Bulbapedia:Manual of style

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Revision as of 21:06, 14 August 2020 by Evkl (talk | contribs) (Article Titles: - merged from MoS.)
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This article is a proposed guideline for Bulbapedia.

Please discuss the proposed guideline and suggest possible changes on the article's talk page.

This is the working space for the upcoming refresh of the Manual of Style.

Keeping Continuity with Existing Style

General Style Guidance

This section deals with general style issues across Bulbapedia.

Article Titles

The conventions for titles dictate that all proper nouns are capitalized, as are all locations, and names unless specifically not capitalized. Titles are not written like book titles with most words capitalized (unless the article is about a book); note the title of this page as Manual of style, not Manual of Style.

Uniformity in the titling of pages is much appreciated in that it makes for a much more professional appearance with regards to the public perception of Bulbapedia. Any page title that includes a name should not be stored in a biographical format; i.e., "Gary Oak", not "Oak, Gary" as the page title for Ash's rival. In cases where only a first name (Bill) exists, or where a character is known by a title (such as Professor Oak) more than their proper name, those should be used as the sole title of the page. In the case of Professor Oak, redirects from "Prof. Oak" and "Samuel Oak" may be used.

In most cases, titles referring to a specific group should be kept singular, such as item rather than items. However, some exceptions are allowed when the group name is plural, such as Eevee brothers rather than Eevee brother.

Also, only link to an article once within a given portion of text; if you say "Ash" more than once in a paragraph, only link it the first time. Instances further apart may be linked to more than once, it is up to you how far apart to place repeated links. For consistency, if most elements of a list are links, then link to an article as many times as needed in that list.

Japanese titles should be romanized in titles, but see the following sections for details.

Opening Line

Naming and Syntax

Subpoints

Placeholder for syntax subpoints.

Opinion

Templates and List Sorting

Sectional Style Guidance

This section will contain links to the Manuals of Style for specific subsections.

Anime

Core Games

TCG

Manga

Side Games

Language

American English should be used rather than Commonwealth English in Bulbapedia articles. This consistent with most English language Pokémon games, as well as much of Pokémon media as a whole.) In general, Bulbapedia follows standard American English style conventions, not all of which are listed here.

  • Exceptions to the preference for American English are made if the spelling is officially the Commonwealth one, such as "Catalogue."
  • 's should be included at the end of singular possessives ending in s. While it is correct to either omit or include the s after the apostrophe in these cases, Bulbapedia follows the games' convention (for a multitude of reasons, including the games' usage) and appends the s. For example, Iris's should be used, not Iris'.
  • The serial comma should be used where applicable (matching the syntax of the Pokémon games).
  • Evolutionary levels should be designated as "unevolved," "first evolution," and "second evolution" for Pokémon that have undergone zero, one, and two evolutions respectively during their development. The TCG terminology of "basic Pokémon," "stage 1 Pokémon" and "stage 2 Pokémon" do not apply to other media.
    • For example, in the TCG Pikachu and several other Pokémon are considered Basic Pokémon, but have a pre-evolved form, making them first-evolution Pokémon. This discrepancy typically applies to evolutionary families that include a baby Pokémon.

Japanese

Kanji

See Bulbapedia:Manual of style/Kanji

Romanization

See Bulbapedia:Manual of style/Romanization

Multimedia and External Content

Addressing images, videos, and content from other websites and sources.

Images

Videos (including YouTube)

Integration of Content from Other Websites