Difference between revisions of "Help:Conventions"

Revision as of 15:31, 14 December 2006

Historical Approach

-- Our style is a historical, rather than a literary, approach, so write about your subjects as if they're real people, places and things. So instead of "In the second chapter of Throne of Jade, X is promoted to lieutenant" try something like "During the sea voyage to China, X was promoted to lieutenant."

-- In the same vein, a historical approach means these events have already happened, so use the past tense --- "was" instead of "is."

-- For anything requiring a date, such as a character's age, attempt to use an absolute date. E.g., date of birth = c. 1700 instead of "100 years old." The reason for this is that we have no idea how long the books will ultimately span in years -- if they go through Waterloo, it's at least a decade. It's fine to estimate if you don't know (and we won't in most cases). The books begin in January 1805, so it's a date we can extrapolate from.

Page Titles

-- Try to use full character names, where available, to create pages, but do not include military/social ranks. Thus: William Laurence, Horatio Nelson. There will be certain exceptions, but we'll deal with those one at a time.

-- British ships should have HMS in front of their name. Thus: HMS Reliant.

-- No accented characters in page titles (é, û, etc.) and therefore, links, even though they properly belong in some French names. If you want to use them in unlinked text, it's fine, but please don't put them in page names.

Links

-- It's not necessary to create links to common terms that have no special meaning in the Temeraire universe. Thus, Napoleon Bonaparte is a proper subject for a page here, as his history in the Temeraire universe deviates from real history, but for the moment we don't need a page here on, say, King George (at least through book 3). Feel free to link to the full Wikipedia pages on common subjects that come up, though.

-- It's not necessary to link every time you mention a linked term; link it the first time, or on a longer page, the first time it's used in each section. So: William Laurence the first time you mention him; after that, just "Laurence" is fine, unless there's a risk of confusion with someone of the same last name.

Templates

-- We have three basic templates, for People, Dragon Breeds, and Dragons. The People template is mostly for military personnel. The Dragon and Dragon Breeds templates should be used for all dragons/dragon breeds, even if not much information is known.

-- To see examples of how the templates are used, have a look at these entries (click "edit" to see the code): Allen (people), Regal Copper (dragon breed), and Laetificat (dragons).

-- Please use the {{expand}} template on every page that needs further expansion.

-- If you're interested in developing other templates, leave a note on the Talk page (either the main page or the template page).

Categories

-- Please be sure to put [[Category:A-Z]] on the bottom of every page with Temeraire content (not meta or special pages, like this one). If you are confused about what other categories to use, if you use A-Z, others can find the page more quickly and help put the page into the right categories.

-- We want characters to show up in the indices under their last names, but we're naming pages firstname lastname. So to set the sort order, when you add a category, use a "pipe" and then how you want the entry sorted. For example, on Laurence's page:

[[Category:People|Laurence, William]]

That tells the wiki that even though the page name is "William_Laurence" we want it to sort under L for Laurence. Don't worry if you're having trouble with this -- leave a note on the Talk page for the article and we'll fix it.

Style Miscellanea

-- Let's use Britain/British rather than England/English.