cyanic-selkie/wikianc huggingface dataset:
MOS:COLLAPSE
Avoid unwarranted use
Avoid abbreviations when they might confuse the reader, interrupt the flow, or appear informal. For example:
For a quotation within a quotation
For quote marks in immediate succession, add a sliver of space by using " ', ' ", or (as in the example just given) " ' ":
Slashes (strokes)
Generally, avoid joining two words with a slash, also called a forward slash, stroke or solidus (/), because it suggests that the words are related without specifying how. Replace with clearer wording.
Gender-neutral language
References to space programs, past, present and future, should use gender-neutral phrasing: human spaceflight, robotic probe, uncrewed mission, crewed spacecraft, piloted, unpiloted, astronaut, cosmonaut, not manned or unmanned. Direct quotations and proper nouns that use gendered words should not be changed, like Manned Maneuvering Unit.
Time of day
Times of day are normally expressed in figures rather than words. Context determines whether the 12- or the 24-hour format is more appropriate.
Invisible comments
Editors use "invisible" comments – not shown in the rendered page seen by readers of the article, but visible in the source editing mode when an editor opens the article for editing – to communicate with one another.
Strong national ties to a topic
An article on a topic that has strong ties to a particular English-speaking nation should use the (formal, not colloquial) English of that nation. For example:
Emphasis
Italics are used for emphasis, rather than boldface or capitals. But overuse diminishes its effect; consider rewriting instead.
Foreign-language quotations
Quotations from foreign-language sources should appear with a translation into English, preferably a modern one. Quotations that are translations should be explicitly distinguished from those that are not. Indicate the original source of a translation (if it is available, and not first published within Wikipedia), and the original language (if that is not clear from the context).
Titles
Use italics for the titles of works (such as books, films, television series, named exhibitions, computer games, music albums, and artworks). The titles of articles, chapters, songs, episodes, storylines, research papers and other short works instead take double quotation marks.
Geographical items
At the start of an article, provide notable equivalent names from other languages, including transcriptions where necessary:
Titles
Italics are not used for major religious works (the Bible, the Quran, the Talmud). Many of these titles should also be in title case.
<span class="anchor" id="Periods (full stops) and spaces"> Punctuation and spacing
An abbreviation may or may not be terminated with a full point (also called a period or full stop). A consistent style should be maintained within an article. North American usage is typically to end all abbreviations with a period/point (Dr. Smith of 42 Drummond St.) but in common British and Australian usage, no period/point is used if the abbreviation (contraction) ends in the last letter of the unabbreviated form (Dr Smith of 42 Drummond St) unless confusion could result. This is also common practice in scientific writing. Regardless of punctuation, words that are abbreviated to more than one letter are spaced (op. cit. not op.cit. or opcit). There are some exceptions: PhD for "Philosophiae Doctor"; BVetMed for "Bachelor of Veterinary Medicine". In most situations, Wikipedia uses no such punctuation inside acronyms and initialisms: GDP, not G.D.P.
Words as words
Use italics when a word or character  or a string of words up to one sentence (the term panning is derived from panorama; the most common letter in English is e). When a whole sentence is mentioned, double quotation marks may be used instead, with consistency (The preposition in She sat on the chair is on; or The preposition in "She sat on the chair" is "on"). Quotation marks may also be used for shorter material to avoid confusion, such as when italics are already being heavily used in the page for some other purpose (e.g., many non-English words and phrases). (to discuss grammar, wording, punctuation, etc.) is different from (in which something is usually expressed on behalf of a quoted source). Quotation is done with quotation marks, never italics, nor both at once
A closely related use of italics is when introducing or distinguishing terms: The natural numbers are the integers greater than 0.
Circa
To indicate approximately, the use of, showing as c., is preferred over circa, c., ca., or approx.
