Club Penguin Wiki:Policy/Manual of Style

This is a manual of style and a guide for the general layout of articles in the Club Penguin Wiki.

Grammar rules
This is a list of grammatical rules for the English language. They must be followed:
 * Do not capitalise words in mid-sentence, unless they are proper nouns. Proper nouns are usually names (in Club Penguin's case, characters), places or species. Nouns however, must not be capitalised. Capitalising every single word in a sentence can be irritating for other uses, so please refrain from it.
 * Please leave a space after any punctuation used in sentences - however, spaces cannot be placed after quotation marks and apostrophies.
 * Punctuation must be placed before any quotation marks.

Wiki editing tips
This is a list of different tips that can help you use wikicode efficiently in articles. Wikicode uses the MediaWiki language, and it can be used to format the page. It can be from simply bolding a word to creating a table. Wikia's built in text editor also has these functions, and how to use them will be explained here:
 * If you want to make text italic (that means slanted), place two apostrophes on each side of the text:
 * Italic will result in: italic, when published.


 * If you want to make text bolded, place three apostrophes on each side of the text:
 * Bold will result in: bold, when published.


 * You can combine these two text styles together to make them both italic and bold. The first two buttons on your text editor's toolbar are bold and italic buttons. Click on them, and type up the text in between the apostrophes, that are highlited.
 * If you want to make an inter-wiki link (that means a link to another article in the wiki), you have to place two square brackets around the name of the article:
 * Article will result in: Article, when published.


 * If you want to link to an article, but you don't want the article's name to appear as the link, and instead want something else you will have to place two square brackets, then the article's name, followed by a vertical line, and then the text you want instead.
 * policy will result in: policy, when published.


 * If you want to insert a external link (a link to a different website), you have to place one square bracket around the link's name:
 * will result in:, when published. Note the "[1]". You can prevent this from happening by using the method for internal links above. To change the link text's name but keep the same link, you have to put a space inbetween the URL and the link's text. Remember that you need to include the "http://" prefix before the website name, and that you must use underscores (_) instead of spaces in URLs.


 * If you want to add a category to a page, there are two ways to do it - manual and automatic:
 * The automatic way is to click on the "add category" button below the editing box. There, just type in a valid category name.
 * The other way is to place two square brackets around the category name (like a link) on each side. Remember to include the "Category:" prefix!
 * will add a category to the article.
 * On the category page will be a list of articles categorised under that category. The names of the articles are in alphabetical order. If you would like the article to have a different name in the category page, use the link method of placing a vertical line after the category name. This doesn't change the link in the article, but it will change the link to the article in the category page.


 * Headings structure an article. This section has a heading as well. You can tell if a page has a heading or not, if there large text above a vertical line. You have probably heard of this before. There are 2 main types of headings. Level 2 headings and Level 3 headings. These all change the size of the heading itself, and a higher level heading will be placed underneath a lower level heading. Level 3 headings are often called "sub-headings". You can also get "sub-headings" under "sub-headings", by created a Level 4 heading and so on.
 * To make a Level 2 heading, you must place two equal signs (=) around the text you want to become the heading's name.
 * To make a Level 3 heading, you must place three equal signs around the text. Remember, the more equal signs - the smaller the heading.


 * You can also make lists in mainspace articles.
 * To make a list of bullet points, place an asterik (*) to the left of the text that you would like to be part of the bullet point. You can make numerous bullet points underneath eachother to make a list.
 * To make an indent (pushes the text further to the centre), you have to place a colon to the left of the text that you would like to be indented. Multiple indents pushes the text further to the right. You can combine indents with bullet points to make indented bullet points. When doing this, remember to place the colon before the asterik.
 * To make a numbered list, place a hash key (#) to the left of the text that you would like to be numbered. Places numerous hash keys underneath eachother will create a numbered list, but it can be broken if there is something inbetween two hash keys.

Any further wiki editing tips can be found in the official HELP wiki.

