Wikipedia:Manual of Style

This is the Wikipedia Manual of Style. For the article about Manuals of Style, see Style guide.

This guideline is a part of the English Wikipedia's Manual of Style.

It is a generally accepted standard that editors should attempt to follow, though it is best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply. Any substantive edit to this page should reflect consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on the talk page.

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[[:|WP:MOS, WP:STYLE]]

This Manual of Style has the simple purpose of making the encyclopedia easy to read and write by following a consistent format — it is a style guide. However the following rules should not be treated as the only standards of Wikipedia style. One way is often as good as any other. On the other hand, the following quotation from The Chicago Manual of Style is worth considering:

“

Rules and regulations such as these, in the nature of the case, cannot be endowed with the fixity of rock-ribbed law. They are meant for the average case, and must be applied with a certain degree of elasticity.

”

Clear, informative, and unbiased writing is always more important than presentation and formatting. Wikipedia does not require writers to follow any of these rules, but their efforts will be more appreciated when they do — the joy of wiki editing is that Wikipedia does not require perfection.

Principles

The style guides are not set in stone and should not be treated absolutely or with no exception. There are cases where the guidelines do not apply, or another style or formatting is better than the suggested one. Please bear the following main principles in mind when reading the rest of the guidelines.

Importance

Wikipedia is intended to be a free encyclopedia, providing detailed and up-to-date knowledge to readers anywhere in the world. Clear, unambiguous, informative, and unbiased writing is always more important than presentation, style and formatting. Hence Wikipedia does not require any editor to follow all or any of these rules, but their efforts to do so will be appreciated.

Consistency

Wikipedia has established a style manual because following a consistent format makes reading easier, but the prescriptions of Wikipedia's Manual of Style are not binding.

Wikipedia does not require all editors to stick with only one single style or formatting. It is not essential that there be consistency across all articles in Wikipedia, but consistency should be maintained internally within an article, unless there are good reasons to vary.

Flexibility

Wikipedia has no firm rules apart from the 5 fundamental principles. One style or formatting is often as good as any other, depending on different cases and situations. As long as the choice of style or formatting is acceptable, it is fine.

Strict and rigid rules may even hinder editor contributions and undermine the quality of the article. The following quotation from The Chicago Manual of Style deserves notice:

“

Rules and regulations such as these, in the nature of the case, cannot be endowed with the fixity of rock-ribbed law. They are meant for the average case, and must be applied with a certain degree of elasticity.

”

Variety

Wikipedia allows multiple styles and respects different formatting and style as long as they are clear and unambiguous. When any of the style is acceptable, it is inappropriate for a Wikipedian to change from one style to another unless there are some substantial reasons for the change.

For example, with respect to English spelling as opposed to American spelling it would be acceptable to change from American spelling to English spelling if the article concerned an English subject. Revert warring over optional styles is unacceptable; if the article is colour rather than color, it would be wrong to switch simply to change styles as both are acceptable.

However editors should ensure that articles are internally consistent. If in doubt, defer to the style used by the first major contributor.

See the ruling of Arbitration Committee in the case of Jguk for details.

Clarity

An article should be presented as clearly as possible. Ambiguity and confusion should be kept to a minimum. Do not use any style, formatting, or wording that causes ambiguity or confusion.

Something obvious in one country or region may not be so in another. Wikipedia is intended to be read worldwide, so if some style or formatting — even if standard — would cause confusion, do not use it.

Style guide not applicable to direct quotations

The style guide do not apply to direct quotations. Direct quotations (ie the word-for-word reproduction of a written or oral text) should not be altered to confirm any wikipedia formatting or style because the original source has to be kept intact (in verbatim), if at all possible.

For instance, the date in the following fictional quotation should not be linked (even if it is preferred in wikipedia):

"Tony Blair, responding to critics in his party, said 'The world has totally changed since the 11th of September.' He was echoing earlier sentiments by Lord Ronald McDonald, who said that 'nine-eleven' was the day that the American public woke up to the reality of terrorism."

