SmashWiki:Manual of Style

This page is a SmashWiki guideline, a principle that suggests how users should contribute and conduct themselves. When editing this page, please ensure that your revision reflects consensus. If in doubt, consider discussing changes on the talk page.

This Manual of Style is a style guide that aims to make the wiki easy to read, write, and understand.

Article titles

• Article names should be in singular form, not plural.
• The titles of articles about individual characters should be the name by which the character is most commonly known in their corresponding series.
• Unless the name of the article contains (or is) a proper noun, none of the words should be capitalized except the first.

Links

• Do not use incorrect links. For example, if you are linking to Super Smash Bros. Brawl, then use [[Super Smash Bros. Brawl]], not [[SSBB]]. In other words, do not use abbreviations for links.

Sections and headings

Markup

Use two equal signs (==) style markup for headings. Start with ==, add the heading title, then end with ==.

This section's heading was created with the markup:

==Sections and headings==

This subsection's heading was created with the markup:

===Markup===

Wording

• In a heading, capitalize only the first letter of the first word and the first letter of any proper nouns, and leave all of the other letters in lowercase.
• Avoid putting links in headings.
• Keep headings short.

Text

• Long bodies of text should be divided into paragraphs. In the case of very long bodies of text, consider dividing the content and arranging it under a number of subheadings.
• Language should be gender-neutral unless referring to a character or person.

Text formatting

• Italic text is used to emphasize certain words and names, though they should be used sparingly for this purpose. Game names should always be in italics. Use a pair of apostrophes ('') on either side of text you wish to italicize.
• Bold text is used to distinguish the subject of an article within the first paragraph of its content. Use three apostrophes (''') on either side of text you wish to make bold.
• Colored text can be used sparingly, though not in very bright colours.

Images

• Right-alignment is preferred to left- or center-alignment.
• If there are too many images in a given article, consider making a gallery with a level two heading.
• Use captions to explain the relevance of the image to the article.
• Make large images a thumb.
• Specifying the size of a thumb image is not recommended.

Uploading Images

• Please name your files descriptively to avoid confusion. Uploading an image with the name "0239235jgjgkdgdf" will be deleted.
• Do not upload images we already have. If you plan on uploading an image, look around the Super Smash Bros. Wiki first to see if it has already been uploaded by someone else.

Captions

Complete sentences in captions should always end in a period. If the caption is not a complete sentence, it generally should not have a period at the end. Captions should also not be italicized.

Numbered lists

Numbered lists can be used for listing steps in a process.

Wikilinking

• Every time an article is mentioned on the page, you don't have to link to every single one. For example, Samus Aran may be mentioned five times. You only have to link to Samus Aran once. You can link to articles more than once if the page is very long.
• Use efficient link formats, especially for plurals. For example, do [[Item]]s instead of [[Item|Items]].
• When including links in an article, there is no need to use capitalization or underscores, since the software produces them automatically.