Memory Alpha's Manual of Style is a collection of guidelines and rules of thumb that are designed to set a rough standard for the appearance of all articles. Although style is not the most important factor in the writing of a good article (or even the perfect article), it is an important one. The Manual of Style is designed to make articles easier to read and comprehend, more consistent, better organized, and easier to edit.
Above all, realize that these rules are not set in stone! They are considered guidelines for making an article appear more attractive to the reader, to make them easier to work with. If you think you have a better way of writing your article, by all means go ahead and be bold! Copy-editing archivists will come along later and start the weeding process, and rework pages to better conform to the guide if necessary. You may also suggest additions to this Manual of Style on its talk page.
If you're looking for information on how to write an article in wiki markup, please see how to edit a page for instructions. As that article is more about how to use markup, this article is concerned with the when, where, and why of using specific markup. Please also read the guide to layout for suggestions on how to organize your article.
On this page, examples of these styles in action are indented from the main margin.
Introducing an article
At the beginning of every article, the title or subject of that article should be emboldened in the first line. Even though the article title is already listed, it is useful to emphasize the article's subject for the reader. (Don't forget to also use italicized text when necessary. See Manual of Style (titles) for further information.)
- "The Picard Maneuver was a battle tactic invented by Starfleet Captain Jean-Luc Picard."
If the subject of the article has more than one name, each new form of the name should be emboldened on its first mention.
- "The Kosst Amojan or Koss'moran..."
In most cases, it is useful to establish context in the first line or two of the article.
- "In cartography, a sector was an area in physical space."
Characters and actors
The actor's credit should be placed at the end of the article within a {{bginfo}} template.
Ships
For Starfleet vessels, you should place the ship's registry number in bold and in parentheses immediately after the first use of the ship's name.
- The USS Honshu (NCC-60205) was a Nebula-class Federation starship...
Sidebars
Sidebar templates are the tabular panels that can be found shifted to the right at the top of many articles. They are used to communicate basic information about the article's subject.
Information contained in the sidebar is not considered a replacement for that same information appearing in the body of the text. As such, please ensure that all information found in a sidebar is also contained in the main body of the article.
If a character has appeared in both live-action and animation, a picture from each should be included in the sidebar on that character's article. Characters who have been portrayed by multiple actors should include a picture for each actor. Additional images may be added to the sidebar when a character looks significantly different due to other factors, such as makeup changes or an aging actor, although such images may be removed or moved to a different location in the article if there is consensus on the article's talk page.
Abbreviations
Abbreviations should be avoided whenever possible, but if they need to be used, the following are the abbreviations that Memory Alpha has chosen to use. Please note that it is best to spell out words as best as possible.
Ranks
- Chief Petty Officer or Senior Chief Petty Officer
- These may both be shortened to "Chief".
- Commander
- This may be shortened to "Cmdr."
- Lieutenant
- This may be shortened to "Lt."
- This also applies to "Lieutenant Commander" being shortened to "Lt. Commander" or "Lt. Cmdr.".
- Lieutenant junior grade
- This may be shortened to "Lieutenant jg" or "Lt. jg"
In addition, ranks, as well as certain multi-word job titles, may be written in either upper case or lower case form, depending on the context of use. The generic use of the term should be written in all lower case, while the used of the term as a title will be written in the proper noun format, or with capitalized first letters. For example, "Lieutenant Commander Data tried to whistle a tune", versus, "Data, who held the rank of lieutenant commander, tried to whistle a tune".
Headlines and sections
To create a new section in an article, type the section's heading on its own line directly above the section, with at least two equal signs on each side (== Heading name ==). Do not include any empty lines between the heading and the beginning of the section's content.
The wiki engine automatically creates a table of contents above the first heading on a page if there are at least four sections.
In all cases, you should capitalize the first word and all proper nouns of the header, and leave all other words lowercase. The only place this does not apply is on episode and movie articles. These pages have their own unique format with all of the words capitalized. In addition, all words should be spelled out and not use numerals (such as "Act One" rather than "Act I") except when a proper title (such as "Scene 092").
Avoid using links in headers. Depending on the browser's default settings, some users may not be able to see the links properly. It is much more useful to place the appropriate link in the first sentence after the header.
See also
Paragraphs and formatting
Inexperienced writers have a tendency towards "run on" paragraphs. Some of these may number dozens of lines and many column inches without a break. This makes the articles difficult to read as everything seems to flow together. It also makes it tough to quickly skim articles for data points.
A good paragraph (grammatically speaking) is two to five sentences in length on average. It covers one thought or idea or piece of information. Any time there is a change in the thought, idea, or piece of information, there should also be a paragraph change.
When formatting paragraphs, adding an empty line between paragraphs looks better in the articles than the traditional "paragraph indent" on the first line. It makes for a more definite "break point" visually, and allows the reader to more easily see that they are reading a new paragraph at that point.
