A Township Tale Wiki/Style Guide

This **A Township Tale Wiki**
outlines a standard of clean, consistent formatting for articles on this wiki. The formatting described here is a guideline and can be overridden where circumstances warrant it. 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.

Standard Wiki markups can be found at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Cheatsheet.

## Page types

Different page types require different page formats. See the following examples:

* Item : Boilerplate:Item
* Location : Boilerplate:Location

## Categories

Category pages should have a small description of the category, but not an extensive description on the topic. If a topic requires more content, it should have a dedicated page. For instance, Fuel and Category:Fuel.

Categories should always be named as plurals: "Fuels" vs "Fuel", "Locations" vs "Location".

## Article titles, headings, and sections

### Article titles

A title should be a natural, precise, concise, and consistent name of the topic. Titles should follow:

* Capitalization of the first letter
* Not starting with 'A', 'An', or 'The' (ie. Use "Gotera" rather than "The Gotera")
* Not finishing with punctuation unless it's an inseparable part of the name (ie. Use "Gotera" rather than "Gotera!")

### Section organization

Article layout is extremely important to ensure readability and maintainability. When dealing with an article that is comparable to others (ie. an item, or a location), a standard format should be used (see #Page Formats).

Articles of visual topics should use a Infobox at the very start of the article.

All articles should (after the info box) begin with an introductory lead section - a summary of the article, or brief description of the topic. This section should not have sub-headings.

If the topic of a section is covered in more detail in a dedicated article, insert `{{main|Article Name}}` immediately under the section heading.

Sections dedicated to linking elsewhere (such as 'Related Articles') should always be at the bottom of an article.

### Section headings

Section headings should follow the guidelines provided above for article titles.

`=Heading=` (`H1`) should not be used, as that is the level that the article title is displayed with.

Section headings should be defined as `==Heading==` (`H2`). Sub headings as `===Heading===` (`H3`) and so forth up to `=====Heading=====` (`H5`).

Headings should also:

* Not redundantly refer back to the subject of the article (eg. Use "Description" rather than "Description of X")
* Not contain links
* Be unique within the page (otherwise section links may lead to the wrong place, and edit summaries may be ambiguous)
* Not contain citations on the same line.
* Only contain text.
* Not be phrased as a question.
* Not start with a number (other than a year)

The above guidelines should generally apply to the headers of tables, though they may contain links where appropriate.

## Article Content

While writing article content, the following guidelines should be followed.

### Styles

* Avoid using bold except for rare cases where emphasis is required.
* All item names should be capitalized (e.g. Flint).
* The first instance of an item name within a section should always be linked, via double brackets (e.g. `[[Flint]]`). Further mentions of the same item should generally *not* be linked, unless within or a table, or if they occur far from each other and would be helpful to readers.

### Writing

* Be concise
* Check your spelling and grammar
* Write from an impersonal perspective. Do not use "I", and avoid use of "You". Instead, refer to "Players".
* Keep content related to the topic. Try not to go into detail about related articles, instead, leave that to be written on it's appropriate page. The only exception here is for brief coverage in Guide articles.

### Grammar

* Grammar is often a huge issue in wikis. Be sure to double check it!
* If people are commonly editing your writing to make grammatical improvements, or you know you struggle with grammar, try looking up some grammar tutorials.

### Other Formats

#### Dates

Dates should be written using Template:Date.

#### Quotes

Quotes should be written using Template:DevQuote or Template:Quote.

#### Tables

Tables should use the "wikitable" class design when possible, and should include as little "fancy" formatting as possible. Tables can also be made sortable by adding a "sortable" class.

For long tables, striped tables utilizing alternating shadings are recommended to aid in distinguishing rows, using the "zebra" class.

More information about wiki tables can be found on the Help Wiki.

### Other

* Be sure to read the page before editing. Editors frequently add notes, tips, and trivia items that duplicate information already contained in the article's paragraphs above.

## Talk Pages

Talk pages are for suggestions regarding the structure or contents of a page, or for a discussion with a user. When editing a Talk: page, use `==Section Title==` to create a new section header if the topic you want to discuss is not already on the page. For example, `==New Format Suggestion==` to suggest a change in the format of a page. If the topic you wanted to discuss is already on the page, you should always use a colon(:) before your reply to make it easier to follow the flow of comments. When you are finished with your editing, insert a break tag by using `<br/>` to move your signature to the next line and then sign it using `-- ~~~~`.

## Suggestions

Suggestions should **ONLY** be related to the A Township Tale Wiki, not to the game itself. If you'd like to get in contact with Alta, A Township Tale's developers, please join the A Township Tale Discord
.