Plants vs. Zombies Wiki:Manual of Style

This **Manual of Style** outlines a standard of clean, consistent formatting for articles on this wiki. These guidelines will never be unerringly perfect for every situation. However, please try your best to keep to the advice outlined in this article so others may use your edits as an example when creating and editing their own articles.

These guidelines are a summary of the most important guidelines for this wiki, but a more expansive set of style guidelines can be found on Wikipedia at the Wikipedia Manual of Style.

## General article and category rules

* Please refer to the pronoun guidelines for pronoun usage. Note that these guidelines are not applied for strategies.

### Language

* Only English is allowed. This wiki is an English wiki, and not everybody will understand other languages.
	+ *Plants vs. Zombies* is an American game, so you must use American English in articles, except for strategies, whereas people who do not use American English, such as the United Kingdom or Australia, would spell words like "color" and "favorite" as "colour" and "favourite."

### Names

* Do not abbreviate whenever possible. Use the full name to prevent confusion.
	+ For page names, the name of the game inside parentheses is allowed to be shortened. This also applies when typing the full name would risk bulkiness. Follow the below instructions for consistency.
		- *Plants vs. Zombies* -> PvZ
		- *Plants vs. Zombies Adventures* -> PvZA
		- *Plants vs. Zombies 2* -> PvZ2
		- *Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare* -> PvZ: GW
		- *Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare 2* -> PvZ: GW2
		- *Plants vs. Zombies Heroes* -> PvZH
		- *Plants vs. Zombies Online* -> PvZO (should not be stated as PvZOL for various reasons)
		- *Plants vs. Zombies: All Stars* -> PvZ: AS
		- *Plants vs. Zombies: Journey to the West* -> PvZ: JttW
		- *Plants vs. Zombies: Battle for Neighborville* -> PvZ: BfN
		- *Plants vs. Zombies 3* -> PvZ3
	+ The above rules do not apply on categories.
* Do not rename articles without staff's permission. If you think that a page's name should be changed, please contact a staff member and it may or may not be done.

### Grammar

* Please italicize all games (such as *Plants vs. Zombies* and *Plants vs. Zombies 2*) along with linking them if needed. This is proper grammar.
	+ However, do not italicize the game version (for example, Nintendo DS), which is incorrect and unneeded.

#### Capitalization

* For names, use those given by the game:
	+ Capitalize the first letter.
	+ For words with a hyphen, the first letter behind it must not be capitalized (Puff-**s**hroom, Tall-**n**ut, Giga-**g**argantuar) unless it is officially capitalized after the hyphen.
	+ Unless referring to *Plants vs. Zombies Heroes* plants, do not use a capital on the letter after the dash.
		- When referring to *Plants vs. Zombies* plants, **Puff-shroom** is correct.
		- When referring to *Plants vs. Zombies* plants, **Puff-Shroom** is incorrect.
		- When referring to *Plants vs. Zombies Heroes* plants, **Puff-Shroom** is correct.
	+ Do not shorten names (do not use "Relic Hunter" instead of "Relic Hunter Zombie").
	+ Use "**z**ombie" for zombies in general. However, use "**Z**ombie" when referring to any specific type of zombies (including normal Zombie).
* In every other case, **only capitalize with titles**. Particular cases include "**A**lmanac **e**ntry," "**L**evel 1-1," and "**P**lant **F**ood **e**ffect."

#### Numbers

* When using numbers, use English words if the number is zero to ten.
	+ If the number is 11 or above, or if you are using numbers in infoboxes or tables, you can use figures or words (**about five million people**; **16** or **sixteen**; 84 or eighty-four; 200 or two hundred; but 3.75, 544, 21 million). Ensure consistency when using words or figures. Words may be preferable when using approximations.
	+ For plants and zombies *Overview* section and Level/Day X, please use digits for all numbers.
* Render comparable quantities, mentioned together, either all as words or all as figures (**5 Sunflowers and 25 Peashooters** or **five Sunflowers and twenty-five Peashooters**, but not **five Sunflowers and 25 Peashooters** or **5 Sunflowers and twenty-five Peashooters**).
* Render differently (with words or figures) adjacent quantities that are not comparable (**thirty-six 6.4-inch rifled guns**; not **36 6.4-inch rifled guns**).
* When mentioning the quantities of uncountable nouns, state it as "[number] units of [item]" (**4 units of 1-star Chlorophyll**; not **4 1-star Chlorophylls**)
* If you want to describe a radius or an area of a plant or zombie, please use numbers.
	+ **3x3** is correct.
	+ **three-by-three** is incorrect.

#### Punctuations

* Use of serial commas in articles is optional; therefore, unless it conflicts with the intended message, do not change it unnecessarily.
* To comply with the American English style, commas and periods should go inside quotation marks, unless for certain cases where another punctuation is already inside the quotation marks. This does not apply on strategy pages.
	+ **Her name is a portmanteau of "Penelope" and "pea."** is correct.
	+ **Her name is a portmanteau of "Penelope" and "pea".** is incorrect.
	+ **There are two mini-games with the name "Can You Dig It?".** is correct.
	+ **There are two mini-games with the name "Can You Dig It?."** is incorrect.

### Information

* In articles, only use facts, not opinions.
* Any information about not publicly released content (such as coding) of the games must be removed from mainspace. Instead, it will be placed in beta or concept pages.
* Assumptions related to references should be kept off unless mentioned directly by developers or in the games.
* Do not refer to any *Plants vs. Zombies* game as "the game." There are multiple *Plants vs. Zombies* games and thus, this is ambiguous. This does not apply if the game's name was already specified.
* Do not swear on articles except in reference to something.
* Do not use phrases to state name of levels.
	+ **Ancient Egypt - Day 1** is correct.
	+ **The first day of Ancient Egypt** is incorrect.
* In the main *Plants vs. Zombies* series, **do not use any unit to measure damage other than damage per shot.**

### Editing

* There should be only one hyperlink to a specific article per section.
* Archived articles should not have any article management templates except for:
	+ Template:ChinaArticle
	+ Template:Archived
* Do not add achievements which are too generalized to the "Related achievements" section. For example, do not add The Complete Zombie to Starfruit, but you can add it to Plants (PvZ).

### Galleries

* If a gallery's number of files exceeds 25, a separate page for that gallery can be made.
* All gallery, strategy and walkthrough pages do not need extra categories about the subject.
* Periods are not required in image descriptions unless there are two or more sentences.

**All of the above rules are ignored if you are adding in-game words such as descriptions and Almanac entries; copy them completely.**

## Page layout

* For disambiguation pages, please use the following layout:

```
{{Disambig}}
'''Subject''' may refer to:
*Item 1
*Item 2
etc

```

* Level articles go in the following order:

```
Dialogue
Difficulty
Waves
Strategies
Gallery
Trivia
Walkthrough

```

* Card articles go in the following order:

```
Origins (if the card originates from somewhere or something)
Statistics
Update history (if the card has changed over time)
Strategies
Gallery
Trivia

```

* Anything along the lines of "X's desc is an excerpt of their (game)'s description" goes to the *Origins* section.
* Mentions of puns and portmanteaus go to the *Origins* section.
* Changed content in games should be listed in the "Update history/Balance changes" section.

## Strategy rules

Main article: Plants vs. Zombies Wiki:Manual of Style/Strategies
## Image rules

Main article: Plants vs. Zombies Wiki:Manual of Style/Image policy
## Trivia rules

Main article: Plants vs. Zombies Wiki:Manual of Style/Trivia policy
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