Manual of style

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The Manual of Style is a style guide that aims to make the Chester Wiki easy to read. One way of presenting information is often as good as another, but consistency is useful in making the Chester Wiki easier to write and read.

The Manual of Style does not claim to be the last word on Chester Wiki style – everything here should be applied with thought. These are not rigid laws, but principles that editors have found to work well in most circumstances. You are encouraged to follow these guidelines with flexibility. If a rule keeps you from writing an informative, useful entry, ignore it.

Contents

[edit] Which style to use

If this page does not specify which usage is preferred:

  • use other reliable resources, such as the style guides listed below;
  • discuss your problems or propose style guidance on the discussion page here;
  • simply look around—research the edit-history pages of worthy articles to see how editors have put them together.

Examples of authoritative style guides are: Fowler's Modern English Usage.

[edit] Disputes over style issues

It is inappropriate for an editor to change from one style to another unless there is a substantial reason to do so. For example, it is acceptable to change from American to British spelling if the article concerns a British topic, and vice versa. Revert warring over optional styles is unacceptable. Editors should ensure that articles are internally consistent. If an article has been stable in a given style, it is not converted without a style-independent reason. Where in doubt, editors defer to the style used by the first major contributor.

[edit] Article titles

If possible, the article’s topic is the subject of the first sentence of the article, for example, “This Manual of Style is a style guide” instead of “This style guide is known as …”. If the article title is an important term, it appears as early as possible.

[edit] Sections and headings

[edit] Markup

Unspaced multiple equal signs are the style markup for headings (also called section titles). The triple apostrophes ( ''' ) that make words appear in boldface are not used in headings.

The heading for the section you are now reading was created with double equal signs:

==Sections and headings==

The heading for the current subsection was created with triple equal signs:

===Markup===

[edit] Wording

In headings and subheadings:

  • only the first letter of the first word, and the first letter of proper nouns should be are capitalised; all other letters are in lowercase (for example, “Rules and regulations”, not “Rules and Regulations”);
  • special characters—such as the slash (/), plus sign (+), curly braces ({}) and square braces ([])—are avoided, and the word “and” is spelled out in place of an ampersand (&), unless the ampersand is part of a formal name;
  • links are avoided in favour of linking the first occurrence of the item in the section text;
  • the wording tends to be short (more than 10 words may defeat the purpose);
  • articles (a, an, and the) are typically avoided, and never occur first;
  • pronouns and repetitions of the article title are avoided;
  • the wording is not identical to that in any other heading or subheading in the article.

[edit] Section management

  • Headings and subheadings provide an overview in the table of contents and allow readers to navigate through the text more easily. Subheadings are particularly appropriate for breaking up longer sections.
  • Headings and subheadings are changed only after careful consideration, because this will break any section links to them from the same and other articles.
  • If you link to a section, leave an editor’s note to remind others that the title is linked. List the names of the linking articles, so that if the title is altered, others can fix the links more easily.
  • If you refer to a section without linking, italicise the section name; for example, you are now reading the section on Section management.
  • If you link to a section, italicise the section name only if it otherwise requires italics (for example, if it is the title of a book). Linking a term provides sufficient indication that you are using a term as a term, which is what you would otherwise use italics for.
  • If you change a section title, try to locate and fix broken links.

[edit] Capital letters

Consistency should be maintained within an article.

Do not use capitals for emphasis.

  • Incorrect: Against common belief, aardvarks are Not the same as anteaters.
  • Incorrect: Against common belief, aardvarks are NOT the same as anteaters.

Where wording cannot provide the emphasis, italics are used.

  • Correct: Against common belief, aardvarks are not the same as anteaters.

[edit] Titles

  • When used as titles (that is, followed by a name), items such as president, king and emperor start with a capital letter: Queen Elizabeth II, not queen Elizabeth II. The formal name of an office is treated as a proper noun: “Victoria was Queen of Great Britain” (where Quen of Great Britain is a title). Royal titles are capitalised: Her Majesty and His Highness; exceptions may apply for particular offices.
  • When used generically, such items are in lower case: “Victoria was the British queen”. Similarly, “Three prime ministers attended the conference”, but “The British Prime Minister is Gordon Brown”. (A rule of thumb is this: when the modifier is the specific article the, we use Prime Minister; when the non-specific a applies, we use prime minister).
  • Philosophies, theories and doctrines do not begin with a capital letter, unless the name derives from a proper noun: lowercase republican refers to a system of political thought; uppercase Republican refers to a specific Republican Party (because each party name is a proper noun).

