User:Dr. Clayton Forrestor/scratch

http://borderlands.wikia.com/wiki/User:Dr._Clayton_Forrestor/scratch2 =Style Guide= The style guide exists to ensure all edits on the Borderlands Wiki are consistent. Although one way is often as good as another, keeping the articles consistent means that they will be easier to read and to use.

Article Titles
Articles must have appropriate titles. All words major contained within the page title should be capitalized. The only words that should not be capitalized are smaller words, such as "and", "or" and "the". The first word in the title should always be capitalized.

Titles of singular topics should not be pluralised. Therefore, an article about vehicles should be named Vehicle and an article about combat rifles should be named Combat Rifle. Only where the subject's in-game designation is strictly plural should the article be pluralised (for example, Deep Fathoms.)

The subject of the article should be in bold only in the first occurrence of the word. Any subsequent occurrences are left as plain text.

Writing articles
The following should be kept in mind when writing articles.


 *  Nobody owns the articles. This means that words such as 'I', 'you', and 'we' should be left out.
 * Articles should be written in the third person. A simple guideline towards doing this is to imagine writing an article as a reference text for somebody who has never played Borderlands.
 * Keep bias out of articles. The Wiki should remain neutral and any personal opinions must be kept out. Useful ideas are allowed in articles.
 * Do not add any unverifiable facts. Link sourcing for proof.
 * Avoid abbreviations in sentences. While a few acronyms (SMG, SDU) are common and acceptable, other kinds of text abbreviation can detract from legibility. Examples: "12" is not a word; "NE" is not a direction; and txt shorthand, such as "ur", has no place in a fully fleshed wiki article.

Introductory Sentence
Every article should start with an introductory sentence, naming the thing this article is about (cp. page name), what kind of thing it is (game function, item type, etc.), where users may find/obtain it and when it has been released. Please make sure to use a determiner ("the", etc.) at the beginning of a sentence. Example: " The Borderlands Wiki is a..." instead of "Borderlands Wiki is a...".

Basic form of an item introductory sentence: "The (page name) is a (type of item) [optional: on Borderlands], that has been released on (date) and is available (way to access/get this item)."

Examples
"The Liquid Lance is a Sniper Rifle that has been released on the original content and is available looting or purchase.  -OR-  The Liquid Lance is a purchasable Sniper Rifle on Borderlands that has been released on the original content."

"The Lancer is a vehicle that has been released on February 3rd 2010 and can be spawned at any DLC3 Catch-A-Ride after completing the OMG APC mission."

"The town of T-bone Junction is a new area on Borderlands that has been introduced on May 26th 2010, which is available to all players and can be accessed from any fast travel kiosk."

Sections
Where appropriate, articles should be split up into sections. This makes them easier to read and edit. Each section should have a title.

The title of each section should follow the same guidelines as article titles. These are as follows:


 * The title should not capitalize all words and should only capitalize titles of items in game.
 * The first word should be capitalized.
 * Only titles of plural items should be pluralized.
 * There should not be links in the title.
 * The title should be as short as possible.

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:

This subsection's heading was created with the markup:

Text
Text may be styled to improve the appearance of the article.

Font colour
In rare cases, font colour can be used in articles. Light colours should be used to emphasize certain points. Using bold is a preferred alternative to using colours. Do not use dark colours, as the do not show up well on the black background.

Bulleted lists
Bullet points can be used to create a list. To use a bullet point, put an asterisk (*) before each point. For example:

*Point 1
 * Point 2
 * Point 3
 * Sub-point 3

Comes out as:


 * Point 1
 * Point 2
 * Point 3
 * Sub-point 3

Numbered lists
Numbered lists are similar to bulleted lists. They should be used to order items or in step-by-step instructions. To create a number list, put a number sign (#) before each point. For example:


 * 1) Point 1
 * 2) Point 2
 * 3) Point 3

Comes out as:


 * 1) Point 1
 * 2) Point 2
 * 3) Point 3

Bold and italics
Put two apostrophes ( italics ) around text to make it italic. Italics should be used to emphasise single word or phrases. It should not be used for long bits of text.

Put three apostrophes ( bold ) around text to make it bold. Bold should be used to emphasise longer parts of text, or where italics is not enough. The first appearance of an article's title should be in bold. Any subsequent appearances should be left as plain text.

Links
A link is placed by putting square brackets ( link ) around words. This will make a link to the article, using the exact words in the link. A link can also be made with a different word as the link, bye putting the title, a | symbol then the word you want to appear in square brackets. For example, player appears as player but is linked to the Mordecai article.


