Help:Style guide

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To keep a consistent look and feel throughout the wiki, it is highly recommended to follow the style guidelines presented on this page.

Wikipedia already offers a general style manual, though further guidelines are required for Vintage Story related articles. This page will reiterate a handful of concepts covered in the aforementioned manual to facilitate the definition of this wikis' look and feel.

Article titles

Article titles should generally be in the singular form. Never prefix them with The, A, An or so on, unless it is part of the name, such as most of the game update names. The title should follow normal phrase capitalization unless it is a proper noun.

Writing

Wikis are used to present facts to the reader, so avoid including any personal theories, opinions, or subjective concepts when writing an article. All information presented should be traceable to a reliable source of some kind. Most articles should be written in the third-person and avoid any terms that refer to the reader directly ("you", "your", etc.), though this rule does not need to be followed in the case of guides or tutorials.

Always try to formulate full, descriptive sentences when writing an article, especially in the summary (eg. "Knives are tools used to harvest grass, cattails, and wild foods including meat from animals." instead of "A tool that can harvest things.").

Capitalization

Items, blocks and mobs

All item (materials, weapons, tools, etc.), block and mob names are considered common nouns and should not be capitalized unless it is at the beginning of a sentence.

Game

Vintage Story should always follow title case capitalization, as well as formal update names (eg. The De-Jank and Game Juice Update). Gamemodes like Survival or Creative should also be capitalized.

Section headings

Section headings should always follow sentence style capitalization. Main sections in an article should have a level 2 heading (== Heading ==) and increase by one for any sub-sections.

Linking

Where appropriate, topics relating to Vintage Story should be made into links, as long as this doesn't negatively affect article readability. Ultimately, the goal is to neither overlink, nor underlink, as either can negatively impact the reading experience.

Here are some general loose guidelines when it comes to linking in an article:

• Generally, a link should only appear once in an article, but may appear multiple times if helpful to the reader. This applies more heavily to larger articles, where links are more likely to no longer be visible on a users' screen as they scroll. Providing repeat links this way can help prevent frustration and the need to use the search bar if and when they may want to read on about a related topic.
• Two links should not be immediately next to eachother, as this can cause them to appear as a single link instead. If you feel it necessary to use both links, either try to rephrase or - when applicable - use a single, larger link instead (eg. stone blocks instead of stone blocks).

Redirects

A redirect is always preferred over a piped link. While applicable, any links in an article should direct to their respective page, regardless of if there is content present or not. If a unique page for a specific object is a bit much, redirect to the page containing the relevant info instead of setting up a piped link. This prevents potential confusion and disorganisation down the line if ever a unique page becomes the preferable choice.

Note: the wiki currently has an extension installed which replaces the display text of redirect pages with their destination page instead. For the time being, and if applicable, use piped links with a lowercase display name in order to display the appropriate link text (eg. trunk).

Article layout

Unless an article fits into a more defined style guide (such as Style_guide/Versions), almost all pages on the site should attempt to follow the following layout, in order :

1. Hatnotes
2. Message boxes
3. Infobox
4. Summary: a general overview of the page's subject
5. Creation/Obtaining: what process the player needs to undergo in order to acquire the object in question
6. Usage: the uses of the respective object, i.e. uses in other crafting recipes, world interactions, etc.
7. Contextual sections: any further sections needed that would help provide extra information about the subject
8. History: all changes relating to the page's subject throughout all game versions
9. Notes: extra notes pertaining to the page's subject that do not fit in the rest of the article
10. Gallery: supplementary images of the subject
11. See also: links to other closely related topics
12. References: a list of all references made in the article to point towards external sources of info
13. Navbox: if applicable, a fitting Navbox, such as {{Navbox}}

Certain articles may fit into particular article categories which have received unique style guides that do not fully respect the previous layout order. These unique style guides are:

• Versions