Article titles

If possible, make the title the subject of the first sentence of the article (as opposed to putting it in the predicate). For example, write "This Manual of Style is a style guide" instead of "This style guide is known as the Manual of Style". In any case, the title should appear as early as possible in the article — preferably in the first sentence.

The first time the article mentions the title, put it in bold using three apostrophes — '''article title''' produces article title. For example: "This Manual of Style is a style guide."

As a general rule, do not put links in

the bold reiteration of the title in the article's lead sentence or
any section title.

Also, try not to put other phrases in bold in the first sentence. An exception to this arises when an article has alternative titles, each of which an editor puts in bold; for example, Río de la Plata:

The Río de la Plata (from Spanish: "River of Silver"), also known by the English name River Plate, as in the Battle of the River Plate, or sometimes [La] Plata River

Follow the normal rules for italics 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.

Headings

Markup

Use the == (two equal signs) style markup for headings, not the ''' (triple apostrophes) used to make words appear bold in character formatting. Start with ==, add the heading title, then end with ==.

Wording

Capitalize the first letter only of the first word and of any proper nouns in a heading, and leave all of the other letters in lowercase. Use "Rules and regulations", not "Rules and Regulations".
Avoid special characters in headings, such as an ampersand (&), a plus sign (+), curly braces ({}), or square braces ([]). In place of the ampersand, use the word "and" unless the ampersand is part of a formal name.
Keep the heading short: headings with more than 10 words may violate their purpose.
Avoid unnecessary words or redundancy in headings: avoid "a/an/the", pronouns, repeating the article title, and so on.
Do not repeat any section title: that is, do not make one section title conflict with another.

Section management

Adding sub-headings is encouraged. It helps readers to browse, read and understand the article.
- Use sub-headings if the section becomes a bit long.
- Use proper sub-headings to flesh out your points.
If at all possible, try not to change section headings and sub-headings. Other articles may link to a specific section. It will break the section links.
If you link to a specific section, it is wise to leave an editor note  to remind others not to change the section title. Please leave the names of the linking articles, so when the title needs changing, it makes the job easier for others to fix the links.

Capital letters

American English and British English sometimes differ in their inclination to use capitals. If possible, as with spelling, use rules appropriate to the cultural and linguistic context. In other words, do not enforce American rules on pages about Commonwealth topics or Commonwealth rules on pages about American topics. In regard to pages about other cultures, choose either style, but be consistent within the page itself.

Initial capitals and all capitals should not be used for emphasis. For example, "aardvarks, which are Not The Same as anteaters" and "aardvarks, which are NOT THE SAME as anteaters" are both incorrect. Use italics instead ("aardvarks, which are not the same as anteaters").

Titles

Titles such as president, king, or emperor start with a capital letter when used as a title (followed by a name): "President Nixon", not "president Nixon". When used generically, they should be in lower case: "De Gaulle was the French president." The correct formal name of an office is treated as a proper noun. Hence: "Hirohito was Emperor of Japan." Similarly, "Louis XVI was the French king" but "Louis XVI was King of France", King of France being a title in that context. Likewise, capitalize royal titles: "Her Majesty" or "His Highness". (Reference: Chicago Manual of Style 14th ed., 7.16; The Guardian Manual of Style, "Titles" keyword.) Exceptions may apply for specific offices.

In the case of "prime minister", either both words begin with a capital letter or neither, except of course when it begins a sentence. Again, when using it generically, do not capitalize it: "There are many prime ministers around the world." When making reference to a specific office, generally use uppercase: "The British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, said today…" (A good rule of thumb is whether the sentence uses a definite article [the] or an indefinite article [a]. If the sentence uses the, use "Prime Minister"; if a, go with "prime minister". However to complicate matters, some style manuals, while saying "The British Prime Minister", recommend "British prime minister".)

