IMSLP Forums

I think the worklist/composition list pages are in use of a style guide- not to enforce uniformity of format, but to remind people of their audience , goals, etc. Too often the entries in these worklists resemble gnomic marginal jottings full of abbreviations that need expanding out, for example. They're taken from Hofmeisters Monatsberichte often enough, I know, which was full of such abbreviations; but I think that was an industry publication, aimed toward people who knew what the various terms and abbreviations in German meant already. I don't think it's quite as safe to assume that everyone coming on your worklist, especially an English language reader, knows that "Kl" is piano, not Clarinet or perhaps older-style Klavichord or... but that's too specific (if still general) an example and there are too many (of which my painfully bad attempts at contributions to composition-etc. lists provide quite a few.)

I don't want this to go overboard personally and would argue for guidelines over rules for the most part (except where obvious - sticking with the existing rules of the site, of course) , but the unreadability gets a bit much.

I have a couple of suggestions for such a style guide that would help with readability (at least they do for my aging eyes). These would really be for the lists and not the sortable tables. First, please clearly separate the opus number from the title. Many of the work lists begin each line with a bullet and have the opus number in bold and separated from the title with some type of dash. Glancing down a page it makes it much easier to find the opus number you're looking for if they stand out in this fashion and the use of the bullet allows you to devote multiple lines of text to this opus without it looking like each line might represent a separate work. The bullet also helps out in the list of works without opus number as there is no bold opus number to help there. Secondly, if you list the individual titles (of songs, piano pieces, etc.) published under one opus indent them in so they aren't even with the opus numbers. Again, not doing so makes it appear that each line is a separate work. All this being said anyone who compiles these lists has my thanks. Having done a few I know it can sometimes be frustrating trying to fill in those blanks.

Cypressdome