Editing style
This is a list of editing tips that can aid to complete coherent and well-written, informative articles. An article that doesn't follow these guidelines should be changed to do so, or should be left with a cleanup template:
 * Always title a page by its actual name in Club Penguin. This also includes the use of capitalisation in titles. For example, Gary should not be titled G. It is also means that regional spellings do not apply in titles. If a page about color was made, then it would be spelled color, not color/colour or colour, because it is spelled color in Club Penguin.
 * Words must always be correctly capitalised. Words cannot be capitalised in mid-sentence, unless they are proper nouns (such as names of people, places or species).
 * Either British English (BrE) or American English (AmE) can be used in articles. The Club Penguin Wiki allows both spellings, and has no preference over one another. However, regional names cannot be used for nouns, only the original word shall be used. For example: Football or association football should be used instead of soccer, unless it is spelled soccer in Club Penguin. Please note that Club Penguin spell in Canadian and American English.
 * Please refrain from using all-capital letters or (CAPS) in mainspace articles. It will be considered as spam, and may put off the reader. It is also not maintaining a neutral point of view for the article.
 * Please refrain from using text-affecting wikicode in mainspace articles. Such examples would be like highlighters or "big" text. This is informal and also creates a biased point of view for the article. Please keep this to non-mainspace.

Article layout guide
The sub-headings below are the typical sections that should be used in an article, to maximise it's quality. The sub-headings are in order, so please place infoboxes above templates, and so on. Please make sure the majority of these are used, otherwise they will be considered as stub articles:

Infoboxes
Infoboxes should be used where possible. They provide easy navigation for users, and can recreate a whole article in a nutshell. Always put the infoboxes above any other text or template in the page, for layout reasons. If you are unable to find an image for the infobox, please use: "File:No Image.png", as a placeholder image in the infobox. Please attempt to fill in all of the fields in the infobox. If you are unable to, use "Unknown". If they are inapplicable to the article, put "N/A".
 * An item article without an infobox should be tagged as a stub.

Templates
Templates such as cleanup should be placed at the top of the page (unless there is an infobox in the page, in which they should be placed below the infobox), because they are relevant to the whole of the article. If another article box (sometimes abbreviated to ambox) is in the article, but only relevant to one section of the article, they should be moved to the top of their corresponding section.

Article text
The article text is usually one paragraph that is the first piece of text information in the article. Within the paragraph is the article's name, it's function and description. Usually other aspects such as its location are placed here. Firstly, the name of the article is included (the article name is always bolded, an example being at the top of this page). To make a page more structured and easier to read through, try keeping the article text to one paragraph, and other information in their corresponding sections.
 * An article without the article text should be tagged as a stub.

Description
Try to the describe the article's subject in more detail in this section. Appearance is also an alternative section name. Try to go beyond describing it's appearance though.

History
If you're making an article about a room or an item, please make sure to create a history section. Not only does it make the article become professional, it also provides a lot more information. In History sections, you can make Level 3 sections to underpin different events and parts of an item's or room's history.

Biography
The Biography section is essentially a character's equivalent of the History section. Sub-headings and Level 3 sections are also welcome for the biography section.

Other information
Other information that is relevant to the article is always needed. Please make a separate section for each different piece of information. For a character this could be sightings and for a room it could special events and parties.

Trivia
Trivia is always a popular section in articles. In this section, you can list down interesting pieces of information. Please try to refrain from making this the largest section in the article however, and please refrain from placing information that isn't considered trivia. Info that isn't trivia can go in any of the above articles.
 * An article without this section must be tagged as a stub.

Category

 * Every article should have at least one category. If it doesn't, leave a CatNeeded template at the top of the page.
 * Use our wikicode tips to help you with adding categories.
 * Category pages themselves act like mainspace articles. You can categorise categories! This is helpful, an example would be that the category "Head Items" would be categorised under "Items".

Manual of Style for News
As you may know, the Club Penguin Wiki has authors who are dedicated to making blog posts that inform readers of the latest news in Club Penguin. There is also a manual of style for news blogs as well, and can be viewed here.

This manual of style was inspired from the Ratchet & Clank wiki.