Stock car racing:Article titles

This page is a list of guidelines on how to name pages. 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. Beyond this general statement, the most important sections to read are the first few sections: Free links, Simplicity, Precision, Capitalization, and Pluralization.

The purpose of these policies is to make creating new pages with appropriate links easier. When writing Wiki pages on any subject, names, words, or phrases that you think should be linked to further information should be bracketed so that they will appear as links. Following consistent naming conventions makes it more likely that these links will lead to the right place.

Use "free links"
If you've used Wiki software on other sites, you may be familiar with PageTitlesLikeThis, using long ugly words with internal capitals. We use plain English titles with spaces between words instead, called "free links". If you see any articles in the old style, change them. The old style of links are just a little silly-looking for an encyclopedia.

Lowercase second and subsequent words
Convention: Unless the term you wish to create a page for is a proper noun, do not capitalize second and subsequent words. Rationale and specifics: See Naming conventions (capitalization) and Canonization.

Prefer singular nouns
Let's say you were writing a page about crayons. Should you call the page , which is basically what the page is about, or , which makes it easier to link to from passages like "Harold took out his purple crayon and drew up the covers"? Probably the latter. One can still write (which the software is smart enough to render as crayons), but if the page is called , then whenever one wants to use the term in the singular, one is forced into typing the ungainly . (If you didn't understand the latter link, you need to read this: How does one edit a page?)

Use common names of persons
As to names of persons, there are two schools of thought: use the most commonly used name, or use the person's full name. After a vote among those interested, we've come down in favor of the former. Names of persons should be the most commonly used name for the following reasons:


 * We want to maximize the likelihood of being listed in other search engines, thereby attracting more people to Wikipedia. Also, the Jimmy Carter page has the string "Jimmy Carter" in the page title.  This is important because other search engines will often give greater weight to the contents of the title than to the body of the page.  Since "Jimmy Carter" is the most common form of the name, it will be searched on more often, and having that exact string in our page title will often mean our page shows up higher in other search engines.
 * We want to maximize the incidence of accidental links.
 * Using full formal names requires, if one wants to link directly to the article, both that people know the full formal name and that they type it out, both of which are a royal pain. If one links to a redirection page, there's the messy "redirected from" announcement at the top of the page.

Examples of common names that should be used instead of formal names are: George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Mozart, Bach, Goethe. Middle names should be avoided unless they are the most common form of a name (as in, say, John Wilkes Booth). Names with initials should have spaces after each period as in normal English text, for example, H. G. Wells.

Use simple titles
Remember that a link is the title of the page it links to. Titles should be as simple as possible without being too general. For example, the page about jazz should simply be called "Jazz", not "Jazz music", because "jazz" does not refer to anything other than music, and the simpler title makes linking easier. Adding the word "music" is redundant. On the other hand, country music should be on a page called Country music because the word "country" has other referents besides the musical genre. If we ignore potential ambiguity, the ideal of simplicity can be at odds with the ideal of precision: see below.

Prefer spelled-out phrases to acronyms
Whether the acronym or the spelled-out phrase is preferable in many particular cases is debatable, but this can work itself out with the  command. For instance, DMCA and Digital Millennium Copyright Act have oscillated as to which is primary and which page redirects. Other less controversial pairs are MPAA versus Motion Picture Association of America and IMDb versus Internet Movie Database. Usage in the language is also a factor. Radar is an acronym, but spelling it out only obfuscates the meaning. WYSIWYG is a newer example of an acronym that's crept into English usage on its own (Rowan and Martin notwithstanding :-). At any rate, if the acronym and the full name are both in common use, both pages should certainly be created, and one should link to the other.

Be precise when necessary
Please, do not write or put an article on a page with an ambiguously-named title as though that title had no other meanings! A reader may have found your article with a search, or accidentally, or in some other way that robs him of the context, so do him a favor and name your articles precisely. If a word or phrase is ambiguous, and your article concerns only one of the meanings of that word or phrase, you should probably--not in all cases, but in many--use something more precise than just that word or phrase. For example, use Apollo program, Nirvana (band), smoking pipe; rather than simply Apollo, Nirvana, Pipe. See disambiguation for more details on that.

Use English words
Convention: Name your pages in English and place the native transliteration on the first line of the article. Rationale and specifics: See: Naming conventions (anglicization)

Use plain numbers only for years
In my opinion, numbers as page names should only be used for Year in Review entries. So call it Form 1040, not 1040, and Intel 386, not 386. That way, if we ever want to add a page about what happened in the year 1040 or the year 386, we won't have a collision with the other uses of numbers. -- Simon J Kissane

Movie titles
Some movie titles describe other things about which we want articles. For example, An American in Paris describes both a Gershwin musical piece and a movie, and Dune is a geological term, a novel, a movie, and a made-for-cable miniseries.

Where a movie or book title is unique or virtually unique, let the title of the article be the same as the title of the movie. But where it's the same as a subject in science, a novel, or whatever, unless the movie title is far and away the most common accepted meaning of the word or phrase, title the movie article like this:. Then, in case of more than one production of the film, add a date or other information, for example.

Philosophy
Name your pages precisely. If you want to discuss a particular version of realism, for example, Platonic realism, then don't call your page realism; call it Platonic realism or Platonism (though the latter, too, is ambiguous) or even just Platonic theories of universals.

Only a very few famous philosophers can be referred to by their last names. Socrates, Plato are fine; but compare James Mill and John Stuart Mill, or R. W. Sellars and Wilfrid Sellars. Remember that there are famous non-philosophers who might have the name in question, about whom we might eventually want to have articles! Best to do a Google search first.

Languages, both natural and programming
Convention: Programming languages should be suffixed with "programming language", and natural languages with "language". For example, Visual Basic programming language and English language.

Historical names and titles
In general, use the most commonly recognized English-language form of the name and disambiguate the names of monarchs of modern countries in the format King of {Country}. Rationale and specifics: See: Naming conventions (names and titles) and History standards

City names
Convention: In general, cities that exist in modern times should be named in this format: City, Nation. However, due to internal naming conflicts, cities within the United States should be named in this format: City, State. Rationale and specifics: See: Naming conventions (city names)

Ship names
Convention: Articles about ships that have standard prefixes should include them in the article title; for example, HMS Ark Royal, USS Enterprise. Articles about ships that do not have standard prefixes should be titled as (Nationality) (type) (Name); for example, Soviet aircraft carrier Kuznetsov. Rationale and specifics: See: Naming conventions (ships)

- See also: Topic creation