Wither Springs Wiki:Manual of Style

The purpose of the Manual of Style is to provide a series of guidelines for users when creating articles for the. These elements should be followed accordingly and with each article created. Doing so reduces any potential workload on other users. Any questions regarding this manual may be directed at the administrators.

If you are unfamiliar with Wiki-style editing, please review the Wikia Help page. If you are inexperienced with Wiki code, please play around with the Sandbox.

=Concrete Elements= The following sections of the Style Guide do not pertain to the on-going discussion regarding our style of writing.

Specific Wiki Notes

 * Don't use nicknames (unless they're so well-used such as Jay Donovan). For example, Allister Mayston and not "Al".


 * The Hallowed should be "The Hallowed" and not "the Hallowed". Keep "the" lowercase, unless it's the beginning of a sentence, of course.


 * Keep images 250px and under.


 * When linking, keep unnecessary words such as 'the' and 'a' out of the link itself ("the Hallowed" is an exception when linking because it is the correct name). For example:
 * Jay goes to the St. Abraham Hospital (incorrect)
 * Jay goes to the St. Abraham Hospital (correct)


 * All monster names should be capitalized.


 * This wiki is written in professional modern English. Cultural slang should be avoided. For example, instead of using 'chap' which is British slang, use a more universally acceptable word such as 'man' or 'fellow'. Never use "whilst" -- instead, use "while". Whilst is a word that is becoming increasingly archaic, similar to how "thee" "thou" "thine" "hast" "hath" are rarely used. Using "singular they" is also perfectly acceptable on this wiki.

Trivia Sections
The purpose of Trivia sections are to add interesting notes that cannot be placed anywhere else in the article. You would not put "The shotgun is an effective weapon for defeating the SmileBeast" in a Trivia section because it would fit better in the main article. Information in Trivia sections should still be notable enough, as well as pertain to the article's subjects.

Italic Titles
Games or titles should be written in italic for easier understanding of what it means. For example:
 * Wither Springs (video game)

When referring to the actual town of Wither Springs itself, do NOT write it in italics.

Using 'You'
It is preferred that editors do not 'you' when referring to the main character or the player as it sounds less professional, as well as 'we'.


 * For example, instead of "You will eventually find Angelica trapped in a hospital room", use "Jay" (the player character) or "The player" (the one playing the game) instead so that it becomes either "The player will eventually find Angelica trapped in a hospital room." or "Jay eventually finds Angelica trapped in a hospital room."


 * Another example is instead of "You can find the syringe in the alleyway.", use "The player can find the syringe in the alleyway." or "Jay can find the syringe in the alleyway."


 * The only exception when using 'You' are Puzzle articles as they are written as guides that explain the puzzle to the reader.

Additionally, always avoid writing in the first-person when writing articles, especially in character or monster pages.

Article Organization
Article organization should be in this order, from top to bottom:
 * Infoboxes
 * Disambiguation (should be indented once, and in italics)
 * Main quote
 * Introduction paragraph
 * The bulk of the article, under headings

...and near the end of the article:
 * Creator's comment (if there is one.)
 * Quotes (in point form. Try to keep it a limit of 20 or so.)
 * Trivia
 * Gallery (very large galleries should have a width of 120)
 * Content Templates (Click here to see an example)

Referencing Other Characters
Whenever a character is first introduced into an article, they should always be referenced by their full name, unless such information is unavailable. Subsequent mentions of a character by name may use their first name or another name they are commonly referred by.

Spoiler Policy
A general spoiler warning exists on the Main Page of the. This essentially negates the need for subsequent spoiler tags. However, it is preferred that all game, film, or comic namespaces include a spoiler tag as a precaution. If a character page is encountered bearing a spoiler tag, feel free to remove it.

The exception for this rule is in concern to any article detailing newly released media. Each article should be tagged with a spoiler, and should remain tagged as such for 30 days.

Is an Article a Stub, or Is It Incomplete?
While it is a tenement of Wikia and the Wiki format that all articles can be improved, any article that is encountered and thought to be unfinished should be tagged as such. We have three templates to fulfill such a purpose.


 * Cleanup Template - This template should be used on articles that are generally complete, but suffer from severe grammatical issues or poor Wiki coding.


 * Stub Template - Please insert this template into an article that consists of only a few sentences, but concerns itself with a large body of content, such as a game or main character article. Most item articles aren't considered stubs.


 * Incomplete Article Template - This template should be placed into articles that present some substantial information, but lack a majority of available information.

If an article looks as though it could be tagged with more than one of the above templates, please address the issue on the article's talk page.

Main articles
To set up a main article link, use this template where X is the name of the main article.

 

For example, to make a main article link to Angelica Dowling, it should be:

 

which becomes:

=Writing Style= The has begun to really grow, both as a wiki and community.

The suggested change-in-question is whether or not to present ourselves as an In-Universe wiki or an Out-Of-Universe wiki. Both styles have their ups and downs, and though we won't have to dedicate ourselves solely to one style or the other, if we choose to incorporate a sense of In-Universe-ness, it will require the effort and cooperation of our entire userbase.

Once we have reached a consensus, this page will be edited to reflect our choice, with tips and info on how contributors can better adhere to our chosen style.

In-Universe vs. Out-Of-Universe
An Out-of-Universe style comes across as much more formal, with information being key and informing the reader in a clear, concise manner being the goal.

The Out-of-Universe style is firm and offers little leeway for embellishment, relying instead on pure information as a means to get its point across. Below, the In-Universe style is more flexible in its content, yet still adheres to the premise of informing the reader about the topic. Rather than break down the fourth wall by clearly stating what media the subject has appeared in, the article attempts to seamlessly integrate it all together, without relying on the existence of the real-world to get its point across.

Each style has its strengths and weaknesses, like all things in life.

An Out-of-Universe style is, simply, easier to write, and requires only the most basic intimacy with the topic at hand. It also presents its information in an uncomplicated way, offering links to the different mediums the subject of the article has appeared in, which eases the learning process. It also makes it easier for those with little or no knowledge on the subject to become familiar with it.

An In-Universe style is harder to write and design an article for, typically requiring familiar knowledge with the topic at hand. It also requires the contributor to think and write in a way that makes it possible to pull all possible information together, while ignoring the fact that the content comes from a fictional work and is rooted only in the media that it appears in. An In-Universe style is also more relaxed in its content and more natural in its presentation.

The community has decided to use an out-of-universe style.

Past Tense vs. Present Tense
A minor point of contention, completely independent of the style debate, is whether or not to write our articles in the past or present tense. It really doesn't matter which is used, but should be made uniform throughout the wiki. Most, if not all, of our articles seem to use present tense, so this almost seems to be a non-issue.

Multiple links
Please make attempts to avoid making multiple links to the same article. For example, if you already have a link to the page Needleman in an article, please don't add another link to the same page later in the article.

Uploading pictures

 * When uploading new pictures, please put them in their correct category and label them. If you don't, GoopKing will cry.


 * Please give pictures sensible titles. Uploading a picture with the title 214354098532947uqw8ei.jpg doesn't help anybody. Try to add the name of any character in the image into the title, or any significant locations.


 * This is not Photobucket. Do not upload pictures and do nothing with them.


 * Please make sure all pictures are cropped nicely, especially if they're letterboxed with black bars on the top and bottom.