing is a distinction I must say I don't really understand. All references are out-of-universe in an in-universe article, because the Doctor obviously wouldn't know what the BBC names of his adventures are. I suppose I am indeed suggesting that grammar demands we change the format of short fiction. That's a pain. i know. So I guess it won't happen. But the manual of style at least needs to address the fact that we've stepped across the lines of good grammar for reasons of convenience (at least until someone can write a bot to change it all automically). Josiah Rowe might be someone useful to bring into this discussion, because I know there was a time at the Wikipedia DW Project where suddenly all new series episodes went from being italicized to being in quotes. So somehow they solved the problem ex post facto, like we're going to have to do.

In the meantime, might I suggest this compromise:

• • • • All classic serials and movies are italicized
      • All multi-episode BFAs are italicized.
      • All books, magazines and newspapers are italicized.
      • All programme names are italicized
      • All BBC Wales programmes' episodes are italicized (with a note explaining how this is grammatically incorrect, but practical). Given this stance, it's consistent to also put "A Girl's Best Friend" in italics, even though I just didn't.
      • All upcoming K9 titles are italicized, on the basis that, like SJA stories, they appear to be two-part serials.
      • All Hartnell episodes are put in quotes, to allow for ease of distinction between episode names and serial names. This is vital, given examples like "The Daleks", which isn't from The Daleks at all, but from The Dalek Invasion of Earth.
      • All short stories, comic titles and single episode BFAs are put in quotes (in truth, these haven't really been referenced widely enough to make this changeover difficult)

To put all this simply, I think it's defensible on the grounds of consistency to keep most of the italicization already present. But I do think it worth changing a small portion of it so that we at least blow a kiss in the direction of proper English formatting. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 04:28, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

I'm all for blowing kisses to English grammar (and spelling), hell I'd take it out to dinner if something elements could be fixed (their, there and they're are three different things...but I digress, I won't rant about that 'small' issue here, I'll save that for my misuse of the apostrophe rant).

I don't think so about your last point. The comic titles are stories in their own right so they should be treated in the same manner as TV stories or novels or whatever else.

Would single episodes of BFAs be if you were referencing a particular episode of say The Time of the Daleks "Part 2" or something along those lines? If you mean the one parters like Urban Myths, then I think they should also be treated the same way as other stories, they're a story in their own right even if they're released along with other titles.

The same again goes for the short stories. They're still stories in their own right.

Why do we need to change the style for short fiction? Is it just because it exists as part of a larger work? (I don't suppose we could just...add insult to injury of the grammar rule and reverse it?) so it would be (ST: "Short Trips: Zodiac" Growing Higher), though really that doesn't need to be cited like that it should just be (ST: Growing Higher) as the Short story page has links to the book it's from.

I do however agree about the Hartnell episode titles.

Just one other thing I thought I'd mention concerning episode vs Part. After Invasion of the Dinosaurs they were no longer identified as 'Episode X' and were then 'Part X' (through to Survival), all the BFAs are also 'Part X'. --Tangerineduel 15:55, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, single episode BFAs are like "Mission of the Viyrans". In no instance would you put "Part 2" or "Episode 7" in quotes. Again, the standard formatting for all short fiction — and it's not a "choice" that Wikipedians have made, but an observation of well-accepted rules — is that titles of such work goes in quotes. If you're not going to observe this on the wiki, then you need to say so quite explicitly in the MOS. It's absolutely counterintuitive to anyone who's written a fully-cited paper.

In other words, we would be making up our own rules, so editors need to be given a full explanation, along with an acknowledgement that we are breaking standard conventions.

But I would again argue strongly against saying "all stories of all kinds get italicized". I think we're sacrificing a useful bit of easy recognition for readers. The vast majority of short fiction in DW is stuff that's comparatively obscure. If there's a conflict between something that's in a comic story and stuff that's on TV, using quotes lets people instantly see which part of the article they may want to "believe" over the other. Note, we wouldn't be telling readers to believe what comes from TV over what comes from, say, a comic story, but we would be making it easier for them to tell the two apart. Beyond DW, that's sort of the reason the rule is what it is. Short fiction gets less credence, generally, than long-form stuff. Short stories are, in effect, junior to books.

Moreover, just like Hartnell-era episode titles, short fiction can be a part of larger collections, which may also have the same name. "The Flood" is a part of The Flood. "Oblivion" is a part of Oblivion. And so on. Without a formatting difference between short and long fiction, you do run into unnecessary problems of identification, as well as the appearance of giving equal weight to works that are vastly different in their size or importance. For instance, if one wanted to quote something about RTD's influence over the last days of the Eighth Doctor's comic run, one would likely turn to the special features of The Flood. If we've set the rule that both the story and the graphic novel are italicized, readers might think that the info comes from the DWM run of "The Flood", when in fact it comes from The Flood. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 03:13, 29 April 2009 (UTC)