Hear it pronouncedWikipedia:Manual of Style
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This guideline is a part of the English Wikipedia's Manual of Style. Editors should follow it, except where common sense and the occasional exception will improve an article. Before editing this page, please make sure that your revision reflects consensus. |
The Manual of Style, often abbreviated MoS, is a style guide for users that aims to make the encyclopedia easier to read in English. One way of presenting information is often just as good as another, but consistency promotes professionalism, simplicity and greater cohesion in Wikipedia articles. An overriding principle is that style and formatting should be applied consistently throughout an article, unless there is a good reason to do otherwise (except in direct quotations, where the original text is generally preserved).
If the Manual of Style does not specify a preferred usage, discuss your issues on the talk page of this manual. The menu to the right contains links to Manual of Style pages that explore topics in greater detail.
It is inappropriate for an editor to change an article from one style to another unless there is a substantial reason to do so; for example, it is unacceptable to change from American to British spelling unless the article concerns a British topic. Edit warring over optional styles is unacceptable. If an article has been stable in a given style, it should not be converted without a reason that goes beyond mere choice of style. When it is unclear whether an article has been stable, defer to the style used by the first major contributor.[1]
[ Article titles, headings and sections
[ Article titles
This guidance applies to the titles of Wikipedia articles, not to the titles of external articles that are cited.
- Article titles should conform to Naming conventions, including Use English.
- Titles are generally nouns or noun phrases (Effects of the wild, not About the effects of the wild).
- Titles should be short—preferably fewer than ten words.
- The first letter of the first word, letters in acronyms, and the first letter of each word of a proper noun are capitalized; all other letters are in lower case (Funding of UNESCO projects, not Funding of UNESCO Projects).
- A, an and the are normally avoided as the first word (Economy of the Second Empire, not The economy of the Second Empire), unless part of a proper noun (The Hague).
- Pronouns (you, they) are normally avoided, except when they form part of the title of a work.
- Links cannot be used in article titles, and should not be used in section titles; instead, link the first occurrence of the phrase in the body of the text.
- Special characters such as the slash (/), plus sign (+), braces ({ }) and square brackets ([ ]) are avoided; the ampersand (&) is replaced by and, unless it is part of a formal name.
This guidance also applies to Section headings below.
[ First sentences
- If possible, an article title is the subject of the first sentence of the article; for example, "The Manual of Style is a style guide" instead of "This style guide is known as ...". If the article title is an important term, it appears as early as possible. The first (and only the first) appearance of the title is in boldface, including its abbreviation in parentheses, if given. Equivalent names may follow, and may or may not be in boldface. Items in boldface are not linked, and boldface is not used subsequently in the first paragraph. For example: "Vienna (German: Wien [viːn], see also its other names) is the capital of Austria and one of that country's nine states."
- If the topic of an article has no name and the title is merely descriptive—such as Electrical characteristics of a dynamic loudspeaker—the title does not need to appear verbatim in the main text; if it does, it is not in boldface.
- The normal rules for italics are followed in choosing whether to put part or all of the title in italics ("Tattoo You is an album by The Rolling Stones, released in 1981").
- If the topic of the article may be unfamiliar to some readers, establish a context. For example, instead of "A trusted third party is an entity that facilitates interactions between two parties who both trust the third party", write "In cryptography, a trusted third party is an entity that facilitates interactions between two parties who both trust the third party". The context in this example is that the topic covered by the article is the use of that notion in the field of cryptography.
[ Section headings
- SEE ALSO the guidance in Article titles above, which applies to section headings.
- Section names should preferably be unique within a page; this applies even for the names of subsections. The disadvantages of duplication are that:
- Avoid restating or directly referring to the topic or to wording on a higher level in the hierarchy (Early life, not His early life).
- Unspaced multiple equal signs are the style markup for headings. The triple apostrophes ( ''' ) that make words appear in boldface are not used in headings. Nest headings correctly. The hierarchy is as follows:
- Spaces between the == and the heading text are optional (==H2== versus == H2 ==). These extra spaces will not affect the appearance of the heading, except in the edit window.
- A blank line below the heading is optional. If there are no blank lines above the heading, one line should be added, for readability in the edit window. Only two or more blank lines above or below will change the public appearance of the page by adding more white space.
[ Section management
- Headings provide an overview in the table of contents and allow readers to navigate through the text more easily.
- Change a heading only after careful consideration, because this will break section links to it within the same article and from other articles. If changing a heading, try to locate and fix broken links; for example, searching for wikipedia "section management" will yield links to the current section.
