The Reading Room

heather

00:20

@Hamlet I appreciate your thoughts; I've edited based on it. do you think it's improved?

BESW

A page from my new book Graphic Science.

Tweeted by AcmeDarryl on October 10, 2017 at 6:19 PM

Hamlet

@heather better, but you still need to connect what happened in the bible to what happens in the song. This means at least a sentence or two explaining how the lyrics relate to that particular aspect of the bible.

You don't really quote the lyrics during that portion of the answer, and you should quote both: the bible and the lyrics: if you're comparing the two.

heather

okay.

@Hamlet alright, I've added that as well, and come across some interesting similarities.

Hamlet

01:38

(I'm way to tired to make any sort of coherent evaluation/give coherent feedback at the moment. Glad to see you thought this was productive ["I've added that as well, and come across some interesting similarities."])

In general, I think if you like literature and like answering questions on this site, I would recommend spending some time learning how to do close reading.

user15026

03:29

@Bookworm Haven't read the thing but it's common in erotica especially if it's the whole "girl gets intro'd to the world of non-vanilla sex" or "deflowering the virgin in "unconventional ways" sort of tropes

user15026

It's basically likely the whole "I've discovered I like sex but OH NOES THAT IS NOT PROPER TIME FOR A CRISIS OF CONSCIENCE" thing

b_jonas

08:10

Quick question. You know the book burning people who figure that Harry Potter supports satanism and Huckleberry Finn supports slavery, right? What was their pretext when attacking Lois Lowry's The Giver?

@Bookworm Oh! That's a good question. I like that tradition a lot, but I've no idea where it comes from.

Apparently it's a very old custom, which is what I would have guessed.

user61230

08:36

Most of the time, when books are burned (either literally or figuratively), it's because the ideology the book promotes is in some way spurious to a cultural sense of social obligation.

user61230

The common thread in the rejection of those books is that they place liberal individualism (in the non-US-politics sense of "liberalism") in contrast with, and above, subservience.

user61230

It goes in a lot of masks. People nowadays call texts heretical, going against the church, not because they are intrinsically so, but because they encourage an ideology that pushes back against direct instruction in modes of thought - a critical tool for these communities.

BESW

@Zyera But see also burning of draft cards, etc.

user61230

The Giver is fundamentally a book about how the restrictions placed on the community are heinous and incorrect, and well, couldn't ours be, too? When Jonas finds out that his valuation of his community's restrictions ultimately stripped the world of its color, that sends a message that you, too, should challenge the assumptions imposed on you by your community.

user61230

@BESW Burning of draft cards is one I place as a rejection of the authoritarian.

user61230

08:40

(I guess the real lesson is: people just love burning things.)

b_jonas

09:20

@Zyera I don't care about literally burning them. More like banning them, as in saying that ordinary people should not be allowed to read those books.

Hamlet

something something generalizing from a few cases to universal trends is always risky.

user61230

@b_jonas Eh, I categorize them the same in this context. They're both protest actions against a book's ideology. Banning is a skip and hop from burning.

Hamlet

usually the best way to find out why people want to ban a book is to talk to the people who are trying to ban it, and then read between the lines.

Mithrandir

Burning is just a more effective way of preventing people from reading it

BESW

Well, it used to be. Now it's more an effective way to publicize the book.

But the intent is there, yes.

b_jonas

09:32

@BESW That sounds unlikely in the case of The Giver, which was already lots of years old and given as mandatory reading for students in American schools when people complained about it.

user61230

In smaller communities, protests against specific books tend to be more effective. Those conditions were present at the time The Giver was being pushed back against.

user61230

Modern book protests have the opposite effect, only because The Internet(tm) has made the scale of effective book protests impossible to achieve.

b_jonas

@Zyera Now that's possible.

Hamlet

@Zyera it depends on what kind of censorship you're talking about.

b_jonas

@Zyera Why? These ones were effective, because they reached me through the internet. Although most of that might just be ironic memetic echoes about the stereotype of stupid people who want to ban Harry Potter or something.

