Compound Title

A Compound Title is when the individual titles of parts of a larger work can be strung together to form a title for the whole thing. Note that if the whole thing already has its own title, these may not coincide. The Compound Title may also be used to set off a few related episodes of a series, levels of a game, or similar, in which case it is a special case of Cross Referenced Titles. Commonly they make up a common English phrase, because these are common titles.

Compare Episode Finishes the Title, where the title of each episode is compounded, seperately, with the overall tite of the work.

Examples of Compound Title include:

• Bottom used a variation of adding the episode title at the end of the series' name. ("'s Up" and "'s Out")
• Bugs - had episodes "What Goes Up..." and "Must Come Down" about a space mission.
• Castle had the episodes "Tick, Tick, Tick..." and subsequent "Boom!"
• Great White - wrote an album Once Bitten, followed it up with Twice Shy.
• The two halves of Asimov's Second Foundation were originally published as "Now You See It--" and "--And Now You Don't."
  • Dawson's Creek used the same compound title for its two part series finale.
• Sasha's first two albums: "Dedicated to", "You"
• Harry Turtledove's Counting Up, Counting Down anthology features two stories at the beginning and end, "Counting Up..." and "...Counting Down." Both are actually the same story told from different perspectives.
• On the Panic! at the Disco album A Fever You Can't Sweat Out: Lying Is the Most Fun a Girl Can Have Without Taking Her Clothes Off, But It's Better If You Do (though the tracks are further separated by Intermission).
• FreeSpace 2 had two consecutive missions named "Love the Treason..." and "...But Hate the Traitor".
• Two short works by Jack Williamson: "With Folded Hands" "...And Searching Mind."
• The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov - had 3 parts, "Against Stupidity", "The Gods Themselves", "Contend In Vain".
• Grey's Anatomy: "It's the End of the World", "As We Know It".
• On Life two sequential episodes are entitled "Dig A Hole" and "Fill It Up", forming the teaching of the Zen master murdered in the first one.
• Two episodes of Lost also compounded the episode title with the series name - "...And Found" and "...In Translation"
• A Two-part Nancy Drew story had the two books titled "Lights, Camera..." and "Action!"
• The song titles on Side Two of the Bob Dylan album Nashville Skyline; Lay Lady Lay, One More Night, Tell Me It Isn't True, Country Pie, Tonight I'll Be Staying Here With You.
• Pathways into Darkness - had level "They May Be Slow..." followed by "...But They're Hungry."
• Robot Chicken had an entire season's worth of this, forming an entire letter.
• South Park - "Do the Handicapped Go to Hell?" "Probably."
• Space: Above and Beyond's last two episodes: "And If They Lay Us Down To Rest..." and "...Tell Our Moms We Done Our Best."
• When TWW (a Welsh TV broadcaster) lost its broadcasting licence, its last two programmes were "All Good Things" and "Come to an End".
• The first song on Heavenly's album Dust to Dust is called "Ashes to Ashes...", and the last is called "...Dust to Dust".
• The chapter titles of If on a winter's night a traveler form a poem.
• Supposedly, the Disney Channel movie Now You See It... was intended to have a sequel titled ...Now You Don't but some of the higher ups forced Alyson Michalka to choose between that and Cow Belles.
• NCIS did this with the season 6 episodes "Cloak" and "Dagger".
• Criminal Minds:
  • "To Hell..." and "...And Back"
  • "Hit" and "Run"
• The miniseries Spin-Off to Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels was called Lock Stock, and the episodes were titled "...And [number] [[[MacGuffin]]s]"
  • Two Guys, a Girl And A Pizza Place had a similar pattern.
• The the 360 version of Saints Row 2 gives you an achievement called "A Brighter Future" for completing the last mission, which is called "...And A Better Life". Combined, they form the Ultor Corporation motto.
• Breaking Bad had "Cat's in the Bag..." "...and the Bag's in the River".
• Used for working titles of Magic: The Gathering sets. Scars of Mirrodin, Mirrodin Besieged, and New Phyrexia were called Lights, Camera, and Action in memos, for instance.
• The Binding of Isaac's soundtrack has two songs called "Thine Wrath..." and "...Be Done".
• Jeopardy! often does this with the category names, where two or more will form a sentence when host Alex Trebek reads them.
• With Strings Attached. Chapter 18 is “Rise and Shine,” and Chapter 19 is “Shine and Rise.”