Wikipedia Manual of Style
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

This Manual of Style (MoS or MOS) is the style manual for all English Wikipedia
articles Article often refers to: * Article (grammar), a grammatical element used to indicate definiteness or indefiniteness * Article (publishing), a piece of nonfictional prose that is an independent part of a publication Article may also refer to: ...
(though provisions related to accessibility apply across the entire project, not just to articles). This primary page is supported by further detail pages, which are cross-referenced here and listed at Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Contents. If any contradiction arises, . Editors should write articles using straightforward, succinct, easily understood language and structure articles with consistent, reader-friendly layouts and formatting (which are detailed in this guide). Where more than one style or format is acceptable under the MoS, one should be used consistently within an article and should not be changed without good reason.
Edit warring A wiki ( ) is an online hypertext publication collaboratively edited and managed by its own audience, using a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages for the subjects or scope of the project, and could be either open to the pub ...
over stylistic choices is unacceptable. New content added to this page should directly address a style issue.


Retaining existing styles

Sometimes the MoS provides more than one acceptable style or gives no specific guidance. The
Arbitration Committee On Wikimedia Foundation projects, an Arbitration Committee (ArbCom) is a binding dispute resolution panel of editors. Each of Wikimedia's projects are editorially autonomous and independent, and some of them have established their own ArbComs w ...
has expressed the principle that "When either of two styles are acceptable it is inappropriate for a Wikipedia editor to change from one style to another unless there is some substantial reason for the change." If you believe an alternative style would be more appropriate for a particular article, discuss this at the article's talk page orif it raises an issue of more general application or with the MoS itselfat Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style. Edit-warring over style, or enforcing optional style in a bot-like fashion without prior consensus, is never acceptable.


Article titles, sections, and headings


Article titles

A title should be a recognizable name or description of the topic that is natural, sufficiently precise, concise, and consistent with those of related articles. If these criteria are in conflict, they should be balanced against one another. For formatting guidance see the section, noting the following: * Capitalize the initial letter (except in rare cases, such as ), but otherwise follow
sentence case Letter case is the distinction between the letters that are in larger uppercase or capitals (or more formally ''majuscule'') and smaller lowercase (or more formally ''minuscule'') in the written representation of certain languages. The writing ...
(), not title case (), except where title case would be expected were the title to occur in ordinary prose. See Wikipedia:Naming conventions (capitalization). * To italicize, add near the top of the article. For mixed situations, use, e.g., , instead. Use of italics should conform to . * Do not use
articles Article often refers to: * Article (grammar), a grammatical element used to indicate definiteness or indefiniteness * Article (publishing), a piece of nonfictional prose that is an independent part of a publication Article may also refer to: ...
(''a'', ''an'', or ''the'') as the first word (, not ), unless it is an inseparable part of a name () or title of a work (', '). * Normally use
noun A noun () is a word that generally functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.Example nouns for: * Living creatures (including people, alive, ...
s or
noun phrase In linguistics, a noun phrase, or nominal (phrase), is a phrase that has a noun or pronoun as its head or performs the same grammatical function as a noun. Noun phrases are very common cross-linguistically, and they may be the most frequently oc ...
s: , not . * The final character should not be punctuation unless it is an inseparable part of a name (, ) or an abbreviation (), or when a closing round bracket or quotation mark is required (). * Whenever quotation marks or apostrophes appear, add a
redirect Redirect and its variants (e.g., redirection) may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media * ''Redirect'', 2012 Christian metal album and its title track by Your Memorial * ''Redirected'' (film), a 2014 action comedy film Computing * ICMP R ...
for the same title using apostrophes. Subject both to the above and to Wikipedia:Article titles, the rest of the MoS, particularly , applies also to the title.


Section organization

An article's content should begin with an introductory a concise summary of the articlewhich is never divided into sections . The remainder of the article is typically divided into
sections Section, Sectioning or Sectioned may refer to: Arts, entertainment and media * Section (music), a complete, but not independent, musical idea * Section (typography), a subdivision, especially of a chapter, in books and documents ** Section sig ...
. Infoboxes, images, and related content in the lead section must be right-aligned. Certain standardized templates and
wikicode A wiki ( ) is an online hypertext publication collaboratively edited and managed by its own audience, using a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages for the subjects or scope of the project, and could be either open to the pub ...
that are not sections go at the very top of the article, before the content of the lead section, and in the following order: * A short description, with the template * A disambiguation hatnote, most of the time with the template * No-output templates that indicate the article's established date format and English-language variety, if any (e.g., , ) * Banner-type maintenance templates, Dispute and
Cleanup templates Cleanup, clean up or clean-up may refer to: * Cleanup (animation), a stage of animation workflow * Clean-up (environment), environmental action to remove litter from a place * Cleanup hitter, a baseball position * Clean-up Records, a record label ...
for article-wide issues that have been flagged (otherwise used at the top of a specific section, after any sectional hatnote such as ) * An
infobox An infobox is a digital or physical table used to collect and present a subset of information about its subject, such as a document. It is a structured document containing a set of attribute–value pairs, and in Wikipedia represents a summa ...
, which is optional (except in special cases like and , or a variant thereof, at applicable articles); usually also includes the first image * An introductory image, when an infobox is not used, or an additional image is desired for the lead section (for unusually long leads, a second image can be placed mid-way through the lead text) If an article has at least four section headings, a navigable
table of contents A table of contents, usually headed simply Contents and abbreviated informally as TOC, is a list, usually found on a page before the start of a written work, of its chapter or section titles or brief descriptions with their commencing page numbe ...
appears automatically, just after the lead. If the topic of a section is covered in more detail in a dedicated article , insert or immediately under the section heading. As explained in detail in , several kinds of material (mostly optional) may appear after the main body of the article, in the following order: * Books or other works created by the subject of the article, under a section heading "Works", "Publications", "Discography", "Filmography", etc. as appropriate (avoid "Bibliography", confusable with reference citations) * Internal links to related English Wikipedia articles, with section heading "See also" * Notes and references, with a section heading "Notes" or "References" (usually the latter), or a separate section for each in this order ; avoid "Bibliography", confusable with the subject's works * Relevant books, articles, or other publications that have not been used as sources; use the section heading "Further reading"; be highly selective, as Wikipedia is not a bibliographic directory * Relevant and appropriate websites that have not been used as sources and do not appear in the earlier appendices, using the heading "External links", which may be made a subsection of "Further reading" (or such links can be integrated directly into the "Further reading" list instead); link templates for sister-project content also usually go at the top of this section when it is present (otherwise in the last section on the page) * The following final items never take section headings: ** Internal links organized into navigational boxes ** Stub templates, if needed **
Authority control In information science, authority control is a process that organizes information, for example in library catalogs, by using a single, distinct spelling of a name (heading) or a numeric identifier for each topic. The word ''authority'' in ''aut ...
metadata, if needed, using (distinguishes uses of the same name for two subjects, or multiple names for one subject) ** Categories, which should be the very last material in the article's source code Stand-alone list articles have some additional layout considerations.


Section headings

Section headings should generally follow the guidance for
article titles Article often refers to: * Article (grammar), a grammatical element used to indicate definiteness or indefiniteness * Article (publishing), a piece of nonfictional prose that is an independent part of a publication Article may also refer to: ...
(above), and should be presented in
sentence case Letter case is the distinction between the letters that are in larger uppercase or capitals (or more formally ''majuscule'') and smaller lowercase (or more formally ''minuscule'') in the written representation of certain languages. The writing ...
(), not title case (). For technical reasons, section headings should: * Be unique within a page, so that section links lead to the right place. * Not contain links, especially where only part of a heading is linked. * Not contain images or
icons An icon () is a religious work of art, most commonly a painting, in the cultures of the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and Catholic churches. They are not simply artworks; "an icon is a sacred image used in religious devotion". The most c ...
. * Not contain <
math Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...
> markup. * Not contain citations or footnotes. * Not misuse description list markup (";") to create pseudo-headings. * Not contain template transclusions. These technical restrictions are necessary to avoid technical complications and are not subject to override by local consensus. As a matter of consistent style, section headings should: * Not redundantly refer back to the subject of the article, e.g., , not or . * Not refer to a higher-level heading, unless doing so is shorter or clearer. * Not be numbered or lettered as an outline. * Not be phrased as a question, e.g., , not . * Not use color or unusual fonts that might cause accessibility problems. * Not wrap headings in markup, which may break their display and cause other accessibility issues. These are broadly accepted community preferences. An invisible comment on the same line must be the

 

markup: It is more usual practice to put such comments the heading.
Before changing a heading, consider whether you might be breaking existing links to it.
If there are many links to the old title, create an
anchor An anchor is a device, normally made of metal , used to secure a vessel to the bed of a body of water to prevent the craft from drifting due to wind or current. The word derives from Latin ''ancora'', which itself comes from the Greek á ...
with that title to ensure that these still work. Similarly, when linking to a section, leave an invisible comment at the heading of the target section, naming the linking articles, so that if the heading is later altered these can be fixed. Combined example: which will be saved in the article as: The advantage of using , or simply inserting the tags directly, is that when edits are made to the section in the future, the anchor will not be included in page history entries as part of the section name. When is used directly, that undesirable behavior ''does'' occur. Note: if electing to insert the span directly, do not abbreviate it by using a self-closing tag, as in

Implications

, since in HTML5 that XML-style syntax is valid only for certain tags, such as . See for further discussion.


Heading-like material

The above guidance about sentence case, redundancy, images, and questions also applies to headers of tables (and of table columns and rows). However, table headings can incorporate citations and may begin with, or be, numbers. Unlike page headings, table headers do not automatically generate link anchors. Aside from sentence case in glossaries, the heading advice also applies to the ''term'' entries in description lists. If using template-structured glossaries, terms will automatically have link anchors, but will not otherwise. Citations for description-list content go in the ''term'' or ''definition'' element, as needed.


National varieties of English

National varieties of English (for example,
American English American English, sometimes called United States English or U.S. English, is the set of varieties of the English language native to the United States. English is the most widely spoken language in the United States and in most circumstances ...
or
British English British English (BrE, en-GB, or BE) is, according to Oxford Dictionaries, "English as used in Great Britain, as distinct from that used elsewhere". More narrowly, it can refer specifically to the English language in England, or, more broadl ...
) differ in vocabulary (''elevator'' vs. ''lift''), spelling (''center'' vs. ''centre''), and occasionally grammar . Articles such as
English plurals English nouns are inflected for grammatical number, meaning that, if they are of the countable type, they generally have different forms for singular and plural. This article discusses the variety of ways in which English plural nouns are fo ...
and
Comparison of American and British English The English language was introduced to the Americas by British colonisation, beginning in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. The language also spread to numerous other parts of the world as a result of British trade and colonisation an ...
provide information about such differences. The English Wikipedia prefers no national variety over others. An article's date formatting ( vs. ) is also related to national varieties of Englishsee MOS:DATEFORMAT and especially MOS:DATETIES and MOS:DATEVAR.


Consistency within articles

the conventions of one particular variety of English should be followed consistently. Exceptions include: * Quotations, titles of works (books, films, etc.) should be as given in the source (but see , below); * Proper names use the subject's own spelling, e.g., ; ; * For articles about chemistry-related topics, the international standard spellings , , (and derivative terms) should be used, regardless of the national English variant employed in the article generally. See .


Opportunities for commonality

For an international encyclopedia, using vocabulary common to all varieties of English is preferable. * Use universally accepted terms rather than those less widely distributed, especially in titles. For example, is preferred to the national varieties (
British English British English (BrE, en-GB, or BE) is, according to Oxford Dictionaries, "English as used in Great Britain, as distinct from that used elsewhere". More narrowly, it can refer specifically to the English language in England, or, more broadl ...
) and (
American English American English, sometimes called United States English or U.S. English, is the set of varieties of the English language native to the United States. English is the most widely spoken language in the United States and in most circumstances ...
); is preferable to (
Indian English Indian English (IE) is a group of English dialects spoken in the republic of India and among the Indian diaspora. English is used by the Indian government for communication, along with Hindi, as enshrined in the Constitution of India. ...
). * If a variant spelling appears in a title, make a
redirect Redirect and its variants (e.g., redirection) may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media * ''Redirect'', 2012 Christian metal album and its title track by Your Memorial * ''Redirected'' (film), a 2014 action comedy film Computing * ICMP R ...
page to accommodate the others, as with artefact and artifact, so that all variants can be used in searches and linking. * Terms that differ between varieties of English, or that have divergent meanings, may be glossed to prevent confusion, for example, . * Use a commonly understood word or phrase in preference to one that has a different meaning because of national differences (rather than , use or , as appropriate), except in technical contexts where such substitution would be inappropriate (; ). * When more than one variant spelling exists within a national variety of English, the most commonly used current variant should usually be preferred, except where the less common spelling has a specific usage in a specialized context, e.g., ''connexion'' in Methodist connexionalism.


Strong national ties to a topic

An article on a topic that has strong ties to a particular English-speaking nation should use the (formal, not colloquial) English of that nation. For example: For topics with strong ties to
Commonwealth of Nations The Commonwealth of Nations, simply referred to as the Commonwealth, is a political association of 56 member states, the vast majority of which are former territories of the British Empire. The chief institutions of the organisation are the C ...
countries and other former British territories, use
Commonwealth English The use of the English language in current and former member countries of the Commonwealth of Nations was largely inherited from British colonisation, with some exceptions. English serves as the medium of inter-Commonwealth relations. Many ...
orthography, largely indistinguishable from British English in encyclopedic writing (excepting Canada, which uses a different orthography).


Retaining the existing variety

When an English variety's consistent usage has been established in an article, maintain it in the absence of consensus to the contrary. With few exceptions (e.g., when a topic has strong national ties or the change reduces ambiguity), there is no valid reason for changing from one acceptable option to another. When no English variety has been established and discussion does not resolve the issue, use the variety found in the first post-
stub Stub or Stubb may refer to: Shortened objects and entities * Stub (stock), the portion of a corporation left over after most but not all of it has been bought out or spun out * Stub, a tree cut and allowed to regrow from the trunk; see Pollardi ...
revision that introduced an identifiable variety. The established variety in a given article can be documented by placing the appropriate ''Varieties of English'' template on its talk page. An article should not be edited or renamed simply to switch from one variety of English to another. may be placed on an editor's talk page to explain this.


Capital letters

Wikipedia article titles and section headings use sentence case, not title case; see Wikipedia:Article titles and . For capitalization of list items, see . Other points concerning capitalization are summarized below. Full information can be found at Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Capital letters. The central point is that Wikipedia does not capitalize something unless it is consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources.


Capitalization of ''The''

Generally, do not capitalize the word ''the'' in mid-sentence: , not . Conventional exceptions include certain proper names () and most titles of creative works (but be aware that ''the'' may not be part of the title itself, e.g., ). There are special considerations for: band names ·  institution names · 
nicknames A nickname is a substitute for the proper name of a familiar person, place or thing. Commonly used to express affection, a form of endearment, and sometimes amusement, it can also be used to express defamation of character. As a concept, it is ...
·  titles of works · 
trademarks A trademark (also written trade mark or trade-mark) is a type of intellectual property consisting of a recognizable sign, design, or expression that identifies products or services from a particular source and distinguishes them from othe ...
.


