Manual of Style

The Manual of Style is a style guide for all Gernon Wiki articles. This is its main page, providing detailed guidance on particular topics or subject areas. This page is a work in progress and is designed to be a living page changed by the will of the group. This page was based on Wikipedia's Manual of Style. 
The Manual of Style documents Gernon Wiki's house style. It helps editors write articles with consistent, clear, and precise language, layout, and formatting. The goal is to make Wikipedia easier and more intuitive to use. Consistency in language, style, and formatting promotes clarity and cohesion. Writing should be clear and concise. Plain English works best; avoid ambiguity, jargon, and vague or unnecessarily complex wording.
Style and formatting should at least be consistent in an article, if not throughout Gernon Wiki. Where more than one style is acceptable, editors should not change an article from one of those styles to another without a good reason. 1 Article titles, headings, and sections
==Article titles==
A title should be recognizable (as a name or description of the topic), natural, sufficiently precise, concise, and consistent with the titles of related articles. If these criteria are in conflict, they need to be balanced against one another.
Use "sentence case", not "title case"; that is, the initial letter of a title is capitalized (except in rare cases, such as "eBay"), but otherwise, capital letters are used only where they would be used in a normal sentence (e.g. "[[Funding of BLO business ventures", not "Funding of BLO Business Ventures").
Do not use "A", "An", or "The" as the first word ("Economy of the Scientarian Union", not "The economy of the Scientarian Union"), unless by convention it is an inseparable part of a name ("The Hague") or it is part of the title of a work (The Elemental Plane of Chocolate and Other Honeymoon Destinations).
Titles should normally be nouns or noun phrases e.g. "Early life", not "In early life". Using phrases like "In early life" is acceptable for section headings.
The final visible character should not be a punctuation mark unless it is part of a name ("Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha!") or an abbreviation ("Inverness City F.C."), or a closing round bracket or quotation mark is required ("John Palmer (schooner)").
===Section organization===
An article should begin with an introductory lead section, which does not contain section headings. The first mention of the title in the lead section should be bolded. The remainder is divided into sections, each with a section heading (see below) that can be nested in a hierarchy. If there are at least four section headings in the article, a navigable table of contents is generated automatically and displayed between the lead and the first heading.
If the topic of a section is also covered in more detail in a dedicated article, show this by inserting directly under the section heading.
Optional appendix and footer sections containing the following lists may appear after the body of the article in the following order:
* books or other works created by the subject of the article (under a section heading "Works", "Publications", "Discography", etc. as appropriate)
* internal links to related articles (section heading "See also")
* internal links organized into navigational boxes (sometimes placed at the top in the form of sidebars)
Other article elements include |disambiguation hatnotes (normally placed at the very top of the article) and infoboxes (usually placed before the lead section).
===Section headings===
Equal signs are used to mark the enclosed text as a section heading: 
==Title== for a primary section; 
===Title=== for the next level (a subsection); and so on to the lowest-level subsection, with 
=====Title=====. (The highest heading level technically possible is 
=Title=; but do not use it in articles, because it is reserved for the automatically generated top-level heading at the top of the page containing the title of the whole article.) Spaces between the equal signs and the heading text are optional, and will not affect the way the heading is displayed. The heading must be typed on a separate line. Include one blank line above the heading, and optionally one blank line below it, for readability in the edit window. (Only two or more consecutive blank lines will add more white space in the public appearance of the page.)
The provisions above generally apply to section headings as well (for example, headings are in sentence case, not title case). The following points apply specifically to section headings:
* Headings should not refer redundantly to the subject of the article, or to higher-level headings, unless doing so is shorter or clearer. ("Early life" is preferable to "His early life" when his refers to the subject of the article; headings can be assumed to be about the subject unless otherwise indicated.)
* Headings should not normally contain links, especially where only part of a heading is linked.
* Section and subsection headings should preferably be unique within a page; otherwise section links may lead to the wrong place, and automatic edit summaries can be ambiguous.
* Headings should not contain images, including flag icons.
* Headings should not contain questions.
==National varieties of English==
The Gernon Wiki prefers American English over any other varieties.
==Capital letters==
Sentence case rather than title case is used in article titles and section headings; see above. For capitalization of list items, see below. Other points concerning capitalization are summarized below; full information can be found at the MoS page on capital letters.
