Help:Style guidelines

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Best practices and tips for writing articles on the Ashes of Community Wiki. This guide is based on Wikipedia's Simplified Manual of style.

Capital letters

SMOS:CAP

  • Use sentence case for article titles and section headings – Tips and pointers, not Tips and Pointers.
  • Capitalize the significant words of proper nouns, such as Intrepid Studios and Ashes of Creation.

Citations (References)

metawikimedia:Help:Footnotes

  • All significant claims must be supported by a citation to source material.
  • A citation should immediately follow the text to which it applies, including any punctuation.
  • We recommend using <ref> (ref tags) to create footnote citations, which appear in the notes section of the article.
  • The markup <ref> Citation text </ref> produces a footnote linking to the citation text, providing the tag <references/> is present on the page.
  • We recommend that <references/> is placed in a == Notes == section at the end of the article.

Abbreviations

SMOS:ABB

  • In general, try to avoid using abbreviations unless they are commonplace.
  • To indicate approximately, the non-italicized abbreviation c. (followed by a space) is preferred over circa, ca., or approx.
  • Write US or U.S., but not USA.
  • Use "and" instead of the "&" sign, except in tables, infoboxes, and official names like AT&T.

Punctuation

Apostrophes and quotation marks

SMOS:A&Q

  • Use straight quote marks " and apostrophes ' as available from the keyboard, and not alternatives such as “ ” and ‘ ’.
  • Italicize names of books, films, TV series, music albums, paintings, and ships—but not short works like songs or poems, which should be in quotation marks.
  • Both James' house and James's house are correct.

Periods and commas

SMOS:P&C

  • Place a full stop (a period) or a comma before a closing quotation mark if it belongs as part of the quoted material; otherwise put it after.
  • An ellipsis should be written as three separate dots (...): not spaced (. . .), and not using the single-character option ().
  • The serial comma (for example the comma before and in "ham, chips, and eggs") is optional; be sensitive to possible ambiguity from thoughtless use or thoughtless avoidance.
  • Avoid comma splices.
  • Picture captions should not end in a full stop (a period) unless they are complete sentences.

Dashes and hyphens

SMOS:D&H

  • Avoid using a hyphen after a standard -ly adverb (a newly available home).
  • A hyphen is not a dash. Hyphens are used within words or to join words, but not in punctuating the parts of a sentence. Use an en dash (–) with &nbsp; before and a space after; or use an em dash (—) without spaces. See How to make dashes. Avoid using two hyphens -- to make a dash; and avoid using a hyphen for a minus sign.
  • Use an en dash, not a hyphen, between numbers: pp. 14–21; 1953–2008. An en dash is also to connect parallel terms: red–green colorblind; a New York–London flight. Use spaces around the en dash only if the connected terms are multi-unit dates: January 1999 – December 2000.

Dates and numbers

SMOS:D&N

  • Write number 1 or No. 1, but not #1. Comic books are an exception.
  • Write 12,000 for twelve thousand, not 12.000.
  • Both 10 June 1921 and June 10, 1921, are correct, but be consistent within an article. A comma is not used if only the month is given, such as June 1921.
  • 400 AD and 400 BC are correct; but so are 400 CE and 400 BCE. As always, use one style consistently in an article.
  • Use one, two, three, ..., eight, nine in normal article text, not 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 (although there are many exceptional circumstances; and some other numbers may be written as words also).

Markup

SMOS:MKP

  • Instead of an ordinary space, use &nbsp; (a hard space or non-breaking space) to prevent a line from ending in the middle of expressions.
  • It does not matter how many spaces come after a period, because extra spaces will not show, although blank lines will create one extra line.
  • Use wikilinks, but only for words and phrases that are most likely to be helpful if clicked. Make sure each link goes to an article on the intended subject, and not to a disambiguation page or incorrect destination.

Usage

SMOS:USG

  • Ashes of Community Wiki prefers no major national variety of the language over any other. These varieties (e.g. U.S. English, British English) differ in vocabulary (soccer vs. football), spelling (center vs. centre), and occasionally grammar.
  • Avoid words like I, we, and you, except in quotations and names of works.
  • Avoid phrases like note that and remember that (which assume "you" for the reader); and avoid such expressions as of course and obviously.

Internationalization and localization

  • All pages on Ashes of Community Wiki are candidates for translation into multiple languages
  • If a page has been translated, then click 'Edit source' to edit the entire page. The translation tag markers around section headings confuse section editing.
  • You can copy and paste existing idioms, but if in doubt leave out all translation machinery and just write English.

See also

External links