cyanic-selkie/wikianc huggingface dataset:
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Retaining the existing variety
An article should not be edited or renamed simply to switch from one variety of English to another. may be placed on an editor's talk page to explain this.
In ranges that might otherwise be expressed with to or through
If negative values are involved, an unspaced en dash might be confusing:
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Brackets and parentheses
Square brackets are used to indicate editorial replacements and insertions within quotations, though this should never alter the intended meaning. They serve three main purposes:
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In compounds when the connection might otherwise be expressed with to, versus, and, or between
Generally, use a hyphen in compounded proper names of single entities.
Use an en dash between the names of nations or nationalities when referring to an association between them. For people and things identifying with multiple nationalities, use a hyphen when using the combination adjectivally and a space when they are used as nouns, with the first used attributively to modify the second.
A slash or some other alternative may occasionally be better to express a ratio, especially in technical contexts.
Brackets and parentheses
There should be a space after a closing bracket, except where a punctuation mark follows (though a spaced dash would still be spaced after a closing bracket) and in unusual cases similar to those listed for opening brackets.
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Punctuation inside or outside
Do not follow quoted words or fragments with commas inside the quotation marks, except where a longer quotation has been broken up and the comma is part of the full quotation.
Names and titles
The Beatles wrote "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" for their album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Spelling and romanization
A non-English proper name should generally not be italicized, unless it would be for some other reason; this is most commonly when it is the title of a major published work, as in Les Liaisons dangereuses; or when it is being compared in a words-as-words manner to another name for the same subject, e.g., Nuremberg (Nürnberg). When the name should not be italicized, language markup can still be used to ensure proper pronunciation in screen readers, with the unset parameter:.
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Controlling line breaks
Whether a non-breaking space is appropriate depends on context: whereas it is appropriate to use  in prose, it may be counterproductive in a table (where an unattractive break may be acceptable to conserve precious horizontal space) and unnecessary in a short parameter value in an infobox (where a break would never occur anyway).
A line break may occur at a thin space (, or ), which is sometimes used to correct too-close placement of adjacent characters. To prevent this, consider using.
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Dates
Full dates are formatted 10 June 1921 or June 10, 1921; or where the year is omitted, use 10 June or June 10.
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External links
These will appear as:
Where appropriate, use external link templates such as and.
Wikilinks
Linking to sections: A hash sign followed by the appropriate heading will lead to a relevant part of a page. For example,  links to a particular section of the article Apostrophe.
External links
Add external links with discretion; Wikipedia is not a link repository.
Avoid using images to convey text
Textual information should almost always be entered as text rather than as an image. True text can be colored and adjusted with CSS tags and templates, but text in images cannot be. Images are not searchable, are slower to download, and are unlikely to be read as text by devices for the visually impaired. Any important textual information in an image should also appear in the image's alt text, caption, or other nearby text.
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Commas
<li> Modern writing uses fewer commas; there are usually ways to simplify a sentence so that fewer are needed.
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Punctuation inside or outside
Do not follow quoted words or fragments with commas inside the quotation marks, except where a longer quotation has been broken up and the comma is part of the full quotation.
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Second-person pronouns
Avoid addressing the reader using you or your, which sets an inappropriate tone.
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Point of view
Quotation should be used, with attribution, to present emotive opinions that cannot be expressed in Wikipedia's own voice, but never to present cultural norms as simply opinional:
Foreign-language quotations
If the original, untranslated text is available, provide a reference for it or include it, as appropriate.
Commas
<li> Don't let other punctuation distract you from the need for a comma, especially when the comma collides with a bracket or parenthesis:
Quotation marks and external links
External links to article titles should have the title in quotes inside the link. CS1 and CS2 templates do this automatically, and untemplated references should do the same.
Serial commas
In such cases of ambiguity, clarify one of four ways:
Geographical items
Avoid anachronism. An article about Junípero Serra should say he lived in Alta Mexico, not in California, because the latter entity did not yet exist in Serra's time. The Romans invaded Gaul, not France, and Thabo Mbeki was the president of the Republic of South Africa, not of the Cape Colony. To be clear, you may sometimes need to mention the current name of the area (for example "in what is now France"), especially if no English name exists for that area in the relevant historical period.<section end="MOS:GEO" />
Linking
Be conservative when linking within quotations: link only to targets that correspond to the meaning clearly intended by the quote's author. Where possible, link from text outside of the quotation instead – either before it or soon after. (If quoting hypertext, add an editorial note, [link in original] or [link added], as appropriate, to avoid ambiguity as to whether the link was made by the original author.)