Titles of works

The English-language titles of compositions (books and other print works, songs and other audio works, films and other visual media works, paintings and other artworks, etc.) are given in , in which every word is given an initial capital except for certain less important words (as detailed at ). The first and last words in an English-language title are always capitalized. * : * : Capitalization in foreign-language titles varies, even over time within the same language; generally, retain the style of the original for modern works, and follow the usage in current English-language reliable sources for historical works. When written in the Latin alphabet, many of these items should also be in
italics In typography, italic type is a cursive font based on a stylised form of calligraphic handwriting. Owing to the influence from calligraphy, italics normally slant slightly to the right. Italics are a way to emphasise key points in a printed t ...
, or enclosed in quotation marks. * : * :


Titles of people

* In generic use, apply lower case to words such as ''president'', ''king'', and ''emperor'' (; ; ). * Directly juxtaposed with the person's name, such words begin with a capital letter (, not ). Standard or commonly used names of an office are treated as proper names (; ; ). Royal styles are capitalized (; ); exceptions may apply for particular offices.


Religions, deities, philosophies, doctrines

* Religions, sects, and churches and their followers (in noun or adjective form) start with a capital letter. Generally, "the" is not capitalized before such names (, not ). *
Religious text Religious texts, including scripture, are texts which various religions consider to be of central importance to their religious tradition. They differ from literature by being a compilation or discussion of beliefs, mythologies, ritual pra ...
s are capitalized, but often not italicized (, , , , ). Do not capitalize "the" when using it in this way. Some derived adjectives are capitalized by convention, and some are not (, but ); if unsure, check a dictionary. *
Honorific An honorific is a title that conveys esteem, courtesy, or respect for position or rank when used in addressing or referring to a person. Sometimes, the term "honorific" is used in a more specific sense to refer to an honorary academic title. It ...
s for deities, including proper names and titles, start with a capital letter (, , , , , , ). Do not capitalize "the" in such cases or when referring to major religious figures or characters from mythology (, , ). Common nouns for deities and religious figures are not capitalized (; ; ). * Pronouns for figures of veneration or worship are not capitalized, even if capitalized in a religion's scriptures (). * Broad categories of mythical or legendary beings start with lower-case letters (, , , , ), although in works of fantasy, such as the novels of J. R. R. Tolkien and some video games, initial capitals are sometimes used to indicate that the beings form a culture or race in a
fictional universe A fictional universe, or fictional world, is a self-consistent setting with events, and often other elements, that differ from the real world. It may also be called an imagined, constructed, or fictional realm (or world). Fictional universes ma ...
. Capitalize the names or titles of individual creatures (, ) and of groups whose name and membership are fixed (, ). Generalized references are not capitalized (; ; ). * Spiritual or religious events are capitalized only when referring to specific incidents or periods ( and ; but and ). * Philosophies, theories, movements, and doctrines use lower case unless the name derives from a proper name () or has become a proper name (, a system of political thought; , a political party). Use lower case for doctrinal topics or canonical religious ideas (as opposed to specific events), even if they are capitalized by some religious adherents (, , ). *
Platonic Plato's influence on Western culture was so profound that several different concepts are linked by being called Platonic or Platonist, for accepting some assumptions of Platonism, but which do not imply acceptance of that philosophy as a whole. It ...
or transcendent ideals are capitalized in the context of philosophical doctrine (, ); used more broadly, they are in lower case (). Use capitals for personifications represented in art (). *
Eponym An eponym is a person, a place, or a thing after whom or which someone or something is, or is believed to be, named. The adjectives which are derived from the word eponym include ''eponymous'' and ''eponymic''. Usage of the word The term ''epon ...
s are capitalized ( , , , , , ), except in idiomatic uses disconnected from the original context and usually lower-cased in sources ( ; ). An entire phrase in which an eponym is an adjective is not capitalized except when the phrase is itself a proper name (e.g., the title of a published work: ).


Calendar items

* Months, days of the week, and holidays start with a capital letter (, ; refers only to the US Independence Dayotherwise or ). * Seasons are in lower case (; ; ), except in personifications or in proper names for periods or events (; ).


Animals, plants, and other organisms

When using taxonomic ("scientific") names, capitalize and italicize the genus: , . (Supergenus and subgenus, when applicable, are treated the same way.) Italicize but do not capitalize taxonomic ranks at the level of species and below: , , ; no exception is made for proper names forming part of scientific names. Higher taxa (order, family, etc.) are capitalized in Latin (, ) but not in their English equivalents (, ); they are not italicized in either form, except for viruses, where all names accepted by the ICTV are italicized ().
Cultivar A cultivar is a type of cultivated plant that people have selected for desired traits and when propagated retain those traits. Methods used to propagate cultivars include: division, root and stem cuttings, offsets, grafting, tissue culture ...
and
cultivar group A Group (previously cultivar-groupInternational Code of Nomenclature for Cultivated Plants, 4th edition (1969), 5th edition (1980) and 6th edition (1995)) is a formal category in the '' International Code of Nomenclature for Cultivated Plants'' (' ...
names of plants are not italicized, and are capitalized (including the word ''Group'' in the name); cultivar names appear within single quotes (), while cultivar groups do not (). English vernacular ("common") names are given in lower case in article prose ( , , and ) and in sentence case at the start of sentences and in other places where the first letter of the first word is capitalized. They are additionally capitalized where they contain proper names: , , and . This applies to species and subspecies, as in the previous examples, as well as to general names for groups or types of organism: , , , , , , , . When the common name coincides with a scientific taxon, do not capitalize or italicize, except where addressing the organism taxonomically: Non-English vernacular names, when relevant to include, are handled like any other foreign-language terms: italicized as such, and capitalized only if the rules of the native language require it. Non-English names that have become English-assimilated are treated as English ( , ). Standardized breeds should generally retain the capitalization used in the breed standards. Examples: , , . As with plant cultivars, this applies whether or not the included noun is a proper name, in contrast to how vernacular names of species are written. However, unlike cultivars, breeds are never put in single quotation marks, and their names are never part of a scientific name. A species term appended at the end for disambiguation ("cat", "hound", "horse", "swine", etc.) should not be capitalized, unless it is a part of the breed name itself and is consistently presented that way in the breed standard(s) (rare cases include and ). Create
redirects Redirect and its variants (e.g., redirection) may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media * ''Redirect'', 2012 Christian metal album and its title track by Your Memorial * ''Redirected'' (film), a 2014 action comedy film Computing * ICMP Re ...
from alternative capitalization and spelling forms of article titles, and from alternative names, e.g.,
Adélie Penguin The Adélie penguin (''Pygoscelis adeliae'') is a species of penguin common along the entire coast of the Antarctic continent, which is the only place where it is found. It is the most widespread penguin species, and, along with the emperor pen ...
,
Adelie penguin Adelie or Adélie may refer to: * Adélie Land, a claimed territory on the continent of Antarctica * Adelie Land meteorite, a meteorite discovered on December 5, 1912, in Antarctica by Francis Howard Bickerton * Adélie penguin The Adélie pen ...
,
Adelie Penguin Adelie or Adélie may refer to: * Adélie Land, a claimed territory on the continent of Antarctica * Adelie Land meteorite, a meteorite discovered on December 5, 1912, in Antarctica by Francis Howard Bickerton * Adélie penguin The Adélie pen ...
and ''
Pygoscelis adeliae The genus ''Pygoscelis'' ("rump-legged") contains three living species of penguins collectively known as "brush-tailed penguins". Taxonomy Mitochondrial and nuclear DNA evidence suggests the genus split from other penguins around 38 millio ...
'' should all redirect to
Adélie penguin The Adélie penguin (''Pygoscelis adeliae'') is a species of penguin common along the entire coast of the Antarctic continent, which is the only place where it is found. It is the most widespread penguin species, and, along with the emperor pen ...
.


Celestial bodies

* The words ''sun'', ''earth'', ''moon'' and ''solar system'' do not take capitals in general use (; ). They are capitalized when the entity is personified () or when used as the name of a specific body in a scientific or astronomical context (; but ). * Names of planets, moons, asteroids, comets, stars, constellations, and galaxies are proper names, and therefore capitalized (). The first letter of every word in such a name is capitalized ( and not ; , not ). Words such as ''comet'' and ''galaxy'' should be capitalized when they form part of a proper name, but not when they are used as a generic term (; ).


Compass points

Do not capitalize directions such as ''north'', or their related forms (), except where they are parts of proper names (, , ). Capitalize names of regions if they have attained proper-name status, including informal conventional names (; ), and derived terms for people (e.g., a ''Southerner'' as someone from the
Southern United States The Southern United States (sometimes Dixie, also referred to as the Southern States, the American South, the Southland, or simply the South) is a geographic and cultural region of the United States of America. It is between the Atlantic Ocean ...
). Do not capitalize descriptive names for regions that have not attained the status of proper names, such as . Composite directions may or may not be hyphenated, depending on the variety of English adopted in the article. and are more common in American English; but and in British English. In cases such as and , use an en dash; see .


Proper names versus generic terms

Capitalize names of particular institutions (; ) but not generic words for institutions (). Do not capitalize ''the'' at the start of an institution's name, regardless of the institution's preferred style. There are rare exceptions, when a leading ''The'' is represented by a ''T'' in the organization's acronym: . Treat political or geographic units similarly: ; . Do not mimic the style of local newspapers which refer to their municipality as ''the City'' or ''The City''; an exception is the
City of London The City of London is a city, ceremonial county and local government district that contains the historic centre and constitutes, alongside Canary Wharf, the primary central business district (CBD) of London. It constituted most of London f ...
, referred to as in a context that already makes the subject clear, as distinct from
London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
and
Greater London Greater may refer to: *Greatness Greatness is a concept of a state of superiority affecting a person or object in a particular place or area. Greatness can also be attributed to individuals who possess a natural ability to be better than al ...
. When in doubt, use the full name for
accessibility Accessibility is the design of products, devices, services, vehicles, or environments so as to be usable by people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design and practice of accessible development ensures both "direct access" (i. ...
reasons; users of text-to-speech systems usually cannot hear a difference between ''city'' and ''City''.


Ligatures

Ligatures should be used in languages in which they are standard (hence is preferable to ) but not in English ( or , not ), except in proper names ( not ).


Abbreviations

Abbreviations are shortened forms of words or phrases. In strict analysis, they are distinct from contractions, which use an
apostrophe The apostrophe ( or ) is a punctuation mark, and sometimes a diacritical mark, in languages that use the Latin alphabet and some other alphabets. In English, the apostrophe is used for two basic purposes: * The marking of the omission of one ...
(e.g., ''won't'', see ), and
initialism An acronym is a word or name formed from the initial components of a longer name or phrase. Acronyms are usually formed from the initial letters of words, as in ''NATO'' (''North Atlantic Treaty Organization''), but sometimes use syllables, as ...
s. An initialism is formed from some or all of the initial letters of words in a phrase. Below, references to abbreviations should be taken to include acronyms, and the term ''acronym'' to apply also to initialisms.


Write out both the full version and the abbreviation at first occurrence

When an abbreviation will be used in an article, first introduce it using the full expression: Do not use capitals in the full version merely because capitals are used in the abbreviation: . Except in special circumstances, common abbreviations (such as , , ) need not be expanded even on first use.


Plural forms

Pluralize
acronyms An acronym is a word or name formed from the initial components of a longer name or phrase. Acronyms are usually formed from the initial letters of words, as in ''NATO'' (''North Atlantic Treaty Organization''), but sometimes use syllables, as ...
by adding ''-s'' or ''-es'': . (Do not use apostrophes to form plurals: .)


Punctuation and spacing

An abbreviation may or may not be terminated with a full point (also called a ''period'' or ''full stop''). A consistent style should be maintained within an article. North American usage is typically to end all abbreviations with a period/point () but in common British and Australian usage, no period/point is used if the abbreviation (contraction) ends in the last letter of the unabbreviated form () unless confusion could result. This is also common practice in scientific writing. Regardless of punctuation, words that are abbreviated to more than one letter are spaced ( not or ). There are some exceptions: for "Philosophiae Doctor"; for "Bachelor of Veterinary Medicine". In most situations, Wikipedia uses no such punctuation inside acronyms and initialisms: , not


US and U.S.

While, in principle, either or may be used (with internal consistency) to abbreviate "United States" in any given article, the use or non-use of periods (full stops) should also be consistent with other country abbreviations in the same article (thus , not ). In longer abbreviations (three letters or more) that incorporate the country's initials (, ), do not use periods. When the United States is mentioned with one or more other countries in the same sentence, or may be too informal, especially at the first mention or as a noun instead of an adjective (, not ). Do not use the spaced or the archaic , except when quoting; and do not use or except in a quotation, as part of a proper name (), or in certain technical or formal uses (e.g., the
ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 codes are three-letter country codes defined in ISO 3166-1, part of the ISO 3166 standard published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), to represent countries, dependent territories, and special area ...
codes and FIFA country codes).


Circa

To indicate ''approximately'', the use of , showing as , is preferred over circa, c., ca., or approx.


Do not use unwarranted abbreviations

Avoid abbreviations when they might confuse the reader, interrupt the flow, or appear informal. For example: * Do not use for except in an infobox or table (in which case use at first occurrence: ). * Do not use the legalism for .


Do not invent abbreviations or acronyms

Generally avoid devising new abbreviations, especially acronyms. For example, is good as a of , but neither it nor the reduction is used by the organization or by independent sources; use the original name and its official abbreviation, . If it is necessary to abbreviate in a tight space, such as a column header in a table, use widely recognized abbreviations. For example, for , use and , with a link if the term has not already been written out in the article: . Do not make up initialisms such as .


HTML tags and templates for abbreviations

Either or can be used for abbreviations and acronyms: or will generate ; hovering over the rendered text causes a
tooltip The tooltip, also known as infotip or hint, is a common graphical user interface (GUI) element in which, when hovering over a screen element or component, a text box displays information about that element, such as a description of a button's f ...
of the long form to pop up.


Ampersand

In normal text and headings, use ''and'' instead of the
ampersand The ampersand, also known as the and sign, is the logogram , representing the conjunction "and". It originated as a ligature of the letters ''et''—Latin for "and". Etymology Traditionally in English, when spelling aloud, any letter tha ...
(''&''): , not . But retain an ampersand when it is a legitimate part of the style of a proper noun, the title of a work, or a trademark, such as in '' Up & Down'' or
AT&T AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered at Whitacre Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the world's largest telecommunications company by revenue and the third largest provider of mobile ...
. Elsewhere, ampersands may be used with consistency and discretion where space is extremely limited (e.g., tables and infoboxes). Quotations may be cautiously modified, especially for consistency where different editions are quoted, as modern editions of old texts routinely replace ampersands with ''and'' (just as they replace other disused
glyph A glyph () is any kind of purposeful mark. In typography, a glyph is "the specific shape, design, or representation of a character". It is a particular graphical representation, in a particular typeface, of an element of written language. A g ...
s, ligatures, and abbreviations). Another frequent permissible but not required use is in short bibliographic references to works by multiple authors, e.g.: .


Italics


Emphasis

Italics are used for emphasis, rather than
boldface In typography, emphasis is the strengthening of words in a text with a font in a different style from the rest of the text, to highlight them. It is the equivalent of prosody stress in speech. Methods and use The most common methods in W ...
or
capitals Capital may refer to: Common uses * Capital city, a municipality of primary status ** List of national capital cities * Capital letter, an upper-case letter Economics and social sciences * Capital (economics), the durable produced goods used fo ...
. But overuse diminishes its effect; consider rewriting instead. Use or for emphasis. This allows user style sheets to handle emphasis in a customized way, and helps reusers and translators. * Correct: * Correct:


Titles

Use italics for the titles of works (such as books, films, television series, named exhibitions, computer games, music albums, and artworks). The titles of articles, chapters, songs, episodes, storylines, research papers and other short works instead take double quotation marks. Italics are not used for major religious works (, , ). Many of these titles should also be in
title case Title case or headline case is a style of capitalization used for rendering the titles of published works or works of art in English. When using title case, all words are capitalized, except for minor words (typically articles, short prepositions, ...
.