Do not invent
If it is necessary to abbreviate in a tight space, such as a column header in a table, use widely recognized abbreviations. For example, for New Zealand gross national product, use NZ and GNP, with a link if the term has not already been written out in the article: NZ GNP. Do not make up initialisms such as NZGNP.
Typographic conformity
A quotation is not a facsimile and, in most cases, it is not a requirement that the original formatting be preserved. Formatting and other purely typographical elements of quoted text should be adapted to English Wikipedia's conventions without comment, provided that doing so will not change or obscure meaning or intent of the text. These are alterations which make no difference when the text is read aloud, for example:
Point of view
Concise opinions that are not overly emotive can often be reported with attribution instead of direct quotation. Use of quotation marks around simple descriptive terms can imply something doubtful regarding the material being quoted; sarcasm or weasel words such as supposedly or so-called, might be inferred.
Commas
<li> Dates in month–day–year format require a comma after the day, as well as after the year, unless followed by other punctuation. The last element is treated as parenthetical.
Section headings
which will be saved in the article as:
These technical restrictions are necessary to avoid technical complications and are not subject to override by local consensus.
Instructional and presumptuous language
Avoid rhetorical questions, especially in headings. Use a heading of Active listening and text such as The term active listening, coined in ..., not What is active listening?
Hyphens
Multi-word hyphenated items: It is often possible to avoid multi-word hyphenated modifiers by rewording (a four-CD soundtrack album may be easier to read as a soundtrack album of four CDs). This is particularly important where converted units are involved (the 6-hectare-limit (14.8-acre-limit) rule might be possible as the rule imposing a limit of six hectares (14.8 acres), and the ungainly 4.9-mile (7.9 km) -long tributary as simply 4.9-mile (7.9 km) tributary).
For optional hyphenation of compound points of the compass such as southwest/south-west, see.
Instructional and presumptuous language
For issues in the use of cross-references – e.g., ) – see.
Compass points
Composite directions may or may not be hyphenated, depending on the variety of English adopted in the article. Southeast Asia and northwest are more common in American English; but South-East Asia and north-west in British English. In cases such as north–south dialogue and east–west orientation, use an en dash; see.
Slashes (strokes)
An example: The parent/instructor must be present at all times. Must both be present? (Then write the parent and the instructor.) Must at least one be present? (Then write the parent or the instructor.) Are they the same person? (Use a hyphen: the parent-instructor.)
Semicolon before "however"
When the word however is a conjunction meaning "in whatever manner", or "regardless of how", it may be preceded by a comma but not by a semicolon, and should not be followed by punctuation. Example:
Brackets and parentheses
This section applies to both round brackets, often called parentheses, and square brackets [ ].
Instead of a hyphen, use an en dash when applying a prefix or suffix to a compound that itself includes a space, dash or hyphen
The form of category names follows the corresponding main articles, e.g.,. However, the principle is not extended when compounding other words in category names, e.g., and  both use hyphens.
Article titles
A title should be a recognizable name or description of the topic that is natural, sufficiently precise, concise, and consistent with those of related articles. If these criteria are in conflict, they should be balanced against one another.
Scientific names
Use italics for the scientific names of plants, animals, and all other organisms except viruses at the genus level and below (italicize Panthera leo and Retroviridae, but not Felidae). The hybrid sign is not italicized (Rosa × damascena), nor is the "connecting term" required in three-part botanical names (Rosa gallica subsp. officinalis).
Slashes (strokes)
Prefer the division operator (÷) to slash or fraction slash when representing elementary arithmetic in general text: 10 ÷ 2 = 5. In more advanced mathematical formulas, a vinculum or slash is preferred: or xn/n! .
And/or
Avoid writing and/or unless other constructions would be lengthy or awkward. Instead of Most had trauma and/or smoke inhalation, write simply trauma or smoke inhalation (which would normally be interpreted as an inclusive-or to imply or both); or, for emphasis or precision or both, write trauma or smoke inhalation or both. Where more than two possibilities are present, instead of x, y, and/orz write one or more of x, y, andz or some or all of x, y, andz.