Proper names versus generic terms
Treat political or geographic units similarly: The city has a population of 55,000; The two towns merged to become the City of Smithville. Do not mimic the style of local newspapers which refer to their municipality as the City or The City; an exception is the City of London, referred to as the City in a context that already makes the subject clear, as distinct from London and Greater London. When in doubt, use the full name for accessibility reasons; users of text-to-speech systems usually cannot hear a difference between city and City.
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Geographical items
This is an English-language encyclopedia, so established English names are preferred if they exist, and spellings in non-English alphabets should always be transcribed into the Roman alphabet. In general, other articles should refer to places by the names which are used in the articles on those places, according to the rules described at Naming conventions (geographic names). If a different name is appropriate in a given historical or other context, then that may be used instead, although it is normal to follow the first occurrence of such a name with the standard modern name in parentheses.
Strong national ties to a topic
• Christchurch (New Zealand English)
Gender-neutral language
Ships may be referred to using either neuter forms ("it", "its") or feminine forms ("she", "her", "hers"). Either usage is acceptable, but each article should be internally consistent and employ one or the other exclusively. As with all optional styles, articles should not be changed from one style to another unless there is a substantial reason to do so. See.
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In compounds when the connection might otherwise be expressed with to, versus, and, or between
Use an en dash for the names of two or more entities in an attributive compound.
Identity
Disputes over how to refer to a person or group are addressed by Wikipedia content policies, such as those on verifiability, and neutral point of view (and article titles when the term appears in the title of an article).
Capital letters
Wikipedia article titles and section headings use sentence case, not title case; see Article titles and. For capitalization of list items, see. Other points concerning capitalization are summarized below. Full information can be found at Manual of Style/Capital letters. The central point is that Wikipedia does not capitalize something unless it is consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources.
Block quotations
Do not enclose block quotations in quotation marks (and especially avoid large, decorative quotation marks; those provided by the template have been disabled in mainspace). Block quotations using a colored background are also discouraged.
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Strong national ties to a topic
• Australian Defence Force (Australian English)
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Block quotations
Use and so on only for actual quotations; indentation for other purposes is done differently.
Spelling and romanization
Spell a name consistently in the title and the text of an article. For a foreign name, phrase, or word, adopt the spelling most commonly used in English-language reliable sources, including but not limited to those already cited in the article. For punctuation of compounded forms, see relevant guidelines in.
Scrolling lists and collapsible content
Scrolling lists, and collapsible templates that toggle text display between hide and show, can interfere with readers' ability to access our content. Such mechanisms should not be used to conceal "spoiler" information. Templates should not normally be used to store article text at all, as it interferes with editors' ability to find and edit it.
Spelling and romanization
A non-English proper name should generally not be italicized, unless it would be for some other reason; this is most commonly when it is the title of a major published work, as in Les Liaisons dangereuses; or when it is being compared in a words-as-words manner to another name for the same subject, e.g., Nuremberg (Nürnberg). When the name should not be italicized, language markup can still be used to ensure proper pronunciation in screen readers, with the unset parameter:.
Sometimes usage will be influenced by other guidelines, such as, which may lead to different choices in different articles.
Section headings
These are broadly accepted community preferences.
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Wikilinks
Make links only where they are relevant and helpful in the context: Excessive use of hyperlinks can be distracting and may slow the reader down. Redundant links (like the one in the tallest people on Earth) clutter the page and make future maintenance harder. High-value links that worth pursuing should stand out clearly.
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External links
External links should not normally be used in the body of an article. Instead, articles can include an External links section at the end, pointing to further information outside Wikipedia as distinct from citing sources. The standard format is a primary heading,, followed by a bulleted list of links. Identify the link and briefly indicate its relevance to the article. For example:
Names and titles
Many, but not all, of the above items should also be in title case.
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Dates and time
For ranges of dates and times, see.
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Keep markup simple
An HTML character entity is sometimes better than the equivalent Unicode character, which may be difficult to identify in edit mode; for example,  is explicit whereas   (the upper-case form of Greek  ) may be misidentified as the Latin.
Capitalization of The
Generally, do not capitalize the word the in mid-sentence: throughout the United Kingdom, not throughout The United Kingdom. Conventional exceptions include certain proper names (he visited The Hague) and most titles of creative works (Tolkien wrote The Lord of the Rings – but be aware that the may not be part of the title itself, e.g., Homer composed the Odyssey).
