Recently, I’ve been trying to populate the data for a Japanese idol group’s page over at =LOVE - MusicBrainz . I’m currently at a crossroad deciding how punctuation should be used for this particular group, which is especially important for them as the group name begins (!) with a punctuation.
These are the issues that I would like to seek clarity and opinions on:
- Should we use full-width (＝, U+FF1D) or half-width (=, U+003D) for the equal-sign at the start of the group name?
- For tracks/works with punctuation in the name, should we use full-width or half-width?
Regarding point number 1, the current style is to use the half-width symbol. This is also what the Japanese Wikipedia page uses for the header and url, although throughout the text, the full-width symbol is used interchangeably and with more occurrences. I am personally leaning towards using the full-width equal-sign, as it is the symbol used in their official webpage and every discography entry on their label’s page (at least to what I’ve seen thus far).
Regarding point number 2, I’ve seen the many different posts on this forum about punctuation (e.g., Space or no space between certain Japanese characters like "「」" and "～" , Style guide: use of punctuation full-width form - #4 by yindesu , A definitive answer on full-width vs. half-width punctuation? - #15 by hiro666 , Style guide: use of punctuation full-width form , etc.). There seems to be two main camps.
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One camp to use Japanese punctuation over similar looking ASCII punctuation ( Style guide: use of punctuation full-width form - #2 by yindesu ) but regular half-width forms for all else. This is because the JIS X 0213 standard does not contain full-width punctuation ( A definitive answer on full-width vs. half-width punctuation? - #7 by hiro666 ).
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The other camp to use follow the style guideline ( Style / Language / Japanese - MusicBrainz ) and use the symbols that appears on the printed packaging ( Style guide: use of punctuation full-width form - #6 by jesus2099 ) or online discography for digital media ( Handling Tilde (〜) in Japanese titles for digital media - #4 by derat ). Specifically, the part in the guideline that says: “Japanese artists have a tendency to choose capitalization and punctuation for aesthetic reasons, and to be very consistent regarding case over all releases. For this reason, words in the Latin script on a Japanese release should be in the same case as on the album art if other available sources, such as official discography or record label pages, are consistent, not normalized according to English or other capitalization standards. This applies even if the whole title is in English or another non-Japanese language, as long as it is consistently written in the non-standard way.”
I find that the first camp is not the correct way to go. It would be presumptuous of us to enforce the JIS X 0213 standard onto the artists who do not follow it. Take the equal-sign in the name of the group as an example. The full-width equal-sign (U+FF1D) does not exist in the JIS X 0213 standard, but yet the group’s official page, their label, event posters, and even ticketing sites use it. However, I also have to note that the half-width, JIS X 0213 standard compliant, equal-sign is used on official streaming platforms such as their Spotify page, Apple Music page, YouTube Music page (although their regular YouTube channel doesn’t), and even on Wikipedia (as mentioned earlier). Therefore, I believe that, at least for this artist, punctuation are to be interpreted as artist’s intent and thus to follow the standard that the artist uses on their official discography/physical medium.
tldr; I suggest to use full-width punctuation for ＝LOVE on musicbrainz unless they use half-width punctuation on their official discography. What do you think?
