Into the Badlands Wiki:Manual of Style

**The Manual of Style** (**MoS** or **MOS**) is a style guide for users to look after to both proof check and clearly understand the correct ways to contribute and edit articles within the Wiki. With the help of this manual, contributors will be enlightened on the proper ways to format, type, and code articles. Ultimately, this should make the wiki vastly organized and uphold uniform across articles that are similar.

## Writing articles

### Titles

When creating or renaming an article title, it should be able to be differentiated from other articles on the wiki. In some cases, the subject of the article may lack an official name, therefore the title should merely be a basic description (e.g. Sunny's weapon's don't have an official name, so the article will be known as "Sunny's weapons").

### Casing

Unless it is an episode title or season title, wiki articles are required to be written in sentence case. Generally, a title should be written as how one would type normal sentence. The only letter which should be capitalized is the first letter of the sentence (e.g. a proper title would be: "M.K.'s pendant" instead of "M.K.'s Pendant ").

### Forms and names

* **Singular form**: When referring to a general subject, it should be written in singular form. (e.g. "Shuriken" not "Shurikens" or "Abbot" not "Abbots").

* **Full names**: Character articles should avoid positions or ranks in their titles, unless they are only known by that title (e.g. "Veil", not "Doctor Veil").

### Same-name articles

* **Differentiating articles with parenthesis**: In some cases, articles will share the same title. However, users can distinguish them putting a classification of the article in parenthesis. For instance, an article based on the martial arts technique "Hands of Five Poison" will be typed as it is in the aforementioned quotes. However, the *episode of the same name* will be typed as "Hand of Five Poisons (episode)").

## Language

Being an English site, **standard American English** is the language in which all articles should be written in. The wiki should as encyclopedic as possible. Proper spelling and grammar is required—slang is not. Blogs, forums, and talk pages should also be typed in English. Considering that the series is highly influenced by [East] Asian culture, it may utilize words derived from other languages.

## Capitalization

Again, the first letter of an article title must always be capital. However, capitalization is not always necessary when writing articles. Capitalization is for proper names only and is usually judged and determined by its importance in the series.

### Proper names

Proper names are names of specific places, persons, terms, and etc. Even in standard usage, proper names are always capitalized (e.g. "The Fort" not "The fort" or "The Badlands" not "The badlands"/"the badlands").

* Even some adjectives derived from proper names should be capitalized (e.g. "Bajie is English" not "Bajie is english").

### Capitalization of "The"

Do not ordinarily capitalize the definite article after the first word of a sentence. The only exception is "The" being the first word of an episode or title.

*Incorrect (generic)*: An article about The North Lands.
***Correct (generic)*: An article about the North Lands.**
*Incorrect (title)*: They wrote the Fort.
***Correct (title)*: They wrote The Fort.**
### Titles of individuals

Titles and ranks such as Baron, Regent, and Clipper are consistently capitalized even if they are used in a generical sense:

*Incorrect (generic)*: They attacked the clipper a the parley.

***Correct (generic)*: They attacked the Clipper at the parley.**
### Animals, plants, and mystic beings

* Animals and plants should always be written lowercase (e.g. monkshood flower) unless a character is named after the said animal of plant.

*Incorrect (character)*: M.K. was taught by the master.
***Correct (character)*: M.K. was taught by The Master.**
## Grammar

### Verb tense

* **Past tense**: This form of writing is used to describe events that have already happened in the past (e.g. "Sunny stabbed Quinn", not "Sunny stabs Quinn"). This kind of writing should normally be applied for character articles, more often under the "biography" content.

* **Present tense**: This form of writing is used to describe ongoing or unchanging actions or events (e.g. "Henry is the child of Veil and Sunny"). Episode articles, season articles and transcripts can be written in present tense.

* **Full form**: In order to avoid informal writing and to keep the wiki professional, the wiki encourages users to avoid contractions and used full form words instead. Words such as "shouldn't" and "could've" will be typed as "should not" and "could have" instead.

## Vocabulary

### Perspective

* **In-universe**: When writing articles, they should be written as if they were historic, real world experiences. Mentioning an episode title or season within a sentence is not allowed. Events should be referred to as how they were in the series (e.g A sentence like “During the nine month gap of Sunny's imprisonment...” is far more acceptable than "Prior the premiere of Season 2"). Articles such as characters, episodes, and etc. should be written in a in-universe perspective.

* **Out-of-universe/Real world**: Articles written from this perspective refer to *Into the Badlands* as one would as a viewer. Articles that are related to the behind the scenes actions of the series should be written from this perspective (e.g. actors articles, crew member articles, etc.).

## Fonts

### Bold font

Boldface fonts should look like **this**. The subject in which the article is about should always be bold upon its first mention in a opening sentence or paragraph.

### Italic font

Italic fonts look like *this*. Italics must be used for the titles of literature and art, such as books, films, short films, television series and music albums (e.g. *Into The Badlands* not Into the Badlands). Episode titles and song titles should **not** be italicized, but enclosed in quotation marks (e.g. "Red Sun, Silver Moon" not *Red Sun, Silver Moon*).

* **Note**: Non-English words **must** be italicized (e.g. *origami* and *katana*). Italics can also be used to show emphasis, especially when quoting characters.

## Images

* The main image in an article (may appear in an infobox, in some cases) is normally no larger than 250px. Images that are not part of an infobox must have a caption.
* Other images, besides the main image, placed as thumbnails on an article do not exceed 200px.
* Use captions to clarify the relevance of the image to the article.
* Avoid sandwiching images between text.
* Avoid using duplicate images on the same article.
* Order images on the article in a left and right pattern.
* A picture is better than no picture: If there happens to be a preexisting image on an article that does not conform to the image guidelines, **do not** remove the image from the article unless it can be replaced or if it has no relevancy to the article or wiki. If you are not sure, contact an admin.

## Miscellaneous

Articles should have the following elements:

* Incomplete articles should be given the stub and/or expand templates.
* Words that can be linked to other articles on the wiki should be linked only once in their first mention in an article.
	+ **Note**: Internal links add to the cohesion and navigation of Into the Badlands Wikia by allowing readers to deepen their understanding of a topic by conveniently accessing other informative articles. These links should be included in article headings, infoboxes and thumbnail captions.

## See also

* Policies
* Images
* Article layouts
* Categorization