For the use of titles and honorifics in biographical articles, see Wikipedia:Manual of Style (biographies)#Honorific_prefixes.

Religions, deities, philosophies, doctrines, and their adherents

Names of religions, whether as a noun or an adjective, and their followers start with a capital letter. Mormonism has particular complications—see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Mormonism).

Deities begin with a capital letter: God, Allah, Freya, the Lord, the Supreme Being, the Messiah. The same is true when referring to important religious figures, such as Muhammad, by terms such as the Prophet. Transcendent ideas in the Platonic sense also begin with a capital letter: Good and Truth. Pronouns referring to deities, or nouns (other than names) referring to any material or abstract representation of any deity, human or otherwise, do not begin with a capital letter. Thus one would say, "He prayed to Wotan", since Wotan in this case, is a proper name it is correctly capitalized, but the common use of gods in this sense is not capitalized. The following sentence would be correct usage, "It was thought he prayed to God, but it turned out he prayed to one of the Norse gods."

Do not capitalize mythical creatures, such as elves, fairies, nymphs or genies. The exception is some works of fantasy, such as those of J. R. R. Tolkien, where the viewer considers the mythical creatures an ethnicity and thus written with an initial capital.

Philosophies, doctrines, and systems of economic thought do not begin with a capital letter, unless the name derives from a proper noun: lowercase republican refers to a system of political thought; uppercase Republican refers to a specific Republican Party (each party name being a proper noun).

Calendar items

The names of months, days, and holidays always begin with a capital letter: June, Monday, Fourth of July (when referring to the U.S. Independence Day, otherwise July 4 or 4 July).

Seasons start with a capital letter when they go with another noun or when they personify. Here they function as proper nouns: "Winter Solstice"; "Autumn Open House"; "I think Spring is showing her colors"; "Old Man Winter".

However, in the general sense, they do not start with a capital letter: "This summer was very hot."

Animals, plants, and other organisms

Editors have hotly debated whether the common names of species should start with a capital letter, and this remains unresolved. As a matter of truce, both styles are acceptable (except for proper names), but create a redirect from the alternative form.

Celestial bodies

Names of other planets and stars are proper nouns and begin with a capital letter: "The planet Mars can be seen tonight in the constellation Gemini, near the star Pollux."

The words sun, earth, and moon are proper nouns when the sentence uses them in an astronomical context, but not elsewhere: so "The Sun is a main sequence star, with a spectral class of G2"; but "It was a lovely day and the sun was warm". Note that 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".

Directions and regions

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.

Directions (north, southwest, etc.) are not proper nouns and do not start with a capital letter. The same is true for their related forms: someone might call a road that leads north a northern road, compared to the Great North Road.

If you are not sure whether a region has attained proper-noun status, assume it has not.

Institutions

Proper names of specific institutions (for example, Harvard University, New York-Presbyterian Hospital, George Brown College, etc.) are proper nouns and require capitalization.

However, the words for types of institutions (university, college, hospital, high school, etc.) do not require capitalization if they do not appear in a proper name:

Incorrect: The University offers programs in arts and sciences.
Correct: The university offers… or The University of Ottawa offers…

Italics

Use the '' (italic) markup. Example:

''This is italic.''

which produces:

This is italic.

Italics are mainly used to emphasize certain words. Italics for emphasis should be used sparingly.

They are also used in these other cases:

Titles

Italics are used for the titles of works of literature and art. (The titles of articles, chapters, and other short works are not italicized but are enclosed in double quotation marks.)

Words as words

Use italics when writing about words as words, or letters as letters (to indicate the use-mention distinction). For example:

Deuce means "two".
The term panning is derived from panorama, a word coined in 1787.
The most common letter in English is e.

