#tagging conventions

Eiiri's The Fanfic Author's Guide to Metatext

A handbook for fanfiction writers on Ao3 regarding effective use of meta text, including good tagging practices. Very useful!

ErinPtah's A Users' Guide to AO3 Tagging

On the AO3, you're allowed to tag your works in any way you want. But if what you want is the tags that are most standard, most searchable, and/or most wrangler-friendly, here's a short guide on how to do it. Originally written in 2013. Rewritten in March 2025, to be accurate about current tags/guidelines. (If that was a long time ago for you, reader, it might be out-of-date again.)

JustSomeAO3Tips's Staring into the Tag Vortex: AO3 tagging demystified

[CW: Tag Vortex may stare back.] Tagging! How many tags does your story need? How can you tell which ones will be useful? As a reader, how can you use them to find what you want, what you really really want? When you keysmash in the forest, does it make a sound? AO3's beautiful and ridiculously wrangled tags do more than most people expect. Behold the mysteries, rejoice in the synonyms, and optimize your search results. Welcome to the tag vortex.

light spoiler context: my sole survivor starts the fic in one relationship and then as her character develops, has several more relationships, with the final one being endgame.

i know i would tag each individual chapter with what's actually contained within the chapter, but do I also tag for what it's building toward?

i have not published fanfic since the early 2000s, and everything i wrote was untagged beyond making sure it was in the right category at fandomination, which to my knowledge didn't have a robust tagging system at the time

i also have gone out of my way to not read any fallout longfics until after mine is finished

I already do that but tumblr has a problem not letting tags show up😭😰

Ive kept all fan art to the #fan art tag

All stuff about the au au to the #blue moon au tag

The actual au and story is solely in the #black sun au tag

Memes in the #black sun lols

I ever tag all the characters, now their naming conventions are #black sun snuf/#blue moon snuf, #black sun moom/#blue moon moom, #black sun maid, #black sun sniff, #black sun mama, #black sun papa

And the triggers are #blood, #gore, #eyes, #tongues, #teeth, #knives

I really do tag everything and its so sad that tumblr doesnt want to work. Truthfully i cant even search on my own blog

Since I’ve gotten some new followers recently, I thought I’d take a moment to let people know about my tagging policy.

I’m a multishipper, but I want all my followers to feel comfortable having my blog on their dash, so I tag all ships religiously. If you have a NoTP, tag filtering should do a good job keeping it away while on my blog.

I tag ships as: destiel, wincest, sastiel, wincestiel, and by the most popular ship name I’m aware of + “rarepair” for everything else. 

I also tag for most unhappy subjects and triggers, and am happy to add tags on request (with a very few exceptions--feel free to ask if you have specific triggers and need more info). I tag political posts as “us politics for ts” and wank/discourse as “discourse for ts”.

About a tenth of my posts are pokemon, because we all need a little adorableness in our lives. But if pokemon aren’t the adorbs for you, I tag those posts “cute happy pokes being cute and happy”.

This is not a well-regulated blog.  But I try to tag things well.

I consider myself primarily a Doctor Who blog, so I do not tag Doctor Who.  It is the unmarked case.  If you’re following me and you don’t like Doctor Who I’m very sorry.  I due tag to episode title, but I’m aware that’s not extremely helpful.

I will tag all of the following as diligently as possible.  As I tend to go off into unexpected directions with very little warning, these are useful to add to your tumblrsavior if you don’t care about or watch these shows:

Due South

Babylon 5

Blake’s 7

Seven Days

Iron Chef

the Man from UNCLE

Sapphire and Steel

Twin Peaks

Gargoyles - but don’t block Gargoyles.  Just watch Gargoyles.  It’s perfect.

Stargate (also sometimes tagged as stargate sg-1)

silmarillion

discworld

hitchhiker’s guide (tv, books, radio, and movie)

lord of the rings

star trek

harry potter

Other relevant tags I use:

stunningly beautiful fan art (for art)

Brigade Leader Blogging (for when I need to be a jerk)

the dream of the 90s is alive on youtube (for when I discover a new obscure 90s show on youtube and get really excited)

space exploration (for humans and robots in space)

solar system (for planets and their satellites)

two nations divided by a common language (for all your SAE/RP shipping needs)

i ship it (for all the dumb things I ship)

linguistics (and associated subfields: regional dialectology, lexical semantics, morphology, syntax, and I’m sure there are a handful more)

I think I’m hilarious (for times I think I’m hilarious)

I love these two losers so much (for things involving Bones & Spock, or, on occasion, Tolkien & Lewis)

botany

pumpkins (just blacklist it now and save yourself a world of hurt)

people getting punched in the face (for my own bookkeeping for the facepunch blog)

shameless self-promotion (for linking people to the I Like Doctor Who Project)