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Administrivia: TV Tropes Glossary

Like a lot of things relating to specific fields of knowledge, we have acquired some terms and idioms particular to this site. This page is to give you a quick overview of their meanings.

Compare Tropes of Legend, Canonical List of Subtle Trope Distinctions, What Page Types Mean.

See also Welcome to TV Tropes, Text Formatting Rules, Page Templates.


Some definitions:

  • Blank Launch (mislaunch): An unskilled attempt to launch a trope from YKTTW. Results in a red link instead of a trope and removes the YKTTW from the list. Learn the basics before you try to launch.
  • Blue Link: A working link. Bluelinks may be Wiki Words or Potholes. Compare Red Link.
  • CamelCase: The usual way of creating Wiki Words onsite, achieved by removing the spaces between two or more words, e.g. CamelCase
  • Compare: A short list at the end of descriptions to note Sister Tropes to the trope being described.
  • Contrast: A short list at the end of descriptions to note Opposite Tropes to the trope being described.
  • Courtesy Link: A link to a trope you are discussing in the forums, provided so your fellow tropers can easily access the trope you want to talk about. Image Picking and Trope Repair Shop now require these when making a thread.
  • Creator: Someone who participates in the creation of a work. On TV Tropes, these include writers, artists, actors, bands, and companies.
  • Crosswicking: Adding a trope example to a work's page and vice versa.
  • Crowner: A system of voting this site uses, usually to decide whether to rename a page and then what the new name will be, but other actions are often voted upon. The crowners work differently than typical voting. Instead of whatever has the most votes, they are decided on whatever has the best ratio of yes to no votes.
  • Curly Brackets: {{ }} The way to make single-word titles Wiki Word (for example, Metallica), or a way to make larger wiki words and control the spacing. Compare CamelCase. See Text Formatting Rules for how to implement them.
  • Custom Title: You can request these for any article to change how the title is displayed in wicks and the page title. The change is usually adding punctuation or altering capitalization in some way.
  • Cut List: Where tropes are proposed for deletion. It's not automatic though, and opportunity is given to site users to respond to/discuss the reasons given for the cutlisting, either in dispute or support of them.
  • Description: The part of a page describing what the page is about. Usually it's defining a trope or describing a work. Often comes in different forms, such as Self-Demonstrating Article or Example as a Thesis.
  • Discussion: A mirror page for any page on this site that has the typical editing code. These are for anything about the page that isn't related to the description or examples. It's sort of a forum for these specific pages.
  • Example: Items listed after a page description. The examples are usually two kinds:
    1. If the page is a trope, the examples are the works where the trope shows up. These usually start with "Examples:" in a banner at the top of the list and are sorted by medium.
    2. If the page is a work/person, the examples are the different tropes that show up in that work. These usually start with "Provides Examples Of:" (or some variation) in a banner at the top of the list.
  • Faux-redlink (fake redlink): A link which shows up as red even though the page exists (even as a redirect or a disambiguation). Done to discourage sinkholes. Faux-redlinks are always locked and are not edited. A list of them can be found in the Permanent Red Link Club.
  • Folder: A system for making examples more easily digestible, so a medium can be easily opened or closed.
  • Forum gingerbread: The fancy bits of the TV Tropes Forum including avatars, signature lines, and so on. Gingerbread is turned on by default; if you are known, you can switch it on and off via your profile page.
  • Informal Wiki: A term we use to describe the attitude of this site in relation to editors. It doesn't mean we don't have rules and procedures for editing pages, but they are far fewer than other sites.
  • Known: Basically being logged in here, just that it's not as extensive as making accounts in other sites.
  • Launch: The process of making a new page. Tropes should go through YKTTW before being launched; Works Pages Are a Free Launch.
  • Main Page: The default namespace, where you will find the trope description and examples.
  • Medium: The format a work is presented in (for example: film, comic book, radio, etc.). Examples in trope pages are sorted by medium.
  • Namespace: This is the part of a page url before the last slash. The TV Tropes default namespace is Main/. We have other namespaces for media (ex.Film/), sub-pages (ex. Analysis/), and trope pages (ex. NightmareFuel/).
  • Natter: Conversations in the main page. This is frowned upon, as it is generally distracting and unfunny.
  • Notability: An odd one, in that we use the definition used by Wikipedia, but are against it. We don't require a work to meet any standards of notability for that site. As long as the work is published, and the page for it doesn't cover content that crosses certain lines note , that page stays here.
  • "Not to be confused with": A disclaimer in descriptions to list any tropes that have similar names to the described trope, but are in no other way related.
  • Null edit: Opening the edit screen and saving the page without making any changes. These have several uses, like leaving a message in an edit reason or making a link blue. Sometimes they happen accidentally.
  • Pothole: A Wiki Word embedded in text, known as a piped link over on That Other Wiki. We like potholes here at TV Tropes. See also sinkhole.
  • Ptitle: Punctuated Title. In the past, all titles containing non-alphanumeric characters other than hyphens, or starting with a number (e.g. 300) used to be ptitles. Ptitles couldn't be linked to with Wiki Words, and could only be created with special markup. They were phased out with the advent of The Ptitle Replacement System; now we use custom titles instead, and the only remaining ptitles are redirects, preserved in order to avoid breaking inbound links.
  • Query: A discussion thread in Ask The Tropers, Lost and Found, or You Know That Show. These are simple forums without titles or gingerbread or similar like the main TV Tropes Forum has. The term comes from the URL for those areas.
  • Red Link: A link to a page that has not yet been created. Compare Blue Link.
  • Referral Count: The number of times a page has brought new users onto the site. You can view the referral count by clicking the "Related" button at the top of the page. The referral count is sometimes called the number of inbound links (inbounds).
  • Sinkhole: Like a Pot Hole, but where the linked article is irrelevant or only tangentially relevant to the context in which it occurs. We don't like these.
  • This Troper: Don't put that on the main page. It's a phrase that was on the site, but became redundant with the Troper Tales namespace. We don't need personal comments on main pages.
  • Trope: A common convention or device in media. These are not the actual literary definition of a trope, and should not be confused for it. This is just an informal definition we use for this site.
  • Troper: Anyone who contributes to this site. Those that are Known are listed in Contributors.
  • Wick: A link on this site to another page on this site. This is useful for getting attention for these pages across the site. You can see the number of Wicks by hitting the "Related to" button at the top of the page.
  • Wiki Word: A link to a page onsite. Can be made using CamelCase, if the title has multiple words, or curly brackets if it is a single-word title. Frequently seen in the form of a Pothole.
  • Work: Any creation in any form of medium. All of them use tropes.
  • Works Page: A page that briefly describes a work and lists all the tropes it uses. Works Pages Are a Free Launch because There Is No Such Thing as Notability.
  • YKTTW: The recommended place to propose tropes (but not works or people). There you can discuss if a trope is a proper trope, how to best define it, if we have the page already or not, and get some examples if you don't have enough.
  • YMMV: Most tropes are deliberate choices of those making a work. It doesn't matter what we think of them, they are in that work. YMMVs differ in that they are entirely what an individual viewer feels.
  • Zero-Context Example: An example that isn't fleshed out to give context to the trope and how it is portrayed in a work.


