Talk:Poems in The Lord of the Rings

Titles of poems/songs

Do we want uppercase first letters of the first words in the poems/songs? --Morgan 18:29, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Name of article

Rename as "Poems and songs in The Lord of the Rings"? Or can a song be said to be a kind of poem (at least in this context)? This question is also linked to how we should categorize the individual articles.--Morgan 19:43, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Titles? or first lines?

Before 2005, the index for LOTR had listed poems and songs by titles assigned to them. After 2005, the index restructured by Hammond & Scull lists poems and songs only by their respective first lines. The problem I see is that this page on this site combines the two rather than using only one or the other. In addition, this page has no explanation of the differences or why there is a difference. Ed8r (talk) 15:10, 24 June 2023 (UTC)

Hello there Ed8r.

All poems listed on Tolkien Gateway are titled by their name where we have one, otherwise we use their opening line. I do not think it causes anyone difficulty in finding poems but it is certainly something to be reviewed for inconsistencies in application.

As for the ordering of poems on this page specifically, if that is something you are referring to, they are simply ordered by appearance. JR Snow (talk) 15:49, 24 June 2023 (UTC)

I think I see what Ed8r is referring to. I grabbed a pre-2005 edition and it does indeed list the poems by both their title, and separately they are listed by the first lines, whereas my newer edition simply lists the first lines. This quote from Hammond and Scull makes me think the titles were left off simply due to space "although this new index is greatly enlarged compared with its predecessor, some constraints on its length were necessary so that it might fit comfortably after the Appendices." I think if anyone should go above and beyond it should be us, especially as we aren't constrained by space, so I'm in favor of listing both the first lines and the original title. We can format it in a sortable table such as this example so the visitor can choose what their preference is. As to whether we should move each poem's article to its respective original title, that I'm on the fence on. If someone is willing to help lookup the original titles and match them with the first lines, I can assist with the formatting of it into a table. Hyarion (talk) 15:56, 24 June 2023 (UTC)

I think that's a great idea. I wish I could offer to help, but currently I have other life events requiring my time. :(

Ed8r (talk) 16:22, 24 June 2023 (UTC)

One thing we could do very quickly is create redirects; Opening lines > Poems with titles JR Snow (talk) 16:34, 24 June 2023 (UTC)

Two more columns in table?

I'm highly tempted to add two more columns to the table: "Composed by" and "Spoken, sung, or written by". What do people think? Spearwielder (talk) 15:28, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

It would be good information in the article. My concern is that wide tables get unwieldy on mobile (Wikipedia doesn't have a good solution to this either). In any case, I'd say we should finish putting the rest of the list into table format before worrying about this. --Pachyderminator 18:35, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

I thought there might be something like that--and maybe some of the titles need to be shortened. Spearwielder (talk) 12:47, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

Would making it look like User:Spearwielder/sandbox be worth the effort? Spearwielder (talk) 22:32, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

That looks good to me. --Pachyderminator 04:41, 14 April 2024 (UTC)