Template:Trade designation/doc

{{Trade designation}} (shortcuts: {{tdes}}, {{sname}}, {{mname}}), displays the trade designation, AKA selling name or marketing name, of a cultivated plant in a different style, as required by the International Code of Nomenclature for Cultivated Plants (ICNCP). This practice has also been adopted by the British Royal Horticultural Society (RHS).

Some of the de facto conventions regularly used for trade designations do not work well in an online encyclopedia. For example, printed texts often use a serif font family for the main text and a sans-serif family for trade designations (or vice-versa). Since readers can set their own browser default fonts, this approach does not work in Wikipedia; many readers view all of Wikipedia in a serif font because they prefer it that way. Even when they don't, MediaWiki's "typography refresh" (from 2014 onward) now uses serif for article headings, so any trade designation appearing in a heading would not be distinguished.

The template shows trade designations, by default, in a monospaced (non-proportional) font that has been kerned for readability and to distinguish it from other uses of monospace. If that particular presentation doesn't work well in a particular case, it can be changed to something else. This output, using a CSS font stack, works cross-platform, regardless of browser and operating system. It has been tested in Mac OS X, Windows 8 and 10, several Linux distributions, OpenBSD Unix, Android, iOS, and ChromeOS.

Usage

This template is simply used inline in a scientific name; typical usage is just {{tdes|Name}}.

This template should not be substituted. It is not designed for that, and doing so will impede part of the purpose of the template (to mark up selling names in a predictable, automated way so that if ICNCP changes their prescribed nomenclatural markup, a simple change to this template will apply the new style site-wide).

This must not be used in titles of works in citation templates, as such markup breaks the citation template's COinS metadata. Just give the trade designation in regular text in such a case.

Default output

The default is kerned monospace:

• ''Choisya ternata'' {{tdes|Goldfingers}} 'Limo', in which {{tdes|Goldfingers}} is the trade designation

produces:

• Choisya ternata Goldfingers 'Limo', in which Goldfingers is the trade designation

This style can be hard-coded (in case the default changes) by adding a second, unnamed parameter as |mono or |ms.

Small capitals

The small caps style used in the ICNCP documentation can be produced by adding a second, unnamed parameter as |smallcaps, |small, |caps, or |sc:

• ''Choisya ternata'' {{tdes|Goldfingers|smallcaps}} 'Limo', in which {{tdes|Goldfingers|smallcaps}} is the trade designation

produces:

• Choisya ternata Goldfingers 'Limo', in which Goldfingers is the trade designation

Comic Sans

The font Comic Sans, which is supported on most readers' computers, can be produced with a second, unnamed parameter as |comicsans, |comic, or |cs:

• ''Choisya ternata'' {{tdes|Goldfingers|comicsans}} 'Limo', in which {{tdes|Goldfingers|comicsans}} is the trade designation

produces:

• Choisya ternata Goldfingers 'Limo', in which Goldfingers is the trade designation

Custom style

Add a |style= parameter with a value containing valid CSS, terminating with a ; (semicolon) character:

Small text:

• ''Choisya ternata'' {{tdes|Goldfingers|style=font-size:90%;}} 'Limo', in which {{tdes|Goldfingers|style=font-size:90%;}} is the trade designation

produces:

• Choisya ternata Goldfingers 'Limo', in which Goldfingers is the trade designation

Grey text:

• ''Choisya ternata'' {{tdes|Goldfingers|style=color:#696969;}} 'Limo', in which {{tdes|Goldfingers|style=color:#696969;}} is the trade designation

produces:

• Choisya ternata Goldfingers 'Limo', in which Goldfingers is the trade designation

Please do not use this feature to apply any of the following: serif/roman font (for the reason already given above), italics/oblique (which is for binomials and trinomials); an uncommon font (which will not work on many systems); boldface, underlining, garish color, an excessively large font, or wide letter spacing (all forms of excessive emphasis); or a tiny font (hard to read and thus an accessibility problem).

Note that some CSS3 properties are not well-supported yet. E.g., font-stretch is supported only by one major browser, as of July 2015, so letter-spacing has to be used for this effect instead, which is how the default output of this template is kerned.

No template-applied style

Plain text can be produced by adding a second, unnamed parameter as |plain, |text, or |txt. This produces no stylistic change.

• ''Choisya ternata'' {{tdes|Goldfingers|plain}} 'Limo', in which {{tdes|Goldfingers|plain}} is the trade designation

produces:

• Choisya ternata Goldfingers 'Limo', in which Goldfingers is the trade designation

The only practical use for this is in mid-sentence in frequent later references to the trade designation in the same article, when it is no longer necessary to typographically distinguish it. The template around the name still makes clear to other editors that the name is a trade designation, and so should not be enclosed in single quotes as if it were a cultivar name.

Overriding with user style

Any logged-in user can override this template's output with a user stylesheet; the template assigns as CSS class of trade_designation to its content. For example, to always display trade designations in small capitals, overriding whatever has been set by the template, add the following lines to your Special:Mypage/common.css:

.trade_designation {
  /* override anything Template:Trade_designation might do: */
  font-style: inherit !important; 
  font-family: inherit !important;
  font-weight: inherit !important;
  font-size: inherit !important;
  font-stretch: inherit !important;
  letter-spacing: inherit !important;
  word-spacing: inherit !important;
  color: inherit !important;
  /* then use the preferred style: */
  font-variant: small-caps !important;
  }

See also

• {{Hybrid}} – similar template for properly formatting a zoological or botanical hybrid name.
• {{Graft chimera}} AKA {{chimera}} – similar template for properly formatting the name of a graft chimera in a longer scientific name.
• {{Taxon italics}} AKA {{taxit}} – similar template for auto-italicizing the correct parts of a taxonomic binomial (or trinomial, etc.); can be used as a wrapper about the above ones.
• Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Organisms – detailed reference on how to do taxonomic and other names correctly
• Wikipedia:Manual of Style § Animals, plants, and other organisms – summary guideline (mostly about capitalization, and properly using italics for binomials)