CZ:Naming conventions

[edit intro]

Citizendium has various conventions about how to name articles. Most importantly, all words in an article name, except for the first word, should be lower case and singular (e.g. Sympathetic nervous system), unless it is normal to write it in the upper case or plural (e.g. Great Britain, Pants). Another convention is that the common names for things are preferred to the obscure, although there are exceptions.

How to title articles

If an article concerns only one aspect of a topic, then it should have a precise title that accurately reflects the content. For example, if an article about Russia is only about the history of Russia, then it should be named History of Russia.

Generally, prefer common names. The common names for things are preferred to the recondite or obscure. For instance, you might better place an article at Bill Clinton rather than William Jefferson Clinton.

Be specific with person names. When starting articles using a person's name, it is normally preferable to disambiguate the title (i.e., not just "Eugene Daub", but rather "Eugene Daub (sculptor)".

Prefer the well-known, common name for the article

If there is a name used regularly in common parlance, by non-experts, the common name should be the preferred article name in Citizendium; e.g., Superfund instead of Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act, or CERCLA.

Naming places

Place names should nearly always include the surrounding location, i.e., not just "Big Sandy River", but "Big Sandy River, Tennessee" or "Big Sandy River, West Virginia". Or, park name might use parentheses, such as "David Bradford Park (Princeton, NJ)". Really famous, widely known geographical features might not need to include a location (i.e., "Mississippi River" is sufficient).

Typographical and stylistic rules

Prefer singular: Prefer the singular form of nouns (Bear, not Bears).

First name first: Articles about people put the first name first (e.g., Albert Einstein). Our metadata template alphabetizes the page according to the "abc" field in the metadata template. Fill in the "abc" field as abc = Einstein, Albert. This will file the Einstein article in all categories under "E" rather than "A" (See CZ:Using the Subpages template).

Punctuation: Avoid punctuation in an article title, but there are many exceptions:

1. Disambiguation titles use parentheses (e.g. Accidental (music))—see below
2. Geographical place names may require commas (e.g., Anchorage, Alaska)
3. Artistic works are rendered as titled (e.g., William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!, Willa Cather's O Pioneers!)
4. A person's name may include initials (e.g., J. R. R. Tolkien). Most institutions with acronyms or initialisms (e.g. NATO, WHO, USSR, BBC, NBC) along with official names comprised of initials (e.g., USS, HMS, RMS) do not use periods; but note that CZ usage is U.S. and not US
5. The names of most people (unless extremely famous) should be qualified with a word or two in parentheses, such as "Bob Jones (Missouri policeman)".

Disambiguation in page titles

The Snake redirect needs to be restored, as Citizendium handles disambiguation differently than Wikipedia. We make sure the top-level topic (in this case, Snake, is a redirect so that no one will be tempted to create a new article if there is a redlink to it.

See also: CZ:Disambiguation

To disambiguate is to reduce ambiguity. It is occasionally necessary to place clarifying phrases within parentheses to specify which of various possible topics might be meant. For example, when

1. The title is used in multiple ways, and the sense in the article is not the most common sense. For example, there is a line of cosmetics called "Philosophy"; the article about that might live at Philosophy (cosmetics). The article about deep thought continues to live at Philosophy.
2. The title takes a common word or phrase and uses it in a special way. For example, "attack surface" is a term in computer science, but the words could mean all sorts of things, such as the deck of an aircraft carrier or a ping-pong table. To clarify that we are using the word or phrase in a special way, we include a disambiguating phrase: e.g. attack surface (software); phenomenon (Kant's philosophy); frontal scale (snakes).

Some titles should always be disambiguated— in particular, those that do not suggest any one particular sense. For example, "Georgia" is apt to bring to mind the U.S. state as much as the country in the Caucasus. Therefore, we use Georgia (U.S. state) and Georgia (country), or similar, suitably unambiguous titles. At Georgia, we put a "disambiguation page," i.e., a page that lists and links to the different pages with the title in question.

Similarly, royalty should be disambiguated by kingdom in parentheses. King James I should be disambiguated in the title by kingdom: James I (England), James I (Scotland), James I (Aragon).

Geographical names

Names of geographical entities should be written in full, in title case, and without the definite article ("the"): Pacific Ocean, Red Sea, Nile, North America. Generally, use the name of a geographical entity usually given by the locals if English-speaking, and most often used in English if the locals are not English-speaking (e.g., Rio Grande). In uncertain cases, some sort of disambiguation should be used in the title.

Incorrectly named articles

If you see a page that you think has been incorrectly named, first look at the article's Talk: page to see if the issue has been previously discussed and if a consensus has been reached about it. If not, leave a note with your suggestion, and add the article to Category:Rename suggested (add [[Category:Rename suggested]] to the bottom of the talk page). It might also be wise to notify the work group editors directly, since the "Category:Rename suggested" is, at the moment, not frequently looked at. You can find a list of the work group editors by navigating through the CZ:Workgroups pages. Look for the "editors" link under "community".

Special cases

• Some pages, like pH and e (mathematics), require lower case titles, which are done like this:

{{lowercase|title=pH}} at the top of the article gives the correct title form for pH

{{lowercase|title=e (mathematics}} gives the correct title form of e (mathematics).

• Some pages, like 9/11, require a "/" in their titles, which for technical reasons doesn't work with our subpage system. Use {{slashtitle}}, and follow the instructions on that page.