Formatting issues
Modifications in font size, blank space, and color are an issue for the Wikipedia site-wide style sheet and should be reserved for special cases only.
Keep markup simple
Other things being equal, keep markup simple. This makes wikitext easier to understand and edit, and the results seen by the reader more predictable. Use HTML and CSS markup sparingly. See: KISS principle.
Guidelines within the Manual of Style
(Links to policy and guidelines on specific questions)
External style guides
Wikipedians are encouraged to familiarize themselves with modern editions of other guides to style and usage, which may cover details not included here. Those that have most influenced the Wikipedia Manual of Style are:
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Formatting issues
Typically, the use of custom font styles:
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Section organization
Infoboxes, images, and related content in the lead section must be right-aligned.
Singular nouns
For the possessive of singular nouns, including proper names and words ending in s, add &apos;s (my daughter's achievement, my niece's wedding, Cortez's men, the boss's office, Illinois's largest employer, Descartes's philosophy, Verreaux's eagle). Exception: abstract nouns ending with an /s/ sound when followed by sake (for goodness' sake, for his conscience' sake). If a name ending in s or z would be difficult to pronounce with &apos;s added (Jesus's teachings), consider rewording (the teachings of Jesus).
Other media files
Other media files include video and audio files. Style recommendations for such files largely follow recommendations for image files (as far as applicable).
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Compass points
Do not capitalize directions such as north, or their related forms (We took the northern road), except where they are parts of proper names (Great North Road, Great Western Drive, South Pole).
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Indentation
Do not abuse block quotation markup to indent non-quotations. Various templates are available for indentation, including and (for inline use).
Effect on nearby punctuation
Italicize only the elements of the sentence affected by the emphasis. Do not italicize surrounding punctuation.
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Formatting issues
Modifications in font size, blank space, and color are an issue for the Wikipedia site-wide style sheet and should be reserved for special cases only.
Quotations within quotations
See.
Brackets and parentheses
If a sentence contains a bracketed phrase, place the sentence punctuation outside the brackets (as shown here). However, where one or more sentences are wholly inside brackets, place their punctuation inside the brackets. There should be no space next to the inner side of a bracket. An opening bracket should usually be preceded by a space. This may not be the case if it is preceded by an opening quotation mark, another opening bracket, or a portion of a word:
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Where more than one style or format is acceptable under the MoS, one should be used consistently within an article and should not be changed without good reason. Edit warring over stylistic choices is unacceptable.
Titles of works
Capitalization in foreign-language titles varies, even over time within the same language; generally, retain the style of the original for modern works, and follow the usage in current English-language reliable sources for historical works. When written in the Latin alphabet, many of these items should also be in italics, or enclosed in quotation marks.
Colons
A colon introduces something that demonstrates, explains, or modifies what has come before, or is a list of items that has just been introduced. The items in such a list may be separated by commas, or if they are more complex and perhaps themselves contain commas, the items should be separated by semicolons or arranged in a bulleted list.
A colon may also be used to introduce direct speech enclosed within quotation marks.
Names and titles
• Poems (long or epic poems italicized)
Semicolons
Above, "Though he had been here before" cannot stand on its own as a sentence, and therefore is not an independent clause.
Block quotations
Format a long quote (more than about forty words or a few hundred characters, or consisting of more than one paragraph, regardless of length) as a block quotation, indented on both sides. Block quotations should be enclosed in.
Semicolons
This incorrect use of a comma between two independent clauses is known as a comma splice; however, in certain kinds of cases, a comma may be used where a semicolon would seem to be called for:
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Other media files
Other media files include video and audio files. Style recommendations for such files largely follow recommendations for image files (as far as applicable).
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In compounds when the connection might otherwise be expressed with to, versus, and, or between
Do not use an en dash for hyphenated personal names, even when they are used as adjectives:
Indentation
Avoid  (description list markup) for simple visual indentation in articles (common as it may be on talk pages). It causes accessibility problems and outputs invalid HTML.
Identity
Use specific terminology. For example, it is often more appropriate for people or things from Ethiopia (a country in Africa) to be described as Ethiopian, not carelessly (with the risk of stereotyping) as African.
Controlling line breaks
It is sometimes desirable to force a text segment to appear entirely on a single linethat is, to prevent a line break (line wrap) from occurring anywhere within it.
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Commas
<li> Place quotation marks by following. This is called "logical quotation".
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Animals, plants, and other organisms
Cultivar and cultivar group names of plants are not italicized, and are capitalized (including the word Group in the name); cultivar names appear within single quotes (Malus domestica 'Red Delicious'), while cultivar groups do not (Cynara cardunculus Scolymus Group).
