Proposal:Remove banned characters

Status: This page describes an active style guideline proposal and is not official.

Proposal number: RFC-294 Champion: Hawke Current status: Unknown Initial Discussion

Use of special characters

The use of certain special characters is preferred:

Apostrophe

A true apostrophe (’) is preferred in place of a typewriter apostrophe ('). Use ' only if it is clearly as it appears on the release, or if you can’t easily enter the preferred character.

Quotation marks

Use the mark that appears on the release. Use " only if it is clearly as it appears on the release, or if you can’t easily enter the preferred characters. Other common variations include:

single quotes

‘ and ’

guillemets

« » and ‹ › (note difference from < and >)

low quotes

„ and ‚ (note difference from comma: ,)

Primes

Use single prime (′), double-prime (″), and triple-prime (‴) where appropriate. Single prime indicates minutes and feet; double-prime indicates seconds and inches. Triple-prime is rarely used.

Ellipsis

Use the ellipsis character (…) instead of three periods (...), unless you cannot easily enter the preferred character.

Dashes

Use the em dash (—) and en dash (–) where appropriate. If you can’t easily enter these characters, use - for en dash and -- for em dash. Other editors should correct these where possible, unless it is clear that the release really uses a doubled generic typewriter-dash.

"Top something" Playlists

Bootleg torrents that are compilations based on playlists of charts authorities (like Billboard's) should not be stored in MusicBrainz as releases. These playlists are often copyrighted by their issuers.

Other Do-Not's

There's some guiding information available What Not To Link To. It is not an Official Style Guideline, but is information that should help while editing.