The Contribution Information help page on Filmography Credits / Characters links to "Ghost Busters" (sic)

On the "Filmography Credits / Characters" contribution information page of help.imdb.com, the section "Character descriptions must be limited to the context of the film" ends with this example:

As a special case of this, if the character name in the credits contradicts the character name seen or spoken in the film (for example, Winston Zedd(e)more in Ghost Busters), we list the character name as it appears in the credit, and note the discrepancy as a continuity goof.

It's probably bad practice for the official policies on data formatting to ignore their own rules. While the film's compound-word title may at various times be styled as either "Ghostbusters" or "GhostBusters", it's certainly never two words.

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steve_crook

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7 years ago

It's apparantly known as Ghost Busters in Denmark & the USA (alternative spelling)
Check the AKAs at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087332/releaseinfo#akas
It's bad to show it as Ghost Busters in the Help Guide
But never say "never"

Steve

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FeRDNYC

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Point taken.

Full disclosure: I actually tried to check the AKAs... and I couldn't remember where they were. *blush* (Because, you know, "Release Dates"? Sure.)

Though, it also lists "Ghostbusters" as a United States AKA for "Ghostbusters", so... I'm not sure we should treat it as 100% thoroughly vetted. As we'd say on Wikipedia,

USA (alternative spelling)   Ghost Busters [citation needed]

7 years ago

FeRDNYC

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7 years ago

(Also, thanks to whoever moved this into the proper category; I went back and forth on whether this really counted as a "Policy Discussion" since it's not about the policy per se. But I'm glad to be corrected on that point.)

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Peter_pbn

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7 years ago

It was listed with "Ghost Busters" as the primary and original title for years. This is because the title was split in two lines in the title sequence. I think it's fair enough to consider it one word, but IMDb has been inconsistent. The Crazy Credits page still references the two-word title as the title seen on screen:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087332/c...

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FeRDNYC

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Ah, that probably explains the "Ghostbusters" in the AKA list. I did notice that "GhostBusters" wasn't there, which surprised me, especially considering the two-line title formatting you mention.

It doesn't look like there's any way to convince Google search to respect exact capitalization anymore (not even Verbatim mode), so checking stats for "GhostBusters" is out, but they list 4 million Verbatim results for "Ghostbusters" vs. 400,000 for "Ghost Busters" — and a good number of those appear to actually be about, well, The Ghost Busters.

Buuuuut, I've already made this way more involved than it needs to be, so my apologies for that. #ShuttingUpNow

7 years ago

Will

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7 years ago

Hi all,

Yes although everyone thinks of Ghostbusters as this is visible on certain posters the title as it appears on screen is Ghost Busters. It looks like the primary title was at some point incorrectly converted to Ghostbusters. I've returned this to the correct Ghost Busters now though to align with our policies.

Regards,
Will

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gromit82

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Will: The title was apparently changed about a year and a half ago based on the discussion at https://getsatisfaction.com/imdb/topics/ghostbusters-is-misspelled-in-data-text-file.

7 years ago

FeRDNYC

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Aaaand, now I wish I could change the mood face on my post.

7 years ago

Will

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Sorry both but this should never have been changed on the previous thread according to our policies.

7 years ago

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FeRDNYC

The Contribution Information help page on Filmography Credits / Characters links to "Ghost Busters" (sic)

steve_crook

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FeRDNYC

Peter_pbn

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Will

gromit82

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Will

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