Loan words

Wikipedia prefers italics for isolated words and phrases from other languages not yet in common use in English. Use anglicized spellings for such words, or use the native spellings if they use the Latin alphabet (with or without diacritics). For example, "Reading and writing in Japanese requires familiarity with hiragana, katakana, kanji, and sometimes rōmaji." Words or phrases that have common use in the English language, however—praetor, Gestapo, samurai, esprit de corps—do not require italicization. If looking for a good rule of thumb, do not italicize words that appear unitalicized in an English-language dictionary. Per the guide to writing better Wikipedia articles, use words from other languages sparingly. Include native spellings in non-Latin scripts in parentheses.

Quotations

There is normally no need to put quotations in italics unless the material would otherwise call for italics (emphasis, use of non-English words, etc.). Indicate whether using the italics in the original text or whether they were added later. For example:

Now cracks a noble heart. Good night sweet prince: And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest! (emphasis added)

Punctuation

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

Quotation marks

With quotation marks we split the difference between American and British usage. Though not a rigid rule, we use the "double quotes" for most quotations—they are easier to read on the screen—and use 'single quotes' for nesting quotations, that is, "quotations 'within' quotations".

Note: if a word or phrase appears in an article with single quotes, such as 'abcd', the Wikipedia:Searching facility considers the single quotes to be part of the word and will find that word or phrase only if the search string is also within single quotes. (When trying this out with the example mentioned, remember that this article is in the Wikipedia namespace.) Avoiding this complication is an additional reason to use double quotes, for which the difficulty does not arise. It may even be a reason to use double quotes for quotations within quotations.

When punctuating quoted passages, include the punctuation mark inside the quotation marks only if the sense of the punctuation mark is part of the quotation ("logical" quotations). When using "scare quotes", the comma or period always goes outside.

Examples:

Arthur said the situation was "deplorable". (The full stop [period] is not part of the quotation.)
Arthur said, "The situation is deplorable." (The full sentence is quoted; the period is part of the quotation.)
Arthur said that the situation was "the most deplorable [he] had seen in years." (Although the full sentence is not quoted, the sense of finality conveyed by the period is part of the quotation.)
Martha asked, "Are you coming?" (Inside when quoting a question.)
Did Martha say, "Come with me"? (Outside when there is a non-interrogative quotation at the end of a question.)

Similarly, when the title of an article requires quotation marks in the text (for example, the titles of songs, poems, etc.), the quotation marks should not be bolded in the summary, as they are not part of the title:

"Jabberwocky" is a nonsense poem by Lewis Carroll.

Longer quotations may be better rendered in an indented style by starting the first line with a colon or by using <blockquote> </blockquote> notation (see #Direct quotations), which indents both left and right margins. Indented quotations do not need to be marked by quotation marks. Double quotation marks belong at the beginning of each paragraph in a quotation of multiple paragraphs not using indented style, though at the end of only the last paragraph.

Use quotation marks or indentation to distinguish quotations from other text. There is normally no need to put quotations in italics unless the material would otherwise call for italics (emphasis, use of non-English words, etc.).

Look of quotation marks and apostrophes

There are two options when considering the look of the quotation marks themselves:

Typographic “text”, ‘text’
Typewriter "text", 'text'

As there is currently no consensus on which should be preferred, either is acceptable. However, it appears that historically the majority of Wikipedia articles, and those on the Internet as a whole, follow the latter style. If curved quotation marks or apostrophes appear in article titles, ensure that there is a redirect with straight glyphs.

Never use grave and acute accents or backticks (`text´) as quotation marks or apostrophes.

Use of punctuation in presence of brackets/parentheses

Punctuation goes where it belongs logically; that is, it goes with the text to which it belongs. A sentence wholly inside brackets will have its punctuation inside the brackets. (As shown here, this applies to all punctuation in the sentence.) If a sentence ends with a clause in brackets, the final punctuation stays outside the brackets (as shown here). This applies to square "[ ]" as well as round "( )" brackets (parentheses).

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 Wikipedia consensus on whether it should be used.

