Grand Theft Wiki:Titles

In brief...

Make sure you follow the way of doing things that already exists here, even if it is different to other wikis.

Consistency means doing things the same way. This is important on a wiki, as repeated methods make it easy to find and do things.

The biggest concern surrounding consistency here is the use of game names in text, section headings and page titles.

For example, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City is the full name of the game, so absolutely must be used on that page. However, on pages about that game, do we really need to use the full title. Page titles like "List of Missions in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City" are cumbersome to read and to type. Shortened titles like Missions in GTA Vice City are easier in both of those respects. There are many choices of title for that page, ranging from a long one (List of Missions in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas) or short ones (Vice City Missions). See the Style Guide for details more on how an article should be written/laid out.

Sites like Wikipedia use the long "correct" titles, but pages like List of characters in Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories really do look silly. Notice that Wikipedia says "List of" at the start of the title - that is something that we do not do here on Grand Theft Wiki.

Policy

After discussion on and off the site, a decision has been made regarding titles and names. This IS official policy, but is still open to discussion.

Titles of articles (pages) should always use the full title of whatever it is about. For example, a game's name should always be in full. All the game names have colons in except the numeric ones (GTA1, GTA2, GTA III, GTA IV)

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas

In articles, the game's name should be shown in full once. After that, an abbreviated version can be used without a colon.

"...and then in GTA San Andreas he joined the mafia..."

Games that are place names (Vice City) should never be shown without "GTA" at the front, to distinguish the place (Vice City) from the game (GTA Vice City). The numerical names must always have "GTA" first. The extended game names, such as "London 1961" and "Liberty City Stories" can be shown without "GTA" at the front.

For pages that are lists of things in games, the full title is not required. An abbreviated version is adequate, and helps keep page titles short.

Missions in GTA Vice City

This also applies to headings within articles - for example in character pages, use "Appearances in GTA San Andreas" instead of "Appearances in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas".

Examples

Some examples of Consistency in a tabular format:

Wrong	Right
Grand Theft Auto San Andreas	Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
GTA: San Andreas	GTA San Andreas
Grand Theft Auto: III GTA: III	Grand Theft Auto III GTA III
GTA San Andreas Vehicles SAVehicles List of Vehicles in GTA San Andreas	Vehicles in GTA San Andreas

Term	Meaning
GTA Vice City	The game
Vice City	The city
GTA / Grand Theft Auto	All Grand Theft Auto games
GTA1 / Grand Theft Auto 1	The first GTA game, originally called "Grand Theft Auto"