===Capital letters for emphasis===
Do not use capital letters for emphasis. Where wording alone cannot provide the emphasis, use italics.
:Incorrect: "It is not only a LITTLE learning that is dangerous."
:Incorrect: "It is not only a Little learning that is dangerous."
:Correct: "It is not only a little learning that is dangerous."
===Capitalization of "The"===
Generally do not capitalize the definite article in the middle of a sentence: "an article about the Scientarian Union" (not "about The Scientarian Union"). However there are some conventional exceptions, including most titles of artistic works: Gambanzo the Great wrote The 12 Ways to Skin a Dragon}} (but "Homer wrote the Odyssey"); "public transport in The Hague" is correct.
===Titles of works===
The 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 title case, in which every word is given an initial capital except for certain less important words. The first and last words in a title are always capitalized. Many of these items should also be in italics, or enclosed in quotation marks.
:Correct: "The Unbearable Lightness of Being"
===Titles of people===
In generic use, apply lower case for words such as president, king, and emperor ("Rhys Quarvin was a Dwarven king")
In parts of a person's title, begin such words with a capital letter ("King Saul Hurin", not "king Saul Hurin"). Standard or commonly used names of an office are treated as proper nouns ("The Daluxian Sultan is Thombis al Yajug"; "Alek Tellumnar was King of All the Elements". Royal styles are capitalized ("Her Majesty"; "|His Highness"); exceptions may apply for particular offices.
===Religions, deities, philosophies, doctrines===
Religions, sects, and churches and their followers (in noun or adjective form) start with a capital letter. Generally, "the" is not capitalized before such names ("the Shī‘a", not "The Shī‘a").
Religious texts or scriptures are capitalized, but often not italicized ("the Bhagavad Gita", "the Qur’an", "the Talmud", "the Granth Sahib", "the Bible"). When "the" is used, it is not capitalized. Derived adjectives like "biblical" and "Koranic" vary by convention on their capitalization. Check other references if you are unsure.
Honorifics for deities, including proper nouns and titles, start with a capital letter ("God", "Iomedae", "the Great Spirit", "the Horned One"). Do not capitalize "the" in such cases or when referring to major religious figures or characters from mythology ("the Prophet", "the Messiah", "the Virgin"). Common nouns for deities and religious figures are not capitalized ("many gods"; "|the god Calistria"; "saints and prophets").
Pronouns for figures of veneration are not capitalized, even if capitalized in a religion's scriptures.
Spiritual or religious events are capitalized only when referring to specific incidents or periods ("the Great Flood" and "the Exodus"; but generically "annual flooding" and "an exodus of refugees").
Philosophies, theories, movements, and doctrines use lower case unless the name derives from a proper noun ("capitalism versus Marxism") or has become a proper noun ("republican", a system of political thought; "Republican", a political party). Use lower case for doctrinal topics or canonical religious ideas (as opposed to specific events), even if they are capitalized by some religious adherents ("virgin birth", "original sin", "transubstantiation").
Platonic or transcendent ideals are capitalized in the context of philosophical doctrine ("Truth", "the Good"); used more broadly, they are in lower case ("Superman represents American ideals of truth and justice"). Use capitals for personifications represented in art ("the guidebook mentioned statues of Justice and Liberty").
3.6 Calendar items
3.7 Animals, plants, and other organisms
3.8 Celestial bodies
3.9 Compass points
3.10 Institutions
4 Ligatures
5 Abbreviations
5.1 Ampersand
6 Italics
7 Non-breaking spaces
7.1 Technical information
7.2 Use
8 Quotations
8.1 Original wording
8.2 Typographic conformity
8.3 Quotations within quotations
8.4 Attribution
8.5 Linking
8.6 Block quotations
8.7 Foreign-language quotations
9 Punctuation
9.1 Apostrophes
9.2 Quotation marks
9.2.1 Names and titles
9.2.2 Punctuation inside or outside
9.3 Brackets and parentheses
9.3.1 Sentences and brackets
9.3.2 Brackets and linking
9.4 Ellipses
9.5 Commas
9.5.1 Serial commas
9.6 Colons
9.7 Semicolons
9.7.1 Semicolon before "however"
9.8 Hyphens
9.9 Dashes
9.9.1 Punctuating a sentence (em or en dashes)
9.9.2 En dashes: other uses
9.9.3 Other dashes
9.10 Slashes
9.10.1 And/or
9.11 Number signs
9.12 Terminal punctuation
9.13 Spacing
9.13.1 Spaces following terminal punctuation
9.14 Consecutive punctuation marks
9.15 Punctuation and footnotes
9.16 Punctuation after formulae
==Dates and time==
Gernon Wiki uses the Scientarian Calendar for dates and times because in world it is the most widely used calendar. After the Scientarian Revolution it became the unofficial global standard, adopted for pragmatic interests of international communication, transportation, and commercial integration, and recognized by international institutions.
