Ataraxia:Style guide

Shortcuts:
RS:SG
RS:STYLE
This **style guide** has the simple purpose of making the Ataraxia Wiki easy to read by establishing a certain format. One way is often as good as another, but if everyone does things the same way, the articles will be easier to read and use, along with being easier to write and edit. Reading the style guide is important to ensure that each user's edits will be consistent with those of other users.

## Article titles

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RS:STYLE#TITLES
Pages must have appropriate titles. **Articles about items, monsters, overrides and non-player characters should be titled exactly as the subject's name appears in-game.** If a page's title conflicts with its content, make the content consistent with the title before checking in-game to ensure accuracy.

Names, locations, and titles should all be capitalised appropriately, **though not the whole title**. A rule of thumb for article titles is that items only have the first letter of the first word in their name capitalised for the most part; exceptions to this rule exist (such as the Pendant of Skill). There is no capitalization convention for monsters or non-player characters. Unless the monster or character's name has more than one capital in-game, do not put a capital at the beginning of every word. Block capitals should not be used in titles (e.g., 'Article titles' instead of 'ARTICLE TITLES'). An exception is acronyms in disambiguation page titles, which should be in block capitals. **Words such as articles and short prepositions in titles should be left un-capitalised**, unless they are intended to be capitalised in *Ataraxia*. These include words such as 'a', 'the', and 'of'. For example, the article on the Tears of Guthix quest has the title 'Tears of Guthix' (the "of" is left un-capitalised).

Try to make the article's topic the subject of the first sentence in the article. For example, write "This style manual is a guide" instead of "This style guide is known as..." Use **boldface** ( in the edit tool bar) for the first (and only the first) appearance of the title. Generally speaking, words in parentheses do not need to be added to the first sentence. The first sentence of Swamp toad (creature) would be better as "**Swamp toads** are creatures" – rather than "**Swamp toad (creature)**".

## Sections and headings

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RS:STYLE#SECTION
Separating articles into sections makes them easy to read and navigate. Headings are used to split articles into sections.

### **Markup**

Use two equal signs (`==`) style markup for headings. Start with `==`, add the heading title, then end with `==`.

This section's heading was created with the markup:

`==Sections and headings==`
This subsection's heading was created with the markup:

`===Markup===`
### **Wording**

* In a heading, **capitalise only the first letter of the first word and the first letter of any proper nouns**, and leave all of the other letters in lowercase. Skills, names, cities, and so on should all have the first letter capitalised. For example, "Fishing equipment", not "Fishing Equipment".
* Avoid putting links in headings.
* Make sure that the heading has an appropriate and accurate title, as this is important to help readers navigate the article. For example, do not make a "Monsters" section in an article about an area or dungeon and then include non-player characters in that section. Instead, make an "Inhabitants" section with "Monsters" and "NPCs" as subsections.
* Keep headings short.

### **Lead sections**

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RS:LEAD
RS:STYLE#LEAD
A lead (introduction) summarises the most important points of an article, creating interest in the topic. Thus, it should be limited to a few paragraphs. Certain information, such as strategies and trivia, should be in a separate section instead of in the lead. This applies only to articles that are of sufficient length to incorporate a lead.

Articles about a subject that are referred to by their in-game name and full name should mention the in-game name *before* mentioning the full name. For example, on Millie Miller, the start of the article should say something in the format of "**Millie Miller**, full name **Millicent Miller**, ...". When the in-game name is part of the subject's full name, the full name should be included right away. For example, Reldo should start by mentioning his full name, **Reldo Trimmly**. See the bolding section for more information about bolding guidelines.

## Text elements

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RS:STYLE#TEXT
### Internal links

* Every time an article is mentioned on the page, you don't have to link to every single one. For example, lobster may be mentioned five times. You only have to link to lobster once. You can link to articles more than once if the page is very long.
* When a skill is linked to, the name of the skill should be used, not a short form or a different spelling of it. Instead of saying "`this item can be [[Mining|mined]] by...`" you should state "`this item can be obtained through the [[Mining]] skill by ...`."
* Piped link formats for simple plurals are generally unnecessary. For example, use `[[lobster]]s` instead of `[[lobster|lobsters]]`.
* On the other hand, use `[[wolf|wolves]]` instead of `[[wolf]]s` when appropriate. Don't be afraid to use a piped link when necessary, particularly if avoiding them contorts the language unnecessarily or introduces spelling or grammatical errors into the article. Piped links have legitimate uses in an article.
* When including wiki-links in an article, there is no need to use underscores, since the software produces them automatically.
* Do not place the last letters of a plural outside of a link that already has alternate text. For example, `[[wikipedia:anti-aliasing|anti-aliasing artefacts]]` should be used instead of `[[wikipedia:anti-aliasing|anti-aliasing artefact]]s`.

### External links

Feel free to link to other sites, such as the *Ataraxia* home page. However, you may want to avoid linking to other sites or servers.

### Font colours

Coloured font can be used **sparingly**, though not in very bright colours. For example, you can use a dark colour for a warning. Note that light colours will not show up well against the wiki's white background.