- When linking to a section, as a courtesy, go to that article's section and leave an editor's note to remind others that the title is linked. List the names of the linking articles, so that if the title is altered, others can fix the links without having to perform exhaustive searches. For example:
==Evolutionary implications==<!--This section is linked from [[Richard Dawkins]] and [[Daniel Dennett]]--> . - As well, consider a preemptive measure to minimize link corruption when the text of a heading changes by inserting an {{anchor}} with an alternative name by which to link to that heading section. For example:
==Evolutionary implications{{anchors | RDawkins | DDennett}}==<!-- This section is linked from [[Richard Dawkins]] and [[Daniel Dennett]] --> . - When referring to a section without linking, italicize the section name (italicize the actual section name only if it otherwise requires italics, such as the title of a book); for example, the current section is called Section management.
- The standard order for optional appendix sections at the end of an article is See also, Notes (or Footnotes), References, Further reading (or Bibliography), and External links; the order of Notes and References can be reversed. See also is an exception to the point above that wording comprises nouns and noun phrases. For information on these optional sections, see Wikipedia:Layout#Standard appendices and descriptions and Wikipedia:Citing sources.
[ Capital letters
There are differences between the major varieties of English in the use of capitals (uppercase letters). Where this is an issue, the rules of the cultural and linguistic context apply. As for spelling, consistency is maintained within an article.
Within articles and other wiki pages, capitals are not used for emphasis. Where wording cannot provide the emphasis, italics are used.
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Incorrect: Contrary to popular belief, aardvarks are Not the same as anteaters. Incorrect: Contrary to popular belief, aardvarks are NOT the same as anteaters. Correct: Contrary to popular belief, aardvarks are not the same as anteaters.
[ Titles
- When used as titles (that is, followed by a name), items such as president, king and emperor start with a capital letter: President Clinton, not president Clinton. The formal name of an office is treated as a proper noun: Hirohito was Emperor of Japan and Louis XVI was King of France (where Emperor of Japan and King of France, respectively, are titles). Royal styles are capitalized: Her Majesty and His Highness; exceptions may apply for particular offices.
- When used generically, such items are in lower case: De Gaulle was a French president and Louis XVI was a French king. Similarly, Three prime ministers attended the conference, but, The British Prime Minister is Gordon Brown.
- For the use of titles and honorifics in biographical articles, see Honorific prefixes.
[ Religions, deities, philosophies, doctrines and their adherents
- 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 (the Shī'a, not The Shī'a). (But see also the style guide and naming convention for the Latter Day Saint movement.)
- Scriptures (religious texts) are capitalized but often not italicized[dubious ] (for example, the names of the Qurʾan, the Talmud, the Granth Sahib, and the Bible). When the is used, it is not capitalized. Some derived adjectives are capitalized by convention, some are not (often biblical, but normally Koranic); for others, check a dictionary appropriate to the topic, and be consistent within an article.
- Honorifics for deities, including proper nouns and titles, start with a capital letter (God, Allah, the Lord, the Supreme Being, the Great Spirit); the is not capitalized. The same is true when referring to major religious figures and figures from mythology by titles or terms of respect (the Prophet, the Messiah, the Virgin, a Muse). Common nouns denoting deities or religious figures are not capitalized; thus the Romans worshipped many gods, many Anglo-Saxons worshipped the god Wotan, Jesus and Muhammad are both considered prophets in Islam, biblical scholars dispute whether Mary was a virgin for her entire life, and her husband was her muse.
- Pronouns and possessives referring to figures of veneration are not capitalized in Wikipedia articles, even when they traditionally are in a religion's scriptures. They are left capitalized when directly quoting scriptures or any other texts that capitalize them.
- Broad categories of mythical or legendary creatures do not start with uppercase capital letters (elf, fairy, nymph, unicorn, angel), although in derived works of fantasy, such as the novels of J.R.R. Tolkien and real-time strategy video games, initial capitals are sometimes used to indicate that the beings are regarded as cultures or races in their fictional universes. Names or titles of individual creatures are capitalized (the Minotaur, the Pegasus) as are those of groups whose name and membership are fixed (the Cherubim, the Magi or the Three Wise Men). As with terms for deities, generalized references are not capitalized (cherub-like, the priests of this sect were called magi by some, several wise men were consulted).
- Spiritual or religious events are likewise capitalized only when they are terms referring to specific incidents or periods (the Great Flood, the Exodus, but annual flooding or an exodus of refugees).
- Philosophies, theories and doctrines do not begin with a capital letter unless the name derives from a proper noun (capitalism versus Marxism) or has become a proper noun (lowercase republican refers to a system of political thought; uppercase Republican refers to one of several specific political parties or ideologies, such as the US Republican Party or Irish Republicanism). Physical and natural laws and parodies of them are capitalized (the Second Law of Thermodynamics, the Theory of Special Relativity, Murphy's Law; but an expert on gravity and relativity, thermodynamic properties, Murphy's famous mock-law). Doctrinal topics or canonical religious ideas (as distinguished from specific events) that may be traditionally capitalized within a faith are given in lower case in Wikipedia, such as virgin birth, original sin or transubstantiation.