Words as words

Use italics when a word or character or a string of words up to one sentence (; ). When a whole sentence is mentioned, double quotation marks may be used instead, with consistency (; or ). Quotation marks may also be used for shorter material to avoid confusion, such as when italics are already being heavily used in the page for some other purpose (e.g., many non-English words and phrases). (to discuss grammar, wording, punctuation, etc.) is different from (in which something is usually expressed on behalf of a quoted source). Quotation is done with quotation marks, never italics, nor both at once A closely related use of italics is when introducing or distinguishing terms:


Foreign words

Italics is indicated for phrases in other languages and for isolated foreign words that are not common in everyday English. However, proper names (such as place names) in other languages are not usually italicized, nor are terms in non-Latin scripts. The template and its variants support all
ISO 639 ISO 639 is a set of standards by the International Organization for Standardization that is concerned with representation of names for languages and language groups. It was also the name of the original standard, approved in 1967 (as ''ISO 639/ ...
language codes, correctly identifying the language and automatically italicizing for you. Please use these templates rather than just manually italicizing non-English material.


Scientific names

Use italics for the scientific names of plants, animals, and all other organisms except viruses at the
genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial nom ...
level and below (italicize and , but not ). The hybrid sign is not italicized (), nor is the "connecting term" required in three-part botanical names ().


Quotations in italics

Do not use italics for quotations. Instead, use quotation marks for short quotations and block quoting for long ones.


Italics within quotations

Use italics within quotations to reproduce emphasis that exists in the source material. If it is not clear that the source already included italics (or some other styling) for emphasis, add the editorial note after the quotation. If adding emphasis that was not in the original, add the editorial note after the quotation. *


Effect on nearby punctuation

Italicize only the elements of the sentence affected by the emphasis. Do not italicize surrounding punctuation. * * *


Quotations

Brief quotations of copyrighted text may be used to illustrate a point, establish context, or attribute a point of view or idea. While quotations are an indispensable part of Wikipedia, try not to overuse them. Using too many quotes is incompatible with an encyclopedic writing style and may be a
copyright infringement Copyright infringement (at times referred to as piracy) is the use of works protected by copyright without permission for a usage where such permission is required, thereby infringing certain exclusive rights granted to the copyright holder, ...
. It is generally recommended that content be written in Wikipedia editors' own words. Consider paraphrasing quotations into plain and concise text when appropriate (while being aware that
close paraphrasing Paraphrasing of copyrighted material may, under certain circumstances, constitute copyright infringement. In most countries that have national copyright laws, copyright applies to the original expression in a work rather than to the meanings or i ...
can still violate copyright).


Original wording

Quotations must be verifiably attributed, and the wording of the quoted text should be faithfully reproduced. This is referred to as the . Where there is good reason to change the wording, bracket the changed text; for example, might be quoted as . If there is a significant error in the original, follow it with (producing ) to show that the error was not made by Wikipedia. However, insignificant spelling and typographic errors should simply be silently corrected (for example, correct to ). Use ellipses to indicate omissions from quoted text. Legitimate omissions include extraneous, irrelevant, or parenthetical words, and unintelligible speech ( and ), but do not omit text where doing so would remove important context or alter the meaning of the text. Vulgarities and obscenities should be shown exactly as they appear in the quoted source; Wikipedians should never bowdlerize words (), but if the text being quoted ''itself'' does so, copy the text verbatim and use to indicate that the text is quoted as shown in the source. In direct quotations, retain dialectal and archaic spellings, including capitalization (but not archaic glyphs and ligatures, as detailed below).


Point of view

Quotation should be used, with attribution, to present emotive opinions that cannot be expressed in Wikipedia's own voice, but never to present cultural norms as simply opinional: * Acceptable: * Unacceptable: Concise opinions that are not overly emotive can often be reported with attribution instead of direct quotation. Use of quotation marks around simple descriptive terms can imply something doubtful regarding the material being quoted; sarcasm or
weasel words A weasel word, or anonymous authority, is an informal term for words and phrases aimed at creating an impression that something specific and meaningful has been said, when in fact only a vague or ambiguous claim has been communicated. Examples ...
such as ''supposedly'' or ''so-called'', might be inferred. * Permissible: * Unnecessary and may imply doubt: * Should be quoted:


Typographic conformity

A quotation is not a
facsimile A facsimile (from Latin ''fac simile'', "to make alike") is a copy or reproduction of an old book, manuscript, map, art print, or other item of historical value that is as true to the original source as possible. It differs from other forms of ...
and, in most cases, it is not a requirement that the original formatting be preserved. Formatting and other purely typographical elements of quoted text should be adapted to English Wikipedia's conventions without comment, provided that doing so will not change or obscure meaning or intent of the text. These are alterations which make no difference when the text is read aloud, for example: * Normalize dashes and hyphens: see . Use the style chosen for the article: unspaced
em dash The dash is a punctuation mark consisting of a long horizontal line. It is similar in appearance to the hyphen but is longer and sometimes higher from the baseline. The most common versions are the endash , generally longer than the hyphen b ...
or spaced
en dash The dash is a punctuation mark consisting of a long horizontal line. It is similar in appearance to the hyphen but is longer and sometimes higher from the baseline. The most common versions are the endash , generally longer than the hyphen b ...
. * Convert apostrophes and quotation marks to Wikipedia's style: ** These should be straight, not curly or slanted. See . ** When quoting a quotation that itself contains a quotation, alternate between using double and single quotes for each quotation. See for details. * When quoting text from non-English languages, the outer punctuation should follow the Manual of Style for English quote marks. If there are nested quotations, follow the rules for correct punctuation in that language. If there are multiple styles for a language, the one used by the Wikipedia for that language is preferred unless the punctuation itself is under discussion. *: * Remove spaces before punctuation such as periods and colons. * Generally preserve bold and italics , but most other styling should be altered. , within words, , , , etc. should generally be normalized to plain text. If it indicates emphasis, use italic () or, in an already-italic passage, boldface (with ). For titles of books, articles, poems, and so forth, use italics or quotation marks following the guidance for titles. Italics can also be added to mark up non-English terms (with the template), for an organism's scientific name, and to indicate a words-as-words usage. * Expand an abbreviation (not already used in the content before the quotation) as a square-bracketed change, or explain it using . * Normalize archaic glyphs and ligatures in English that are unnecessary to the meaning. Examples include '' æ''→''ae'', '' œ''→''oe'', '' ſ''→''s'', and '' þe''→''the''. However, national varieties should not be changed, as these may involve changes in vocabulary. For example, a quotation from a British source should retain British spelling, even in an article that otherwise uses American spelling. Numbers also usually should not be reformatted. Direct quotation should not be used to preserve the formatting preferred by an external publisher (especially when the material would otherwise be unchanged), as this tends to have the effect of " scare-quoting": * : * : Italics can be used to mark a particular usage as a
term of art Jargon is the specialized terminology associated with a particular field or area of activity. Jargon is normally employed in a particular communicative context and may not be well understood outside that context. The context is usually a partic ...
(a case of " words as words"), especially when it is unfamiliar or should not be reworded by a non-expert: * : When quoting a complete sentence, it is usually recommended to keep the first word capitalized. However, if the quoted passage has been integrated into the surrounding sentence (for example, with an introduction such as " said that"), the original capital letter may be lower-cased. * * * It is not normally necessary to explicitly note changes in capitalization. However, for more precision, the altered letter may be put inside square brackets: *


Attribution

The reader must be able to determine the source of any quotation, at the very least via a footnote. The source must be named if the quotation is an opinion . When attributing a quotation, avoid characterizing it in a biased manner.


Quotations within quotations

See .


Linking

Be conservative when linking within quotations: link only to targets that correspond to the meaning clearly intended by the quote's author. Where possible, link from text outside of the quotation instead – either before it or soon after. (If quoting
hypertext Hypertext is text displayed on a computer display or other electronic devices with references ( hyperlinks) to other text that the reader can immediately access. Hypertext documents are interconnected by hyperlinks, which are typically ...
, add an editorial note, or , as appropriate, to avoid ambiguity as to whether the link was made by the original author.)


Block quotations

Format a long quote (more than about forty words or a few hundred characters, or consisting of more than one paragraph, regardless of length) as a
block quotation A block quotation (also known as a long quotation or extract) is a quotation in a written document that is set off from the main text as a paragraph, or block of text, and typically distinguished visually using indentation and a different typefa ...
, indented on both sides. Block quotations should be enclosed in . Do not enclose block quotations in quotation marks (and especially avoid large, decorative quotation marks; those provided by the template have been disabled in mainspace). Block quotations using a colored background are also discouraged. Use and so on only for actual quotations; indentation for other purposes is done differently. It is conventional to precede a block quotation with an introductory sentence (or sentence fragment) and append the source citation to that line. Alternatively, the template provides parameters for attribution and citation which will appear below the quotation. This below-quotation attribution style is intended for famous quotations and is unusual in articles because it may strike an inappropriate tone. A quotation with no cited source should be flagged with , or deleted. Line breaks and indentation inside a or are generally ignored; use or for poetry, lyrics, and similar material: This gives: Or quote such material inline, with line breaks indicated by /, and paragraph or stanza breaks by //. Pull quotes do not belong in Wikipedia articles. These are the news and magazine style of "pulling" material already in the article to reuse it in attention-grabbing decorative quotations. This unencyclopedic approach is a form of editorializing, produces out-of-context and undue emphasis, and may lead the reader to conclusions not supported in the material.


Foreign-language quotations

Quotations from foreign-language sources should appear with a translation into English, preferably a modern one. Quotations that are translations should be explicitly distinguished from those that are not. Indicate the original source of a translation (if it is available, and not first published within Wikipedia), and the original language (if that is not clear from the context). If the original, untranslated text is available, provide a reference for it or include it, as appropriate. When editors themselves translate foreign text into English, care must always be taken to include the original text, (except for non-Latin-based writing systems), and to use actual and (if at all possible) common English words in the translation. Unless you are certain of your competency to translate something, see Wikipedia:Translation for assistance.


Punctuation


Apostrophes

* Use straight apostrophes (), not curly apostrophes (). Do not use accent marks or backticks () as apostrophes. * Templates such as and are helpful when an apostrophe (or single quote) appears at the beginning or end of text in italics or bold, because italics and bold are themselves indicated by sequences of single quotes. Example: (markup: ). * Letters resembling apostrophes, such as the
okina Okina may refer to: * ʻOkina, a letter used in some Polynesian languages, visually resembling a left single quotation mark * Okina () or , a character from the ''Rurouni Kenshin'' manga series * Okina, Spain Okina ( es, Oquina) is a village of ...
(''markup:'' ), saltillo (''markup:'' ), Hebrew
ayin ''Ayin'' (also ''ayn'' or ''ain''; transliterated ) is the sixteenth letter of the Semitic scripts, including Phoenician , Hebrew , Aramaic , Syriac ÜĄ, and Arabic (where it is sixteenth in abjadi order only). The letter represen ...
(''markup:'' ) and Arabic
hamza Hamza ( ar, همزة ') () is a letter in the Arabic alphabet, representing the glottal stop . Hamza is not one of the 28 "full" letters and owes its existence to historical inconsistencies in the standard writing system. It is derived from ...
(''markup:''), should be represented by those templates or by their
Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, ...
values. ** Templates cannot be used in article titles; if necessary, use the corresponding Unicode character directly. Per WP:TITLESPECIALCHARACTERS, also make a redirect from the ASCII form to aid searches. Forms without apostrophe-like characters are sometimes preferred by WP:COMMONNAME (e.g.
Hawaii Hawaii ( ; haw, Hawaii or ) is a state in the Western United States, located in the Pacific Ocean about from the U.S. mainland. It is the only U.S. state outside North America, the only state that is an archipelago, and the only stat ...
but not Kealii Reichel). *: * For
Wade–Giles Wade–Giles () is a romanization system for Mandarin Chinese. It developed from a system produced by Thomas Francis Wade, during the mid-19th century, and was given completed form with Herbert A. Giles's '' Chinese–English Dictionary'' o ...
romanizations of Mandarin Chinese, use . * For languages with
ejective consonants In phonetics, ejective consonants are usually voiceless consonants that are pronounced with a glottalic egressive airstream. In the phonology of a particular language, ejectives may contrast with aspirated, voiced and tenuis consonants. Some l ...
, use . * For the Cyrillic
soft sign The soft sign (Ь, ь, italics ) also known as the front yer, front jer, or er malak (lit. "small er") is a letter of the Cyrillic script. In Old Church Slavonic, it represented a short (or "reduced") front vowel. As with its companion, the b ...
, when indicated at all, use or . * For usage of the possessive apostrophe, see . * For further treatment of apostrophe usage (possessive, elision, formation of certain plurals, foreign-language issues) see the article
Apostrophe The apostrophe ( or ) is a punctuation mark, and sometimes a diacritical mark, in languages that use the Latin alphabet and some other alphabets. In English, the apostrophe is used for two basic purposes: * The marking of the omission of one ...
.


Quotation marks

In the material below, the term ''quotation'' includes conventional uses of quotation marks such as for titles of songs, chapters, episodes, and so on. Quotation marks are also used in other contexts, such as in cultivar names.


Quotation characters

* Use quotation marks, not ones. (For single apostrophe quotes: , not .) * Do not use accent marks, backticks (), low-high () or
guillemet Guillemets (, also , , ) are a pair of punctuation marks in the form of sideways double chevrons, and , used as quotation marks in a number of languages. In some of these languages "single" guillemets, and , are used for a quotation inside a ...
() marks as quotation marks (except when such marks are to quoted non-English textsee MOS:CONFORM). The symbols and seen in edit window dropdowns are
prime A prime number (or a prime) is a natural number greater than 1 that is not a product of two smaller natural numbers. A natural number greater than 1 that is not prime is called a composite number. For example, 5 is prime because the only ways ...
and double-prime; these are used to indicate subdivisions of the degree, but not as apostrophes or quote marks. * Quotation marks and apostrophes in imported material should be changed if necessary.


Double or single

Most quotations take double quotation marks (). Exceptions: * Plant cultivars take single quotation marks (; see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (flora)). * Glosses that translate or define unfamiliar terms take single quotes; simple glosses require no comma before the definition (). The template can be used for this; e.g. yields: .


For a quotation within a quotation

Use single quotes: * For deeper nesting, alternate between single and double quotes: * For quote marks in immediate succession, add a sliver of space by using , , or (as in the example just given) : * Markup: He announced, "The answer was 'Yes! * (simply jamming ' and " together)


Article openings

In the bolded text typically appearing at the opening of an article: * Any quotation marks that are part of the title should be in bold just like the rest of the title (from '' "A" Is for Alibi'': ). * Quotation marks ''not'' part of the article title should not be bolded (from the article
Jabberwocky "Jabberwocky" is a nonsense poem written by Lewis Carroll about the killing of a creature named "the Jabberwock". It was included in his 1871 novel ''Through the Looking-Glass'', the sequel to '' Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' (1865). The ...
: ; from
Buffalo Bill William Frederick Cody (February 26, 1846January 10, 1917), known as "Buffalo Bill", was an American soldier, bison hunter, and showman. He was born in Le Claire, Iowa Territory (now the U.S. state of Iowa), but he lived for several years ...
: ).