Contested vocabulary
Avoid words and phrases that give the impression of straining for formality, that are unnecessarily regional, or that are not widely accepted. See List of commonly misused English words; see also.
Number (pound, hash) sign and numero
Avoid using the # symbol (known as the number sign, hash sign, pound sign, or octothorpe) when referring to numbers or rankings. Instead write number, No. or Nos.; do not use the symbol №. For example:
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.
Dashes
Two forms of dash are used on Wikipedia: en dash (–) and em dash (—). To enter them, click on them in the CharInsert toolbar, or enter them manually as: Do not use a double hyphen to stand in for a dash.
Years and longer periods
More information on all the above topics can be found at, including the handling of dates expressed in different calendars, and times corresponding to different time zones.
Punctuation and footnotes
Exceptions: Ref tags are placed dashes, not after. Where a footnote applies only to material within parentheses, the ref tags belong just before the closing parenthesis.
Attribution
The reader must be able to determine the source of any quotation, at the very least via a footnote. The source must be named if the quotation is an opinion. When attributing a quotation, avoid characterizing it in a biased manner.
Typographic conformity
When quoting a complete sentence, it is usually recommended to keep the first word capitalized. However, if the quoted passage has been integrated into the surrounding sentence (for example, with an introduction such as "X said that"), the original capital letter may be lower-cased.
Hyphens
Hyphenation rules in other languages may be different. Thus, in French a place name such as Trois-Rivières ("Three Rivers") is hyphenated, when it would not be in English. Follow reliable sources in such cases.
Plural forms
Pluralize acronyms by adding -s or -es: Three CD-ROMs and two BIOSes were released. (Do not use apostrophes to form plurals: Three CD-ROM's and two BIOS's were released.)
Strong national ties to a topic
• Afrikaners (South African English)
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.
Punctuation and footnotes
When ref tags are used, a footnote list must be added, and this is usually placed in the References section, near the end of the article in the standard appendices and footers.
Do not invent
Generally avoid devising new abbreviations, especially acronyms. For example, World Union of Billiards is good as a of Union Mondiale de Billard, but neither it nor the reduction WUB is used by the organization or by independent sources; use the original name and its official abbreviation, UMB.
Slashes (strokes)
A spaced slash may be used:
Ampersand
In normal text and headings, use and instead of the ampersand (&): January 1 and 2, not January 1 & 2. But retain an ampersand when it is a legitimate part of the style of a proper noun, the title of a work, or a trademark, such as in Up &amp; Down or AT&T. Elsewhere, ampersands may be used with consistency and discretion where space is extremely limited (e.g., tables and infoboxes). Quotations may be cautiously modified, especially for consistency where different editions are quoted, as modern editions of old texts routinely replace ampersands with and (just as they replace other disused glyphs, ligatures, and abbreviations). Another frequent permissible but not required use is in short bibliographic references to works by multiple authors, e.g.: ... a series of French and Belgian papers (Lubbers & Scheepers, 2002; Van Hiel & Mervielde, 2002; Swyngedouw & Giles, 2007; Van Hiel, 2012).
Semicolon before "however"
If the two clauses cannot be swapped, a semicolon is required.
A sentence or clause can also contain the word however in the middle, if it is an adverb meaning "although" that could have been placed at the beginning but does not start a new clause in mid-sentence. In this use, the word may be enclosed between commas. Example:
Typographic conformity
However, national varieties should not be changed, as these may involve changes in vocabulary. For example, a quotation from a British source should retain British spelling, even in an article that otherwise uses American spelling. Numbers also usually should not be reformatted.
Abbreviations
Abbreviations are shortened forms of words or phrases. In strict analysis, they are distinct from contractions, which use an apostrophe (e.g., won't, see ), and initialisms. An initialism is formed from some or all of the initial letters of words in a phrase. Below, references to abbreviations should be taken to include acronyms, and the term acronym to apply also to initialisms.
