Wikipǣdia:Manual of Style

This Manual of Style has the simple purpose of making things look alike—it is a style guide. If you need help with the Old English language itself, check out the Grammar and Writing section, or web references such as Old English Made Easy or Bosworth and Toller. The following rules don't claim to be the last word on wiki style. One way is often as good as another, but if everyone does it the same way, Wikipedia will be easier to read and use, not to mention easier to write and edit. In this regard the following quote from The Chicago Manual of Style deserves notice:

Rules and regulations such as these, in the nature of the case, cannot be endowed with the fixity of rock-ribbed law. They are meant for the average case, and must be applied with a certain degree of elasticity.

Clear, informative and unbiased writing is always more important than presentation and formatting. Writers are not required to follow all or any of these rules: the joy of wiki editing is that perfection is not required. Copy-editing wikipedians will refer to this manual, and pages will either gradually be made to conform with this guide or this guide will itself be changed to the same effect.

Please see Wikipedia:How to edit a page for information on how to use all the different forms of markup — there is much more available 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.

Article names

See Wikipedia:Naming conventions for choosing a name for your article. It is customary for the title to be the subject of the first sentence of the article. Make article titles bold in the first sentence using '''three apostrophes''' — do not self-link to embolden the title. Avoid putting links inside the emboldened title. Use '''''bold italics''''' in the first sentence only for terms that would be italicised even if they were not set in bold, for example, book titles (this does not mean only terms that are always italicized; whether a word or phrase is italicized or not depends on context).

Links

Free links

The use of so-called "free links" to other topics, for example, [[George W. Bush]], is encouraged. Use the links for all words and terms that are relevant to your article.

Don't make too many links. For each link that you add, ensure that there is a reasonable amount of unlinked text to make the article easy to read. It is difficult to know how many links are appropriate for any particular article. A suggestion is that if 10% of the words are already linked, then perhaps some less vital link can be removed when more important links are added. Do not link every occurrence of a word; simply linking the first time the word appears will usually be enough. For words that appear first in an article and then in a list farther down, it can be linked again in the list. For dates like [[25 March]] [[2004]] wikify every time so that the date preference of the reader will be used. Note both day-month and year must be linked for the preference to work correctly.

Don't link words in article titles; find alternative ways to include and then link those words.

See also Wikipedia:Make only links relevant to the context

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, good links 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 to without having to follow the link. When forming plurals, do so thus: [[language]]s. This is clearer to read in wiki form than [[language|languages]] — and easier to type. This syntax is also applicable to adjective constructs, e.g. [[Asia]]n, as well as hyphenated phrases and the like.

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 have a slightly different name than you expect.

Never use "click here" as the text for a link (since Wikipedia articles could be printed) — this conveys no information at all. The text of the link should be the subject to which the link leads.

External links

Wikipedia is not a link collection and an article with only links is actively discouraged, but it is appropriate to reference more detailed material from the World Wide Web. This is particularly the case when you have used a web site as an important source of information.

See also Wikipedia:External links.

Syntax

The syntax for referencing a URL is simple. Just enclose it in single brackets:

[URL optional-text-after-space]

The URL must begin with http:// or another common protocol, such as ftp:// or news://.

In addition, putting URLs in plain text with no markup automatically produces a link, e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org. However, this feature may disappear in a future release. Therefore, 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 (host name) as the optional text: [http://en.wikipedia.org/ en.wikipedia.org] produces en.wikipedia.org.

Link titles

You can add a title to an external link by supplying descriptive text after the URL separated by a space and enclosing it all in square brackets. For example, to add a title to a bare URL such as http://en.wikipedia.org (this is rendered as "http://en.wikipedia.org"), use the following syntax: [http://en.wikipedia.org an open-content encyclopedia] (this is rendered as "an open-content encyclopedia").

Some URLs are ugly and uninformative; in such cases, it is better for a meaningful title to be displayed rather than the URL itself. For example, "European Space Agency website" is much more reader-friendly than "http://www.esa.int/export/esaCP/index.html".

