PotC Wiki:Naming conventions

This page establishes our code guidelines in relation to naming articles. Naturally, bear in mind these are more actual guidelines than rules, so there may be cases where these conventions can be overruled.

Generally, article names should be presented in full, reflecting what the majority of English speakers will recognize.

Lowercase second and subsequent words
Do not capitalize second and subsequent words unless the title is a proper noun (such as a name) or is otherwise almost always capitalized.
 * Example: Jack Sparrow, but Tia Dalma's shack.

Technical limitations with the MediaWiki software mean that first letters of first or single words are always capitalized. This is only a problem when a proper noun's first letter is lowercase -- though in this case, Title can be used to overwrite the article title.

Prefer singular nouns
In general only create page titles that are in the singular, unless that noun is always in a plural form in English.
 * Example: galleon, but Pelegostos.

Use English words
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
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
Please, do not write or put an article on a page with an ambiguously-named title as though that title had no other meanings.

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.
 * Example: East India Trading Company instead of EITC.

Avoid the definite article ("the") and the indefinite article ("a"/"an") at the beginning of the page name
Convention: Except in titles of works (The Coming Storm) or in official names, avoid the definite ("the") and indefinite ("a"/"an") articles at the beginning of a page name. This applies even if the subject of the page is usually preceded by the definite article "the" in speech or writing.
 * Example: Black Pearl, not The Black Pearl.

Be careful with special characters
Some special characters either cannot be used or can but cause problems. For example you should not use a piping character (|), an asterisk (*), an ampersand (&), a plus sign (+), curly braces ({}), or square braces ([]) in a name.

Media titles
Use italics in the titles of films (Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl), books (Pirates of the Caribbean: Jack Sparrow: The Coming Storm) and video games (Pirates of the Caribbean Online). Music cues and tracks use quotation marks ("He's a Pirate").

Vessels
Named ships, boats and other vessels are presented in italics. Acronyms such as HMS or RMS are presented in standard type with the ship's title following in italics.
 * Example: Black Pearl, Jolly Mon, HMS Dauntless.