English vernacular ("common") names are given in lower case in article prose (plains zebra, mountain maple, and southwestern red-tailed hawk) and in sentence case at the start of sentences and in other places where the first letter of the first word is capitalized. They are additionally capitalized where they contain proper names: Przewalski's horse, California condor, and fair-maid-of-France. This applies to species and subspecies, as in the previous examples, as well as to general names for groups or types of organism: bird of prey, oak, great apes, Bryde's whales, livestock guardian dog, poodle, Van cat, wolfdog. When the common name coincides with a scientific taxon, do not capitalize or italicize, except where addressing the organism taxonomically: A lynx is any of the four medium-sized wild cat species within the genus Lynx. Non-English vernacular names, when relevant to include, are handled like any other foreign-language terms: italicized as such, and capitalized only if the rules of the native language require it. Non-English names that have become English-assimilated are treated as English (ayahuasca, okapi).
Section headings
An invisible comment on the same line must be the   markup:
Invisible comments
Invisible comments are useful for alerting other editors to issues such as common mistakes that regularly occur in the article, a section title's being the target of an incoming link, or pointing to a discussion that established a consensus relating to the article. They should not be used to instruct other editors not to perform certain edits, although where existing local consensus is against making such an edit, they may usefully draw the editor's attention to that. Avoid adding too many invisible comments because they can clutter the wiki source for other editors. Check that your invisible comment does not change the formatting, for example by introducing unwanted white space in the rendered page.
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Section organization
An article's content should begin with an introductory – a concise summary of the article – which is never divided into sections. The remainder of the article is typically divided into sections.
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Wikilinks
Initial capitalization: Wikipedia's MediaWiki software does not require that wikilinks begin with an upper-case character. Capitalize the first letter only where this is naturally called for, or when specifically referring to the linked article by its name (see also related rule for italics in cross-references): Snakes are often venomous, but lizards only rarely.
Avoid using images to convey text
For entering textual information as audio, see WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia.
Punctuation inside or outside
Use the "logical quotation" style in all articles, regardless of the variety of English in which they are written. Include terminal punctuation within the quotation marks only if it was present in the original material, and otherwise place it after the closing quotation mark. For the most part, this means treating periods and commas in the same way as question marks: keep them inside the quotation marks if they apply only to the quoted material and outside if they apply to the whole sentence. Examples are given below.
Technical language
Some topics are intrinsically technical, but editors should try to make them understandable to as many readers as possible. Minimize jargon, or at least explain it or tag it using or  for other editors to fix. For unavoidably technical articles, a separate introductory article (like Introduction to general relativity) may be the best solution.
Formatting issues
Specify font sizes (for example with  ) rather than  (like  ). The resulting font size of any text should not drop below 85% of the page's default font size.
Titles of works
The English-language titles of compositions (books and other print works, songs and other audio works, films and other visual media works, paintings and other artworks, etc.) are given in, in which every word is given an initial capital except for certain less important words (as detailed at ). The first and last words in an English-language title are always capitalized.
Quotation marks and internal links
Internal links (wikilinks) accompanied by quotation marks should usually have the quotes outside the link. This applies to song titles. However, quotation marks are needed inside wikilinks when the quotation mark is part of the link, or where the linked display text includes quotation marks indicating slang, nicknames, common names, or similar usage.
Quotations
Brief quotations of copyrighted text may be used to illustrate a point, establish context, or attribute a point of view or idea. While quotations are an indispensable part of Wikipedia, try not to overuse them. Using too many quotes is incompatible with an encyclopedic writing style and may be a copyright infringement. It is generally recommended that content be written in Wikipedia editors' own words. Consider paraphrasing quotations into plain and concise text when appropriate (while being aware that close paraphrasing can still violate copyright).
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Ellipses
Use an ellipsis (plural ellipses) if material is omitted in the course of a quotation, unless square brackets are used to gloss the quotation.
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Captions
Photographs and other graphics should have captions, unless they are unambiguous depictions of the subject of the article or when they are "self-captioning" images (such as reproductions of album or book covers). In a biography article no caption is necessary for a portrait of the subject pictured alone, but one might be used to give the year, the subject's age, or other circumstances of the portrait along with the name of the subject.
