Consistent example style

Shimaspawn, I tend to do the same thing myself, but at least have the "citation" form as an aspirational goal.... :)

Jet-a-Reeno!

Well, that's wrong. The names of works (novels, films, TV shows, magazines, comicbook series, etc) are supposed to be italicized. However, shorter works or parts of works (short stories, songs, episodes of a TV show, etc) get quote marks rather than italics. That's not just our policy, that's proper formatting in general. One of the things that this wiki, your English teacher, and The Other Wiki all agree on.

Citing the examples sounds ideal, but probably not feasible.

Also, kinda wondering if I'm the only one who likes variety in how the examples are written. I don't mind whether the work title shows up in the beginning, middle, or end of the entry.

I agree, which is why I said I would be against a strictly enforced example structure. We seem to go with a more informal tone as it is now, which I enjoy.

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Anything acceptable or above on Yamikuronue rankings is good with me... sometimes the bad category is tolerable but the "Worst" ones really get to me those have to go.

Sparkling and glittering! Jan-Ken-Pon!

I dislike not seeing the work name first or potholed because it invites duplicate examples. And screw my english teacher!

Fight smart, not fair.

I agree on the potholed bit, and I at least explicitly state which work is being used when writing my own examples.

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Yeah, the first thing I should see in an example is the work name. A potholed name, particularly if it's just on a characters name, is just irritating.

Fight smart, not fair.

Deboss, we have a standard we're trying to keep to across the wiki. Part of that standard is "Works names are italicized; episodes, chapters, albums, and short stories are put in quotes; and authors of written works should be mentioned.". You can like it or not, but not following it isn't making the wiki a better wiki. It's just making work for someone who has to come along behind you and fix what you "fixed".

Read these two pages: Good Style and Page Templates.

edited 31st Jan '11 7:40:39 AM by Madrugada

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

I'll leave them. I don't like them, but I'll leave them. Can I at least shove the author behind the work title?

Fight smart, not fair.

Potholes are bad, because you can't even search them with Ctrl+F unless you go to the source page.

But if a page is long enough that you can't check all the entries with a quick glance, you shouldn't check the first words one by one to begin with, just search for the term.

I personally like variety.

• Show A used this trope.
• Deconstructed by Show B, in this and that ways.
• The protagonist of Show C invoked this trope once.
• In Show D it was Played for Laughs.
• Show E used this trope Once an Episode
• According to Word of God, this trope was intentionally exaggerated in Show F.

It's more interesting than:

• Show A: used this trope.
• Show B: Deconstructed in this and that ways.
• Show C: The protagonist invoked this trope once.
• Show D: it was Played for Laughs in it.
• Show E: this trope was used Once an Episode
• Show F: According to Word of God, this trope was intentionally exaggerated here.

Especially when the entries aren't alphabetized anyways, so it doesn't make it easier to find a specific example.

"More interesting" is a fickle goal, especially when it comes at the expense of clarity.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

I don't think the example that Eternal September showed really loses anything as far as clarity is concerned. I like that kind of variety in example lists as well (though I would personally shy away from putting the work title at the very end of the example.)

edited 31st Jan '11 9:29:20 AM by Meeble

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But in this case, the supposed "clarity" of the titles being on the front of the lines is so weak, that it's basically just another matter of taste.

If at least someone would organize a change of making the lists alphabetic, I could get behind this format, because I see that Trope pages are a lot more clear this way.

But not if it is just for those few people who refuse to read the whole page, but are ready to scroll through a bunch of first lines rather than use a search bar.

edited 31st Jan '11 9:30:20 AM by EternalSeptember

I dislike the first list you made because it looks crufty to me. Particularly if the name is at the end.

Fight smart, not fair.

Funny that you say that, because they both use the same amount of words. There is nothing unnecessary stuffed into it. (actually, the second one needed two extra words)

I can say the same thing as about "brutally subverted": If it hurts our editors' eyes, they will stop doing it, but there is no reason to force them as long as it's about preferences and tastes.

edited 31st Jan '11 10:01:20 AM by EternalSeptember

Which is why I don't go out and do it to random pages. I do it to pages I'm planning to curate though. I especially needed to do it on things like Combo Platter Powers because Wolverine was listed in the comic book section three times. One of which was a reference to the movie.

edited 31st Jan '11 10:04:12 AM by Deboss

Fight smart, not fair.

As long as the the work is in the first few words, I prefer the more natural sentence structure.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

Yeah, I submit that the last, "Show F" example can be too annoying, sometimes I fix those, depending on the example length.

Isn't Eternal September's position basically a variant on another editorial guideline we have (somewhere, can't find it, though) about "Don't sound like a robot from a bad 1950s sci-fi show?"

Slightly different context, but there, the guideline was to avoid style like:

• Subversion: Alice did this to Bob once, and it was brutally subversive.
• Aversion: Charlie did not do this to Bob.
• Inversion: Bob did it to Alice in one episode.

Jet-a-Reeno!

I don't like it per se, but I don't think it makes a huge difference as long as the information is there. I don't think the consensus is that TV Tropes is intended to be a scholarly work.

Again, I don't think it's better with the title in various positions, but it's not worse.

The child is father to the man —Oedipus

Word Cruft

Pretentious quote || In-joke from fandom you've never heard of || Shameless self-promotion || Something weird you'll habituate to

Ooops.You were identifying the page Sue was talking about. Sorry. I misread that.

Still identifying an example as a subversion, inversion, aversion, lampshading, or whatever formof playing with it is,isn't really Word Cruft. It's necessary information about the example. Starting an example with things like "Another example" or ""in the same vein" or a media identifier when the examples are already sorted into media sections is cruft. If they aren't already sorted, things like "Film example:" or "Radio example:" can be helpful.

edited 31st Jan '11 12:04:58 PM by Madrugada

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

[disregard]

edited 31st Jan '11 12:05:50 PM by TripleElation

Pretentious quote || In-joke from fandom you've never heard of || Shameless self-promotion || Something weird you'll habituate to

Actually, it's not the act of identifying subversions and such, so much as the specific style. From the Word Cruft page:

Prolongation: robo-speech: Some poor souls begin every example with "Subversion:" or "Inversion:" or "Film example:" or, in desperate cases, "Another example:". The motivation, of course, is to delay, even for a moment, that dread instant when they have to start saying something. The only significant effect is that they sound like a robot from a '50s B Movie. Easy to clean up.

Jet-a-Reeno!