Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 23:19, 5 October 2007

This guideline is a part of the English Misplaced Pages's Manual of Style. It is a generally accepted standard that editors should attempt to follow, though occasional exceptions may apply. Any substantive edit to this page should reflect consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on the talk page.

Shortcuts WP:MOS WP:STYLE WP:SYLLABUS WP:MANUAL

The Manual of Style is a style guide for meretricious users that aims to make the encyclopedia easier to read. One way of presenting information is often just as good as another, but consistency promotes professionalism, simplicity and greater cohesion in Misplaced Pages articles. An overriding principle is that style and formatting should be applied consistently throughout an article, unless there is a good reason to do otherwise, except in direct quotations, where the original text is generally preserved.

If this page does not specify a preferred usage, consult other reliable guides, such as those listed below, or discuss your issues on the talk page of this manual. The Chicago Manual of Style, the Oxford Guide to Style and Fowler’s Modern English Usage are well-known style guides; Chicago provides an online guide, The Chicago Manual of Style Online. The Guardian Styleguide, the Mayfield Electronic Handbook of Technical & Scientific Writing and the CMS Crib Sheet are among online style guides that are accessible gratis.

When either of two styles is acceptable, it is inappropriate for an editor to change an article from one style to another unless there is a substantial reason to do so (for example, it is acceptable to change from American to British spelling if the article concerns a British topic, and vice versa). Edit warring over optional styles is unacceptable. If an article has been stable in a given style, it should not be converted without a style-independent reason. When it is unclear whether an article has been stable, defer to the style used by the first major contributor.

Article titles

If possible, the article’s title is the subject of the first sentence of the article, for example, “This Manual of Style is a style guide” instead of “This style guide is known as …”. If the article title is an important term, it appears as early as possible. The first (and only the first) appearance of the title is in boldface, including its abbreviation in parentheses, if given. Equivalent names may follow, and may or may not be in boldface. Highlighted items are not linked, and boldface is not used subsequently in the first paragraph.

This example illustrates the use of boldface in the Vienna article:

Vienna (Template:Lang-de , see also its other names) is the capital of Austria and one of that country’s nine states.

The normal rules for italics are followed in choosing whether to put part or all of the title in italics:

Tattoo You is an album by The Rolling Stones, released in 1981.

If the topic of an article has no name, and the title is simply descriptive—such as Electrical characteristics of a dynamic loudspeaker—the title does not need to appear verbatim in the main text; if it does, it is not in boldface:

A dynamic loudspeaker driver’s chief electrical characteristics can be shown as a curve, representing the …

How to edit a page gives advice on making items bold, italic, or both.

Sections and headings

Markup

Unspaced multiple equal signs are the style markup for headings (also called section titles). The triple apostrophes ( ''' ) that make words appear in boldface are not used in headings.

The heading for the section you are now reading (Sections and headings) was created with double equal signs:

==Sections and headings==

The heading for the current subsection (Markup) was created with triple equal signs:

===Markup===

Wording

In headings and subheadings:

• only the first letter of the first word, and the first letter of proper nouns are capitalized; all other letters are in lower case (for example, “Rules and regulations”, not “Rules and Regulations”);
• special characters such as the slash (/), plus sign (+), curly brackets ({ }) and square brackets () are avoided, and the ampersand (&) is spelled out as and unless it is part of a formal name;
• links are never used, in favor of linking the first occurrence of the item in the section text;
• the wording tends to be short (more than 10 words may defeat the purpose);
• articles (a, an, the) and pronouns (you, they) are typically avoided unless part of a formal name; and
• the wording is, where possible, not identical to that of any other heading or subheading in the article.

Section management

• Headings and subheadings provide an overview in the table of contents and allow readers to navigate through the text more easily. Subheadings are particularly appropriate for breaking up longer sections.
• Headings and subheadings are changed only after careful consideration, because this will break any section links to them from the same and other articles.
• If you link to a section, leave an editor’s note to remind others that the title is linked. List the names of the linking articles, so that if the title is altered, others can fix the links more easily. For example: ==Evolutionary implications==<!-- This section is linked from ] and ] --> .
• If you refer to a section without linking, italicize the section name; for example, you are now reading the section on Section management.
• If you link to a section, italicize the section name only if it otherwise requires italics (for example, if it is the title of a book). Linking a term provides sufficient indication that you are using a term as a term, which is what you would otherwise use italics for.
• If you change a section title, try to locate and fix broken links; for example, searching for wikipedia “section management” will probably yield links to the current section.

Capital letters

There are differences between the major varieties of English in the use of capitals (uppercase letters). Where this is an issue, the rules of the cultural and linguistic context apply. As for spelling, consistency is maintained within an article.

Capitals are not used for emphasis. Where wording cannot provide the emphasis, italics are used.

Incorrect:	Contrary to common belief, aardvarks are Not the same as anteaters.
Incorrect:	Contrary to common belief, aardvarks are NOT the same as anteaters.
Correct:	Contrary to common belief, aardvarks are not the same as anteaters.

Titles

• When used as titles (that is, followed by a name), items such as president, king and emperor start with a capital letter: President Clinton, not president Clinton. The formal name of an office is treated as a proper noun: “Hirohito was Emperor of Japan” and “Louis XVI was King of France” (where King of France is a title). Royal styles are capitalized: Her Majesty and His Highness; exceptions may apply for particular offices.
• When used generically, such items are in lower case: “De Gaulle was a French president” and “Louis XVI was a French king”. Similarly, “Three prime ministers attended the conference”, but, “The British Prime Minister is Gordon Brown”.
• For the use of titles and honorifics in biographical articles, see Honorific prefixes.

Religions, deities, philosophies, doctrines, and their adherents

• Religions, sects and churches and their followers (in noun or adjective form) start with a capital letter. Generally the is not capitalized before such names (the Shī‘a, not The Shī‘a). (But see also the style guide and naming convention for the Latter Day Saint movement.)
• Scriptures are capitalized (Qur'an, the Granth Sahib, the Bible). When the is used, it is not capitalized or italicized.
• Honorifics for deities, when used alone in reference to a specific figure of veneration, start with a capital letter (God, Allah, the Lord, the Supreme Being, the Great Spirit); the is not capitalized. The same is true when referring to major religious figures and figures from mythology by terms of respect (the Prophet, the Messiah, the Virgin, a Muse). When used generically, descriptively or metaphorically, such descriptive terms are not capitalized; thus the Romans worshipped many gods, many Anglo-Saxons worshipped the god Wotan, Jesus and Muhammad are both considered prophets in Islam, Biblical scholars dispute whether Mary was a virgin for her entire life, and her husband was her muse.
• Pronouns and possessives referring to figures of veneration are not capitalized in Misplaced Pages articles, even when they traditionally are in a religion's scriptures. They are left capitalized when directly quoting scriptures that capitalize them.
• Broad categories of mythical or legendary creatures do not start with capital letters (elf, fairy, nymph, unicorn, angel), although in derived works of fantasy, such as the novels of J.R.R. Tolkien and realtime strategy video games, initial capitals are sometimes used to indicate that the beings are regarded as cultures or races in their fictional universes). Descriptive terms for individual creatures are capitalized (the Minotaur, the Pegasus) as are those of groups whose name and membership are fixed (the Cherubim, the Magi or the Three Wise Men). As with terms for deities, generalized references are not capitalized ("cherub-like", "the priests of this sect were called magi by some", "several wise men were consulted").
• Spiritual or religious events are likewise capitalized only when they are terms referring to specific incidents or periods (the Great Flood, the Exodus, but annual flooding or an exodus of refugees).
• Philosophies, theories and doctrines do not begin with a capital letter unless the name derives from a proper noun (capitalism versus Marxism) or has become a proper noun (lowercase republican refers to a system of political thought; uppercase Republican refers to one of several specific political parties or ideologies, such as the US Republican Party or Irish Republicanism). Physical and natural laws and parodies of them are capitalized (the Second Law of Thermodynamics, the Theory of Special Relativity, Murphy's Law; but an expert on gravity and relativity, thermodynamic properties, Murphy's famous mock-law). Doctrinal topics or canonical religious ideas that may be traditionally capitalized within a faith are given in lower case in Misplaced Pages, such as virgin birth, original sin or transubstantiation.
• Platonic or transcendent ideals are capitalized (Good, Truth), but only within the context of philosophical doctrine; used more broadly, they are lower-case ("Superman represents American ideals of truth and justice"). Personifications represented in art, such as a statue of the figure Justice, are capitalized.