Punctuation before quotations

If a non-quoted but otherwise identical construction would work grammatically without a comma, using a comma before a quotation embedded within a sentence is optional: * (
Cf. The abbreviation ''cf.'' (short for the la, confer/conferatur, both meaning "compare") is used in writing to refer the reader to other material to make a comparison with the topic being discussed. Style guides recommend that ''cf.'' be used onl ...
the non-quotation ) * The comma-free approach is often used with partial quotations: * Commas are usually used with interrupted quotations (but this construction is rare in encyclopedic writing): * A comma is required when it would be present in the same construction if none of the material were a quotation: * Do not insert a comma if it would confuse or alter the meaning: * (Accurate quote of a statement about childrenspecifically those children "who are coming to terms...") * (Changes the meaning to imply Jenner was expressing concern about children, while separately observing that children, in general, "are coming to terms...") It is clearer to use a colon to introduce a quotation if it forms a complete sentence, and this should always be done for multi-sentence quotations: * * No additional punctuation is necessary for an explicit words-as-words scenario: *


Names and titles

Quotation marks should be used for the following names and titles: For example: The song "
Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles from their 1967 album ''Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band''. It was written primarily by John Lennon and credited to the Lennon–McCartney songwriting partnersh ...
" from the album ''
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band ''Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band'' is the eighth studio album by the English rock band the Beatles. Released on 26May 1967, ''Sgt. Pepper'' is regarded by musicologists as an early concept album that advanced the roles of sound composi ...
'' by the band
the Beatles The Beatles were an English Rock music, rock band, formed in Liverpool in 1960, that comprised John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. They are regarded as the Cultural impact of the Beatles, most influential band of al ...
. Do not use quotation marks or italics for: Many, but not all, of the above items should also be in
title case Title case or headline case is a style of capitalization used for rendering the titles of published works or works of art in English. When using title case, all words are capitalized, except for minor words (typically articles, short prepositions, ...
.


Punctuation inside or outside

Use the " logical quotation" style in all articles, regardless of the variety of English in which they are written. Include terminal punctuation within the quotation marks only if it was present in the original material, and otherwise place it after the closing quotation mark. For the most part, this means treating periods and commas in the same way as question marks: keep them inside the quotation marks if they apply only to the quoted material and outside if they apply to the whole sentence. Examples are given below. * ''Correct:'' (question mark applies to whole sentence) * ''Incorrect:'' (incorrect to apply the question mark to the quotation) * ''Correct:'' (question mark applies to quoted material only) If the quotation is a single word or a sentence fragment, place the terminal punctuation outside the closing quotation mark. When quoting a full sentence, the end of which coincides with the end of the sentence containing it, place terminal punctuation inside the closing quotation mark. * * If the quoted sentence is followed by a
clause In language, a clause is a constituent that comprises a semantic predicand (expressed or not) and a semantic predicate. A typical clause consists of a subject and a syntactic predicate, the latter typically a verb phrase composed of a verb wit ...
that should be preceded by a comma, omit the
full stop The full stop (Commonwealth English), period (North American English), or full point , is a punctuation mark. It is used for several purposes, most often to mark the end of a declarative sentence (as distinguished from a question or exclamatio ...
(period) – but other terminal punctuation, such as a question mark or exclamation mark, may be retained. * * If the quoted sentence is followed by a clause identifying the speaker, use a comma outside the quotation mark instead of a full stop inside it, but retain any other terminal punctuation, such as question marks. * * Do not follow quoted words or fragments with commas inside the quotation marks, except where a longer quotation has been broken up and the comma is part of the full quotation. * ''Correct:'' * ''Correct:'' * ''Correct:'' * ''Incorrect:''


Brackets and parentheses

This section applies to both round brackets , often called
parentheses A bracket is either of two tall fore- or back-facing punctuation marks commonly used to isolate a segment of text or data from its surroundings. Typically deployed in symmetric pairs, an individual bracket may be identified as a 'left' or 'r ...
, and square brackets . If a sentence contains a bracketed phrase, place the sentence punctuation outside the brackets However, where one or more sentences are wholly inside brackets, place their punctuation inside the brackets. There should be no space next to the inner side of a bracket. An opening bracket should usually be preceded by a space. This may not be the case if it is preceded by an opening quotation mark, another opening bracket, or a portion of a word: * * * * There should be a space after a closing bracket, except where a punctuation mark follows (though a spaced dash would still be spaced after a closing bracket) and in unusual cases similar to those listed for opening brackets. Avoid adjacent sets of brackets. Either put the parenthetical phrases in one set separated by semicolons, or rewrite: * : * : * : Square brackets are used to indicate editorial replacements and insertions within quotations, though this should never alter the intended meaning. They serve three main purposes: * To clarify: , where this was the intended meaning, but the type of school was unstated in the original sentence. * To reduce the size of a quotation: may be reduced to . When an ellipsis () is used to indicate that material is removed from a direct quotation, it should not normally be bracketed . * To make the grammar work: Referring to someone's statement , one could properly write . If a sentence includes subsidiary material enclosed in square or round brackets, it must still carry terminal punctuation those brackets, regardless of any punctuation within the brackets. However, if the entire sentence is within brackets, the closing punctuation falls within the brackets.


Brackets and linking

Square brackets inside of links must be escaped: The markup can also be used: or . If a URL itself contains square brackets, the wiki-text should use the URL-encoded form https://example.com/foo.php?query=xxxyyy, rather than ...query=xxxyyy. This will avoid truncation of the link after xxx.


Ellipses

Use an ''
ellipsis The ellipsis (, also known informally as dot dot dot) is a series of dots that indicates an intentional omission of a word, sentence, or whole section from a text without altering its original meaning. The plural is ellipses. The term origin ...
'' (plural ''ellipses'') if material is omitted in the course of a quotation, unless square brackets are used to gloss the quotation . * Wikipedia's style for an ellipsis is three unspaced dots (); do not use the precomposed ellipsis character () or three dots separated by spaces * Generally, use a non-breaking space before an ellipsis, and a regular space after it: ** But where an ellipsis is immediately followed by any of . ? ! : ; , ) ] } or by a closing quotation mark (single or double), use a non-breaking space before the ellipsis, and no space after it: **: **: (Place terminal punctuation after an ellipsis only if it is textually important, as is often the case with exclamation marks and question marks but rarely with periods.) ** Or, if the ellipsis immediately follows a quotation mark, use no space before the ellipsis, and a non-breaking space after it: **: ; : Three dots are occasionally used to represent a pause in or suspense of speech, in which case the punctuation is retained in its original form: . When it indicates an incomplete word, no space is used between the word fragment(s) and the ellipsis: ; With square brackets :Occasionally, square brackets are placed around an ellipsis to make clear that it isn't original to the material being quoted, for example if the quoted passage itself contains an ellipsis ().


Commas

  • A pair of
    comma The comma is a punctuation mark that appears in several variants in different languages. It has the same shape as an apostrophe or single closing quotation mark () in many typefaces, but it differs from them in being placed on the baseline ...
    s can bracket an
    appositive Apposition is a grammatical construction in which two elements, normally noun phrases, are placed side by side so one element identifies the other in a different way. The two elements are said to be ''in apposition'', and one of the elements is c ...
    (as can brackets or dashes, though with greater interruption of the sentence). For example: Always use a ''pair'' of commas for this, unless another punctuation mark takes the place of the second comma:
  • Don't let other punctuation distract you from the need for a comma, especially when the comma collides with a bracket or parenthesis:
  • Modern writing uses fewer commas; there are usually ways to simplify a sentence so that fewer are needed.
  • In geographical references that include multiple levels of subordinate divisions (e.g., city, state/province, country), a comma separates each element and follows the last element unless followed by other punctuation. The last element is treated as
    parenthetical A bracket is either of two tall fore- or back-facing punctuation marks commonly used to isolate a segment of text or data from its surroundings. Typically deployed in symmetric pairs, an individual bracket may be identified as a 'left' or 'r ...
    .
  • Dates in month–day–year format require a comma after the day, as well as after the year, unless followed by other punctuation. The last element is treated as
    parenthetical A bracket is either of two tall fore- or back-facing punctuation marks commonly used to isolate a segment of text or data from its surroundings. Typically deployed in symmetric pairs, an individual bracket may be identified as a 'left' or 'r ...
    .
  • Place quotation marks by following . This is called "logical quotation".
  • A comma may be included before a quotation embedded within a sentence .


Serial commas

A
serial comma In English-language punctuation, a serial comma (also called a series comma, Oxford comma, or Harvard comma) is a comma placed immediately after the penultimate term (i.e., before the coordinating conjunction, such as ''and'' or ''or'') in a se ...
(sometimes also called an ''Oxford comma'' or ''Harvard comma'') is a comma used immediately before a conjunction (''and'', ''or'', ''nor'') in a list of three or more items. Editors may use either convention so long as each article is internally consistent. Serial commas are more helpful the more complex the material, such as a list with multi-word items (especially if one contains its own ''and'' or a series of probably unfamiliar terms. However, there are cases in which either omitting or including the serial comma results in ambiguity: In such cases of ambiguity, clarify one of four ways: * Add or remove the serial comma. * Use separate sentences, bullet lists, or some other structural change to clarify. * Recast the sentence ("friends" case): ** To list two people: *** Clearer: ** To list several people: **: or **: . *** But not: introduces ambiguity about ''her''. * Recast the sentence ("friend" case): ** To list two people: *** Or be more specific when possible (the commas here set off non-restrictive appositives): ** To list three people: *** Clarity with gender-specific terms such as ''mother'' can be tricky; is unclear because readers may not know
Kim Thayil Kim Anand Thayil (born September 4, 1960) is an American musician best known as the lead guitarist of the Seattle-based rock band Soundgarden, which he co-founded with singer Chris Cornell and bassist Hiro Yamamoto in 1984. Cornell and Thayil ...
is male and wouldn't be the same person as the mother. *** Clearer: or .


Colons

A colon () introduces something that demonstrates, explains, or modifies what has come before, or is a list of items that has just been introduced. The items in such a list may be separated by commas, or if they are more complex and perhaps themselves contain commas, the items should be separated by semicolons or arranged in a bulleted list. A colon may also be used to introduce
direct speech As a form of transcription, direct or quoted speech is spoken or written text that reports speech or thought in its original form phrased by the original speaker. In narrative, it is usually enclosed in quotation marks, but it can be enclosed in ...
enclosed within quotation marks . In most cases, a colon works best with a complete grammatical sentence before it. When what follows the colon is also a complete sentence, start it with a capital letter, but otherwise, do not capitalize after a colon except where doing so is needed for another reason, as for a proper name. Except in technical usage (), no sentence should contain multiple colons, no space should precede a colon, and a space (but never a hyphen or dash) should follow the colon.


Semicolons

A
semicolon The semicolon or semi-colon is a symbol commonly used as orthographic punctuation. In the English language, a semicolon is most commonly used to link (in a single sentence) two independent clauses that are closely related in thought. When a ...
() is sometimes an alternative to a full stop (period), enabling related material to be kept in the same sentence; it marks a more decisive division in a sentence than a comma. If the semicolon separates clauses, normally each clause must be independent (meaning that it could stand on its own as a sentence). In many cases, only a comma or only a semicolon will be correct in a given sentence. Above, "Though he had been here before" cannot stand on its own as a sentence, and therefore is not an independent clause. This incorrect use of a comma between two independent clauses is known as a
comma splice In written English usage, a comma splice or comma fault is the use of a comma to join two independent clauses. For example: The comma splice is sometimes used in literary writing to convey a particular mood of informality. In the United States i ...
; however, in certain kinds of cases, a comma may be used where a semicolon would seem to be called for: A sentence may contain several semicolons, especially when the clauses are parallel in construction and meaning; multiple unrelated semicolons are often signs that the sentence should be divided into shorter sentences or otherwise refashioned. Semicolons are used in addition to commas to separate items in a listing, when commas alone would result in confusion.


Semicolon before "however"

The meaning of a sentence containing a trailing clause that starts with the word ''however'' depends on the punctuation preceding that word. A common error is to use the wrong punctuation, thereby changing the meaning to one not intended. When the word ''however'' is an adverb meaning "nevertheless", it should be preceded by a semicolon and followed by a comma. Example: When the word ''however'' is a conjunction meaning "in whatever manner", or "regardless of how", it may be preceded by a comma but not by a semicolon, and should not be followed by punctuation. Example: In the first case, the clause that starts with "however" cannot be swapped with the first clause; in the second case this can be done without change of meaning: If the two clauses cannot be swapped, a semicolon is required. A sentence or clause can also contain the word ''however'' in the middle, if it is an adverb meaning "although" that could have been placed at the beginning but does not start a new clause in mid-sentence. In this use, the word may be enclosed between commas. Example:


Hyphens

Hyphen The hyphen is a punctuation mark used to join words and to separate syllables of a single word. The use of hyphens is called hyphenation. ''Son-in-law'' is an example of a hyphenated word. The hyphen is sometimes confused with dashes ( figure ...
s () indicate conjunction. There are three main uses: # In hyphenated personal names (, ). # To link
prefix A prefix is an affix which is placed before the stem of a word. Adding it to the beginning of one word changes it into another word. For example, when the prefix ''un-'' is added to the word ''happy'', it creates the word ''unhappy''. Particul ...
es with their main terms in certain constructions (, , ). #* A hyphen may be used to distinguish between
homograph A homograph (from the el, á˝ÎĽĎŚĎ‚, ''homĂłs'', "same" and ÎłĎάφω, ''gráphĹŤ'', "write") is a word that shares the same written form as another word but has a different meaning. However, some dictionaries insist that the words must also ...
s ( means ''dress again'', but means ''remedy'' or ''set right''). #* There is a clear trend to join both elements in all varieties of English (, ). Hyphenation clarifies when the letters brought into contact are the same (, ) or are vowels (), or where a word is uncommon (, ) or may be misread (, not ). Some words of these sorts are nevertheless common without the hyphen (e.g., is more frequently attested than in contemporary English). # To link related terms in
compound modifier A compound modifier (also called a compound adjective, phrasal adjective, or adjectival phrase) is a compound of two or more attributive words: that is, two or more words that collectively modify a noun. Compound modifiers are grammatically equival ...
s: #* Hyphens can aid ease of reading (that is, they can be aids) and are particularly useful in long noun phrases: . But never insert a hyphen into a proper name (, not ). #* A hyphen can help to disambiguate (some are quite tall; is a program that monitors the government, whereas is a government program that monitors). #* Compounds that are hyphenated when used (adjectives before the nouns they qualify: , ) or (as a noun: ) are usually not hyphenated when used (descriptive phrase separated from the noun: , ). Where there would otherwise be a loss of clarity, however, a hyphen may be used in the predicative form as well (, ). Awkward attributive hyphenation can sometimes be avoided with a simple rewording: → . #* Avoid using hyphen to connect racial or ethnic descriptors, regardless of whether or not they are used attributively ( , , ). #* Avoid using a hyphen after a standard ' adverb (, ) unless part of a larger compound (). In rare cases, a hyphen can improve clarity if a rewritten alternative is awkward, but rewording is usually preferable: can be disambiguated as or . #* A few words ending in ' function as both adjectives and adverbs (; ). Some such dual-purpose words (like , , ) are not standard ' adverbs, because they are not formed by addition of ' to an independent current-English adjective. These need careful treatment: , but ; (no adult actors) but (actors without siblings). #* A hyphen is normally used when the adverb ''well'' precedes a participle used attributively (; but normally , because ''well'' itself is modified) and even predicatively, if ''well'' is necessary to, or alters, the sense of the adjective rather than simply intensifying it (, , but ). #* In some cases, such as , the independent status of the linked elements requires an en dash instead of a hyphen. See . #* Use a hanging hyphen when two compound modifiers are separated (; ; ). #* Values and units used as compound modifiers are hyphenated only where the unit is given as a whole word; when using the unit symbol, separate it from the number with a
non-breaking space In word processing and digital typesetting, a non-breaking space, , also called NBSP, required space, hard space, or fixed space (though it is not of fixed width), is a space character that prevents an automatic line break at its position. I ...
(&nbsp;). :::: Multi-word hyphenated items: It is often possible to avoid multi-word hyphenated modifiers by rewording ( may be easier to read as ). This is particularly important where converted units are involved ( might be possible as , and the ungainly as simply ). For optional hyphenation of compound points of the compass such as ''southwest/south-west'', see . Do not use a capital letter after a hyphen except for a proper name: and , but not . In titles of published works, follow the capitalization rule for each part independently (resulting in, e.g., ), unless reliable sources consistently do otherwise in a particular case (). Hyphenation rules in other languages may be different. Thus, in French a place name such as ("Three Rivers") is hyphenated, when it would not be in English. Follow reliable sources in such cases. Spacing: A hyphen is never followed or preceded by a space, except when hanging or when used to display parts of words independently, such as and . Image filenames and redirects: Image filenames are not part of the encyclopedic content; they are tools. They are most useful if they can be readily typed, so they usually use hyphens instead of dashes. Similarly, article titles with dashes should also have a corresponding redirect from a copy of the title with hyphens: for example, redirects to . Non-breaking: A
non-breaking hyphen The hyphen is a punctuation mark used to join words and to separate syllables of a single word. The use of hyphens is called hyphenation. ''Son-in-law'' is an example of a hyphenated word. The hyphen is sometimes confused with dashes ( figure ...
() will be used as a point of line-wrap. Soft hyphens: Use soft hyphens to mark locations where a word will be broken and hyphenated at the end of a line of text, usually in very long words or narrow spaces (such as captions, narrow table columns, or text adjacent to a very wide image), for example: . Use sparingly to avoid making wikitext difficult to read and edit. For more information, see Help:Line-break handling. Encoding: The hyphen is represented by the character, which is entered by the hyphen or minus key on all standard keyboards. Do not use the character. Hyphenation involves many subtleties that cannot be covered here; the rules and examples presented above illustrate the broad principles.


