UESPWiki talk:Style Guide

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Archive 1: Oct 2005-Feb 2007. Archived by Nephele

Any discussion of the styles to be used on the site should be done here.

New Sections

I've added to new sections to the style guide, namely Accurate and Verifiable and Unofficial Mods, prompted by multiple discussions on these topics over the last year or so. I've primarily tried to document the consensus from existing discussions and/or the existing practice. However, it's hard to be sure that my synopsis accurately reflects everyone's opinions. And there are a few details that might be unexpected, as documented in the following subsections. Feedback is welcome; until the text has been tweaked to everyone's satisfaction, I've added "proposed" notices to the new text to (hopefully) let readers know that the text has not been finalized. --Nephele^Talk 00:15, 15 January 2008 (EST)

Accurate and Verifiable

These additions have primarily been prompted by several discussions about CS data vs lore data (e.g., Oblivion Talk:Dark Brotherhood#Members Section, User talk:Obliv4PS3#Dark Brotherhood Factions). However, in assembling this information I realized that CS data is not actually considered to be an infallible "gold standard." There are actually several instances where CS data is not correct. Therefore I ended up stating that the most reliable source of data is the in-game console, rather than the CS. The CS is used as a convenient shortcut to obtain the information, but when the CS and the console differ, the console has to date been given precedence. I believe emphasizing that in-game data is ultimately treated as the most authoritative information also addresses the concerns of editors who claim that CS data is not relevant to gameplay. The wiki has not chosen external (CS) data in preference to gameplay data; rather the wiki has chosen one set of gameplay data (verifiable statistics) over another (lore-based information).

The slight de-emphasis of CS data is not meant to discourage its continued widespread use. The CS (or other tools that read the .esm and .esp files) is still the easiest way to extract all of the important information for the site. But I think it's worth occasionally remembering that there are a few limitations to the CS. (N.B., I'm also starting a related discussion at Morrowind talk:Enchant#Enchant points about another instance where CS data is perhaps not the best choice). --Nephele^Talk 00:15, 15 January 2008 (EST)

Unofficial Mods

This section is primarily a very brief synopsis of discussions at UESPWiki:Community Portal/Mod Info in Articles. I didn't want to get into details on the general style guide. However, I thought that a basic statement was necessary. Also, based on the recent example of Daggerfall:AndyFall, it seemed that a clarification regarding the older games would be useful. --Nephele^Talk 00:15, 15 January 2008 (EST)

Perspective

Again, the intent of this section is not to change existing practices. The main reason for adding it is to explain that the perspective used on UESP differs from some other prominent wikis (Wookieepedia for example) where articles are written from the perspective of someone living "in universe" [1]. We have generally adopted a more "out of universe" perspective in our articles, and this has led to confusion with some new editors.

However, I then realized that our Lore articles actually have generally adopted an "in universe" perspective. I thought that highlighting that distinction would perhaps help to refine the purpose of the Tamriel namespace, and provide one answer to frequent questions such as "what's the difference between the Tamriel article and the game article." If the community agrees with this emphasis, there are perhaps tweaks to Tamriel articles that would be appropriate. For example, on Lore:Fighters Guild, the game-specific sections would be kept as would links to the game-specific articles. However, those sections would be reworded to not use "game perspective" keywords such as "quest" or the "player". The sentence "The questline has the player cleaning up the guild and destroying the competition, the dubious Blackwood Company." would be reworded to something more like "The guild faced competition from a dangerous new threat, the Blackwood Company. However, in 3E433 the new guildmaster eliminated the threat by proving that the Blackwood Company was engaging in illegal practices, such as the use of hist sap." Also, these changes wouldn't need to be implemented right away; rather these would just be guidelines to keep in mind when revising Tamriel articles in future.

Reactions? --Nephele^Talk 16:20, 18 January 2008 (EST)

No problems at all with the first two. That seems a good explanation of what we've been doing recently. The Perspective shift is also a good idea. I've tended to write Tamriel articles from that point of view in any case as it always seemed to be the truly encyclopaedia-like part of the site. Apart from anything else, this will avoid irritating shifts in the articles themselves; "The player" or "You" could mean two different things on the same page if it mentioned, say, Arena and Oblivion. The main problem I foresee is that a number of Tamriel articles are transcluded into game pages; care is going to have to be taken to ensure that changing the Tamriel pages doesn't adversely affect the game ones. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 11:44, 19 January 2008 (EST)

(update) I was just wondering about an edit made here. This new perspective idea hadn't been approved so I didn't edit for tone but the thought occurred that a new Cleanup-type template will be needed here. I'm not sure whether it should be the existing Cleanup template or a version of Tone or a whole new thing. Thought I should mention it though. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 18:15, 22 January 2008 (EST)

Quotes

Can I suggest a new guideline on quotes. There's a lot of different styles, but the one we seem to be using most often (at least, in my impression) is the newer style where quotes are treated identically to parentheses and punctuation is grouped accordingly...in other words:

This is a "sample". (period belongs with sentence, not quote, so goes outside)

This is a "sample." (traditional style where punctuation is always inside the quotes)

but

"This is a sample." (whole sentence inside, so punctuation is inside)

Obviously it's hardly a big concern either way, as long as it's reasonably consistent throughout a given page, but I figure if we put a guideline in place, then it's at least a little more likely to be consistent across the site. Any comments from the peanut gallery? :Þ --Robin Hood (Talk • E-mail • Contribs) 14:06, 28 April 2008 (EDT)

