A common practice is to entitle list articles asList of ___ (for exampleList ofWikipedia naming conventions). If (as is often the case), the list has multiple columns and so is in layout table form, the name or titleList ofXs is still preferable toTable ofXs orComparison ofXs (though the latter may be appropriate for articles that are actual tables of data comparing numerous features, e.g.Comparison of Linux distributions).
The title is not expected to contain a complete description of thelist's subject. Many lists are not intended to contain every possible member, but this does not need to be explained in the title itself. For example, the correct choice isList of people from the Isle of Wight, notList of people who were born on or strongly associated with the Isle of Wight and about whom Wikipedia has an article. Instead, the detailed criteria for inclusion should be described in the lead, and a reasonably concise title should be chosen for the list. Best practice is to avoid words likenotable,famous,noted,prominent, etc. in the title of a list article. Similarly, avoid titles likeList of allXs.
People: People by nationality are eitherList of Finns orList of French people, preferringList of ___ people. United States folk are a special case:List of United States people redirects toLists of Americans which contains, amongst other things, lists by US state. (Special treatment is necessary becauseAmerican is ambiguous.) Note, however, that lists of people organized by individualcity should be atList of people from[city], rather thanList of[city] people. In all relevant lists,people is far preferred to alternatives such aspersons orindividuals.
Fiction and real life:List of fictional dogs is a list of fictional creatures, whereasList of individual dogs is a list with real-life examples. Note that the lead section of each list explains what criterion or criteria that list's entries meet.
Set index articles do not need to be titled withlist of unless there is also another article or a disambiguation page using that title. For example,Dodge Charger is a list of cars named Dodge Charger, but does not need to be titledList of cars named Dodge Charger. However, sinceSignal Mountain is a disambiguation page, the related set index article is atList of peaks named Signal Mountain.
Three other special lists types have their own naming patterns. Glossaries are usually titledGlossary ofX orGlossary ofX terms, though if they contain substantial non-list prose about the nature or history of terminology relating to the topic, as well as a glossary list, a title such asX terminology may be more appropriate. Timelines are named in the formTimeline ofX orGraphical timeline ofX. Outlines are namedOutline ofX orOutline ofXs.
Several styles have been used. As indicated below, the preferred style is "List offoos: A" (for numeric divisions "List offoos: 1") and for ranges "List offoos: S–Z" (numeric: "List offoos: 1–20").Complicated formats like "List offoos: X, Y, Z" or "List offoos: U–W, Y–Z" for short ranges are discouraged, and are certainly too unwieldy for long ranges. It will be difficult for readers to guess at such names (while "List offoos: A–M" and "List offoos: 1–20" strongly imply "List offoos: N–Z" and "List offoos: 21–40", respectively).
If the preferred style is not used,redirects should be created from the preferred-style article names to the actual article names, as readers will come to expect an article to be at the preferred name rather than a variant.
When ranges are expressed, do so with theen-dash (–) character, not a hyphen (-), em-dash (—), minus (−) or other similar character, nor the–HTML character entity, in the article titles. Redirects should be created from the hyphenated versions of the article names to the real locations, as not all readers are aware of, or have the keen eyesight to see, the difference and may not be able to easily enter the en-dash character.
The most common methods of splitting a long list into multiple sub-articles are by ranges of letters of the alphabet (or by individual letters for very long lists), by numerical ranges (or individual numbers for very long lists), or by some kind of topical division, such as geography, field, language, etc.
Models (see examples below)
Preferred:
List offoos: A–K
List offoos: 1–9
List offoos: A
List offoos: 1
List offoos: Africa
List offoos: Physics
List offoos: Africa and the Middle East
List offoos: Physics and chemistry
Avoid splitting into separate articles per letter or numeral, unless using larger groupings would still produce overly large articles.
Common and acceptable (variants not shown):
List offoos, A–K
List offoos (A–K)
List offoos – A–K
Note: That is an en-dash, not a hyphen; a version of the name with a hyphen should exist as a redirect to the real page.
Deprecated as ambiguous, hard to read, or longwinded (variants not shown):
In some situations, the subject matter does not lend itself to such simple nomenclature, and other schemes may be devised on a case-by-case basis. Some examples might even be considered "problematic" (though a supposed "ideal solution" might not be immediately apparent, either).
List of compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach contains a large number of Bach's works, while others of various classes are listed in separate sub-articles, and it even includes several worksnot composed by Bach in both the main list and its sub-lists. Most of the problems experienced with this list primarily result from its being a hybrid "by genre" and "by number" list. Possible improvements include consistent inter-page navigation, such as a multi-page table of contents (see examples below) ornavboxes; using identical links connecting the pages on each page; making related partial lists (List of compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach printed during his lifetime, etc.) readily available from the general lists.
Fiction and franchises: A large number of TV show articles have sub-articles in the form of multi-page season summary lists, and there are also list articles that are lists of works by a particular author or which form part of amedia franchise. Various other guidelines assert scope over such articles, includingWikipedia:Manual of Style/Lists of works,Wikipedia:Naming conventions (television), etc. These guidelines do not always seem to be in perfect agreement, but overallde facto-standard patterns have emerged. For example, TV show season lists are named in the form "Show title (season 1)", although the present guideline would have preferred "Show title: season 1" (the use of colons in the titles of works to indicate a subtitle, as inStar Trek: The Next Generation, is a likely reason for this variance). If in doubt, seek input on the matter atWikipedia talk:Naming conventions (lists) and/or at the talk pages of relevantWikiProjects.
Navigational template:See template documentation for syntax.{{Compact TOC}} can be used in several different ways for creating custom tables of contents for split list articles, including ranges and one-page-per-letter setups. The template supports many additional features, including sections for numeric and symbol entries, configurability of layout, and links for standard (References, etc.) or custom sections.
{{Compact TOC|name=List of foos|center=yes|side=yes|n=[[List offoos: N–Z#N|N]]|o=[[List offoos: N–Z#O|O]]|...|z=[[List offoos: N–Z#Z|Z]]}}
Example showing every letter, with links directly to sub-article sections:
Note: this template has built-in categorization; in the actual rendered example here, the categorization features were omitted to prevent this guideline page from being improperly categorized.
There is no obligatory migration strategy to convert all multi-page lists to the preferred style. However:
When starting a new multi-page list (or splitting an existing list into several pages), consider if adoption of the preferred style is possible; if not, try to keep as close to it as possible, and create redirects from the names expected by this guideline to the actual page names.
Forexisting multi-page lists: if there's no apparent reason against it – such as establishedconsensus at the article's talk page, recommendations of other, topic-specific guidelines likeWikipedia:Naming conventions (music), etc. – the list should be migrated. Please note that this often entails a great deal more than simply moving the pages, as the table of contents/navigation templates will have to be updated, many links may refer to the original names of pages, and utility templates (e.g.{{Cuegloss}}) may depend upon the original names.
