There's a trend on SciFi.SE, where any mentions of works that are less popular with fans (Dune prequels, Highlander II, Matrix sequels, Star Wars prequels) are frequently met with snarky comments denigrading the unpopular works. "What Prequels"? (just commented on my own question today about...

Assuming the question isn't breaking any other rules, should questions about graphic novels/comic books be on-topic for this site? On one hand, comic-books are books just like any other books. On the other hand, because of the nature of comic books they're much more likely to be about Sci-Fi top...

The title pretty much sums it up. It seems plausible to me that an assumption that a question about a book is liable to contain spoilers is enough reason to not use spoiler markup. I wanted to ask and be sure, though.

If I my question is about a certain book by an author, should I use the tag for both the book and the author? Or just the book? What's the purpose of these author tags in the first place and when can I use them?

I've asked several questions about fairly obscure short stories. I, for one, don't think that these warrant their own tag, but I'd say that the general rule should be to create tags for most major books and book series, but to tag short stories with the short-stories tag and the corresponding aut...

This is a post that was made over on Tex.SE that I think we should all keep in mind. "I'm a moderator from MathOverflow, and this "question" is actually unsolicited advice, based on our experience from the initial launch of MathOverflow. We should encourage everyone to vote positive...

The Modern Language Association style guide (which, unlike Chicago, APA, or the AP style guide), is the style guide used for academic writing about literature. According to the MLA style guide, titles of books should be italicized. This is true even if the title of the book appears in the title o...

A big pet peeve of mine about Stack Exchange's Science Fiction and Fantasy website is that's filled with questions that I describe as "why didn't character x act rationally" questions. Recently, someone asked the question Why did Hermione not kill Voldemort in 'the Prisoner of Azkaban'?, which is...

When quoting a book in a question that was originally written in a language other than English, is it preferable to quote it in the original version or in an English translation, or both? If one should supply a translation, should it be an official one of some kind or is it okay to do the transla...

This is a bit more of an abstract question, but it's one that I think is going to become pretty important. It's also not something we're going to be able to resolve in a day, but I wanted to kick off discussion on the topic. Literature.SE has seen a lot of questions so far. A good fraction hav...

One of the two questions with the tag "character-explanation" can be interpreted as a character analysis and also the term used in literature is generally "character analysis". Should these tags be synonyms?

Not long ago, I posted this question: How many words did Shakespeare really invent? ... which was swiftly put on hold as off-topic. One of the close-voters said: I'm vtcing as off topic because this is asking about Shakespeare's words not his works Should this question be closed? What's o...

We recently discussed spoilers on this site, and the consensus was that while spoilers in titles should be avoided, spoilers in the body of questions/answers were acceptable, and therefore that spoiler blockquotes should be avoided. If someone posts an answer that contains spoiler blockquotes, i...

Right now, this site has a poems tag and a poetry tag. Which tag should we use? I'm partial to poetry, since the word "poetry" refers to the art form, while "poems" refers to poem in the plural. Could we come to a consensus, and could we then make the tags synonyms of each other?

Common Stack Network policy is to embrace non-Googlers. The Stack Exchange wants to be a place Google sends folks, not a place that sends folks to Google. Unfortunately, many sites and some of our users feel the downvote reason "does not show any research effort" is synonymous with "did not try ...

I asked this question on Literature SE, related to online published e-book. But I had no clue of what tag to attach. There are no generic tags like: "E-book","Online-Literature" etc. Since there are no tags, I think, Literature SE might not be considering questions related to e-books and online ...

Back in the Definition stage in Area 51, Literature attracted a total of 84 example questions, 40 of which received at least ten upvotes. But not all of these questions have yet been asked here on the site now that we've entered beta phase. I've seen people in chat suggest posting some of those ...

It feels like the tags on the beta had kicked off extremely inconsistent in the range of scopes. In my experience from other sites, when I ask a question it should be reasonably clear whether I am expected to tag novels or fantasy or english-literature or 20th-century or j-r-r-tolkien (or john-ro...

We have margaret-peterson-haddix and c-s-lewis. I think it should be uniform whether a name is stated in full or initialised. If this is not resolved early and enforced it will become virtually impossible to reach a consistent feeling later. I suggest initials only for every case of 2 or more gi...

Sometimes, I (I think we all do) come across a passage or quote where we couldn't quite understand what author means in that context. So, should asking such questions be on-topic? Users can get better perspective from others who actually read this.

First day meta enthusiasm has been cooled down a bit now then why don't we make a meta feeds bot for our chatroom to post latest meta questions like all other SE sites? We can even name it bookworm.

Literary non-fiction is a form of non-fiction, in which the author uses the techniques of literature to describe a factually accurate account of a true occurrence. Is this on topic?

Do I have to read a book before I ask a question about it? Can I ask questions about books I haven't finished reading yet? Do I have to read a book several times before I ask a question about it?

Having read the current tour the "ask / don't ask" is short an vague. Now I would expect that since we are currently in private beta. However, to me a big definition on scope would be a debate between fiction and non-fiction. Ask Specific issues with literature Real problems or que...

Are works of fanfiction within the site scope (either as independent text, or in context of the main literary work that they are fanfiction of). I'm asking about questions with fanfic as their topic. I'm NOT asking if fanfics can be used in answers (which is a wholly separate question).

Forgive my ignorance, but I couldn't find any documentation on this subject. This is the first time I've been part of an SE private beta and I am unfamiliar with the process. The info page you have to read and accept before posting makes clear the beta exists for seven days, and that it will be ...

In this day and age, you don't need a publishing house to publish a book. Self-publishing is possible and happening. There are several popular web serials (including, but not limited to, fan fiction). Do works have to be professionally published to count as literature, and if so, what counts as "...

Are questions about authors on-topic, or just their works? For example, asking about authors lives, motivations, interviews, or anything relating to their work.

This question is slightly different from other tag related questions, in that I'm asking which tags the site would benefit from, when viewed from subject matter expertise perspective. On SciFi this was easy - there are really very few generic SME trade terms that could be used universally. Howe...