Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Writing about fiction

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CN tagging fiction for citations for basic plot points in the fiction

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard#CN tagging fiction for citations for basic plot points in the fiction. Most of the responses to far have basically been off-topic, trying to address whether media references/popular culture material is best included in the article in question, rather than the posed question of whether an inline citation is required that a work contains the plot point that it contains.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:25, 9 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Fictional characters known by initials - what qualifies as the "preferred style for their own name" ?

MOS:INITIALS

WP:Requested moves has consistently interpreted the "Initials" section as also applying to names of fictional characters.

An initial is capitalized and is followed by a

full point (period) and a space (e.g. J. R. R. Tolkien
), unless:

  • the person demonstrably has a different, consistently preferred style for their own name; and
  • an overwhelming majority of reliable sources use that variant style for that person.

In such a case, treat it as a self-published name change. Examples include k.d. lang, CC Sabathia, and CCH Pounder.

Would the "preferred style for their own name" for fictional characters be the owner's name for the character? Examples:

  1. Owner: E.T. for E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, style followed in secondary source
  2. Owner: C.C. for C.C. (Code Geass), style followed in secondary source
  3. Owner: MJ for MJ (Marvel Cinematic Universe), style followed in secondary source
  4. Owner: JD McDonagh for JD McDonagh, style followed in secondary source
  5. Owner: O.B. for
    Ouroboros "O.B.", style followed in secondary source
  6. Owner: K.K. Slider for K.K. Slider, style followed in secondary source
  7. Owner: B.A. for Knights of the Dinner Table#Boris Alphonzo "B.A." Felton, style followed in secondary source

starship.paint (RUN) 13:37, 30 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I oppose any outcome that provides for C.3.P.O. or R. 2. D. 2. Largoplazo (talk) 16:07, 30 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
C-3PO and R2-D2 are not initials so won't be affected either way by this discussion. R2-D2 for example, is a droid from the R2 series. Gonnym (talk) 16:20, 30 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
While OP brings a few examples, other than ET, none of the articles have been promoted, so they haven't been checked against any MoS guideline. Even the ET article (as I've told the OP before) was promoted years before
MOS:SPACEINITS
was even written, so that too might not have been checked.
That said, lets talk about the actual issue of fictional characters vs real life people. With fictional characters we have the original text (book, film script, official sub-titles, end-credits, etc.) so there is always an official place where we can see how a name is written. RS in these situations just copy from that text (and each other) when they review a film or episode. The question is, does MOS:SPACEINITS apply, and we do we want a consistent style used across Wikipedia or should fictional characters be exempt from it? This might lead to situations where we have in cast list something like: * A. B. as C.D.
If we decide that we follow the source material then that should be added to the guideline so future discussions shouldn't be needed each time this will arise. Gonnym (talk) 16:30, 30 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
We follow the independent reliable source material in pretty much everything to do with styling of names of things, and that generally does entail discussions on a case by case basis. In particular, per
Realtor" as "REALTOR", etc., etc. (despite preferences of fans of these things and in may cases preferences of the trademark holder) then we should not be using something like "JD McDonagh" unless the expected "J. D. McDonagh" is virtually unattested in independent source material. The reason we have exceptions like "Deadmau5" with a letter substitition and "Spider-Man: Far From Home" with a capitalized "From" in it are because case-by-case consensus determinations have done the source research to demonstrate that these divergences from the expected style very strongly dominate in independent sources. Just create redirects from other forms like "JD McDonagh" and "J.D. McDonagh".  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:29, 31 October 2023 (UTC)[reply
]
Even if we have e.g. J. K. Rowling as M.K., it's not going to be very common. I don't think this would require to change all our fictional characters' spelling to ensure that a potential minor point of confusion would never occur. Instead we would have even more potential minor points of confusion on why our spelling deviates from the most common names used by sources. Note that we already have differences in initials, for example CCH Pounder as Ethel B. in Funny Valentines. starship.paint (RUN) 07:41, 31 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • @SMcCandlish: - a simple Google Search for "J. D. McDonagh" shows me that every source on the first page lists him, the wrestler, as "JD McDonagh" (your mileage may vary, but do try). I did use Google Books and Google Scholar but the results were contaminated by non-wrestler results. Am I understanding you correctly, that we should simply follow the independent sources say, so "JD McDonagh" above? starship.paint (RUN) 07:01, 31 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes, though I'm now confused why that entry was given as an example to discuss, if it's not a fictional character. Since this is a real person, it's the exact same kind of case as CCH Pounder: subject prefers it and sources almost entirely go along with it. But it's not actually relevant to the above discussion after all. Maybe "K.K. Slider" is an approriate one to examine since that does appear to be a fictional character.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:13, 31 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    @SMcCandlish: - that's because "JD McDonagh" is a character portrayed by real person Jordan Devlin, just like how "Harry Potter" is a character portrayed by real person Daniel Radcliffe. For K.K Slider, in Google Scholar "KK Slider" seems to be dominant, in Google Books there are some "KK" but "K.K. Slider" seems to be dominant, and in Google Search, at least on the first page, it seems to be ~70% "K.K.", ~30% "KK". I haven't seen any "K. K. Slider" in all three searches despite that being searched for. starship.paint (RUN) 07:32, 31 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    The first point seems rather dubious to me; we generally treat stage names, even rather "peformative" ones, as alternative names not as "fictional" separate subjects, e.g.
    WP:COMMONNAME and thus used as the article title, while "Buster Poindexter" is not. McDonough is not comparable to Potter, because Potter is an invention of an entirely unrelated party (Rowling). A wrestling persona is not analogous to casting as a fictional character in a film/TV/theatre role; it's directly analogous to adopting any other kind of performance persona like Poindexter, or like Angela White's Blac Chyna, a name/persona she abandoned this year (though our article on her is outdated and doesn't go into this).
    On the Slider matter, that data strongly indicates we should do "K. K. Slider", since there is no overwhelming preference for "KK Slider" across the RS material.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:18, 31 October 2023 (UTC)[reply
    ]

A simpler way to get at this is that the original question was "Would the 'preferred style for their own name' for fictional characters be ...", but it is not possible for a fictional character to have a preference about anything. The guideline addresses variants as a matter of whether "the person demonstrably has a different, consistently preferred style for their own name; and an overwhelming majority of reliable sources use that variant style for that person. In such a case, treat it as a self-published name change." A fictional character is not a person, cannot prefer anything, and cannot self-publish anything. The "and" in there (not "or") also means that a style preference in sources (which are not written to our style guide) cannot be used to override our own MoS (otherwise MoS simply wouldn't exist; we'd always use whatever was the most common style for the subject in question, on every matter, but we do not and

there are good reasons why). There is no way in which this guideline provision can be bent to support using the style preferred by the author (who often will date to a period when the norms of English usage were different), and the guideline itself already says "WP:Requested moves has consistently interpreted the 'Initials' section as also applying to names of fictional characters", so this question has already been asked an answered by the community repeatedly. To get at the OP's desired result would require a quite substantive "ignore our style manual and do whatever the primary source likes better" change, which would have to be its own proposal and which is almost certain to fail.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:28, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply
]

Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Writing_about_fiction#List_of_exemplary_articles

Would it be a good idea to add some plays? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 20:29, 21 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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