Difference between revisions of "WikiMoon:Style guidelines"

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Revision as of 07:36, 28 December 2007

Work in progress.

General guidelines for writing articles

Always strive to use correct grammar, spelling and punctuation when writing articles. If you aren't sure about how to spell a particular term from the series, then check the list of common character names.

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). Instead, link to the appropriate category on WikiMoon Web (see the Sera Myu article for an example of how it should look). There are exceptions to this rule, however; voice actors, production staff, and other people or companies associated with Sailor Moon can have links to the Anime News Network database or their own official websites. (In other words, websites not Sailor Moon related can be linked to in External Links.)

Formatting

  • The opening paragraph of the article should give a general definition of the subject. In most cases, this should begin with the article name in bold italics (this can be done by enclosing the phrase between two sets of five apostrophes). 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.
  • 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).

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.

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, simply create a new section within the Japanese name article with the heading "North American Dub".

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

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

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, and the Cast section contains a full Japanese cast list. We may yet add more sections pertaining to the NA dub: if you have any ideas, please mention them on the talk page.

A guide to writing a good episode summary:

How to write an episode summary

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

Miscellaneous templates

Media

Magic

Items

Admin templates