I've noticed lately a lot of abbreviated titles which use the quotation marks around them, such as "Gulliver's Travels" and "Tom Sawyer" in lieu of the correct titles "Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, in Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships" and "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer". I admit the use of Gulliver's full title would be unneeded but doesn't the fact it is not the title mean it shouldn't get the respect that the use of the marks implies, i.e., it denotes the collection of words asssembled by the author to be what his work is to be known as.
There are a lot of uses of the marks which are employed when the "The Adventures of" is dropped from a title and I do not think that in that situation the use of the marks is proper either (I think if the title isn't going to be used and you want to reference Tom Sawyer, you should say the book about Tom Sawyer and not "Tom Sawyer"). Am I wrong? Is there a hard rule somewhere that states the usage rules?
Some of the Potter titles are showing up this way as well as many movie and TV shows.

In some cases it's not feasible to write out exceedingly lengthy titles. People will still understand what's being talked about. 'Gulliver's Travels' is what many consider the book's name these days (my copy has that on the cover). Our quiz titles and intros can only take so many characters.

Rather than omit them, it's best to keep all titles (full or truncated) in quotation marks to maintain consistency.

I noted that the Gulliver issue was only as an example and understood that instance. I do not understand that other part of my example, deleting chunks and still quoting as if it were the real title. I take it that is your feeling and not a fast rule written somewhere. It is not best to keep them if the use is wrong. But please cite a reference where it is stated to be okay to truncate and still attribute with quotes.

This has been part of Quiz Creation Notes for Movies since at least 2004.

I believe the correct title of the album track you quote in your signature is "Living Loving Maid (She's Just a Woman)".

Length of time doesn't make the use correct. In fact it exaccerbates the issue by pointing out the error has been allowed to exist without fixing it for so long.
edit to Dippo: I thought parentheticals in titles were an automatic exception where they did not need to be included in the full title and are often only employed to indicate alternative titles a work may be known as. But I will update my signature piece to reflect what you have pointed out. Thank you.

It is not an error. It is a Funtrivia convention, as set down in the Guidelines. Normal convention would be to italicize titles, but this is not possible on Funtrivia.

Or double underline book titles and single underline chapter titles?

But I think these are side issues to my maybe inadequately posed point in the first place. It seems many titles are being chopped unnecessarily (whether the quote marks are proper or not). It is the chopping I am noticing. Doesn't the chopping rule out the respect denoted by the marks? Why is a chopped title accepted when there are only 3-4 words being saved?
Another example: "Frankenstein" when the title is "Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus". That one isn't used much on the site. I will come up with better ones, give me time, please? Can anyone cite other examples?

Both of these are also not possible, and therefore replaced by the FT convention of using quotation marks.

Does the italicized and Gulliver's back up part of what I said? You could write in plain script. Gulliver's Travels, and folks would know what you meant. You could put the full title in italics and that would be okay. But to italiciz(s)e the truncated form is not needed if not indeed wrong. Did Michaelangelo paint "M. Lisa"? No (just keeping it light. I know it was Rembrandt). His work is titled "Mona Lisa". Let's not let the short attention span seeming to pervade our civilization to the point where we bowdlerize our great works of art.

edit: Let me see if putting it this way makes any difference to getting the idea across.
It seems a lot of works' titles are being shortened for whatever reason and the practice is being legitimized by throwing quote marks around the new name. I find this practice wrong but will gladly change my mind if someone cites a source other than here that legitimizes the practice.

The quotation-around-titles convention is in place to help players recognize easily when they are being given the title of something. Whether it's a full title or a well-known or colloquial short-form of the full title doesn't matter, it should be in quotation.

Again, to reiterate what has already been said:

Typical citation practice, at least in my experience with MLA formatting, requires film, book, TV show, etc. titles to be italicized or underlined. This is not possible in quizzes. HTML coding of all kinds is disallowed and has been for over a decade because of possible bad code that can be placed into quizzes.