Hamlet

09:38

@Zyera some of the time. Something something these universal statements are risky.

user61230

@b_jonas They reached you, but that largely means it failed to achieve its aim of suppressing knowledge & readership for Harry Potter.

user61230

@Hamlet Something something any generalization should always be taken with a grain of salt and not assumed to be truly universal ;)

b_jonas

@Zyera Well of course. They always fail that. You can't actually ban a book anymore once it's well-known, our society doesn't work that way luckily.

But as protests they totally worked.

user61230

@b_jonas Not anymore, yeah. But it can work on a local scale. Books have been removed from curricula and school libraries in local districts, and that continues to be effective today.

user61230

Less so, but it does. People, even out here in an intensely liberal area, go to school board meetings and ask to have books removed.

b_jonas

09:41

@Zyera That just makes the books better. Nobody likes books that school classes teach about anyway.

user61230

Up to student access. Usually, your school is your number-one go-to for finding books, and finding them elsewhere requires means many people might not have.

b_jonas

@Zyera Hmm. But isn't the problem that most schools don't have a good library in first place, and many young students live in small towns where they don't even have access to any good library until they go to college?

I'm quite sure that's true, because I've heard repeated tales from people about that.

Also not having access to interested people they can talk to.

user61230

@b_jonas This is a pretty broad topic to breach, but I honestly think that's a reflection of community mis-valuation of knowledge.

user61230

Which turns it into a reflection of the same book-burning problem, but book-burnings are just for the most especially objectionable books.

user61230

But the suppression of the written word as a whole is still very alive today.

Hamlet

09:43

@b_jonas yep, that is one of the most effective forms of censorship

b_jonas

It's something that's not easy to fix, because libraries are one of those things like schools and healthcare that nobody wants to pay for and have to live off ever decreasing state funds. The only library I know that actually has enough money is the Siófok library, which is fortunate enough to be in a town whose town council is temporarily rich from selling off precious natural resources.

@Zyera Suppressing written word, certainly. But at an earlier stage, not when it's already published as a book.

user61230

@b_jonas Even when it's already published, yes. It's decreasing in effectiveness, but it's still very present.

user61230

The mechanisms of suppression at the publishing stage are very different than the ones at the readership stage. At the publishing stage, minorities tend to be clipped out en masse (example). At the readership stage, filtration of ideas and limitation of accessibility are the operative mechanisms.

b_jonas

And good libraries cost a lot, because they have to hold rooms full of book and journal volumes, some of which nobody will even look at, because they can't tell in advance which of those volumes someone will really need in the future, and they have to shelter it from the elements and from war.

It costs a shitton, and a lot of it has to be continuously payed even when the library is closed.

Hamlet

Another form of censorship might be how the publishing industry consistently ignores writers of color.

user61230

09:48

A good community library, especially as a branch in a library system, costs less than you'd think.

b_jonas

Only certain museums are worse than that when they hold collections (of biology or paleontology or archaeology) that are even harder to preserve in the long term than paper volumes.

user61230

Well, setting aside archival libraries, because most people don't go to those for casual readership anyway.

b_jonas

@Zyera It's not really the community libraries that cost a ton, but the big fallback research libraries that have to hold every book because I go there to find not popular books that aren't in the community libraries.

Hamlet

If we're going to talk about censorship, it makes sense to talk about the forms of censorship that have the largest numerical impact, not the forms of censorship that get the most publicity.

user61230

@b_jonas Right, that's the point. Community libraries are comparatively cheap, and a community library that's part of a network has greater accessibility at lower cost.

b_jonas

09:50

And university and academy libraries that hold a ton of obscure paper journals because someone might want to access one some day.

I was just in the MTA library, and had to use their knife to cut open some pages in a journal from 1975, which is evidence that they had to keep it despite that nobody had yet read that instance of it.

This was the first time I've even seen uncut pages in real life. So far I've only heard of them as a thing of past technology.

user61230

Right, but when we're talking about accessibility to books and freedom of readership, that's not the kind of library we're talking about.

BESW

Mm. there's a lot of different ideas being thrown around here and it sounds like some of them are getting conflated or equated.

b_jonas

It doesn't matter that "most people don't go to those". Most people still have to pay for them with their taxes. Most people also don't go to dialysis because of kidney problems, but I still pay for hospitals doing that from my taxes just in case I might need that in the future.

user61230

I think we're talking about vastly different things.

