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This is a compilation of general guidelines that all editors should make themselves familiar with. These guidelines are kept brief in order to save aspiring editors time when wishing to familiarise themselves with these standards, however most of these guidelines are adapted from Wikipedia's Manual of Style which readers may wish refer to for a more detailed explanation and reasoning behind any particular guideline they are still unsure about.

Capital letters[]

See also: Manual of Style (capital letters)
  • If in doubt, do not use any capital letters.

Capital letters may be used for normal English sentence structure, proper nouns, titles, such as the title of a book or an honorific prefix, and calendar items (excluding seasons). In any other case, the use of capitals is incorrect.

Abbreviations[]

See also: Manual of Style (abbreviations)
  • Do not use symbols in place of words. For example, write and instead of &.
  • When inserting numbers into a paragraph, write the number out in its word form if it is between zero and ten, otherwise it is acceptable to insert the number itself.

Avoid all abbreviations that require specialist knowledge of the game in order to understand. For example, always write experience instead of exp and magic defense instead of m. defense. Similarly, avoid common colloquialisms such as mob; write monster or enemy instead, as appropriate.

Page titles[]

  • The title of a page is very important and should be both accurate and concise in describing the subject of the article.
  • Ensure that the rules for capital letters are followed for page titles. If in doubt, only capitalise the first letter.
  • Ensure that the rules for abbreviations and symbols are followed for page titles.

Page titles are typically singular, wherever this makes sense. For example class and not classes. The title classes assumes that the reader already knows what a class is, whereas the title class gives the editor the ideal opportunity to explain what a class is in the opening paragraph. There is no reason why a list of classes cannot still appear on, or be linked from, the class page. Also see plurals and disambiguations.

Headings[]

See also: Manual of Style (section headings)
  • Do not use boldface or any other markup to create faux-headings. Use wiki heading markup only.
  • Never include any links in headings.
  • Ensure that the rules for capital letters are followed for headings. If in doubt, only capitalise the first letter.
  • Ensure that the rules for abbreviations and symbols are followed for headings.

Be aware that there are multiple heading levels. The top-level headings in an article should always be second level headings. Third level headings may only exist under second level headings; fourth level headings may only exist under third level headings and so on. These are referred to as nested headings. Content under nested headings should provide information that is applicable to the current heading as well as all parent headings under which it is nested.

Linking[]

See also: Help:Links
  • When link text occurs multiple times within a page, only link the first occurrence.
  • Never create "click here" links. Always create intuitive links using the text of a sentence.
  • Ensure that the rules for capital letters are followed for links. Never change the capitalization of a sentence just to insert a link; use piped links to rewrite the link text if necessary.

Links should be inserted around any text for which a reader may wish to find more information. It is never necessary to add, modify or delete parts of paragraphs to include links because links work with sentences, not against them. Where necessary, link text may be different from the title of a page by inserting piped links. Usually, inserting links should be an intuitive process of simply demarcating strings of words with pairs of square brackets, without needing to change any existing text.

Plurals[]

Although most pages should be titled in the singular, many sentences require the use of plurals. For example, you might wish to write players can learn many [[crafts]]. Unfortunately, a page called crafts does not exist because the article is correctly titled craft. However, any letters that are appended to links automatically become part of the link text. In this example you could write players can learn many [[craft]]s to create the crafts link. The trailing s becomes part of the link.

Sometimes it is not possible to append letters to create the plural. For example, you might wish to write a player can hire up to eight active [[mercenaries]]. A page called mercenaries does not exist, but mercenary does. In this case your only option is to use a piped link to rewrite the link text completely: a player can hire up to eight active [[mercenary|mercenaries]].

Markup[]

See also: How to edit a page
  • Never use HTML where wiki markup exists for the same purpose.
  • Never insert two adjacent blank lines to force extra vertical space into an article.
  • Never insert preformatted text to force extra horizontal space into an article.
  • Never use __TOC__ to force a table of contents into an article.
  • Don't include any markup in your articles unless you know what it does!