Punctuating a sentence (em or en dashes)
Use dashes sparingly. More than two in a single sentence makes the structure unclear; it takes time for the reader to see which dashes, if any, form a pair.
Foreign words
Italics is indicated for phrases in other languages and for isolated foreign words that are not common in everyday English. However, proper names (such as place names) in other languages are not usually italicized, nor are terms in non-Latin scripts. The template and its variants support all ISO 639 language codes, correctly identifying the language and automatically italicizing for you. Please use these templates rather than just manually italicizing non-English material.
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:
Punctuating a sentence (em or en dashes)
Dashes can clarify the sentence structure when there are already commas or parentheses, or both.
Hyphens
Do not use a capital letter after a hyphen except for a proper name: Graeco-Roman and Mediterranean-style, but not Gandhi-Like. In titles of published works, follow the capitalization rule for each part independently (resulting in, e.g., The Out-of-Towners), unless reliable sources consistently do otherwise in a particular case (The History of Middle-earth).
Punctuating a sentence (em or en dashes)
Dashes are often used to mark divisions within a sentence: in pairs (parenthetical dashes, instead of parentheses or pairs of commas) or singly (perhaps instead of a colon). They may also indicate an abrupt stop or interruption, in reporting quoted speech. In all these cases, use either unspaced em dashes or spaced en dashes, with consistency in any one article:
Section headings
As a matter of consistent style, section headings should:
Semicolon before "however"
In the first case, the clause that starts with "however" cannot be swapped with the first clause; in the second case this can be done without change of meaning:
Brackets and linking
The nowiki markup can also be used: <nowiki >[Doe]</nowiki> or <nowiki >[etc.]</nowiki>.
Other uses (em dash only)
For example, —hair spaceCharlotte Brontë will produce:
Number (pound, hash) sign and numero
An exception is issue numbers of comic books, which unlike for other periodicals are conventionally given in general text in the form #1, unless a volume is also given, in which case write volume two, number seven or Vol. 2, No. 7. Another exception are periodical publications carrying both, issue and number designations (typically one being a year-relative and the other an absolute value); they should be given in the form 2 #143 in citations, or be spelt out as Iss. 2, No. 143 in text. When using the abbreviations, write, , , or , at first occurrence.
Verb tense
Tense can be used to distinguish between current and former status of a subject: Dún Aonghasa the ruin of a prehistoric Irish cliff fort. Its original shape presumably oval or D-shaped, but parts of the cliff and fort have since collapsed into the sea. (Emphasis added to distinguish the different tense usages; Dún Aonghasa is a structure that was later damaged by an event.)
To separate parts of an item in a list
Spaced en dashes are sometimes used between parts of list items. For example: or
Section headings
<section begin="heading links" />Before changing a heading, consider whether you might be breaking existing links to it.<section end="heading links" /> If there are many links to the old title, create an anchor with that title to ensure that these still work. Similarly, when linking to a section, leave an invisible comment at the heading of the target section, naming the linking articles, so that if the heading is later altered these can be fixed. Combined example:
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.
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.
National varieties of English
National varieties of English (for example, American English or British English) differ in vocabulary (elevator vs. lift), spelling (center vs. centre), and occasionally grammar. Articles such as English plurals and Comparison of American and British English provide information about such differences. The English Wikipedia prefers no national variety over others.
Quotations within quotations
See.
National varieties of English
An article's date formatting ( vs. ) is also related to national varieties of English – see MOS:DATEFORMAT and especially MOS:DATETIES and MOS:DATEVAR.
Strong national ties to a topic
• Lagos (Nigerian English)
Consistency within articles
the conventions of one particular variety of English should be followed consistently. Exceptions include:
Strong national ties to a topic
• Muhammad Ali Jinnah (Pakistani English)
Subset terms
A subset term identifies a set of members of a larger class. Common subset terms are including, among, and etc. Avoid redundant subset terms (e.g., mis-constructions like the most well-known members of the fraternity are two members of the Onassis family or The elements in stars hydrogen, helium,). The word including does not introduce a complete list; instead, use consisting of, or composed of.
