GuildWiki:Style and formatting

This article covers information on proper style and formatting rules. For formatting of individual sections please see the links below.


 * Skills (Talk)
 * Quests (Talk)
 * Bestiary (Talk)
 * NPC (Talk)
 * Items (Talk)
 * Armor (Talk)
 * Weapons (Talk)
 * Materials (Talk)
 * Unique items (Talk)
 * Professions (Talk)
 * Locations (Talk)
 * Missions (Talk)
 * Builds (Talk)

The GuildWiki is a project to document and organise the world of Guild Wars as effectively as possible in the form of a Wiki. Anyone is welcome to contribute! An important part of creating such an exhaustive source of information is ensuring that the content is delivered in a pleasing, uniform way. In order to achieve this the GuildWiki community has worked to produce some standards on the format of the wiki. As they currently stand these standards are not set in stone, but they are considered 'good policy'. If you have any suggestions for improving the standards please discuss them on the GuildWiki style and formatting talk page before implementing them.

General Notes on Formatting
When working on an article there are some points to consider. Try to think about whether this article topic is too generic. If the topic of the article you are working on is too generic then it is likely to grow extremely large. To avoid this try splitting the article up into it's constituent parts. For example, an article on humans in Guild Wars doesn't need to contain details of every human in the game. Looking at the headings of sections in an article is a good indication of how the article can be split up.

The following is a brief summary of some common style issues. More information on any point is contained in the articles mentioned.

Linking
When writing an article, linking from the current article to the current article will embolden the text within the link. For example Style and formatting in any other article will produce a link, but in this article it will appear like this: Style and formatting. After discussion it has been decided that linking to articles from within articles is preferable, as it produces semantically accurate documents.

When making links to other articles it's best to only link the first instance of a word for each paragraph. So if you are talking about skills then don't link to the page every time you repeat the word 'skills'. This also applies when making 'recursive' links, or links from the current article to the current article, as in the above example.

Upper/Lower Case
When in doubt, use lower case. This includes in article headings, article titles, and category names.

Getting Started
Articles can generally describe


 * an object, such as an item or weapon
 * a Non-Player Character, either friendly or hostile
 * a location
 * a guide on how to do something, such as a quest or mission
 * a collection of all of the above in a category

Anyone is welcome to update the wiki, but before you write your article it's best to double check that an article doesn't already exist on the subject. You can do so by making use of the search bar on the left. If you are unsure, make use of the discussion link that appears at the top of every article, allowing you to discuss that article.

If you click on a red link you will be prompted with the choice to start writing a new article on the subject. You can also start a new article by clicking on the "edit" link at the top of an article with no content. For an understanding of the Wiki Code necessary to format a page please read the Editing guide.

Unknown Information
In some cases you won't have all the information to hand. If this is the case please do not fill in information with guesses or approximations. No information is better than inaccurate information! This is especially true of numerical details, such as damage ranges, but might not always apply to descriptions. If you can only remember an approximate description then in most cases this could suffice, but please use your discretion.

Please omit sections if you don't have the information for them. For example, most skills should have an "Acquisition" section. If you don't know how to acquire a given skill then please don't fill in this section with "to be completed" or "unknown". Instead omit the section and readers will know that this information is unknown.

Categorization and localization
Category and localization links should be located at the end of the page.

Boxes
Many articles that discuss an object or character in the game make use of boxes. At the moment only the Skill box had been rigorously standardised, but Items, Weapons and Creatures are currently undergoing a similar process. In order to avoid confusion the following colors should be used to represent the appropriate object.

&#42; These colors are suggested.

When designing new boxes try to pick colors that differ as much as possible from those already in place, but are still light enough so that you can read black text on top of it. Try to keep to the list of accepted X11 color names.

Other Notes

 * When listing professions, keep to the order: warrior, ranger, monk, necromancer, mesmer, elementalist, assassin, ritualist.
 * When archiving keep to Page_name/Archive_X, X being the number