Wikisource:Style guide

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Style guide

Shortcut: WS:STYLE This Manual of Style outlines Wikisource's formatting conventions and guidelines (see Wikipedia's article on style guides). These are not hard rules, and can be ignored where necessary. However, users should follow these guidelines where possible to ensure that Wikisource is consistent and maintains a high standard of quality. Style guide Annotations Images Poetry

Contents 1 Flexibility 2 General guidelines 2.1 Page titles 2.2 Article formatting 2.3 Headings 2.4 Wikilinks 2.5 Disambiguation pages 3 Particular guidelines 3.1 Author pages 3.2 Poetry and annotations 3.3 Templates 3.3.1 Usage 4 See also

[edit] Flexibility

While the style guide presents widely-supported standards, it is not a set of rigid rules. You may experiment with deviations, but other editors may find those deviations unacceptable, and revert those changes. They have just as much right to do that as you have to make them. Be ready to discuss those changes; if you want your way accepted, you have to make the case for that. Unless there is a good reason for deviating, the standard should be presumed correct. Refusing to discuss, or engaging in edit wars may also affect your credibility in other unrelated areas.

[edit] General guidelines

[edit] Page titles

1. Sentence form (most words lowercase) is preferred, unless an original capitalisation is consistently used. Normal exceptions, such as proper nouns, apply.
2. Subpage titles should be separated from the parent title by a forward slash ([[Title/Chapter 1]]). Sections should be numbered, not named ([[Title/Chapter 1]] and not [[Title/The Dog Returns]]). The section name should reflect those in the original work (Chapter II, Chapter 2, Act 2, et cetera).
3. Standalone works published as part of a collection, such as most poems, have their own pages (for example, They instead of "The Old Huntsman and Other Poems/They"). The collection page (ie, The Old Huntsman and Other Poems) can be created to link to them if the poems were originally published in that collection.
4. Disambiguation is needed when multiple works share the same name; see Disambiguation pages below.

[edit] Article formatting

See also Help:Adding texts and Wikisource:How to edit a page.

1. The {{header2}} template should be used at the top of every article page; see that template's talk page for usage information. Editorial notes (publication date, etc.) should be placed in the 'notes' parameter of the header template.
2. <div class="prose"> … </div> can be wrapped around passages of prose writing to render the passages narrower, centered, and justified (which some users prefer).
3. Small caps are available via the {{small-caps}} template.
4. Various typography templates are available, for dealing with ligatures, special characters, etc. Please see the templates' documentation for more information.

[edit] Headings

1. Pages with headings (such as several poems or chapters on a single page) should use second-level headings for section titles, third-level headings for subsections, et cetera. Top-level headings should never be used, as these are reserved for the page title (see Help:Editing Wikisource).
2. Headings used where there are no discrete sections or headings in the original text (ie, to separate stanzas) should use {{stanzabreak|number}}. The exceptions are headings used to distinguish between distinct versions of the same text.

[edit] Wikilinks

1. Relative wikilinks should be used to link to another page of the same work. This shortens the code and ensures that a work remains linked together even if it is moved or reorganised. The three formats are [[/subpage]] (subpage), [[../]] (parent), and [[../sibling]] (sibling); see the example usage on Template talk:Header. Note that [[../]] will expand to the title of the parent page, which is ideal if the work is renamed at a later time.

   This depends on a page conforming to the page title standards.

2. Context links: Words or references that may be difficult to understand should optionally be linked to their Wikipedia or Wiktionary entries using the syntax [[w:Article|word]] (Wikipedia) or [[wikt:Article|word]]. Commonly used words or well known references should not be linked.
   • Note: words may be specifically used in a historical or cultural context. For example, the phrase Duke of York may refer to James II of England rather than the actual phrase Duke of York, or a reference to The Prime Minister may refer to Tony Blair rather than the term Prime Minister.

[edit] Disambiguation pages

A disambiguation page is a page listing multiple works of the same name (such as The Raven).

1. The page title should be the ambiguous title being disambiguated (for example, "The Raven"). (For guidelines on the titles of other pages, see 'Page titles' above.)
2. The header is standardized with "{{disambiguation}}" at the top of the page.
3. Disambiguated works are listed in bulleted form, with no links except the titles. Only the basic information (title, author, date if known, and type of work) should be listed. If there are multiple works of the same title by the same author, also specify the collection it was first published in if known. For example:

   * [[The Raven (Poe)|The Raven]] (1845), a poem by Edgar Allan Poe.

   * [[A Cradle Song (Blake, 1789)|A Cradle Song]] (1789), a poem by William Blake published in ''Songs of Innocence''.

4. Then use {{similar|The Raven}} in each the works.

[edit] Particular guidelines

[edit] Author pages

• An author, in this case, is any person who has written any text that is included in Wikisource.

1. Page titles should be in the form [[Author:Author Real Name]], without titles unless needed for disambiguation.
2. The page should contain the {{author}} template (see usage).
3. Immediately following the {{author}} template should be a a header named "Works", then links to works on Wikisource (point form). The links should generally point to the cover pages, not individual chapters or sections. The works should be listed alphabetically with, if possible, the year of publication.
   • In the case of very prolific authors who wrote works of various types, subsections—using third-level headings—should be used to simplify locating a particular work.

[edit] Poetry and annotations

There are supplemental guidelines for poetry and for annotation.

[edit] Templates

[edit] Usage

Standard templates like {{author}} and {{header2}} are normalized, meaning that usage is the same on all pages. This makes it very easy to create new pages by copying the format of existing pages, and allows bots to easily automate updates or changes.

1. Templates should be copied from the documentation exactly as-is. If there is no value for a parameter (for example, 'deathyear' for a living author), simply leave it blank— do not remove it. Do not re-order parameters, or change the spacing unless technically necessary.

[edit] See also

• Wikisource:Text quality