Hyphens
Soft hyphens: Use soft hyphens to mark locations where a word will be broken and hyphenated at the end of a line of text, usually in very long words or narrow spaces (such as captions, narrow table columns, or text adjacent to a very wide image), for example:. Use sparingly to avoid making wikitext difficult to read and edit. For more information, see Help:Line-break handling.
Non-breaking: A non-breaking hyphen will  be used as a point of line-wrap.
Encoding: The hyphen is represented by the ASCII/UNICODE HYPHEN-MINUS character, which is entered by the hyphen or minus key on all standard keyboards. Do not use the UNICODE HYPHEN character.
Punctuating a sentence (em or en dashes)
But do not insert a non-breaking or other space where the en dash should be unspaced.
Article titles
For formatting guidance see the section, noting the following:
Retaining existing styles
Sometimes the MoS provides more than one acceptable style or gives no specific guidance. The Arbitration Committee has expressed the principle that "When either of two styles are acceptable it is inappropriate for a Wikipedia editor to change from one style to another unless there is some substantial reason for the change." If you believe an alternative style would be more appropriate for a particular article, discuss this at the article's talk page or – if it raises an issue of more general application or with the MoS itself – at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style.
Slashes (strokes)
To avoid awkward linebreaks, code spaced slashes (and fraction slashes) with a non-breaking space on the left and a normal space on the right, as in:. For short constructions, both spaces should be non-breaking:. On the other hand, if two long words are connected by an unspaced slash, an wbr added after the slash will allow a linebreak at that point.
MOS:
Geographical items
At the start of an article, provide notable equivalent names from other languages, including transcriptions where necessary:
MOS:COLLAPSE
Typographic conformity
It is normally unnecessary to explicitly note changes in capitalization. However, for more precision, the altered letter may be put inside square brackets: "The" → "[t]he".
Other uses (em dash only)
An indented em dash may be used before a name or other source when attributing below a block quotation, poem, etc. This dash should not be fully spaced, though it is best for metadata and accessibility reasons to hair-space it from the name. Most of Wikipedia's quotation templates with attribution-related parameters already provide this formatting.
Formatting issues
Typically, the use of custom font styles:
Strong national ties to a topic
• American Civil War (American English)
Spacing
In normal text, never put a space before a comma, semicolon, colon, period/full stop, question mark, or exclamation mark (even in quoted material; see ).
Typographic conformity
Direct quotation should not be used to preserve the formatting preferred by an external publisher (especially when the material would otherwise be unchanged), as this tends to have the effect of scare-quoting:
Instructional and presumptuous language
Avoid phrases such as remember that and note that, which address readers directly in an unencyclopedic tone and lean toward instructional. They are a subtle form of Wikipedia self-reference, "breaking the fourth wall". Similarly, phrases such as of course, naturally, obviously, clearly, and actually make presumptions about readers' knowledge, may express a viewpoint, and may call into question the reason for including the information in the first place. Do not readers that something is interesting, ironic, surprising, unexpected, amusing, coincidental, etc. Simply present sourced facts neutrally and allow readers to draw their own conclusions. Such constructions can usually just be deleted, leaving behind proper sentences with a more academic and less pushy tone: Note that this was naturally subject to controversy in more conservative newspapers. becomes This was subject to controversy in more conservative newspapers.
In ranges that might otherwise be expressed with to or through
Do not change hyphens to dashes in filenames, URLs, or templates such as (which formats verse ranges into URLs), even if a range is embedded in them.
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.
Strong national ties to a topic
• Christchurch (New Zealand English)
HTML tags and templates
Either or  can be used for abbreviations and acronyms: <abbr >WHO</abbr> or  will generate WHO; hovering over the rendered text causes a tooltip of the long form to pop up.