Many new editors notice that the software does not replicate single line breaks within articles, causing information split onto multiple lines in the editor to appear all on one line in the article. This is not a mistake or oversight of the wiki software. If you find yourself wanting to force a new line, consider why you want text to break suddenly. Are you creating a list? If so, use the # or * markup to create ordered or unordered lists, respectively. Are you creating tabular data? If so, use wiki table markup. It is very rare that you should need to insert explicit line breaks, so please explore alternative solutions in each case.

Another common mistake is to insert preformatted text into an article.

This is an example of preformatted text. It's ugly and very easy to do by mistake!

Simply putting a space at the beginning of a line will cause text to become preformatted. If you find yourself doing this deliberately because you're looking for a way to space things out horizontally, then as above, you're problem is probably best solved with the use of tables instead.

Writing[]

Keep your writing concise. Don't use two words where one will do. Keeping your writing simple will make it easy to understand and easy to expand on. Check your spelling and grammar. Write the way you would for a class paper or a newspaper article.

Write from an impersonal perspective. Do not address yourself as I. Avoid drawing attention to the reader as much as possible by avoiding the word you, unless you are writing a guide such as this one! For example, do not write: "you get Walachia equipment from Bran Castle Equipment Boxes". Instead write: "Walachia equipment can be obtained from Bran Castle Equipment Boxes".

Avoid information duplication[]

Keep all of the topics covered within the scope of the article. For example, if you are writing about battle points you might mention that battle points can be spent at [Pointry]. However, do not mention what Pointry is or where he/she/it is located because this is outside the scope of the article. If the reader already knows about Pointry then you are wasting their time repeating what they already know. If the reader wishes to know more then they will follow a link to Pointry.

If you are unsure whether the content you want to add is within scope of an article, consider how many pages would need updating if the information had to be changed. For example, if you have written that Pointry is located in Rome on every page containing information about exchanging points, but Pointry is later moved to New York, you would have to update a lot of pages! By keeping relevant information within the appropriate article scope, you only need to update information in one place.

Preview[]

See also: Help:Show preview
  • Some of the best articles are written when major contributors review their own work several times for accuracy, clarity and consistency before submitting it.

Preview your work! Avoid committing many micro revisions to a page. Continue using the preview button until you are completely happy with the article before using the save page button. This is much quicker than clicking save and then clicking edit every time, since the preview page shows you the result and still gives you the edit box to make additional changes.

Minor edits[]

See also: Help:Minor edit

A check to the minor edit box signifies that only superficial differences exist between the current and previous version. This includes type corrections, formatting and presentational changes, rearranging of text without modifying content, et cetera. A minor edit is a version that the editor believes requires no review and could never be the subject of a dispute. Therefore, any change that affects the meaning of an article is not minor, even if the edit is a single word. If in doubt, do not mark your edits as minor.

Lead sections[]

See also: Lead section

The lead section of a an article is the section before the table of contents and first heading. The lead should be able to stand alone as a concise overview of the article. It should establish context and summarize the most important points.

The first (and only the first) appearance of the page title should be as early as possible in the first sentence and should be in boldface. If the subject of the page is normally italicized then its first mention should be both bold and italic text.

Disambiguations[]

See also: Disambiguation
  • Disambiguations are always appended to an article title in parenthesis.
  • Keep disambiguations as short and simple as possible, and keep them consistent.
  • Include links at the top of all articles involved in a disambiguation that point to each other so that readers can find what they are looking for easier.

When an article title could refer to several things, it is necessary to provide a disambiguation in one or both of the article's titles. For example, Nest of Insects could refer to a dungeon or a quest chain of the same name. Since Nest of Insects is better known as a dungeon, this disambiguation can be resolved by permitting the article with this name to refer to the dungeon itself while a page titled Nest of Insects (quest chain) is created to list details of the quest chain.

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