If the URL is displayed, make it as simple as possible; for example, if the index.html is superfluous, remove it (but be sure to check in preview mode first).

The "printable version" of a page displays all URLs in full, including those given a title, so no information is lost.

URLs as footnotes

Without the optional text, an external reference appears as a footnote: For example,

[http://en.wikipedia.org/]

is displayed like this:

[1]

Position in article

In most cases, it is preferable to group external links together at the bottom of the article in bullet point format under the heading:

==External links==

*[http://

*[http://

As with other top-level headers, two equal signs should be used to markup the external links header (see Headings elsewhere in the article).

It is also possible to include an inline URL reference within the body of an article. For example:

One good example of a cooperative online community is the [http://en.wikipedia.org Wikipedia, an open-content encyclopedia].

is displayed like this:

One good example of a cooperative online community is the Wikipedia, an open-content encyclopedia.

This is discouraged in most situations.

If an article has used information from an external webpage or it is to be indicated that more information regarding the article will be available, e.g., statistics, picture gallery, essays, etc., on a website, then such links should be part of the "External links" section at the bottom of the article. If the external reference to be cited pertains to only a paragraph or a line in the article for example, then the use of inline external links as footnotes serves as a proper citation. Footnote links can be used throughout the article; they are replaced by numbers in increasing order starting from 1.

Foreign-language sites

Since this is the English Wikipedia, webpages in English are highly preferred. Linking to non-English pages may still be useful for English-language readers in some cases:

• when linking to pages with maps, diagrams, photos, tables; explain the key terms with the link, so that people who do not know the language can still interpret them
• for example, if the subject of the article is a Spanish-language newspaper

In such cases indicate what language the site is in. For example:

• El País, a Spanish-language newspaper from Madrid

File type

If the link is not to an HTML file, but to a file which must be opened in an external program, such as a PDF or Microsoft Word document, a remark about that is useful to help the user decide whether opening or first downloading is preferred.

File size

If the link is to a large file (in the case of html, including the images) a note about that is useful. Someone with a slow connection may decide not to use it.

Headings

Use the == style markup for headings, not ''' (bold). Example:

==This is a heading==

which produces

This is a heading

Note that when ==This is a heading== is used, no blank line under the headline is needed. Extra blank lines are optional, and their presence (or absence) will not affect the appearance of your article.

If you mark headings this way, then a table of contents is automatically generated from the headings in an article, sections can be automatically numbered for users with that preference set and words within properly marked headings are given greater weight in searches. Headings also help readers by breaking up the text and outlining the article.

• Capitalize the first word and any proper nouns in headings, but leave the rest (including ordinary nouns) lower case.
• Avoid links within headings. Depending on settings, some users may not see them clearly. It is much better to put the appropriate link in the first sentence under the header.
• Overuse of sub-headings should be avoided, as it can make the article look cluttered. Short paragraphs and single sentences generally do not warrant their own sub-heading.
• In circumstances where there is not enough text to justify a sub-heading, it may be preferable to use bolded text or bullet points within a section instead of using sub-headings.

For more information, see Wikipedia:Manual of Style (headings).

Capitalization

Headings

As discussed in the Headings section above, only the first word and proper nouns in headings should be capitalized; other words (including ordinary nouns) should be in lower case. In Old English, proper names, place names, and nationalities are capitalized.

Job titles

Job titles such as president, king, or emperor are capitalized when used as a title (followed by a name), thus it is "President Bush", not "president Bush". When used generically, they should be in lower case: "Bush is the American president." However if one is using the correct formal name of an office, it is treated as a proper noun. Hence: "Bush was President of the United States", in contrast to "Bush was the U.S. president". Similarly "Louis XVI was the French king" but "Louis XVI was King of France", King of France being a title in that context. The same goes for historical offices: "Maximilian was Mexican emperor from X to Y". "Maximilian was Emperor of Mexico from X to Y". (Reference: Chicago Manual of Style 14th ed., par. 7.16; The Guardian Manual of Style, "Titles" keyword.) Exceptions may apply for specific offices; feel free to add them here.