In the cases of poems and short stories, titles are placed in quotation marks (in formal writings, as per MLA). We've decided to do this for all media titles as a substitute; it doesn't make sense to omit them entirely because this way it can be differentiated from text.

Which would you rather see?
'Paranormal activity occurs in Paranormal Activity." or "Paranormal activity occurs in 'Paranormal Activity'."

How about: "Gulliver's travels are chronicled in Swift's literary classic, 'Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, in Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships'." or Gulliver's travels are chronicled in Swift's literary classic, 'Gulliver's Travels'."


I think players 'get it' when titles are truncated. We know 'Fellowship of the Ring' is a LOTR novel. To put 'Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring' or any other lengthier variation up would be superfluous and, in some cases, too long, especially for titles, intros, conclusions, and single question answers (in which length would pose an issue). We try to avoid abbreviating when possible, but heck, even in academic papers I'm explicitly told to use the commonly-regarded names of books. If I sent a formal writing with 'Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, in Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships' in it, I'd be asked not to do it again. We'd never say the full name in conversation. :p

So, is that MLA formatting you mentioned the source of rules I asked about? What is the full un-acronymed name s'il vous plait?

MLA, what I use for my citation formatting, stands for 'Modern Language Association'.

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/section/2/11/


I may note that most citation styles change annually. Even if we formatted everything to be the same as MLA on the site, there's no way it would necessarily be correct the following year, or the next, or the next.

Imagine the amount of work we'd need to do.

Thank You. I will leave y'all alone for a while and go improve myself by doing some reading and listening to "Surrealistic Pillow".

I believe the name of da Vinci's painting was "Portrait of Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco del Giocondo".

Agony, you owe me for a new laptop - that comment made me spray coffee all over this one, lolol.

Doesn't that back my contention that putting the marks around a title that isn't the right one helps to legitimize the wrong one? Then just Mona Lisa is how we should refer to it when not expressing the real, full title. Mona Lisa is the slang title we've come to know it by and works quite well without any marks around it.

No.

Yes, it helps to legitimize.
Yes, the title works without the marks.
Yes, it is a slang name for it.
To which do you mean no?

May I just point out, Mehaul, that truncated titles are still part of titles, and therefore deserve the quotation marks. It is exactly the same thing as what is in your signature line.

If what you say is true, shouldn't part of the lyrics of a song not have quotation marks? After all, it is truncated, and not the entire lyrics of the song. Yet you put those little snippet into quotation marks. Why? Why is music different than books, movies, and television?


Or with a quote... We say that Benjamin Franklin said "A Penny Saved..." Not the entire quote, but it belongs in quotations, correct?


I guess I fail to see your reasoning as to why a widely accepted title should not be in quotation marks.


Also, people accept "Moby Dick" as a title, when really, it is actually called "Moby-Dick".

No, sorry salami_swami, you've missed the HTML forced use of Quotes in lieu of Italics or underlining for titles. Quotes are stil quotes, truncated or not. There is a difference between using them for quotations and to show respect for a whole piece of work.

edit to repeat my intent:edit: Let me see if putting it this way makes any difference to getting the idea across.
It seems a lot of works' titles are being shortened for whatever reason and the practice is being legitimized by throwing quote marks around the new name. I find this practice wrong but will gladly change my mind if someone cites a source other than here that legitimizes the practice.
edit add: That MLA didn't define diddly as far as rules for title punctuation goes.
edit add. In the "Moby-Dick" case, people should be corrected before the real title is found only on page six among the publisher's notes like the Jonathan Swift work.

Quotes are still quotes, and titles are still titles.

I still fail to see the difference.

Please.

Before the internet the conventions were defined by the use of single quotemarks, double quote marks, single underline, double underline, and Italics or Bold lettering where possible. There is a difference between quotations and titles.

edit: adding bold to a statement makes it a new statement and not a quote. A parallel example of the very activities I am talking about.