Forum:Italics or Quotation marks?

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 and TARDIS:Manual of Style? 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.  Czech Out  ☎ | ✍  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".  Czech Out   ☎ | ✍  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.   Czech Out   ☎ | ✍  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.     Czech Out   ☎ | ✍  03:13, 29 April 2009 (UTC)


 * I would have to disagree, I hold the books, and short stories in equal regard to the TV stories, and I'm probably not the only one.

We wouldn't be telling anyone anything, but there is a level of implication that we are favouring one medium over another because of the two different rules.


 * Obscurity is a matter of perspective I would have thought, half the stuff on this wiki is obscure in some way, evident by the fact there is often only one or two editors for the information plentiful articles.


 * I still don't understand why short fiction should get less credence, we certainly don't make the distinction between what info comes from short stories and what comes from say a novel or whatever it's all contributing to the same universe.


 * I understand it's the accepted rule, but a 'short story published as part of a larger work' sort of implies that the larger work carries more credence than the single story, which often in collected works of Doctor Who short fiction (may) carry a theme (such as the BF Short Trips series and the Decalogs) but the stories are very wildly different and therefore we can't cite the whole work to be specific to one article/sentence.


 * When citing something like The Flood special features, which for the most part is just like citing a DVD vs a TV story. You would most likely just leave in the (graphic novel) portion so it would read; The Flood (graphic novel). And if it was in an out-of universe article (which it would be if you're citing something RTD said) you'd be adding in all the other referencing for a print document (author, year of publication, publisher, place of publication and pages used) as well as the title being wikilinked to this wiki's article page of it.
 * In the other comic strip cases, the comics are unchanged from comic strip to graphic novel the articles for Oblivion and The Flood should note that they were originally published in DWM and then later republished in graphic novel form (just as the TV stories note that they've been released in numerous formats).


 * I would be fine with re-writing the manual of style and stating that we're "making up our own rules" as you say in big bold letters even...and give a full explanation of the reasoning behind it.


 * I'm not saying no (well I am), but I understand the reasoning behind your arguments, however perhaps there should be more discussion on this with other editors and admins before we shut this away (preferably in a locked filing cabinet, with a leopard guarding it). --Tangerineduel 16:27, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Discussion renewed
A large part of the reason this discussion ended was that there was no way to effectively implement a switch at the time the discussion started. Any change of policy would have required a massive manual effort of changing every single instance of, say, The Time of Angels to "The Time of Angels". With the presence of a bot, this changeover can now be done with far less pain. Since it's been basically agreed, above, that proper grammar demands short fiction be placed in quotes, while longer fiction gets italicized, can we change the MOS and start making changes per those revisions?  Czech Out  ☎ | ✍  21:45, June 21, 2010 (UTC)


 * Actually this conversation ended because there were two of us and I thought we needed more than 2 editors to make a major change to how the wiki is run.
 * Just to summarise what's above you want to change it so short fiction is cited thusly: ST: Decalog: "The Golden Door".
 * Correct? --Tangerineduel 12:31, June 22, 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, sorta. I don't think I'd throw the Decalog in there though. If I were citing that story, I'd just go, ST: "The Golden Door".  The page itself then establishes that it's in Decalog.  It might be simpler just to think of this thing in terms of a chart.  So here's the idea in detail.


 * You may be wondering about the practicalities of making these changes, especially considering such things as DW. Well, changing the instances as they exist right now is fairly easy.  You just build a file which contains all the names of all the various stories by type, including markup.   So, the file will contain, The Gift (short story), et al, and you set to replace  with ".  That's pretty straightforward, though there is some time involved in creating the master list, of course.  Then you have to consider future'' use and change the templates accordingly.  With most of these templates, it's no big deal, because you simply go to the ones relating to shorter fiction, like ST and TN, and switch the single quotes for double quotes.  What's slightly harder are BFA and DW.  There, you have to build a switch thing so that it looks for individual titles identified as being single episodes.  Then you tell it that if it finds, say, Tooth and Claw, that it should put double quotes instead of two single quotes.  This will require occasional but easy maintenance as new titles are added.   Czech Out   ☎ | ✍  20:12, June 22, 2010 (UTC)


 * I'm sorry, but I'm not comfortable solely making a ruling on this as it's still a massive and somewhat confusing change to the wiki.
 * It has nothing to do with the massive editing challenge, it's got more to do with the editor's experience.
 * I'm sure we'll get people asking why Time and Relative (sorry "Time and Relative") has quotation marks whilst a novel is italicised.
 * I also totally disagree with having two rules for TV episodes, The Big Bang or The Family of Blood are treated as separate entities and they should be cited as such.
 * While it's a nice table it's...somewhat too complicated. I'm not going to make a ruling on this based on our conversations without the involvement of at least one other admin and other regular editors on this wiki as I feel this is something of a major and complicated change that regular editors and admins will need to police. --Tangerineduel 07:21, June 23, 2010 (UTC)
 * While I can appreciate your need to have more involvement by others, I'd disagree that it's confusing. The entire table can be summarized in a very simple way.  If it's a short piece of fiction, it's in quotes.  If it's longer, it's italicized. Nothing hard about that.  And, again, this isn't just an arbitrary thing: these are the actual English rules, no matter what flavour of English you speak.   Czech Out   ☎ | ✍  14:12, June 23, 2010 (UTC)