Remember in the case of prime minister, both letters are capitalised or lower-cased together, except, obviously, when it starts a sentence. Again, when being used generically (that is, when talking generally about prime ministers) the office is lower-cased. When reference is made to a specific office, upper case is generally used. So "there are many prime ministers around the world." but "The British Prime Minister Tony Blair, said today . . . " (However to complicate matters, some style manuals, while saying "The British Prime Minister", recommend "British prime minister". A good rule of thumb is whether a definite article (the) or an indefinite article (a) is used. If the is used, capitalisation often follows. If a is used, the lowercase is preferred.)

Remember also, users of American English and British English differ in their inclination to use capitals. British English uses capitals far more widely than American English does. This may apply to titles for people. If possible, as with spelling, use capitalization rules appropriate to the cultural and linguistic context. In other words, do not enforce American capitalization rules on pages to do with British topics. Neither should one rigidly enforce British capitalisation rules on pages that are concerned with American topics.

Religions, deities, philosophies, doctrines and their adherents

Names of religions should be capitalised, thus Islam, Tibetan Buddhism, Judaism. Mormonism requires special care — see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Mormonism). Followers of a religious faith should also be capitalised thus Christian, Muslim, Jew. Whenever a faith is used as an adjective it should also be capitalised: Jewish calendar, Islamic architecture, etc.

As per The Chicago Manual of Style, deities in both monotheistic and polytheistic religions should be capitalized — such as, God, Allah, Freya. This also applies to transcendent ideas in the Platonic sense — Good and Truth. Similarly, alternative and descriptive names for deities should be capitalized — the Lord, the Supreme Being, the Messiah. Pronouns referring to deities, or in the extreme case "who" or "whom", or nouns (other than names) referring to any material or abstract representation of any deity, human or otherwise, should not be capitalized, however.

However, philosophies, doctrines, and systems of economic thought should not be capitalised, unless the name is derived from a proper noun. Adherents of such systems, and any derived adjectives also follow this rule. Thus we have existentialism, communism, and modernist, but Luddite, Marxism, and Jeffersonian. Lowercase republican refers to a system of political thought, uppercase Republican refers to a specific Republican Party (each party name being a proper noun); similarly, lowercase fascist refers generically to the ideology, whereas uppercase Fascist refers specifically to the Mussolini's Italian Fascist Party. Capitalisation of Nazi and Nazism is preferred (reflecting the etymology), but the trend is perhaps towards lower-casing.

Calendar items

Always capitalize the names of months, days, and holidays: June, Monday, Fourth of July.

Seasons

Don't capitalize the names of seasons when they are used generally. ("This summer was very hot", fall, autumn, winter, spring)

Do capitalize seasons when they are used with another noun and function as proper nouns. (Winter Solstice, Autumn Open House)

Do capitalize the names of seasons when they are personified. ("I think Spring is showing her colors", Old Man Winter)

Animals, plants, and other organisms

The capitalization on the common names of species in Old English isn't really an issue. If you scan through Clark Hall and Bosworth & Toller, the animal names and plant names weren't capitalized.
See: Wikipedia:WikiProject_Tree_of_Life#Article_titles_and_common_names
See: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (fauna)
See: Capitalization

Celestial bodies

Names of other planets and stars are proper nouns, and should be capitalized. For example, "The planet Mars can be seen tonight in the constellation Gemini, near the star Pollux".

The words sun, earth, and moon are to be capitalized when being used in an astronomical context as proper nouns. Hence: "The Sun is a main sequence star, with a spectral class of G2." However, in a non-scientific context, do not capitalize: "It was a lovely day and the sun was warm." Also, take care that these words are only capitalized when refering to the name of a specific body. "The Moon orbits the Earth" refers to the names of two bodies. However, "Pluto's moon Charon" uses moon as a conventional noun.

