User:MentalMouse42/Sandbox/Style Guide

See also: Terraria Wiki:Rules

The following is a guide to creating or editing mainspace pages at Terraria Wiki in accordance with the established article style. It describes accepted and established practices at Terraria Wiki, and should not be used to impose changes to the wiki. These guidelines are not set in stone, but they should generally be followed in order to maintain consistency across pages, unless there is a good reason to make an exception.

Page types

Different page types require different page formats. See the following examples:

• For enemies, see the enemy page format.
• For items, see the item page format.
• For biomes, see the biome page format.

General guidelines

• The name of the page should be plural if it is a list of entities which are named differently (e.g. Work Benches), otherwise, it should be singular (e.g. Armored Skeleton).
• All entity names should be capitalized as in-game (e.g. Iron Broadsword, Roman candle), groups of items should be lower-cased (e.g. bars, bullet). Note that there are edge cases where the plural of an item name is the same as the name of an item group, e.g. Chests (refers to multiple of the standard, wooden Chest item) vs. chests (refers to any chest), Seeds (refers to multiple of the Seed ammunition item) vs. seeds (refers to the group of items that are to be planted in the ground).
• Page titles and section headings should be in sentence case. The above rule still applies.
• The first instance of an entity name on a page should always be linked, via double brackets (e.g. [[Iron Broadsword]]). This does not apply to the page title (which should be in proper bold instead; see below). Further mentions of the same entity should generally not be linked, though multiple identical links can exist if they occur far from each other and would be helpful to readers. An example might be one link in the introductory section along with an identical link in a section, table, or template occurring further down. Duplicate links may be especially helpful on larger pages that would require scrolling to find an entity's first mention.
• Be sure to read the page before editing. Editors frequently add notes, tips, and trivia items that duplicate information already contained in the article's paragraphs above.

Formatting guidelines

• The first instance of the page title should be bold. This should usually be in the first sentence of the article. No other instance of the page title should be bold. To make a word or phrase bold, place three apostrophes (') on each side. For example: '''bold'''. Bold print should usually be avoided for emphasis on other words. Instead, italic print (two apostrophes) is preferred.
• Template calls should be lower-cased (i.e. {{item}} instead of {{Item}}). Navigational templates, however, are to be called upper-cased (i.e. {{Biomes}} instead of {{biomes}}). This facilitates distinguishing these two types of templates in the source code.
• Times of day are to be formatted as in-game, i.e., in a 12-hour clock hh:mm{{nbsp}}AM/PM format. Hours do not have a leading zero.
• When displaying dimensions, multiplication in formulas, etc. the multiplication sign × is the proper operator. The letter x is mathematically not correct.

Standard sections

Here is a simple rundown of sections an article can include. For examples based on the article type, see Page types above.

The lead (or intro) section of a page should describe the article topic. For instance, for items, describe the item and state how it is acquired.

Any or all of the following additional sections can be included in an article. They should generally be in the order they are presented in below. Sections are added via == Section Title ==. For example, == Notes == would add a "Notes" section.

• Notes: Bulleted list of short facts about the article topic.
• Tips: Bulleted list of helpful hints regarding effective practices and what to avoid.
• Trivia: Bulleted list of facts relating to the article topic, which may be interesting but have no bearing on the game. Explaining the etymology of an item name could be one example. See trivia rules for an expanded guide to Trivia sections.
  • Special note: "Possible references" usually aren't; avoid them unless they are supported by Word Of God (that is, statements from the developers, which should have citations in the References section).
• See also: Bulleted list of related articles. Pages which are already linked to should not be mentioned here another time.
• History: List of changes to the article topic from various game updates, with each item using the {{history}} template. A history section should almost always be included, with at least one item stating which update introduced the game element. Should also be the only location acknowledging game updates that have caused introductions or modifications of page content.
• References/Footnotes: Put {{reflist}} here, if necessary. If there is no actual reference (i.e. link to a source) among the <ref>s, "Footnotes" is the more appropriate section title.

Writing and Editing Style

This wiki uses American English. Please try to use proper grammar and spelling! If you are unsure about spelling, there are any number of online dictionaries that can help. Avoid slang and pop-culture references -- remember, your readers may come from anywhere in the world, and they may not have seen your favorite TV show, movie, manga, comic book, etc.

Some special points for writing on this wiki:

• Neutral tone: Do not include personal opinions and avoid "breathless" or "chatty" writing.
  • Statements like "this is the best weapon" should not appear unless they are obviously justifiable by game considerations (damage/speed values, etc). Likewise for comments about beauty/ugliness of sprites and such.
  • Don't be partisan among the game classes. All four classes are viable and can win the game. And any given weapon or tool isn't mandatory unless it's actually part of the game progression (like the Pwnhammer). Likewise for choosing between the "world evils" -- they do have in-game trade-offs, but neither is clearly superior.
• Do not use second-person writing (addressing the player as "you") in main pages. However, second-person is acceptable in Guides (tutorials) and sometimes in Tips sections, depending on the page's overall style. This may require some use of passive voice (such as "should be avoided"), don't overuse passive voice. If you can say something straight, do so.
  • In that vein, avoid phrases like "it is recommended...". By who? Why? Similarly, think twice about saying "most players" -- there's a lot of players out there with widely varying play styles.
  • Any statement such as "a wise player will" or "players should..." should include the reasons or purpose of doing such-and-such.
• Avoid icon clutter: Not every mention of an item or NPC needs to be a full-featured {{item}} template. Text links are usually enough, especially if the section or page is already marked as exclusive, and/or the icons are already displayed on the page.
  • Large icons such as the NPC full figures or the crafting stations tend to interfere with line spacing -- using map icons or the item template's "size" option can help with that.
• Never leave "TODO" or "FIX THIS" markers visible to the reader. If you are doing a general rewrite of an article, either copy it into your own user-space to work on it, or do sections in such a manner that the page remains readable and coherent at each stage. You can leave "comments" (that is, not visible to the normal reader) about such things in the wiki text -- the "Insert" menu on the top bar can insert, among other things, comments. If you need information, you can put an {{Info_request}} template in the page, but it's usually better to pose questions or complaints on the matching discussion page.
  • To create a page in your own user-space, "go to", and then create when asked, a page with a link such as "User:<user name>/Sandbox/<page name>", without the quotes, and with the bits in angle brackets replaced by your own user name and page you want to work on. You can also create a page at "User:<user name>/Sandbox" to hold links to the pages you have created.

Guides

Guides can cover a wide array of subject matter, so a single blanket template cannot be applied to all of them. Nevertheless, do see Terraria Wiki:Rules § Guides for guidelines concerning these pages.

Trivia

See the trivia rules for guidance on trivia sections.