Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lists of works

This guideline is a part of the English Wikipedia's Manual of Style.

It is a generally accepted standard that editors should attempt to follow, though it is best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply. Any substantive edit to this page should reflect consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on the talk page.

Shortcuts

This style guideline aims to create a consistent method of displaying lists of works, such as lists of texts, discographies and filmographies.

Ordering[edit]

Items should normally be listed in chronological order of production, earliest first.

Musical works by a single composer are typically listed by opus or catalogue number, or sometimes by genre.

In the case of a complex series of works, items can sometimes be split into groups, e.g. Isaac Asimov contains sub-lists for each series of novels.

List styles[edit]

Basic lists are used in the majority of articles, e.g. Henry James or The Illuminatus! Trilogy or The KLF. It's also the easiest style to add to and edit, for wikicode-newcomers.^[1] See wikicode examples further below.

If the list is part of an article about the creator then the section title "Works" or "Publications" is preferred.^[2]

Advanced list styles

Where a series grows complex, tables can be used, e.g. Diane Keaton or Mandy Moore.
When free license artwork is available, a gallery form may be more suitable (combined with any of the options above). Fair-use imagery used in such gallery form is usually unacceptable.

Basic list style – examples[edit]

Lists of published works should be included for authors, illustrators, photographers and other artists. The individual items in the list do not have to be sufficiently notable to merit their own separate articles. Complete lists of works, appropriately sourced to reliable scholarship (WP:V), are encouraged, particularly when such lists are not already freely available on the internet. If the list has a separate article, a simplified version should also be provided in the main article.

When to split out articles: If an article already exists on an author or artist, then a separate article for a list of that person's works (such as Jorge Luis Borges bibliography or Robert A. Heinlein bibliography) is warranted if the list becomes so long that its inclusion in the main article would be unsuitable. See Category:Bibliographies by writer, Category:Filmographies, and Category:Discographies for specific examples.

Even though items in a list of works are not strictly speaking citations, our various citation templates are often a good way to format a list item. The templates provide a consistent format, and their documentation is a handy way to check that all relevant information is provided.

Publications (Works, Bibliography)[edit]

Shortcuts

Books in English[edit]

For works created and first published in English, vital information is the title and year of first publication. Provide the subtitle too, unless it is painfully longwinded. Thus within Max Beerbohm:

The Works of Max Beerbohm, with a Bibliography by John Lane (1896)
More (1899)
Yet Again (1909)
Zuleika Dobson; or, An Oxford Love Story (1911)

These should be supplemented with publication details where helpful. (The standard form is "Place: Publisher, Year.") Thus within the article on the cartoonist and illustrator John Glashan:

Sex and the Single Girl. By Helen Gurley Brown. London: Four Square, 1964. (This edition has "£ove $tory", an unpaginated 32-page supplement by Glashan, between pages 128 and 129.)
The Good Loo Guide: Where to Go in London. By Jonathan Routh with Brigid Segrave. London: Wolfe, 1965. Second (expanded) edition: Wolfe, 1968.

Other editions, perhaps all other editions, of Sex and the Single Girl lack this supplement, so the publication details are likely to be useful to the Glashan hunter. And the reader learns not just that there were two editions of The Good Loo Guide but that the second is bigger than the first. (ISBNs (see section below) are useful in examples similar to these; however, both of these Glashan editions predate ISBNs.)

ISBNs[edit]

Provide the ISBN of one or more editions when doing so seems to be helpful. ISBNs are unlikely to be helpful for books that either have had or are to have many editions: a reader looking for Zuleika Dobson can easily type "zuleika dobson" into a web interface. Given a single ISBN, a reader may instead only copy this in and thereby miss other editions.