Some style authorities support a mandatory final serial comma. These include Fowler's Modern English Usage (Brit.), the Chicago Manual of Style (Amer.), and Strunk and White's Elements of Style (Amer.). Others recommend avoiding it where possible; these include The Times (Brit.), The New York Times (Amer.) and The Economist (Brit.). 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 is not explicitly resolving ambiguity. Many non-journalistic style guides recommend its use, while many newspaper style guides discourage its use; Wikipedia currently has no consensus, itself a position which allows either style and therefore allows avoidance of ambiguities like those above.

The serial comma should never be employed when specifying the name of a railroad or railway (for example, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis Railroad). This is also the standard for law firms and similar firms (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

Dashes

The hyphen (-), en-dash (–) and em-dash (—) should be used in the correct context wherever possible. Other dashes, notably double-hyphen (--) should be avoided.

Spaces after the end of a sentence

There are no guidelines on whether to use one or two spaces after the end of a sentence (French spacing), but it is not important as the difference shows up only in the edit box. See Wikipedia talk: Manual of Style archive (spaces after the end of a sentence) for a discussion on this.

Contractions

In general, formal writing is preferred. Therefore, avoid the use of contractions — such as don't, can't, won't, would've, they'd, and so on — unless they occur in a quotation.

Slashes

Avoid joining two words by a slash, as it suggests that they are related, but does not say how. Spell it out to avoid ambiguities. Also, the construct and/or is awkward outside of legal writing. Use "x or y, or both," to explicitly conjoin with the inclusive or, or "either x or y, but not both," to explicitly specify the exclusive or.

Ellipsis

Ellipsis, the dot-dot-dot indicating omitted text, should be separated from surrounding words by spaces, but not spaced when combined with other punctuation. The precomposed ellipsis character (… … ) may be used: it is intended to replace three dots, but looks a bit different in some fonts, so it may be better to just type the dots. To prevent the ellipsis from wrapping to the beginning of a line, you may enter a non-breaking space before it ( ... ).

Example: in the middle of a sentence ... or after a comma, ... before one..., and at the end.... Following a question...? Or even an exclamation...!

Acronyms and abbreviations

Do not assume that your reader is familiar with the acronym or abbreviation you are using. The standard writing style is to spell out the acronym or abbreviation on the first reference (wikilinked if appropriate) and then show the acronym or abbreviation after it. This signals to readers to look out for it later in the text and makes it easy for them to refer back to it. For example:

The New Democratic Party (NDP) won the 1990 Ontario election with a significant majority. The NDP quickly became unpopular with the voters, however…

It can also be helpful in a longer article to spell out the acronym or abbreviation for the reader again or to rewikify it if it has not been used for a while.

When abbreviating United States, please use "U.S."; that is the more common style in that country. When referring to the United States in a long abbreviation (USA, USN, USAF), periods should not be used. When including the United States in a list of countries, do not abbreviate the "United States" (for example, "France and the United States", not "France and the U.S.").

The software that Wikipedia runs on does not currently support HTML acronym or abbreviation elements (<acronym> or <abbr>), so these tags should not be inserted into the source. (See Mediazilla:671.)

Direct quotations

Use the exact same formatting as was used in the original written text being quoted; in general, do not alter it to conform to Wikipedia style. An exception is that if a quotation is enclosed in quotation marks and includes a quotation itself, any quotation within the quotation should have its quotation marks changed to conform to the Wikipedia style of alternating " and '. For instance, if an article were to quote a source containing the text

The statement "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" is frequently misattributed to Voltaire.

then the article would read:

According to source, "The statement 'I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it' is frequently misattributed to Voltaire."

not:

According to source, "The statement "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" is frequently misattributed to Voltaire."

(Of course, if the original text followed the British standard of alternating ' and ", there would be no difference.)

When indenting a block quote, use the HTML tag <blockquote>, not the wiki indentation mark :. (For the time being, <blockquote> will not work for multiparagraph quotes; you can manually add <p> tags to the beginning of paragraphs beyond the first, or just use : until the issue is resolved. See Mediazilla:6200.)

