WikiMoon:Style guidelines

Always a work in progress. Please direct questions/comments/clarification requests to the talk page.

A Brief Overview of Wiki Editing

• To bold text, type ''' before and after the word(s) to be bolded.

• Example: '''Sailor Moon''' will give you Sailor Moon.

• To italicize text, type '' before and after the word(s) to be italicized.

• Example: ''Sailor Moon'' will give you Sailor Moon.

• To link to another article on WikiMoon, surround the word(s) with [[ and ]].

• Example: [[Sailor Moon]] will give you Sailor Moon.

• To link to another article with a pipe redirect (as needed when linking to an article with text that isn't the same as the article's title), type [[, the title of the article in question, a |, the text of the link, then close with the ]] brackets.

• Example: typing [[Sailor Moon|Eternal Sailor Moon]] will give you Eternal Sailor Moon (so the link text says "Eternal Sailor Moon" but the link takes you to the "Sailor Moon" article).

• To link to a URL not on WikiMoon, surround the word(s) with [ and ]. If you want the link to say something, enter the URL, a space, then the text between the brackets.

• Example: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon] would give you [1], but if you typed [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon The Moon] it would give you The Moon.

• To push text down on the article so that it doesn't wrap around an image (for example, on Mars Flame Sniper the "Trivia" section begins after the attack screencap), type <br clear="left"> or <br clear="right">, depending on which side of the page the image is on. (The given example uses <br clear="left"> as the image is on the left.)

• To sign your comments on talk pages, type ~~~~ after the comment, or click on the button above the edit box.

• To indent comments on talk pages, add another : at the beginning of each comment in the thread. The first comment on a talk page won't have a : at all. The second will have one :. The reply to the second comment will have :: before it. The reply to the third comment will have ::: before it. And so on and so forth.

General Guidelines for Writing Articles

Always strive to use correct grammar, spelling, and punctuation when writing articles. Also, we are going with American spellings and grammar conventions rather than British ("honor" instead of "honour" and so forth). Avoid using contractions in the body of an article, though they are acceptable in an episode/chapter summary. The general language, tone, and formatting of articles should be more formal, as something written for an academic purpose.

If you aren't sure about how to spell a particular term from the series, then check the list of common character names.

Keep in mind that articles should be kept as unbiased and academic in nature as possible. This means no personal opinions or commentary, and contributions to articles need to be based on actual facts, not conjecture or speculation. Also, all contributions to the wiki should be your own work; copy-pasting information from other websites is considered plagiarism and will result in your account being banned.

External Links

There should not be any external links to other websites at the bottom of an article, unless it is listed in the references ("references" include citations, sources of information, etc - all of these are not only allowed, but encouraged). Ideally, you should link to the appropriate category on WikiMoon Web (see the Sera Myu article for an example of how it should look), if one is available. Voice actors, production staff, and other people or companies associated with Sailor Moon can have links to the Anime News Network database, Wikipedia, their own official websites, etc. Essentially, websites that are not Sailor Moon related can be linked to in External Links; fansites should not be linked to except as references.

Please do not link to/embed YouTube videos, mp3s, or wav files anywhere in articles.

General Formatting

• The opening paragraph of the article should give a general definition of the subject. In most cases, this should begin with the article's title in bold italics (this can be done by enclosing the phrase between two sets of five apostrophes, '''''like this'''''). There are some exceptions to this though, such as episode summaries, which usually just begin with a brief synopsis of the episode.

• As the article gets bigger, consider breaking it into sections. Sections can be created by enclosing the section title between two sets of two equals signs. You can even create sections within sections by enclosing titles within two sets of three equals signs. (If the article isn't very big, however, sections visually interrupt the flow of text, so don't overuse them.)

• Use italics when referring to the Sailor Moon series as a whole (rather than the character). Also use italics for titles of musicals, books, CDs, and magazines, but use quotation marks to denote song or episode titles.

• Dates should be in the format of Month Day, Year (January 1, 2007 or March 15, 2004).

• Most articles should be written in past tense. One of the notable exceptions to this would be the "summary" section of an episode or manga chapter article. Please see the following sections for more details.

• Article titles about attacks, powers, weapons, etc. should ideally be the original name of the attack in Japanese (or in the case of Sabão Spray, Portuguese, or in the case of the Stallion Rêve, French, etc.) or the name given in an official English translation, but this can vary on a case-by-case basis depending on the situation. For example, the anime episode articles all use the translated titles from the R1 DVD release, the manga chapter articles use the original Japanese, Sera Myu attacks have romanized Japanese titles, and "Akuryo Taisan" is still in romanji, and these are all completely intentional and as they should be. At this time there should be no need to create any new articles, but the names of currently-existing articles may be changed to fit future developments, such as the release of new volumes of the Kodansha manga. When in doubt how this guideline applies, please ask for clarification before making any changes.