BESW

I get the feeling there may even be two different conversations.

b_jonas

09:54

@Hamlet Yes, that's true. This doens't matter for the ones that affect the most people.

@BESW Yes. Sorry, I did get off topic.

Hamlet

@Zyera well, if you're an open access advocate...

user61230

@Hamlet Going for forms of censorship with largest numerical impact can have the same problems as appealing to the flat majority does. Smaller minorities end up being a rounding error on larger minorities.

BESW

And, well. Censorship is generally a concept aimed at removing specific things from the public discourse. Resource scarcity can be part of a censorship action, but they aren't equivalent.

b_jonas

But then @Hamlet mentioned censorship in the form of not letting people publish certain books, which was the form practiced back in the sixties, but because of technological development it's getting more difficult.

BESW

Eh, it's still a very real gatekeeping mechanism.

user61230

09:58

@b_jonas No, this is downright common today.

BESW

In terms of keeping something out of the public discourse there's little functional difference between preventing an author from publishing and restricting the author's access to the infrastructure of publishing--which is a thing that happens at many levels.

b_jonas

@BESW Sure, but totally changed form. Publishing was expensive and rare in the past, so information got suppressed by not allowing someone afford to use those expensive publisher resources with state funding. Around 2002 publishing became so cheap that everyone could publish everything and we're drowned in the mass, and censorship is by building systems that let you find the right snippets form those mass and excluding some of the others.

BESW

Self-publishing is a massive effort with minimal reward unless you've already got an established audience. If you DO get a publisher, they're still going to make decisions about publicity campaigns, print runs, and communication with distributors, that can effectively bury your book anyway.

"I can get my book published" is not at all the same as "I can get my book read."

And "I can get my book read" is what publishers are really there for.

user61230

@b_jonas Censorship was always this way. Whenever you go to a publisher's office, you're buying their advertising skill, and largely not their printing presses, comparatively.

user61230

Anyone who wanted to be published first went to a publisher, and the publisher goes yea or nay. Self-publishing is totally fine, but doesn't give nearly the same public platform and engine backing your voice.

b_jonas

10:01

@Zyera Sort of. You were still buying that too, but the printing itself was expensive when you want to print something in small numbers.

user61230

@b_jonas Yes, but it's minor enough in this context. The important point is that publishers give platform access.

BESW

(see Diamond Comics Distributors, Inc, and how their history and current presence has defined the entire shape of the comic industry despite not even being a publisher at all.)

Rand al'Thor

13:00

@BESW Agreed. SFF had a couple of meta posts about that, with the conclusion that customised welcome comments are fine but generic "welcome to the site" comments should be flagged as too chatty (or NLN, these days).

@Hamlet That reminds me of this question where I was asked to elaborate on what a book was about in order to ask a simple question about it.

@Hamlet I'm always happy to start meta discussions on important issues, but what exactly are you thinking of here that's not already covered by BESW's meta post about non-Googlers?

Gallifreyan

I started reading Moon is a harsh mistress. I hope I'll like it more than the last two books this course made me read.

Rand al'Thor

Heinlein?

Gallifreyan

Yes

Rand al'Thor

13:22

Funny thing: just a few hours after getting my first Notable Question badge here (for a current HNQ), I also got my second one (for an old question whose views have been slowly increasing for months). Good timing!

Dammit, untagged is now in the top 30 tags on the site :-/

Gallifreyan

:'(

Rand al'Thor

And those are the easy places to recreate tags. What about all the questions which were tagged with single-use tags and e.g. symbolism or meaning, and now only have the latter?

Gallifreyan

On one hand CMs are right in saying the tags need a usage guidance; on other hand a usage guidance for a book or an author tag would be just a circular definition.

BESW

...howso?

Gallifreyan

"For questions about the life and works of X". Additionally there may be an "the <nationality> author of novels-n-stuff", if anyone bothered.

BESW

13:37

"Questions about the life and works" is the key there.