Acronyms expanded:

  • ANF, HONF, NF, and NFU: Accidental Nightmare Fuel, High Octane Nightmare Fuel, Nightmare Fuel, and Nightmare Fuel Unleaded, respectively. Pages about scary stuff. NFU was the old name for HONF, which is now just part of NF again.
  • ATT: Ask The Tropers. The catch-all query area for vandal reports, quick questions, and other stuff.
  • BUPKIS: Blank Until Pretty Kickass Image Suggested (or Suggestion). A stock phrase found in Image Pickin, often said in relation to pages which are hard to picture. See also KUBIS.
  • CMOA, CMOF, and CMOH: Crowning Moment Of Awesome, Crowning Moment Of Funny, and Crowning Moment Of Heartwarming, respectively. CMOA/CMOF/CMOH are still widely used terms, but officially the pages have lost their "crowning" titles (which named crowners) after finding a crowning moment of anything proved impossible.
  • GCPTR: Getting Crap Past the Radar. This trope has had to go through so many discussions that its acronym is well-established, unlike most tropes (which therefore aren't listed here).
  • IP:
    1. An Internet Protocol address. A string of numbers identifying your computer.
    2. Image Pickin'. A forum for choosing images and other such items.
  • KUBIS: Keep Until Better Image Suggested (or Suggestion). A stock phrase found in Image Pickin'. See also BUPKIS.
  • PM: Private message. A feature and term common to most sites, these are, well, private messages. If you are known, you can find your mailbox here.
  • TRS: The Trope Repair Shop. A forum for renaming, removing, and otherwise reforming or refining tropes.
  • TT: Troper Tale(s). A long-gone wiki project involving recounting your personal experiences of tropes. Sometimes people still post anecdotes on discussion pages; these are Troper Tales and are not generally appropriate.
  • TVT: TV Tropes.
  • YKTS: You Know That Show. A discussion area in which you may ask about a work you can remember but don't know the title of.
  • YMMV: Your Mileage May Vary. See its entry in the first list.
  • YKTTW: You Know, That Thing Where.... See its entry in the first list.
  • ZCE: Zero-Context Example. An entry on a trope or work page which just lists a trope link or work name without explaining anything.
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