For a quotation within a quotation
Use single quotes: For deeper nesting, alternate between single and double quotes:
Section organization
Certain standardized templates and wikicode that are not sections go at the very top of the article, before the content of the lead section, and in the following order:
Animals, plants, and other organisms
When using taxonomic ("scientific") names, capitalize and italicize the genus: Berberis, Erithacus. (Supergenus and subgenus, when applicable, are treated the same way.) Italicize but do not capitalize taxonomic ranks at the level of species and below: Berberis darwinii, Erithacus rubecula superbus, Acacia coriacea subsp. sericophylla; no exception is made for proper names forming part of scientific names. Higher taxa (order, family, etc.) are capitalized in Latin (Carnivora, Felidae) but not in their English equivalents (carnivorans, felids); they are not italicized in either form, except for viruses, where all names accepted by the ICTV are italicized (Retroviridae).
Slashes (strokes)
In circumstances involving a distinction or disjunction, the en dash is usually preferable to the slash: the digital–analog distinction.
Names and titles
• Songs (albums, song cycles, operas, operettas, and oratorios italicized)
Commas
</li>
Quotation marks
In the material below, the term quotation includes conventional uses of quotation marks such as for titles of songs, chapters, episodes, and so on. Quotation marks are also used in other contexts, such as in cultivar names.
Scrolling lists and collapsible content
When such features are used, take care that the content will still be accessible on devices that do not support JavaScript or CSS, and to the greater than 60% of Wikipedia readers who use the mobile version of the site, which has a limited set of features and does not support collapsing (any collapsible templates will either be automatically uncollapsed or hidden entirely). Mobile ability to access the content in question is easy to test with the "Mobile view" link at the bottom of each page.
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Quotation marks
In the material below, the term quotation includes conventional uses of quotation marks such as for titles of songs, chapters, episodes, and so on. Quotation marks are also used in other contexts, such as in cultivar names.
Article titles
For formatting guidance see the section, noting the following:
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Strong national ties to a topic
• Vancouver (Canadian English)
Gender identity
Specific guidelines apply to any person whose gender might be questioned, and any living transgender or non-binary person. In summary:
No common usage in English
Foreign terms should be used sparingly.
Ligatures
Ligatures should be used in languages in which they are standard (hence Moreau's last words were clin d'œil is preferable to Moreau's last words were clin d'oeil) but not in English (encyclopedia or encyclopaedia, not encyclopædia), except in proper names (Æthelstan, not Aethelstan).
Block quotations
Line breaks and indentation inside a or  are generally ignored; use poem or  for poetry, lyrics, and similar material:
Scrolling lists and collapsible content
When hiding content is desired, it must be done using the  parameter of relevant templates, or manually-added CSS classes , and   (see Help:Collapsing). Other methods of hiding content should not be used, as they may render content inaccessible to many users, such as those browsing Wikipedia with JavaScript disabled, browsing the mobile version, or using proxy services such as Google Web Light.
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Brackets and parentheses
If a sentence includes subsidiary material enclosed in square or round brackets, it must still carry terminal punctuation those brackets, regardless of any punctuation within the brackets. However, if the entire sentence is within brackets, the closing punctuation falls within the brackets. (This sentence is an example.)
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Commas
<ul> <li> A pair of commas can bracket an appositive, relative clause, or parenthetical phrase (as can brackets or dashes, though with greater interruption of the sentence). For example:
Always use a pair of commas for this, unless another punctuation mark takes the place of the second comma: </li>
Original wording
Use ellipses to indicate omissions from quoted text. Legitimate omissions include extraneous, irrelevant, or parenthetical words, and unintelligible speech (umm and hmm), but do not omit text where doing so would remove important context or alter the meaning of the text. Vulgarities and obscenities should be shown exactly as they appear in the quoted source; Wikipedians should never bowdlerize words (G-d d--m it!), but if the text being quoted itself does so, copy the text verbatim and use to indicate that the text is quoted as shown in the source.
Section headings
It is more usual practice to put such comments the heading.
Scrolling lists and collapsible content
This includes reference lists, tables and lists of article content, image galleries, and image captions.
Double or single
Most quotations take double quotation marks (Bob said: "Jim ate the apple."). Exceptions:
Spelling and romanization
The use of diacritics (such as accent marks) for foreign words is neither encouraged nor discouraged; their usage depends on whether they appear in verifiable reliable sources in English, and on the constraints imposed by specialized Wikipedia guidelines. Provide redirects from alternative forms that use or exclude diacritics.
Block quotations
This gives: "What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore         Meant in croaking 'Nevermore.'"