[edit] Calendar items

  • Days, months and holidays start with a capital letter: June, Monday, the First of May (when referring to the UK Mayday bank holiday, otherwise 1 May).
  • Seasons, in almost all instances, are lowercase: “this summer was very hot”; “the winter solstice occurs about 22 December”; “I’ve got spring fever”. When personified, season names may function as proper nouns, where they should be capitalised: “I think Spring is showing her colours”; “Old Man Winter”.
  • Dates are normally followed by a comma: “In 2001, Bob got married”; “On 10 April, I will be having a party”, but not when they are used to modify other terms: “The 1993 edition has several errors”.

[edit] Directions

  • Directions such as north are not proper nouns and are therefore lowercase. The same is true for their related forms: someone might call a road that leads north a northern road, compared with the Great North Road (United Kingdom). Composite directions may or may not be hyphenated (northeast and north-east, Southeast Asia and South-east Asia).

[edit] Institutions

  • Proper names of institutions (for example, the University of Chester) are proper nouns and require capitalisation. Where a title starts with the, it typically starts with lowercase t when the title occurs in the middle of a sentence ("a degree from the University of Chester"); usage on the webpage of the institution may confirm whether this is the case.
  • Generic words for institutions (university, college, hospital, high school) require no capitalisation:
  • Incorrect (generic): The University offers programmes in arts and sciences.
  • Correct (generic): The university offers …
  • Correct (title): The University of Chester offers …

[edit] Italics

Use the '' (italic) markup. Example:

''This is italic.''

which produces:

This is italic.

[edit] Effect on nearby punctuation and links

In all of the uses mentioned here, care should be taken to italicise only what should properly be affected by italics, and not the surrounding punctuation of the sentence. This is the consensus of most style manuals, including Fowler's Guide to Modern English. Examples:

  • What are we to make of that?
[Incorrect: only the word that is properly subject to emphasis, not the following question mark.]
  • The word was tack; it certainly was not tick, tap, or tab.
[Correct: the punctuation marks here are not being cited or mentioned; they are ordinary parts of the sentence.]

In linked material that is to be italicised, the italic markup should be outside of the link markup. Example:

  • The Daniel Craig film ''[[Casino Royale]]'' is his best.
[Correct: it will generate text with a proper link: “The film Casino Royale is his best.”]

[edit] Emphasis

Italics are mainly used to emphasize certain words. Italics for emphasis should be used sparingly.

They are also used in these other cases:

[edit] Titles

Italics are used for the titles of works of literature and art. The titles of articles, chapters, and other short works are not italicised but are enclosed in double quotation marks.

[edit] Words as words

Use italics when writing about words as words, or letters as letters. For example:

  • Deuce means “two”.
  • The term panning is derived from panorama, a word coined in 1787.
  • The most common letter in the English language is e.
  • In English class I received an A.

[edit] Foreign terms

We prefer italics for phrases in other languages and for isolated foreign words that do not yet have common use in the English language. Use Anglicised spellings for such words, or use the native spellings if they use the Latin alphabet (with or without diacritics).

Loan words or phrases that have common use in English, such as samurai or esprit de corps do not require italicization. If looking for a good rule of thumb, do not italicise words that appear in an English language dictionary. Use foreign words sparingly, and include native spellings in non-Latin scripts in parentheses. Native spellings in non-Latin scripts (such as Greek or Cyrillic) should not be italicised at all - the difference of script suffices.

[edit] Quotations in italics

Do not put an entire quotation in italics solely because it is a quotation. Use double quotation marks instead.

