UniWiki:Manual of Style

This page is a part of the UniWiki's Manual of Style. It is a general guideline intended to harmonize article style across the UniWiki, though it is best treated with common sense, and exceptions may apply. Any substantive edit to this page should be approved by the Wiki Manager. When in doubt, discuss first on the talk page.

Template:Work in Progress The UniWiki Manual of Style (abbreviated as UMoS or simply MoS) is the style manual for all UniWiki articles. This primary page of the guideline covers certain topics (e.g., punctuation) in detail and summarizes the key points of other topics. The detail pages, which are cross-referenced here and linked by this page's menu or listed at UniWiki:Manual of Style/Contents, provide specific guidance on those topics. If any contradiction arises, this page has precedence over all detail pages of the guideline and the Simplified Manual of Style.

Much of this manual has been adapted from Wikipedia's Manual of Style. While care has been taken to adapt as many relevant sections as possible, any topics not covered here can most likely be found there, and interested editors are encouraged to refer to both the UMoS and Wikipedia's MoS for the most comprehensive instruction.

Further, this page and any UniWiki pages linked here serve only as a style manual. For all other guidelines, such as categorization and editing, the UniWiki defers to those guidelines set forth by Wikipedia, both because it has set a standard of excellence that UniWiki seeks to emulate, and because to develop UniWiki-specific guidelines of a similar caliber would be an unrealistic goal, given the relatively small number of Wiki Curators.

In particular, the UniWiki can be considered to operate under the following guidelines used by Wikipedia:

• Behavioral guidelines
• Relevant sections of the content guidelines
• Editing guidelines
• Naming conventions (where applicable)

Links to relevant sections of the above can be found throughout this manual.

The UniWiki Manual of Style presents the UniWiki's house style. The goal is to make using the UniWiki easier and more intuitive by promoting clarity and cohesion, while helping editors write articles with consistent and precise language, layout, and formatting. Plain English works best. Avoid ambiguity and vague or unnecessarily complex wording. Any new content added to the body of this page should directly address a style issue that has occurred in a significant number of instances.

Style and formatting should be consistent within an article, though not necessarily throughout the UniWiki. Where more than one style is acceptable, editors should not change an article from one of those styles to another without a good reason. Edit warring over optional styles is unacceptable. If discussion cannot determine which style to use in an article, defer to the style used by the first major contributor. If a style or similar debate becomes intractable, refer the issue to the Wiki Manager, the Director of Communications, or, as a last resort, the Director of Operations.

Discuss style issues on the UMoS talk page.

Article titles, headings, and sections

Article titles

When choosing an article's title, refer to the article titles policy. A title should be a recognizable name or description of the topic that is natural, sufficiently precise, concise, and consistent with the titles of related articles. If these criteria are in conflict, they should be balanced against one another.

For guidance on formatting titles, see the Article title format section of the policy. Note the following:

• Capitalize the title's initial letter (except in rare cases where the first letter is purposely lowercase), but otherwise follow sentence case, not title case; e.g., Funding of EVE University projects, not Funding of EVE University Projects. This does not apply where title case would be expected were the title to occur in ordinary prose. See Naming conventions (capitalization) for more details.
• Do not use A, An, or The as the first word (Economy of the Caldari State, not The economy of the Caldari State), unless it is an inseparable part of a name (The Broker) or it is part of the title of a work (The Seven Events of the Apocalypse, The Scope).
• Titles should normally be nouns or noun phrases: Early life, not In early life.
• The final character should not be a punctuation mark unless it is part of a name (Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha!) or an abbreviation (Inverness City F.C.), or a closing round bracket or quotation mark is required (Kronos (ship)).

The guidance contained elsewhere in the UMoS, particularly § Punctuation (below) applies to all parts of an article, including the title.

Section organization

Main article: UniWiki:Manual of Style/Layout

An article should begin with an introductory lead section, which should not contain section headings (see UniWiki:Manual of Style/Lead section). The remainder of the article may be divided into sections, each with a section heading (see below) that can be nested in a hierarchy.

The lead should be a concise summary. Newly added information does not always qualify as important enough for the lead; it should be placed in the most appropriate section or sections (see Lead section).

