R&S Example page/Italics in a title?

Please see User talk:Bluesman#Strange New Worlds 9 where an editor has attmepted to represent italics in a story titel with HTML. I think this is a bad idea, but the help doesn't actually speak to this that I can find. Should it? -DES ^Talk 00:05, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

HTML in titles will mess up searches, which appears to be a bad trade-off. Ahasuerus 14:38, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

That's what I thought. Bluesman agreed to delete the HTML from these particular titles. I'm going to add a mention of this to the help. If anyone objects, the changes can be reverted. -DES ^Talk 14:41, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

See this edit to Template:PublicationFields:Title and this edit to Template:TitleFields:Title. I trust that makes the policy clear for the future. -DES ^Talk 14:52, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

The changes are good. I corrected a typo in the latter template and noticed the mention of using Unicode for special characters. I feel it would be a good idea to link to the Wikipedia list, so that those of us who are less literate in such areas (including me) would have a place to find the Unicode characters. MHHutchins 15:06, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

We've got a few other examples to look at: 66834 and 117871 at least, and a true example (as in not a real title) 931034. The last has a particularly unhelpful standardisation "10 to 16 to 1" for the real title - I think "10 to the 16th to 1" might express it better. BLongley 18:22, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Or "10^16 TO 1". The "real" title is for 84510. -DES ^Talk 20:45, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

I'm not keen on Unicode for funny characters, even relatively common ones like Registered Trademark symbols - I wildcard such on searches, and would be happy to just use plain ASCII "(TM)" or "(R)" on entries that really do need it. (I find most don't - it's normally an indication that someone is incorporating a series name into a title. E.g. Aliens™ Book 1: Earth Hive.) BLongley 18:22, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

There is The Technicolor® Time Machine, Bean Bag Cats®, and Universe®. And what about Völsungakviđa en Nýja eđa Sigurđarkviđa en Mesta (The New Lay of the Völsungs or The Longest Lay of Sigurd) (which was a pain to type in) -DES ^Talk 20:45, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

I think we quite possibly need a "simplified title" field for searching on. This would be a form of the title with only ASCII characters, and any basic title search would check this field in addition to the regular title. To same space, it might be blank when there are no non-ascii characters in the regular title. Then we could use funny characters or HTML in a title without messing up searches -DES ^Talk 20:45, 29 July 2009 (UTC)