Any special rules for project names?

I just noticed that some of my empty subprojects show up on the Next Actions list, whereas others don’t. I then discovered that the ones that do not show up all begin with a backslash, whereas the ones that do show up begin with a capital letter. (Mode is set to Auto for all, and they share parents.)

Is this intentional? Is backslash a way to signify a project as a “folder” (a mere organizational node that cannot be executed and hence should never show up as an action even if it has no children, e.g “Books to read”)? Are there other prefixes that will have a special meaning?

I do not see this as a problem either way. Just curious. (Many of the “mode” type settings could be accomplished either with prefixes, checkboxes or dropdowns - these methods all have their pros and cons.)

(Maybe “node type” would be an alternative to the term “mode”?)

I’m not sure I’m quite understanding. You can’t really have an “empty” subproject. If there is nothing indented under the item it would just be an action in the project above it. Only once you add an item under it would it be a sub-project (unless the mode is changed to project - but you said it is on auto) So I’m not sure I understand what you mean. Can you restate the question/problem?

OK. How about this:

Child nodes (having no children of their own) sometimes appear on the next list, sometimes not.

The reason I called them empty subprojects was because that was what they were intended to be - subprojects, but in which I had not yet created any actions. Sorry for the confusion.

But it was good you asked. Upon closer inspection I noticed it had nothing to do with my backslashes at all. It was simply the auto-sequential feature with perfectly correctly identified the first of these childless “actions” as a next action. If I declare all these as Mode=Project this will not happen.