When you provide an ISBN for an edition, complement this with the precise publication details: this will help point out exactly what the ISBN denotes, and so for example a reader in the US will not waste time searching for an edition restricted to the British market. Thus from the article on Nicholson Baker:

The Mezzanine: A Novel (1988, Weidenfeld & Nicolson; ISBN 1-55584-258-5 / 1990, Vintage; ISBN 0-679-72576-8)
Room Temperature: A Novel (1990, Grove Weidenfeld; ISBN 0-8021-1224-2 / 1990, Vintage; ISBN 0-679-73440-6 / 1990, Granta; ISBN 0-14-014212-6 / 1991, Granta; ISBN 0-14-014021-2)

– although the places of publication would be useful here, and anyway perhaps this pair would better be rendered simply as

The Mezzanine: A Novel (1988)
Room Temperature: A Novel (1990)

until a substantively different edition of either book appears (one with a corrected text, afterword, etc.).

Online books and articles[edit]

When a book or article is available online through a site such as Internet Archive, Project Gutenberg, Google Books, or an open access website, it may be useful to provide a link to the online content so readers can view it; the link should always be accompanied by the necessary information such as title and publication date. The link itself may be either a bare URL, or it can be embedded in a {{cite}} template. There is no requirement either to add or remove such links. A link to Google Books should only be added if the book is available for preview.

Books in languages other than English[edit]

When a book is in a language other than English, make this clear. Add an English translation of the title where helpful (and the title of the English translation where it exists), but don't substitute a translation for the original. If the original title is not in roman script, provide it in roman script and in the original. Thus within Vladimir Nabokov bibliography:

(1932) Podvig (Подвиг (Heroic Deed)); English translation: Glory (1971)
(1932) Kamera Obskura (Камера Обскура); English translations: Camera Obscura (1936), Laughter in the Dark (1938)
(1936) Otchayanie (Отчаяние); English translation: Despair (1937, 1966)

The reader of Russian is told, and can use, the Cyrillic script; the non-reader of Russian learns the original title and what it means.

Use {{Lang}} to mark up text in other languages than English.

Parallel texts, alternative titles[edit]

If the book has parallel texts or otherwise is directed to people reading two or more languages, provide the various titles, unless perhaps it has an English title that you are certain will show up in any search, anywhere. In the article on the photographer Kęstutis Stoškus:

Vilnius: Senamiesčio fotografijos / Photographs of the Old Town. Vilnius: E. Karpavičiaus leidykla, 2004. ISBN 9955-9650-3-7 (Text in Lithuanian and English.)

(However, accuracy is very important. If, say, you're confronted with a book with texts and titles in English and Chinese but are not confident of your ability to type in the Chinese correctly, skip the Chinese and say so in the article's talk page; somebody else can later add the Chinese correctly.)

Other second-language titles[edit]

In Japan and elsewhere, a title in a second language is often added to the main title of a monolingual book. Particularly if the second language is English, provide the second title, but also provide the main title. From the article on the photographer Bishin Jumonji:

Ran no fune (『蘭の舟』) / Orchid Boat. Tokyo: Tōjusha, 1981. The title alone is in English as well as Japanese: all the text is in Japanese only.

Template[edit]

{{Cite book}} may be used to format bibliography entries; for single-author lists, use |author-mask= to avoid repeating the author's name.

Discographies[edit]

Shortcut

MOS:DISCOGRAPHY

These are included for musical acts (solo or group), composers and other people who have a list of contributions to music, also for important musical works such as operas. Ordered from oldest to newest. Vital information is the title and year; label and notes are optional. Items may also be divided into sub-sections, e.g. singles, albums, DVDs.

''[[Title]]'' (year), label – notes

or

''[[Title]]'' (label, year) – notes

A few examples of acceptable formatting styles, using the discography of Sloan (band):

Smeared (1993)
Twice Removed (Geffen, 1994)
One Chord to Another (Murderecords, June 12, 1996) – Canadian release

Musicians who have released a significant amount of work should be given their own discography articles.

For artists without separate discography pages, relevant discographical information, such as record labels, date(s) of release, chart positions, and sales certifications, may be included in the discography section. The use of a table may be advisable to keep the information readable and organized.

The exact format chosen will depend on the discography and the amount of verifiable information available, which may vary greatly between musical acts. In all cases, the format should follow from what's best for the article, and not vice versa.

For discographies on compositions see, for example, Porgy and Bess discography and Mass in B minor discography.

Filmographies[edit]