- Platonic or transcendent ideals are capitalized (Good, Truth), but only within the context of philosophical doctrine; used more broadly, they are lower-case (Superman represents American ideals of truth and justice). Personifications represented in art, such as a statue of the figure Justice, are capitalized.
[ Calendar items
- Months, days of the week, and holidays start with a capital letter: June, Monday, the Fourth of July (when referring to the U.S. Independence Day, otherwise July 4 or 4 July).
- Seasons, in almost all instances, are lowercase: This summer was very hot; The winter solstice occurs about December 22; I've got spring fever. When personified, season names may function as proper nouns, and they should then be capitalized: I think Spring is showing her colors; Old Man Winter.
[ Animals, plants, and other organisms
Scientific names for genera and species are italicized, with a capital initial letter for the genus but no capital for the species; for more specific guidelines for article titles, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Tree of Life#Article titles. For example, the tulip tree is Liriodendron tulipifera, and humans are Homo sapiens. Taxonomic groups higher than genus are given with an initial capital and are not in italics; for example, gulls are in the family Laridae, and we are in the family Hominidae.
Common (vernacular) names of flora and fauna should be written in lower case—for example, oak or lion. There are a limited number of exceptions to this:
- Where the common name contains a proper noun, such as the name of a person or place, that proper noun should be capitalized; for example, The Amur tiger may have a range of over 500 square kilometres, or The Roosevelt elk is a subspecies of Cervus canadensis.
- For specific groups of organisms, there are specific rules of capitalization based on current and historic usage among those who study the organisms. These should ordinarily be followed:
- In a very few cases, a set of officially established common names are recognized only within a country or a geographic region. Those common names may be capitalized according to local custom but it should be understood that not all editors will have access to the references needed to support these names; in such cases, using the general recommendation is also acceptable.
In any case, a redirect from an alternative capitalization should be created where it is used in an article title.
[ Celestial bodies
- Sun, earth and moon are not capitalized generally (The sun was peeking over the mountain top). They may be proper nouns in an astronomical context but only when referring to specific celestial bodies (our Sun, Earth and Moon): so The Moon orbits the Earth, but Jupiter's moon Io.
- Other planets and stars are proper nouns and start with a capital letter: The planet Mars can be seen tonight in the constellation Gemini, near the star Pollux. Where a name has multiple words, it is treated like other proper nouns where each leading letter is capitalized: Alpha Centauri and not Alpha centauri.
[ Directions and regions
- Directions such as north are not proper nouns and are therefore lowercase. The same is true for their related forms: someone might call a road that leads north a northern road, compared with the Great North Road. Composite directions may or may not be hyphenated (northeast and north-east, Southeast Asia and South-East Asia), depending on the general style adopted in the article.
- Regions that are proper nouns, including widely known expressions such as Southern California, start with a capital letter. Follow the same convention for related forms: a person from the Southern United States is a Southerner. Regions of uncertain proper-noun status are assumed not to have attained it.
[ Institutions
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The following section's wording or inclusion in this policy or guideline is disputed or under discussion. Please see the relevant discussion on the talk page for further information. |
- Proper names of institutions (for example, the University of Sydney, New York-Presbyterian Hospital, George Brown College) are proper nouns and require capitalization. Where a title starts with the, it typically starts with lowercase t when the title occurs in the middle of a sentence: a degree from the University of Sydney.
- Generic words for institutions (university, college, hospital, high school) require no capitalization:
-
-
Incorrect (generic): The University offers programs in arts and sciences. Correct (generic): The university offers ... Correct (title): The University of Delhi offers ...
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[ Acronyms and abbreviations
- Write out both the full version and the abbreviation at first occurrence
- Readers are not necessarily familiar with any particular acronym such as NASA (pronounced as a word) or initialism such as PBS (pronounced by saying the names of the letters themselves). The standard practice is to name the item in full on its first occurrence, followed by the acronym in parentheses. (That last acronym meant acronym or initialism; it is common for acronym to be used in both senses.) For example, The New Democratic Party (NDP) won the 1990 Ontario election with a significant majority (first mention of New Democratic Party in the article) and The NDP quickly became unpopular with the voters (subsequent mention).
- Initial capitals are not used in the full name of an item just because capitals are used in the abbreviation.
- If the full term is already in parentheses, use a comma and or to indicate the abbreviation; for example, They first debated the issue in 1992 (at a convention of the New Democratic Party, or NDP).