Dashes

Two forms of dash are used on Wikipedia:
en dash The dash is a punctuation mark consisting of a long horizontal line. It is similar in appearance to the hyphen but is longer and sometimes higher from the baseline. The most common versions are the endash , generally longer than the hyphen b ...
() and
em dash The dash is a punctuation mark consisting of a long horizontal line. It is similar in appearance to the hyphen but is longer and sometimes higher from the baseline. The most common versions are the endash , generally longer than the hyphen b ...
(). To enter them, click on them in the CharInsert toolbar, or enter them manually as: * &ndash; or &mdash; * or Do not use a double hyphen (--) to stand in for a dash. Sources use dashes in varying ways. For consistency and clarity, Wikipedia adopts the following principles.


In article titles

In
article titles Article often refers to: * Article (grammar), a grammatical element used to indicate definiteness or indefiniteness * Article (publishing), a piece of nonfictional prose that is an independent part of a publication Article may also refer to: ...
, do not use a hyphen () as a substitute for an en dash, for example in '' eye–hand span'' (since ''eye'' does not modify ''hand''). Nonetheless, to aid searching and linking, provide a redirect with hyphens replacing the en dash(es), as in '' eye-hand span''. Similarly, provide category redirects for categories containing dashes.


Punctuating a sentence (em or en dashes)

Dashes are often used to mark divisions within a sentence: in pairs (parenthetical dashes, instead of parentheses or pairs of commas) or singly (perhaps instead of a colon). They may also indicate an abrupt stop or interruption, in reporting quoted speech. In all these cases, use either unspaced em dashes or spaced en dashes, with consistency in any one article: * An em dash is (with no space on either side): * An en dash is (with a space on each side) when used as sentence punctuation: Ideally, use a non-breaking space before the en dash, which prevents the en dash from occurring at the beginning of a line (markup: or or &nbsp;&ndash;): But do not insert a non-breaking or other space where the en dash should be unspaced . Dashes can clarify the sentence structure when there are already commas or parentheses, or both. * Use dashes sparingly. More than two in a single sentence makes the structure unclear; it takes time for the reader to see which dashes, if any, form a pair. * * * Avoid: * Better:


=In ranges that might otherwise be expressed with ''to'' or ''through''

= For ranges between numbers, dates, or times, use an en dash: * ;   ;   Do not change hyphens to dashes in filenames, URLs, or templates such as (which formats verse ranges into URLs), even if a range is embedded in them. Do not mix en dashes with ''between'' or ''from''. * * , not * , not * , not * (or ) The en dash in a range is always unspaced, except when either or both elements of the range include at least one space, hyphen, or en dash; in such cases, between them will provide the proper formatting. * (not ) * (not ) * (and note in this case that the second element of the range is ''17'' not ''17September'');   ;   * ;   ;   ;   (but ) * * If negative values are involved, an unspaced en dash might be confusing: * , not (though might work in a table consistently formatted with – constructions)


=In compounds when the connection might otherwise be expressed with ''to'', ''versus'', ''and'', or ''between''

= Here, the relationship is thought of as parallel, symmetric, equal, oppositional, or at least involving . The components may be nouns, adjectives, verbs, or any other independent part of speech. Often, if the components are reversed there would be little change of meaning. * ;   ;   * ; the components are parallel and reversible; iron and cobalt retain their identity * Wrong: ; ''iron'' modifies ''roof'', so use a hyphen: * Wrong: ; not separate persons, so use a hyphen: * ; red and green are separate independent colors, not mixed * Wrong: ; a blended, intermediate color, so use a hyphen: * ;   ;   ; but prefer spelling out when using words instead of numerals: , not with the awkward ;  avoid confusingly reversed order: * ;   ;   avoid using a slash (stroke) here, which indicates division * ;   ;   ;   ;   * ;   ;   ;   * ;   * ;   Generally, use a hyphen in compounded proper names of single entities. * ; Bissau is its capital, and this name distinguishes the country from neighboring
Guinea Guinea ( ),, fuf, đž¤đž¤­đž¤˛đž¤«, italic=no, Gine, wo, Gine, nqo, ߖߌ߬ߣߍ߫, bm, Gine officially the Republic of Guinea (french: RĂ©publique de GuinĂ©e), is a coastal country in West Africa. It borders the Atlantic Ocean to the we ...
* , a single city named after two people, but , an area encompassing two cities * , an individual named after two families Use an en dash between the names of nations or nationalities when referring to an association between them. For people and things identifying with multiple nationalities, use a hyphen when using the combination adjectivally and a space when they are used as nouns, with the first used attributively to modify the second. * ;   but for * ;   * ;   * Wrong: ; ''Franco-'' is a , not an independent word, so use a hyphen: * Wrong: ; the hyphenated was the name of a single jurisdiction during its 1867–1918 existence A slash or some other alternative may occasionally be better to express a ratio, especially in technical contexts . * ;   ;   * Colons are often used for strictly numeric ratios, to avoid confusion with subtraction and division: ;   . Use an en dash for the names of two or more entities in an attributive compound. * ;   * (developed by Seeliger and Donker-Voet) * or just (discovered by Hale and Bopp) Do not use an en dash for hyphenated personal names, even when they are used as adjectives: * with a hyphen: named after John Lennard-Jones Do not use spaces around the en dash in any of the compounds above.


=Instead of a hyphen, use an en dash when applying a prefix or suffix to a compound that itself includes a space or a dash

= * (consider recasting: ) * (consider recasting: ) * * * * The form of category names follows the corresponding main articles, e.g., . However, the principle is not extended when compounding other words in category names, e.g., and both use hyphens.


=To separate parts of an item in a list

= Spaced en dashes are sometimes used between parts of list items. For example: * or * * *


Other uses (en dash only)

The
en dash The dash is a punctuation mark consisting of a long horizontal line. It is similar in appearance to the hyphen but is longer and sometimes higher from the baseline. The most common versions are the endash , generally longer than the hyphen b ...
(–) has other roles, beyond its use as a sentence-punctuating dash . It is often analogous to the hyphen , which more strongly than the en dash; or to the slash , which more definitely. Consider the exact meaning when choosing which to use.


Other uses (em dash only)

An indented em dash may be used before a name or other source when attributing below a
block quotation A block quotation (also known as a long quotation or extract) is a quotation in a written document that is set off from the main text as a paragraph, or block of text, and typically distinguished visually using indentation and a different typefa ...
, poem, etc. This dash should not be fully spaced, though it is best for
metadata Metadata is "data that provides information about other data", but not the content of the data, such as the text of a message or the image itself. There are many distinct types of metadata, including: * Descriptive metadata – the descriptive ...
and
accessibility Accessibility is the design of products, devices, services, vehicles, or environments so as to be usable by people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design and practice of accessible development ensures both "direct access" (i. ...
reasons to hair-space it from the name. Most of Wikipedia's quotation templates with attribution-related parameters already provide this formatting. For example, will produce: —Charlotte Brontë


Other dashes

Do not use typewriter approximations or other substitutes, such as two hyphens (), for em or en dashes. For a negative sign or subtraction operator use , which can also be generated by clicking on the following the in the toolbar beneath the edit window. Do not use inside a tag, as the character gives a syntax error; instead use a normal hyphen .


Slashes (strokes)

Generally, avoid joining two words with a
slash Slash may refer to: * Slash (punctuation), the "/" character Arts and entertainment Fictional characters * Slash (Marvel Comics) * Slash (''Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles'') Music * Harry Slash & The Slashtones, an American rock band * Nash ...
, also called a forward slash, stroke or solidus (), because it suggests that the words are related without specifying how. Replace with clearer wording. An example: Must both be present? (Then write .) Must at least one be present? (Then write .) Are they the same person? (Use a hyphen: .) In circumstances involving a distinction or disjunction, the en dash is usually preferable to the slash: . An unspaced slash may be used: * to indicate
phonemic In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-west ...
pronunciations Pronunciation is the way in which a word or a language is spoken. This may refer to generally agreed-upon sequences of sounds used in speaking a given word or language in a specific dialect ("correct pronunciation") or simply the way a particul ...
(); * in a fraction (7/8, but see other techniques at ); * to indicate regular defined yearly periods that do not coincide with calendar years (e.g., ), if that is the convention used in reliable sources (see for further explanation); * to express a ratio, in a form in which a slash is conventionally used (e.g., ); * in an expression or abbreviation widely used outside Wikipedia (e.g., or for ''not applicable''). A spaced slash may be used: * to separate run-on lines in quoted poetry or song (), or rarely in quoted prose, where careful marking of a paragraph break is textually important; * to separate items that include at least one internal space (), where for some reason use of a slash is unavoidable. To avoid awkward linebreaks, code spaced slashes (and fraction slashes) with a non-breaking space on the left and a normal space on the right, as in: My mama told me&nbsp;/ You better shop around. For short constructions, both spaces should be non-breaking: . On the other hand, if two long words are connected by an unspaced slash, an added after the slash will allow a linebreak at that point. Do not use the
backslash The backslash is a typographical mark used mainly in computing and mathematics. It is the mirror image of the common slash . It is a relatively recent mark, first documented in the 1930s. History , efforts to identify either the origin of ...
character () in place of a slash. Prefer the division operator () to slash or fraction slash when representing elementary arithmetic in general text: . In more advanced mathematical formulas, a vinculum or slash is preferred: \textstyle\frac or .


And/or

Avoid writing unless other constructions would be lengthy or awkward. Instead of , write simply (which would normally be interpreted as an inclusive-or to imply ''or both''); or, for emphasis or precision or both, write . Where more than two possibilities are present, instead of write or .


Number (pound, hash) sign and numero

Avoid using the symbol (known as the
number sign The symbol is known variously in English-speaking regions as the number sign, hash, or pound sign. The symbol has historically been used for a wide range of purposes including the designation of an ordinal number and as a ligatured abbreviati ...
, hash sign, pound sign, or octothorpe) when referring to numbers or rankings. Instead write , or ; do not use the symbol . For example: An exception is issue numbers of comic books, which unlike for other periodicals are conventionally given in general text in the form , unless a volume is also given, in which case write or . Another exception are periodical publications carrying both, issue ''and'' number designations (typically one being a year-relative and the other an absolute value); they should be given in the form in citations, or be spelt out as in text. When using the
abbreviations An abbreviation (from Latin ''brevis'', meaning ''short'') is a shortened form of a word or phrase, by any method. It may consist of a group of letters or words taken from the full version of the word or phrase; for example, the word ''abbrevia ...
, write , , , or , at first occurrence.


Terminal punctuation

* Exclamation and question marks have almost no application in encyclopedic writing. * For the use of three periods in succession, see . * In some contexts, no terminal punctuation is necessary. In such cases, the sentence often does not start with a capital letter. See and .
Sentence fragment In grammar, sentence and clause structure, commonly known as sentence composition, is the classification of sentences based on the number and kind of clauses in their syntactic structure. Such division is an element of traditional grammar. Typolog ...
s in captions or lists should in most cases not end with a period. See and .


Spacing

In normal text, never put a space before a comma, semicolon, colon, period/full stop, question mark, or exclamation mark (even in quoted material; see ). Some editors place two spaces after a period/full stop (); these are condensed to one space when the page is rendered, so it does not affect what readers see.


Consecutive punctuation marks

Where a word or phrase that includes terminal punctuation ends a sentence, do not add a second terminal punctuation mark. If a quoted phrase or title ends in a question mark or exclamation mark, it may confuse readers as to the nature of the article sentence containing it, and so is usually better reworded to be mid-sentence. Where such a word or phrase occurs mid-sentence, new terminal punctuation (usually a period) must be added at the end.


Punctuation and footnotes

Ref tags () are used to create ''
footnotes A note is a string of text placed at the bottom of a page in a book or document or at the end of a chapter, volume, or the whole text. The note can provide an author's comments on the main text or citations of a reference work in support of t ...
'' (sometimes called ''endnotes'' or just ''notes''), as citation footnotes and sometimes explanatory notes. All ref tags should follow the text to which the footnote applies, with no intervening space. Refs are placed adjacent punctuation, not before (apart from the exceptions below). Adjacent ref tags should have no space between them, nor should there be any between ref tags and inline dispute/cleanup templates. When ref tags are used, a footnote list must be added, and this is usually placed in the
References Reference is a relationship between objects in which one object designates, or acts as a means by which to connect to or link to, another object. The first object in this relation is said to ''refer to'' the second object. It is called a ''name'' ...
section, near the end of the article in the standard appendices and footers. * :
Flightless bird Flightless birds are birds that through evolution lost the ability to fly. There are over 60 extant species, including the well known ratites (ostriches, emu, cassowaries, rheas, and kiwi) and penguins. The smallest flightless bird is the ...
s have a reduced
keel The keel is the bottom-most longitudinal structural element on a vessel. On some sailboats, it may have a hydrodynamic and counterbalancing purpose, as well. As the laying down of the keel is the initial step in the construction of a ship, in Br ...
, and they also have smaller wing bones than flying birds of similar size. Exceptions: Ref tags are placed dashes, not after. Where a footnote applies only to material within parentheses, the ref tags belong just before the closing parenthesis. * : Paris is not the capital city of Englandthe capital of which is Londonbut that of France, and it is widely known as a beautiful city. * : Kim Jong-un (Korean: 김정은; Hanja: 金正ć©) is the
Supreme Leader of North Korea The supreme leader () of North Korea is the ''de facto'' paramount leader of the Workers' Party of Korea, the state and the Korean People's Army. The title has not been written into the national constitution as a separate office, but it curren ...
and the
leader Leadership, both as a research area and as a practical skill, encompasses the ability of an individual, group or organization to "lead", influence or guide other individuals, teams, or entire organizations. The word "leadership" often gets v ...
of the
Workers' Party of Korea The Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) is the founding and sole ruling party of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, commonly known as North Korea. Founded in 1949 from the merger of the Workers' Party of North Korea and the Workers' Party ...
.