Official names
Official names (of companies, organizations, or places) should not be altered. (St Thomas' Hospital should therefore be rendered as St Thomas's Hospital or St. Thomas Hospital, even for consistency.)
Technical language
Avoid excessive wikilinking (linking within Wikipedia) as a substitute for parenthetic explanations such as the one in this sentence. Do not introduce new and specialized words simply to teach them to the reader when more common alternatives will do.
Brackets and parentheses
Square brackets are used to indicate editorial replacements and insertions within quotations, though this should never alter the intended meaning. They serve three main purposes:
Verb tense
Always use present tense for verbs that describe genres, types and classes, even if the subject of the description (e.g. program, library, device) no longer exists, is discontinued or is unsupported/unmaintained.
Technical language
When the notions named by jargon are too complex to explain concisely in a few parenthetical words, write one level down. For example, consider adding a brief background section with tags pointing to the full treatment article(s) of the prerequisite notions; this approach is practical only when the prerequisite concepts are central to the exposition of the article's main topic and when such prerequisites are not too numerous. Short articles, such as stubs, generally do not have such sections.
Brackets and parentheses
If a sentence includes subsidiary material enclosed in square or round brackets, it must still carry terminal punctuation those brackets, regardless of any punctuation within the brackets. However, if the entire sentence is within brackets, the closing punctuation falls within the brackets. (This sentence is an example.)
Brackets and linking
Square brackets inside of links must be escaped:
Opportunities for commonality
For an international encyclopedia, using vocabulary common to all varieties of English is preferable.
Scrolling lists and collapsible content
Collapsed or auto-collapsing cells or sections may be used with tables if they simply repeat information covered in the main text (or are purely supplementary, e.g., several past years of statistics in collapsed tables for comparison with a table of uncollapsed current stats). Auto-collapsing is often a feature of navboxes. A few infoboxes also use pre-collapsed sections for infrequently accessed details. If information in a list, infobox, or other non-navigational content seems extraneous or trivial enough to inspire pre-collapsing it, consider raising a discussion on the article (or template) talk page about whether it should be included at all. If the information is important and the concern is article density or length, consider dividing the article into more sections, integrating unnecessarily list-formatted information into the article prose, or splitting the article.
Block quotations
Or quote such material inline, with line breaks indicated by, and paragraph or stanza breaks by.
Names and titles
• Short stories (books and periodicals italicized)
Plurals
Use the appropriate plural; allow for cases (such as excursus or hanif) in which a word is now listed in major English dictionaries, and normally takes an s or es plural, not its original plural: two excursuses, not two excursus as in Latin; three hanifs, not three hunafa as in Arabic.
Some collective nouns – such as team (and proper names of them), army, company, crowd, fleet, government, majority, mess, number, pack, and party – may refer either to a single entity or to the members that compose it. In British English, such words are sometimes treated as singular, but more often treated as plural, according to context (but singular is not actually ). In North American English, these words are almost invariably treated as singular; the major exception is that when a sports team is referred to by its short name, plural verbs are commonly used, e.g. the Heat are playing the Lakers tonight.
Names of towns and countries usually take singular verbs (even when grammatically plural: the United States is in North America, the Netherlands is also known as Holland), but exceptionally in British English, typically when used to refer to a sports team named after a town or country or when discussing actions of a government, plural is used. For example, in England are playing Germany tomorrow, England refers to a football team; but in England is in the Northern hemisphere, it refers to the country. See also including.
Section organization
As explained in detail in, several kinds of material (mostly optional) may appear after the main body of the article, in the following order:
New content added to this page should directly address a persistently recurring style issue.
Names and titles
• Individual episodes of television and radio series and serials (series title italicized)
Compass points
Capitalize names of regions if they have attained proper-name status, including informal conventional names (Southern California; the Western Desert), and derived terms for people (e.g., a Southerner as someone from the Southern United States). Do not capitalize descriptive names for regions that have not attained the status of proper names, such as southern Poland.
Names and titles
• Myths and epics
Commas
<li> Modern writing uses fewer commas; there are usually ways to simplify a sentence so that fewer are needed.
Names and titles
• Prayers
Pronunciation
Pronunciation in Wikipedia is indicated in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). In most situations, for ease of understanding by the majority of readers and across variants of the language, quite broad IPA transcriptions are best for English pronunciations. See Help:IPA/English and Help:IPA (general) for keys, and for templates that link to these keys. For English pronunciations, pronunciation respellings may be used the IPA.
Compass points
Do not capitalize directions such as north, or their related forms (We took the northern road), except where they are parts of proper names (Great North Road, Great Western Drive, South Pole).