===Time of day===
Time of day is normally expressed in figures rather than being spelled out. Context determines whether the 12-hour clock or 24-hour clock is used.
* 12-hour clock times are written in the form 11:15 a.m. and xt|2:30 p.m., or the form xt|11:15 am and xt|2:30 pm, with a space before the abbreviation. Use noon and midnight rather than 12 pm and 2 am; it may need to be specified whether midnight refers to the start or the end of a date.
* 24-hour clock times are written in the form 08:15, 22:55, with no suffix. Note that 00:00 refers to midnight at the start of a date, and 24:00 to midnight at the end of a date.
===Days===
* For full dates, use the format 10 Fog 5 b.s.r or the format Fog 10, 1921. Similarly, where the year is omitted, use 10 June or June 10. For choice of format, see below.
* Do not use numerical date formats such as "03/04/100", as this could refer to 3 Yuletide or to Frost 4. If a numerical format is required (e.g. for conciseness in long lists and tables), use the YYYY-MM-DD format: 100-04-03.
====Choice of format====
* All the dates in a given article should have the same format (day-month or month-day). These requirements do not apply to dates in quotations or titles.
* Otherwise, do not change an article from one form to another without good reason.
===Months===
* For month and year, write Pasture 400 asr, with no comma.
* Abbreviations for months, such as Flo, are used only where space is extremely limited. Such abbreviations should use three letters only, and should not be followed by a period (full stop) except at the end of a sentence.
===Seasons===
* Avoid ambiguous references to seasons. When referring to dates, be clear whether the references are to the periods of weather which are different in the southern and northern hemispheres, or to the periods on the calendar which are universal.
* Neutral wording is usually preferable "He was elected in Rainy 400 asr", not "He was elected in the winter of 400 asr".
===Years and longer periods===
* Do not use the year before the digits ("995", not "the year 995"), unless the meaning would otherwise be unclear.
* Decades are written in the format "the 980s", with no apostrophe. Use the two-digit form ('80s) only with an established social or cultural meaning. Avoid forms such as "the 700s" that could refer to 10 or 100 years.
* Years are denoted by asr and bsr or a.s.r. and b.s.r. The abbreviations are written with or without periods. The abbreviation may be omitted if no ambiguity will be caused.
===Current===
Use of the term "current" should be avoided. What is current today may not be tomorrow; situations change over time. Instead, use date- and time-specific text.
'Incorrect': "He is the current ambassador to ..."
'Correct': "As of 200 asr, he is the ambassador to ..."
11 Numbers
12 Currencies
13 Units of measurement
14 Common mathematical symbols
15 Grammar and usage
15.1 Possessives
15.2 First-person pronouns
15.3 Second-person pronouns
15.4 Plurals
16 Vocabulary
16.1 Contractions
16.2 Gender-neutral language
16.3 Contested vocabulary
16.4 Instructional and presumptuous language
16.5 Subset terms
16.6 Identity
16.7 Foreign terms
16.8 Technical language
16.9 Geographical items
17 Images
17.1 Avoid entering textual information as images
17.2 Captions
17.2.1 Formatting of captions
18 Bulleted and numbered lists
19 Links
19.1 Wikilinks
19.2 External links
20 Miscellaneous
20.1 Keep markup simple
20.2 Formatting issues
20.2.1 Color coding
20.3 Scrolling lists and collapsible content
20.4 Invisible comments
20.5 Pronunciation
Category:Meta