Good

Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Bad

Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Pronunciation

Scientific style

For units of measure, use SI units as the main units in science articles, unless there are compelling historical or pragmatic reasons not to do so (for example, Hubble's constant should be quoted in its most common unit of (km/s)/Mpc rather than its SI unit of Hz). For other articles, either Imperial or metric units may be used as the main units of measurement. See Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)#Units of measurement for further guidance. Wikipedia Style for numbers is 12,345,678.901.
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 new IUPAC names (these use Hindu-Arabic numerals, not Roman numerals or letters).
For mathematics and mathematical formulae, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics.

Sections

Simple tabulation

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

foo     bar     baz
alpha   beta  gamma

A line that starts with a blank space with nothing else on it forms a blank line.

For a complete guide to more complex 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 "Moses' Laws" 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, it should also be noted that articles that are intended for a general audience will be more widely understood if such terms are avoided and English terms such as "that is", "for example", or "note" are used instead.
If a word or phrase is generally regarded as correct, then prefer it to any other word or phrase that might be regarded as incorrect. For example, "other meaning" should be used instead of "alternate meaning", since alternate only means "alternating" in British English.
Use an unambiguous word or phrase in preference to an ambiguous one. For example, "other meaning" should be used instead of "alternative meaning", since alternative commonly suggests "nontraditional" or "out-of-the-mainstream" to an American-English speaker.

Avoid self-referential pronouns

Wikipedia articles must not be based on one person's opinions or experiences. Thus, "I" can never be used except, of course, when it appears in a quotation. For similar reasons, avoid the use of "we" and "one". A sentence such as "We/One should note that some critics have argued in favor of the proposal" sounds more personal than encyclopedic.

Nevertheless, it might sometimes be appropriate to use "we" or "one" when referring to an experience that anyone, 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", and it is certainly better than using the passive voice: "When the eyes are opened, something is seen."

It is also acceptable to use "we" in mathematical derivations; for example: "To normalize the wavefunction, we need to find the value of the arbitrary constant A."

Avoid the second person

Use of the second person ("you") is discouraged. This is to keep an encyclopedic tone and also to help clarify the sentence. Instead, refer to the subject of the sentence, for example:

"When a player moves past 'go', that player collects $200."
- Or: "Players passing 'go' collect $200."
Not: "When you move past 'go', you collect $200."

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

National varieties of English

Cultural clashes over grammar, spelling, and capitalisation/capitalization are a common experience on Wikipedia. Remember that millions of people have been taught to use a different form of English from yours, including different spellings, grammatical constructions, and punctuation. For the English Wikipedia, while a nationally predominant form should be used, there is no preference among the major national varieties of English. However, there is certain etiquette generally accepted on Wikipedia, summarized here:

Articles should use the same dialect throughout.
If an article's subject has a strong tie to a specific region/dialect, it should use that dialect.
Where varieties of English differ over a certain word or phrase, try to find an alternative that is common to both.
If no such words can be agreed upon, and there is no strong tie to a specific dialect, the dialect of the first significant contributor (not a stub) should be used.

The special cases are clarified in the following guidelines. They are roughly in order; guidelines earlier in this list will usually take precedence over guidelines later:

Proper names should retain their original spellings, for example, United States Department of Defense and Australian Defence Force.
Each article should have uniform spelling and not a haphazard mix of different spellings, which can be jarring to the reader. For example, do not use center in one place and centre in another in the same article (except in quotations or for comparison purposes).
Articles that focus on a topic specific to a particular English-speaking country should generally conform to the usage and spelling of that country. For example:
- Article on the American Civil War: American English usage and spelling
- Article on Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings: British English usage and spelling
- Article on Uluru (Ayers Rock): Australian English usage and spelling
- Article on European Union institutions: British, Irish and Maltese English usage and spelling
- Article on the city of Montreal: Canadian English usage and spelling
- Article on Taj Mahal: Indian English usage and spelling.
If the spelling appears in an article name, you should make a redirect page to accommodate the other variant, as with Artefact and Artifact, or if possible and reasonable, a neutral word might be chosen as with stevedore.
Words with multiple spellings: In choosing words or expressions, there may be value in selecting one that does not have multiple spellings if there are synonyms that are otherwise equally suitable. In extreme cases of conflicting names, a contrived substitute (such as fixed-wing aircraft) is acceptable.
If an article is predominantly written in one type of English, aim to conform to that type rather than provoking conflict by changing to another. (Sometimes, this can happen quite innocently, so please do not be too quick to make accusations!)
Consult Wikipedia articles such as English plural and American and British English differences.
If all else fails, consider following the spelling style preferred by the first major contributor (that is, not a stub) to the article.

