Misplaced Pages

:Manual of Style - Misplaced Pages

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A Manual of Style has the simple purpose of making things look alike. The following rules don't claim to be the last word. One way is often as good as another, but if everyone does it the same way, the Misplaced Pages will be easier to read and easier to use, not to mention easier to write and easier to edit. New contributors are reminded that clear, informative writing is always more important than presentation and formatting. Writers are not expected to follow all these rules -- rather, copyediting Wikipedians will be referring to these pages when Misplaced Pages:Weeding.

Please see Misplaced Pages:How does one edit a page for information on how to use all the different forms of markup, much more than just bold or italic. This article concentrates on when to use them, although the examples usually also show the markup.

Some of the standard forms outlined below are available on Misplaced Pages:boilerplate text for quick copy-paste into articles.

Note to contributors to this article: We should keep this "manual" simple and straightforward, with anything TOO hairy (table styles, for instance) relegated to a linked page. There should also probably be an associated article Misplaced Pages:Guide to Layout. Markup for tables will likely change in the future; discussions of that have been occurring on the mailing list.

Article introduction

All articles should have the title or subject in bold in the first line. The title or subject can almost always be made part of the first sentence, but some articles simply have names.

  • The Pythagorean theorem is named for and attributed to the 6th century BC Greek philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras
    • The '''Pythagorean theorem''' is named for and attributed to the ] Greek philosopher and mathematician ]
  • Tom and Jerry -- Pairing of names from Pierce Egan's Life in London
    • '''Tom and Jerry''' -- Pairing of names from ]'s ''Life in London''

If the subject of the article has more than one name, each new form of the name should be in bold on its first appearance.

  • Sodium hydroxide (NaOH), also known as caustic soda or lye
    • '''Sodium hydroxide''' (]]]), also known as '''caustic soda''' or '''lye'''

If the subject is a person, however, articles should start with the name and dates. Full dates are preferable to years only, but in any case they should always be links. For people who are dead, just use a dash between the birth and death dates:

  • Karel Capek (1890 - 1938)
    • '''Karel Capek''' (] - ])

For those still alive, it's clearer and less morbid to use the word "born", rather than leaving a hungry space for the death date:

  • Li Ao (born 1935)
    • '''Li Ao''' (born ])
  • Seamus Heaney (born April 13, 1939)
    • '''Seamus Heaney''' (born ], ])

Date Style

A page title that is just a number is always a year. Pages also exist for days of the year, decades, centuries and even millennia. The formats are:

  • 1830s (note no apostrophe)
    • ]

In the last example, always add the century as well to prevent confusion, so ] rather than merely ].

Headline Style

Use the == style markup for headlines, not '''. Start with "==" (that's two equal signs). If the resulting font looks too big, that's an issue for the Misplaced Pages-wide stylesheet, not individual articles. Major benefits of marking headers this way are that sections can be automatically numbered for users with that preference set, and words within properly marked headers are given greater weight in searches. Headlines also help readers by breaking up the text and outlining the article.

Title Style

Use italics for the title or name of books, movies, albums, TV series, magazines, and ships. If the title is also a link, you should usually place the italic markup outside the brackets, but see the Titanic example below for a special case.

  • Huckleberry Finn, DCL Command Language Manual
    • '']'', ''DCL Command Language Manual''
  • RMS Titanic, only the name is italicized, not the classification. This link will require a pipe, as italics tags will not work within a link
    • ]


Use "quotes" for the title or name of short stories, statues, short films, individual episodes of TV shows.

  • "An Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge", Rodin's "The Thinker", "Goober and Gomer Change a Tire", "Do's and Don'ts of Dating"

See also: Misplaced Pages:Filmographies and Discographies

Style for Words as Words

Italicize words when they are being referenced in a sentence, rather than used normally.

  • The term panning is derived from panorama, a word originally coined in 1787
    • The term ''panning'' is derived from ''panorama'', a word originally coined in ]

Spelling Style

For the English Misplaced Pages, either American or English spelling is acceptable.

It is in no way a requirement, but it probably reads better to use American spellings in articles on American subjects and English spelling in articles on English subjects. A reference to "the American labour movement" (with a U) or to "Anglicization" (with a Z) may be jarring. It also may be jarring to find both forms in a single article. If the spelling appears in an article name, you should make a redirect page to accommodate "the other language", as with Aeroplane and Airplane.

Style for Numbers, Weights, and Measures

Very large numbers, such as pinball scores, should be divided up by commas every three places. In scientific contexts, scientific notation is preferred: see below.

The issue of whether all units should be SI or whether Imperial is acceptable is being debated on the talk page.

For now, if using Imperial, give SI as a courtesy. These need not be exact equivalents unless exact measurement is involved. And if the quantity is always given in one form, you need not perform any conversion at all. Here is a good site for online conversions you might find useful.

Use standard abbreviations for metric units, m for meter, kg for kilogram, etc (see SI for the list), and two-letter abbreviations for inch-pound units, in=inch, ft=foot, yd=yard, mi=mile, pd=pound, gal=gallon, pt=pint, qt=quart, and so forth.

  • The highest score recorded for the Deuces High pinball game was 11,933,750.
  • The hippopotamus stands 1.5 m (5 ft) at the shoulders and weighs between 2700 and 4500 kg (roughly 6000 to 10000 lb).
  • The first sub-four-minute mile was run by Roger Bannister.
  • The 155mm diameter projectile offers a wide range of options for battlefield usage.
  • 10 = 100
    • 10<SUP>2</SUP> = 100
  • A large number such as 156,234,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 can be concisely recorded as 1.56234 × 10, and a small number such as 0.0000000000234 can be written as 2.34 × 10.
    • A large number such as 156,234,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 can be concisely recorded as 1.56234 × 10<SUP>29</SUP>, and a small number such as 0.0000000000234 can be written as 2.34 × 10<sup>-11</sup>.