Strong national ties to a topic
• Dublin (Hiberno-English)
Semicolons
Semicolons are used in addition to commas to separate items in a listing, when commas alone would result in confusion.
Gender-neutral language
Use gender-neutral language – avoiding the generic he and generic she, for example – if this can be done with clarity and precision. This does not apply to direct quotations or the titles of works (The Ascent of Man), which should not be altered, or to wording about one-gender contexts, such as an all-female school (When any student breaks that rule, she loses privileges).
In article titles
In article titles, do not use a hyphen (-) as a substitute for an en dash, for example in eye–hand span (since eye does not modify hand). Nonetheless, to aid searching and linking, provide a redirect with hyphens replacing the en dash(es), as in eye-hand span. Similarly, provide category redirects for categories containing dashes.
Retaining the existing variety
When no English variety has been established and discussion does not resolve the issue, use the variety found in the first post-stub revision that introduced an identifiable variety. The established variety in a given article can be documented by placing the appropriate Varieties of English template on its talk page.
Hyphens
Spacing: A hyphen is never followed or preceded by a space, except when hanging or when used to display parts of words independently, such as the prefix sub-and the suffix-less.
Other dashes
Do not use typewriter approximations or other substitutes, such as two hyphens (--), for em or en dashes.
Names and titles
Quotation marks should be used for the following names and titles: • Articles and chapters (books and periodicals italicized)
Section headings
The advantage of using, or simply inserting the   tags directly, is that when edits are made to the section in the future, the anchor will not be included in page history entries as part of the section name. When  is used directly, that undesirable behavior does occur. Note: if electing to insert the span directly, do not abbreviate it by using a self-closing tag, as in, since in HTML5 that XML-style syntax is valid only for certain tags, such as. See for further discussion.
Hyphens
Hyphenation involves many subtleties that cannot be covered here; the rules and examples presented above illustrate the broad principles.
Original wording
Quotations must be verifiably attributed, and the wording of the quoted text must be faithfully reproduced. This is referred to as the. Where there is good reason to change the wording, bracket the changed text; for example, "Ocyrhoe told him his fate" might be quoted as "Ocyrhoe told [her father] his fate". If there is a significant error in the original, follow it with (producing [sic]) to show that the error was not made by Wikipedia. However, insignificant spelling and typographic errors should simply be silently corrected (for example, correct basicly to basically).
In ranges that might otherwise be expressed with to or through
For ranges between numbers, dates, or times, use an en dash:
Article titles
Subject both to the above and to Article titles, the rest of the MoS, particularly, applies also to the title.
Heading-like material
The above guidance about sentence case, redundancy, images, and questions also applies to headers of tables (and of table columns and rows). However, table headings can incorporate citations and may begin with, or be, numbers. Unlike page headings, table headers do not automatically generate link anchors. Aside from sentence case in glossaries, the heading advice also applies to the term entries in description lists. If using template-structured glossaries, terms will automatically have link anchors, but will not otherwise. Citations for description-list content go in the term or definition element, as needed.
Strong national ties to a topic
• Great Fire of London (British English)
Hyphens
Image filenames and redirects: Image filenames are not part of the encyclopedic content; they are tools. They are most useful if they can be readily typed, so they usually use hyphens instead of dashes. Similarly, article titles with dashes should also have a corresponding redirect from a copy of the title with hyphens: for example, Michelson-Morley experiment redirects to Michelson–Morley experiment.
Animals, plants, and other organisms
Standardized breeds should generally retain the capitalization used in the breed standards. Examples: German Shepherd dog, Russian White goat, Berlin Short-faced Tumbler. As with plant cultivars, this applies whether or not the included noun is a proper name, in contrast to how vernacular names of species are written. However, unlike cultivars, breeds are never put in single quotation marks, and their names are never part of a scientific name. A species term appended at the end for disambiguation ("cat", "hound", "horse", "swine", etc.) should not be capitalized, unless it is a part of the breed name itself and is consistently presented that way in the breed standard(s) (rare cases include Norwegian Forest Cat and American Quarter Horse).