Calendar items

• Months, days and holidays start with a capital letter: June, Monday, the Fourth of July (when referring to the U.S. Independence Day, otherwise July 4 or 4 July).
• Seasons, in almost all instances, are lowercase: “This summer was very hot”; “The winter solstice occurs about December 22”; “I’ve got spring fever”. When personified, season names may function as proper nouns, where they should be capitalized: “I think Spring is showing her colors”; “Old Man Winter”.

Animals, plants, and other organisms

Scientific names for genera and species are italicized, with a capital initial letter for the genus but no capital for the species; for more specific guidelines for article titles, see Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Tree of Life#Article titles. For example, the tulip tree is Liriodendron tulipifera, and humans are Homo sapiens. Taxonomic groups higher than genus are given with an initial capital and are not in italics; for example, gulls are in the family Laridae, and we are in the family Hominidae.

Common (vernacular) names of flora and fauna should be written in lower case-—for example, "oak" or "lion". There are a limited number of exceptions to this:

1. Where the name is the first word of the sentence, it should be capitalised as any other word would be. For example "Black bears eat white suckers and blueberries."
2. Where the common name contains a proper noun, such as the name of a person or place, that proper noun should be capitalised; for example, "The Bengal tiger has a range of over 500 kilometers." or "The Roosevelt elk is a subspecies of Cervus canadensis."
3. For specific groups of organisms, there are specific rules of capitalization based on current and historic usage among those who study the organisms. These should ordinarily be followed:
   • Official common names of birds are normally capitalised
4. In a very few cases, a set of officially established common names are recognised only within a country or a geographic region. Those common names may be capitalised according to local custom but it should be understood that not all editors will have access to the references needed to support these names; in such cases, using the general recommendation is also acceptable.

In any case, a redirect from an alternative capitalisation should be created where it is used in an article title.

Celestial bodies

• Sun, earth, and moon are proper nouns in an astronomical context, but not elsewhere. Thus, “The Sun is a main sequence star, with a spectral class of G2”; but “The sun was peeking over the mountain top”. These terms are proper nouns only when they refer to specific celestial bodies (our Sun, Earth and Moon): so “The Moon orbits the Earth”, but “Pluto’s moon Charon”.
• Other planets and stars are proper nouns and start with a capital letter: “The planet Mars can be seen tonight in the constellation Gemini, near the star Pollux.” Where a name has multiple words, it is treated like other proper nouns where each leading letter is capitalized: Alpha Centauri and not Alpha centauri.

Directions and regions

• Directions such as north are not proper nouns and are therefore lowercase. The same is true for their related forms: someone might call a road that leads north a northern road, compared with the Great North Road. Composite directions may or may not be hyphenated (northeast and north-east, Southeast Asia and South-East Asia).
• Regions that are proper nouns, including widely known expressions such as Southern California, start with a capital letter. Follow the same convention for related forms: a person from the Southern United States is a Southerner. Regions of uncertain proper-noun status are assumed not to have attained it.

Institutions

• Proper names of institutions (for example, the University of Sydney, New York-Presbyterian Hospital, George Brown College) are proper nouns and require capitalization. Where a title starts with the, it typically starts with lowercase t when the title occurs in the middle of a sentence (“a degree from the University of Sydney”).
• Generic words for institutions (university, college, hospital, high school) require no capitalization:

Incorrect	(generic):	The University offers programs in arts and sciences.
Correct	(generic):	The university offers …
Correct	(title):	The University of Ottawa offers …

Acronyms and abbreviations

Initial spelling out

Readers are not necessarily familiar with particular acronyms, such as NASA (pronounced as a word) or initialisms, such as PBS (pronounced by spelling it out). The standard practice is to spell out the item on its first occurrence, followed by the abbreviation in parentheses. For example, “The New Democratic Party (NDP) won the 1990 Ontario election with a significant majority. However, the NDP quickly became unpopular with the voters.”

Initial capitals are not used in a spelled out item just because capitals are used in the abbreviation.

Incorrect	(not a title):	We used Digital Scanning (DS) technology
Correct:		We used digital scanning (DS) technology
Correct	(title):	produced by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)

In British English, acronyms (abbreviations pronounced as words) that are in common usage are sometimes not capitalized in their entirety (Aids rather then AIDS).

Within parentheses

If a term is already in parentheses, use a comma and or to indicate the acronym; for example, “They first debated the issue in 1992 (at a convention of the New Democratic Party, or NDP).”

Plural forms

Acronyms and initialisms are pluralized by adding -s or -es. For example, “They produced three CD-ROMs in the first year”. The apostrophe is not used.

United States

In American English, U.S. is the more common abbreviation than US; when referring to the country in a longer abbreviation (USA, USN, USAF), periods are not used. When the United States occurs with the name of one or more other countries in the same sentence, U.S. is informal, and many authors avoid it (for example, "France and the United States", not "France and the U.S.").

Periods and spaces

Many periods and spaces that were traditionally required have now dropped out of usage. For example, PhD is preferred to Ph.D. and Ph. D.. Periods are retained in abbreviations that cannot otherwise be clearly identified.

HTML elements

The software that Misplaced Pages runs on does not support HTML abbreviation elements (<acronym> or <abbr>); therefore, these tags are not inserted into the source (see Mediazilla:671).

Italics

Emphasis

Italics are used sparingly to emphasize words in sentences (bolding is normally not used at all for this purpose). Generally, the more highlighting in an article, the less the effect of each instance.

Titles

Italics are used for the titles of works of literature and art such as books, paintings and musical albums. The titles of articles, chapters, songs and other short works are not italicized but are enclosed in double quotation marks.

Words as words

Italics are used when citing a word or letter (see use–mention distinction). For example, “The term panning is derived from panorama, a word coined in 1787.” “The most commonly used letter in English is e.” Here, word includes noun phrases (e.g., the brown dog).

Quotations in italics

An entire quotation is not italicized solely because it is a quotation.

Italics within quotations

Italics are used within quotations if they are in the source material, or to add emphasis; if the latter, an editorial note “” appears at the end of the quotation. For example: “Now cracks a noble heart. Good night sweet prince: And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.”

If the source uses italics for emphasis, and it is desirable to stress that Misplaced Pages has not added the italics, the editorial note “” appears after the quote.

Effect on nearby punctuation

Italicization is restricted to what should properly be affected by italics, and not the surrounding punctuation.

Incorrect:	What are we to make of that?
Correct:	What are we to make of that?
		(The question mark applies to the whole sentence, not just to that.)
Correct:	Four of Patrick White’s most famous novels are A Fringe of Leaves, The Aunt’s Story, Voss and The Tree of Man.
		(The commas and and are not italicized.)

Italicized links

The italic markup must be outside the link markup, or the link will not work; however, internal italicization can be used in piped links.

Incorrect:	The opera ] is his best.
Correct:	The opera '']'' is his best.
Correct:	The ] was a submarine.

Foreign terms

Foreign words are used sparingly.

No common usage in English

Misplaced Pages prefers italics for phrases in other languages and for isolated foreign words that do not yet have common usage in English. However, in an article on a subject for which there is no English-language term, the foreign term does not require italicization.

Common usage in English

Loan words and phrases that have common usage in English—praetor, Gestapo, samurai, esprit de corps—do not require italicization. A rule of thumb is: do not italicize words that appear in an English language dictionary.

Spelling and transliteration

For terms in common usage, use anglicized spellings; native spellings are an optional alternative if they use the Latin alphabet. Diacritics are optional, except where they are required for disambiguation (résumé). Where native spellings in non-Latin scripts (such as Greek and Cyrillic) are given, they appear in parentheses, and are not italicized, even where this is technically feasible. The choice between anglicized and native spellings should follow English usage (e.g., Besançon, Edvard Beneš and Göttingen, but Nuremburg, naive (not naïf), role, and Florence). Article titles follow our naming conventions.

Quotations

• WP:MOSQUOTE

See also Punctuation: Quotation marks below.

Minimal change

Wherever reasonable, preserve the original style and spelling of the text. Where there is a good reason not to do so, insert an editorial explanation of the changes, usually within square brackets (e.g., ).

Attribution

The author of a quote of a full sentence or more is named; this is done in the main text and not in a footnote. An exception is that attribution is unnecessary for well-known quotations (e.g., from Shakespeare) and those from the subject of the article or section.

