Help:Style guide: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 16:43, 6 August 2012

This is a brief guide on how to design articles for Project:Redcap, emphasizing layout and structure.

Before You Begin

Please read our article on Copyright and do not post copyrighted material to this Wiki. The moderators will remove unauthorized copyrighted material immediately.

When to Create a New Article

Before you create a new article, please check to see whether there is an existing page that covers the same or a similar topic. Use the search box, which appears in the upper-right corner of every page on Project: Redcap, to search for key words.

You can find a list of articles we'd like people to write on the Special:WantedPages page.

How to Create a New Article

The easiest way to create a new article is to click on an existing link, on any page, that links to a non-existent page. Such links appear red in most Web browsers (though this may vary according to the preferences you've set for Project:Redcap and/or your browser). You can find a list of such links on the Special:WantedPages page.

Another way to create a new article is to search for it. If the article does not exist, the search results will include a link you can use to edit (create) it.

Follow our Naming Convention

Article titles in MediaWiki are case-sensitive, with the exception of the first character. Thus, Magus and magus are the same page, but "Troupe Style" and "Troupe style" would point to different pages. It's important that we have only one article about each topic. To achieve that goal and make Project: Redcap usable, we have to adhere to a strict capitalization convention.

Our capitalization and naming rules are:

Capitalize proper nouns normally.
Capitalize the titles of books as they appear on the cover: Realms of Power: The Divine
Capitalize game terms as they appear in the latest edition of the rules: for example, Casting Total, Botch die, Grand Tribunal, Lesser enchanted device.
Prefer the singular form for nouns: Magus not "magi," Virtue not "Virtues". We make a few exceptions to this rule: for example, the Covenant concepts article because it is inherently a list of ideas contributed by fans; similarly Products is a page about many products, not just one.
Drop leading articles (such as "the" or "a") because they make pages hard to find by name
For titles with multiple words, capitalize the title as if it were appearing at the beginning of a normal sentence. If your article is about learning to play Ars Magica, "Learning to play" would be correct and "Learning to Play" would be incorrect (because "play" is not a proper noun and should not be capitalized)

If you follow these rules, it will be easy for other writers to link to your article. If you don't follow them, a moderator will probably re-name your article.

Use Categories

Project: Redcap uses Categories to organize pages and make them discoverable. It would be a big help to us if you could include categories in your new article. The Wiki automatically maintains a list of categories on the Special:Categories page.

Please use only the existing categories. If you think we need to add a new category, please contact us or use your article's Talk page to discuss it. Although it might not be apparent, we've put quite a bit of thought into our categories and we want to think carefully before adding new ones.

@@ Line 18: / Line 18: @@
 Article titles in [[MediaWiki]] are case-sensitive, with the exception of the first character. Thus, [[Magus]] and [[magus]] are the same page, but "Troupe Style" and "Troupe style" would point to different pages. It's [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_repeat_yourself|very important] that we have only ''one'' article about each topic. To achieve that goal and make Project: Redcap usable, we have to adhere to a strict capitalization convention.
-Our capitalization rules are:
+Our capitalization and naming rules are:
-# Capitalize the title of an article as if it were appearing at the beginning of a normal sentence. Do not capitalize it as if it were the title of a book or a magazine article! So if your article is about learning to play Ars Magica, "Learning to play" would be correct and "Learning to Play" would be incorrect (because "play" is not a proper noun and should not be capitalized)
+# Capitalize proper nouns normally.
-# Subject to the preceding rule, capitalize game terms as they appear in the [[ArM5]] text: for example, [[Casting Total]], [[Botch die]], [[Grand Tribunal]], [[Lesser enchanted device]].
+# Capitalize the titles of books as they appear on the cover: [[Realms of Power: The Divine]]
+# Capitalize game terms as they appear in the latest edition of the rules: for example, [[Casting Total]], [[Botch die]], [[Grand Tribunal]], [[Lesser enchanted device]].
 # Prefer the singular form for nouns: [[Magus]] not "magi," [[Virtue]] not "Virtues". We make a few exceptions to this rule: for example, the [[Covenant concepts]] article because it is inherently a list of ideas contributed by fans; similarly [[Products]] is a page about many products, not just one.
 # Drop leading articles (such as "the" or "a") because they make pages hard to find by name
+# For titles with multiple words, capitalize the title as if it were appearing at the beginning of a normal sentence. If your article is about learning to play Ars Magica, "Learning to play" would be correct and "Learning to Play" would be incorrect (because "play" is not a proper noun and should not be capitalized)
 If you follow these rules, it will be easy for other writers to link to your article. If you don't follow them, a moderator will probably re-name your article.