Proposal:Remove banned characters

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Revision as of 16:25, 30 November 2010 by Hawke (talk | contribs)
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Status: This page describes an active style guideline proposal and is not official.



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



This proposal updates Miscellaneous Guideline to the following:

Use of special characters

The use of certain special characters is preferred over generic equivalents. Generic characters should be used only in cases of Artist Intent. Otherwise, editors should replace generic characters with their more specific equivalents.

While there are several ways to enter these characters—including various key combinations and copy/paste—it may be difficult in your configuration. In such cases, use the generic equivalents. Other editors can later edit with preferred characters.

Apostrophe
A true apostrophe (’) is preferred in place of a typewriter apostrophe (').
Quotation marks
Use the mark that appears on the release, instead of " or '. Common variations include:
double quotes
“ and ”
single quotes
‘ and ’
guillemets
« » and ‹ › (note difference from < and >)
low quotes
„ and ‚ (note difference from comma: ,)
ditto mark
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 (...)
Dashes, hyphens, and minus signs
Use the appropriate hyphen (‐), minus sign (−), em dash (—), en dash (–), or other dash as it appears on the release. If you can’t easily enter these characters, or can’t determine which is correct, use - (hyphen-minus, the common character appearing on keyboards) for en dash, hyphen, and minus; and -- for em dash and quotation dash.

Relation to Classical Style Guide

Since the Classical Style Guide has its own rules about punctuation in titles, please follow that guideline where it applies.

"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.