I have a song book that alphabetizes song titles that start with ‘The’ in the ‘T’ section (right after ‘S’, e.g. “The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill”). My girlfriend, who used to be a filing clerck, says that you never include the ‘The’ in alphabetizing schemes. I disagree. What’s the Straight Dope?
I agree with your girlfriend. Alphabet, The.
Oops…“clerk”
My point is that ‘The’ in a song title, as oppsed to “Alphabet, The” is a copywritten collection of words not to be broken.
Well, there might be times when “The” could fit in the T section, I suppose. Perhaps if “The” is really important, like if a song is call “The Man”, but that the Man is more than just a man, but he’s really The Man, you know?
I agree with her, too. I’ve been trying to find a cite for 10 minutes, and here’s the best I can come up with. It’s from “The Writer’s Hotline Hanbook” – still the best quick reference I’ve ever seen.
“Knowing whether the title or name includes the initial article is sometimes a problem, but unfortunately, there is no easy way around it. . . We advise writers to assume that the article is not part of the title.”
I need to write an important book. It will be titled thus:
The
Ought to drive indexers to distraction.
I guess the reason for that is simply that soooo many titles start with “The” it wouldn’t really help if you want to make searching for a certain title as quick and easy as possible. The T section would be as large as the other 25 ones combined.
Titles can’t be copyrighted. They can conceivably be trademarked, I think, but rarely or never are.
Remember the pop/rock band The The? File 'em as “The The” or The, The" - and be prepared to explain the difference.
Another band that must have confused folks - Mr. Mister.
Strange. I wrote a song and it was copyrighted, including the title. Official forms and all.
I understand your point, Schnitte, but I do have a new Beatle’s Song Book that is organized this way. What I was hoping for is a cite to some sort of official guidline on the subject. White and Strunk type thing for example.
Well, this writing guideline from Colorado State Univerity tells you:
(It’s mentioned for anonymous books because, of course, non-anonymous ones are listed under the writer’s name.)
And the help page for some geographic database tells you:
That’s the closest thing to an official rule I could find. Maybe I’ll take a look at the Encyclopaedia Britannica usage notes when I’m in a library next time.
This is a problem of style, so there is and can be no official answer.
“The,” “An,” and “A” are virtually never put first when alphabetizing because of the problems previously mentioned: it makes it too hard to find what you are looking for and it concentrates unrelated songs under “T” and “A”. (no sniggering)
Hombre, titles cannot be copyrighted. While the title is part of a song or book or film, any title can be reused exactly by anyone else with no penalty, which is not true of the rest of the contents of the work.
No doubt. The point is that titles cannot be copyrighted separately. Say the title of your song is a self-referential “I’m a Hombre.” That’s all well and good, and the three verses and chorus, with specified melody and harmony, are your property – as a complete entity.
But Glenn Frey could write an entirely different song called “I’m a Hombre” without infringing on your copyright.
Same with book titles. “A Short History of England” is probably the title of 20 different books, as is “Introductory Chemistry.”
But distinguish trademarks. The collective wisdom of the Dopers could probably compile an excellent encyclopedia. But we could not market it as “Encyclopedia Britannica” – that name is trademarked and has an owner.
(Note that “Webster’s Dictionary” is not a trademark – there are several books on the market that purport to be “Webster’s Dictionary” as well as a reprint of Noah Webster’s original work and the Webster’s New International Dictionary and its abridgements, which are the descendents of the original, now owned by G. & C. Merriam & Sons.