Formatting Guidelines

**We're not done yet.**
This article is totally different from a WIP. This means that that article is not finished but has content that is inaccurate, copied, and potentially under cleanup.

# Manual of Style

## In typical articles

#### Starters

* Create an Overview section and render the section as a heading (Ctrl+1).
* The page name should always be written in bold the first time it appears within the article body. Use the magic word `{{PAGENAME}}` and render it in **bold**. Example: (**Formatting Guidelines**)
* Use magic words `__NOTOC__` and `__NOEDITSECTION__` beside the first paragraph of the first section to hide the table of contents and edit links beside sections.
* Start introducing the item is the main focus of the article through general information before delving into details.
* Use the appropriate infobox.

#### Grammar

* Please write articles in proper, yet plain English while editing so they can be understood. Defunct and/or discontinued media must use past tense.
* American, British, Australian or any regional word variations of English is acceptable; it is up to own choice if those are wanted to be used or not.
* Balanced the use of active and passive voice. Use active voice when focusing on the action, such as describing how something works. Use while passive voice on the doer or imply something that is not revealed.
	+ To identify passive voice, simply find phrases that contains a be verbs (is, was, were, will, has, have) and a verb in past tense.
	+ Contractions like "isn't" and "can't" are okay to be used in pages
	+ The full form of "can't" should be written as "cannot", not "can not".
	+ Do not confuse these following words:
		- "Its" and "It's" - **Its** is the possessive form of *it* while **it's** is the contraction of *it is*. To avoid confusion, use "it has been" instead of "it's been".
		- "Then" and "Than" - **Then** is a transitional word while **Than** is a comparison word.
		- "There" and "They're" - **They're** is a contraction of "they are", while "There" is used for anything else that would not make much sense to say the former.
		- "Who's" and "Whose" - Similar to **"There" vs. "They're"**.
		- "Your" and "you're" - **Your** is a sign of ownership while **you're** is a contraction for "you are".
* Plural words must never be written with apostrophe. Doing so will state that the subject is in ownership of something, which is incorrect.

#### Text Formatting

* Italicize the official title of every Toca Life franchises in the series.
* For titles of news articles or titles of media not in the wiki, capitalize the initial of every word except words with less than three letters.
* Insert links to words that have pages of its kind. Do this once in each section.
* Using texting language (leetspeak, acronyms, emojis) and text modifying tools such as font generators are not allowed.
	+ Exceptions are those used officially.
* Slang, vulgar, pejorative, derogative and discirminating language is prohibited.

#### Categories

* Please use appropriate categories for articles.
* Manually adding certain categories, as well as its notices, such as Stub and Candidates for Deletion is not allowed

### Pages

* Creation of useless pages, such as definitions of words and random gibberish, will be quickly deleted.
	+ The Toca Life Glossary serves as a page for words commonly and exclusively used in the Toca Life universe.

## Media

### General

* To add media, create a section called Gallery and render it to Heading (Ctrl+1). Depending on the article, copy and use the specific galleries under the Gallery tabber.
* All must must be related to the *Toca Boca* franchise. Unrelated ones will be deleted unless they are for decoration purpose on user pages.
* Sort media and videos by date. If no date is found, arrange them by the initial of the first word of the title of the image or video alphanumrically.
	+ Symbols should go first before numbers and then letters of the Latin alphabet. Those outside the Latin alphabet such as Kanji and Cyrillic letters should go last.
* Fan and user-created works are prohibited. The Exhibit serves as a separate page for fan works such as fanart and covers of fanfiction.
* TItles of media that are not in English should go after titles in English.

### Images

See also: Help:Uploading files
* Images must be at least 150×150 pixels and at most 7500×7500 pixels
* They should be at a maximum of 10MB
* Thumbnails of pictures in articles should be set to 250 pixels.

### Videos

See also: Help:Videos
* The supported sites for uploading videos are Youtube, Dailymotion, Vimeo and Youku.
* Adding videos from YouTube is allowed, but with restrictions:
	+ They must be related to the article.
	+ If a video has been deleted or hidden from YouTube, it must be deleted within the wiki.
* Short videos (videos that are shorter than three minutes) should be first.

### Citations

* Reference articles and media by the website link
* Do not add `Template:Fact` manually.

## Footnotes

* Footnotes refer to references that are not website links such as statements or credit information to media
* Add a reference below the citation and add the necessary information