Quotations within quotations

When a quotation includes another quotation (and so on), start with double-quotes outermost and working inward, alternate single-quotes with double-quotes. For example, the following three-level quotation: “She disputed his statement that ‘Voltaire never said “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” ’ ” Adjacent quote marks, as at the end of this example, are separated by a non-breaking space (&nbsp;).

Linking

Unless there is a good reason to do so, Misplaced Pages avoids linking from within quotes, which may clutter the quotation, violate the principle of leaving quotations unchanged, and mislead or confuse the reader.

Block quotations

A long quote (more than four lines, or consisting of more than one paragraph, regardless of number of lines) is formatted as a block quotation, which Wikimedia’s software will indent from both margins. Block quotes are not enclosed in quotation marks (especially including decorative ones such as those provided by the {{cquote}} template, used only for "call-outs", which are generally not appropriate in Misplaced Pages articles). Use a pair of <blockquote>...</blockquote> HTML tags. Example:

<blockquote>
And bring us a lot of horilka, but not of that fancy kind with raisins, or with any other such things — bring us horilka of the purest kind, give us that demon drink that makes us merry, playful and wild!

—'']'', by ]
</blockquote>

The result appears indented and in a smaller font:

And bring us a lot of horilka, but not of that fancy kind with raisins, or with any other such things — bring us horilka of the purest kind, give us that demon drink that makes us merry, playful and wild!

—Taras Bulba, by Nikolai Gogol

The {{quote}} template provides the same semantic HTML formatting, as well as a workaround for the newline bug and a pre-formatted attribution line:

{{quote|And bring us a lot of horilka, but not of that fancy kind with raisins, or with any other such things — bring us horilka of the purest kind, give us that demon drink that makes us merry, playful and wild!|]|'']''}}

Which results in:

And bring us a lot of horilka, but not of that fancy kind with raisins, or with any other such things — bring us horilka of the purest kind, give us that demon drink that makes us merry, playful and wild!

— Nikolai Gogol, Taras Bulba

Punctuation

• ]

Quotation marks

Double or single

Quotations are enclosed within “double quotes”. Quotations within quotations are enclosed within ‘single quotes’.

Inside or outside

Punctuation marks are placed inside the quote marks only if the sense of the punctuation is part of the quotation (this system is referred to as logical quotation).

Correct:	Arthur said that the situation is “deplorable”.
	(When a sentence fragment is quoted, the period is outside.)
Correct:	Arthur said, “The situation is deplorable.”
	(The period is part of the quoted text.)
Correct:	Martha asked, “Are you coming?”
	(When quoting a question, the question mark belongs inside because the quoted text itself was a question.)
Correct:	Did Martha say, “Come with me”?
	(The very quote is being questioned, so here, the question mark is correctly outside; the period in the original quote is omitted.)

Article openings

When the title of an article appearing in the lead paragraph requires quotation marks (for example, the title of a song or poem), the quotation marks should not be in boldface, as they are not part of the title:

Correct:

“Jabberwocky” is a nonsense poem by Lewis Carroll.

Block quotes

As already noted (see "Quotations" above), we use quotation marks or block quotes (not both) to distinguish quotations from other text. Multiparagraph quotations are always block-quoted.

Look of quotation marks and apostrophes

There are two options when considering the look of the quotation marks (that is, the glyph):

• Typographic: “text”, ‘text’, foo’s
• Typewriter: "text", 'text', foo's

When quotation marks or apostrophes appear in article titles, there is a redirect to the same title using the other glyph.

• Grave and acute accents or backticks (`text´) are neither quotation marks nor apostrophes.

Other matters

• An entire quotation is not italicized solely because it is a quotation.
• The sentence-initial letter of a quotation may be lower-cased if the quotation starts in the middle of a sentence and the quoted material is a natural part of that sentence. Where this occurs, it is unnecessary to indicate this change with square brackets. (For example, "It turned out to be true that 'a penny saved is a penny earned.'")
• If a word or phrase appears in an article in single quotes, such as 'abcd', Misplaced Pages’s search facility will find that word or phrase only if the search string is also within single quotes. This difficulty does not arise for double quotes.
• The choice of glyph style affects searching in an article for most browsers. For example, searching in an article for McDonald's (typewriter quote) will fail to find McDonald’s (typographic quote), and vice versa.

Brackets and parentheses

A bracketed phrase is enclosed by the punctuation of a sentence (as shown here). If there are one or more sentences wholly inside brackets, though, their punctuation comes inside the brackets. These rules apply to square “” as well as round “( )” brackets (parentheses). There should never be a space next to the brackets on the inside, except when blank brackets are used as part of an example. There should generally be a space before an opening bracket when it is preceded by:

• An opening quotation mark

He rose to address the meeting: “(Ahem...) Ladies and gentlemen, welcome!”

• Another opening bracket

Several companies ( GMH, Ford, and Mazda) resisted.

• An ellipsis not followed by a space, or an unspaced em dash

Well…(how could I continue?).

• A portion of a word, or a hyphen, etc., where the brackets enclose only a part of a word

We went on the Inter.

There should be a space after a closing bracket, except where another punctuation mark (other than an apostrophe or a hyphen) follows, and except in cases similar to those listed for opening brackets.

If sets of brackets must be nested, use the contrasting type (normally square brackets appear within round brackets ). Often, it is better to revise the sentence and thus reduce clutter by appropriate use of commas, semicolons, colons, or dashes, rather than brackets.

Avoid adjacent sets of brackets—-either put the parenthetic phrases in one set separated by commas or rewrite the sentence. For example, this sentence:

Incorrect:	Nikifor Grigoriev (c. 1885–1919) (also known as Matviy Hryhoriyiv) was a Ukrainian insurgent leader.
Correct:	Nikifor Grigoriev (c. 1885–1919), also known as Matviy Hryhoriyiv, was a Ukrainian insurgent leader.
Correct:	Nikifor Grigoriev (c. 1885–1919) was a Ukrainian insurgent leader. He was also known as Matviy Hryhoriyiv.

Square brackets are used to indicate editorial replacements and insertions of text. They are used:

• For clarification (“She attended school”—-where this was the intended meaning, but the type of school was unstated in the original sentence);
• To reduce the size of a quotation (If a source says, “X contains Y, and under certain circumstances, X may contain Z as well”, it is acceptable to reduce this to “X contains Y Z”, without ellipsis; when an ellipsis (...) is used to indicate material removed from a direct quotation, it should not be bracketed); and
• To make the grammar work (“She said that ‘ would not allow this’”—where her original statement was “I would not allow this”). (Generally, though it would be preferable to begin the quotation after the problematic word: "She said that she 'would not allow this.' ")

The use of square-bracketed wording should never alter the intended meaning of a quotation.

Serial commas

The serial comma (also known as the Oxford comma or Harvard comma) is a comma used immediately before a conjunction in a list of three or more items. The phrase “ham, chips, and eggs” is written with a serial comma, but “ham, chips and eggs” is not. Sometimes omitting the comma can lead to an ambiguous sentence, as in this example: “The author would like to thank her parents, Sinéad O’Connor and President Bush.” Sometimes including the comma can also lead to an ambiguous sentence, as in: “The author would like to thank her mother, Sinéad O’Connor, and President Bush” which may be a list of either two or three people. In such cases, there are three options for avoiding ambiguity:

• A choice can be made whether to use or omit the comma after the penultimate item in such a way as to avoid ambiguity.
• The sentence can be recast to avoid listing the items in an ambiguous manner.
• The items in the list can be presented using a formatted list.

If the presence of the final serial comma does not affect ambiguity of the sentence (as in most cases), there is no Misplaced Pages consensus on whether it should be used.

Some style authorities (mostly non-journalistic style guides) support a mandatory final serial comma. These include Fowler's Modern English Usage (UK), the Chicago Manual of Style (US), and Strunk and White’s Elements of Style (US). Others (mostly newspapers and magazines) recommend avoiding it where possible; these include The Times (UK), The New York Times (US) and The Economist (UK). See serial comma for further authorities and discussion.

Proponents of the serial comma, such as The Elements of Style, cite its disambiguating function and consistency as reasons for its use. Opponents consider it extraneous in situations where it does not explicitly resolve ambiguity.

By convention, the names of railroads and railways do not employ the serial comma (for example, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis Railroad). This is also the standard for law firms and similar corporate entities (for example, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom).

