Wikipedia:Manual of Style (titles)

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This guideline is a part of the English Wikipedia's Manual of Style. Editors should follow it, except where common sense and the occasional exception will improve an article. Before editing this page, please make sure that your revision reflects consensus.

Shortcuts: WP:MOSTITLE MOS:TITLE WP:MOST

Italics

Italics should be used for:

• Scientific names for genera or species
• Titles of the following:
  • Art exhibitions
  • Books
  • Comic strips and webcomics
  • Computer and video games
  • Court cases
  • Films
  • Long or epic poems
  • Musical albums
  • Named trains and locomotives
  • Orchestral works
  • Paintings, sculptures and other works of visual art
  • Periodicals (newspapers, journals, and magazines)
  • Plays
  • Ships
  • Ship class
  • Television series

Abbreviations of the above should also be italicized. If the title is also a link, you should usually place the italic markup outside the brackets, but see the Titanic example below for a special case.

Examples

• Huckleberry Finn, DCL Command Language Manual
  • ''[[Huckleberry Finn]]'', ''DCL Command Language Manual''
• Casablanca, Boccacio '70
  • ''[[Casablanca (film)|Casablanca]]'', ''Boccacio '70''
• The Mary Tyler Moore Show
  
  • ''[[The Mary Tyler Moore Show]]''
• Life magazine, Astounding Science Fiction
  • ''[[Life (magazine)|Life]]'' magazine, ''[[Astounding Science Fiction]]''
• RMS Titanic, USS Minnesota (BB-22), Apollo 11, The Legend of Zelda series. Only the name is italicized, not the classification or designation. This link will require a pipe character (a "|"), as italics tags will not work within a link
  
  • [[RMS Titanic|RMS ''Titanic'']], [[USS Minnesota (BB-22)|USS ''Minnesota'' (BB-22)]], ''[[Apollo 11]]'', [[The Legend of Zelda series|''The Legend of Zelda'' series]]
• Escherichia, Escherichia coli, E. coli
  • ''[[Escherichia]]'', ''[[Escherichia coli]]'', ''[[Escherichia coli|E. coli]]''
• USS Toledo (CA-133) was a Baltimore class cruiser, HMAS Australia (1911) was an Indefatigable class battlecruiser. Only the class name is italicized, not the ship type. This link will require a pipe character (a "|"), as italics tags will not work within a link.
  Note that ship class names are not always italicised, for further information see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (ships).
  • [[USS Toledo (CA-133)|USS ''Toledo'' (CA-133)]] was a [[Baltimore class cruiser|''Baltimore'' class cruiser]], [[HMAS Australia (1911)|HMAS ''Australia'' (1911)]] was an [[Indefatigable class battlecruiser|''Indefatigable'' class battlecruiser]]
• Mouse Trap, The Incredible Machine, Baldur's Gate: Tales of the Sword Coast, HL2
  • ''[[Mouse Trap]]'', ''[[The Incredible Machine]]'', ''[[Baldur's Gate series|Baldur's Gate: Tales of the Sword Coast]]'', ''[[Half-Life 2|HL2]]''
• Symphony No. 9 Op. 95 "From the New World"
  • ''[[Symphony]] No. 9 Op. 95 "From the New World"''
• Eldred v. Ashcroft, Plessy v. Ferguson
  • ''[[Eldred v. Ashcroft]]'', ''[[Plessy v. Ferguson]]''
• Action Comics, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, The Beano, The Amazing Spider-Man
  • ''[[Action Comics]]'', ''[[Batman: The Dark Knight Returns]]'', ''[[The Beano]]'', ''[[The Amazing Spider-Man]]''
• Peanuts, Penny Arcade
  • ''[[Peanuts]]'', ''[[Penny Arcade (webcomic)|Penny Arcade]]''

Quotation marks

Italics are generally used for titles of longer works. Titles of shorter works (particularly those that exist as a smaller part of a larger work), such as the following, should be enclosed in double quotation marks:

• Articles, essays or papers
• Chapters of a longer work
• Singular episodes of a television series
• Short poems
• Short stories
• Songs and singles

Examples

• "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge"
• "Goober and Gomer Change a Tire"
• "Do's and Don'ts of Dating"
• "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening"
• "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" and "She's Leaving Home" appear on Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
• "The Germans" is an episode of the television programme Fawlty Towers

The quotation marks should not be bolded in the lead section when the title of an article requires quotation marks, as they are not part of the title. See WP:Manual of Style#Punctuation.

Neither

There are a few cases in which the title should be in neither italics nor quotation marks:

• Scriptures of large, well-known religions, such as for example the Bible, the Qur'an, the Talmud, the Bhagavad Gita, the Ādi Granth, the Book of Mormon, or the Avesta, should not normally be italicized. However, references to specific published versions of sacred texts should be italicized, such as the Authorized King James Version or the New Edition of the Babylinian Talmud. Many relatively obscure sacred texts are also generally italicized, particularly if the work is not likely to be well-known to the Wikipedia reader, if the work was first published in modern times and has not undergone substantial changes, or if it might be unclear that the title refers to a book. For example, The Urantia Book the Satanic Bible, and Divine Principle should be italicized.
• Legal or constitutional documents: Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms
• Traditional games: hopscotch
• Software other than games: iTunes
• Commercial products other than media works: Cheerios

Punctuation

Whether the title is in italics or quotes, added punctuation – such as a comma following a title in a series of titles, as contrasted with the novel and television series

I, Claudius

or the film

O Brother, Where Art Thou?

– belongs outside the markup, as can be seen in the series of titles above: the comma is not part of the title. For example,

Huckleberry Finn,

is not the title of the book, so referring to the book and following the reference by a comma must look like

Huckleberry Finn,

while

Huckleberry Finn,

(with the comma italicized) is a mistake.