We've had entire meta discussions about the policies contained in that little phrase.

It's not circular, or trivial, or useless, to be clear that it's okay to ask about an author's life.

Rand al'Thor

@Gallifreyan Not for an author tag: it's important to make clear that the tag is to be used for questions about the author themselves or about any of their works (unlike on SFF).

BESW

...or that it's not. Or that there are guidelines for how to do so and stay on topic. Or whatever the site winds up deciding at any particular point and the tag wiki needs to get updated.

Gallifreyan

We have questions about authors' lives on SFF as well

Rand al'Thor

@Gallifreyan Yes, but author tags on SFF are only to be used for questions about the author themselves, not about their books.

BESW

This stuff seems simple or obvious, but it's not and that's why good tag wikis are hard to write; it requires the ability to step aside from oneself and identify one's assumptions and unconscious understanding of the site in order to make it explicit.

Hamlet

13:40

@Randal'Thor hoping for people to reread the meta post honestly.

BESW

(This is also why it's almost never useful to just copy-paste a tag wiki's contents in from some place like Wikipedia.)

Rand al'Thor

So saying that an author tag on Lit is about the author's life AND works is a non-trivial statement.

Mithrandir

@Randal'Thor but it's still better to include some more info

Hamlet

The best way to draw attention to a meta post is to create a new meta post in my mind.

Gallifreyan

IDK, new users seem to be adept at using author tags even with no guidance

Hamlet

13:41

I think it could be put into the context of our recent meta discussions about our community being [toxic/unfriendly/etc]

Mithrandir

someone could bug Pops again if they feel like it

Rand al'Thor

@Mithrandir Yes, but "For questions about J. S. Author or about any of their literary works" is not a circular definition. It's sufficient as a minimum, even if more info could be added.

Gallifreyan

Probably because using the tag for works is natural, and not using them is something specific to SFF

Rand al'Thor

@Hamlet VTC: dupe :-P

Mithrandir

literature.stackexchange.com/edit-tag-wiki/1268

Hamlet

13:42

@Randal'Thor if you make the connection between downvoting for lack of research and being unfriendly, you should be fine.

I put my hand up to downvoting the Sleepy Hollow question. I didn't explain why at the time because there was no way i could condense it to a comment and I believe the question is not salvageable by editing. I think it was a poorly conceived question which basically invited members to invest their time on a whimsy of the author's, based on no more than a loose play on words. I have now answered the thing to try and demonstrate its shortcomings and both explained and removed my downvote. — Spagirl 42 mins ago

(speaking of downvoting/frame challenges/etc.)

Mithrandir

on the one hand, untagged helped me recreate some tags in their longer versions

Rand al'Thor

@Hamlet Sorry, I still can't think how to get enough material for a new meta post here which isn't already contained in either BESW's old one or the new one about unfriendliness.

Hamlet

@Randal'Thor make the connection between the two?

In our recent post about unfriendlyness, people talked about ________.

I think it's time to revisit _________.

BESW

...Underlines are the root of all evil!

Rand al'Thor

I'll mull it over.

doppelgreener

13:50

@Gallifreyan i'd agree with that, also people see the front page and absorb pretty quickly that books by author X also get a tag for author X. still, tag wikis are useful for confirming what's going on -- there's a number of times people on RPG.SE have remarked checking the tag wiki to figure something out, and/or a tag wiki that's mismatched to usage highlighting an issue (often with the tag wiki, sometimes with the tag's very existence)

Rand al'Thor

Can someone write an assassins-creed tag wiki or excerpt? Because I can't.

doppelgreener

@Randal'Thor i'll do that

Rand al'Thor

Danke!

doppelgreener

excerpt added

Rand al'Thor

Hmm. george-eliot or marian-evans?

I guess we should go with george-eliot since it's the name on her books.

doppelgreener

14:03

@Randal'Thor i'd go with that, and note that it's the pen name of Marian Evans in the tag wiki excerpt

Mithrandir

Synonym time?

BESW

Oooh, that sounds like a fun game. I'll go first! "Thespian."

Rand al'Thor

Dramatic.

BESW

Lugubrious.

Mithrandir

Despondent.