[edit] Italics within quotations

Use italics inside quotations if the source material does, or if you want to add emphasis. If you do the latter, insert the editorial note “[emphasis added]” at the end of the quotation. For example: “Now cracks a noble heart. Good night sweet prince: And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest. [emphasis added]”

If the source uses italics for emphasis, and you want to stress that the emphasis is the source’s and not yours, you can add “[emphasis in original]” after the quote.

[edit] Acronyms and abbreviations

Readers will not necessarily be familiar with acronyms, such as NASA (pronounced as a word) and initialisms, such as PBS. The standard practice is to spell out the item on its first occurrence, followed by the abbreviation in parentheses. If a term is already in parentheses, use a comma and or to indicate the acronym.

Acronyms and initialisms are pluralised by adding -s or -es. For example, “They produced three CD-ROMs in the first year”.

Initial capitals are not used in a spelled out item just because capitals are used in the abbreviation.

  • Incorrect: Our new Digital Light Processing (DLP) technology
  • Correct: Our new digital light processing (DLP) technology
  • Correct (title): produced by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)

Many periods and spaces that were traditionally required have now dropped out of usage. For example, PhD is preferred to Ph.D. and Ph. D.. Periods are retained in abbreviations that cannot otherwise be clearly identified.

The software that Wikipedia runs on does not support HTML abbreviation elements (<acronym> or <abbr>), so these tags should not be inserted into the source.

[edit] Quotations

Whenever it is reasonable to do so, use the style that was used in the original text; do not alter it to conform this style manual. When the original style is unreasonable, indicate the changes, with [sic] or an explanation. An exception: when a quotation encloses a quotation, use the common style of beginning with double-quotes outermost; working inward, alternate single quotes with double quotes. For example, you might quote an article that says, “She disputed his statement that ‘Voltaire never said “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it” ’ ”. (Note that adjacent quote marks, as at the end of this example, should always have a space between them. This should be a non-breaking space, obtained by typing &nbsp; instead of a normal space.)

Or applying this rule to a block quote (though passages this short would generally not be block-quoted), you might quote the article as saying

She disputed his statement that “Voltaire never said ‘I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it’ ”.

Here are two examples that show how to handle commas and capital letters at the beginning of a quote within a sentence:

He said that “to have is to hold”. She said, “Go now”.

Avoid linking from within quotes, as doing so clutters the quotation, violates the principle of leaving quotations unchanged, and may mislead or confuse the reader. On the other hand, consider this example (quoted from John Adams): “If Aristotle, Livy, and James Harrington| knew what a republic was, the British constitution is much more like a republic than an empire.” Every alternative to those links seems awkward.

Format a long quote (over four lines) as a block quotation, which will be indented from both margins. Do not enclose the block quote in quotation marks. To format a block quotation, do not use the wiki indentation mark :—instead, use the HTML <blockquote> tag: 

<blockquote>
Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a 
new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men 
are created equal.
</blockquote>

Result:

Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Except with well-known quotations (from Shakespeare etc.), and those from the subject of the article or section, always name the person whom you quote for a full sentence or more. Name the person in the text, not in a footnote, unless the person is the subject of the article or is otherwise obvious. In the case of a famous line from a play in an article on the play, attribution is not necessary.

[edit] Punctuation

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

[edit] Quotation marks

With quotation marks (inverted commas), usual practice is to use the double-quotes (“ ”) — they are easier to read on the screen — and use single-quotes (‘ ’) for quotations nested within quotations. Adjacent quotation marks should be separated by a space, preferably a non-breaking space obtained by typing &nbsp;.

When punctuating quoted passages, put the punctuation mark inside the quotation marks only if the sense of the punctuation mark is part of the quotation (logical quotations). In the very rare case of a multi-paragraph quotation that is not block-quoted, put double-quotes at the beginning of each paragraph, but at the end of only the last paragraph.

If you change the case of the initial letter of a quote, we neither require nor recommend that you follow the older convention of “[f]ormally indicating the case change with square brackets”.

When the title of an article appearing in the lead paragraph requires quotation marks (for example, the title of a song or poem), the quotation marks should not be in boldface, as they are not part of the title:

Use quotation marks or block quotes to distinguish quotations from other text. Quotations should not be italicized unless the material otherwise calls for italics (emphasis, use of non-English words, etc.).