Colons

Colons (:) should not have spaces before them:

Correct:	He attempted it in two years: 1941 and 1943
Incorrect:	He attempted it in two years : 1941 and 1943

Colons should have complete sentences before them:

Correct:	He attempted it in two years: 1941 and 1943
Incorrect:	The years he attempted it included: 1941 and 1943

Hyphens

• WP:HYPHEN

Hyphens (-) indicate conjunction. There are three main uses.

1. To distinguish between homographs (re-dress = dress again, but redress = remedy or set right).
2. To link certain prefixes with their main word (non-linear, sub-section, super-achiever):
   • However, a clear tendency is emerging to join both elements in all varieties of English (subsection is now standard), particularly in North America (where nonlinear is also standard).
   • The hyphen is more likely to be used when the letters brought into contact are vowels, especially the same vowel (co-opt, pre-existing), or where a word is unusual or less expected in the context (co-proposed, re-target).

   • It is somewhat common not to hyphenate well-known and recognizable cases (coopt, preexisting, but not coowned, and probably not reanchor).

   • The hyphen is very often used to avoid doubling a or i: intra-atomic, juxta-articular, semi-intensive.
   • The hyphen is sometimes retained after sub- to avoid bringing two consonants into contact, and especially to avoid doubling b (subabdominal, but sub-basement). It is often retained for clarity when the main word begins with a vowel, or is short—especially when both of these apply (sub-era, not subera).
   • The hyphen is still often used after non-, and especially when n would be doubled (non-linear or nonlinear, as above; non-negotiable).
3. To link related terms in compound adjectives and adverbs:
   • Sometimes the hyphen helps with ease of reading (face-to-face discussion, hard-boiled egg); hyphens are particularly useful in long nominal groups where non-experts are part of the readership, such as in Misplaced Pages's scientific articles: gas-phase reaction dynamics.
   • Sometimes the hyphen helps with disambiguation (little-used car, not a reference to the size of a used car).
   • Many compound adjectives that are hyphenated when used attributively (before the noun they qualify—a light-blue handbag), are not hyphenated when used predicatively (after the noun—the handbag was light blue). Where there would be a loss of clarity, the hyphen may also be used in the predicative case (hand-fed turkeys, “the turkeys were hand-fed”).
   • Hyphens are often not used after -ly adverbs (wholly owned subsidiary), unless part of larger compounds (a slowly-but-surely strategy).
   • A hyphen is normally used when the adverb well precedes a participle used attributively (a well-meaning gesture; but normally a very well managed firm, since well itself is modified); and even predicatively, if well is necessary to, or alters, the sense of the adjective rather than simply intensifying it (“the gesture was well-meaning”, “the child was well-behaved”, but “the floor was well polished”).
   • A hanging hyphen is used when two compound adjectives are separated (two- and three-digit numbers, a ten-car or -truck convoy).
   • Values and units used as compound adjectives are hyphenated only where the unit is fully spelled out. Where hyphens are not used, values and units are always separated by a non-breaking space (&nbsp;).

Incorrect:	9-mm gap
Correct:	9 mm gap (rendered as 9 mm gap)
Incorrect:	9 millimetre gap
Correct:	9-millimetre gap
Correct:	12-hour shift
Correct:	12 h shift

Hyphens are never followed or preceded by a space, except when hanging or when used to display parts of words independently, such as the prefix sub- and the suffix -less.

Hyphens are used only to mark conjunctions; on Misplaced Pages, they have often been wrongly used to mark disjunction (for which en dashes are correct: see below).

Hyphenation involves many subtleties that cannot be covered here; but the rules and examples presented above illustrate the sorts of broad principles that inform current usage.

Dashes

• WP:DASH
• WP:MOSDASH

Several kinds of dash are used on Misplaced Pages.

En dashes

En dashes (–) have four distinct roles.

1. To indicate disjunction. In this role there are two main applications.
   • To convey the sense of to or through, particularly in ranges (pp. 211–19, 64–75%, the 1939–45 war, May–November) and where movement is involved (Dublin–Belfast route). Year and page ranges are often an issue on Misplaced Pages. The word to, rather than an en dash, is used when a number range involves a negative value or might be misconstrued as a subtraction (−3 to 1, not −3–1), or when the nearby wording demands it (“he served from 1939 to 1941”, not “he served from 1939–1941”).
   • As a substitute for some uses of and, to or versus for marking a relationship involving independent elements in certain compound expressions (Canada–US border, blood–brain barrier, time–altitude graph, 4–3 win in the opening game, male–female ratio, 3–2 majority verdict, Michelson–Morley experiment, diode–transistor logic; but a hyphen is used instead in Mon-Khmer languages which lacks a relationship, Sino-Japanese trade, in which Sino- lacks independence, and Indo-European linguistics which lacks both relationship and lexical independence).
     • Spacing: All disjunctive en dashes are unspaced, except when there is a space within either or both of the items (the New York – Sydney flight, the New Zealand – South Africa grand final, 3 July, 1888 – 18 August, 1940).
2. For negative signs and subtraction operators, as an alternative to the usually slightly shorter minus sign, − (input with &minus;). Negative signs (–8°C) are unspaced; subtraction signs (42 – 4 = 38) are spaced. The en dash was the traditional typographic symbol for this operator, but now that unicode defines a character for this specific use, the minus is preferred. In contexts such as code, where the text is intended to be copied and executed or evaluated, the ordinary hyphen works better and is preferred.
3. In lists, to separate distinct information within points—particularly track titles and durations, and musicians and their instruments, in articles on music albums. In this role, en dashes are always spaced.
4. As a stylistic alternative to em dashes (see below).

Hyphens have often been wrongly used in disjunctive expressions on Misplaced Pages; this is especially common in sports scores. When creating an article, a hyphen is now not used as a substitute for an en dash in the title.

The article on dashes includes input methods for typing dashes on several operating systems.

En dashes in page names

The en dash may be used in a page name, for example, Eye–hand span. Editors should provide a redirect page to such an article, using a hyphen in place of the en dash (e.g., Eye-hand span), to allow the name to be typed easily when searching Misplaced Pages. See also Misplaced Pages:Naming conventions (precision). Regardless of whether the page name includes a dash, the associated talk page name should match the page name exactly.

Em dashes

Em dashes (—) indicate interruption. They are used in the following two roles.

1. Parenthesis (“Misplaced Pages—one of the most popular web sites—has the information you need”). Here, a pair of em dashes is a more arresting way of nesting a phrase or clause than a pair of commas, and may be less intrusive than brackets. A pair of em dashes is particularly useful where there are already many commas; em dashes can make a sentence with more than one nesting easier to read, and sometimes they can remove ambiguity.
2. A sharp break in the flow of a sentence—sharper than is provided by a colon or a semicolon.

Em dashes are normally unspaced on Misplaced Pages.

Because em dashes are visually striking, Misplaced Pages takes care not to overuse them. A rule of thumb is to avoid more than two in a single paragraph, unless the paragraph is unusually long or the use of more than two em dashes would be logically cohesive. Only very rarely are there more than two em dashes in a single sentence.

The main article shows common input methods for em dashes on Macintosh and Windows.

Spaced en dashes as an alternative to em dashes

Spaced en dashes – such as here – can be used instead of em dashes in all of the ways discussed above. Spaced en dashes are used by several major publishers, to the complete exclusion of em dashes; style manuals more often prefer unspaced em dashes. One style should be used consistently in an article.

Other dashes

These are avoided on Misplaced Pages, notably the double-hyphen (--).

Spaces after the end of a sentence

There are no guidelines on whether to use one space after the end of a sentence, or two (French spacing), but the issue is not important, because the difference is visible only in edit boxes and not in the final display.

Contractions

In general, formal writing is preferred; therefore, the use of contractions, such as “don’t”, “can’t” and “won’t”, is avoided unless they occur in a quotation.

Slashes

Avoid joining two words by a slash, as it suggests that the two are related, but does not specify how. It is often also unclear how the construct would be read aloud. Consider replacing a slash with an explanation, or adding one in a footnote. Where possible, spell things out to avoid uncertainties.

An example: “The parent/instructor must be present at all times.” Must both be present? (Then write “the parent and the instructor”.) Must at least one be present? (Then write “the parent or the instructor”.) Are they the same person? (Use a hyphen: “the parent–instructor”.)

In circumstances involving a distinction or disjunction, the en dash is usually preferable to the slash, e.g., “the novel–novella distinction”.