• For articles including infoboxes (such as characters, attacks, weapons, etc) the "Name" field at the top of the infobox should match the title of the article. There are some exceptions to this, however: some articles are named after translated versions of attack names, and therefore the "Name" field is the romanized version of the original Japanese name, while the "English Name" field matches the article's title (see Ultimate Attack: Diphenhydramine Dispersal for an example). This should be the exception rather than the rule, however, and it should only happen when an article is deliberately named after a translation that doesn't match the Japanese name.

Continuity, Canon and Perspective

Sailor Moon contains a lot of different continuities, and many of the articles here will encompass more than one of them. We will achieve this by splitting each article into distinct sections. An article about Sailor Uranus, for example, would contain an Anime section, a Manga section and a Musicals section, and possibly more too. In these sections, we would be able to write about Sailor Uranus' personality, experiences and so on in these different continuities. This is where the issue of perspective comes in.

Basically, when writing about an event which occurred within the series, try to write it as if that event was factual. Which is to say: don't have canon information (eg, Sailor Uranus' first attack was World Shaking) sitting right next to information from outside the series (eg, Sailor Uranus is very popular amongst fans). It is okay to include background information like this, but this should be kept in separate sections lower down, labelled "Production notes" or "Fandom". As time goes on we'll standardise these.

When writing about canon events, try to stick to the past tense, as if you're writing about an event that occurred in the recent past.

If discussing fanfiction-related articles, be sure it's made clear that they relate to fanfiction somewhere at the beginning. This is especially important if it's material that doesn't contradict canon but isn't in canon either.

To get a feel for the sort of writing style we're aiming for with this project, peruse a few of the articles at Memory Alpha, the Star Trek wiki.

Linking to Other Articles

• Only the first mention of a particular term needs to be linked in the main body of the article. The trivia section or infobox (if present) are considered separate entities, however, so the link rule resets there. For example, if the Usagi Tsukino article is linked to in the main body of an article, she won't be linked to again for the rest of that article, but if she is mentioned again in a trivia note or in the infobox, she still would be. There are some exceptions to this guideline that will be considered on a case-by-case instance, such as when there is a list of linked items or it is considered visually/stylistically necessary, but it must be followed in the vast majority of cases.

• Link to the actual title of an article (with a pipe redirect, if necessary) instead of to a redirect. See the redirect policy for more details.

Character Pages

Regarding name order, use Western order not Japanese, so first name then last name.

Do not create separate articles for dub names. To discuss the dub version of a character, add a note to the Trivia section, or create a new section if there is a lot of information to be discussed.

Please write "Sailor Moon" and not "Sailormoon," "Sailor Mercury" not "Sailormercury," etc.

• How to write a character article
• A guide to common character names
• A good example of a character article.

Here are some templates that will be of use on character pages:

• General character infobox (for use with all apart from Myu or video game -only characters)
• Myu character infobox
• Video game character infobox
• Template to be placed at the bottom of all Sailor Senshi articles

Episode Articles

We're using the ADV/Pioneer episode titles, albeit with the occasional adjustment for the sake of internal consistency. North American dub episode titles should redirect to their Japanese counterparts. There are now two episode templates available at Template:Episode_Navigation and Template:EpisodeBox. See Crybaby Usagi's Magnificent Transformation for how to use these. If there's any information you don't know, just leave it out and somebody else will fill it in.

The articles start with a brief one-sentence synopsis, then, under Summary, a more complete description. An Episode trivia section contains miscellaneous information about the episode that doesn't belong in the other sections, and the Cast section contains a full Japanese cast list. We may yet add more sections pertaining to the English dub: if you have any ideas, please mention them on the talk page.

Please refer to this article when writing the episode summary:

How to write an episode summary

Here are some templates that will be of use on episode pages:

• Episode information template
• Template to be placed at the bottom of all episode articles

Music/Song Articles

Please see "Moonlight Densetsu" or "Otome no Policy" for examples of how to format a song article.

• The first part of the article should include basic information about the song. A "Song Details" section should include credits for who composed it, who wrote the lyrics, etc, as well as any further details on when it was used in the series, which CDs it was on, and anything else that wouldn't belong in the Trivia section.

• There should be three different sections for the Japanese-language songs: "Japanese" with the kanji/kana lyrics, "Romanized" with the romanized equivalent of those lyrics, and "English Translation" with a translated version. Until all three sections are present the article needs to be marked as a stub.

• The first letter of each line should be capitalized in the romaji and translated sections.

• Do not put words in all caps in the "Romanized" section unless they appeared that way (in roman letters) in the original Japanese lyrics.

