Mike,
thanks for replying. It seems I hit a new Joomla 3.3 feature. What I wanted was to have the article title shown as the browser page title. As I understand this is done by placing the title in the menu's "Page display->Browser Page Title" attribute. Rather I created a new ../templates/incline/html/com_content/article/default.php override with
....
// Fix Joomla 1.6+ title bug
$app = JFactory::getApplication();
$menu = $app->getMenu();
$menuTitleOverride = $menu->getActive()->params->get('page_title');
$config =& JFactory::getConfig();
$prefixSuffix = $config->get( 'sitename_pagetitles' );
$document=& JFactory::getDocument();
$document->setTitle( (1 == $prefixSuffix ? $config->get( 'sitename' ).' | ' : '') . ($menuTitleOverride ? $menuTitleOverride : $this->item->title) . (2 == $prefixSuffix ? ' | '.$config->get( 'sitename' ) : '') );
....
You are correct this is not a template's problem. Thank you anyway.