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Difference between revisions of "Help:Style"
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Reorganising and adding things that were missing
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Of course, if you're the person who really likes the details and wants to know how to edit other people's work to be in line with the conventions, well, here's a bunch of conventions!
==
;Literary Style
Generally, articles should be factual and written from an in-world perspective. Exceptions to this include meta (out-of-world) pages such as articles on the actual book. In terms of in-world pages, Development sections and Trivia sections can include out-of world-references, however, all other sections should be written from an in-world perspective.
Remember that the Coppermind is '''not''' a repository of quotes. Do not simply copy and paste things from the novels directly; put things into your own terms and cite it. It is very obvious when you see a quote pretended to be an encyclopedia entry, because the novels are--shockingly--not encyclopedia entries! Use the primary sources to inform you, but don't copy them directly. When adding information to a topic, try and make it flow with the structure of the article. Or, restructure the article! But new facts should always flow in the article.
Generally, write articles in present tense, except when obviously necessary to write in past tense, such as in history sections. There may exist additional exceptions to this rule.▼
Use American English (British English isn't a big deal, but the correct spelling will probably be eventually edited out in favor of its corrupt brethren). So, use [[aluminum]] instead of aluminium.▼
To create a new paragraph, make sure you have an empty line. If you just press enter once, the wiki will render that new line as part of the same paragraph. Do not put each sentence of a paragraph on their own line, just write like you normally would.▼
When you end a sentence, do not put two spaces after it (Grammar Girl agrees it is a silly, archaic habit that's entirely unnecessary anyway). One space will do.▼
As in usual written text, typically do not use numerals. Use "one" instead of "1", and so on. There are of course certain exceptions, such as dates.▼
;Linking Other Pages
You don't have to wikilink every instance of every term on a page! That gets tedious really quick. Instead, you need only to link the first instance of a new term on the page (this is why many articles have their first paragraph full of links to other articles!). You can add additional wikilinks if it is convenient. Long articles, for example, can benefit from linking terms in each new section, but that remains your stylistic preference as an editor. However, new terms in the article should definitely be linked.
;Smart Punctuation from Word Processors
In a strange turn of events with the wiki software, there's a difference between the quotation marks that, say, Word produces and those that a plain text editor. Normal text editors like Notepad or the wiki edit screen produce characters like " and '. But, if you typed "Vin's" into Word, that apostrophe would be more "curly". Word does this because that makes things look better in a book or printed page, but the wiki software makes a distinction between normal quotes and the curlier "smart" quotes. When possible, use normal quotes. This is especially necessary when dealing with '''bold''' and ''italics'', as they use the apostrophe to delimit themselves.
Don't use dashes. Similarly to the smart quotes, dashes are things generated by a word processor. When you want to use a dash, use two hyphens. For example, if I were to give you an example--and wanted a parenthetical statement--I'd do it like this!
=== General Style Conventions ===
▲*Use American English (British English isn't a big deal, but the correct spelling will probably be eventually edited out in favor of its corrupt brethren). So, use [[aluminum]] instead of aluminium.
▲*To create a new paragraph, make sure you have an empty line. If you just press enter once, the wiki will render that new line as part of the same paragraph. Do not put each sentence of a paragraph on their own line, just write like you normally would.
▲Generally, write articles in present tense, except when obviously necessary to write in past tense, such as in history sections. There may exist additional exceptions to this rule.
▲*When you end a sentence, do not put two spaces after it (Grammar Girl agrees it is a silly, archaic habit that's entirely unnecessary anyway). One space will do.
▲*As in usual written text, typically do not use numerals. Use "one" instead of "1", and so on. There are of course certain exceptions, such as dates.
==Titles==
=== Article Titles ===
Titles of articles should be singular. However, it is easy to have wikilinks that are plural which direct to singular titles. For example: <code><nowiki>[[Highprince]]s</nowiki></code> instead of <code><nowiki>[[Highprinces]]</nowiki></code>. You can also use apostrophes similarly.
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