Purpose
This template ensures that some kinds of taxon name used as page titles are correctly italicized, particularly botanical names requiring a connecting term. Thus "Populus sect. Populus" should be displayed as "Populus sect. Populus". It is mainly used by templates within the automated taxobox system, which try to italicize page titles automatically.
It may very rarely be necessary to use this template directly in an article with a taxon name as its title, when:
- the page uses a manual taxobox (e.g. {{Taxobox}})
- adding {{Italic title}} does not produce the correct italicization.
For example, the template handles a page title like "Puzosia (Bhimaites)" correctly when the page has a manual taxobox, italicizing it as "Puzosia (Bhimaites)" rather than "Puzosia (Bhimaites)" or "Puzosia (Bhimaites)" (note the italicized parenthesis characters in the latter, which would be incorrect).
This template should almost never be added to pages with automated taxoboxes (e.g. {{Automatic taxobox}}, {{Speciesbox}}, {{Infraspeciesbox}}), which almost always automatically correctly italicize the page title. For special cases where this does not work, including subgenus pages with titles of the form Camponotus (Dendromyrmex), see Template:Automatic taxobox#Italic title.
Usage
If it is necessary to use this template in an article, place
{{Italic taxon title}}
where {{Italic title}} would otherwise be placed or where {{DISPLAYTITLE:...}} would be needed.