Rand al'Thor

14:15

Saturnine.

BESW

Gloomy.

Mithrandir

Foggy?

BESW

Damp.

doppelgreener

Fetid

(... that might be a step further than the game intended, hm)

Rand al'Thor

Pungent.

BESW

14:28

Mephitic.

Rand al'Thor

Overpowering.

doppelgreener

14:50

Conquering

@BESW that heat-sensitive mug has a useful functional purpose: it tells me when my tea's getting cold. :D

if the mug's starting to go black, i gotta hurry up and finish my tea while it's still at a good temperature.

b_jonas

15:49

@Gallifreyan We were just talking about Heinlein in the Restaurant. There's people who know his writings well there.

@Gallifreyan What course?

I don't see a problem. A usage guidance can just say which author or group of works a tag is about.

Such user guidance and tag wiki is worth to create, because often the short tag names are ambiguous or it's hard to track down what they refer to.

And even when it's not, it's a nice confirmation.

I don't think we lose much when we create tag wikis for author tags used only once.

I for one was glad to find out that just creating a tag wiki will stop tags to be deleted. I think that solves the whole problem.

Rand al'Thor

@b_jonas We don't lose anything - quite the contrary: we have to create those tag wikis, otherwise the tags will be nuked :-/

b_jonas

@Gallifreyan Even on SFF, the default is to use author tags, it's just that (a) films usually have way more authors than non-fiction literary works, (b) we don't use them for big franchises with separate tags like [harry-potter] and whatever the new long tag for Tolkien is.

literature.stackexchange.com/tags/stanislaw-lem/info "Stanisław Herman Lem"? When did he grow a middle name?

Rand al'Thor

16:06

@b_jonas Benoit B Mandelbrot grew a middle name too: the B stands for Benoit B Mandelbrot.

b_jonas

@Randal'Thor Yes, and the Star Diaries, narrated in character by Ijon Tichy, specifically denies the rumour that the Star Diaries were written by LEM.

Anyway, if Lem had a middle name, then he didn't use it on his publications, and we should generally use the name used on the publications of that author. (This gets a bit tricky in the case of Rejtő Jenő.)

Rand al'Thor

@b_jonas In the tag name, yes: stanislaw-lem. There's nothing wrong with including some extra info in the excerpt.

b_jonas

@Randal'Thor Sure.

Gilles

18:45

@Randal'Thor that makes the tag wiki non-findable if someone is looking for “Stanisław Lem”. Given that Lem didn't use his middle name (second forename, rather, middle name is not a concept in most European cultures) in his literary life, and probably (someone who knows Polish culture please rectify if I'm wrong) didn't use it in his daily life either, I think it doesn't belong in the tag wiki at all.

Rand al'Thor

@Gilles How do you mean, non-findable? Is there a way to search the text of tag wikis?

Gilles

@Randal'Thor lmgtfy.com/?q=google.com

granted, tag wikis have negligible google juice

Rand al'Thor

@Gilles flagged!

I've never seen a tag wiki show up in a Google search, but I suppose that's a fair point.

Gilles

@Randal'Thor and also Lem is easy to find without quotes. I'd be more concerned with authors who are hard to pinpoint, like Smith.

Rand al'Thor

Given the form of that Lem tag wiki, I'm pretty sure it dates from the private beta days when people were writing/approving crap tag wikis left and right.

Gilles

19:04

@Randal'Thor indeed

yours is good, thanks

Rand al'Thor

@Gilles Let me know if you have any useful tips on writing good tag wikis and excerpts (either here in chat, or on one of the relevant meta posts). Having seen some of your work on tag wikis at SFF, I know you're pretty good at it.

Gilles

@Randal'Thor I've already written about it some on metas here and there

a key thing is to write for the community

The biggest mistake people make with a tag wiki is to try to be wikipedia

we don't care what Lem's second name was if he never used it

I'm assuming it didn't influence his writing. If Georges Perec had a second name, it surely would matter.

Bookworm

0

Q: What is the nature of the friendship in Don Henley's "My Thanksgiving"?