[edit] Long quotations

Long quotations (more than four lines) may be rendered as block quotations, without quotation marks or italics. A long quotation is indented by using <blockquote>text</blockquote> or {{quote|text}} notation, which indents both left and right margins.

[edit] Look of quotation marks and apostrophes

Never use grave and acute accents or backticks (`text´) as quotation marks or apostrophes.

[edit] Quotation marks affect searching

If a word or phrase appears in an article in single-quotes, such as 'abcd', the search facility considers the single-quotes to be part of the word and will find that word or phrase only if the search string is also within single quotes. Avoiding this complication is an additional reason to use double quotes, for which the difficulty does not arise.

[edit] Brackets

A bracketed phrase is enclosed by the punctuation of a sentence (as shown here). (But one or more sentences wholly inside brackets have their punctuation inside the brackets.) These rules apply to square “[ ]” as well as round “( )” brackets (parentheses). There should never be a space next to the brackets on the inside, except as in the preceding sentence. There should be a space before an opening bracket, except in certain rare cases involving editorial interpolation and the like, when it is preceded by:

  • an opening quotation mark
  • another opening bracket (see below)
  • an ellipsis not followed by a space, or an unspaced em dash
  • a portion of a word, or a hyphen, etc., where the brackets enclose only a part of a word

There should be a space after a closing bracket, except where another punctuation mark (other than an apostrophe or a hyphen) follows, and except in cases similar to those listed for opening brackets.

If sets of brackets must be nested, use the contrasting type (normally square brackets appear within round brackets [parentheses]). Or reduce clutter by appropriate use of commas, semicolons, colons or spaced en dashes, rather than brackets.

Avoid adjacent sets of brackets—either put the parenthetic phrases in one set separated by commas, or rewrite the sentence. For example, this sentence:

[edit] Serial commas

The serial comma (also known as the Oxford comma) is a comma used immediately before a conjunction in a list of three or more items. The phrase “ham, chips, and eggs” is written with a serial comma, but “ham, chips and eggs” is not. Sometimes omitting the comma can lead to an ambiguous sentence, as in this example: “The author would like to thank her parents, Sinéad O’Connor and President Bush.” Sometimes including the comma can also lead to an ambiguous sentence, as in: “The author would like to thank her mother, Sinéad O’Connor, and President Bush” which may be a list of either two or three people. In such cases, there are three options for avoiding ambiguity:

  • A choice can be made whether to use or omit the comma after the penultimate item in such a way as to avoid ambiguity.
  • The sentence can be recast to avoid listing the items in an ambiguous manner.
  • The items in the list can be presented using a formatted list.

Serial commas should be avoided unless absolutely necessary to avoid ambiguity.

[edit] Colons

Colons ( : ) should not have spaces before them:

Correct:
He attempted it in two years: 1941 and 1943
Incorrect:
He attempted it in two years : 1941 and 1943

Colons should have complete sentences before them:

Correct:
He attempted it in two years: 1941 and 1943
Incorrect:
The years he attempted it included: 1941 and 1943

[edit] Dashes

The hyphen (-) is used to form compound words. The en dash (–) is used to specify numeric ranges, such as “open 9–5” and to link clauses of a sentence. Other dashes, notably the double-hyphen (--), should be avoided.

[edit] Spaces after the end of a sentence

Avoid the use of double spaces after the end of a sentence.

[edit] Contractions

In general, formal writing is preferred. Therefore, avoid the use of contractions such as don’t, can’t, won’t, would’ve, they’d, and so on unless they occur in a quotation. However, if the full form would be clumsy or unidiomatic, use the contraction or recast the sentence.

[edit] “And/or”

The construct and/or is especially awkward. In general, where it is important to mark an inclusive or, use “x or y, or both”, rather than “x and/or y”. For an exclusive or, use “either x or y”, and optionally add “but not both”, if it is necessary to stress the exclusivity.

