User:Drakwood/Style Guide

This style guide has the simple purpose of making MapleWiki easy to read by establishing a certain format. One way is often as good as another, but if everyone does things the same way, the articles will be easier to read and use, along with being easier to write and edit. Reading the style guide is important to ensure that each user's edits will be consistent with those of other users.

Article titles

Pages must have appropriate titles. Names, locations, and titles (like a quest) should all be capitalized, though not the whole title. Try to make the article's topic the subject of the first sentence in the article. For example, write "This style manual is a style guide" instead of "This style guide is known as..." Use boldface for the first (and only the first) appearance of the title.

Articles about items, monsters, and non-player characters should be titled exactly as the subject's name appears in-game. A general rule of thumb for article titles is that most items, monsters, and non-player characters only have the first letter of the first word in their name capitalised, although most quest items, monsters, and non-player characters are exceptions to this rule. Unless the item or monster's name has more than one capital in-game, don't put a capital at the beginning of every word. This is a common mistake which often causes broken links and time being diverted to moving these pages. If you are in doubt about a name, please check it in-game. If you come across a page with an incorrect title, please move it to the correct title and edit it to make the correct title consistent. If a page's title conflicts with its content, make the content consistent with the title before checking in-game to ensure accuracy.

Sections and headings

Separating articles into sections makes them easy to read and navigate. Headings are used to split articles into sections.

Markup

Use two equal signs (==) style markup for headings. Start with ==, add the heading title, then end with ==.

This section's heading was created with the markup:

==Sections and headings==

This subsection's heading was created with the markup:

===Markup===

Wording

In a heading, capitalize only the first letter of the first word and the first letter of any proper nouns, and leave all of the other letters in lowercase. Quest titles, skills, names, cities, and so on should all have the first letter capitalised. For example, "Pole arms", not "Pole Arms".
Avoid putting links in headings.
Make sure that the heading has an appropriate and accurate title, as this is important to help readers navigate the article. For example, do not make a "Monsters" section in an article about an area or dungeon and then include non-player characters in that section. Instead, make an "Inhabitants" section with "Monsters" and "NPCs" as subsections.
Keep headings short.

Text elements

Font colours

Coloured font can be used sparingly, though not in very bright colours. For example, you can use a dark colour for a warning. Note that light colours will not show up well against the article's white background. Here and here are lists of colours.

Invisible comments

Invisible comments are used to communicate with other editors in the article body. To do so, enclose the text which you intend to be read only by editors within . For example, doing  will be hidden in the article.

Bulleted lists

Bulleted lists can be used in quest walkthroughs and lists. For example, you can use bullets if you're listing what levels to train a certain skill or locations of an item. Don't forget proper punctuation. To add bullets, put an asterisk (*) before the name. For example:

* List name 1
* List name 2
* List name 3

would come out as:

List name 1
List name 2
List name 3

Numbered lists

All the rules for bulleted lists apply also to numbered lists. Numbered lists can be used for listing steps in a process. To add a numbered list, put a number sign (#) before the list name. For example:

# List name 1
# List name 2
# List name 3

would come out as:

List name 1
List name 2
List name 3

Bold and italics

Place two apostrophes (''Italicised text'') on either side of a selection of text to italicize the selection. Italics are mainly used to emphasise certain words, though they should be used sparingly. Also note that the word MapleStory should always be italicised. Italics may make longer phrases or sentences difficult to read.

Place three apostrophes ('''Boldfaced text''') on either side of a selection of text to boldface the selection. Bold is used as a stronger emphasis than italics, although it should be used sparingly as well. The first appearance of an article's title in the article should always be boldfaced.

Place five apostrophes ('''''Boldfaced and italicized text''''') on either side of a selection to use bold and italics in combination on the selection. Bold and italics combined emphasise selections well, but should be used extremely rarely. There are no common cases in which bold and italics are used together.

As you can see, bold works well to emphasise sentences as well as short phrases and single words, while italics are a much weaker emphasis for sentences, but work well on short phrases or single words. Bold and italics are used in combination very rarely. Excessive use of any of these text elements will make the entire article difficult to read, so please use them in appropriate situations.

Grammar and spelling

Abbreviations

Try to not use abbreviations. For example, use "battle axe" instead of "baxe." Some players may not know what these abbreviations mean. And as far as looks goes, it's much more pleasing to the eye to look at "That Dragon's Tail will help you to kill the monsters faster." than "Tht dtail wil help u 2 kil da monstrs fastr." It's even worse when you type something in "Leet Speak" also known as "1337 5P34K." This wiki's preferred language is American English, not numbers (translation: 3n6L15H, n07 nUM83r5)

Punctuation

If you are listing multiple things, like different runes, each of them should have a comma at the end. For example, "Squishy liquid, Slime bubbles, and Meso" would be proper, "Squishy liquid, Slime bubbles and Meso" would not be.

Usage and Spelling

The S in MapleStory is capitalised. MapleStory should also be italicised.
The X in Nexon should not be capitalised.
Nexon is a American company, so American spelling should be used at all times.
See also: American and British English spelling variations.

Images

Some general guidelines which should be followed are listed below.

The first image should be right-aligned. For other images in the article, right-alignment is preferred to left- or center-alignment.
If there are too many images in a given article, consider making a gallery with a level two heading.
Use captions to explain the relevance of the image to the article.
Make large images a thumb.
Specifying the size of a thumb image is not recommended.

Uploading images

The preferred formats for images are PNG.
Images of items should have a transparent background.
Please name your files descriptively to avoid confusion. For example if you are uploading a picture of your bank, name it Your Username_Bank.PNG and not just Bank.PNG or MyBank.PNG.
Don't upload images we already have. We have many users doing this and it is not good to have multiple images of the same item! Before you upload an image, search the wiki if someone has already uploaded a version of it. We don't need [[Image:Squishy liquid.PNG]] or [[Image:Squishy liquid.gif]] if someone has already uploaded [[Image:Squishy liquid.PNG]].

Captions

Complete sentences in captions should always end in a full stop (period). If the caption is not a complete sentence, it generally should not have a full stop at the end. Captions should also not be italicized.

Wikilinking

Every time an article is mentioned on the page, you don't have to link to every single one. For example, Tree branch may be mentioned five times. You only have to link to Tree branch once. You can link to articles more than once if the page is very long.
When a skill is linked to, the name of the skill should be used, not a short form or a different spelling of it.
Use efficient link formats, especially for plurals. For example, do [[Tree Branch]]es instead of [[Tree branch|Tree branches]].
When including wikilinks in an article, there is no need to use capitalization or underscores, since the software produces them automatically.

Writing articles

Everyone is encouraged to contribute meaningfully to the wiki.

Ownership and bias

Keep personal bias out of articles. Even if "Grinding is for noobs" or "Party Questing is awesome", we do not need to hear it in the articles.
Nobody owns articles. This is a wiki, after all. This means words like "I," "we," or "me" should not be included in articles.
Do not include specific usernames of players or groups of players (guilds) in articles.
Do not try and claim "facts" such as "player x was the first to complete this task" without any verifiable proof.

Facts and trivia

If you have a piece of information or trivia that you would like to add to an article, yet are unsure of its accuracy, leave a note on the talk page of the article so that all editors can discuss it. Do not engage in edit wars on the article page.