Help:Manual of Style

This Manual of Style (MoS) is a brief style manual for all articles on this Wiki. When a MoS guideline offers a choice of style, use only one alternative consistently throughout an article, and do not unreasonably alter a choice that has already been made. If there are any changes or suggestions you think should be made to the MoS, visit the talk page to discuss them. These are by no means firm rules, but these suggestions help create consistent articles.

Layout

A simple article should have, at least, (a) a lead section and (b) references. The following list includes additional standardized sections in an article. A complete article need not have all, or even most, of these elements.

1. Before the article content
   1. {{DISPLAYTITLE}}, {{Lowercase title}}, {{Italic title}} (some of these may also be placed before the infobox or after the infobox)
   2. Hatnotes
   3. {{Featured list}}, {{Featured article}} and {{Good article}} (where appropriate for article status)
   4. Deletion / protection tags (deletion notices)
   5. Infoboxes (It is important that hatnotes and maintenance/dispute tags appear on the first page of the article. On the mobile site, the first paragraph of the lead section is moved above the infobox for the sake of readability. Since the infobox is generally more than one page long, putting hatnotes, etc., after it will result in them being placed after the first page, making them less effective.)
   6. Images
2. Article content
   1. Lead section (also called the introduction) (Boldface is often applied to the first occurrence of the article's title word or phrase in the lead. This is also done at the first occurrence of a term, commonly a synonym in the lead, that redirects to the article or one of its subsections, whether the term appears in the lead or not.)
   2. Table of contents
   3. Body
3. Appendices
   1. See also
   2. Notes and references (this can be two sections in some citation systems)
   3. External links
4. End matter
   1. Categories

Capital letters

Use sentence case for article titles and section headings – Tips and pointers, not Tips and Pointers.

Capitalize names of scriptures like Bible and Qur'an, but not biblical. Always capitalize God when it refers to a primary or only deity, but not pronouns that refer to deities: he not He.

Avoid capitalizing the names of plants and animals. Among the exceptions are scientific names (Felis catus) and proper nouns occurring as part of a name (Norway rat).

The seasons (summer, winter, spring, and fall/autumn) are not capitalized. Similarly, the compass points (north, southwest) are not capitalized.

When in doubt about whether to capitalize something, default to lowercase.

Abbreviations

To indicate approximately, the non-italicized abbreviation c. (followed by a space) is preferred over circa, ca., or approx.

Write US or U.S., but not USA. Use US, not U.S., in an article using UK, PRC, etc.

Use "and" instead of the "&" sign, except in tables, infoboxes, and official names like AT&T.

Punctuation

Apostrophes and quotation marks

Use straight quote marks " and apostrophes ' as available from the keyboard, and not alternatives such as “ ” and ‘ ’.

Italicize names of books, films, TV series, music albums, paintings, and ships—but not short works like songs or poems, which should be in quotation marks.

Write James's house, not James' house.

Periods and commas

Place a full stop (a period) or a comma before a closing quotation mark if it belongs as part of the quoted material; otherwise put it after: The word carefree means "happy". But She said, "I'm feeling carefree." (Please do so irrespective of any rules associated with the variety of English in use.)

An ellipsis should be written as three separate dots (...): not spaced (. . .), and not using the single-character option (…).

The serial comma (for example the comma before and in "ham, chips, and eggs") is optional; be sensitive to possible ambiguity from thoughtless use or thoughtless avoidance.

Avoid comma splices.

Picture captions should not end in a full stop (a period) unless they are complete sentences.

Dashes and hyphens

Avoid using a hyphen after a standard -ly adverb (a newly available home).

A hyphen is not a dash. Hyphens are used within words or to join words, but not in punctuating the parts of a sentence. Use an en dash (–) with   before and a space after; or use an em dash (—) without spaces. See Wikipedia's How to make dashes. Avoid using two hyphens (--) to make a dash; and avoid using a hyphen for a minus sign.

Use an en dash, not a hyphen, between numbers: pp. 14–21; 1953–2008. An en dash is also to connect parallel terms: red–green colorblind; a New York–London flight. Use spaces around the en dash only if the connected terms are multi-unit dates: January 1999 – December 2000.

Dates and numbers

Write number 1 or No. 1, but not #1. Comic books are an exception. Do not use the symbol №.

Write 12,000 for twelve thousand, not 12.000.

Both 10 June 1921 and June 10, 1921, are correct, but should be consistent within an article. A comma is not used if only the month is given, such as June 1921.

400 AD (or AD 400) and 400 BC are correct; but so are 400 CE and 400 BCE. As always, use one style consistently in an article.

Use one, two, three, ..., eight, nine in most cases, not 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 (exceptions include times and dates, equations, sport scores, most measurements, and data in tables). Use digits for 10 and higher (though some such numbers also may be written as words, when it helps clarity).

Markup

Instead of an ordinary space, use   (a non-breaking space) to prevent a line from ending in the middle of expressions like 17 kg, 565 BCE, 2:50 pm, £11 billion, 129 million, November 2024, 5° 24′ 21.12″ N, or Boeing 747; also after the number in 123 Fake Street, and before Roman numerals in World War II and Pope Benedict XVI. Use   in the same way inside a wikilink. (An alternative: enclose the whole expression using the template {{nowrap}}.)

It does not matter how many spaces come after a period because extra spaces will not show, although blank lines will create one extra line.

Use wikilinks, but only for words and phrases that are most likely to be helpful if clicked. Make sure each link goes to an article on the intended subject, and not to a disambiguation page or incorrect destination.

References

There are multiple citation styles. The most common uses <ref>...</ref> (ref tags) to create footnotes (sometimes called endnotes or notes), which will appear in the reference or endnote section. This citation should immediately follow the text to which it applies, including any punctuation (with some exceptions).

Usage

Due to OWOT having an international user base, this Wiki prefers no major national variety of the language over any other. These varieties (e.g. U.S. English, British English) differ in vocabulary (soccer vs. football), spelling (center vs. centre), and occasionally grammar.

Avoid words like I, we, and you, except in quotations and names of works.

Avoid phrases like note that and remember that (which assume "you" for the reader); and avoid such expressions as of course and obviously.

See also

• Help:Editing_guide – an overview page that will answer all your editing-related questions
• Wikipedia's Cheatsheet – a page that provides the most commonly used wiki markup