STOWiki:Manual of Style

Shortcut: STOW:STYLE

This page is considered a guideline on STOWiki. It illustrates standards of conduct, which many editors agree with in principle. However, it is not policy. Feel free to update the page as needed, but please put proposals for any major changes to a vote on this article's discussion page. See the Guidelines home page for an overview of STOWiki guidelines. See Category:Guidelines for a list of proposed and accepted guideline articles.

This guideline discusses best practices with regard to the writing style. We strive to achieve a consistent style across all articles. This however is only a guideline, not a policy. Violations against these suggestions should be corrected, but not frowned upon (see also Please do not bite the newcomers guideline).

Tense

All articles discussing in-game elements or aspects are written from a 2409 perspective. That means, that in general we use the present tense, as a contemporary encyclopedia does. Articles about Cryptic Studios or other meta-elements like the C-Store are written in a contemporary style, i.e. present tense for ongoing and current developments, past tense for completed and past developments and future tense for announcements etc. Articles that are specific to the STOWiki like the Main Page, these guidelines or talk pages should also use the present tense where appropriate.

Neutral style

Outside of guides, walkthroughs and talk pages, which are intended to give room for personal and subjective opinions, adhere to a neutral point of view. E.g. do not evaluate an item or ability when presenting it upfront. You may however add some information on its usefulness and relation to others of its kind in a Notes sub-section. This however should be backed not only by your personal opinion, but by external references like a profound forum discussion or a developer interview. Of course you can also present original research, but base your findings transparently on numbers, that everyone can reproduce.

Addressing the reader

Using second-person pronouns (you, your) is discouraged in articles with an in-game (e.g. items, skills, NPCs) or meta-game (e.g. a developer article, user interface, C-Store) subject. Try to find a neutral point of view and talk about the player in the third person. For example "the player's starship" instead of "your starship". Also try to differentiate between the player and the character. So in an article you might want to elaborate on "the character's health" instead of "the player's health".

In guidelines, project pages and talk pages using second-person pronouns is however strongly encouraged.

Article titles

In general, we prefer singular, lower case article names, if the game does not use the article title as a proper name. Article titles must not contain capitalized words unless they are proper nouns, such as "Federation", "Cardassian", "Sulu", ranks (when used as part of name), and "Spacedock" in the phrase "Earth Spacedock" (because it is itself a proper noun consisting of more than one word, each of which must be capitalized. Item names may be capitalized as they are in the game.

So for example an article would be named bridge officer, not bridge officers or Bridge Officers. Items are capitalized as in the game: Tribble of Borg instead of tribble of borg or Tribble Of Borg. Locations are generally capitalized: Sol System instead of Sol or Sol system; Fluidic Space instead of fluidic space; Alpha Quadrant instead of alpha quadrant or Alpha quadrant. Article titles must not contain ranks for characters in the game. For example, Jorel Quinn instead of Admiral Quinn.

The first occurrence of the article title (or a variant thereof, e.g. plural) in the article itself must be in bold. An exception are NPCs, who are always addressed with their rank in-game For example, in the article for Zihr starts with "Ensign Zihr is..." instead of "Ensign Zihr is...".

In order to distinguish identically named entities like the Accolade Lucky and the Trait Lucky the respective articles get separate prefixes.

Article Type	Prefix	Example
NPCs (non-player characters)	(None)	Golos Vell
Starships	(Prefix) (Name)	U.S.S. Oakland
Missions	Mission:(space)	Mission: Stranded In Space
Items (all)	(None)	Disruptor Dual Pistols
Skills (all)	Skill:(space)	Skill: Tactical Team Leader
Trait (all)	Trait:(space)	Trait: Leadership
Injury (all)	Injury:(space)	Injury: Minor Concussion
Accolade (all)	Accolade:(space)	Accolade: Affluent
Guide (all)	Guide:(space)	Guide: Basics

Lists

An exception from the article naming guideline on plural forms are lists. The most prominent example is the list of missions.

Categories

Categories should adhere to the usual article naming guidelines, but in fact many are not. The Category: Federation Starships is such an example. Since it is a lot of work, to rename an established category with many members, users are encouraged to pay special attention to creating new categories.

Linking

For the following article types, the corresponding template must be used when linking to it:

Article Type	Template	Example
NPCs (non-player characters)	(None)	[[Malcolm Sissel]]
Starships	{{USS}}, {{IKS}}, {{IRW}}	{{USS|Oakland}}
Missions	{{mission}}	{{mission|Assimilation}}
ALL Items	{{item}}	{{item|Body Armor - Energy Dampening|Mk II|common}} {{item|Livanian Beet||common}}
Abilities	{{ability}}	{{ability|Evasive Maneuvers}}
Skills	{{skill}}	{{skill|Science Team Leader}}
Traits	{{trait}}	{{trait|Cold Dwelling}}
Injuries	{{injury}}	{{injury|Minor concussion}}
Accolades	{{accolade}}	{{accolade|Affluent}}

• LINKING: Should a new entry be created on the STO Wiki? Or should it be linked to the Memory Alpha wiki? If it is a link-worthy article, but is only mentioned in passing, then link to Memory Alpha like so. Otherwise, create a new article and/or add content to the article.
• ONLY LINK ONCE: While we encourage linking as much relevant information as possible to new articles, only one link per page is necessary. So if the Romulans are referenced more than once, only the first reference may be linked.

See also

• The guideline on formatting