A slash may be used:

• to separate run-in lines of poetry (“To be or not to be: that is the question: / Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer / The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune”);
• to show pronunciations (“ribald is pronounced /ri-bəld/”);
• to separate the numerator and denominator in a fraction (“7⁄8”);
• to indicate regular defined yearly periods that do not coincide with calendar years (see Years).

“And/or”

The construct and/or is usually awkward. In general, where it is important to mark an inclusive or, use “x or y, or both”, rather than “x and/or y”. For an exclusive or, use “either x or y”, and optionally add “but not both”, if it is necessary to stress the exclusivity.

Where more than two possibilities are presented, from which a combination is to be selected, it is even less desirable to use and/or. With two possibilities, at least the intention is clear; but with more than two it may not be (see The Cambridge Guide to English Usage, 2004, p. 38). Instead of “x, y, and/or z”, use an appropriate alternative, such as “one or more of x, y, and z”; “some or all of x, y, and z”.

Ellipses

An ellipsis is a series of three dots (periods) indicating omitted text. Ellipses are useful for reducing the size of quotations so that only the relevant parts appear.

• The precomposed ellipsis character (…) may be used; it displays three dots (…).
• Ensure that the omission does not subvert the intended meaning of the quotation.
• A space is inserted either side of the ellipsis, except where the first portion of text itself ends with a period; in this case, four dots rather than three typically follow the last word, without an intervening space. To prevent an ellipsis from wrapping to the beginning of a line, non-breaking spaces are entered instead of normal spaces ( …).

Examples: "in the middle of a sentence where punctuation does not occur … after a comma, … a semicolon; … a colon: … or at the end of a sentence…. Rarely, in a question…? Even more rarely, before an exclamation mark…!"

Where ellipses are used to indicate material elided from a direct quotation, they should not be square-bracketed.

Question marks and exclamation marks

• Question and exclamation marks are never preceded by a space.
• The exclamation mark is used with restraint: it is an expression of surprise or emotion that is generally unsuited to a scholarly or encyclopedic register.
• Clusters of question marks, exclamation marks, or a combination of them (such as the interrobang) are highly informal and inappropriate in Misplaced Pages articles.
• For the use of these marks in association with quotation marks, see the relevant section above.

Non-breaking spaces

• In compound items in which numerical and non-numerical elements are separated by a space, non-breaking spaces are recommended to avoid the displacement of those elements at the end of a line.
• Non-breaking spaces are produced by keying in the html code &nbsp; instead of a normal space; thus, 19&nbsp;kg yields a non-breaking 19 kg.
• Non-breaking spaces are also produced by using the {{nowrap}} template; thus, {{nowrap|4:40 pm}} produces a non-breaking 4:40 pm.

Chronological items

Precise language

Avoid statements that will date quickly, except on pages that are regularly refactored, such as those that cover current events. Avoid such items as recently and soon (unless their meaning is clear in a storyline), currently (except on rare occasions when it is not redundant), in modern times, is now considered and is soon to be superseded. Instead, use either:

• more precise items (since the start of 2005; during the 1990s; is expected to be superseded by 2008); or
• an as of phrase (as of August 2007), which is a signal to readers of the time-dependence of the statement, and to later editors of the need to update the statement (see As of).

Times

Context determines whether the 12- or 24-hour clock is used; in both, colons separate hours, minutes and seconds (1:38:09 pm and 13:38:09).

• 12-hour clock times end with dotted or undotted lower-case a.m. or p.m., or am or pm, which are spaced (2:30 p.m. or 2:30 pm, not 2:30p.m. or 2:30pm). Noon and midnight are used rather than 12 pm and 12 am; whether midnight refers to the start or the end of a date will need to be specified unless this is clear from the context.
• 24-hour clock times have no a.m., p.m., noon or midnight suffix. Discretion may be used as to whether the hour has a leading zero (08:15 or 8:15). 00:00 refers to midnight at the start of a date, 12:00 to noon, and 24:00 to midnight at the end of a date.

Dates

• Misplaced Pages does not use ordinal suffixes or articles, or put a comma between month and year.

Incorrect:	June 25th, 25th June, the 25th of June
Correct:	14 February, February 14
Incorrect:	October, 1976
Correct:	October 1976

• Date ranges are preferably given with minimal repetition (5–7 January 1979; September 21–29, 2002), using an unspaced en dash. If the autoformatting function is used, the opening and closing dates of the range must be given in full (see Autoformatting and linking) and be separated by a spaced en dash.
• Rarely, a night may be expressed in terms of the two contiguous dates using a slash (the bombing raids of the night of 30/31 May 1942); this cannot be done using the autoformatting function.
• Yearless dates (5 March, March 5) are inappropriate unless the year is obvious from the context. If there would be any doubt, include the year.
• ISO 8601 dates (1976-05-13) are uncommon in English prose and are generally not used in Misplaced Pages. However, they may be useful in long lists and tables for conciseness and ease of comparison.

Longer periods

• Months are expressed as whole words (February, not 2), except in the ISO 8601 format. Abbreviations such as Feb are used only where space is extremely limited, such as in tables and infoboxes. Do not insert of between a month and a year (April 2000, not April of 2000).

• WP:SEASON

• Seasons. Because the seasons are reversed in each hemisphere (and areas near the equator tend to have just wet and dry seasons), neutral wording is used to describe times of the year (“in early 1990”, “in the second quarter of 2003”, “around September”). Use a date or month rather than a season, unless there is a need to do so (the autumn harvest). It is ambiguous to say that Apollo 11 landed on the Moon in the summer of 1969. Whose summer? Seasons are normally spelled with a lower-case initial.
• Years
  • Years are normally expressed in digits; a comma is not used in four-digit years (1988, not 1,988).
  • Avoid inserting the words the year before the digits (1995, not the year 1995), unless the meaning would otherwise be unclear.
    • Either CE and BCE or AD and BC can be used to specific the era; these abbreviations should be spaced, undotted (without periods) and upper-case. Be consistent within the article. AD appears before or after a year (AD 1066, 1066 AD); the other abbreviations appear after (1066 CE, 3700 BCE, 3700 BC). The absence of such an abbreviation indicates the default, CE or AD.
    • While either of the two styles are acceptable, it is inappropriate for a Misplaced Pages editor to change from one style to another unless there is some substantial reason for the change.
    • Year ranges, like all ranges, are separated by an en dash (do not use a hyphen or slash: 2005–08, not 2005-08 or 2005/08). A closing CE/AD year is normally written with two digits (1881–86) unless it is in a different century from that of the opening year (1881–1986). The full closing year is acceptable, but abbreviating it to a single digit (1881–6) or three digits (1881–886) is not. A closing BCE or BC year is given in full (2590–2550 BCE). While one era signifier at the end of a date range still requires an unspaced en dash (12–5 BC), a spaced en dash is required when a signifier is used after the opening and closing years (5 BC – 29 AD).
    • A slash may be used to indicate regular defined yearly periods that do not coincide with calendar years (the financial year 1993/4).
    • Abbreviations indicating long periods of time ago — such as BP (before present), Ma and mya (million years ago), and Ga (billion years ago) — are spelled out on first occurrence.
    • To indicate about, c. and ca. are preferred to circa or a question mark; these abbreviations are followed by a space (c. 1291).
  • Decades contain no apostrophe (the 1980s, not the 1980’s); the two-digit form is used only where the century is clear (the ’80s or the 80s).
• Centuries and millennia
  • There was no year 0. Thus, the first century CE was 1–100 AD, the 17th century AD was 1601–1700 CE, and the second millennium AD/CE was 1001–2000; the first century BCE was 100–1 BC; the 17th century BC was 1700–1601 BCE, and the second millennium BCE was 2000–1001 BC. Editors should choose either the BC/AD or the BCE/CE system consistently within an article; the Manual of Style does not favor one system over the other.

Numbers

Spelling out numbers

General rule

• In the body of an article, single-digit whole numbers (from zero to nine) are spelled out; numbers of more than one digit are generally rendered as digits, but may be spelled out if they are expressed in one or two words (sixteen, eighty-four, two hundred, but 3.75, 544, 21 million).