The first verse My Thanksgiving by Don Henley (from Inside Job) reads as follows: A lot of things have happened Since the last time we spoke Some of them are funny Some of 'em ain't no joke And I trust you will forgive me If I lay it on the line I always thought you were a friend ...

Rand al'Thor

@Gilles But we do (at least sometimes) care about authors' names which never appear on their books, like Eric Blair or Marian Evans. Where is the line drawn?

Gilles

@Randal'Thor “Eric Blair” might be mentioned in the tag wiki (not in the excerpt), but it isn't critical.

Did he write under that name as well? Was his use of a pseudonym relevant to his writing?

If so then it's a good idea to mention it.

well, as a journalist he wrote as Blair, didn't it?

So it's probably useful to mention it, to relate Orwell the author with Blair the journalist

Rand al'Thor

19:22

And Marian Evans is important to mention IMO because it indicates the author is a woman, which some readers of "George Eliot" might not know. (Or am I mistaking the purpose of a tag wiki again?)

@Gilles You reckon a pseudonymous author's real name isn't always necessary to mention in the tag wiki?

Since we accept questions about authors' lives as well as their works, I think it's reasonable to expect real names to be mentioned.

Gilles

@Randal'Thor not always, and certainly not in the excerpt

I'd only mention it in the excerpt if it was very important, like an author who wrote under different names, then the excerpt should mention them all

some examples of cases where the tag wiki needs to mention the real name: if the author was also somewhat famous under the other name (as a politician, scientist, etc.); if the author wrote under a name that hid their gender/ethnicity/… (and even then what really matters is that fact, more than the actual real name)

Gallifreyan

@b_jonas re: Markdown doesn't work in excepts

Rand al'Thor

@Gallifreyan Ah, I didn't spot that when approving. You have enough rep to "Improve Edit" though.

Gallifreyan

Yeah, I was too quick to hit the wrong button though :D Fixed now

Review queues active lately

Rand al'Thor

@Gallifreyan Gives us a chance to see that red dot in action.

Time to try recruiting from the past again ...

@BinojAntony Hi! I noticed you were the person who proposed the previous incarnation of Literature SE, and thought I'd ping you in case you weren't aware that it's been reincarnated. Would be great if you'd like to join the new Literature SE and help it succeed where the old one failed :-)

Gallifreyan

19:41

@Randal'Thor That's a whole new level of stalking and mod abuse

Rand al'Thor

Hey, it worked before!

Jun 26 at 23:41, by Rand al'Thor

@TML Hi TML, I'm throwing you a ping in case you weren't aware that Literature SE has been reborn :-) We noticed you were a mod on the old Lit but haven't set up an account on the new one - would be great if you'd like to join and help the new one succeed where the old one failed!

Gallifreyan

Rand al'Thor

Jun 27 at 1:07, by TML

@Randal'Thor I definitely had NOT noticed - thanks for the ping!

Gallifreyan

Gilles

The Narbonic reprints will have the Victorian era Sunday strips! Yay!

Narbonic

user15026

19:50

@Gilles I still need to read this at some point

user61230

20:05

@Gilles Tag wikis aren't supposed to be Googleable.

user61230

They're description and usage guidance for the community, not the public.

user61230

As for multiple variations, tag wikis don't have to have a singular canonical form. We can establish a tag synonym for other forms of the same name, multiple pseudonyms, etc.

Rand al'Thor

@Zyera No matter how many synonyms you create, there's only one wiki and excerpt.

b_jonas

20:37

@Gallifreyan I know, but in places where we deliberately can't use any sort of formatting (such as in post titles or email subjects), stars still work fine to mark italics.

@Randal'Thor ^ Same. I know Markdown doesn't work, but I use stars to mark italics. But if you don't like it in the tag wiki, I don't care much.

@Gilles Sure, when someone is famous under multiple not clearly similar names (such as Rejtő Jenő), then we can mention more than one of them.

@Gilles Wait, what's the difference? Isn't a middle name in the U.S. also just a second given name (or second word of a given name), except that there almost all people have one, whereas here only a minority do, and many who have one don't use it or use only that instead of the first given name?

