cyanic-selkie/wikianc huggingface dataset:
MOS:
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.
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.
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.
Foreign-language quotations
If the original, untranslated text is available, provide a reference for it or include it, as appropriate.
Spacing
Some editors place two spaces after a period/full stop ; these are condensed to one space when the page is rendered, so it does not affect what readers see.
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:
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:
Emphasis
Italics are used for emphasis, rather than boldface or capitals. But overuse diminishes its effect; consider rewriting instead.
Names and titles
• Songs (albums, song cycles, operas, operettas, and oratorios italicized)
Many, but not all, of the above items should also be in title case.
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.
Hyphens
For optional hyphenation of compound points of the compass such as southwest/south-west, see.
Write first occurrences in full
Except in special circumstances, common abbreviations (such as PhD, DNA, USSR) need not be expanded even on first use.
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).
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).
Hyphens
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.
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:
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.
Controlling line breaks
It is desirable to prevent line breaks where breaking across lines might be confusing or awkward. For example:
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).
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.
External links
Where appropriate, use external link templates such as and.
Semicolons
Above, "Though he had been here before" cannot stand on its own as a sentence, and therefore is not an independent clause.
In ranges that might otherwise be expressed with to or through
Do not mix en dashes with between or from.
Brackets and linking
The nowiki markup can also be used: <nowiki >[Doe]</nowiki> or <nowiki >[etc.]</nowiki>.
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.
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
• Locations
Quotation marks should be used for the following names and titles: • Articles and chapters (books and periodicals italicized)
Semicolons
Semicolons are used in addition to commas to separate items in a listing, when commas alone would result in confusion.
Semicolon before "however"
The meaning of a sentence containing a trailing clause that starts with the word however depends on the punctuation preceding that word. A common error is to use the wrong punctuation, thereby changing the meaning to one not intended.
When the word however is an adverb meaning "nevertheless", it should be preceded by a semicolon and followed by a comma. Example:
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.
Foreign-language quotations
When editors themselves translate foreign text into English, care must always be taken to include the original text, (except for non-Latin-based writing systems), and to use actual and (if at all possible) common English words in the translation. Unless you are certain of your competency to translate something, see Translation for assistance.
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.
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.
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:
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.
Words as words
A closely related use of italics is when introducing or distinguishing terms: The natural numbers are the integers greater than 0.
In ranges that might otherwise be expressed with to or through
For ranges between numbers, dates, or times, use an en dash:
Semicolon before "however"
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:
Hyphens
Hyphens (-) indicate conjunction. There are three main uses:
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.)
Semicolons
A semicolon is sometimes an alternative to a full stop (period), enabling related material to be kept in the same sentence; it marks a more decisive division in a sentence than a comma. If the semicolon separates clauses, normally each clause must be independent (meaning that it could stand on its own as a sentence). In many cases, only a comma or only a semicolon will be correct in a given sentence.
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.)
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.
Scrolling lists and collapsible content
This includes reference lists, tables and lists of article content, image galleries, and image captions.
Plurals
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.
Slashes (strokes)
An unspaced slash may be used:
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:
Dashes
Sources use dashes in varying ways. For consistency and clarity, Wikipedia adopts the following principles.
Controlling line breaks
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.
Insert non-breaking and thin spaces as named character reference ( or  ), or as templates that generate these, and never by entering them directly into the edit window from the keyboard – they are visually indistinguishable from regular spaces, and later editors will be unable to see what they are. Inside wikilinks, a construction such as works but  doesn't.
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.
Block quotations
Pull quotes do not belong in Wikipedia articles. These are the news and magazine style of "pulling" material already in the article to reuse it in attention-grabbing decorative quotations. This unencyclopedic approach is a form of editorializing, produces out-of-context and undue emphasis, and may lead the reader to conclusions not supported in the material.
External links
Add external links with discretion; Wikipedia is not a link repository.
Emphasis
Use <em ></em> or for emphasis. This allows user style sheets to handle emphasis in a customized way, and helps reusers and translators.
In ranges that might otherwise be expressed with to or through
The en dash in a range is always unspaced, except when either or both elements of the range include at least one space, hyphen, or en dash; in such cases, snd between them will provide the proper formatting.
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.
In ranges that might otherwise be expressed with to or through
If negative values are involved, an unspaced en dash might be confusing:
In compounds when the connection might otherwise be expressed with to, versus, and, or between
A slash or some other alternative may occasionally be better to express a ratio, especially in technical contexts.
Here, the relationship is thought of as parallel, symmetric, equal, oppositional, or at least involving. The components may be nouns, adjectives, verbs, or any other independent part of speech. Often, if the components are reversed there would be little change of meaning.
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.
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).
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:
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).
Names and titles
• Individual episodes of television and radio series and serials (series title italicized)
Current
Terms such as "current", "now", and "recent" should be avoided. What is current today may not be tomorrow; situations change over time. Instead, use date- and time-specific text. To help keep information updated use, which will allow editors to catalog and update dated statements.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
Commas
Always use a pair of commas for this, unless another punctuation mark takes the place of the second comma: </li>
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.