• The lyrics in the Japanese and Romanized sections should match as closely as possible. In other words, put the line breaks in the same places, and if there are words in roman letters in the Japanese lyrics, write them exactly the same way in the Romanized section. The Japanese sections and the English translation should also match formatting as closely as possible for consistency, including words that were in roman letters and punctuation (though exceptions can be made when commas, hyphens, etc need to be added in for ease of understanding phrases translated into English).
  • Although style guidelines call for the first letter of the line to be capitalized in the romanized and translation sections, if the line in Japanese begins with a word written in lower-case roman letters, it should still be lower-case in the other sections. (This is the only exception to that rule; see the Honoo no Messenger article for an example of this.)

• English translations of songs must be your own work or posted with the express permission of the translator (and stated as such in the edit note when added). Please don't just copy/paste a translation from someone's website without permission, as this is considered plagiarism.

Voice Actor/Seiyuu Articles

Most of these articles should contain three sections: the first information about the actor in question, the second a list of the roles they played in the anime, and the third links to reference pages such as their IMDb or Anime News Network articles.

The information section could include other notable roles that the actor may have played in other series or games, but it is not intended to be an exhaustive list. Try to keep that in mind when editing; though there is no set guideline on how many can be listed in an article, it is best to list particularly significant roles rather than minor characters.

The roles are generally listed with the main characters first, followed by minor or single-episode characters in the order in which they appeared in the series. If they shared the role with another actor, then note in parentheses after the character name which episodes that particular actor was in. For example, Wendy Lyon and Barbara Radecki both played Queen Serenity in the English dub, so in their respective articles there is a notation indicating in which episodes Queen Serenity was played by which actress.

If the character was minor enough that they do not have an article about them, simply put the name and the episode in which they appeared in parentheses next to it.

PLEASE NOTE: There have been enough English-dub voice actor credits added that have later been proven false that if you add a voice actor without providing a source it will be removed. Leaving a note on the talk page of the article in question is preferable, but at least add something in the edit summary if you don't want your contribution removed.

Talk Pages

Article talk pages are intended for discussion of that particular article. If you have something to discuss regarding a group of articles, you might want to consider putting that discussion on the talk page for that category or on the Community Portal. If you want to ask questions about something related to canon, that belongs on the Reference Desk. If you want to discuss something related to the story or speculate on canon, that should go to a message board or online forum (like this one, for example).

Please don't go back and change your comments on talk pages once someone has already replied to them. Even though you're technically able to do so, it can make the response look nonsensical or incorrect, and that's not really conducive to discussion. And along those lines, don't edit things other people have written on talk pages. (Some exceptions may apply, such as when pages are moved and links need to be changed, but those are very rare and specific cases.)

User Pages

An individual's user page is intended to be a place to facilitate communication between editors of the wiki. A user's talk page is a good place for discussion of matters not relevant to an individual article's talk page, but please refrain from extended personal conversations, as such things should ideally go to a private venue (such as email).

There is no set template for a user page or strict rules about what may or may not be contained there, but keep in mind that this wiki is primarily intended as a wiki, not a blog or a web hosting service. While it is entirely appropriate to put some personal information or wiki-related thoughts on your user page, excessive amounts of material unrelated to the wiki, blog-style updates, offensive material, advertisements, or inflammatory comments are not allowed. Generally speaking, one's user page shouldn't be more than a page long (unless the user is making temporary use of it as a sandbox to test edits or something along those lines).

There are no rules regarding the length of talk pages; some users may find it useful to archive old discussions, while others choose to simply delete them and keep it as blank as possible. However, if users have been given warnings by administrators, removing them from a talk page does not erase them from existence, as they are still contained in the page edit history, and the removal of the text is considered an acknowledgment that it has been read.

Also please remember that every edit is saved in the edit history of a page, so it generally is not advisable to put anything on your user page that you might regret putting there later, such as personal or private information.

Miscellaneous Templates

Media

• Manga chapter template
• CD information template
• DVD information template
• Book information template
• Website template
• Sera Myu template

Magic

• Sailor Senshi attack template
• Sailor Senshi attack template (with PGSM)
• Sailor Senshi attack template (with myu)
• Myu only Senshi attack template
• Sailor Senshi magic template
• Sailor Senshi transformation template
• Myu only Senshi transformation template
• PGSM only attack template
• PGSM transformation template
• Video game attack template
• Enemy attack template
• Enemy attack template (with game)
• Enemy attack template (with myu)
• Myu only enemy attack template

Items

• Sailor Senshi item template
• PGSM Sailor Senshi item template
• Sailor Senshi transformation item template
• PGSM transformation item template
• Sailor Senshi weapon template
• PGSM only weapon template
• Sailor Senshi weapon template (with PGSM)
• Enemy weapon template
• Enemy weapon template (with myu)
• Myu-only enemy weapon template

Admin Templates

• Stub template (for short articles that need expansion)
• Unsigned comment template (for adding a signature to comments left unsigned by their authors)
• Esoteric article template (for articles that are suspected to be nonsense or beyond the scope of the project; used by admins only)