Semicolons
A sentence may contain several semicolons, especially when the clauses are parallel in construction and meaning; multiple unrelated semicolons are often signs that the sentence should be divided into shorter sentences or otherwise refashioned.
First-person pronouns
To maintain an objective and impersonal encyclopedic voice, an article should never refer to its editors or readers using I, my, we, us, our, or similar forms: We note that some believe that bats are bugs. But some such forms are acceptable in certain figurative uses. For example:
Second-person pronouns
Avoid addressing the reader using you or your, which sets an inappropriate tone.
Spelling and romanization
Names not originally written in one of the Latin-script alphabets (written for example in Greek, Cyrillic, or Chinese scripts) must be given a romanized form for use in English. Use a systematically transliterated or otherwise romanized name (Aleksandr Tymoczko, Wang Yanhong); but if there is a more common English form of the name (Tchaikovsky, Chiang Kai-shek), use that form instead.
Original wording
In direct quotations, retain dialectal and archaic spellings, including capitalization (but not archaic glyphs and ligatures, as detailed below).
MOS:
Wikilinks
Check links: Ensure the destination is the intended one; many dictionary words lead to disambiguation pages and not to complete or well-chosen articles.
MOS:COLLAPSE
Brackets and linking
If a URL itself contains square brackets, the wiki-text should use the URL-encoded form, rather than ... . This will avoid truncation of the link after.
External style guides
For additional reference works, see notable entries at Style guide and .
Article openings
In the bolded text typically appearing at the opening of an article:
Contractions
Avoid contractions, which have little place in formal writing. For example, write do not instead of don't. Use of o'clock is an exception. Contracted titles such as Dr. and St generally should not be used but may apply in some contexts (e.g., quoted material, place names, titles of works).
Quotations in italics
Do not use italics for quotations. Instead, use quotation marks for short quotations and block quoting for long ones.
Geographical items
<section begin="MOS:GEO" />Geographical or place names are the nouns used to refer to specific places and geographic features. These names often give rise to conflict, because the same places are called different things by different peoples speaking different languages. Many place names have a historical context that should be preserved, but common sense should prevail. There can be few places that have not been parts of more than one culture or have had only one name. As proper nouns, all such place names (but not terms for types of places) have major words capitalized.
Punctuation inside or outside
If the quoted sentence is followed by a clause identifying the speaker, use a comma outside the quotation mark instead of a full stop inside it, but retain any other terminal punctuation, such as question marks.
Italics within quotations
Use italics within quotations to reproduce emphasis that exists in the source material. If it is not clear that the source already included italics (or some other styling) for emphasis, add the editorial note [emphasis in original] after the quotation.
If adding emphasis that was not in the original, add the editorial note [emphasis added] after the quotation.
Names and titles
• Sections of musical pieces (pieces italicized)
Keep markup simple
In general, wikitext formatting is considered easier to use than HTML and wikitext is preferred if there are equivalents; see Help:HTML in wikitext. Obsolete elements and attributes should be updated or removed. There are many templates that allow HTML markup to be used without putting it in articles directly, such as em (see MOS:EMPHASIS) and strong (see MOS:BOLD).
Punctuation after formulae
A sentence that ends with a formula should have terminal punctuation (period, exclamation mark, or question mark) after the formula. Within a sentence, place other punctuation (such as commas or colons) after the formula just as if the text were not a formula. See.
Consecutive punctuation marks
Where a word or phrase that includes terminal punctuation ends a sentence, do not add a second terminal punctuation mark. If a quoted phrase or title ends in a question mark or exclamation mark, it may confuse readers as to the nature of the article sentence containing it, and so is usually better reworded to be mid-sentence. Where such a word or phrase occurs mid-sentence, new terminal punctuation (usually a period) must be added at the end.
Verb tense
By default, write articles in the present tense, including those covering works of fiction and products or works that have been discontinued. Generally, use past tense only for past events, and for subjects that are dead or no longer meaningfully exist. Use past tense for articles about periodicals no longer produced, with common-sense exceptions.
Punctuation and footnotes
Ref tags () are used to create footnotes (sometimes called endnotes or just notes), as citation footnotes and sometimes explanatory notes. All ref tags should follow the text to which the footnote applies, with no intervening space. Refs are placed adjacent punctuation, not before (apart from the exceptions below). Adjacent ref tags should have no space between them, nor should there be any between ref tags and inline dispute/cleanup templates.
