CrawlWiki:Style guide
CrawlWiki has no formal style guide as of yet. Changes should be discussed on the talk page.
(currently this style guide is shamelessly copied from the nethackwiki style guide)
Tone
CrawlWiki is not just an encyclopedia of DCSS, but articles in the main namespace should be written in a largely encyclopaedic tone. That means clearly separating facts from comments, by putting strategy tips in their own section, and comments on the talk page. Spelling and grammar should follow (american/british standardized?) rules.
Please keep your sentences short, especially if your native language favors long ones.
Article names
Try to be consistent with existing articles:
- Name most pages with lowercase letters, like scroll of identify, but use uppercase for proper nouns, like Orb of Zot.
- Prefer singular to plural (i.e. Dragon instead of Dragons)
- Redirect acronyms like GDA to pages like gold dragon armour. However, identification, scroll of identify, and spellbook of identify can be three separate pages.
The first time the article name appears in the main text, it should be bolded. This includes the titles of any redirects redirecting to the article. In-game messages documented in a definition list will be bolded automatically:
; "You feel centered in your personal space." : You gained teleport control through eating a corpse, while hallucinating
formats into
- "You feel centered in your personal space."
- You gained teleport control through eating a corpse, while hallucinating
Redirects
When creating a new article, redirect variations on that name to it, to avoid someone duplicating the article under a slightly different title.
For in-game messages, redirect the message (e.g. The golden haze around you disappears) to the article about the thing that caused it. If the message can have multiple causes, create a disambiguation page (e.g. Your skin feels warm for a moment).
The syntax for a redirect is like this:
#REDIRECT [[spellbook of protection]]
See [1] for help creating redirects.
Headers
The highest header level that should be used is ==This==. Do not use =These=, they are reserved for the article main title only. In each article, there should be a brief introduction before going into specifics. This introduction should not have a header, like ==Introduction==, because it is obvious and because when omitting it, the introduction appears before the table of contents as it is supposed to.
Section names
Some sections are common to many articles. Try to use one of these for the section header rather than a variant like "Messages given", "Behavior in previous versions", or "External Links". Known standard sections are:
- (insert other standard sections here)
- Strategy
- Mythology/Trivia?
- History
- See also
- References
- External links
Generation should explain where and how the thing can be found or created.
The History section should be for explaining what the thing did in previous versions of DCSS. Actual history should go in Mythology (if the thing is based on real life, Origin may be a better heading).
