FORwiki:FORwiki Style Manual
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The FORwiki Style Manual is a set of standards for designing and writing FORwiki documents.
Contents |
General principles
The first principle of style is clarity and cohesion. Style and formatting should be consistent within an article, but obviously not necessarily throughout FORwiki as a whole. Even more, the initial formatting of an article should not be changed by another member of the FORwiki community without very good reason. In case of disagreement over the style of an article, the Administrator should revert to the initial style. Another principle is that many points of usage - such as the treatment of proper names - can be decided by the customary practice of the community. But the overriding principle of style is that articles should be written with clarity and concise. Avoid jargon, vague phrases, and unnecessary complexity.
Titles, headings, and sections
Titles
The following guidelines apply to the titles of FORwiki articles:
- Titles should match the article contents, and should not be too narrow or too broad.
- Titles should be nouns or noun phrases (nominal groups).
- Titles should be short—preferably fewer than ten words.
- Avoid special characters such as the slash (/), plus sign (+), braces ({ }), and square brackets ([ ]).
- The final visible character of a title should not be a punctuation mark, unless the punctuation is part of a name.
Headings
The following guidelines apply to the headings of FORwiki articles:
- Headings provide an overview in the table of contents. Change a heading only after careful consideration, because this will break section links to it within the same article and from other articles. If changing a heading, try to locate and fix broken links.
- Section and subsection names should preferably be unique within a page.
- Section names should not contain links.
- Section names should not explicitly refer to the subject of the article, or to higher-level headings, unless doing so is shorter or clearer.
- Spaced or un-spaced multiple equal signs are the style markup for headings.
- The triple apostrophes () that make words appear in boldface are not used in headings.
- A blank line below the heading is optional; but do include one blank line above the heading, for readability in the edit window.
Sections
The following guidelines apply to the sections of FORwiki articles:
- When linking to a section of an article, go to that section and leave an editor's note to inform others that the section's title is linked.
- Consider a preemptive measure to minimize link corruption when the text of a heading changes.
- Optional appendix sections containing the following information may appear after the body of the article, in the following order: (a) a list of books or other works created by the subject of the article; (b) a list of internal links to related articles; (c) notes and references; (d) a list of recommended relevant books, articles, or other publications that have not been used as sources; and (e) a list of recommended relevant websites that have not been used as sources and do not appear in the earlier appendix sections.