 * Links should be added to any articles named on a page.
 * Links should not be made to the same article multiple times. This means that if the word Mordecai is mentioned five times, only the first appearance of the word should be linked.
 * Plurals can be linked to by placing the s outside the box. For example, Skags will link to Skag and will display as Skags.

Contents of this page by Ajraddatz were taken from Farmville by The Evil Dr. F

=Borderlands Wiki:Manual of Style= This page is a list of guidelines provided by the community for the benefit of all users.

This MoS is based on WoWWiki's Manual of Style.

This Manual of Style outlines a standard of clean, consistent formatting for articles on this wiki. The formatting described here is a guideline and can be overridden where circumstances warrant it. These guidelines will never be unerringly perfect for every situation. However, please try your best to keep to the advice outlined in this article so others may use your edits as an example when creating and editing their own articles.

These guidelines are a summary of the most important guidelines for this wiki, but a more expansive set of style guidelines can be found on Wikipedia at Wikipedia Manual of Style. A sample article based off these guidelines can be found on Project:Manual of Style/Sample.

Edit Summaries
Any edit to a mainspace article without a summary may be rolled back (or undone by non rollbackers with an "MoS" summary). This is not a requirement but a call to common courtesy. Editors have been working on this wiki for years and to not give reason for editing at this stage is simply rude.

Article layout
One of the most important parts of wiki editing is how to structure an article. The structure is a powerful thing: it dictates what information the reader reads and when he or she reads it. It can influence what people contribute, where it goes, and how it might be written. Structure has the power to inform or confuse the same way good or bad writing does. Keep a well structured article, and you're more likely to have a high quality one.

Organize sections in an article in a hierarchical structure like you would an outline. Keep it logical, but feel free to forsake strict logic for readability. Wherever possible, try to have an introduction for each section. Just like the article as a whole, the section should start with an introduction and then have its subsections below it. Try using a shallow structure rather than a deep one. Too many nested sections usually leads to a confusing or unreadable article.

Above all, keep your layout consistent. Don't throw your reader a curve ball too often. The following sections will offer some good advice on keeping your articles clean, consistent, and clear.

Lead section
Unless an article is very short, it should start with an introductory lead section, before the first subheading. The lead should not be explicitly entitled == Introduction == or any equivalent header.

The lead should be capable of standing alone as a concise overview of the article, establishing context, and explaining why the subject is interesting or notable. It should be between one or two paragraphs long, and should be written in a clear and accessible style so that the reader is encouraged to read the rest of the article.

If possible, make the title the subject of the first sentence of the article. For example, write "King Frederick II was King of Terra during and after the Second War ."

The first time the article mentions the title, put it in bold using three apostrophes —  produces article title. Avoid other uses of bold in the first sentence, except for alternative titles of an article; for example:

The blood elves, or sin'dorei, are a race comprised of former high elves...

Follow the normal rules for italics in choosing whether to put part or all of the title in italics. This will mainly apply to the titles of books and games:

The Demon Soul is a novel in the  War of the Ancients  trilogy.

Do not put links in the bold reiteration of the title in the article's lead sentence. For example, "The night elves  are an ancient race..." versus "The night elves are an ancient race."

Table of contents
A table of contents will automatically appear in articles with a minimum of four headings (unless forced by the below options). By default this will be left-aligned above the first section heading.


 * To the force a TOC position (left-aligned):
 * To completely remove the TOC from a page:

The table of contents can be right-aligned - but only if it is very long (over 15 entries) and an information box is not occupying the top-right corner of the article (rare exceptions exist).


 * Right-aligned TOC that floats next to text: tocright

Section headings
Use the  (two equal signs) style markup for main headings, equivalent to. Do not use a single . This is because a single   creates an   heading which is already used by the page header and would be bad coding. Also, do not use wikilinks in subject headings. When edited, these sections become confusing in the edit history because of the link code. Consider instead putting the word in the first or second sentence of the section and linking it there.

Avoid special characters in headings, such as an ampersand (&), a plus sign (+), curly braces ({}), or square braces ([]). In place of the ampersand, use the word "and" unless the ampersand is part of a formal name.

Always keep headings short and simple. Headings are guidelines to your page's structure and should inform the reader rather than confuse. To keep it short, avoid unnecessary words or redundancy in headings, i.e. avoid a, an, and the, pronouns, repeating the article title, and so on. Also, try to avoid giving identical titles to different sections.

Images
Images make an article memorable and pretty. They can speak where words fail. At the same time, misplaced or untidy images can detract from an article. When choosing images, keep in mind placement, size, and the appropriateness of the image to the section. Let images flow with the text instead of break it up.

