Battlestar Wiki:Standards and Conventions: Difference between revisions
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==Spelling== | ==Spelling== | ||
Prefer the American spellings of words as much as possible. This is arbitrary, but a call had to be made. | Prefer the American spellings of words as much as possible. This is arbitrary, but a call had to be made. | ||
==Ships== | |||
Ship names should be italicized (e.g. ''Galactica''). Military ships generally receive no article (i.e. "''Galactica''" not "the ''Galactica''") and civilian ships generally ''do'' receive an article (i.e. "the ''Rising Star''" not "''Rising Star''"). There are some exceptions to this (e.g. ''Colonial One''). Mostly, ships are female and so use of "she" and "her" is encouraged, though not mandated. | |||
When discussing [[Vipers]], use of either "Mark" or "Mk." is acceptable, though "mk." is just sloppy. Also, roman numerals are preferred. Thus, "Viper Mark II" or "Viper Mk. VII" but not "Viper mk. 2". | |||
==Verb Tense== | ==Verb Tense== | ||
Revision as of 01:22, 15 September 2005
This page serves as the central hub for standards used in writing articles on Battlestar Wiki. Initially, it will probably consist of a lot of gesturing and debating on the talk page. Once a reasonable approximation of consensus is achieved on a topic, information about it will be moved here. Feel free to bring up new convention questions on the talk page.
This page is not designed to supercede other Project Pages. Some over-lap is expected, but project-specific standards and conventions should be moved to their project page, if one exists or a page created for a project, if one does not.
Spelling
Prefer the American spellings of words as much as possible. This is arbitrary, but a call had to be made.
Ships
Ship names should be italicized (e.g. Galactica). Military ships generally receive no article (i.e. "Galactica" not "the Galactica") and civilian ships generally do receive an article (i.e. "the Rising Star" not "Rising Star"). There are some exceptions to this (e.g. Colonial One). Mostly, ships are female and so use of "she" and "her" is encouraged, though not mandated.
When discussing Vipers, use of either "Mark" or "Mk." is acceptable, though "mk." is just sloppy. Also, roman numerals are preferred. Thus, "Viper Mark II" or "Viper Mk. VII" but not "Viper mk. 2".
Verb Tense
In almost every case, the present tense should be used when relating events occuring in an episode (e.g. Baltar shoots Crashdown in the back in order to save Cally's life). This is in line with the traditional style used to discuss literary works of fiction and the reasons it is employed for those kinds of articles entirely apply here.
Exceptions can be made for articles dealing with historical events, where present tense can impede narrative flow.
Numbers
Numbers should use a period (.) for decimal places and a comma (,) for marking every three digits (e.g. 3,600 or 54,345,277). For ease of reading, such use of commas is encouraged. Numbers less than 11 should generally be written out long hand (i.e. seven, not 7).
Images
Pictures are desirable wherever their use is appropriate. Character pictures are currently being handled on the Battlestar Wiki:Characters project. Other articles needing images are listed here. Bear in mind that Battlestar Wiki already hosts a large selection of images - try to find something appropriate from what's already been uploaded before uploading a new image.