Hyphens
Hyphens (-) indicate conjunction. There are three main uses:
US and U.S.
While, in principle, either US or U.S. may be used (with internal consistency) to abbreviate "United States" in any given article, the use or non-use of periods (full stops) should also be consistent with other country abbreviations in the same article (thus the US, UK, and USSR, not the U.S., UK, and USSR). In longer abbreviations (three letters or more) that incorporate the country's initials (USN, USAID), do not use periods. When the United States is mentioned with one or more other countries in the same sentence, U.S. or US may be too informal, especially at the first mention or as a noun instead of an adjective (France and the United States, not France and the US). Do not use the spaced U. S. or the archaic U.S. of A., except when quoting; and do not use U.S.A. or USA except in a quotation, as part of a proper name (Team USA), or in certain technical or formal uses (e.g., the ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 codes and FIFA country codes).
MOS:MAIN
Strong national ties to a topic
• Mumbai (Indian English)
• Vancouver (Canadian English)
For topics with strong ties to Commonwealth of Nations countries and other former British territories, use Commonwealth English orthography, largely indistinguishable from British English in encyclopedic writing (excepting Canada, which uses a different orthography).
Names and titles
• Individual episodes of television and radio series and serials (series title italicized)
Instead of a hyphen, use an en dash when applying a prefix or suffix to a compound that itself includes a space, dash or hyphen
The form of category names follows the corresponding main articles, e.g.,. However, the principle is not extended when compounding other words in category names, e.g., and  both use hyphens.
Other dashes
Do not use typewriter approximations or other substitutes, such as two hyphens (--), for em or en dashes.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Names and titles
• Myths and epics
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:
</li>
For a quotation within a quotation
Use single quotes: For deeper nesting, alternate between single and double quotes:
Article openings
In the bolded text typically appearing at the opening of an article:
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" />
To separate parts of an item in a list
Spaced en dashes are sometimes used between parts of list items. For example: or
Color coding
Choose colors such as maroon  and  teal  that are distinguishable by readers with the most common form of colorblindness, and  mark the differences with change of font or some other means (<span style="background: white; font-family: Georgia, serif; color: maroon; font face: Times New Roman">maroon and alternative font face,  teal ). Avoid low contrast between text and background colors. See also color coding.
Slashes (strokes)
An example: The parent/instructor must be present at all times. Must both be present? (Then write the parent and the instructor.) Must at least one be present? (Then write the parent or the instructor.) Are they the same person? (Use a hyphen: the parent-instructor.)
Spelling and romanization
Sometimes usage will be influenced by other guidelines, such as, which may lead to different choices in different articles.
<span class="anchor" id="Periods (full stops) and spaces"> Punctuation and spacing
An abbreviation may or may not be terminated with a full point (also called a period or full stop). A consistent style should be maintained within an article. North American usage is typically to end all abbreviations with a period/point (Dr. Smith of 42 Drummond St.) but in common British and Australian usage, no period/point is used if the abbreviation (contraction) ends in the last letter of the unabbreviated form (Dr Smith of 42 Drummond St) unless confusion could result. This is also common practice in scientific writing. Regardless of punctuation, words that are abbreviated to more than one letter are spaced (op. cit. not op.cit. or opcit). There are some exceptions: PhD for "Philosophiae Doctor"; BVetMed for "Bachelor of Veterinary Medicine". In most situations, Wikipedia uses no such punctuation inside acronyms and initialisms: GDP, not G.D.P.
US and U.S.
