Project:Manual of Style

The Manual of Style is a style guide for all Credits Wiki articles. This page may be supported by further detail pages, however, if any contradiction arises, this page always has precedence.

Please read through this guide before contributing to the wiki.

Article titles
A title should be an easily recognizable name or description of the article's content. A good title meets the following five criteria, and if these criteria are in conflict, they need to be balanced against one another.


 * 1) Recognizable: The title is a name or description of the subject that someone familiar with the subject area will recognize.
 * 2) Naturalness: The title is one that readers are likely to look or search for and that editors would naturally use to link to the article from other articles. Such titles usually convey what the subject is actually called in English.
 * 3) Precision: The title is sufficiently precise to unambiguously identify the article's subject and distinguish it from other subjects.
 * 4) Conciseness: The title is no longer than necessary to identify the article's subject and distinguish it from other subjects.
 * 5) Consistency: The title is consistent with the pattern of similar articles' titles.

When naming an article:


 * Always capitalize the initial letter
 * Do not use A, An, or The as the first word, except in cases where it is an inseparable part of a name (The Land Before Time, The Little Mermaid)
 * Do not use punctuation unless it is a part of the name (Star Trek: First Contact, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring)

There is often more than one suitable title for an article. In this case, the best title available should be used and redirects should be created if possible.

It is not always possible to use the exact title that may be desired for an article, as that title may have other meanings, and therefore may have been already used for other articles. According to the above, when a more detailed title is necessary to distinguish an article topic from another, use only as much additional detail as necessary, placed in parentheses behind the title. For example, it would be appropriate to title an article Shameless (US), as the addition of (US) is precise enough to distinguish the title from other uses of the term such as Shameless (UK).

Capital letters
Unnecessary capitalization should be avoided. This is sometimes referred to as the "down style". Capitalization should be reserved for proper names only. The following points are noteworthy:


 * Capitalization of "The": Generally do not capitalize "the" in the middle of a sentence. For example, "Jean-Luc Picard is the captain of the USS Enterprise" (not "of The USS Enterprise"). However there are some conventional exceptions, including most titles of artistic works.
 * Titles: Royal styles are capitalized ("Sir Patrick Stewart"); exceptions may apply for particular offices.
 * Calendar items: Names of months, days of the week, and holidays start with a capital letter ("January", "February"), whereas the units of time ("week", "month", "year") and seasons are in lower case ("summer"), except in personifications or in proper names for periods or events ("Captain America: The Winter Soldier").
 * Locations: Generic words for establishments and political or geographical units (cities, towns, and countries) do not take capitals. For example, "Star Trek: First Contact was filmed in the town of". Names of institutions and political or geographical units are proper nouns and require capitals, such as "Star Trek: First Contact was filmed in the town of Green Valley, Arizona".

Spelling
In English there is a national variety of the language, e.g. American English vs. British English. These varieties differ in many ways, including vocabulary (elevator vs. lift), spelling (center vs. centre), date formatting ("April 13" vs. "13 April"), and occasionally grammar. Check out the Comparison of American and British English article on Wikipedia to determine the differences between the varieties.

In order to ensure consistency, American spelling should be used on all articles on the wiki, on any templates, and on all official projects and blog posts.