Redirected from Wikipedia/Manual of style
New contributors are reminded that clear, informative and unbiased writing is always more important than presentation and formatting. Writers are NOT expected or required to follow all or any of these rules: the joy of wiki editing is that perfection is not required. Copy-editing wikipedians will be referring to these pages when weeding, and pages will be gradually made to conform with this guide.
Please see Wikipedia:How does one edit a page for information on how to use all the different forms of markup, much more than just bold or italic. This article concentrates on when to use them, although the examples usually also show the markup.
Please see Wikipedia:Guide to Layout for some simple suggestions on laying out an article. For event articles, it may be a good idea to understand News Style as a convention for organising materials in a straightforward way; basically, from top to bottom in order of relevance.
Some of the standard forms outlined below are available on Wikipedia:boilerplate text for quick copy-paste into articles.
Note to contributors to this article: We should keep this "manual" simple and straightforward, with anything TOO hairy (table styles, for instance) relegated to a linked page.
See also Wikipedia:WikiProject -- some of these set out boilerplates for certain areas of knowledge.
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If the subject of the article has more than one name, each new form of the name should be in bold on its first appearance.
It is preferable to make the context clear in the first few words. For example,
Capitalize the first word and any proper nouns in headlines, but leave the rest lower case.
Avoid links within headers. Depending on settings, some users may not see them clearly. Much better to put the appropriate link in the first sentence under the header.
Captions should be in italics, using conventional text wherever italics would normally appear.
It is in no way a requirement, but it probably reads better to use American spellings in articles on American subjects and English spelling in articles on English subjects. A reference to "the American labour movement" (with a U) or to "Anglicization" (with a Z) may be jarring. It also may be jarring to find both forms in a single article. If the spelling appears in an article name, you should make a redirect page to accommodate "the other language", as with Aeroplane and Airplane.
With quotation marks, we suggest splitting the difference between American and English usage.
Although it is not a rigid rule, it is probably best to use the "double quotes" for most quotations, as they are easier to read on the screen, and use 'single quotes' for "quotations 'within' quotations". This is the American style.
Note however the following problem with single quotes: if a word appears in an article with single quotes, such as 'abcd', the Wikipedia:Searching facility will only find it if you search for the word with quotes (when trying this out with the example mentioned, remember that this article is in the Wikipedia namespace). Since this is rarely desirable, this problem is an additional reason to use double quotes, for which this problem does not arise. It may even be a reason to use double quotes for quotations within quotations as well.
When punctuating quoted passages, put punctuation where it belongs, inside or outside the quotation marks, depending on the meaning, not rigidly within the quotation marks. This is the British style (Fowler has good guidelines for this). For example, "Stop!" has the punctuation inside the quotation marks. However, when using "scare quotes", the comma goes outside.
Another example:
Keep in mind that if you're quoting several paragraphs, there should be quotes at the beginning of each paragraph, but only at the end of the last paragraph.
For uniformity and to avoid complications use straight quotation marks and apostrophes:
Links that follow the Wikipedia naming conventions are much more likely to lead to existing articles, and, if there is not yet an article about that subject, will make the creation of a correctly-named article much easier for later writers.
It is possible to link words that are not exactly the same as the linked article title, [[English language|English]] for example. Make sure however that it is still clear what the link refers without having to follow the link. When making plurals, do [[language]]s. This is clearer to read in wiki form than [[language|languages]] -- and easier to type.
Try to link accurately. If an article you want to link doesn't yet exist, do a quick search to find out if that is really the case; the article may be named slightly different from what you expected.
Sometimes it may be useful to have an explicit cross-reference in the text, for example, when a long section of text has been moved somewhere else. In these cases, please make the link bold so that its significance is easier to recognize. Example:
Sometimes, references may also be more formally called out:
The syntax of referencing a URL is simple, just enclose it in single brackets, [full URL optional text after space]. The URL must begin with http:// or other form, such as ftp://. Most URLs are ugly and uninformative, so it is better to hide them. The "printable version" of a page displays all URLs in full, even if concealed, so no information is lost.
Without the optional text, such an external reference takes the form of a footnote:
If followed by a space and text, the text replaces the URL:
This form can be used to include a run-in URL reference within text when necessary, as:
In most cases, however, it is clearer to keep the URL separate at the bottom of the article under a heading like this:
As with other headers, two equals signs should be used to markup the external links header (see Headline style above).
Note: At present, without brackets, URLs are presented as is:
But this feature may disappear in a future release and in cases where you wish to display the URL because it is intrinsically valuable information, it is better to use the short form of the URL as the optional text:
foo bar baz alpha beta gamma
A line that starts with a blank space with nothing else on it forms a blank line, which can be a confusing error, or may be just what you want.
Or maybe not.
(If you are one of those typists who puts two spaces after a period, you can cause a blank line unknowingly if those blanks are "wrapped" to the beginning of the next line.)
Even simpler is simply to look at an article that you like and open it for editing to see how the writers and editors have put it together. You can then close the window without saving changes if you like, but look around while you're there. Almost every article can be improved. Maybe you could add some markup to make it fit this style better.
It is easier to display the Wikipedia, easier to edit or add to its articles, if we don't make the markup any more complex than is necessary to display the information in a useful and comprehensible way. A useful encyclopedia is the first goal, but ease of editing and maintenance that encyclopedia is right behind it.
Among other things, this means use HTML markup sparingly and only with good reason.
Note to contributors to this page: We need to go over all these and make sure they're up to date too.
wikipedia.org dumped 2003-03-17 with terodump