Exceptions

• The numerical elements of dates and times are never spelled out (that is, never the seventh of January or twelve forty-five p.m.; but specific references such as Daniel Webster's Seventh of March speech, should follow standard usage for the topic).
• Numbers that open a sentence are spelled out; alternatively, the sentence can be recast so that the number is not in first position.
• In tables and infoboxes, all numbers are expressed as numerals.
• Within a context or a list, style should be consistent (either “There were 5 cats and 32 dogs” or “There were five cats and thirty-two dogs”, not “There were five cats and 32 dogs”).
• On rare occasions when digits may cause confusion, spell out the number (thirty-six 6.4-inch rifled guns, not 36 6.4-inch rifled guns).
• Fractions are spelled out unless they occur in a percentage or with an abbreviated unit (⅛ mm, but never an eighth of a mm), or are mixed with whole numerals.
• Ordinal numbers are spelled out using the same rules as for cardinal numbers. The exception is single-digit ordinals for centuries, which may be expressed in digits (the 5th century CE). The ordinal suffix (e.g., th) is not superscripted (23rd and 496th, not 23 and 496).
• Proper names and formal numerical designations comply with common usage (Chanel No. 5, 4 Main Street, 1-Naphthylamine, Channel 6). This is the case even where it causes a numeral to open a sentence, although this is usually avoided by rewording.

Hyphenation

• Spelled-out two-word numbers from 21 to 99 are hyphenated (fifty-six), as are fractions (seven-eighths). Do not hyphenate other multi-word numbers (five hundred, not five-hundred).

Large numbers

• Commas are used to break the sequence every three places (2,900,000).
• Large rounded numbers are generally assumed to be approximations; only where the approximation could be misleading is it necessary to qualify with about or a similar term.
• Avoid overly precise values where they are unlikely to be stable or accurate, or where the precision is unnecessary in the context (“The speed of light in a vacuum is 299,792,458 metres per second” is probably appropriate, but “The distance from the Earth to the Sun is 149,014,769 kilometres” and “The population of Cape Town is 2,968,790” would usually not be, because both values are unstable at that level of precision, and readers are unlikely to care in the context.)
• Scientific notation (5.8 × 10) is preferred in scientific contexts.
• Where values in the millions occur a number of times through an article, upper-case M may be used for million, unspaced, after spelling out the first occurrence. (“She bequeathed her fortune of £100 million unequally: her eldest daughter received £70M, her husband £18M, and her three sons each just £4M each.”)
• Billion is understood as 10. After the first occurrence in an article, billion may be abbreviated to unspaced bn ($35bn).

Decimal points

• A decimal point is used between the integral and the fractional parts of a decimal; a comma is never used in this role (6.57, not 6,57).
• The number of decimal places should be consistent within a list or context (“The response rates were 41.0 and 47.4 percent, respectively”, not “The response rates were 41 and 47.4 percent, respectively”), except in the unusual instances where the items were measured with unequal precision.
• Numbers between minus one and plus one require a leading zero (0.02, not .02); exceptions are performance averages in sports where a leading zero is not commonly used, and commonly used terms such as .22 caliber.

Percentages

• Percent or per cent are commonly used to indicate percentages in the body of an article. The symbol % may be more common in scientific or technical articles, or in complex listings.
• The symbol is unspaced (71%, not 71 %).
• In tables and infoboxes, the symbol is used, not the spelled-out percent or per cent.
• Ranges are preferably formatted with one rather than two percentage signifiers (22–28%, not 22%–28%).

Units of measurement

• WP:UNITS

Which system to use

• For US-related articles, the main units are US units; for example, 10 miles (16 km).
• For UK-related, the main units are either metric or imperial (consistently within an article).
• For other country-related articles, the main units are metric; for example, 16 kilometres (10 mi).
• AmEng spells metric units with final -er (kilometer); in all other varieties of English, including CanEng, -re is used (kilometre).
• In scientific articles, SI units are the main units of measure, unless there are compelling historical or pragmatic reasons not to use them (for example, Hubble’s constant should be quoted in its most common unit of (km/s)/Mpc rather than its SI unit of s)
• If editors cannot agree on the sequence of units, put the source value first and the converted value second. If the choice of units is arbitrary, use SI units as the main unit, with converted units in parentheses.

Conversions

• Conversions to and from metric and US units should generally be provided. There are two exceptions:
  • scientific articles where there is consensus among the contributors not to convert the metric units, in which case the first occurrence of each unit should be linked;
  • where inserting a conversion would make a common expression awkward (“The four-minute mile”).
• In the main text, spell out the main units and use unit symbols or abbreviations for conversions in parentheses; for example, “a pipe 100 millimetres (4 in) in diameter and 16 kilometres (10 mi) long” or “a pipe 4 inches (100 mm) in diameter and 10 miles (16 km) long”. The exception is that where there is consensus to do so, the main units may also be abbreviated in the main text after the first occurrence.
• Converted values should use a level of precision similar to that of the source value; for example, “the Moon is 380,000 kilometres (240,000 mi) from Earth”, not “(236,121 mi)”. The exception is small numbers, which may need to be converted to a greater level of precision where rounding would be a significant distortion; for example, one mile (1.6 km), not one mile (2 km).
• Category:Conversion templates can be used to convert and format many common units, including {{convert}}, which includes non-breaking spaces.
• In a direct quotation:
  • conversions required for units cited within direct quotations should appear within square brackets in the quote;
  • if the text contains an obscure use of units (e.g., five million board feet of lumber), annotate it with a footnote that provides standard modern units, rather than changing the text of the quotation.
• Where footnoting or citing sources for values and units, identify both the source and the original units.

Unit symbols and abbreviations

• Standard abbreviations and symbols for units are undotted (do not carry periods). For example, m for meter and kg for kilogram (not m. or kg.), in for inch (not in., " or ″), ft for foot (not ft., ' or ′) and lb for pound (not lb. or #).
• The degree symbol is °. Using any other symbol (e.g. masculine ordinal º or "ring above" ˚) for this purpose is incorrect.
• Do not append an s for the plurals of unit symbols (kg, km, in, lb, not kgs, kms, ins, lbs).
• Temperatures are always accompanied by °C for Celsius, °F for Fahrenheit, or K for Kelvin (35 °C, 62 °F, and 5,000 K, not 5,000 °K); these three terms are always spelled with an upper-case initial.
• Values and unit symbols are spaced (25 kg, not 25kg). The exceptions are degrees, minutes and seconds for angles and coordinates (“the coordinate is 5° 24′ 21.12″ N”, “the pathways are at a 180° angle”, but “the average temperature is 18 °C”).
• Squared and cubic metric-symbols are always expressed with a superscript exponent (5 km, 2 cm); squared imperial-unit abbreviations are rendered with sq, and cubic with cu (15 sq mi, 3 cu ft). A superscript exponent indicates that the unit is squared, not the unit and the quantity (3 meters squared is 9 square meters, or 9 m; 8 miles squared is 64 square miles).
• In tables and infoboxes, use unit symbols and abbreviations; do not spell them out.
• Some different units share the same name. These examples show the need to be specific.
  • Use US or imperial gallon rather than just gallon.
  • Use nautical or statute mile rather than mile in nautical and aeronautical contexts.
  • Use long ton or short ton rather than just ton (the metric unit—the tonne—is also known as the metric ton).
• Ranges are preferably formatted with one rather than two unit signifiers (5.9–6.3 kg, not 5.9 kg – 6.3 kg).

Unnecessary vagueness

Use accurate measurements whenever possible.

Vague:	The wallaby is small.
Precise:	The average male wallaby is 1.6 metres (63 in) from head to tail.
Vague:	Prochlorococcus marinus is a tiny cyanobacterium.
Precise:	The cyanobacterium Prochlorococcus marinus is 0.5 to 0.8 micrometres across.
Vague:	The large herd of dugong stretched a long way down the coast.
Precise:	The dugong swam down the coast in a herd five kilometres (3 mi) long and 300 metres (1000 ft) wide.

Currencies

• WP:$

Which one to use

• In country-specific articles, such as Economy of Australia, use the currency of the country.
• In non-country-specific articles such as Wealth, use US dollars (US$123).

Formatting

• Fully identify a currency on its first appearance (AU$52); subsequent occurrences are normally given without the country identification (just $88), unless this would be unclear. The exception to this is in articles related to the US and the UK, in which the first occurrence may also be shortened ($34 and £22, respectively), unless this would be unclear.
• Do not place a currency symbol after the value (123$, 123£), unless the symbol is normally written thus. Do not write $US123 or $123 (US).
• Currency abbreviations that come before the number are unspaced if they end in a symbol (£123, €123), and spaced if they end in an alphabetical character (R 75). Do not place EU or a similar prefix before the € sign.
• If there is no common English abbreviation or symbol, use the ISO 4217 standard.
• Ranges are preferably formatted with one rather than two currency signifiers ($250–300, not $250–$300).
• Conversions of less familiar currencies may be provided in terms of more familiar currencies, such as the euro or the US dollar. Conversions should be in parentheses after the original currency, with the year given as a rough point of reference; for example, “1,000 Swiss francs (US$763 in 2005)”, rounding to the nearest whole unit.
• Consider linking the first occurrence of a symbol for less well-known currencies (₮146); it is generally unnecessary to link the symbols of well-known currencies.

