Split character for Japanese script(s)

Which character should be used to separate titles written in Japanese when Multiple titles / Splits applies? Latin forward slash? Full-width forward slash? 「・」? 「〜」?

I could not find anything on this matter in the documentation.

According to the guideline, space, slash, space (the guideline does not make exceptions). That said, common sense trumps guidelines, so if the slash doesn’t make any sense in Japanese, it’s probably fine to use whatever is actually common as a separator in the language.

The guideline is obviously not written with non-Western languages in mind as “slash” is ambiguous and does not actually indicate a particular character. Is it okay to mix full-width characters with “regular” ones? Leaning on the guideline, I have no idea.

What is the purpose of the separator anyways? Make parts recognizable by a human? By a machine? Create uniform style?

The problem with so-called common sense is that everyone has their own.

The guideline does specifically give the characters: " / " :slight_smile: But guidelines are called guidelines, rather than rules, because we can’t cover every single possibility, and don’t even really try to.

It’s mostly for humans to have a more uniform style so that it’s easier to understand it’s a split. A machine wouldn’t need that I imagine: it could just see that there are several release artists, and each has a bunch of tracks, and decide it’s a split between those artists.

And that’s ok. If people disagree, we’re supposed to talk to each other and come to a decision more people support than not.

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Specifically? Are you sure that it was not just the characters readily available on the keyboard of the person who typed that? In case you can confirm that it is actually well-thought and deliberate, could you also confirm that it is okay to mix " / " with full-width characters?

You don’t have to. Instead the guidelines should establish and explain basic principles in the first place. So that a person reading them can infer more specific information or at least be aware of places where that might be needed and refer to some other source.

Unless " / " is actually designated as a separator for any possible language/script (and then it is not clear why we are still having this discussion), the guideline should use the concept of separator (split character, …, you name it) which might have various physical representations. Of course the default one like " / " should be defined as well.

It is not about split releases only. That guideline covers compound track titles too. So the question remains: does anyone need or assume semantics in those titles or is it just black informational hole?

IMO it depends of the context.

WAVE DASH is usually used to link songs together in a flow (medley): SONGA〜SONGB〜SONGC.

But beware, it can also be used for subtitle TITLE 〜SUBTITLE〜 (can also be EN DASH or EM DASH for this matter).

I tend to use the FULLWIDTH SOLIDUS for separating SIDEA/SIDEB single release titles.
But that’s if it’s what’s used on the prints.

And TEN is/was usually used to join artists like 水木一郎・影山ヒロノブ.
In more modern pops they tend to use more and more Latin characters for joining artists.

I would in fact not really follow a guideline, but the printed release.
Even artist credits are often consistent, not only titles.
And in (compilation) release I can see mixes, depending on the recording style: Like in R♥35 SWEET J-BALLADS where track 15 uses TEN and track 16 uses ampersand.

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Thanks for your input.

I have nothing to follow from the release, as each title goes on a new line and I need to concatenate them somehow – see https://ia801505.us.archive.org/35/items/mbid-69623b5b-ceaa-4350-8a92-1ba30080b10e/mbid-69623b5b-ceaa-4350-8a92-1ba30080b10e-24648338642.jpg

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In this case, there is no hint from the package indeed… Maybe booklet and/or CD label?
minc is of absolutely no help for this KICC 5158 either.
Suruga-ya shows pipes with no spaces but it’s very ugly, it’s very IT and I do see this kind of things on some websites but it’s very rarely same on prints (seen only once for a SIDEA|SIDEB type of title).

Specifically, yes - this has been our go-to way to do splits from pretty much the beginning of the project (for titles - for artists, since we started being able to use multiple artists per release/track). If you (or @jesus2099 or anyone else) think full-width languages should use something else by default, you’re welcome to request it - our guidelines change when the community wants them to change, so if a fair amount of people think this isn’t a good way, we should improve it. This is not some sort of word from God, it’s pretty much attempting to write down community consensus or at least preference, like pretty much every guideline we have :slight_smile:

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I’ve also seen this × used to separate artists.

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Oh yes, there is a big trend for this “ARTISTA×ARTISTB” (to be read as “ARTIST A cross ARTIST B”) for collaborations, v2.0 style. :wink:

Examples:


Unlike the USA’s usual vs (for versus), used in similar occurrences, it sounds less confrontational and more like collaboration enables multiplied creativity. :wink:

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There are machines out there looking for the space slash space as a divider.

More up to date tagging now means multiple artists are stored in multiple tags, but in the older days there was only one artist field. So that separator is important and still parsed by some applications.

I assumed this is why the guideline was specific with the SPACE SLASH SPACE as those spaces stop it being confused with AC/DC.

I have also been specifically stopped from using alternate characters that I found on a cover.

So please update the guidelines when you change how you are advising they are used. :slight_smile:

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