UESPWiki:Style Guide/Book Layout

The UESPWiki – Your source for The Elder Scrolls since 1995

Contents 1 Books 1.1 Name of Page 1.2 Author and Description 1.3 Text 1.4 Multi-volume Books 1.5 Links to the Book 2 Notes and Letters

[edit] Books

[edit] Name of Page

The text of most books is kept in the Tamriel namespace, which is where general information about the lore of the Elder Scrolls games is documented. This organization was chosen because many books are common to multiple games, and even for books that only appear in one game, the text will often be of broader interest. The Tamriel text is then transcluded into game-specific copies of each book; the game-specific pages include details such as ID, price, weight, and locations.

Therefore, the name of a book's page will be of the format:

[[Lore:Book Name]]

The page name should exactly match the title as displayed in the character's inventory, even for book titles that start with "A" or "The" (this is a change from past guidelines on UESP). For example "The Book Title" and "A Book Title" would page names:

[[Lore:The Book Title]]

[[Lore:A Book Title]]

In the cases of books with multiple possible titles, things can get a bit more complicated:

• Some books use one title that is displayed in the character's inventory, but then have another title shown inside the book. The page name should use the title as displayed in the character's inventory. In these cases, a note on the book page may be appropriate to prevent confusion (e.g., Lore:Mythic Dawn Commentaries).
• Some books have had different titles in different games. As long as the text of the book is identical (or nearly identical), only one page is needed for the book. Generally the existing page for the book should continue to be used, but a redirect should be created for any other titles used (e.g., Lore:How Orsinium Passed to the Orcs, Lore:How Orsinium Passed to the Orcs). A note on the book page can explain the multiple titles. The game-specific pages should always use the book's title as it appears in that game.
• In more complex situations, decisions probably need to be made on a case by case basis. In general, if the text of two books differs by more than a few words, the two books should have separate pages, but be cross-referenced. An example of a particularly complex set of books is the Queen Barenziah series: Lore:The Real Barenziah, Lore:The Real Barenziah (Daggerfall), Lore:Biography of Queen Barenziah, Lore:Biography of Queen Barenziah (Daggerfall).

[edit] Author and Description

The Author and Description are not directly added to the book page. Instead, subpages are used to provide the book's author and description. This enables the information to be easily displayed as part of any book listing. So for a book "Book Name", the appropriate subpages would be:

• [[Lore:Book Name/Author]]
• [[Lore:Book Name/Description]]

These pages should not contain any line breaks or other formatting that would mess up the layout of a table (since the subpages will be displayed in multiple tables). If the book does not have an author, or if you do not know what the description should be, simply do not create the subpage.

To be truly complete, each Author and Description subpage should contain a category. Each /Author subpage should have the following tag copied exactly as it appears here (yes, it's bizarre-looking, but the bizarreness allows the tag to be copied and pasted without any modifications):

<noinclude>[[Category:Tamriel-Books-Authors]]</noinclude>

Each /Desc subpage should have the following tag:

<noinclude>[[Category:Tamriel-Books-Descriptions]]</noinclude>

Do not add extra blank lines before or after these tags.

To display the title, author, and description on the book's page, use the Book Summary template at the very top of the page, e.g.:

{{Book Summary}}

One frequent problem is that after the Author and Description subpages are first created, they may not appear on the book's page. In this case, the book page (not the subpages) needs to be forced to refresh, or "purged" to use the wiki software terminology. One way to purge the page is:

1. Click the "edit" button on the book page
2. On the edit page that appears, edit the page's URL (at the top of your browser): replace "edit" with "purge" (at the very end of the URL it should read &action=edit; change that to read &action=purge).
3. Hit enter (tell your browser to load the modified URL)
4. The book page should reappear and should now correctly display the information from any subpages

[edit] Text

The text of all books should be entered exactly as it appears in the game. The easiest way to do this is generally to cut and paste from the construction set. If you don't have access to the construction set, it is possible to manually type in the text, but take care to enter the information accurately.