Gilles

@b_jonas For a title, I'd go with quotes. Most styles use italics for titles of long works, but quotes aren't unheard of.

@b_jonas I don't know where “here” is, but in France, people have one or more prénoms (first names), and one last name which can consist of multiple worsd (or, nowadays, two last names, but that's yet another kettle of fish)

b_jonas

@Gilles I like the distinction of italics for work (volume, book, journal) titles double quotes for chapter (story, article, poem) titles, which is why I don't use double quotes for this, but again, I don't care much about the formatting of the tag wiki so feel free to edit it to use whatever.

Gilles

There's no concept of “middle name” because the second forename, if any, is not thought of as “middly”, it's thought of as one of the forenames.

and if people have more than two then the first one isn't necessarily singled out separately from the “middle” ones.

Napoleon Wilson

@b_jonas They don't really. If it's a title, quotation marks make a ton more sense. If not, why not just accept the fate of no formatting?

b_jonas

@Gilles In France, some people have hyphenated given names. That's a bit different, we don't have that here, and I don't think it's popular in the U.S. either.

Gilles

20:45

French forms ask you for your prénom(s) (forename(s)) and for your nom de famille (family name). There's no third line on the form.

b_jonas

@NapoleonWilson Because some titles are strange phrases that aren't noun phrases, and the formatting or separators helps the reader easily distinguish it from the rest of the sentence.

Gilles

(Well, yes, there is, but it's for maiden name, not for middle name, and the maiden name is a family name.)

Napoleon Wilson

@b_jonas Yeah, then use quotes.

Gilles

@b_jonas A hyphenated given name counts as a single unit. People always use the full thing.

b_jonas

@Gilles Sure. But then how does it work in the U.S.? How do they treat middle names there, apart from looking at people who don't have one as foreigners?

Napoleon Wilson

20:46

Whenever I see stars I think "that dude thought they could use markdown there, better correct it". ;-)

Gilles

@b_jonas three lines on the form, for one thing

b_jonas

@Gilles Yes, exactly, but it might make multiple given names less common or something.

Gilles

not two, not four

b_jonas

@Gilles Hmm.

I'm not sure if that's an important difference. There are some pretty stupid forms out there everywhere, both on paper and on the internet.

Rand al'Thor

There's a meta discussion somewhere about quotes and italics.

I seem to recall Hamlet was a purist, saying we should never use quotes for novels and long works, while I took a more pragmatic approach.

Can't find it now though.

@b_jonas Maybe it's different because the US is such a mixed bag of cultures and naming conventions.

People from a Spanish family background, for example, might have two surnames, so their "middle name" is actually a surname.

Gilles

20:53

4

A: A proposal for [poetry] and [short-stories]

I agree, I think this is a good idea. As Rand points out in the comments, there already is a system for determining whether a poem/short story should get its own tag. We can use the MLA guidelines for whether a title should be italicised or in quotes. Note that the MLA guidelines, unlike Chicago...

probably this

Rand al'Thor

While for people from an English or French background, the "middle name" is basically another first name.

Gilles

and for Russians it's yet another thing

Rand al'Thor

@Gilles No, we had a longer discussion somewhere.

Maybe it was in chat.

@Gilles Yeah, Russian middle names are neither first names nor surnames.

And I think in Iceland some people have only first names and patronymics, no surnames.

b_jonas

You can certainly have more than one (word of) family name, or more than one (word of) given name, and people can do both. More than one family name occurs in Hungary, especially when one of them is a single letter, but also when both are ordinary family names. It's just not common for newly constructed family names, because hyphenating two family names is encouraged now.

But people who already have two family names or inherit them from their parent still use them. An example is the writer G. Szabó Judit. (But note that some people have the letter as the second family name, not the first.)

Gilles

@Randal'Thor yes

b_jonas

20:58

@Randal'Thor Yes, Icelandic names are always like that.

Gilles

and some cultures have no last name at all. Many Indonesians, for example.

b_jonas

And of course all of this is tricky because (a) people used to demand to sort names by family name, which is convenient but a bit archaic and useless these days with computers, and (b) it's impossible to divine from a name which parts are what of type of name, and so mistakes are often made.

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