Slashes (strokes)
A spaced slash may be used:
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.
Do not use the backslash character (\) in place of a slash.
Punctuation inside or outside
If the quoted sentence is followed by a clause that should be preceded by a comma, omit the full stop (period) – but other terminal punctuation, such as a question mark or exclamation mark, may be retained.
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.
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
When an abbreviation will be used in an article, first introduce it using the full expression:
Section headings
An invisible comment on the same line must be the   markup:
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.
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.
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 variety of English template on its talk page.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Semicolon before "however"
If the two clauses cannot be swapped, a semicolon is required.
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".
Names and titles
• Sections of musical pieces (pieces italicized)
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.
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.
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.
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.
Dates and time
Dates should be linked only when they are germane and topical to the subject, as discussed at.
Write first occurrences in full
Do not use capitals in the full version merely because capitals are used in the abbreviation: an early Local Area Network (LAN).
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.
Names and titles
• Concert tours
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
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:
Names and titles
• Prayers
Indentation
Do not abuse block quotation markup to indent non-quotations. Various templates are available for indentation, including and (for inline use).
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.
Commas
</li>
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.
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.
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.
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
This section applies to both round brackets, often called parentheses, and square brackets [ ].
Section headings
It is more usual practice to put such comments the heading.
Brackets and parentheses
Avoid adjacent sets of brackets. Either put the parenthetical phrases in one set separated by semicolons, or rewrite:
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:
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:
Instructional and presumptuous language
For issues in the use of cross-references – e.g., ) – see.
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.
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.
Color coding
Do not use color to mark differences in text: they may be invisible to people with color blindness and useless in black-and-white printouts or displays.
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.
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.
Double or single
Most quotations take double quotation marks (Bob said: "Jim ate the apple."). Exceptions:
Hyphens
Hyphenation involves many subtleties that cannot be covered here; the rules and examples presented above illustrate the broad principles.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Proper names in languages which use the Latin alphabet can include characters with diacritics, ligatures, and others that are not commonly used in present-day English. Wikipedia normally retains these special characters, except where there is a well-established English spelling that replaces them with English standard letters. Examples: Such matters are determined on a topic-by-topic basis; a small group of editors cannot "prohibit" or "require" diacritics across a category of articles.
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.
Section headings
which will be saved in the article as:
Strong national ties to a topic
• Dublin (Hiberno-English)
Guidelines within the Manual of Style
(Links to policy and guidelines on specific questions)
Strong national ties to a topic
• Lagos (Nigerian English)
• Muhammad Ali Jinnah (Pakistani English)
Animals, plants, and other organisms
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).
External style guides
For additional reference works, see notable entries at Style guide and .
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.
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).
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:
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).
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.
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.
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)".
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).
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).
Avoid using images to convey text
For entering textual information as audio, see WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia.
Geographical items
Names in languages with no particular present-day or historical ties to the place in question (English excepted, of course) should be listed as alternatives.
Opportunities for commonality
For an international encyclopedia, using vocabulary common to all varieties of English is preferable.
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.
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.
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.
Article titles
Subject both to the above and to Article titles, the rest of the MoS, particularly, applies also to the title.
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:
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.
Consistency within articles
the conventions of one particular variety of English should be followed consistently. Exceptions include:
Strong national ties to a topic
• Afrikaners (South African English)
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.
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.
Strong national ties to a topic
• American Civil War (American English)
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:
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.
Sometimes usage will be influenced by other guidelines, such as, which may lead to different choices in different articles.
Commas
<li> In geographical references that include multiple levels of subordinate divisions (e.g., city, state/province, country), a comma separates each element and follows the last element unless followed by terminal punctuation or a closing parenthesis. The last element is treated as parenthetical.
MOS:COLLAPSE
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.
Editors should write articles using straightforward, succinct, easily understood language and structure articles with consistent, reader-friendly layouts and formatting (which are detailed in this guide).
MOS:
Commas
<li> A comma may be included before a quotation embedded within a sentence. </li>
MOS:COLLAPSE
Commas
</ul>
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.
MOS:
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.
MOS:COLLAPSE
Strong national ties to a topic
• Mumbai (Indian English)
MOS:
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.
MOS:COLLAPSE
Identity
When there is a discrepancy between the term most commonly used by reliable sources for a person or group and the term that person or group uses for themselves, use the term that is most commonly used by recent reliable sources. If it is unclear which is most used, use the term that the person or group uses.
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.
Names and titles
• Individual strips from comics and webcomics (comics italicized)
In ranges that might otherwise be expressed with to or through
Do not mix en dashes with between or from.
The en dash in a range is always unspaced, except when either or both elements of the range include at least one space, hyphen, or en dash; in such cases, snd between them will provide the proper formatting.