This template and its articles were created to replace List of television programs by name, which had grown too massive to be browsed.
This template is a nigh complete copy of Template:List of films by letter, so credit goes to its creators and contributors.
Numbers being alphabetically first is an old standard. So is ignoring "the". Where I may stray is ignoring spaces, special symbols and not ignoring A/AN.
Explanation:
- Special symbols are rarely read, like for example the dollar symbol. Creating separate sections for them when they are so rare would also make for a lot of needless work. People searching for the show will also only go by the first letter and not search for the symbol. This is the most obvious one if you spend some time with the lists.
- Same goes for spaces. People think alphabetically letter by letter and skip the space. Sometimes it just didn't look good when spaces here and there made the list read very unalphabetically. But in some instances spaces being read alphabetically does seem to help though, like for example at the MY section of M. I'm unsure as to whether fix it or not at this point. It makes the list more readable when all the countless My Something titles are separate from the Mysterious ones. I'll leave it to others. Most likely no one will bother changing anything...
- Lastly, A and AN. I noticed there are surprisingly few titles with these at the beginning, and they're in fact so rare that people may remember the shows by them. I'm most unsure about this policy though, as people may think of them like "the" and search for the title without the A/AN. It might be best if these shows were listed with and without the A/AN, utilizing the [article name|visible name] template.
--Mr. Magoo and McBarker (talk) 11:25, 3 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]__DTELLIPSISBUTTON__{"threadItem":{"timestamp":"2016-02-03T11:25:00.000Z","author":"Mr. Magoo and McBarker","type":"comment","level":1,"id":"c-Mr._Magoo_and_McBarker-2016-02-03T11:25:00.000Z-Some_basics","replies":[]}}-->
Name of popular commentator 69.178.94.168 (talk) 07:24, 1 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]__DTELLIPSISBUTTON__{"threadItem":{"timestamp":"20220801072400","author":"69.178.94.168","type":"comment","level":1,"id":"c-69.178.94.168-20220801072400-On_Television","replies":[]}}-->