Directions and regions

Directions (north, southwest, etc.) are not capitalized. Do capitalize regions that are proper nouns, including widely known expressions such as Southern California. Follow the same conventions for their related forms, so that a person from the American South is a Southerner, but the road that leads north is the northern road.

Whether a region has attained proper-noun status can be a gray area. Use an appropriate reference if needed. Use lowercase when in doubt.

Contractions

In general, we prefer formal writing. Frequently found in Old English texts are contractions of the negative ne with certain verbs (willan, wesan, and habban) - næs for ne wæs and nelle for ne wille. Therefore, contractions are discouraged, but aren't an issue for contention. When quoting directly, do quote directly.

Another common contraction is the elimination of the weak a/e on the end of a weak noun, such as nama in combination with a word, such as nambōc and not namabōc or namanbōc (register of names). This contraction is expected.

Punctuation

In most cases, simply follow the usual rules of English punctuation. A few points where the Wikipedia may differ from usual usage follow.

Quotation marks

With quotation marks, we suggest splitting the difference between American and British 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 find it only 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, and 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:

Arthur said the situation was "deplorable". (we're quoting only part of a sentence)

Arthur said, "The situation is deplorable." (full sentence is quoted)

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 longer quotations, an indented style may be better, as

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones; So let it be with Caesar.

This is done by prepending a colon to the first line.

Since quotations are already marked by quotation marks or indentations, they need not be italicized.

Use straight quotation marks and apostrophes

For uniformity and to avoid complications use straight quotation marks and apostrophes:

' "

not curved (smart) ones or grave accents:

‘ ’ “ ” `

If you are pasting text from Microsoft Word, remember to turn off the smart quotes feature by unmarking this feature in AutoEdit and "AutoEdit during typing"! [2]. Many other modern word processors have a smart quotes setting – please read the appropriate documentation for your editor.

The grave accent (`) is also used as a diacritical mark to indicate a glottal stop; however, the straight quote should be used for this purpose instead (e.g., Hawai'i, not Hawai`i).

Spaces after periods

There are no current guidelines on whether to use one or two spaces after a period but it is not important as the difference only shows up in the edit box. The page itself will only display one space (unless you use   to force it otherwise). See Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (spaces after a period) for a discussion on this.

Commas

As stated by Kate Turabian's A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations , the Chicago Manual of Style, Strunk and White, and other authoritative sources, when a conjunction joins the last two elements in a series of three or more elements, a comma is used before the conjunction: "The wires were brown, blue, and green." The reason for the final serial comma is to prevent the last two elements from being confused as a unit. Consider its utility in this sentence: "The author would like to thank her parents, Sinead O'Connor and Pope John-Paul II."

Dashes

The use of dashes on Wikipedia is often under dispute. Please read Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dashes) and its talk page for details.

Scientific style

• See Wikipedia:Technical terms and definitions
• For units of measure use SI units; see also Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers). Note that the Wikipedia Style for very large numbers is 10,000 or scientific notation and not the SI notation 10 000 with a space.
• For decimals use a period .
• In articles about chemicals and chemistry, use the style of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry for chemical names wherever possible, except in article titles, where the common name should be used if different, followed by mention of the IUPAC name.
• In periodic table groups, use the new IUPAC names: (these use Arabic numerals, not Roman numerals or letters).
• For mathematics and mathematical formulae, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics

Sections

Introduction

All articles should have the title or subject in bold in the first line and sometimes also in italic if that word or phrase is normally in italic or should be italicized for some other context-dependent reason; see Wikipedia:Manual of Style (titles). The title or subject can almost always be made part of the first sentence, but some articles simply have names.

• The Pythagorean theorem is named for and attributed to the 6th century BC Greek philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras
  • The '''Pythagorean theorem''' is named for and attributed to the [[6th century BC]] Greek philosopher and mathematician [[Pythagoras]]
• Tom and Jerry — Pairing of names from Pierce Egan's Life in London
  • '''Tom and Jerry''' — Pairing of names from [[Pierce Egan]]'s ''Life in London''

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.

