Format link to Wikipedia page about an essay or chapter title

formattingwikipedia

For books and movies it's easy: surround the link in pairs of single-quotes to italicize it. For example, Lord of the Rings.

''[[Lord of the Rings]]''

But according to "Which Titles Are Italicized and Which Are Enclosed in Quotation Marks?", essays, articles, and chapter titles are placed inside quotation marks instead of being italicized. For example, "The Council of Elrond".

When linking to external pages (especially in references), I mostly see the quotes included in the link text as above. But this doesn't work when linking to other Wikipedia articles since the quotation marks are not part of the article's title–they are only used in a larger context. The following produces a broken link:

[["The Use of Knowledge in Society"]]

How should I format this link? I can think of two solutions, but is there a better way?

  1. Move the quotes outside the link. This is easy to type but leaves the quotes outside of the link text which looks weird.

    "[[The Use of Knowledge in Society]]"

  2. Duplicate the title with quotation marks in the link. This is cumbersome but produces a better-looking link that matches external links containing quotation marks.

    [[The Use of Knowledge in Society|"The Use of Knowledge in Society"]]

Note: I posted this question on Wikipedia itself, but the only respondent seems to have misunderstood my quandary.

Best Answer

While Wikipedia's Manual of Style doesn't say anything specifically about links in titles with quotes, Wikipedia:Manual of Style:Titles § Quotation marks §§ Additional markup says

If a title is enclosed in quotation marks, do not include the quotation marks in any additional formatting markup.

Therefore, I would definitely go with Solution 1. Most, if not all, Wikipedia articles follow this. For example see an article about a singer; their songs will have the quotation marks outside the link. Note that this only applies to links formatted with double brackets. External links are typically formatted with quotes inside the link.

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