How to treat release titles within quotations?

I have looked through the documentation and the forum and have yet to find anything discussing how to treat release titles when it comes to quotations. If a release is enclosed within quotes, should that title include said quotes (similar to track titles)? Or should the release title stand on its own?

Could you link to an example? I think there guidelines don’t mention it because it’s rare and should probably be decided case by case.

An example of one of my submissions. Granted, the record itself states The Giants, both front and rear of the sleeve note “The Giants”. The same is prevalent on a variety of other Jazz albums of the period, so I’m not sure if this was just a stylistic trend of the time or if the title should be treated expressly.

I’d keep the quotations as it’s that way on both the front and back cover art. I’ve never seen any official guidelines that says to remove all quotations from album titles. But yeah, I think it’s a case by case (some tracklistings,etc. might have them on every track, than I’d likely say to remove those). This case looks, “The Giants” is how it was released.

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Maybe check if same label same year same kind releases also get these quotes. In this case it may not be part of the title, unlike “Heroes” by Bowie.

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I would want to solve the question - is this the label designer making a style for the covers? Or is this the actual artist doing this? Checking other sources is always key to me. How does the album appear in normal discographies? What is used on the spine and within the text in the booklet?

I would look also at the rest of a series. If this is one of many titles from a label, I’d make sure they all follow the same style - with or without quotes.

Personally I would throw out speechmarks like this in many cases. Including this one. When I look at the art at Discogs I only see speechmarks used on the cover for emphasis. On the vinyl itself I see the plain title written. That shows to me that they don’t really see the speechmarks as part of the title.

“Heroes” is a good example. Looking in the booklet it is very clear the speechmarks are part of the title as the track itself adds them to the title.

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This is where I’m conflicted. It seems that the vast majority of the sources do not include the speechmarks but at the same time that can all boil down to formatting practices of each source. This (among other reasons) is why I do not like using Wikipedia as a source of artist or release formatting.

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I agree that Wikipedia can be as daft as this place for following guidelines instead of normal logic. I’d try and find a fan site. Or the label. Gets trickier with something of this age. (I did notice that Discogs had also left the quotes out - but that lot are not caring about these kinds of details as they just want to sell)

I would want to see these in a list alongside other releases. A list that has been created by the label and\or someone who cares. Are there others in this series we can look at? Do you have this - what is on the spine? If front, rear and spine all had the quotes I’d keep em.

Or just toss a coin.

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It seems this label puts quotes half of the time, according to the releases we have with cover arts:

So it seems to be a kind of this label trademark. But why not include them anyway…

And LP labels (the round label at the center of each LP side) are notorious for being very basic and condensed style. They could say Heroes, instead of “Heroes”, or they can shorten long titles, etc.

I would probably include quotes myself if the record was in my collection, except maybe if the spine has no quotes… :thinking:

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Yeah, I am still tossing a coin on it.

“Heroes” is easy as it really is a clear title choice by the artist. Trouble is, in this example we have a cover designer who likes quotes around his titles, which to me is like just doing Bold or Italics. But they don’t do it on all the covers which makes me think it is more an intentional thing. Tricky. Even more tricky as this is a re-issue label.

If I had these in my collection I would be editing them in Picard to get rid of the quotes as it messes up the alphabetical order. That is only a personal choice though.

(BTW - I love your cover art add-on… that one image you post is another example of how much it adds to MB. Brings life to a boring text database. Especially with that laughing face in the second image. Thank you for bringing this place to life :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:)

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My rule of thumb is to standardize (in this case, remove quotes) unless the non-standard is used consistently everywhere. In this case, since the labels aren’t using the quotes, I’d take that to indicate this is “cover designer intent” rather than “artist intent”. I think that’s consistent with the spirit of the guidelines on error correction and artist intent.