While, in principle, either US or U.S. may be used (with internal consistency) to abbreviate "United States" in any given article, the use or non-use of periods (full stops) should also be consistent with other country abbreviations in the same article (thus the US, UK, and USSR, not the U.S., UK, and USSR). In longer abbreviations (three letters or more) that incorporate the country's initials (USN, USAID), do not use periods. When the United States is mentioned with one or more other countries in the same sentence, U.S. or US may be too informal, especially at the first mention or as a noun instead of an adjective (France and the United States, not France and the US). Do not use the spaced U. S. or the archaic U.S. of A., except when quoting; and do not use U.S.A. or USA except in a quotation, as part of a proper name (Team USA), or in certain technical or formal uses (e.g., the ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 codes and FIFA country codes).
Write first occurrences in full
Except in special circumstances, common abbreviations (such as PhD, DNA, USSR) need not be expanded even on first use.
Commas
</ul>
Names and titles
Many, but not all, of the above items should also be in title case.
Instructional and presumptuous language
Avoid phrases such as remember that and note that, which address readers directly in an unencyclopedic tone and lean toward instructional. They are a subtle form of Wikipedia self-reference, "breaking the fourth wall". Similarly, phrases such as of course, naturally, obviously, clearly, and actually make presumptions about readers' knowledge, may express a viewpoint, and may call into question the reason for including the information in the first place. Do not readers that something is interesting, ironic, surprising, unexpected, amusing, coincidental, etc. Simply present sourced facts neutrally and allow readers to draw their own conclusions. Such constructions can usually just be deleted, leaving behind proper sentences with a more academic and less pushy tone: Note that this was naturally subject to controversy in more conservative newspapers. becomes This was subject to controversy in more conservative newspapers.
Section organization
Infoboxes, images, and related content in the lead section must be right-aligned.
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.
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.
Gender identity
Specific guidelines apply to any person whose gender might be questioned, and any living transgender or non-binary person. In summary:
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.
Block quotations
This gives: "What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore         Meant in croaking 'Nevermore.'"
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.)
Avoid unwarranted use
Avoid abbreviations when they might confuse the reader, interrupt the flow, or appear informal. For example:
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:
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.
This Manual of Style (MoS or MOS) is the style manual for all English Wikipedia articles (though provisions related to accessibility apply across the entire project, not just to articles). This primary page is supported by further detail pages, which are cross-referenced here and listed at Manual of Style/Contents. If any contradiction arises, this page has precedence.
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)".
Words as words
A closely related use of italics is when introducing or distinguishing terms: The natural numbers are the integers greater than 0.
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.
Foreign-language quotations
Quotations from foreign-language sources should appear with a translation into English, preferably a modern one. Quotations that are translations should be explicitly distinguished from those that are not. Indicate the original source of a translation (if it is available, and not first published within Wikipedia), and the original language (if that is not clear from the context).
External links
These will appear as:
Quotations within quotations
See.
Color coding
Even for readers with unimpaired color vision, excessive background shading of table entries impedes readability and recognition of Wikilinks. Background color should be used only as a visual cue and should be subtle (consider using lighter, less-dominant pastel hues) rather than glaring.
Names and titles
The Beatles wrote "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" for their album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Indentation
Do not abuse block quotation markup to indent non-quotations. Various templates are available for indentation, including and (for inline use).
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.
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.
Plural forms
Pluralize acronyms by adding -s or -es: Three CD-ROMs and two BIOSes were released. (Do not use apostrophes to form plurals: Three CD-ROM's and two BIOS's were released.)
Serial commas
A serial comma (sometimes also called an Oxford comma or Harvard comma) is a comma used immediately before a conjunction (and, or, nor) in a list of three or more items.
Gender-neutral language
Use gender-neutral language – avoiding the generic he and generic she, for example – if this can be done with clarity and precision. This does not apply to direct quotations or the titles of works (The Ascent of Man), which should not be altered, or to wording about one-gender contexts, such as an all-female school (When any student breaks that rule, she loses privileges).
Instructional and presumptuous language
For issues in the use of cross-references – e.g., ) – see.