Template:Trade designation/doc

 , short form   , displays the trade designation (a.k.a. selling name, marketing name) of a cultivated plant in a different style, as required by the International Code of Nomenclature for Cultivated Plants (ICNCP).

Some of the conventions regularly used for trade designations do not work well in an online encyclopedia. For example, printed texts often use a serif font family for the main text and a sans-serif family for trade designations. Since readers can set their own browser default fonts, this approach does not work in Wikipedia.

Currently, by default the template shows trade designations in Comic Sans font. This is not necessarily the final solution. Using the template ensures consistency if a change is agreed in future.

Default style
 Rosa is the trade designation of a rose cultivar. 

produces

Rosa is the trade designation of a rose cultivar.

Small caps
The style used in the ICNCP documentation can be produced by including a second parameter with the value "smallcaps" (or "small" or "caps"):

 Rosa is the trade designation of a rose cultivar. 

produces

Rosa is the trade designation of a rose cultivar.

Small capitals are generally deprecated in Wikipedia.

Plain text
Plain text can be produced by including a second parameter with the value "plain" (or "text"):

 Rosa is the trade designation of a rose cultivar. 

produces

Rosa is the trade designation of a rose cultivar.

Although this form may seem redundant, it has two advantages:
 * It makes clear to other editors that the name is a trade designation (selling name, marketing name) and so should not be enclosed in single quotes as if it were a cultivar name.
 * It allows for easy future updating. Should there be a consensus on the style to use, the template can be changed to ignore the second parameter and always output the preferred style.