Any typographical errors in the book should be preserved. If you wish to make it clear that the typo comes from the original source, add {{sic}} after the misspelled word. If other issues with the text need clarification, generally that should be done in a note at top or bottom of the page. If notes must be added within the text, they should always be italicized and enclosed in square brackets (as shown for the "sic" notation).

Although the text of the book should not be altered, the formatting generally does need to be changed, especially if the book has been cut and paste from the construction set. All unnecessary html commands (<font>, <div>, etc) should be deleted. Paragraphs can be separated either using two <br> commands or with two standard line breaks.

[edit] Multi-volume Books

A separate page should be created for each volume of a book that appears in a game, but with additional navigation to make it easy to locate the other volumes. In addition, an overall page for the book should be created that displays all of the volumes. For an example, see Lore:Brief History of the Empire, Lore:Brief History of the Empire v 1, Lore:Brief History of the Empire v 2, etc.

The text of each volume is provided on its own page. Differences necessary for multi-volume books are:

• In the title provided in the {{Book Info template, the overall book title should be a link to the overall page for that set of books.
• The {{Book Summary template and most introductory notes should be enclosed in <noinclude> ... </noinclude> tags to prevent that text from being shown on the overall page.
• The bottom of the page should have a Book Footer template. This should not be enclosed in noinclude tags; instead the Skippage parameter is used so that it does not appear on the aggregate book page. This footer is used to provide links to other books in the series. For example, the following is the footer used on the page Lore:Brief History of the Empire v 3:

 {{Book Footer
 |Skippage=Brief History of the Empire
 |Prev=''[[{{NAMESPACE}}:Brief History of the Empire{{#ifeq:{{NAMESPACE}}|Oblivion|,}} v 2|Volume 2]]''
 |Up=''[[{{NAMESPACE}}:Brief History of the Empire|Brief History of the Empire]]''
 |Next=''[[{{NAMESPACE}}:Brief History of the Empire{{#ifeq:{{NAMESPACE}}|Oblivion|,}} v 4|Volume 4]]''
 }}
 

The overall page for the series of books transcludes each of the individual volumes, instead of duplicating all of the text. For each volume there should be a level-four header containing a link to the volume, followed by the transclusion. For example:

 ==''[[Lore:Brief History of the Empire v 1|Volume I]]''==
 {{Lore:Brief History of the Empire v 1}}
 

To force the table of contents to be shown, __TOC__ should be entered onto the page immediately after the introductory information.

[edit] Links to the Book

All books in the Tamriel namespace should be included in the alphabetical lists of books at Lore:Books. (In the case of multi-volume books, only a link to the overall book is needed, not a link to each individual volume). Book information is entered using the Tamriel Book Entry template. For example:

{{Lore Book Entry|title=Advances in Lock Picking |OB=yes}}

• "title" should be the exact title of the book page
• OB=yes means that the book appears in Oblivion (the template will automatically create a link to the appropriate book page).

Books should also be added to the Lore:Books by Author and Lore:Books by Subject listing, just using a standard wiki link.

Finally, books should also be added to any appropriate game-specific listing of books (e.g., Morrowind:Books, Oblivion:Books, Shivering:Books). Currently, different formats are used on most of the game-specific pages. At some point, a more uniform layout will probably be adopted.

[edit] Notes and Letters

Notes, letters, and other brief reading material in general do not belong in the Tamriel namespace. In general, if the reading material uses an icon other than a book (scroll, piece of paper, etc) then it probably should not be added to the Tamriel books. Also, if the information is not of general interest (e.g., only necessary to complete one quest, or is uninteresting, like shopping lists or recipes) then it probably should not be a Tamriel book. There are some existing "books" in the Tamriel namespace that do not meet these criteria, and should at some point be relocated to the appropriate game.

For particularly brief notes, they do not need to have their own page. The text can be provided in a table (e.g., Oblivion:Notes), or entered on the appropriate quest page (e.g., the "Suicide Note" at Oblivion:Permanent Retirement#Notes).