Punctuation after formulae

A sentence that ends with a formula should have terminal punctuation (period, exclamation mark, or question mark) after the formula. Within a sentence, place other punctuation (such as commas or colons) after the formula just as if the text were not a formula. See .


Dates and time

For ranges of dates and times, see . Dates should be linked only when they are germane and topical to the subject, as discussed at .


Time of day

Times of day are normally expressed in figures rather than words. Context determines whether the 12- or the
24-hour The modern 24-hour clock, popularly referred to in the United States as military time, is the convention of timekeeping in which the day runs from midnight to midnight and is divided into 24 hours. This is indicated by the hours (and minutes) pass ...
format is more appropriate. * Twelve-hour clock times are written in one of two forms: and , or and (wherein the spaces should be non-breaking). Use and rather than and ; it may need to be specified whether ''midnight'' refers to the start or end of a date. * Twenty-four-hour clock times are written in the form and , with no suffix. Midnight written as begins the day; ends it.


Dates

Full dates are formatted or ; or where the year is omitted, use or . * The dates in the ''text'' of any one article should all have the same format (day-first or month-first). ** For date formats in citations, see . ** Dates in quotations and titles are always left as-is. ** If a numerical format is required (e.g., for conciseness in lists and tables), use the YYYY-MM-DD format: . * Articles on topics with strong ties to a particular English-speaking country should generally use the more common date format for that country (month-first for the US, except in military usage; day-first for most others; articles related to Canada may use either consistently). Otherwise, do not change an article from one date format to the other without good reason.


Months

* For month and year, write , with no comma. * Abbreviations for months, such as , are used only where space is extremely limited. Such abbreviations should use three letters only, and should not be followed by a period (full point) except at the end of a sentence.


Seasons

* Avoid ambiguous references to
seasons A season is a division of the year based on changes in weather, ecology, and the number of daylight hours in a given region. On Earth, seasons are the result of the axial parallelism of Earth's tilted orbit around the Sun. In temperate and po ...
, which are different in the southern and northern hemispheres. * Names of seasons may be used when there is a logical connection to the event they are describing () or when referring to a phase of a natural yearly cycle (). Otherwise, neutral wording is usually preferable (, not ). * Journals and other publications that are issued seasonally (e.g., "Summer 2005") should be dated as such in citations .


Years and longer periods

* Do not use ''the year'' before the digits (, not ), unless the meaning would otherwise be unclear. * Decades are written in the format , with no apostrophe. Use the two-digit form ('80s) only with an established social or cultural meaning. Avoid forms such as that could refer to ten or a hundred years. * Years are denoted by AD and BC or, equivalently, CE and BCE. Use only one system within an article, and do not change from one system to the other without good reason. The abbreviations are written without periods, and with a
non-breaking space In word processing and digital typesetting, a non-breaking space, , also called NBSP, required space, hard space, or fixed space (though it is not of fixed width), is a space character that prevents an automatic line break at its position. I ...
, as in . Omit AD or CE unless omitting it would cause ambiguity. More information on all the above topics can be found at , including the handling of dates expressed in different calendars, and times corresponding to different time zones.


Current

Terms such as "current", "now", and "recent" should be avoided. What is current today may not be tomorrow; situations change over time. Instead, use date- and time-specific text. To help keep information updated use , which will allow editors to catalog and update dated statements.


Numbers

* Integers from zero to nine are spelled out in words. Integers greater than nine may be expressed either in numerals or in words. Other numbers are given in numerals or in forms such as . See . * In general, use a comma in numbers with five or more digits to the left of the decimal point. Numbers with four digits are at the editor's discretion: , but either or . See . * In general, use decimals rather than fractions for measurements, but fractions are sometimes used with
imperial Imperial is that which relates to an empire, emperor, or imperialism. Imperial or The Imperial may also refer to: Places United States * Imperial, California * Imperial, Missouri * Imperial, Nebraska * Imperial, Pennsylvania * Imperial, Texas ...
and U.S. customary units. Keep articles internally consistent. *
Scientific notation Scientific notation is a way of expressing numbers that are too large or too small (usually would result in a long string of digits) to be conveniently written in decimal form. It may be referred to as scientific form or standard index form, o ...
(e.g., ) is preferred in scientific contexts. Markup: . * Write out "million" and "billion" on the first use. After that, unspaced "M" can be used for millions and "bn" for billions: and . See for similar words. * Write , , or , but not (with a space) or . "Percent" is American usage, and "per cent" is British usage . In ranges of percentages written with an en dash, write only a single percent sign: . * Indicate uncertainties as e.g., . Markup: . See for other formats.


Currencies

* Use the full abbreviation on first use ( for the US dollar and for the Australian dollar), . For example, the government of the United States always spends money in American dollars, and never in Canadian or Australian dollars. * Use only one symbol with ranges, as in . * In articles that are not specific to a country, express amounts of money in
United States dollars The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...
,
euros The euro (symbol: €; code: EUR) is the official currency of 19 out of the member states of the European Union (EU). This group of states is known as the eurozone or, officially, the euro area, and includes about 340 million citizens . Th ...
, or
pounds sterling Sterling (abbreviation: stg; Other spelling styles, such as STG and Stg, are also seen. ISO code: GBP) is the currency of the United Kingdom and nine of its associated territories. The pound ( sign: ÂŁ) is the main unit of sterling, and ...
. Do not link the names or symbols of currencies that are commonly known to English-speakers (, , ), unless there is a particular reason to do so; do not use potentially ambiguous currency symbols, unless the meaning is clear in the context. * In country-specific articles, use the currency of the country. On first occurrence, consider including conversion to US dollars, euros, or pounds sterling, at a rate appropriate to the context. For example, . Wording such as "approx." is not appropriate for simple rounding-off of the converted amount. * Generally, use the full name of a currency, and link it on its first appearance if English-speakers are likely to be unfamiliar with it (); subsequent occurrences can use the currency sign (just ). * Most currency symbols are placed the number, and unspaced


Units of measurement

* The main unit in which a quantity is expressed should generally be an SI unit or non-SI unit officially accepted for use with the SI. However, ** Scientific articles may also use specialist units appropriate for the branch of science in question. ** In non-scientific articles with strong ties to the United States, the main unit is generally a U.S. customary unit (). ** In non-scientific articles with strong ties to the United Kingdom, although the main unit is generally a metric unit (), imperial units are still used as the main units in some contexts (). * Where English-speaking countries use different units for the same measurement, provide a conversion in parentheses. Examples: ; . See . * In a direct quotation, always retain the source's units. Any conversion should follow in square brackets (or, an obscure use of units can be explained in the article text or a footnote). * Where space is limited (such as tables, infoboxes, parenthetical notes, and mathematical formulas) unit symbols are preferred. In prose, unit names should be given in full if used only a few times but symbols may be used when a unit (especially one with a long name) is used repeatedly after spelling out the first use (e.g., ), except for unit names that are hardly ever spelled out ( rather than ). * Most unit names are not capitalized (see for spelling differences). * Use "per" when writing out a unit, rather than a slash: , not . * Units unfamiliar to general readers should be presented as a name–symbol pair on first use, linking the unit name (). * For ranges, see , and MOS:NUM, at . * Unit symbols are preceded by figures, not by spelled-out numbers. Values and unit symbols are separated by a
non-breaking space In word processing and digital typesetting, a non-breaking space, , also called NBSP, required space, hard space, or fixed space (though it is not of fixed width), is a space character that prevents an automatic line break at its position. I ...
. For example, . The percent sign and units of degrees, minutes, and seconds are unspaced.


Common mathematical symbols

* For a negative sign or subtraction operator, use a minus sign (, Unicode character U+2212 MINUS SIGN). Input by clicking on it in the insert box beneath the edit window or by typing &minus;. * For multiplication, use a multiplication sign () or a dot (), which are input by clicking on them in the edit toolbox under the edit window or by entering &times; or &sdot;. Care should be taken not to confuse the dot operator (in the "Math and logic" section of the edit toolbox) with an interpunct (in the "Insert" section of the edit toolbox) or a bullet. The letter should not be used to indicate multiplication, but it is used (unspaced) as the substitute for "by" in terms such as . *
Exponentiation Exponentiation is a mathematical operation, written as , involving two numbers, the '' base'' and the ''exponent'' or ''power'' , and pronounced as " (raised) to the (power of) ". When is a positive integer, exponentiation corresponds to ...
is indicated by a superscript, (typed as ''a''''n''. * Do not use programming language notation outside computer program text. In most programming languages, subtraction, multiplication, and exponentiation are represented by the
hyphen-minus The hyphen-minus is the most commonly used type of hyphen, widely used in digital documents. It is the only character that looks like a minus sign or a dash in many character sets such as ASCII or on most keyboards, so it is also used as such. ...
-, the
asterisk The asterisk ( ), from Late Latin , from Ancient Greek , ''asteriskos'', "little star", is a typographical symbol. It is so called because it resembles a conventional image of a heraldic star. Computer scientists and mathematicians often voc ...
*, and either the
caret Caret is the name used familiarly for the character , provided on most QWERTY keyboards by typing . The symbol has a variety of uses in programming and mathematics. The name "caret" arose from its visual similarity to the original proofreade ...
^ or the double asterisk **;
scientific notation Scientific notation is a way of expressing numbers that are too large or too small (usually would result in a long string of digits) to be conveniently written in decimal form. It may be referred to as scientific form or standard index form, o ...
is replaced by E notation. * Symbols for
binary operator In mathematics, a binary operation or dyadic operation is a rule for combining two elements (called operands) to produce another element. More formally, a binary operation is an operation of arity two. More specifically, an internal binary o ...
s and relations are usually spaced on both sides: ** plus, minus, and plus-or-minus (as binary operators): , , (as in ); ** multiplication and division: , ; ** equals, does not equal, equals approximately: , , ; ** is less than, is less than or equal to, is greater than, is greater than or equal to: , , , . * Symbols for
unary operator In mathematics, an unary operation is an operation with only one operand, i.e. a single input. This is in contrast to binary operations, which use two operands. An example is any function , where is a set. The function is a unary operation o ...
s are closed-up to their operand: ** positive, negative, and positive-or-negative signs: , , (as in ); ** other unary operators, such as the exclamation mark as a
factorial In mathematics, the factorial of a non-negative denoted is the product of all positive integers less than or equal The factorial also equals the product of n with the next smaller factorial: \begin n! &= n \times (n-1) \times (n-2) \ ...
sign (as in ). * Variables are italicized, but digits and punctuation are not; only ''x'' and ''y'' are italicized in . * can be used to style formulas to distinguish them from surrounding text. For single variables, is handy.


Grammar and usage


Possessives


Singular nouns

For the possessive of singular nouns, including proper names and words ending in ''s'', add '''s'' (, , , , , , ). Exception: abstract nouns ending with an /s/ sound when followed by ''sake'' (, ). If a name ending in ''s'' or ''z'' would be difficult to pronounce with '''s'' added (), consider rewording ().


Plural nouns

* For a normal plural noun, ending with a pronounced ''s'', form the possessive by adding just an apostrophe (, ). * For a plural noun ending with a pronounced ''s'', add '''s'' (, , ; , but where rewording is an option, this may be better: ).


Official names

Official names (of companies, organizations, or places) should not be altered. ( should therefore be rendered as or , even for consistency.)


First-person pronouns

To maintain an objective and impersonal encyclopedic voice, an article should never refer to its editors or readers using ''I'', ''my'', ''we'', ''us'', ''our'', or similar forms: . But some such forms are acceptable in certain figurative uses. For example: * In historical articles to mean the modern world as a whole: * The author's ''we'' found in scientific writing (), though
passive voice A passive voice construction is a grammatical voice construction that is found in many languages. In a clause with passive voice, the grammatical subject expresses the ''theme'' or '' patient'' of the main verb – that is, the person or thing ...
may be preferable ().


Second-person pronouns

Avoid addressing the reader using ''you'' or ''your'', which sets an inappropriate tone . * Use a noun or a third-person pronoun: instead of , use , or . * If a person cannot be specified, or when implying "anyone" as a subject, the impersonal pronoun ''
one 1 (one, unit, unity) is a number representing a single or the only entity. 1 is also a numerical digit and represents a single unit of counting or measurement. For example, a line segment of ''unit length'' is a line segment of length 1. I ...
'' may be used: . Other constructions may be preferable if the pronoun ''one'' seems stilted: . * The
passive voice A passive voice construction is a grammatical voice construction that is found in many languages. In a clause with passive voice, the grammatical subject expresses the ''theme'' or '' patient'' of the main verb – that is, the person or thing ...
may sometimes be used instead: . * Do not bait links, e.g., ""; let the browser's normal highlighting invite a click. ("" also makes no sense to someone reading on paper.) * Likewise, "See: (reference)" or "Consider ..." are milder second-person baits, common in academic writing (
pedagogy Pedagogy (), most commonly understood as the approach to teaching, is the theory and practice of learning, and how this process influences, and is influenced by, the social, political and psychological development of learners. Pedagogy, taken ...
). This interactive personality is inconsistent with an encyclopedia's passive presentation of objective matter. ** "See" and the like can be used to internally cross-reference other Wikipedia material. Do not italicize words like "see". Such a cross reference should be parenthetical, so the article text stands alone if the parenthetical is removed. can be used for this: , It is usually better to rewrite the material to integrate these links contextually rather than use explicit Wikipedia self-references. * Do not address the reader with the
Socratic method The Socratic method (also known as method of Elenchus, elenctic method, or Socratic debate) is a form of cooperative argumentative dialogue between individuals, based on asking and answering questions to stimulate critical thinking and to draw ou ...
by asking and answering questions.


Plurals

Use the appropriate plural; allow for cases (such as ''
excursus An excursus (from Latin ''excurrere'', 'to run out of') is a short episode or anecdote in a work of literature. Often excursuses have nothing to do with the matter being discussed by the work, and are used to lighten the atmosphere in a tragic stor ...
'' or '' hanif'') in which a word is now listed in major English dictionaries, and normally takes an ''s'' or ''es'' plural, not its original plural: , not as in Latin; , not as in Arabic. Some
collective noun In linguistics, a collective noun is a word referring to a collection of things taken as a whole. Most collective nouns in everyday speech are not specific to one kind of thing. For example, the collective noun "group" can be applied to people (" ...
ssuch as ''team'' (and proper names of them), ''army'', ''company'', ''crowd'', ''fleet'', ''government'', ''majority'', ''mess'', ''number'', ''pack'', and ''party''may refer either to a single entity or to the members that compose it. In British English, such words are sometimes treated as singular, but more often treated as plural, according to context. Exceptionally, names of towns and countries usually take singular verbs (unless they are being used to refer to a team or company by that name, or when discussing actions of that entity's government). For example, in , ''England'' refers to a
football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly ...
team; but in , it refers to the country. In North American English, these words (and ''the United States'', for historical reasons) are almost invariably treated as singular; the major exception is when a sports team is referred to by its short name, plural verbs are commonly used to match e.g., . See also including .


Verb tense

By default, write articles in the present tense, including those covering works of fiction and products or works that have been discontinued. Generally, use past tense only for past events, and for subjects that are dead or no longer meaningfully exist. Use past tense for articles about periodicals no longer produced, with common-sense exceptions. * * * * * (not ). * * (not ). * (not ). Tense can be used to distinguish between current and former status of a subject: (Emphasis added to distinguish the different tense usages; DĂşn Aonghasa is a structure that was later damaged by an event.) Always use present tense for verbs that describe genres, types and classes, even if the subject of the description (e.g. program, library, device) no longer exists, is discontinued or is unsupported/unmaintained.


