Talk:Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. Inclusive Communities Project, Inc.

Latest comment: 8 years ago by MZMcBride in topic Article title

Article title edit

Hi. Citation styles and article titles are somewhat distinct. If you all insist on using Bluebook for citations, that's probably fine on a per-article basis. But for article titles, Wikipedia:Article titles is the relevant policy. It seems pretty clear that "Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. Inclusive Communities Project, Inc." is more common than "Texas Dept. of Hous. and Cmty. Affairs v. Inclusive Communities Project, Inc."

If we look at the official slip opinion, I can't see anywhere where "Cmty." is used. SCOTUSblog and Oyez.org both don't use "Hous." or "Cmty."-type abbreviations. Same with CNN, the ACLU, Reuters, and The Atlantic.

There are also general prohibitions against using abbreviations in page titles, with some exceptions for acronyms such as NASA and middle initials such as Harry S. Truman. In this case, the reliable sources and general practice dictate not using obscure abbreviations such as "Cmty." in the article title. --MZMcBride (talk) 16:18, 11 December 2015 (UTC)Reply

MZMcBride, thanks for taking the initiative on the page move, and thank you for the thoughtful explanation. When I originally created this article, I used the title "Texas Dept. of Housing and Community Affairs v. Inclusive Communities Project, Inc." notwithstanding the fact that some words were not abbreviated per T6 in the Bluebook. I agree that we should generally use titles that are cited by reliable sources, rather than a perfunctory application of Bluebook abbreviations. However, for SCOTUS articles, I think we should follow the abbreviated title that appears on the slip opinion or the abbreviated title that appears in the U.S. Reports. For example, the title of National Assn. of Home Builders v. Defenders of Wildlife is abbreviated in a manner that reflects the abbreviations in the U.S. reports (see 551 U.S. 644), even though "National" should be abbreviated "Nat'l" pursuant to T6. That said, how do you feel about moving the article back to the original title of "Texas Dept. of Housing and Community Affairs v. Inclusive Communities Project, Inc." to reflect the abbreviations that appear on the slip opinion? Best, -- Notecardforfree (talk) 17:11, 11 December 2015 (UTC)Reply
Given that we use Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs as the page title and not Texas Dept. of Housing and Community Affairs, I'm hesitant. Same with National Association of Home Builders instead of National Assn. of Home Builders. I realize that these articles are about the organizations and not about the court cases, but being internally consistent with how we abbreviate page titles seems more reasonable than being inconsistent. --MZMcBride (talk) 17:48, 11 December 2015 (UTC)Reply