As an example of what NOT to do, here are the above paragraphs typed as one big single paragraph (the way many articles tend to be written):
- Inexperienced writers have a tendency towards "run on" paragraphs. Some of these may number dozens of lines and many column inches without a break. This makes the articles difficult to read as everything seems to flow together. It also makes it tough to quickly skim articles for data points. A good paragraph (grammatically speaking) is two to five sentences in length on average. It covers one thought or idea/piece of information. Any time there is a change in the thought/idea/piece of information, there should also be a paragraph change. When formatting paragraphs, adding an empty line between paragraphs looks better in the articles than the traditional "paragraph indent" on the first line. It makes for a more definite "break point" visually, and allows the reader to more easily see that they are reading a new paragraph at that point.
List style
Title style
Table styles
Dash style
Dashes and hyphens can be used in a number of ways, including to connect words, split sentences, and show a range of numbers. Memory Alpha has chosen to use the standard hyphen (-) to connect words and for number ranges. Instead of the standard long dash to split sentences, Memory Alpha has chosen to use the shorter dash in this respect. This is rendered with the – code, which renders as –. Avoid the use of —, which renders as —.
Quotations
When quoting a person in an article, and the quote is at least a full sentence, the quotation should be "italicized and quoted."
- Kahless said, "Destroying an empire to win a war is no victory, and ending a battle to save an empire is no defeat."
However, if the quote is just a single word or a sentence fragment, it should not be italicized.
- Picard said the situation was "deplorable."
For quotes around titles, any punctuation that is not part of the title should follow the quote.
- Picard first appeared in the episode "Encounter at Farpoint".
For uniformity and to avoid problems with the wiki software and the search utility, use straight quotation marks and apostrophes, and avoid curved marks such as the backtick or so-called "smart quotes." Punctuation marks should be placed inside of the quotation marks, unless the quotation marks surround a title (i.e., episode, comic, etc.), as shown in the third example above.
See also
Alternate timelines
For in-universe articles, information from alternate timelines should be distinguishable from the rest of the information presented. To facilitate this, all references to alternate timeline information should be in italics with no indentation.
If an article primarily covers information from an alternate timeline, it should begin with the appropriate article type template. In these cases, italicizing the entire article is not necessary, as there is no need to distinguish it from "prime universe" information.
Background information and comments
On occasion, it is necessary or appropriate to include commentary about a notable, unusual, or contested point of information in an article. It is not for personal speculation. If there is a sufficient amount of information on a background subject, it should be contained in a separate section, named:
- == Background information ==
Alternatively, comments and information may be described in a short paragraph (no longer than three sentences) within a {{bginfo}} template:
See also
Citations
See cite your sources for reference formatting.
"See also" and "Related topics"
Informational references to related articles that have not been linked to from free links in the article itself are best handled by the "see also" header.
- See also: Heisenberg compensator, annular confinement beam
(Note that you shouldn't indent the "see also" line in actual use.)
Alternatively, you can use a "Related topics" or "See also" section header to list the links in a more explicit fashion as a section of the article:
- === Related topics === or === See also ===
If an article consists of several sections and a "see also" refers to the entire article, making it a separate section helps emphasize that the links refer to the entire article, rather than simply the last section alone.
Other styles
There are undoubtedly styles that this tutorial does not cover. Although we try to keep this page simple, consider suggesting a new section to help out our archivists in creating and editing articles if you notice an omission.
When all else fails, we recommend referring to published resources for English style, such as The Chicago Manual of Style or Fowler's Modern English Usage.
Keep it simple
Above all else, you are encouraged to keep your articles simple! Don't try to get too fancy with your markup (like embedding tables within tables). The easier the markup is, the easier it will be for anyone to edit the article later on. Our first goal is to reliably and accurately display the information. The goal of wiki markup is to keep the articles simple and to emphasize the information as much as possible. We prefer content over form!
For this and other reasons, HTML markup should be avoided in most circumstances. The exception is typography (such as •), which should use the HTML code (•).
Spelling and style choices
Because Star Trek is an American production, Memory Alpha has chosen to use American spellings of words rather than British spellings. Some examples of the common misspellings have been collected to help you out. Note that this also applies to grammar and usage.
When referring to years, use "AD" and "BC" rather than their modern equivalents, "CE" and "BCE." As Trek does not mention the more modern abbreviations but does make mention of "AD" and "BC" (when referring to years in TOS: "Requiem for Methuselah", TNG: "The Big Goodbye", and TNG: "The Royale"), these are what Memory Alpha has chosen to use. These are not intended as slights in any way at all and have simply been chosen to simplify matters.
In addition, when discussing the character of the EMH aboard Voyager, the stylistic choice has been made to use "The Doctor" (capitalizing "the") because the character had taken that as his "name." This is also true for other beings such as The Traveler.
Names that end in "s" or an "s"-sound should not have an "apostrophe s" ('s) added in the possessive form. Names that end in "x" or "z" should have an "apostrophe s" unless they are either silent or sound like an "s". For example, "Dax" and "Neelix" should be "Dax's" and "Neelix's" when using the possessive but "Sanchez" should be "Sanchez'" for the possessive.
See also
Before you start editing or creating new pages, we encourage you to read through and understand the following documents (if you haven't already):
- Introduction is a basic primer to what Memory Alpha is about and where you should look to find the information you need.
- Be bold is a guideline for a basic attitude you should have towards updating articles.
- Policies and guidelines contains the complete set of rules that Memory Alpha operates under.
- How to edit a page is a basic introduction to wiki markup.
- Naming conventions is an article on how to properly name articles.