[edit] Ellipses

An ellipsis is a series of three dots (periods) indicating omitted text. The precomposed ellipsis character (&hellip;, …) may be used: it displays three dots. To prevent the ellipsis from wrapping to the beginning of a line, regardless of where the line breaks of the reader’s browser fall, enter a non-breaking space before it (&nbsp;…).

Note that square brackets indicate editorial replacements as well as editorial insertions. For example, suppose that a source says, “X contains Y. Under certain circumstances, X may contain Z as well.” Then it is correct to quote this work as saying “X contains Y [and sometimes] Z” (without ellipsis).

[edit] Question marks and exclamation marks

The question mark is to be used in the standard English manner: every direct question requires a question mark; the question mark normally, though not always, marks the end of a sentence, so the grammar should reflect that fact; etc. There should never be a space just before a question or exclamation mark.

The exclamation mark should be used with restraint, as it is an expression of surprise or emotion that is generally thought unsuited to wiki use. It normally, though not always, marks the end of a sentence, so the grammar should reflect that fact.

For use of these marks in association with quotation marks, see the relevant section above.

[edit] Simple tabulation

Lines that in the editing window start with blank spaces are displayed boxed and in a fixed-width font, for simple tabulation.

A line that contains only a blank space inserts a blank line into the table.

[edit] Usage and spelling

[edit] Usage

  • Possessives of singular nouns ending in s should generally maintain the additional s after the apostrophe. However, if a form without an s after the apostrophe is much more common for a particular word or phrase, follow that form, such as with “Achilles’ heel” and “Jesus’ tears”.
  • [Abbreviations of Latin terms like i.e., e.g., or n.b., or use of the Latin terms in full, such as “nota bene”, or “vide infra”, should be left as the original author wrote them. However, articles intended for a general audience will be more widely understood if English terms such as “that is”, “for example”, or “note” are used instead.
  • Use an unambiguous word or phrase in preference to an ambiguous one.

[edit] Avoid first-person pronouns and one

Articles must not be based on one person’s opinions or experiences. Thus, I can never be used except when it appears in a quotation. For similar reasons, avoid the use of we and one. A sentence such as “We should note that some critics have argued in favour of the proposal” sounds more personal than encyclopedic.

Nevertheless, it is sometimes appropriate to use we or one when referring to an experience that anyone, any reader, would be expected to have, such as general perceptual experiences. For example, although it might be best to write, “When most people open their eyes, they see something”, it is still legitimate to write, “When we open our eyes, we see something”, and it is certainly better than using the passive voice: “When the eyes are opened, something is seen.”

[edit] Avoid second-person pronouns

Use of the second person (you), which is often ambiguous and contrary to the tone of a wiki, is discouraged. Instead, refer to the subject of the sentence, for example:

Good:
When a player moves past “Go”, that player collects $200.
Good:
Players passing “Go” collect $200.
Bad:
When you move past “Go”, you collect $200.

This guideline does not apply to quoted text, which should be quoted exactly.

[edit] Images

Some general guidelines which should be followed in the absence of a compelling reason not to:

  • Start the article with a right-aligned image.
  • When using multiple images in the same article, they can be staggered right-and-left.
  • Avoid sandwiching text between two images facing each other.
  • Generally, right alignment is preferred to left or centre alignment.
    • Exception: Portraits with the head looking to the reader’s right should be left-aligned (looking into the text of the article) when this does not interfere with navigation or other elements. In such cases it may be appropriate to move the Table of Contents to the right by using {{TOCright}}. As faces are not perfectly symmetrical it is generally inadvisable to use photo editing software to reverse a right-facing portrait image; however, some editors employ this controversial technique when it does not alter obvious non-symmetrical features or make included text in the image unreadable.
  • If there are too many images in a given article, consider using a photo gallery.
  • Do not place left-aligned images directly below second-level (===) headings, as this disconnects the heading from the text it precedes. For example, do not use: 
=== Section 1b ===
[[Image:Image relating to section 1b.jpg|frame|left|]]
First paragraph of section 1b.
Instead, either right-align the image, remove it, or move it to another relevant location. If the image acts as a bridge from the previous section, you can place it at the end of that section: 
[[Image:Image relating to section 1a and section 1b.jpg|frame|left|]]
=== Section 1b ===
First paragraph of section 1b.
  • Use captions to explain the relevance of the image to the article.
  • Specifying the size of a thumb image is not recommended: without specifying a size the width will be what the reader has specified in their user preferences, with a default of 180px (which applies for most readers). However, the image subject or image properties may call for a specific image width in order to enhance the readability and/or layout of an article. Cases where specific image width are considered appropriate include:
  • On images with extreme aspect ratios
  • When using detailed maps, diagrams or charts
  • When a small region of an image is considered relevant, but the image would lose its coherence when cropped to that region
  • On a lead image that captures the essence of the article.