### Bold and italics

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RS:STYLE#BOLD
Italics are mainly used to *emphasise* certain words, though they should be used sparingly. Italics may make longer phrases or sentences difficult to read. Bold is used as a **stronger emphasis** than italics, although it should be used sparingly as well. The first appearance of an article's title in the article should always be boldfaced.

Bold and italics combined ***emphasise selections*** well, but should be used extremely rarely. There are no common cases in which bold and italics are used together. Excessive use of any of these text elements will make the entire article difficult to read, so please use them in appropriate situations.

Italics should not be used on any quotes, which should always be delimited with quotation marks. The final punctuation mark of an italic section should sit outside of the italics.

### Titles of works

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RS:STYLE#WORKS
Titles of works (e.g., books, movies) have standards in styling that should be appropriately followed here as well. Common examples for each type are listed below. For an exhaustive list, see Template:WP.

#### Italics

Below are commonly encountered examples of types of works that should use italics.

* Books; e.g., *The Picture of Dorian Gray*
* Video games; e.g., *Ataraxia*
	+ Note that "Ataraxia" may refer to both the game itself and the world in which it takes place. "Ataraxia" should only be italicised when referring to the game itself, as a franchise or a different instalment.
* Films; e.g., *Casablanca*
* Television shows; e.g., *The Simpsons*

#### Quotation marks

Below are commonly encountered examples of types of works that should use quotation marks.

* Short stories; e.g., "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty"

### Numbers

For numbers, a comma should be used as a thousands separator.

## Grammar and spelling

### Case

* Older item and monster names are normal nouns, always being lowercase. For newer items, this is not the case however, and the exact casing as used in-game should be used on articles and in article names for all items and monster names, e.g., helm of neitiznot and Banner of Armadyl are correct, but helm of Neitiznot and banner of armadyl are incorrect.
* All place names, NPC names, quest names, task names, (etc) and skills are proper nouns - always uppercase, per ingame (also certain monsters, like Sigmund, Nomad, King Black Dragon ("the King Black Dragon is a black dragon")).
* Care is to be taken in certain cases, in places where the name is a verb, like mining, smithing, fletching, etc. "The queen can be smooshed by mining the pillar, requiring level 10 Mining."

### Abbreviations

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RS:STYLE#ABBR
Try not to use abbreviations. For example, use "battleaxe" instead of "baxe." The reader may not know what these abbreviations mean. And, as far as looks go, it's much more pleasing to the eye to look at "That dragon hatchet will help you to cut the logs faster." than "Tht d hacht wil help u 2 cut da logs fastr." It's even worse when you type something in "Leet Speak" also known as "1337 5P34K."

### Punctuation

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RS:STYLE#PUN
If you are listing multiple things, like different runes, each of them should have a serial comma at the end. For example, "fire runes, earth runes, and water runes" would be proper, "fire runes, earth runes and water runes" would not be.

### Tense

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RS:STYLE#TENSE
A rule of thumb is to use present tense in all cases. For example, articles for quests, skills, activities, non-player characters, etc. should be written in present tense. An exception to this rule would be events that have occurred in the past, or for in-game content that has been removed. For example, holiday events that have already occurred should be written in past tense. For future updates and upcoming content that have been confirmed by Jagex, use the future tense.

* **Past tense:** Past events and in-game content that has been removed
* **Future tense:** Future updates and upcoming content that have been confirmed; *See also: Ataraxia:Future content*
* **Present tense:** All other cases

### Point of view

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RS:STYLE#POV
Articles should be written in the third person or objective point of view. Using the word "you" in articles is informal and should be avoided except if it is inside a quotation; try to use "players" or "the player" instead. For guides, "you" can be used, although the command imperative ("Cut some logs and bring them to Lumbridge") is acceptable as well.

## Images

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RS:STYLE#IMAGES
Main article: RuneScape:Images and media policy
Some general guidelines which should be followed are listed below.

* The preferred format for images is PNG.
* Right-alignment is preferred to left- or centre-alignment. However, centre-alignment can be used for some images in the quest pages, such as the reward picture.
* Personal images which are only used on a userpage should not be uploaded. Images should be able to be used on main space articles, else they will be deleted.
* **Don't upload images we already have**. We have many users doing this and it is not good to have multiple images of the same item! Before you upload an image, search the wiki if someone has already uploaded a version of it. We don't need `[[File:Fire rune.PNG]]` or `[[File:Fire rune.gif]]` if someone has already uploaded `[[File:Fire rune.png]]`.

### Captions

Complete sentences in captions should always end in a full stop (period). If the caption is not a complete sentence, it generally should not have a full stop at the end. Captions should also not be *italicised*.

## Dates and times

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RS:DATE
Use the **day before month** format (dd/mm/yyyy - 1 May 2008) rather than the **month before day** format (mm/dd, yyyy - May 1, 2008). Note that **no commas** are used in the day before month format.

### Time references

Prefer specific statements of time by date, including year, to general ones (e.g., currently, recent, recently, soon). Articles should always contain current information, so there should be no reason to specify that it is current, unless there is some expectation that it could change.