If there are at least four section headings in the article, a navigable table of contents is generated automatically and displayed between the lead section and the first heading.

If the topic of a section is also covered in more detail in a dedicated article, show this by inserting {{main|Article name}} directly under the section heading (see also Summary style).

As explained in more detail in UniWiki:Manual of Style/Layout § Standard appendices and footers, optional appendix and footer sections containing the following lists may appear after the body of the article in the following order:

• internal links to related UniWiki articles (section heading "See also");
• notes and references (section heading "Notes" or "References", or a separate section for each; see Citing sources);
• relevant books, articles, or other publications that have not been used as sources (section heading "Further reading");
• relevant websites that have not been used as sources and do not appear in the earlier appendices (added as part of "Further reading" or in a separate section headed "External links");
• internal links organized into navigational boxes (sometimes placed at the top in the form of sidebars);
• Categories.

Other article elements include disambiguation hatnotes (normally placed at the very top of the article) and infoboxes (usually placed before the lead section).

Section headings

See also: UniWiki:Manual of Style/Accessibility#Headings and UniWiki:Manual of Style/Layout#Order of article elements

Use equal signs to mark the enclosed text as a section heading: =Title= for a primary section; ==Title== for the next level (a subsection); and so on to the lowest-level subsection, with =====Title=====. Spaces between the equal signs and the heading text are optional, and will not affect the way the heading is displayed. The heading must be typed on a separate line. Include one blank line above the heading, and optionally one blank line below it, for readability in the edit window (but not two or more consecutive blank lines, which will add unnecessary visible space in the rendered page). There is no need to include a blank line between a heading and sub-heading.

The provisions in § Article titles generally apply to section headings as well (for example, headings are in sentence case, not title case). The following points apply specifically to section headings:

• Headings should not refer redundantly to the subject of the article, or to higher-level headings, unless doing so is shorter or clearer. (Early life is preferable to His early life when his refers to the subject of the article; headings can be assumed to be about the subject unless otherwise indicated.)
• Section and subsection headings should preferably be unique within a page; otherwise section links may lead to the wrong place, and automatic edit summaries can be ambiguous.
• Citations should not be placed within or on the same line as section and subsection headings.
• Avoid starting headings with numbers (other than years), because this can be confusing for readers with the "Auto-number headings" preference selected.

Before changing a section heading, consider whether you might be breaking existing links to that section.

When placing an invisible comment on the same line as the heading, do not do this outside the == == markup:

==Evolutionary implications==<!--This comment disrupts editing-->

<!--This comment disrupts display as well as editing-->==Evolutionary implications==

Several of the above provisions are also applicable to table headers, including sentence case and redundancy. Table headers are often useful places for citations (e.g., the source of all the data in a column), and many do begin with or are numbers. Table headers do not automatically generate link anchors. (For more information see UniWiki:Manual of Style/Tables § Captions and headers.)

Retaining existing styles

For some elements of style, there is more than one format that is acceptable. In general, editors should not change articles between acceptable formats unless there is some substantial reason for the change (unrelated to the choice of style or the preference of the editor), and edit-warring between optional styles is unacceptable.

Examples of topic-specific versions of this guideline include:

• Varieties of English
• Date formats
• Era styles
• Variations of citation style (where applicable)

National varieties of English

See also: UniWiki:Manual of Style/Spelling

The UniWiki prefers no major national variety of the language over any other. These varieties (e.g., American English, British English, etc.) differ in many ways, including vocabulary (elevator vs. lift), spelling (center vs. centre), date formatting ("April 13" vs. "13 April"), and occasionally grammar (see § Plurals, below). The following subsections describe how to determine the appropriate variety for an article. (The accepted style of punctuation is covered in § Punctuation, below.)

Consistency within articles

See also Wikipedia:Consistency for additional policies and guidelines on consistency.

While Wikipedia does not favor any national variety of English, within a given article the conventions of one particular variety should be followed when possible. The exceptions are:

• quotations, titles of works (books, films, etc.): Quote these as given in the source (but see § Typographic conformity, below);
• proper names: Use the subject's own spelling e.g., joint project of the United States Department of Defense and the Australian Defence Force;
• URLs: Changing the spelling of part of an external link's URL will almost always break the link.