Bear in mind that some users need to configure their systems to display large text. Forced large thumbnails can leave little width for text, making reading difficult.

The current image markup language is: 

[[Image:picture.jpg|thumb|right|Insert caption here]]

[edit] 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, a caption is not needed for a portrait of the subject pictured alone; however, many entries use the name of the subject and the birth and death years and an approximation of the date when the image was taken: “John Smith (1812–95) circa 1880” or “John Smith (1812–95) on January 12, 1880 in Paris”.

Complete sentences in captions should always end in a period (or other appropriate punctuation). If the caption is not a complete sentence, it generally should not have a period at the end.

Captions should not be italicised unless they are book titles or related material. The caption always starts with a capital letter. Remember that the full information concerning the image is contained in the image entry, so people looking for more information can click on the photo to see the full details.

[edit] Bulleted lists

Do not use bullets if the passage reads easily using plain paragraphs or indented paragraphs. If every paragraph in a section is bulleted, it is likely that none should be bulleted.

Do not mix grammatical styles in a list: either use all complete sentences or use all sentence fragments. Begin each item with a capital letter, even if it is a sentence fragment.

When using complete sentences, provide a period at the end of each.

When using sentence fragments, do not provide a period at the end.

[edit] Numbered lists

All the rules for bulleted lists apply also to numbered lists.

Use numbered rather than bulleted lists only if you will be referring back to items by number, or the sequence of the items is critical (for example, you are explaining step 1, step 2, etc. of a multi-step process).

[edit] Identity

This is an area where flexibility and plurality are an asset, and where we would not want all pages to look exactly alike. Chester Wiki's neutral point of view and policies always take precedence. However, here are some nonbinding guidelines that may help:

  • Where known, use terminology that subjects use for themselves (self-identification). This can mean using the term an individual uses for himself or herself, or using the term a group most widely uses for itself. This includes referring to transgender individuals according to the names and pronouns they use to identify themselves.
  • Do not assume that any one term is the most inclusive or accurate.
  • If possible, terms used to describe people should be given in such a way that they qualify other nouns. Thus, black people, not blacks; gay people, not gays; and so forth.
  • Also note: The term Arab refers to people and things of ethnic Arab origin. The term Arabic refers to the Arabic language or writing system (and related concepts). For example, “Not all Arab people write or converse in Arabic, but nearly all are familiar with Arabic numerals.”
  • In a direct quotation, use the original text, even if the originator does not conform with the above guidelines.

[edit] Links

Make only |links relevant to the context. It is not useful and can be very distracting to mark all possible words as hyperlinks. Links should add to the user’s experience; they should not detract from it by making the article harder to read. A high density of links can draw attention away from the high-value links that you would like your readers to follow up. Redundant links clutter up the page and make future maintenance harder. A link is the equivalent of a footnote in a print medium. Imagine if every second word in an article were followed by “(see:)”. Hence, the links should not be so numerous as to make the article harder to read. However, that all depends.

Check links after they are wikified to make sure they direct to the correct concept; many dictionary words lead to disambiguation pages and not to complete articles on a concept. If an anchor into a targeted page (the label after a pound sign (#) in a URL) is available, is likely to remain stable, and gets the reader to the relevant area significantly faster, then use it.

When links are rendered as URLs by the software, the initial character becomes capitalised and spaces are replaced by underscores. When including links in an article, there is no need to use capitalisation or underscores, as the software produces them automatically. This feature makes it possible to avoid a piped link in many cases. The correct form in English orthography can be used as a straight link. Links that begin sentences or are proper nouns should be capitalised as normal.