- Plural and possessive forms
- Acronyms and initialisms are pluralized by adding -s or -es as with any other nouns (They produced three CD-ROMs in the first year; The laptops were produced with three different BIOSes in 2006). As with other nouns, no apostrophe is used unless the form is a possessive.
- Periods (full stops) and spaces
- Acronyms and initialisms are generally not separated by full stops (periods) or blank spaces (GNP, NORAD, OBE, GmbH); many periods and spaces that were traditionally required have now dropped out of usage (PhD is preferred over Ph.D. and Ph. D.).
- Truncated (Hon. for Honorable), compressed (cmte. for committee) and contracted (Dr. for Doctor) abbreviations may or may not be closed with a period. A period is much more usual in American usage (Dr. Smith of 42 St. Joseph St.); and no period is commonly preferred in British and other usage (Dr Smith of 42 St Joseph St, though one or other "St" might take a period, in such a case). Some British and other authorities prefer to drop the period from truncated and compressed abbreviations generally (XYZ Corp, ABC Ltd), a practice also favored in science writing. Regardless of punctuation, such abbreviations are spaced if multi-word (op. cit. or op cit, not op.cit. or opcit).
- US and U.S.
- In American English, U.S. is the standard abbreviation for United States; US is becoming more common and is standard in other national forms of English. In longer abbreviations incorporating the country's initials (USN, USAF), periods are not used. When the United States is mentioned along with one or more other countries in the same sentence, U.S. or US can be too informal, and many editors avoid it especially at first mention of the country (France and the United States, not France and the U.S.). In a given article, if the abbreviated form of the United States appears predominantly alongside other abbreviated country names, for consistency it is preferable to avoid periods throughout; never add periods to the other abbreviations (the US, the UK and the PRC, not the U.S., the U.K. and the P.R.C.). The spaced U. S. is never used, nor is the archaic U.S. of A., except in quoted materials. U.S.A. and USA are not used unless quoted or as part of a proper name (Team USA).
- In all of these matters, maintain consistency within an article. The sole exception is that for units of measurement, periods are not used even if other abbreviations are dotted. (See Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) for more information.)
- Do not use unwarranted abbreviations
- The use of abbreviations should be avoided when they would be confusing to the reader, interrupt the flow, or appear informal or lazy. For example, approx. for approximate or approximately should generally not be used, although it may be useful for reducing the width of an infobox or a table of data, or in a technical passage in which the term occurs many times.
- See also Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) for when to abbreviate units of measurement.
- Do not invent abbreviations or acronyms
- Generally avoid the making up of new abbreviations, especially acronyms. For example, while it is reasonable to provide World Union of Billiards as a translation of Union Mondiale de Billard, the former is not the organization's name, and it does not use the acronym or initialism WUB; when referring to it in short form, use the official abbreviation UMB. In a wide table of international economic data, it might be desirable to abbreviate a United States gross national product heading; this might be done with the widely recognized initialisms US and GNP spaced together, with a link to appropriate articles, if it is not already explained: US GNP, rather than the made-up initialism USGNP.
- HTML elements
- The software that Wikipedia runs on does not support HTML abbreviation elements (
<acronym>or<abbr>); therefore, these tags are not inserted into the source (see Mediazilla:671).
[ Italics
- Further information: Wikipedia:Manual of Style (text formatting)
- Emphasis
- Italics are used sparingly to emphasize words in sentences (bolding is normally not used at all for this purpose). Generally, the more highlighting in an article, the less the effect of each instance.
- Titles
- Italics are used for the titles of works of literature and art, such as books, paintings and musical albums. The titles of articles, chapters, songs and other short works are not italicized, but are enclosed in double quotation marks.
- Italics are not used for major revered religious works (for example the Bible, the Koran, and the Talmud).
- Words as words
- Italics are used when mentioning a word or letter (see Use–mention distinction) or a string of words up to a full sentence: "The term panning is derived from panorama, a word coined in 1787"; "The most commonly used letter in English is e". For a whole sentence, quotation marks may be used instead: "The preposition in She sat on the chair is on", or "The preposition in 'She sat on the chair' is on". Mentioning (to discuss such features as grammar, wording and punctuation) is different from quoting (in which something is usually expressed on behalf of a quoted source).
- Foreign words
- Wikipedia prefers italics for phrases in other languages and for isolated foreign words that do not yet have everyday use in non-specialized English.
- Quotations in italics
- For quotations, use only quotation marks (for short quotations) or block quoting (for long ones), not italics. (See Quotations below.) This means that (1) a quotation is not italicized inside quotation marks or a block quote just because it is a quotation, and (2) italicization is not used as a substitute for proper quotation formatting.
- Italics within quotations
- Italics are used within quotations if they are already in the source material, or are added by Wikipedia to give emphasis to some words. If thee latter, an editorial note "[emphasis added]" sh
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