See orders of magnitude and the talk page there for ongoing, possibly resolved debate on which style of exponent notation to use for large numbers.

Punctuation Style

In most cases, simply follow the usual rules of English punctuation. A few points where the Misplaced Pages may differ from usual usage follow.

With quotation marks, we suggest splitting the difference between American and English usage.

Although it is not a rigid rule, it is probably best to use the "double quotes" for most quotations, as they are easier to read on the screen, and use 'single quotes' for "quotations 'within' quotations". This is the American style.

When punctuating quoted passages, put punctuation where it belongs, inside or outside the quotation marks, depending on the meaning, not rigidly within the quotation marks. This is the British style.

Keep in mind that if you're quoting several paragraphs, there should be quotes at the beginning of each paragraph, but only at the end of the last paragraph.

Scientific Style

Somebody help out here! Maybe this should be a separate article?

Citation Style

Please see http://bailiwick.lib.uiowa.edu/journalism/cite.html for a list of citation style guides. There is currently no consistent Misplaced Pages citation style, and citations are very poor at the moment.

Proposal: Misplaced Pages should adopt the recommendations of http://www.columbia.edu/cu/cup/cgos/idx_basic.html

ISBN numbers are suto-converted to links. This is useful, as this allows readers to go to online stores and purchase books. However, ISBN numbers only identify a particular edition of a book: when it goes out of print, they are not very useful.

The Misplaced Pages software recognizes inline ISBNs; for example: ISBN 0-12-345678-9 becomes ISBN 0-12-345678-9. This creates an external link to a special booksource page, with links to sites where one may search for the best price for the book or access information about the book such as reviews and reader reactions. It is important when making a link to not put a colon after "ISBN".

Please do not use ISBN numbers alone to identify books: please add a proper citation as well as the ISBN.


Free Link Style

The use of so-called "free links" to other topics, for example, ], is encouraged. Use the links for all words and terms that appear in your article for which it could be worthwhile to read the linked article. However, don't overdo it. Do not link every occurrance of a word; simply linking the first time the word appears will usually be enough.

Links that follow the Misplaced Pages naming conventions are much more likely to lead to existing articles, and, if there is not yet an article about that subject, will make the creation of a correctly-named article much easier for later writers.

It is possible to link words that are not exactly the same as the linked article title, ] for example. Make sure however that it is still clear what the link refers without having to follow the link. When making plurals, do ]s. This is clearer to read in wiki form than ] -- and easier to type.

Try to link accurately. If an article you want to link doesn't yet exist, do a quick search to find out if that is really the case; the article may be named slightly different from what you expected.

URL and World Wide Web Style

Misplaced Pages is not a link collection and an article with only links is actively discouraged, but it is appropriate to reference more detailed material from the World Wide Web. This is particularly the case when you have used a web site as an important source of information.

The syntax of referencing a URL is simple, just enclose it in single brackets, . The URL must begin with http:// or other form, such as ftp://. Most URLs are ugly and uninformative, so it is better to hide them. Future enhancements planned include displaying the URL in printed form while concealing it online.

Without the optional text, such an external reference takes the form of a footnote:

If followed by a space and text, the text replaces the URL:

This form can be used to include a run-in URL reference within text when necessary, as:

In most cases, however, it is clearer to keep the URL separate at the bottom of the article under a heading like this:

External Links

  • ====External links====

Note: At present, without brackets, URLs are presented as is:

But this feature may disappear in a future release and in cases where you wish to display the URL because it is intrinsically valuable information, it is better to use the short form of the URL as the optional text:

Simple Tabulation

Any line that starts with a blank space becomes a fixed font width and can be used for simple tabulation. See English plural for many examples. 

foo     bar     baz
alpha   beta    gamma

A line that starts with a blank space with nothing else on it forms a blank line, which can be a confusing error, or may be just what you want.

Or maybe not.

(If you are one of those typists who puts two spaces after a period, you can cause a blank line unknowingly if those blanks are "wrapped" to the beginning of the next line.)

When all else fails

If you are faced with a fine point that isn't covered here, please use other resources, such as The Chicago Manual of Style from the University of Chicago Press, a college composition handbook, or even Fowler. Where this page differs from the other sources, the usage on this page should be followed, but please feel free to add to this page or to carry on a discussion on Wikipedia_talk:Manual of Style.

Even simpler is simply to look at an article that you like and open it for editing to see how the writers and editors have put it together. You can then close the window without saving changes if you like, but look around while you're there. Almost every article can be improved. Maybe you could add some markup to make it fit this style better.

Don't get fancy

It's easier for you and whoever follows you if you don't try to get too fancy with your markup. Even with markup as suggested here, you shouldn't assume that any markup you put in is guaranteed to have a certain appearance when it is displayed.

It is easier to display the Misplaced Pages, easier to edit or add to its articles, if we don't make the markup any more complex than is necessary to display the information in a useful and comprehensible way. A useful encyclopedia is the first goal, but ease of editing and maintenance that encyclopedia is right behind it.

For Further Information

Before you start writing or editing, it is a good idea to read through and understand these documents:

Note to contributors to this page: We need to go over all these and make sure they're up to date too.