Finally, in the event of conflicts on this issue, please remember that if the use of your preferred version of English seems like a matter of great national pride to you, the differences are actually relatively minor when you consider the many users who are not native English speakers at all and yet make significant contributions to the English-language Wikipedia, or how small the differences between national varieties are compared with other languages. There are many more productive and enjoyable ways to participate than worrying and fighting about which version of English to use on any particular page.

Currency

When including a price or currency, include only one. This should be the currency that fits best for that article. An incorrect example:

The object costs 300USD (160GBP, 280EURO).

This would be incorrect as there is no need to include multiple currencies. Also, as exchange rates vary with time, these figures will not remain correct.

However, if the figures are there in order to show a geographical variation in the amount (such as the cost of an item at release in different countries), then they can be included:

The object was released in the USA for $10, in the UK for £10 and in the rest of Europe for €12.

Time

Remember that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia that will hopefully be read well into the future. Avoid words or phrases like recently, last year, soon, modern, new.

Whenever information may become dated, try to give the time at which it was accurate. Thus

Good = The university had an undergraduate enrollment of 8000 in 2003.

Bad = The university has an undergraduate enrollment of 8000.

Also, avoid phrases like "Mike Tyson was a professional boxer." That makes it sound like he is dead. Instead, use "Mike Tyson is a former professional boxer," unless the person really is dead.

Big little long short

Try to use accurate measurements whenever possible. Use specific information.

Good: The average male wallaby is 1.6 metres from head to tail.
Bad: The wallaby is small.

Good: The cyanobacterium Prochlorococcus marinus is 0.5 to 0.8 micrometres across.
Bad: Prochlorococcus marinus is a tiny cyanobacterium.

Good: The dugong swam down the coast in a herd five kilometres long and 300 metres wide.
Bad: The big herd of dugong stretched a long way down the coast.

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 left-and-right (Example: Platypus).
Avoid sandwiching text between two images facing each other.
Generally, we prefer right-alignment to left- or center-alignment. (Example: Race).
- However: portraits with the head looking to the right can be left-aligned (looking into the article) when this doesn't interfere with navigation or other elements. In such cases you may prefer to use {{TOCright}} or reverse the image as long as this doesn't alter non-symmetrical distinguishing features (Example: 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.
Use {{Commons}} to link to more images on Commons, wherever possible.
Use captions to explain the relevance of the image to the article.

The current image markup language is more or less this:

[[Image:picture.jpg|120px|right|thumb|Insert caption here]]

Captions

Photos and other graphics should have captions unless they are "self-captioning", as in reproductions of album or book covers, or when the graphic is an unambiguous depiction of the subject of the article. For example, in a biography article, a caption is not needed for a portrait of the subject pictured alone; however, most entries use the name of the subject and the birth and death years and an approximation of the date when the image was taken: "John Smith (1812–95) circa 1880" or "John Smith (1812–95) on January 12, 1880 in Paris".

If the caption is a single sentence or a sentence fragment, it does not get a period at the end. If the caption contains more than one sentence, then each sentence should get a period at the end.

Captions should not be italicized unless they are book titles or related material. The caption always starts with a capital letter. Remember the full information concerning the image is contained in the image entry, so people looking for more information can click on the photo to see the full details.

