![]() | This guideline documents an English Wikipedia naming convention. Editors should generally follow it, though exceptions may apply. Substantive edits to this page should reflect consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on this guideline's talk page. |
Introduction: This guideline is about naming conventions for Wikipedia articles, and discusses use of "The", "A", and "An" at the start of an article title. There are some situations where they are warranted, but many where they are not. When used inappropriately, they violate common usage, only serving as noise words. More importantly, this can cause problems with the length of the name, the quick search function, and sorting. Due to these problems, the default rule is to exclude them unless certain specific conditions are met, usually where they are integral to the article subject's name.
Convention: In general, a definite ("the") or indefinite ("a" or "an") article should be included at the beginning of the title of a Wikipedia article only if at least one of the following conditions is met:
These conditions are sometimes met if the Wikipedia article name is:
Not all of the Wikipedia article names which belong to these categories meet the above-listed conditions. For instance, Mona Lisa is the name of a work of art, and Eurythmics is the name of a musical band, but neither includes a definite or indefinite article.
These guidelines also apply to foreign-language equivalents, such as Spanish El/La, German Das/Der/Die, etc.