Large images such as screenshots should use the "thumb" (example: ) option which displays large images as thumbnails. Images should generally be right aligned to enhance readability by allowing a smooth flow of text down the left margin - the "thumb" option does this by default. If an infobox is not being used in an article, a right aligned picture in the lead section is encouraged.

For more information, see Help:Images.
 * See also: policy.

Galleries
When an article has many images, or can be improved by having more, and having inline images be detract from the readbility of an articles, the use of a  section is encouraged.

Tables
Tables should use a "class" design when possible, and should include as little 'fancy' formatting as possible. Tables can also be made sortable by adding a "sortable" class.

For long tables, it is recommended to create an "alt" class to alternate row colours to enhance readability. The below examples use "toccolours" as a class, but this is only for the purposes of demonstration, and isn't generally recommended.

Navigation boxes
Navigation boxes can use or be based off Navbox. Generally they should be placed at the end of an article, above the categories.

Article message boxes
''Add me! You may want to look at Wikipedia:Article message boxes.''

See also, references, external links, and navigational tables
The last sections, if they exist, should always be "See also", followed by "External links", followed by "References". In the case of "See also", use bullets to list the internal links. Under the references section should be placed. Finally, in the external links should be all external links.

Categories
Categories should be added to the end of an article - a full list can be found on Special:Categories. They take the form. Many of the articles on the make use of categories auto-generated by information supplied in the infobox. It is best practice to let the infobox generate the categories rather than try to add them manually.

All articles should be accessible starting from Category:Browse, via subcategories.

Disambiguation
A disambiguation line is sometimes put at the beginning of an article to link to another article with the same or similar title. The line should be italicized and indented once. Most usually contain the phrase, "Were you looking for X?" For example:


 * Were you looking for " The Battle of Terrafield", an official novel? 

The template for can also be used for this purpose.

Quotations
Format a long quote (over four lines) as an italicized 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  element.

Grammar
Grammar is a writer's toolbox. You can't build good sentences without knowing how to use your tools. Since a wiki article must be as clear as possible for all the people reading it, editors must keep close to correct grammar standards to ensure clear communication.

Capitalization
Titles such as lord or king start with a capital letter when used as a title (followed by a name): "King Arthas," not "king Arthas." When used generically, they should be in lower case: "Furion is a powerful lord." The correct formal name of an office is treated as a proper noun. Hence: "Anduin is the current King of Stormwind."

Classes should only be capitalized when used as a proper noun, i.e. as someone's name. ("Mechromancer, go be evil" versus "That mechromancer is quite evil.")

Human factions, sentient races, and animal species, should not be capitalized except when used as a proper noun, or at the beginning of a sentence. For example, "bandits" and "scavs" use informal terms to describe groups of people. Conversely formal designations, like the "Lost Legion" and the "Crimson Lance", should always be capitalized.

Spelling
The is inclusive of both English and American English spelling standards. Any content on any article may be written in either standard.

Titles of works
Italics are used for the titles of works, such as books and games. The titles of articles, chapters, and other short works are not italicized but are enclosed in double quotation marks.

For example, italicize  The Last Guardian  and  World of Warcraft , and use quotes for " Arathor and the Troll Wars ".

Writing

 * “I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs” -- Stephen King

We now come to the meat of an article: the words themselves. When you're editing wikis, you're both academic and artist. You have to be accurate, but you also have to be interesting. Neither one can dominate; you have to balance both.

Keep your writing concise. Don't use two words where one will do. Keeping your writing simple will make it easy to understand and easy to expand on. Use complete sentences whenever possible. When you write, use grammar as a toolbox: know the rules, but only break them on purpose.

Check your spelling and grammar. Do not use 'u' in place of 'you' or '2' in place of 'to'. Write the way you would for a class paper or a newspaper article.

Keep all of the topics you cover within the scope of the article. What that means is, you don't need to give a detailed history of humans on the page about Winston Churchill. Consider the article's title as your point of origin and write from that perspective. Make use of the wiki's ability to link to more detailed articles or external sources for more information.

Write from an impersonal perspective.' Do not use "I." For example, do not write, "Hellscream was a fervent member of the Horde. He served both the Old and New Horde, As far as I know ." Avoid drawing attention to the author (yourself) as much as possible.

Be bold. If you know something is wrong, correct it. If you think you could word something better, write it. If an article has a glaring deficiency, fill it. Even if your first attempt isn't golden, you can fix it later or someone else will come along and fix it for you. Don't be afraid to screw up.

Conclusion
Every article can be improved (even this one). Following these guidelines will not ensure a perfect article the first time, but it will give the article a stronger skeleton. It's ultimately your job as an editor to put meat on it.