• Sodium hydroxide (NaOH), also known as caustic soda or lye
  • '''Sodium hydroxide''' ([[sodium|Na]][[oxygen|O]][[hydrogen|H]]), also known as '''caustic soda''' or '''lye'''

It is preferable to make the context clear in the first few words. For example,

• In quantum physics, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle
  • In [[quantum physics]], the '''Heisenberg uncertainty principle'''

Lead section

The lead section is the section before the first headline. It is shown above the table of contents (for pages with more than three headlines). The appropriate lead length depends on the length of the article, but should be no longer than three paragraphs in any case. See Wikipedia:Lead section for more details.

"See also" and "Related topics" sections

Ideally, topics related to an article are included within the text of the article as free links. Doing so makes the relation explicit. However, the editing process is organic, and it's often easier to list related articles at the end than to incorporate them into the article text.

If the article is divided into sections and See also refers to a particular section only, references to related articles that have not been linked from free links in the text may be handled by this form, placed at the bottom of the section:

''See also:'' [[Internet troll]], [[flaming]]

which produces:

See also: Internet troll, flaming.

The above form may also be used in short articles without sections.

When the See also refers to the entire article, not just a section, it should be a heading of level 2 so that it appears in the table of contents. It should be placed at the bottom of the article, but before External links. Again, do not add any links to the "See also" section that are already present in the text of the article. If you remove a redundant link from the See also section of an article, it may be an explicit cross reference (see below), so consider making the link in the main text bold instead.

example

==See also==

*[[Internet troll]]

*[[flaming]]

Which appears as:

See also

• Internet troll
• flaming

Another equally valid form is:

Related topics

• Expressionism
• Cubism

Sometimes it is useful to have an explicit cross-reference in the text, for example, when a long section of text has been moved somewhere else, or there is a major article on a subtopic. In these cases, make the link bold so that its significance is easier to recognize. Example:

The legal situation with regard to circumcision varies from country to country (see Legal status of circumcision).

or

The legal status of circumcision varies from country to country.

(See Wikipedia:Section).

Other Sections

Other common sections (in their preferable order) are:

References

Compare against

External links

Simple tabulation

Any line that starts with a blank space becomes a fixed font width and can be used for simple tabulation. See English plural for many examples.

foo     bar     baz
alpha   beta    gamma

A line that starts with a blank space with nothing else on it forms a blank line which may be just what you want or not if you are one of those typists who put two spaces after a period. You can cause a blank line unknowingly if those blanks are "wrapped" to the beginning of the next line.

Usage and spelling

Cultural clashes over grammar, spelling and capitalisation/capitalization are a common experience on Wikipedia. Remember that millions of people may have been taught to use a different form of English from yours, including different spellings, grammatical constructions or capitalisation. For the English Wikipedia, there is no preference among the major national varieties of English (those of Australia, Britain, Canada, the US and others). However, there is a certain etiquette generally accepted on Wikipedia:

