I don't much like adding something directly to a track that isn't in its original title (however lacking it is). Except for disc numbers, pretty much everything we add in title fields actually appears on some cover somewhere, even if it's adjusted for style issues.
The only big exception that comes to me is untitled tracks, where it is allowed (maybe even encouraged) to use descriptive text between square brackets. Given this and the generally accepted typographical convention of using square brackets for editor-inserted information, I'm partial to the subdivision-in-brackets someone suggested above. And in the spirit of my previous suggestions, I think instead of pondering for weeks exactly what to put in parentheses we just figure out a few suggestions and leave it to the judgment of the editors. So my edited guidelines recommendation would go like this: * * * * * Rule 0) In general, common MusicBrainz guidelines apply to audiobooks too, unless they don't make sense. In particular: 1) if the audiobook's track names make sense, use them. 2) if the book's system matches the tracks reasonably, use that. 3) otherwise use UntitledTrackStyle, which recommends "[description]" tags. x) Note: if points (1) or (2) would lead to several tracks with the same name, you may also append a _brief_ distinguisher between square brackets. For consistency it is recommended that this distinguisher be just "[part #]", unless something in the book's or the tracks' structures makes more sense. y) Note: please observe general MB guidelines with regards to style: use CapitalizationStandard, and capitalize the words denoting parts (e.g. Chapter, Section, Part) in the _official_ part of the title (when applying guideline 1 or 2 above); according to UntitledTrackStyle, everything in the brackets should be lower-cased, unless it actually contains a proper name or title. Punctuation, typos and misspellings should be handled according to the usual StylePrinciples. Examples: ... * * * * * This gives the most common case a consistent look, and also allows editors to enter weird cases. We can add examples of such cases below the rules, as we encounter them. For instance, someone mentioned books broken in very short fixed-length interval: the brackets might contain the number of seconds or minutes from the beginning, which perfectly represents the logic of the track structure. Or if the split is based on some content logic, it could contain something like "[prologue]" and "[main part]" and "[epilogue]". If it's (say) a lecture of the Bible it might contain verse numbers. (Remember, this applies only if there are some "official" titles that make sense, but that are not enough to distinguish everything.) Note that the distinguishing part doesn't actually have to be a numerical sequence. Also note that not necessarily _all_ tracks that get the same name have to be distinguished. There are (music) artists that intentionally have several or all songs on a release identically titled (or not at all), and in many cases we just keep that as a sort of artist intent. This might make sense for some audiobooks too. And I'm pretty sure in time we'll get other examples we didn't think of. -- Bogdan Butnaru > -----Original Message----- > From: Brian Schweitzer <brian.brianschweit...@gmail.com> > > Well, in that edge case, why not then hyphenate? > > > Track 12: > Chapter 2. The Russians are Coming, Part 1 - 1 > > Track 13: > Chapter 2. The Russians are Coming, Part 1 - 2 > > Track 14: > Chapter 2: The Russians are Coming, Part 1 - 3 > > Brian > > On Thu, Jan 15, 2009 at 7:13 PM, Paul C. Bryan <em...@pbryan.net> wrote: > I suppose then we can live with a chapter name having its own ", > Part n" > in MB? A contrived example: > > "Chapter 2. The Russians are Coming, Part 1" > "Chapter 3. The Russians are Coming, Part 2" > > ... would appear in MB (if it spans multiple tracks) as... > > Track 12: > Chapter 2. The Russians are Coming, Part 1, Part 1 > > Track 13: > Chapter 2. The Russians are Coming, Part 1, Part 2 > > Track 14: > Chapter 2: The Russians are Coming, Part 1, Part 3 _______________________________________________ Musicbrainz-style mailing list Musicbrainz-style@lists.musicbrainz.org http://lists.musicbrainz.org/mailman/listinfo/musicbrainz-style