Common mathematical symbols

• For a negative sign or subtraction operator, use a minus sign (−), input by clicking on it in the insert box beneath the edit window or by keying in &minus;), or an en dash (see En dashes); do not use a hyphen, unless writing code.
• For a multiplication sign, use ×, which is input by clicking on it in the edit toolbox under the edit window or by keying in &times; (however, the letter ex is accepted as a substitute for "by" in such terms as "4x4").
• The following signs are spaced on both sides:
  • plus, minus, plus or minus (as operators): + − ±
  • multiplication and division: × ÷
  • equals, does not equal, equals approximately: = ≠ ≈
  • is less than, is less than or equal to, is greater than, is greater than or equal to: < ≤ > ≥

Simple tabulation

Lines that start with blank spaces in the editing window are displayed boxed and in a fixed-width font, for simple tabulation. Lines that contain only a blank space insert a blank line into the table. For a complete guide to constructing tables, see Meta:Help:Table.

Usage and spelling

Usage

• Possessives of singular nouns ending in s should generally maintain the additional s after the apostrophe. However, if a form without an s after the apostrophe is much more common for a particular word or phrase, follow that form, such as with “Achilles’ heel” and “Jesus’ tears”.
• Abbreviations of Latin terms like i.e., e.g., or n.b., or use of the Latin terms in full, such as “nota bene”, or “vide infra”, should be left as the original author wrote them. However, articles intended for a general audience will be more widely understood if English terms such as “that is”, “for example”, or “note” are used instead.
• Use an unambiguous word or phrase in preference to an ambiguous one. For example, use “other meaning” rather than “alternate meaning” or “alternative meaning”, since alternate means only “alternating” to a British English speaker, and alternative suggests “nontraditional” or “out-of-the-mainstream” to an American English speaker.

Avoid first-person pronouns

Misplaced Pages articles must not be based on one person’s opinions or experiences; thus, I is never used, except when it appears in a quotation. For similar reasons, avoid we; a sentence such as “We should note that some critics have argued in favor of the proposal” sounds more personal than encyclopedic.

Nevertheless, it is sometimes appropriate to use we when referring to an experience that any reader would be expected to have, such as general perceptual experiences. For example, although it might be best to write “When most people open their eyes, they see something”, it is still legitimate to write “When we open our eyes, we see something”.

It is also acceptable to use we in mathematical derivations (“To normalize the wavefunction, we need to find the value of the arbitrary constant A”). In historical fields, we can mean the modern world as a whole (“The text of De re publica has come down to us with substantial sections missing”).

Avoid second-person pronouns

Use of the second person (you), which is often ambiguous and contrary to the tone of an encyclopedia, is discouraged. Instead, refer to the subject of the sentence or use the passive voice, for example:

Use:	When a player moves past “Go”, that player collects $200.
Use:	Players passing “Go” collect $200.
Use:	$200 is collected when passing “Go”.
Do not use:	When you move past “Go”, you collect $200.

This guideline does not apply to quoted text, which should be quoted exactly.

The guideline also does not apply to the Misplaced Pages namespace, where you refers to the writers to whom articles in the namespace are addressed.

National varieties of English

• ]

The English Misplaced Pages has no general preference for a major national variety of the language; none is more correct than the others, and users are asked to take into account that the differences between the varieties are superficial. Cultural clashes over spelling and grammar are avoided by using four simple guidelines.

Consistency within articles

Each article consistently uses the same conventions of spelling and grammar (e.g., British, Canadian); for example, center and centre are not to be used in the same article. The exceptions are:

• quotations (the original variety is retained);
• titles (the original spelling is used, for example United States Department of Defense and Australian Defence Force); and
• explicit comparisons of varieties of English.

Strong national ties to a topic

An article on a topic that has strong ties to a particular English-speaking nation uses the appropriate variety of English for that nation. For example:

• American Civil War—(American English)
• Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings—(British English)
• Australian Defence Force—(Australian English)
• European Union institutions—(British English)
• Montreal—(Canadian English)

Retaining the existing variety

If an article has evolved using predominantly one variety, the whole article should conform to that variety, unless there are reasons for changing it on the basis of strong national ties to the topic. In the early stages of writing an article, the variety chosen by the first major contributor to the article should be used, unless there is reason to change it on the basis of strong national ties to the topic. Where an article that is not a stub shows no signs of which variety it is written in, the first person to make an edit that disambiguates the variety is equivalent to the first major contributor.

Opportunities for commonality

Misplaced Pages tries to find words that are common to all varieties of English.

• In choosing words or expressions, especially for article titles, there may be value in making choices that avoid varying spellings, where possible. In extreme cases of conflicting names, a common substitute (such as fixed-wing aircraft) is favored over national varieties (“fixed-wing aeroplanes” , and “fixed-wing airplanes” ).
• If a variable spelling appears in an article name, redirect pages are made to accommodate the other variants, as with Artefact and Artifact, so that they can always be found in searches and linked to from either spelling.
• Sensitivity to terms that may be used differently between different varieties of English allows for wider readability; this may include glossing terms and providing alternate terms where confusion may arise. Insisting on a single term or a single usage as the only correct option does not serve well the purposes of an international encyclopedia.

Articles such as English plural and American and British English differences provide information on the differences between the major varieties of the language.

Images

Some general guidelines which should be followed in the absence of a compelling reason not to:

• Start the article with a right-aligned image.
• When using multiple images in the same article, they can be staggered right-and-left (Example: Timpani).
• Avoid sandwiching text between two images facing each other.
• Generally, right-alignment is preferred to left- or center-alignment. (Example: Race).
  • Exception: Portraits with the head looking to the reader’s right should be left-aligned (looking into the text of the article) when this does not interfere with navigation or other elements. In such cases it may be appropriate to move the Table of Contents to the right by using {{TOCright}}. Since faces are not perfectly symmetrical it is generally inadvisable to use photo editing software to reverse a right-facing portrait image; however, some editors employ this controversial technique when it does not alter obvious non-symmetrical features (such as Mikhail Gorbachev’s birthmark) or make included text in the image unreadable.
• If there are too many images in a given article, consider using a gallery.
• Do not place left-aligned images directly below second-level (===) headings, as this disconnects the heading from the text it precedes. For example, do not use:

=== Section 1b ===
]
First paragraph of section 1b.

Instead, either right-align the image, remove it, or move it to another relevant location.

• Use {{Commons}} to link to more images on Commons, wherever possible.
• Use captions to explain the relevance of the image to the article.
• Specifying the size of a thumb image is not recommended: without specifying a size the width will be what readers have specified in their user preferences, with a default of 180px (which applies for most readers). However, the image subject or image properties may call for a specific image width to enhance the readability or layout of an article. Cases where specific image width are considered appropriate include:
  • On images with extreme aspect ratios
  • When using detailed maps, diagrams or charts
  • When a small region of an image is considered relevant, but the image would lose its coherence when cropped to that region
  • On a lead image that captures the essence of the article.

Bear in mind that some users need to configure their systems to display large text. Forced large thumbnails can leave little width for text, making reading difficult.

The current image markup is, for landscape-format and square images:

]

and for portrait-format images:

]

Captions

Appropriate use

Photos and other graphics always have captions, unless they are “self-captioning” (such as in reproductions of album or book covers) or when they are unambiguous depictions of the subject of the article (for example, in a biography article, a caption is not mandatory for a portrait of the subject pictured alone, but might contain the name of the subject and additional information relevant to the image).

Formatting

Captions always start with a capital letter. Most captions are not complete sentences, but merely an extended phrase which should not finish with a period. Complete sentences in captions always end in a period. Captions are not italicized, except for words that are normally italicized. Captions are succinct; more information on the file can be included in the image or media description page.

Bulleted and numbered lists

Do not use lists if the passage reads easily using plain paragraphs or indented paragraphs. If every paragraph in a section uses bulleted or numbered lists, it is likely that none should.