Bulleted items

The following are rules for using lists of bulleted items:

When using complete sentences, always use punctuation and a period at the end.
Incomplete sentences don't need terminal punctuation.
Do not mix sentence styles; use all complete sentences, or use all sentence fragments.
Each entry begins with a capital letter, even if it is a sentence fragment.

Identity

This is perhaps one area where Wikipedians' flexibility and plurality are an asset, and where one would not wish all pages to look exactly alike. Wikipedia'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/herself, or using the term a group most widely uses for itself. This includes referring to transgender individuals according to the name and pronoun 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.
However, a more general name will often prove to be more neutral or more accurate. For example, a List of African-American composers is acceptable, though a List of composers of African descent may be more useful.
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."

Wikilinking

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 (the label after a pound sign (#) in a URL) is available into a targeted page and 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.

Dates

Not every year listed in an article needs to be wikilinked. Ask yourself: will clicking on the year bring any useful information to the reader?

Do, however, wikilink years, using the [[As of XXXX]] form, when they refer to information that was current at the time of writing; this allows other editors to ensure that articles are kept up to date as time passes. Dates including a month and day should also be linked in order for user preferences on date formatting to work properly.

Miscellaneous notes

When all else fails

If this page does not specify which usage is preferred:

Use other reliable resources as style guides, such as The Chicago Manual of Style (from the University of Chicago Press) or Fowler's Modern English Usage (3rd edition) (from the Oxford University Press)
Discuss your problems or propose missing style guide on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style
Simply look around. Open articles for editing to see how editors have put it together. You can then close the window without saving changes if you like, but look around while you are there.

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

Formatting issues such as font size, blank space and color are issues for the Wikipedia 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;
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), viewing articles on black-and-white printouts, older monitors with fewer colors, monochrome LCD displays (PDAs, cell phones), and so on.

If necessary, try to choose colors that are unambiguous 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 acceptable 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. It is 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 in the article body, because an editor would like to leave instructions to guide other editors when they edit this section, or leave reminders on specific issues (eg 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 .

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 on certain places, such as 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 bolding. For more on this, see "How Users Read on the Web" by Jakob Nielsen.

External links

Links to websites outside of Wikipedia can be listed at the end of an article or embedded within the body of an article. The standard format for a list of links is to have a header named == External links == followed by a bulleted list of links. External links should summarize the website's contents, and indicate why the website is relevant to the article. For example:

*[http://www.aidsnews.org/ AIDS treatment news]

When wikified, the link will appear as:

AIDS treatment news

External links can be embedded in the body of an article to provide specific references. These links have no description other than an automatically generated number. For example:

Sample text. [http://www.sample.com]

When wikified, the link will appear as:

Sample text. [1]

An embedded external link should be accompanied by a full citation in the article's References section.

Principles

Importance

Consistency

Flexibility

Variety

Clarity

Style guide not applicable to direct quotations

Article titles

Headings

Markup

Wording

Section management

Capital letters

Titles

Religions, deities, philosophies, doctrines, and their adherents

Calendar items

Animals, plants, and other organisms

Celestial bodies

Directions and regions

Institutions

Italics

Titles

Words as words

Loan words

Quotations

Punctuation

Quotation marks

Look of quotation marks and apostrophes

Use of punctuation in presence of brackets/parentheses

Serial commas

Colons

Dashes

Spaces after the end of a sentence

Contractions

Slashes

Ellipsis

Acronyms and abbreviations

Direct quotations

Pronunciation

Scientific style

Sections

Simple tabulation

Usage and spelling

Usage

Avoid self-referential pronouns

Avoid the second person

National varieties of English

Currency

Time

Big little long short

Images

Captions

Bulleted items

Identity

Wikilinking

Dates

Miscellaneous notes

When all else fails

Keep markup simple

Formatting issues

Color coding

Invisible comments

Legibility

External links

Submanuals

See also