Vocabulary


Contractions

Avoid contractions, which have little place in formal writing. For example, write instead of . Use of is an exception. Contracted titles such as and generally should not be used but may apply in some contexts (e.g., quoted material, place names, titles of works).


Gender-neutral language

Use gender-neutral language – avoiding the generic ''he'' and generic ''she'', for example – if this can be done with clarity and precision. This does not apply to direct quotations or the titles of works ('), which should not be altered, or to wording about one-gender contexts, such as an all-female school (). References to space programs, past, present and future, should use gender-neutral phrasing: , , , , , , , , not or . Direct quotations and proper nouns that use gendered words should not be changed, like . Ships may be referred to using either neuter forms ("it", "its") or feminine forms ("she", "her", "hers"). Either usage is acceptable, but each article should be internally consistent and employ one or the other exclusively. As with all optional styles, articles should not be changed from one style to another unless there is a substantial reason to do so. See .


Contested vocabulary

Avoid words and phrases that give the impression of straining for formality, that are unnecessarily regional, or that are not widely accepted. See List of commonly misused English words; see also .


Instructional and presumptuous language

Avoid such phrases as and , which address readers directly in an unencyclopedic tone and lean toward instructional. They are a subtle form of Wikipedia self-reference, "breaking the
fourth wall The fourth wall is a performance convention in which an invisible, imaginary wall separates actors from the audience. While the audience can see through this ''wall'', the convention assumes the actors act as if they cannot. From the 16th cen ...
". Similarly, phrases such as , , , , and make presumptions about readers' knowledge, may express a viewpoint, and may call into question the reason for including the information in the first place. Do not readers that something is interesting, ironic, surprising, unexpected, amusing, coincidental, etc. Simply present sourced facts neutrally and allow readers to draw their own conclusions. Such constructions can usually just be deleted, leaving behind proper sentences with a more academic and less pushy tone: becomes Avoid rhetorical questions, especially in headings. Use a heading of and text such as , not For issues in the use of
cross-reference The term cross-reference (abbreviation: xref) can refer to either: * An instance within a document which refers to related information elsewhere in the same document. In both printed and online dictionaries cross-references are important because ...
se.g., see #Second-person pronouns.


Subset terms

A ''subset term'' identifies a set of members of a larger class. Common subset terms are ''including'', ''among'', and ''etc.'' Avoid redundant subset terms (e.g., mis-constructions like or ). The word ''including'' does not introduce a complete list; instead, use ''consisting of'', or ''composed of''.


Identity

When there is a discrepancy between the term most commonly used by reliable sources for a person or group and the term that person or group uses for themselves, use the term that is most commonly used by recent reliable sources. If it is unclear which is most used, use the term that the person or group uses. Disputes over how to refer to a person or group are addressed by Wikipedia content policies, such as those on
verifiability Verify or verification may refer to: General * Verification and validation, in engineering or quality management systems, is the act of reviewing, inspecting or testing, in order to establish and document that a product, service or system meets ...
, and
neutral point of view Neutral point of view may refer to: * Objectivity (science), the concept of a position formed without incorporating one's own prejudice * Neutrality (philosophy) Neutrality is the tendency not to ''side'' in a conflict (physical or ideological ...
(and
article titles Article often refers to: * Article (grammar), a grammatical element used to indicate definiteness or indefiniteness * Article (publishing), a piece of nonfictional prose that is an independent part of a publication Article may also refer to: ...
when the term appears in the title of an article). Use specific terminology. For example, it is often more appropriate for people or things from Ethiopia (a country in Africa) to be described as ''Ethiopian'', not carelessly (with the risk of
stereotyping In social psychology, a stereotype is a generalized belief about a particular category of people. It is an expectation that people might have about every person of a particular group. The type of expectation can vary; it can be, for example ...
) as ''African''.


Gender identity

Specific guidelines apply to any person whose gender might be questioned, and any living transgender or non-binary person. In summary: * Use gendered words only if they reflect the person's latest self-identification as reported in recent sources. * If the person is living and was not notable yet when a former name was in use, that name should not be included in any Wikipedia page, even in quotations, as a privacy matter. Exception: Do not expunge or replace names in source citations (whether as authors or mentioned in work titles). * Former names under which a living person was notable should be introduced with "born" or "formerly" in the lead sentence of their main biographical article. Name and gender matters should be explained at first appearance in that article, without overemphasis. In articles on works or other activities of such a person, use their current name by default, and give another name associated with that context in a parenthetical or footnote, only if they were notable under that name. In other articles, do not go into detail about such a person's name or gender except when directly relevant to the context. * Avoid confusing constructions by rewriting. Paraphrase, elide, or use square brackets to replace portions of quotations as needed to avoid confusion, former names, and mismatching gendered words.


Foreign terms


No common usage in English

Foreign terms should be used sparingly. Use italics for phrases in other languages and for isolated foreign words that are not current in English (except certain cases in other guidance). Where possible, this is best done with the template using the appropriate ISO language code, e.g., . There are alternatives to the template which also provide additional information about a foreign word or phrase, such as a link to the language name; . The template and related templates automatically italicize text for Latin-alphabet scripts, so do not add separate italics markup around or within them. Non-Latin-based scripts like Chinese should not be italicized, since it is already obvious the material cannot be English, and some such scripts do not support italicization.


Common usage in English

Loanword A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because ...
s and borrowed phrases that have common usage in English, , do not require italics. A rule of thumb is to not italicize words that appear in major general-purpose English-language dictionaries.


Spelling and romanization

Names not originally written in one of the Latin-script alphabets (written for example in Greek, Cyrillic, or Chinese scripts) must be given a
romanized Romanization or romanisation, in linguistics, is the conversion of text from a different writing system to the Roman (Latin) script, or a system for doing so. Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written text, and ...
form for use in English. Use a systematically
transliterated Transliteration is a type of conversion of a text from one script to another that involves swapping letters (thus ''trans-'' + '' liter-'') in predictable ways, such as Greek → , Cyrillic → , Greek → the digraph , Armenian → or L ...
or otherwise romanized name (, ); but if there is a more common English form of the name (, ), use that form instead. The use of
diacritic A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacrit ...
s (such as accent marks) for foreign words is neither encouraged nor discouraged; their usage depends on whether they appear in verifiable reliable sources in English, and on the constraints imposed by specialized Wikipedia guidelines. Provide
redirects Redirect and its variants (e.g., redirection) may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media * ''Redirect'', 2012 Christian metal album and its title track by Your Memorial * ''Redirected'' (film), a 2014 action comedy film Computing * ICMP Re ...
from alternative forms that use or exclude diacritics. Proper names in languages which use the
Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and the ...
can include characters with
diacritic A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacrit ...
s, ligatures, and others that are not commonly used in present-day English. Wikipedia normally retains these special characters, except where there is a well-established English spelling that replaces them with English standard letters. Examples: * The name of the article on Hungarian mathematician
Paul Erdős Paul Erdős ( hu, Erdős Pál ; 26 March 1913 – 20 September 1996) was a Hungarian mathematician. He was one of the most prolific mathematicians and producers of mathematical conjectures of the 20th century. pursued and proposed problems in ...
is spelt with the double acute accent, and the alternative spellings ''Paul Erdos'' and ''Paul Erdös'' redirect to that article. * Similarly, the name of the article on the Nordic god
Ægir Ægir (anglicised as Aegir; Old Norse 'sea'), Hlér (Old Norse 'sea'), or Gymir (Old Norse less clearly 'sea, engulfer'), is a jötunn and a personification of the sea in Norse mythology. In the Old Norse record, Ægir hosts the gods in his halls ...
is so spelt, with redirects from the ligature-free form Aegir and the Swedish spelling Ă„gir. * However, the Spanish region named in Spanish and in Catalan is given as
Aragon Aragon ( , ; Spanish and an, AragĂłn ; ca, AragĂł ) is an autonomous community in Spain, coextensive with the medieval Kingdom of Aragon. In northeastern Spain, the Aragonese autonomous community comprises three provinces (from north to s ...
, without the accent, as this is the established English name (the non-English names appear, with their diacritics, in its lead section). Such matters are determined on a topic-by-topic basis; a small group of editors cannot "prohibit" or "require" diacritics across a category of articles. Spell a name consistently in the title and the text of an article. For a foreign name, phrase, or word, adopt the spelling most commonly used in English-language reliable sources, including but not limited to those already cited in the article. For punctuation of compounded forms, see relevant guidelines in . A non-English
proper name A proper noun is a noun that identifies a single entity and is used to refer to that entity (''Africa'', ''Jupiter'', ''Sarah'', ''Microsoft)'' as distinguished from a common noun, which is a noun that refers to a class of entities (''continent, ...
should generally not be italicized, unless it would be for some other reason; this is most commonly when it is the title of a major published work, as in ; or when it is being compared in a words-as-words manner to another name for the same subject, e.g., ). When the name should not be italicized, language markup can still be used to ensure proper pronunciation in screen readers, with the parameter: . Sometimes usage will be influenced by other guidelines, such as , which may lead to different choices in different articles.


Other non-English concerns

* For non-English vernacular names of species, see . * For handling of foreign-language quotations, see . * For non-English characters that resemble single quotation marks and apostrophes, see . * For actual non-English quotation characters, see . * For capitalization in foreign-language work titles, see . * For
interlinear gloss In linguistics and pedagogy, an interlinear gloss is a gloss (series of brief explanations, such as definitions or pronunciations) placed between lines, such as between a line of original text and its translation into another language. When gloss ...
es and their particular uses of small-caps (and italics and single quotes), see .


Technical language

Some topics are intrinsically technical, but editors should try to make them understandable to as many readers as possible. Minimize
jargon Jargon is the specialized terminology associated with a particular field or area of activity. Jargon is normally employed in a particular communicative context and may not be well understood outside that context. The context is usually a partic ...
, or at least explain it or tag it using or for other editors to fix. For unavoidably technical articles, a separate introductory article (like Introduction to general relativity) may be the best solution. Avoid excessive ''wikilinking'' (linking within Wikipedia) as a substitute for parenthetic explanations such as the one in this sentence. Do not introduce new and specialized words simply to teach them to the reader when more common alternatives will do. When the notions named by jargon are too complex to explain concisely in a few parenthetical words, write one level down. For example, consider adding a brief background section with tags pointing to the full treatment article(s) of the prerequisite notions; this approach is practical only when the prerequisite concepts are central to the exposition of the article's main topic and when such prerequisites are not too numerous. Short articles, such as stubs, generally do not have such sections.


Geographical items

Geographical or place names are the nouns used to refer to specific places and geographic features. These names often give rise to conflict, because the same places are called different things by different peoples speaking different languages. Many place names have a historical context that should be preserved, but common sense should prevail. There can be few places that have not been parts of more than one culture or have had only one name. As proper nouns, all such place names (but not terms for types of places) have major words capitalized. A place should generally be referred to consistently by the same name as in the title of its article . An exception may be made when there is a widely accepted historical English name appropriate to the given context. In cases where such a historical name is used, it should be followed by the modern name in round brackets (parentheses) on the first occurrence of the name in applicable sections of the article. This resembles linking; it should not be done to the detriment of style. On the other hand, it is probably better to provide such a variant too often than too rarely. If more than one historical name is applicable for a given context, the other names should be added after the modern English name, that is: "historical name (modern name, other historical names)". This is an English-language encyclopedia, so established English names are preferred if they exist, and spellings in non-English alphabets should always be transcribed into the Roman alphabet. In general, other articles should refer to places by the names which are used in the articles on those places, according to the rules described at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (geographic names). If a different name is appropriate in a given historical or other context, then that may be used instead, although it is normal to follow the first occurrence of such a name with the standard modern name in parentheses. At the start of an article, provide notable equivalent names from other languages, including transcriptions where necessary: :Cologne (German: ''Köln'', IPA: ) is the ... :Mount Fuji ( ''Fuji-san'', IPA: ) is the ... Names in languages with no particular present-day or historical ties to the place in question (English excepted, of course) should be listed as alternatives. Avoid anachronism. An article about
JunĂ­pero Serra JunĂ­pero Serra y Ferrer (; ; ca, JunĂ­per Serra i Ferrer; November 24, 1713August 28, 1784) was a Spanish Roman Catholic priest and missionary of the Franciscan Order. He is credited with establishing the Franciscan Missions in the Sierr ...
should say he lived in Alta Mexico, not in
California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...
, because the latter entity did not yet exist in Serra's time. The Romans invaded
Gaul Gaul ( la, Gallia) was a region of Western Europe first described by the Romans. It was inhabited by Celtic and Aquitani tribes, encompassing present-day France, Belgium, Luxembourg, most of Switzerland, parts of Northern Italy (only during ...
, not
France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...
, and
Thabo Mbeki Thabo Mvuyelwa Mbeki KStJ (; born 18 June 1942) is a South African politician who was the second president of South Africa from 14 June 1999 to 24 September 2008, when he resigned at the request of his party, the African National Congress (ANC ...
was the president of the
Republic of South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring countr ...
, not of the Cape Colony. To be clear, you may sometimes need to mention the current name of the area (for example "in what is now France"), especially if no English name exists for that area in the relevant historical period.


Media files


Images

* Each image should be inside the level2 section to which it relates, within the section defined by the most recent

Heading

delimited by two equal signs, or at the top of the lead section. Do not place images immediately above section headings. * Avoid sandwiching text horizontally between two images that face each other, and between an image and an infobox or similar. * It is often preferable to place images of people so they "look" toward the text. Do not achieve this by reversing the image. * Any galleries should comply with . Consider linking to additional images on Commons instead. * Avoid referring to images as being to the left, the right, above or below, because image placement varies with platform, and is meaningless to people using screen readers; instead, use captions to identify images. * An image's text takes the image's place for those who are unable to see the image. See Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Accessibility/Alternative text for images.


Other media files

Other media files include video and audio files. Style recommendations for such files largely follow recommendations for image files (as far as applicable).


Avoid using images to convey text

Textual information should almost always be entered as text rather than as an image. True text can be colored and adjusted with
CSS Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet language used for describing the presentation of a document written in a markup language such as HTML or XML (including XML dialects such as SVG, MathML or XHTML). CSS is a cornerstone technolo ...
tags and templates, but text in images cannot be. Images are not searchable, are slower to download, and are unlikely to be read as text by devices for the visually impaired. Any important textual information in an image should also appear in the image's alt text, caption, or other nearby text. For entering textual information as audio, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia.


Captions

Photographs and other graphics should have captions, unless they are unambiguous depictions of the subject of the article or when they are "self-captioning" images (such as reproductions of album or book covers). In a biography article no caption is necessary for a portrait of the subject pictured alone, but one might be used to give the year, the subject's age, or other circumstances of the portrait along with the name of the subject.


Formatting of captions

* Captions normally start with a capital letter. * Most captions are not complete sentences but merely
sentence fragment In grammar, sentence and clause structure, commonly known as sentence composition, is the classification of sentences based on the number and kind of clauses in their syntactic structure. Such division is an element of traditional grammar. Typolog ...
s which should not end with a period. However, if any complete sentence occurs in a caption, then every sentence and every sentence fragment in that caption should end with a period. * The text of captions should not be specially formatted, except in ways that would apply if it occurred in the main text (e.g., italics for the Latin name of a species). * Captions should be succinct; more information can be included on its description page, or in the main text. * Captions for technical charts and diagrams may need to be substantially longer than usual; they should fully describe all elements of the image and indicate its significance.