• Each article should have uniform spelling and not a haphazard mix of different spellings (it can be jarring to the reader). In particular, for individual words and word-endings. It may have been the case in actual Old English text to have multiple spellings for the same word, but this is to be avoided on the Anglo-Saxon wikipedias. For example, don't use ðam in one place and þǣm in another. This wiki utilizes the Early West-Saxon spelling as seen in Wright's Old English grammar. This work is in public domain and is easily accessible.
• y represents the umlaut of u, the German sound ü, not as a variant of ie/i.
• þ will be utilized to represent the voiceless th sound as in think; ð will represent the voiced sound as in that.
• Long vowels will be represented consistently throughout the Wikipedia using macron-covered vowels.
• Utilize unique dative and accusative pronouns: mē/mec, þē/þec, ūs/ūsic, ēow/ēowic
• Utilize full verb inflections and not the contracted version: findeþ and not fint, findest, and not fintst.
• Proper names should retain their original spellings. For example, United States Department of Defense and Australian Defence Force.
• When writing about a topic utilizing a proper title, use the gender appropriate article for that word as if it were in Old English. A Department, or Dǣlung, is feminine, so sēo would be correct. Hē wæs mid þǣre Department of Defense.
• Articles which focus on a topic specific to a particular English-speaking country should generally aim to conform to the spelling of that country (for instance the British "Labour Party"). A reference to "the American labour movement" (with a U) or to "Anglicization" (with a Z) may be jarring. However, a reference to "the American labour movement" would be okay on New Labour.
• When referring to the United States, please use "U.S."; that is the more common style in that country, is easier to search for automatically, and we want one uniform style on this. When referring to the United States in a long abbreviation (USA, USN, USAF), periods should not be used.
• If the spelling appears in an article name, you should make a redirect page to accommodate the other variant, as with Aeroplane and Airplane, or if possible and reasonable, a neutral word might be chosen as with Glasses.
• If the spelling appears within the article text, also consider a consistent synonym such as focus or middle rather than center/centre.
• If an article is predominantly written in one type of Old English, make sure it is correctly spelled, then aim to conform to that type rather than provoking conflict by changing to another. (Sometimes, this can happen quite innocently, so please don't be too quick to make accusations!)
• Consult Wikipedia articles such as English plural and American and British English differences.
• Scholarly abbreviations of Latin terms like i.e., or e.g. should be avoided and English terms such as swilce such as and tō bysene for example used instead.
• If all else fails, consider following the spelling style preferred by the first major contributor (that is, not a stub) to the article who used a word with variant spellings in the article or the title.
• If a word or phrase is generally regarded as correct, then prefer it to an alternative that is often regarded as incorrect. Thus "other meanings" should be used rather than "alternate meaning" or "alternative meaning". Some dictionaries discourage or do not even recognize this latter use of alternate. For example, the American Heritage Dictionary "Usage Note" at alternative simply says: "Alternative should not be confused with alternate." However, alternative is also not entirely acceptable because of the very common connotations in American English of "non-traditional" or "out-of-the-mainstream". Further, some traditional usage experts consider "alternative" to be appropriate only when there are exactly two alternatives.

Words as words

Italicize words when they are being written about, rather than being used to write about what they refer to. Similarly for letters.

• The term panning is derived from panorama, a word originally coined in 1787
  • The term ''panning'' is derived from ''panorama'', a word originally coined in [[1787]]
• The letter E is the most common letter in English.

Pictures

Main article: Wikipedia:Picture tutorial

Articles with a single picture are encouraged to have that picture at the top of the article, right-aligned, but this is not a hard and fast rule. Portraits with the head looking to the right should be left-aligned (looking into the article). Please put the image at the top of the article, before the text begins.

The current image markup language is more or less this:

[[Image:picture.jpg|thumb|Blah blah caption]]

Captions

Photos and other graphics should have captions unless they are "self-captioning" as in reproductions of album or book covers, or when the graphic is an unambiguous depiction of the subject of the article. For example, in a biography article, it's presumed that the portrait is that of the person in the article, thus a caption is not necessary (unless more than one person is in the picture).

See Wikipedia:Captions for tips on writing captions.

Identity

This is perhaps one area where wikipedians' flexibility and plurality are an asset, and where one would not wish all pages to look exactly alike. Nevertheless, here are some guidelines:

• When writing an article about specific people or specific groups, always use the terminology which they themselves use (self identification).
• Use the most specific terminology available. If someone is of Ethiopian descent, one would describe him or her as Ethiopian, not African.
• In case this is objectionable, often a more general name will prove to be more neutral or more accurate. For example, although to have a List of African-American composers would be acceptable, a List of composers of African descent, in this case, is more useful.
• If possible, instead of using nouns directly, terms should be given in such a way that they qualify other nouns. Thus, black people, not blacks; gay people, not gays; adults with disabilities, not the disabled; and so forth.
• Do not assume that any one term is the most inclusive or accurate.

Style recommendations regarding the use of Categories

See also Wikipedia:Categorization and Wikipedia:Categorization of people. Note that categorization was only fully deployed in Wikipedia in 2004: style rules regarding categorization include as well the general style recommendations included in the Manual(s) of Style, as additional recommendations emerging in the process of treating categorization issues: future will show whether a separate style manual regarding categories is the best option.

