The name of a French collection does not hold a fixed place in the advertisements: it wanders between the beginning, the middle and the end of the title, and its writing changes along the way.Out of 178 advertisements citing this collection on August 30, 2026, the name appears 91 times at the top, 76 times in the middle and 11 times at the end. It is written 99 times with a space before the percent sign and 79 times without. The same volume devoted to the character appears there in two formulations with entirely different word order, at the same price. Neither the position, nor the spelling, nor the order can serve as a guide.
Previous articles in this series focused on amputated, ambiguous or duplicated information. This concerns complete, exact and present information: the collection is well named, the volume is well numbered, nothing is missing. The problem is elsewhere, in the layout.
An ad title is a free sentence. The seller puts what he deems useful, in the order that comes to him. As long as a human reads, the order doesn't matter: you recognize a collection wherever it is. As soon as we arrange, sort or compare, the order becomes decisive, because any extraction method is based on an expected position.
Same volume, two different sentences
I surveyed the French market on August 30, 2026 on three requests, then duplicated: 338 distinct advertisements, of which 178 cite the collection in question. The amounts areare requestedthat day; no sales are observed, and a statement taken on a single date does not measure any change.
Ten of these announcements relate to volumes devoted to the character. Two pairs are particularly informative, because they describe the same volume at the same price. For the sixth volume, at €16.00: on one side “collection, character, series, T06, title of the story”, on the other “series, character, collection, 6, T06, date, title of the story”. For the fifth, at €19.00: on one side “collection, character, series, volume 5, 05”, on the other “series, character, collection, 5, 05, date”.
Look at the beginning of these four titles. Two begin with the name of the collection, two with the name of the series. Nothing in any of the four indicates where each piece of information begins and ends. A human reader untangles it all effortlessly; a cutting rule does not achieve this, because there is no rule to find.
Three possible positions
91 ads place the name of the collection at the top, 76 in the middle, 11 at the end. No position dominates enough to serve as a working hypothesis.
Two spellings
99 ads insert a space before the percent sign, 79 do not. Two different strings, which no sorting brings together, for one and the same name.
The number written twice
“Volume 5 05”, “100% 6 T06”: three announcements in the statement repeat the number in two neighboring forms in the same title.
A name that contains another
Two advertisements carry a collection whose name begins with that of the first, followed by one more word. A reconciliation by the beginning of the chain confuses them.
This last point is the most tricky and deserves to be explained. A collection has a name; another has the same name plus one word. Any method that recognizes a collection by searching for its name at the beginning of a title will therefore assign the volumes from the second to the first. The error is silent, systematic, and it is not corrected by extending the list of known names: it is corrected by requiring that the match relate to the entire name.
Three announcements in the statement reverse the two words in the collection name, placing the second before the first. Eight others precede it with the word “collection”. None of these variations is faulty from a reader's point of view: they all mean the same thing unambiguously.
This is precisely what makes the problem invisible. There is nothing to correct in the ads. The difficulty arises when we ask a character string to play the role of an identifier, even though it was written to be read.
Why the number does not catch up with the order
We could hope that the volume number saves the day: if we fail to recognize the collection, we would at least recognize the volume. The survey shows that this appeal is fragile, for a specific reason: the number is also written in several ways, and it is not the only one of its kind in the title.
Seventeen advertisements write the number in the form “volume” followed by a number, sixteen in abbreviated form with a leading zero. Three writes the two in a row, which produces a sequence of two consecutive numbers in the title — “5 05”, “6 T06” — of which automatic processing cannot tell which is the correct one.
Added to this are all the other numbers that populate these titles: the name of the collection itself contains a number, the advertisements cite years, some mention a percentage discount. A title in this family can thus contain five different numbers, only one of which is the volume number, and nothing distinguishes it from the others by its form.
There is a basic reason for this accumulation of numbers, and it lies in the very name of the collection. This has a number followed by a percent sign. This is not a cosmetic detail: it means that an ad title contains at least one number which is neither a number, nor a year, nor a quantity, but a piece of a proper name. Any automatic reading which identifies the numbers to deduce a rank therefore begins by falling on that one.