Bulleted and numbered lists

* Do not use lists if a passage is read easily as plain paragraphs. * Use proper wiki markup- or template-based list code . * Do not leave blank lines between items in a bulleted or numbered list unless there is a reason to do so, since this causes the Wiki software to interpret each item as beginning a new list. ** Indents (such as this) are permitted if the elements are "child" items. * Use numbers rather than bullets only if: ** a need to refer to the elements by number may arise; ** the sequence of the items is critical; or ** the numbering has some independent meaning, for example in a listing of musical tracks. * Use the same grammatical form for all elements in a list, and do not mix sentences and sentence fragments as elements, for example when the elements are: ** complete sentences – each one is formatted with sentence case (its first letter is capitalized) and a final period (full point); ** sentence fragments – the list is typically introduced by an introductory fragment ending with a colon; ** titles of works – they retain the original capitalization of the titles; ** other elements – they are formatted consistently in either sentence case or lower case.


Links


Wikilinks

Make links only where they are relevant and helpful in the context: Excessive use of hyperlinks can be distracting and may slow the reader down. Redundant links (like the one in ) clutter the page and make future maintenance harder. High-value links that worth pursuing should stand out clearly. Linking to sections: A hash sign (#) followed by the appropriate heading will lead to a relevant part of a page. For example, Apostrophe#Use in non-English names links to a particular section of the article
Apostrophe The apostrophe ( or ) is a punctuation mark, and sometimes a diacritical mark, in languages that use the Latin alphabet and some other alphabets. In English, the apostrophe is used for two basic purposes: * The marking of the omission of one ...
. Initial capitalization: Wikipedia's
MediaWiki MediaWiki is a free and open-source wiki software. It is used on Wikipedia and almost all other Wikimedia websites, including Wiktionary, Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata; these sites define a large part of the requirement set for Media ...
software does not require that wikilinks begin with an upper-case character. Capitalize the first letter only where this is naturally called for, or when specifically referring to the linked article by its name (see also related rule for italics in cross-references): Check links: Ensure the destination is the intended one; many dictionary words lead to disambiguation pages and not to complete or well-chosen articles.


External links

External links should not normally be used in the body of an article. Instead, articles can include an ''External links'' section at the end, pointing to further information outside Wikipedia as distinct from citing sources. The standard format is a primary heading,

External links

, followed by a bulleted list of links. Identify the link and briefly indicate its relevance to the article. For example: These will appear as: Where appropriate, use external link templates such as and . Add external links with discretion; Wikipedia is not a link repository.


Miscellaneous


Keep markup simple

Other things being equal, keep markup simple. This makes wikitext easier to understand and edit, and the results seen by the reader more predictable. Use HTML and CSS markup sparingly. See:
KISS principle KISS, an acronym for "Keep it simple, stupid!", is a design principle noted by the U.S. Navy in 1960. First seen partly in American English by at least 1938, the KISS principle states that most systems work best if they are kept simple rather tha ...
. In general, wikitext formatting is considered easier to use than HTML and wikitext is preferred if there are equivalents; see Help:HTML in wikitext. Obsolete elements and attributes should be updated or removed. There are many templates that allow HTML markup to be used without putting it in articles directly, such as (see MOS:EMPHASIS) and (see MOS:BOLD). An HTML character entity is sometimes better than the equivalent Unicode character, which may be difficult to identify in edit mode; for example, &Alpha; is explicit whereas Α (the upper-case form of Greek α) may be misidentified as the Latin A.


Formatting issues

Modifications in font size, blank space, and color are an issue for the Wikipedia site-wide style sheet and should be reserved for special cases only. Typically, the use of custom font styles will: * reduce consistency, since the text will no longer look uniform; * reduce usability, since it might be impossible for people with custom style sheets (for accessibility reasons, for example) to override it, and it might clash with a different
skin Skin is the layer of usually soft, flexible outer tissue covering the body of a vertebrate animal, with three main functions: protection, regulation, and sensation. Other animal coverings, such as the arthropod exoskeleton, have different ...
or inconvenience people with color blindness ; and * cause disputes, since other editors may disagree aesthetically with the choice of style. Specify font sizes (for example with font-size: 85%) rather than (like font-size: 8pt). The resulting font size of any text should not drop below 85% of the page's default font size.


Color coding

Do not use color to mark differences in text: they may be invisible to people with
color blindness Color blindness or color vision deficiency (CVD) is the decreased ability to see color or differences in color. It can impair tasks such as selecting ripe fruit, choosing clothing, and reading traffic lights. Color blindness may make some aca ...
and useless in black-and-white printouts or displays. Choose colors such as maroon and teal that are distinguishable by readers with the most common form of colorblindness, and mark the differences with change of font or some other means ( maroon and alternative font face, teal). Avoid low contrast between text and background colors. See also
color coding A color code is a system for displaying information by using different colors. The earliest examples of color codes in use are for long-distance communication by use of flags, as in semaphore communication. The United Kingdom adopted a color c ...
. Even for readers with unimpaired color vision, excessive background shading of table entries impedes readability and recognition of Wikilinks. Background color should be used only as a visual cue and should be subtle (consider using lighter, less-dominant
pastel A pastel () is an art medium in a variety of forms including a stick, a square a pebble or a pan of color; though other forms are possible; they consist of powdered pigment and a binder. The pigments used in pastels are similar to those use ...
hues) rather than glaring.


Indentation

Do not abuse block quotation markup to indent non-quotations. Various templates are available for indentation, including and (for inline use) . Avoid : ( description list markup) for simple visual indentation in articles (common as it may be on talk pages). It causes accessibility problems and outputs invalid HTML.


Controlling line breaks

It is sometimes desirable to force a text segment to appear entirely on a single linethat is, to prevent a line break (line wrap) from occurring anywhere within it. * A
non-breaking space In word processing and digital typesetting, a non-breaking space, , also called NBSP, required space, hard space, or fixed space (though it is not of fixed width), is a space character that prevents an automatic line break at its position. I ...
(or hard space) will never be used as a line-break point. Markup: for , code 19&nbsp;kg 19kg. * Or use , , or (all equivalent). Markup: for code . It is desirable to prevent line breaks where breaking across lines might be confusing or awkward. For example: Whether a non-breaking space is appropriate depends on context: whereas it is appropriate to use 12MB in prose, it may be counterproductive in a table (where an unattractive break may be acceptable to conserve precious horizontal space) and unnecessary in a short parameter value in an infobox (where a break would never occur anyway). A line break may occur at a thin space (&thinsp;, or ), which is sometimes used to correct too-close placement of adjacent characters. To prevent this, consider using . Insert non-breaking and thin spaces as named character reference (&nbsp; or &thinsp;), or as templates that generate these (, ), and never by entering them directly into the edit window from the keyboardthey are visually indistinguishable from regular spaces, and later editors will be unable to see what they are. Inside wikilinks, a construction such as works but doesn't.


Scrolling lists and collapsible content

Scrolling lists, and collapsible templates that toggle text display between ''hide'' and ''show'', can interfere with readers' ability to access our content. Such mechanisms should not be used to conceal "
spoiler Spoiler is a security vulnerability on modern computer central processing units that use speculative execution. It exploits side-effects of speculative execution to improve the efficiency of Rowhammer and other related memory and cache attacks. ...
" information. Templates should not normally be used to store article text at all, as it interferes with editors' ability to find and edit it. When such features are used, take care that the content will still be accessible on devices that do not support JavaScript or CSS, and to the greater than 60% of Wikipedia readers who use the mobile version of the site, which has a limited set of features and does not support collapsing (any collapsible templates will either be automatically uncollapsed or hidden entirely). Mobile ability to access the content in question is easy to test with the "Mobile view" link at the bottom of each page. This includes reference lists, tables and
lists A ''list'' is any set of items in a row. List or lists may also refer to: People * List (surname) Organizations * List College, an undergraduate division of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America * SC Germania List, German rugby union ...
of article content, image galleries, and image captions. When hiding content is desired, it must be done using the collapsible parameter of relevant templates, or manually-added CSS classes collapsed, mw-collapsed, and autocollapse (see Help:Collapsing). Other methods of hiding content should not be used, as they may render content inaccessible to many users, such as those browsing Wikipedia with
JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior, of ...
disabled, browsing the mobile version, or using proxy services such as Google Web Light. Collapsed or auto-collapsing ''cells'' or ''sections'' may be used with tables if they simply repeat information covered in the main text (or are purely supplementary, e.g., several past years of statistics in collapsed tables for comparison with a table of uncollapsed current stats). Auto-collapsing is often a feature of navboxes. A few infoboxes also use pre-collapsed sections for infrequently accessed details. If information in a list, infobox, or other non-navigational content seems extraneous or trivial enough to inspire pre-collapsing it, consider raising a discussion on the article (or template) talk page about whether it should be included at all. If the information is important and the concern is article density or length, consider dividing the article into more sections, integrating unnecessarily list-formatted information into the article prose, or splitting the article.


Invisible comments

Editors use "invisible" commentsnot shown in the rendered page seen by readers of the article, but visible in the source editing mode when an editor opens the article for editingto communicate with one another. Invisible comments are useful for alerting other editors to issues such as common mistakes that regularly occur in the article, a section title's being the target of an incoming link, or pointing to a discussion that established a consensus relating to the article. They should not be used to instruct other editors not to perform certain edits, although where existing local consensus is against making such an edit, they may usefully draw the editor's attention to that. Avoid adding too many invisible comments because they can clutter the wiki source for other editors. Check that your invisible comment does not change the formatting, for example by introducing unwanted white space in the rendered page. To leave an invisible comment, enclose the text you intend to be read only by editors between <!-- and -->. For example: * * This notation can be inserted with a single click in
wiki markup A wiki ( ) is an online hypertext publication collaboratively edited and managed by its own audience, using a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages for the subjects or scope of the project, and could be either open to the pub ...
, just under the edit pane in edit mode.


Pronunciation

Pronunciation in Wikipedia is indicated in the
International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standardized representation ...
(IPA). In most situations, for ease of understanding by the majority of readers and across variants of the language, quite broad IPA transcriptions are best for English pronunciations. See Help:IPA/English and Help:IPA (general) for keys, and for templates that link to these keys. For English pronunciations, pronunciation respellings may be used the IPA.


See also

* Editing policy – explains Wikipedia's general philosophy of editing *
Wikipedia is not a manual, guidebook, textbook, or scientific journal Wikipedia is a multilingual free online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and using a wiki-based editing system. Wikipedia is the largest and most-read refe ...
we write for a general, not technical, readership as much as we can * Manual of Style tutoriala quick introduction to the style guide for articles * Manual of Style quiztest your Manual of Style knowledge * Styletips – a list of advice for editors on writing style and formatting * Manual of Style Contents – guidelines for film, novels, biographies, military history, etc. * Identifying and using style guidesan essay providing a summary of off-site style guides' influences on MoS and their uses as sources in Wikipedia articles * Wikipedia:If MOS doesn't need a rule on something, then it needs to not have a rule on that thingresisting MOSbloat


Guidance

* Annotated article – is a well-constructed sample article, with annotations * Article development – lists the ways in which you can help an article grow ** Basic copyediting – gives helpful advice on copy-editing ** Better articles – guidance on how to make articles better ** Perfect article – point-by-point guidance on what makes a great article * Avoiding common mistakes – gives a list of common mistakes and how to avoid them *
Be bold Be bold may refer to: * Boldness, the opposite of shyness * "Be bold", the first part of a quote attributed to Basil King William Benjamin Basil King (1859–1928) was a Canadian clergyman who became a writer after retiring from the clergy. H ...
– suggests a bold attitude toward page updates *
Citing sources A citation is a reference to a source. More precisely, a citation is an abbreviated alphanumeric expression embedded in the body of an intellectual work that denotes an entry in the bibliographic references section of the work for the purpose o ...
– explains process and standards for citing references *
Editing Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written, photographic, visual, audible, or cinematic material used by a person or an entity to convey a message or information. The editing process can involve correction, condensation, or ...
– is a short primer on editing pages *
Style guide A style guide or manual of style is a set of standards for the writing, formatting, and design of documents. It is often called a style sheet, although that term also has multiple other meanings. The standards can be applied either for gene ...
– contains links to the style guides of some magazines and newspapers *
Wiki markup A wiki ( ) is an online hypertext publication collaboratively edited and managed by its own audience, using a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages for the subjects or scope of the project, and could be either open to the pub ...
– explains the codes and resources available for editing a page * Wikipedia:''in'' versus ''of'' – proper use of ''in'' and ''of'' (or some alternatives, as ''from'' and ''on'')


Tools

* User:GregU's dashes script – a script that will fix dashes in articles in accordance with MOS:DASH * User:Ohconfucius MOSDATE script – a script that will unify dates in articles in accordance with MOS:DATEFORMAT


Other community standards

*
List of policies A ''list'' is any set of items in a row. List or lists may also refer to: People * List (surname) Organizations * List College, an undergraduate division of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America * SC Germania List, German rugby unio ...
– a comprehensive, descriptive directory of policies * List of guidelines – a comprehensive descriptive directory of guidelines ** Community standards and advicea quick directory of community norms and related guidance essays * Advice pages – about advice pages written by WikiProjects


Guidelines within the Manual of Style

(Links to policy and guidelines on specific questions)


Names

* Proper names: ** Generally (dedicated MOS page): Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Proper names ** Place names: ** Diacritical marks in names: ** Peoples and languages that share the same name: ** Names of ships in article titles and in the body of articles: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (ships) * Naming and identifying individuals and peoples: ** Generally: ** Specifically (for individuals): ** Opening paragraph of biographies: * Names of organizations: ** Generally (has application beyond the topic guideline in which it is currently located): ** Names that are also trademarks (dedicated MOS page): Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Trademarks * Names of animal and plant species, etc. (in article titles): Wikipedia:Naming conventions (fauna), Wikipedia:Naming conventions (flora)


Notes


References


Further reading


External style guides

Wikipedians are encouraged to familiarize themselves with modern editions of other guides to style and usage, which may cover details not included here. Those that have most influenced the Wikipedia Manual of Style are: * ''
The Chicago Manual of Style ''The Chicago Manual of Style'' (abbreviated in writing as ''CMOS'' or ''CMS'', or sometimes as ''Chicago'') is a style guide for American English published since 1906 by the University of Chicago Press. Its 17 editions have prescribed writi ...
'' (University of Chicago Press). Th
''CMS Crib Sheet''
is free online, and summarizes the main provisions. * '' Oxford Guide to Style'' (Oxford University Press). A compressed edition is available as ''New Hart's Rules''. Available with its companion, the ''Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors'', in one volume as ''New Oxford Style Manual'' * ''
Scientific Style and Format The Council of Science Editors (CSE), formerly the Council of Biology Editors (CBE; 1965–2000) and originally the Conference of Biology Editors (CBE; 1957–1965), is a United States-based nonprofit organization that supports editorial practic ...
'' (Council of Science Editors) * ''
Garner's Modern English Usage ''Garner's Modern English Usage'' (''GMEU''), written by Bryan A. Garner and published by Oxford University Press, is a usage dictionary and style guide (or ' prescriptive dictionary') for contemporary Modern English. It was first published in 1 ...
'' (Oxford University Press) * '' Fowler's Dictionary of Modern English Usage'' (Oxford University Press; primarily British English) * '' The MLA Style Manual'' (Modern Language Association) * ''
The Elements of Style ''The Elements of Style'' is an American English writing style guide in numerous editions. The original was written by William Strunk Jr. in 1918, and published by Harcourt in 1920, comprising eight "elementary rules of usage", ten "elementary ...
'' by Strunk & White For additional reference works, see notable entries at ''
Style guide A style guide or manual of style is a set of standards for the writing, formatting, and design of documents. It is often called a style sheet, although that term also has multiple other meanings. The standards can be applied either for gene ...
'' and '. {{Writing guides