Detailed Wikipedia style manuals

Biographies

See Wikipedia:Manual of Style (biographies).

Captions

See Wikipedia:Captions.

Citing sources

See Wikipedia:Cite sources.

Dates, numbers, measurements

See Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers).

Headings

See Wikipedia:Manual of Style (headings).

Linking to sister projects

See Wikipedia:Manual of Style (sister projects).

Lists

See Wikipedia:List.

Naming conventions

See Wikipedia:Naming_conventions.

Proper names

See Wikipedia:Proper_names.

Specific countries

Separate Wikipedia style manuals exist for material in the English Wikipedia regarding several other cultures and languages. These attempt to lay out Wikipedia standards for transliteration to English, renderings of place names, name order and other thorny cultural and linguistic issues.

• Manual of Style for China-related articles
• Manual of Style for Japan-related articles
• Manual of Style for Thailand-related articles

Titles

See Wikipedia:Manual of Style (titles).

Trademarks

See Wikipedia:Manual of Style (trademarks).

Wikiprojects

If you can't find anything specific enough for a particular type of article, see Wikipedia:WikiProject — some of these WikiProjects set out boilerplates for certain areas of knowledge.

Miscellaneous notes

When all else fails

If you are faced with a fine point, please use other resources, such as The Chicago Manual of Style (from the University of Chicago Press) or Fowler's Modern English Usage (from the Oxford University Press). Where this page differs from the other sources, the usage on this page should be preferred, but please feel free to add to this page or to carry on a discussion on Wikipedia_talk:Manual of Style.

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.

Don't get fancy

It's easier for you and whoever follows you if you don't try to get too fancy with your markup. Even with markup as suggested here, you shouldn't assume that any markup you put in is guaranteed to have a certain appearance when it is displayed.

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 maintaining that encyclopedia is right behind it.

Among other things, this means use HTML markup sparingly and only with good reason.

Further information

It is a good idea to read through and understand these documents:

Note to contributors to this page: We need to go over all these and make sure they're up-to-date too.

• Wikipedia:Welcome, newcomers is a gentle introduction to the world of Wikipedia.
• Be bold in updating pages should define your attitude toward page updates.
• Policies and guidelines is the main stop for policies and, well, guidelines.
• Avoiding common mistakes gives a list of common mistakes and how to avoid them.
• Lee's notes on writing style contains one Wikipedian's advice on good language usage.
• Editing policy has even more editing guidelines.

• How does one edit a page will explain the mechanics of what codes are available to you when editing a page, to do things like titles, links, external links, and so on.
• The perfect stub article shows what you should aim for at a minimum when starting a new article.
• Wikipedia:History — style guidelines for history
• Wikipedia:Definitions

Formatting issues

Formatting issues such as font size, blank space and color are issues for the Wikipedia site-wide style sheet and should not be dealt with in articles except in special cases. If for example you feel that headline fonts are too large or there should be spaces underneath headlines, these are issues for the style sheet, not article markup.

Make comments invisible

Try to avoid highlighting that the article is incomplete and in need of further work. It rarely provides benefit to the reader, and makes a negative impression. Trust the reader to accept current content for what it is worth.

Readers should not expect to see holding comments such as "Under construction", "More later", or "Please add more". All Wikipedia articles can be edited, so it is redundant to say that an individual article can be edited.

Similarly, there is little benefit to the reader in seeing headings and tables without content. They merely add clutter. If you have no content, then do not provide the heading. Give future editors the credit of being able to format the article when it is required.

If you want to communicate with other potential editors, make comments invisible to the ordinary article reader. To do so, enclose the text which you intend to be read only by editors within <!-- and -->.

For example, the following:

<!-- This is a comment. -->

is displayed (or rather, is not displayed) as:

so the comment can be seen when viewing the HTML or wiki source.

External link

• The Economist's style guide is a style manual for British English.