Editing Rules: Titles
Titles found in various pages, as well as the page titles in the Wiki, song files, and song metadata should follow the style guide below.
Contents
Naming
If a title has a title that has been published in English by an official publisher, use that title for the article's name in the Wiki and when referencing it in an article. However, when a title was originally published in a language other than English, do the following to obtain a title:
- Use an official English translation if one exists. For example, Double Dragon (NES) was titled 双截龍 Shuang Ryu in its original Japanese release, but was translated into English as "Double Dragon," by the official publisher. Include the native title within the article. If a game with a foreign title was only translated into British English or Australian English, use their translation and spelling.
- If the game has multiple official English titles, use the title that was published first. For example, Contra (NES) was given the official English title Probotector in the UK, but it was first released in English as Contra in the USA, so this site uses Contra. This rule can be ignored if a later English title is considerably more popular (like if it has ten times more results in a Google search). If both names are quite popular, create a redirect page for the alternate title.
- If the language uses a pseudo-English title, convert it to proper English. Many Japanese titles are written in katakana to show an English title, but need to be converted into English. For example, the Japanese title of Final Fantasy (NES) is ファイナルファンタジー Fainaru Fantaji, which is clearly meant to be Final Fantasy.
- If no official translation exists, do not translate it, but use the native title. However, transliterate the title to the English alphabet. For example, 北海道連鎖殺人 オホーツクに消ゆ is transliterated to, Hokkaidou Rensa Satsujin: Okhotsk ni Kiyu (FC). In order to make the title more accessible to readers, attempt to translate the title into English to the best of your ability inside of the article.
Capitalization
The VGMPF uses the same capitalization rules as Wikipedia for determining when words in a title should be capitalized. Below is a list of the more common rules, but there are more in-depth in their style guide.
Always Capitalize
- The first and last word of a title.
- Every adjective, adverb, noun, and pronoun.
- Subordinating conjunctions (Me, It, His, If, etc.)
- All verbs, including short verbs (Am, Are, Be, Do, Go, Is, Was, etc.)
- Prepositions (words that identify a location in space or time) that contain five letters or more (During, Through, About, Until, Below, Under, etc.)
Never Capitalized
- Indefinite and definite articles (a, an, the).
- Short coordinating conjunctions (and, but, or, and nor).
- Other words when used as a conjunction (for, yet, so).
- Prepositions containing four letters or fewer (as, in, of, on, to, for, from, into, like, over, with, upon, etc.)
- The word to in infinitives.
Contradicting Official Titles
Due to artistic license used by composers and disagreed upon standards used by editors, titles as they are seen on official documentation may not always adhere to the rules of the VGMPF. When this occurs please use the following guidelines as to whether a title should match an official wording, or be converted to fit our rules.
- Capitalization of standard English words should be changed to meet the standards of the VGMPF. For example, if an official soundtrack capitalizes the word "and" in the middle of the title, it should be changed to lowercase here. Likewise, if an official soundtrack doesn't capitalize a long preposition like "through," it should be capitalized here. There are a few exceptions like when referencing a proper noun that is meant to be lower case like, Nobody Told Me About id.
- Words that are all capital for no reason (like many of the songs in the bemani series) should be changed to proper case. Sometimes, a word in a song title is written in all capitals to show emphasis, in which case, it should be retained.
- Punctuation within the title should be retained even if it doesn't fit with common style rules. For example, the use of double exclamation points in "You've Got to Eat Your Vegetables!!"
- Made-up words, or words with creative spellings should retain their spelling and capitalization, like "CCCool." Sometimes it's difficult to tell is a word was purposely misspelled, so try and contact the composer.
