Wikipedia:Article titles

This page documents an English Wikipedia policy. It describes a widely accepted standard that all editors should normally follow. Changes made to it should reflect consensus.

Shortcuts WP:NC WP:AT WP:TITLE

This page in a nutshell: Article titles should be recognizable, concise, natural, precise, and consistent.

A Wikipedia article title is the large heading displayed above the article's content, and the basis for the article's page name and URL.^[a] The title indicates what the article is about and distinguishes it from other articles.^[b]

The title may simply be the name (or a name) of the subject of the article, or, if the article topic has no name, it may be a description of the topic. Because no two articles can have the same title,^[c] it is sometimes necessary to add distinguishing information, often in the form of a description in parentheses after the name. Generally, article titles are based on what the subject is called in reliable sources. When this offers multiple possibilities, editors choose among them by considering several principles: the ideal article title precisely identifies the subject; it is short, natural, distinguishable and recognizable; and resembles titles for similar articles.

This page explains in detail the considerations, or naming conventions, on which choices of article titles are based. This page does not detail titling for pages in other namespaces, such as categories. It is supplemented by other more specific guidelines (see the box to the right), which should be interpreted in conjunction with other policies, particularly the three core content policies: Verifiability, No original research, and Neutral point of view.

If necessary, an article's title can be changed by a page move.^[d] For information on page move procedures, see Wikipedia:Moving a page, and Wikipedia:Requested moves.
Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or {{efn}} templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}} template or {{notelist}} template (see the help page).