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This guideline is an attempt to clarify the naming conventions for articles of schools based in the United States of America. Generally, United States school article titles should reflect what the majority of English speakers would most easily recognize, with a minimum of ambiguity.
If an article has been named inappropriately, it can be renamed by moving the article to a more appropriate title. See Help:Moving a page and Wikipedia:Requested moves for more on renaming pages. Editors are often passionate about the naming of their particular schools and it is generally wise to discuss a proposed name change on the talk page first. This can be done with the {{WPSchools}} "move" parameter or by a simple comment.
Choosing a name
editUnited States school article titles should use the full official name of the school as provided by the school itself, unless the most common name for the school is significantly more well known than the official name.
Articles on schools preferably don't start with a definite article. See When definite and indefinite articles should be avoided. Should it be necessary to start the name of a school article with a definite article, the definite article should be removed when placing the article in a category. This can be accomplished with the magic word {{DEFAULTSORT}} so for "The School (location)" article, one should add "<nowiki>{{DEFAULTSORT:School (location) The}}" above the category list at the bottom of the page.
Disambiguation
editIf two or more U.S. school articles are identically named, the location of each school should be added as a qualifier in parentheses in the following format:
- [[School (State)]]
- For example, Cherokee High School (New Jersey), or Washington Township High School (New Jersey).
In the event that there is more than one school article with an identical name in the same state, the city or municipality should also be included, in the following format:
- [[School (City/Municipality, State)]]
- For example, Austin Middle School (Irving, Texas), or West Valley High School (Cottonwood, California).
A disambiguation page should then be created at [[School Name]]. If the [[School Name]] title is already taken (if for example an internationally recognized school has an overwhelming case for not having a disambiguated title) then the disambiguation page should be created at [[School Name (disambiguation)]]. The disambiguation page should always include full location details, including the country in which the school is situated, to avoid any confusion.
Disambiguation should only be used if there is a conflict between existing school articles with an identical name, or if it seems likely that there will be a naming conflict in the future. Likely future conflicts include a school article with a name which does not appear to be unique, such as Washington School or School of Art.
Redirects
editIf location parameters have been used for disambiguation purposes the appropriate redirect pages should be created without the added location parameters. If a United States school article has been moved from another title that included some sort of location parameter to [[School Name (new parameter)]], there is no need to delete the redirects, unless there is a risk of confusion.
Hatnotes
editHatnotes should be used when two or more U.S. school articles have similar names to avoid confusion. If there are only two school articles which have a similar name, a hatnote should be added to both articles, which should either link the two articles together, or link to a disambiguation page if it exists. If there are more than two school articles with a similar name, a hatnote should be added to all applicable articles linking to a disambiguation page.