The phenomenon worsens when the seller announces a discount, which several announcements in the statement do by indicating a reduction percentage. The title then contains two percentage signs in two different functions: one is part of the name of the collection, the other describes a commercial offer. Nothing distinguishes them by form, and their proximity is enough to mislead a rapid reading, human as well as automatic.
We must draw a conclusion broader than the particular case. A naming convention that borrows its characters from the vocabulary of numbers — a number, a symbol, an abbreviation — permanently exposes everything that cites it. The collector can do nothing about it: he inherits the name as it is. What it can do, however, is never let such a name coexist with a number in the same field.
Six consequences in an inventory
An impossible cutting
No position being stable, there is no rule to separate collection, series and title of the story. Each announcement should be read individually.
A split collection
With and without a space, these are two strings. 99 ads on one side, 79 on the other: grouping by collection will display two instead of one.
A neighboring collection sucked
A name that begins with another name switches the volumes from one to the other, as long as we recognize by the beginning of the string rather than in full.
Two numbers for one volume
“5 05” in the same title: two neighboring writings of the same rank. An automatic reading picks one at random, and sometimes both.
Numbers everywhere
The name of the collection contains a number, the date contains one, and a possible discount too. The volume number has no mark that distinguishes it.
False counts
How many volumes do you have in this collection? The answer depends on the spelling chosen and the way in which the neighboring collection was arranged.
What this statement does not establish
It describes the way sellers write, not the way the publisher names his collection. The official form undoubtedly exists; it does not appear here, and an ad is not a source of it. Finding which of the two spellings is the correct one would have no practical significance: both circulate, you have to deal with both.
He also does not say how many volumes the series dedicated to the character has in this collection. Ten announcements cover volumes numbered two through seven, establishing that at least six exist, and nothing more. A catalog is not reconstructed from what was on sale on a Tuesday.
Finally, the prices quoted – €16.00 for two ads of the same volume, €19.00 for two others – are used to identify the pairs I am talking about. That two ads of the same volume show the same amount is a convenient coincidence for demonstration, not a fact from which I derive anything.
Translate this into a file
The instruction:don't try to cut out an ad title, describe the subject from its cover.The title is used to find the ad, it is not a form. Wanting to mechanically extract the collection, the series and the number amounts to assuming a structure which does not exist.
Once the object is in hand, four fields are enough and deserve to be kept separately: the collection, the series, the number in the collection, the title of the story. The number is entered in a single form, the one you adopt for your entire database - without leading zero or with, it doesn't matter, but always the same. It is homogeneity that makes a sort usable, as with the name of the publisher.
For the collection, choose a unique spelling and stick to it, including when the ad uses another. Above all, check that you do not have two collections in your database, one of which begins with the name of the other: if this is the case, write them completely, without abbreviating, otherwise you will mix the two without ever realizing it.
There remains the case of a distance purchase, where you only have the title. Then note the line as it is, in its entirety, in a notes field, and mark the entry as unverified. You will take it back upon receipt. What matters is not to avoid provisional records – they are inevitable – but that a provisional record is marked as such instead of passing itself off as an established record.
Because an ad title is a free phrase, not a form. Each seller orders the information as he sees fit. Of the 178 advertisements recorded on August 30, 2026, the name appears 91 times at the top, 76 times in the middle and 11 times at the end: no position dominates enough for us to assume it.
For a reader, no. For storage, yes: they are two different chains, and no sorting spontaneously brings them together. The survey includes 99 advertisements with space and 79 without: the two populations are too important for one to be neglected. Keep a unique spelling in your base, whatever it may be.
Read it on the item rather than in the ad. Three titles of the statement write the rank twice in two similar forms, “volume 5 05” or “6 T06”. Both say the same thing, but a title in this family often contains five numbers - including the year, and a number in the name of the collection itself - without any mark distinguishing the correct one.
By always writing the entire name, never abbreviated, and never using a connection by the beginning of the string. Two advertisements in the survey carry a collection whose name begins with that of another, with one more word. Any recognition based on the beginning of the title pours the volumes of one into the other, silently.
Not reliably, and the survey explains why: there is neither stable position, nor unique spelling, nor mark distinguishing the volume number from other numbers. The title is used to find the ad; the description of the object is based on the cover, once the copy is received.
Four fields are better than one sentence
My Comics Collection keeps the collection, series, issue and story separately, without depending on the word order of an ad.