 * How short is short, where is the point of determination between short fiction, novella and longer fiction? (I know I'll get questions like that from users should this go ahead)
 * Are there any instances of users getting confused and defaulting to the system you've suggested, does that outweigh the useful edits contributed to users following our current system, is following our current system having a detrimental effect on the wiki?
 * I still have a preference for writing out our current system of citation and explaining how everything is run (or to use your parlance "writing our own rules").
 * Your proposal would effect all users of this wiki, that's why I want involvement from regular users and other admins on this wiki. This is a discussion and should involve more than two people on this wiki as it is a massive change, implementing the change is not the issue, it's dealing with the upkeep and the after affects that is. --Tangerineduel 15:24, June 23, 2010 (UTC)
 * Well obviously I wanted discussion on the issue else I wouldn't have brought it to the forum. But it has been 18 months.  And I don't think something so basic as good rules of grammar — now that there's actually a practical way to do it — should be left to languish simply because no one's interested in the discussion.  Silence on the issue can well suggest that it's not something people actually care about that much.  If no-one cares, as they evidently do not, then one possible conclusion is that we should come down on the side of standard English.  I mean, as far as I know, we've never had a discussion around here about whether to accept Br. Eng. spelling as the standard, but we do it.  Any discussions have, so far as I've seen, been along the lines of "Since we use Br. Eng. here, shouldn't [insert word here] be consistently spelled this way across the site?"  This is along those same lines.  There are all sorts of grammatical minutiae like this that we don't bother to discuss, because it's boring.  I mean we've chosen to spell Tardis "TARDIS" without real discussion, even though there's a decent argument for it being "Tardis", especially according to Br. Eng. rules of engagement.  And that's a sort of thing that affects every user.  I dunno.  I mean, I hear you on getting more involvement on this issue, but at the same time, I feel that a year-and-a-half is pretty well full time on what is well-documented, widely-accepted rule of standard English.


 * I know you're speaking casually, but I mildly object to you calling it "the system I've suggested". It's nothing of the kind.  It's absolutely the way English works — no matter what your flavour.  It's the way wikipedia operates in general, the way the DW group on wikipedia works, the way The New York Times works, the way The Guardian works, the way academia works, the way everyone works.  I didn't make up the rules; they're in every standard English language textbook.


 * As for your question about "how short is short", well, that's the reason for the chart. It spells it out.  But it's pretty easy to keep in your head, I think.  If it's shorter than a novel, book, or periodical then it's in quotes.  If it is a novel, periodical, or book, then it's in italics.  If it's a serial, it's in italics.  And if it's an episode it's in quotes.  The rest of the cases are fairly specific, and most people won't encounter them too often.


 * Your question of "who's been getting confused" is a bit of a spurious one. This isn't a change to help people who are confused.  This is change to correct a problem that should never have been allowed to exist in the first place.  The side effect is that it will help anyone coming from a situation where genuine English punctuation is valued.


 * In general, though, this whole thing is a bit like your firm stance on Br. Eng. spelling. No amount of discussion would really change your mind on that, I don't think.  Even if we had 20 people here arguing for American English, you'd never allow that.  Because it's just instinctual: it must be British English.  It must be organisation, even though there every category that used that word had been created with a "-ization", and had been happily unmolested for years, indicating the vast majority of users were fine with that.  This is a British subject, so British English predominates.  Period.  And I've got no problem with that, because it's picking a known, quantifiable rule set and sticking to it.


 * But by the same token, I'd say, well, this is an English language wiki, so English rules of punctuation should be employed. Not some freaky thing we've pulled out of thing air that makes us seem uneducated or lazy or both.  We look like amateurs when we can't get even basic English down. Ask yourself this.  If we were starting this wiki anew today, would you want to do things according to standard English or not?  If the answer's yes, even a mild or indifferent yes, then we should make the change.  To me, the current practice is often untenable.  It forces lengthy parenthetical explanations of terms, particularly on comic pages.  It would be so much easier just to type The Iron Legion, and for people to know you were talking about the graphic novel, and to type "The Iron Legion" to indicate the single comic strip.  It's also deeply illogical in the current system that we're allowed to put some episodes in quotes, like "An Unearthly Child", but not others, like "Gridlock".  The rule, "all episodes go in quotes" is much simpler than "episodes of the new series are italicized, but episodes in the Hartnell era are in quotes".   Czech Out   ☎ | ✍  03:49, June 24, 2010 (UTC)