Section organization
Stand-alone list articles have some additional layout considerations.
Dates and time
For ranges of dates and times, see.
Dates should be linked only when they are germane and topical to the subject, as discussed at.
No common usage in English
Use italics for phrases in other languages and for isolated foreign words that are not current in English (except certain cases in other guidance). Where possible, this is best done with the template using the appropriate ISO language code, e.g.,. This does not apply to foreign names of people or places. There are alternatives to the template which also provide additional information about a foreign word or phrase, such as a link to the language name;. The template and related templates automatically italicize text for Latin-alphabet scripts, so do not add separate italics markup around or within them. Non-Latin-based scripts like Chinese should not be italicized, since it is already obvious the material cannot be English, and some such scripts do not support italicization.
In compounds when the connection might otherwise be expressed with to, versus, and, or between
Do not use spaces around the en dash in any of the compounds above.
Write first occurrences in full
Except in special circumstances, common abbreviations (such as PhD, DNA, USSR) need not be expanded even on first use.
Other uses (em dash only)
—Charlotte Brontë
Capitalization of The
There are special considerations for: band names · institution names · nicknames · titles of works · trademarks.
Slashes (strokes)
An unspaced slash may be used:
Other dashes
For a negative sign or subtraction operator use, which can also be generated by clicking on the − following the ± in the Insert toolbar beneath the edit window. Do not use inside a  tag, as the character gives a syntax error; instead use a normal hyphen.
Common usage in English
Loanwords and borrowed phrases that have common usage in English – Gestapo, samurai, vice versa – do not require italics. A rule of thumb is to not italicize words that appear in major general-purpose English-language dictionaries.
Names and titles
The Beatles wrote "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" for their album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Typographic conformity
Italics can be used to mark a particular usage as a term of art (a case of "words as words"), especially when it is unfamiliar or should not be reworded by a non-expert:
Names and titles
• Locations
Retaining the existing variety
When an English variety's consistent usage has been established in an article, maintain it in the absence of consensus to the contrary. With few exceptions (e.g., when a topic has strong national ties or the change reduces ambiguity), there is no valid reason for changing from one acceptable option to another.
Punctuation before quotations
If a non-quoted but otherwise identical construction would work grammatically without a comma, using a comma before a quotation embedded within a sentence is optional: The comma-free approach is often used with partial quotations: A comma is required when it would be present in the same construction if none of the material were a quotation: Do not insert a comma if it would confuse or alter the meaning: It is clearer to use a colon to introduce a quotation if it forms a complete sentence, and this should always be done for multi-sentence quotations: No additional punctuation is necessary for an explicit words-as-words scenario:
Proper names versus generic terms
Capitalize names of particular institutions (the founding of the University of Delhi; the history of Stanford University) but not generic words for institutions (the high school is near the university). Do not capitalize the at the start of an institution's name, regardless of the institution's preferred style. There are rare exceptions, when a leading The is represented by a T in the organization's acronym: The International Cat Association (TICA).
Write first occurrences in full
When an abbreviation will be used in an article, first introduce it using the full expression:
Brackets and parentheses
Avoid adjacent sets of brackets. Either put the parenthetical phrases in one set separated by semicolons, or rewrite:
Animals, plants, and other organisms
Create redirects from alternative capitalization and spelling forms of article titles, and from alternative names, e.g., Adélie Penguin, Adelie penguin, Adelie Penguin and Pygoscelis adeliae should all redirect to Adélie penguin.
Retaining existing styles
Edit-warring over style, or enforcing optional style in a bot-like fashion without prior consensus, is never acceptable.
Geographical items
A place should generally be referred to consistently by the same name as in the title of its article. An exception may be made when there is a widely accepted historical English name appropriate to the given context. In cases where such a historical name is used, it should be followed by the modern name in round brackets (parentheses) on the first occurrence of the name in applicable sections of the article. This resembles linking; it should not be done to the detriment of style. On the other hand, it is probably better to provide such a variant too often than too rarely. If more than one historical name is applicable for a given context, the other names should be added after the modern English name, that is: "historical name (modern name, other historical names)".
Invisible comments
To leave an invisible comment, enclose the text you intend to be read only by editors between  and. For example: This notation can be inserted with a single click in wiki markup, just under the edit pane in edit mode.
Punctuation inside or outside
If the quotation is a single word or a sentence fragment, place the terminal punctuation outside the closing quotation mark. When quoting a full sentence, the end of which coincides with the end of the sentence containing it, place terminal punctuation inside the closing quotation mark.