Do not mix grammatical styles in a list — either use all complete sentences or use all sentence fragments. Elements within a list should use parallel grammatical form. Begin each item with a capital letter, even if it is a sentence fragment.

When using complete sentences, provide a period at the end of each. When using sentence fragments, do not provide a period at the end.

Use numbered rather than bulleted lists only if the article will refer back to items by number, or the sequence of the items is critical (for example, if one is explaining step 1, step 2, etc. of a multi-step process).

Identity

This is perhaps an area where Wikipedians’ flexibility and plurality are an asset, and where we would not want all pages to look exactly alike. Misplaced Pages’s neutral point of view and no original research policies always take precedence. However, here are some nonbinding guidelines that may help:

• Where known, use terminology that subjects use for themselves (self-identification). This can mean using the term an individual uses for himself or herself, or using the term a group most widely uses for itself. This includes referring to transgender individuals according to the names and pronouns they use to identify themselves.
• Use specific terminology: People from Ethiopia (a country in Africa) should be described as Ethiopian, not African.
• Do not assume that any one term is the most inclusive or accurate.
• If possible, terms used to describe people should be given in such a way that they qualify other nouns. Thus, black people, not blacks; gay people, not gays; and so forth.
• Also note: The term Arab refers to people and things of ethnic Arab origin. The term Arabic refers to the Arabic language or writing system (and related concepts). For example, “Not all Arab people write or converse in Arabic, but nearly all are familiar with Arabic numerals.”
• In a direct quotation, use the original text, even if the originator does not conform with the above guidelines.

Gender-neutral language

Please consider the use of gender-neutral language where this can be achieved in tidy wording and without loss of precision. This recommendation does not apply to direct quotations, the titles of works (e.g. The Ascent of Man), or where all referents are of one gender, such as in an all-female school (e.g. "If any student broke that rule, she was severely punished.")

Wikilinks

Make only links relevant to the context. It is not useful and can be very distracting to mark all possible words as hyperlinks. Links should add to the user’s experience; they should not detract from it by making the article harder to read. A high density of links can draw attention away from the high-value links that you would like your readers to follow up. Redundant links clutter up the page and make future maintenance harder. A link is the equivalent of a footnote in a print medium. Imagine if every second word in an encyclopedia article were followed by “(see:)”. Hence, the links should not be so numerous as to make the article harder to read.

Check links after they are wikified to make sure they direct to the correct concept; many dictionary words lead to disambiguation pages and not to complete articles on a concept. If an anchor into a targeted page (the label after a pound/hash sign (#) in a URL) is available, is likely to remain stable, and gets the reader to the relevant area significantly faster, then use it.

When wikilinks are rendered as URLs by the MediaWiki software, the initial character becomes capitalized and spaces are replaced by underscores. When including wikilinks in an article, there is no need to use capitalization or underscores, since the software produces them automatically. This feature makes it possible to avoid a piped link in many cases. The correct form in English orthography can be used as a straight link. Wikilinks that begin sentences or are proper nouns should be capitalized as normal.

Likewise, the use of piped links can be avoided in many cases when adding a grammatical suffix to a wikilink that is not part of an article title, by placing the suffix outside of the brackets. The suffix will still appear as part of the link, but will not be included in the link’s target when actually clicked. For example, the markup ]s appears in the article text as transformers but links to the article named Transformer.

Pronunciation

Pronunciation in Misplaced Pages is indicated using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For ease of understanding, fairly broad IPA transcriptions are usually provided.

Miscellaneous notes

Keep markup simple

Use the simplest markup to display information in a useful and comprehensible way. Markup may appear differently in different browsers. Use HTML and CSS markup sparingly and only with good reason. Minimizing markup in entries allows easier editing.

In particular, do not use the CSS float or line-height properties because they break rendering on some browsers when large fonts are used.

Formatting issues

• WP:MOSCOLOR

Formatting issues such as font size, blank space and color are issues for the Misplaced Pages site-wide style sheet and should not be dealt with in articles except in special cases. If you absolutely must specify a font size, use a relative size, that is, font-size: 80%; not an absolute size, for example, font-size: 8pt. It is also almost never a good idea to use other style changes, such as font family or color.

Typically, the usage of custom font styles will

• reduce consistency—the text will no longer look uniform with typical text;
• reduce usability—it will likely be impossible for people with custom stylesheets (for accessibility reasons, for example) to override it, and it might clash with a different skin as well as bother people with color blindness; and
• increase arguments—there is the possibility of other Wikipedians disagreeing with choice of font style and starting a debate about it for aesthetic purposes.

For such reasons, it is typically not good practice to apply inline CSS for font attributes in articles.

Color coding

Using color alone to convey information (color coding) should not be done. This is not accessible to people with color blindness (especially monochromacy), on black-and-white printouts, on older computer displays with fewer colors, on monochrome displays (PDAs, cell phones), and so on.

If it is necessary to use colors, try to choose colors that are unambiguous (such as orange and violet) when viewed by a person with red-green color blindness (the most common type). In general, this means that shades of red and green should not both be used as color codes in the same image. Viewing the page with Vischeck can help with deciding if the colors should be altered.

It is certainly desirable to use color as an aid for those who can see it, but the information should still be accessible without it.

Invisible comments

Invisible comments are used to communicate with other editors in the article body. These comments are only visible when editing the page. They are invisible to ordinary readers.

Normally if an editor wants to discuss issues with other potential editors, they will do it on the talk page. However, it sometimes makes more sense to put comments in the article body, because an editor would like to leave instructions to guide other editors when they edit this section, or leave reminders about specific issues (for example, do not change the section title since others have linked here).

To do so, enclose the text which you intend to be read only by editors within <!-- and -->.

For example, the following:

Hello <!-- This is a comment. --> world.


is displayed as:

Hello world.

So the comment can be seen when viewing the wiki source (although not, incidentally, the HTML source).

Note: Comments may introduce unwanted whitespace when put in certain places, such as at the top of an article. Avoid placing comment fields in places where they might change the rendered result of the article.

Legibility

Consider the legibility of what you are writing. Make your entry easy to read on a screen. Make judicious use of devices such as bulleted lists and boldface. For more on this, see “How Users Read on the Web” by Jakob Nielsen.

Links

External links

Articles can include an "external links" section at the end to list links to websites outside of Misplaced Pages for purposes of providing further information as opposed to citing sources. The standard format is a header named == External links == followed by a bulleted list of links. External links should identify the link and briefly summarize the website’s contents and why the website is relevant to the article. For example:

*

* - National Institutes of Health hompepage

When wikified, the link will appear as:

• History of NIH
• www.nih.gov – National Institutes of Health hompepage

Style in articles on chemistry

• In articles about chemicals and chemistry, use the style of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) for chemical names wherever possible except in article titles, where the common name should be used if different followed by mention of the IUPAC name. For general information see systematic name, and for organic compounds in particular see IUPAC nomenclature.
• In periodic table groups, use the IUPAC names (these use Arabic numerals, not Roman numerals or letters).

Submanuals

See also

• Style guide, the Misplaced Pages entry on style guides. Contains links to the online style guides of some magazines and newspapers.
• Misplaced Pages:Annotated article is a well-constructed article, with annotations that explain why.
• Misplaced Pages:Avoiding common mistakes gives a list of common mistakes and how to avoid them.
• Misplaced Pages:Be bold in updating pages should define your attitude toward page updates.
• Misplaced Pages:Citing sources explains process and standards for citing references in articles.
• Misplaced Pages:Editing policy explains Misplaced Pages’s general philosophy of editing.
• Misplaced Pages:Footnotes describes footnote usage and style; parts of it are contested.
• Misplaced Pages:Guide to layout is an example of how to lay out an article.
• Misplaced Pages:How to edit a page is a short primer on editing pages.
• Misplaced Pages:Introduction is a gentle introduction to the world of Misplaced Pages.
• Misplaced Pages:Perfect stub article shows what you should aim for at a minimum when starting a new article.
• Misplaced Pages:Policies and guidelines is the main stop for policies and, well, guidelines.
• Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Jguk was an Arbitration Committee case on style edit warring.
• Wiki markup explains the mechanics of what codes are available to you when editing a page, to do things like titles, links, external links, and so on.
• Misplaced Pages:WikiProject sets out boilerplates for certain areas of knowledge.
• Meta:Reading level (discussion)

• Misplaced Pages style guidelines