Help:Manual of Style

From DIYinfo.org

The Manual of Style, often abbreviated MoS, is a style guide for users that aims to make Diyinfo easier to read and navigate. One way of presenting information is often just as good as another, but consistency promotes professionalism, simplicity and greater cohesion in Diyinfo 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 the Manual of Style does not specify a preferred usage, discuss your issues on the talk page of this manual.

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). Edit warring over optional styles is unacceptable. If an article has been stable in a given style, it should not be converted without a reason that goes beyond mere choice of style. When it is unclear whether an article has been stable, defer to the style used by the first major contributor.

[edit] Article titles, headings and sections

[edit] Article titles

This guidance applies to the titles of Diyinfo articles, not to the titles of other articles that appear in Diyinfo.

• Article titles generally comprise nouns or noun phrases (Effects of the wild, not About the effects of the wild).
• The title should be short—preferably fewer than seven words.
• Only the first letter of the first word, letters in acronyms, and the first letter of proper nouns are capitalized; all other letters are in lower case (Funding of UNESCO projects, not Funding of UNESCO Projects).
• Unless part of a proper noun, a, an and the are normally avoided as the first word (Economy of the Second Empire, not The economy of the Second Empire).
• Pronouns (you, they) are normally avoided, except when they form part of the title of a work.
• Links cannot be used in article titles, and should not be used in section titles; link the first occurrence of a phrase (as Second Empire in Economy of the Second Empire) instead.
• Special characters such as the slash (/), plus sign (+), braces ({ }) and square brackets ([ ]) are avoided; the ampersand (&) is replaced by and, unless it is part of a formal name.

Note: This guidance also applies to Section headings below.

[edit] First sentences

• If possible, an article title is the subject of the first sentence of the article; for example, "The 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. Items in boldface are not linked, and boldface is not used subsequently in the first paragraph.
• If the topic of an article has no name and the title is merely 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.
• 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").

[edit] Section headings

• The guidance in Article titles above also applies to section headings.
• Section names should preferably be unique within a page; this applies even for the names of subsections. The disadvantages of duplication are that:
  • after editing, the display can arrive at the wrong section; see also below; and
  • the automatic edit summary on editing a section with a non-unique name is ambiguous.
• Unspaced multiple equal signs are the style markup for headings. The triple apostrophes ( ''' ) that make words appear in boldface are not used in headings. Nest headings correctly. The hierarchy is as follows:
  • the automatically generated top-level heading of a page is H1, which gives the article title;
  • primary headings are then ==H2==, followed by ===H3===, ====H4====, and so on.
• Spaces between the == and the heading text are optional (==H2== versus == H2 ==). These extra spaces will not affect the appearance of the heading, except in the edit box.
• Spaces above and below headings are optional. Only two or more line-spaces above and below will change the appearance by adding more white space.
• Avoid restating or directly referring to the topic or to wording on a higher level in the hierarchy (Early life, not His early life).
• Avoid using links inside headings themselves (e.g. ==[[Ancient Rome|Roman]] colonization==). Instead, link from the first occurrence of the term in the prose of the section.

[edit] Section management

• Headings provide an overview in the table of contents and allow readers to navigate through the text more easily.
• Change a heading only after careful consideration, because this will break section links to it from the same and other articles. If changing a heading, try to locate and fix broken links; for example, searching for Diyinfo "section management" will probably yield links to the current section.
• When linking 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 Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett --> .
• Italicize the section name only if it otherwise requires italics (such as the title of a book).
• When referring to a section without linking, italicize the section name; for example, the current section is called Section management.
• The standard order for optional appendix sections at the end of an article is See also, Notes (or Footnotes), References, Further reading (or Bibliography), and External links; the order of Notes and References can be reversed. See also is an exception to the point above that wording comprises nouns and noun phrases. For information on these optional sections.