Likewise, the use of piped links can be avoided in many cases when adding a grammatical suffix to a link that is not part of an article title, by placing the suffix outside of the brackets. The suffix will still appear as part of the link, but will not be included in the link’s target when actually clicked.

[edit] Miscellaneous notes

[edit] Keep markup simple

Use the simplest markup to display information in a useful and comprehensible way. Markup may appear differently in different browsers. Use HTML and CSS markup sparingly and only with good reason. Minimizing markup in entries allows easier editing.

In particular, do not use the CSS float or line-height properties because they break rendering on some browsers when large fonts are used.

[edit] Formatting issues

Formatting issues such as font size, blank space and colour are issues for the Chester Wiki site-wide style sheet and should not be dealt with in articles except in special cases. If you absolutely must specify a font size, use a relative size, that is, font-size: 80%; not an absolute size, for example, font-size: 8pt. It is also almost never a good idea to use other style changes, such as font family or colour.

Typically, the usage of custom font styles will

  • reduce consistency—the text will no longer look uniform with typical text;
  • reduce usability—it will likely be impossible for people with custom stylesheets (for accessibility reasons, for example) to override it, and it might clash with a different skin as well as bother people with colour blindness; and
  • increase arguments—there is the possibility of other users disagreeing with choice of font style and starting a debate about it for aesthetic purposes.

For such reasons, it is typically not good practice to apply inline CSS for font attributes in articles.

[edit] Colour coding

Using colour alone to convey information (colour coding) should not be done. This is not accessible to people with colour blindness, on black-and-white printouts, on older monitors with fewer colours, on monochrome displays (PDAs, cell phones), and so on.

If it is necessary to use colours, try to choose colours that are unambiguous (such as orange and violet) when viewed by a person with red-green colour blindness (the most common type). In general, this means that shades of red and green should not both be used as colour codes in the same image.

[edit] Invisible comments

Invisible comments are used to communicate with other editors in the article body. These comments are only visible when editing the page. They are invisible to ordinary readers.

Normally if an editor wants to discuss issues with other potential editors, they will do it on the talk page. However, it sometimes makes more sense to put comments in the article body, because an editor would like to leave instructions to guide other editors when they edit this section, or leave reminders about specific issues (for example, do not change the section title since others have linked here).

To do so, enclose the text which you intend to be read only by editors within <!-- and -->.

For example, the following:

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

is displayed as:

Hello world.

So the comment can be seen when viewing the wiki source (although not, incidentally, the HTML source).

Note: Comments may introduce unwanted whitespace when put in certain places, such as at the top of an article. Avoid placing comment fields in places where they might change the rendered result of the article.

[edit] Legibility

Consider the legibility of what you are writing. Make your entry easy to read on a screen. Make judicious use of devices such as bulleted lists and boldface.

[edit] External links

Links to websites outside of Chester Wiki can be listed at the end of an article or embedded within the body of an article.

[edit] List of links

The standard format for a list of links is to have a header named == External links == followed by a bulleted list of links. External links should summarise the website’s contents, and indicate why the website is relevant to the article.

[edit] Embedded links

External links can be embedded in the body of an article to provide specific references. These links have no description other than an automatically generated number. For example:

Sample text [http://www.example.org].

When wikified, the link will appear as:

Sample text [1].

An embedded external link should be accompanied by a full citation in the article’s References section.

[edit] Footnotes

The References or Notes section can have a code which will copy your embedded link (with its external link, description and/or quote), into the References or Notes section and make it a functioning link there. Do not use this code with an embedded link alone; use it only if you are adding a citation or description of the link.

Here is a demonstration:

The embedded link format can look like this:

<ref name="test1">[http://www.example.org/ The name of your external link goes here.] Further explanation can go here.</ref>

It will produce this: <ref name="test1">The name of your external link goes here. Further explanation can go here.</ref>

In the “References” section the code can look like this:

<references />

It will produce this copy of the embedded link you have made above:

<references />

NOTE: The code will place all properly formatted references on the page here.

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