Difference between revisions of "Naming Conventions"

Latest revision as of 21:23, 24 June 2006

Naming conventions is a list of guidelines on how to appropriately create and name pages. It is important to note that these are conventions, not rules written in stone. Some conventions that once made sense may become outdated, and there may be cases where a particular convention is "obviously" inappropriate. But when in doubt, follow convention.

Generally, article naming should give priority to what the majority of English speakers would most easily recognize, with a reasonable minimum of ambiguity, while at the same time making linking to those articles easy and second nature.

In addition to following the naming conventions it is also important to follow the linking conventions. Following consistent conventions in both naming and linking makes it more likely that links will lead to the right place. A redirect should be created for articles that may reasonably be found under two or more names (such as different spellings or former names). Conversely, a term that may be used to describe several different search terms may require a disambiguation page.

General conventions

Lowercase second and subsequent words

Convention: Do not capitalize second and subsequent words unless the title is a proper noun (such as a name) or is otherwise almost always capitalized (for example: John Wayne and Art Nouveau, but not Computer Game).

Due to technical limitations inherent to the MediaWiki software, the first letter in an article title always needs to be a capital letter. Ordinarily this isn't a problem, but it poses an issue when a proper noun's first letter is lowercase (for example, eBay). The first letter of an internal wikilink need not be capitalized and will direct the reader to the same page (for example, computer game or Computer game can be used interchangeably as needed).

Prefer singular nouns

Convention: In general only create page titles that are in the singular, unless that noun is always in a plural form in English (such as scissors or trousers). Category names follow different pluralization conventions.

Redirect adjectives to nouns

Convention: Adjectives (such as democratic) should redirect to nouns (in this case, democracy).

Use gerund of verbs

Convention: Use the gerund of verbs (the -ing form in English) unless there is a more common form for a certain verb.

Use English words

Convention: Name your pages in English and place the native transliteration on the first line of the article unless the native form is more commonly used in English than the English form.

Use common names of persons and things

Convention: Use the most common name of a person or thing that does not conflict with the names of other people or things.

Be precise when necessary

Convention: Please, do not write or put an article on a page with an ambiguously named title as though that title had no other meanings. If all possible words have multiple meanings, go with the rule of thumb of naming guidelines and use the more popular term.

Prefer spelled-out phrases to acronyms

Convention: Avoid the use of acronyms in page naming unless the term you are naming is almost exclusively known only by its acronym and is widely known and used in that form (NATO, laser, radar, and scuba are good examples of acronyms that are commonly thought of as words).

Definite and Indefinite Article

Avoid the definite article ("the") and the indefinite article ("a"/"an") at the beginning of the page name

Convention: If the definite or indefinite article would be capitalized in running text, then include it at the beginning of the page name. This would be the case for the title of a work such as a novel. Otherwise, do not include it at the beginning of the page name.

Examples: "Netherlands" instead of "The Netherlands", or "Punisher" instead of "The Punisher". Exceptions: The Hague, The Cheat, The Old Man and the Sea

Use of "and"

Sometimes two or more closely-related or complementary concepts are most sensibly discussed on a common page rather than a page each. Where possible, use a name covering all cases. Do not use "and" to bias article names.

Do not use an article name that suggests a hierarchy of articles

Since Transportation in Azerbaijan could just as well be considered a subdivision of Transport as of Azerbaijan, do not use a name like Azerbaijan/Transportation

Be careful with some special characters

Some special characters either cannot be used or may cause problems. For example you should not use a piping character (|), curly braces ({}), or square braces ([]) in a name.

Titles must not begin with an interlanguage link code followed by a colon. For example a page with the title FR:example will produce a link to the page entitled "Example" on the French Wikipedia. The same also applies to interwiki links.

Avoid non alpha-numeric characters used only for emphasis

To maintain the functionality of Alphabetical Indexing and avoid needless redirect pages, page names should not begin with non alpha-numeric (A-Z,0-9) characters used solely for emphasis. Do not use quotation marks to start the page name, just use the quotation.

Non alpha-numeric characters may still be appropriate if a common term for the article is generally expressed as a non alpha-numeric phrase. In these cases the character(s) are not being used solely for emphasis. A redirect page may be helpful in such cases.