Call me a traditionalist, but I much prefer the "old" way, where the punctuation is always inside the quotes. The other way makes sense to me logically, but it just looks...wrong. I always assumed the frequency of punctuation appearing outside of quotes was due to the fact that most people have no idea how to use punctuation correctly ;). But if both ways are technically correct, I suppose I'm open to change. –Eshe^talk 14:16, 28 April 2008 (EDT)

Traditionalist! (Sorry, you asked. :Þ) I'm more of a proponent of the new way, but that's probably because I'm a programmer and unbalanced begin & end punctuation drives me up the wall! I'm usually more of a traditionalist, myself, in almost all other grammar/spelling issues...just not this one. --Robin Hood (Talk • E-mail • Contribs) 14:27, 28 April 2008 (EDT)

By the way, if anybody wants to read more on the confusion that is quotes & punctuation, wikipedia has a pretty good description of where the styles originate and where they're currently in use: Wikipedia on Quotes & Punctuation. — Unsigned comment by RobinHood70 (talk • contribs)

I've tended to do the programmer thing too and put exactly what is said or written in the quotation marks. Thus, with your initial two examples I'd use the first if there was no full stop (or period if you prefer) in the original and the second if one was present. That obviously leads to an inconsistent look, but it is at least consistent in terms of what is to be found in the game, which is probably the more important factor. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 06:45, 29 April 2008 (EDT)

I'm with Rpeh. The quotation marks should only contain what is being quoted. Any adjacent punctuation that is for grammatical purposes, rather than being part of the quotation, should be outside the quotation marks. --Gaebrial 09:05, 29 April 2008 (EDT)

While the signature was my goof <blush>, I had actually deliberately outdented my previous point as sort of a side-note. It would look odd to outdent it at this point, so I guess I'll leave it there. :) Let's see if I can remember to sign this time... --Robin Hood (Talk • E-mail • Contribs) 11:58, 29 April 2008 (EDT) (Yes!)

(Outdent) I'm another traditionalist. I find that "This." simply looks more naturlal to the eye than "this". Tha gap between the end of the word and the period is what really annoys me, but like RobinHood already said, the matter is hardly an important one, and probably won't even be noticed by the majority of viewers. - Game Lord^{Talk|Contribs} 12:03, 29 April 2008 (EDT)

I think if this discussion proves anything, it's that we're never going to get a standard. I'm going to stick with the in-game quotes but it's simply not practical to enforce that: checking everything that appears in quotes against the CS is a bit over the top. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 12:31, 29 April 2008 (EDT)

To change everything would be a nightmare, of course, but if we decide on something (majority vote?) and put a recommendation in place, at least future edits can all follow the same standard. Also, Sam324 seems like he might be interested in helping out on this sort of thing, judging by recent edits. --Robin Hood (Talk • E-mail • Contribs) 12:43, 29 April 2008 (EDT)

Consensus may be tricky to achieve. If you want a wider discussion you ought to bring it up on the Community Portal. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 12:49, 29 April 2008 (EDT)

I don't think it's important enough to start a site-wide sweep for inconsistent use and fix all of it to use a single system, but it's one of those things where if I'm changing something else on the page I might slip it in on the same edit. I definitely think the "logical quotes" method makes more sense all around, and would probably be the worldwide standard if it were for some technical issues with old printing presses that necessitated the rule change in the first place. I think the other method is just obsolete in today's world of digital text and inkjet/laser printers. Most technical publications (and this site is a technical publication, being an encyclopedic reference) conform to the logical quotes standard, and only a few hard-line traditionalists still cling to the old method (which isn't even the original rule - technically logical quotes came first, and they only changed it to accommodate printing presses). --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 14:55, 1 May 2008 (EDT)

{Discussion continued on UESPWiki:Community Portal#Quoting & Punctuation Format)

Headers

Lately, there has been some minor conversation as to whether headers should be like Rules and regulations or Rules and Regulations. It isn't mentioned in the Style Guide, so I think something has to be added (especially since we are different than Wikipedia by capitalizing most words in the title). If no one opposes, I will add a quick sentence or two in the page. –Elliot ^talk 23:27, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

For in-game stuff, we always need to use the in-game casing. For other stuff, this is one of the very few issues where I can honestly say I don't mind either way :) –rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 23:48, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm all for using "title case" in titles and have always disliked Wikipedia's stance on that, so as far as I'm concerned, you can go right ahead. —Robin Hood (Talk • E-mail • Contribs) 00:18, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Actual PAGES!

In my opinion a HUGE category of items ex. Miscellaneous items isn't usefull. Yes we know a quill is worth nothing and weighs 0.1 BUT people want more in-depth descriptions. Such as locations of most quills etc. this should be done to further help users FIND the items. It is MY opinion on this although if others are different that's their opinion I was just thinking people migh want something like that.

Quills are very common - they are in hundreds of fixed places - plus random spots. You wouldn't need to search far to find one. And after that, what else could be said specifically about a quill? --Arch-Mage Matt ^{Did I Do That?} 05:29, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Italicizing quotes

"This should be the standard method of quoting an NPC's dialogue."

"This should not be because it looks stupid."

I can't find any guidance for this issue in the style guide or elsewhere, but we can use our common sense and eyes here: italics are used for emphasis, and there's no point in italicizing the quotations, since they are not part of the game's dialogue or punctuation. Further, when the quotations are italicized, they bleed together with the last word of the sentence. As you can see above, it just looks bad, plain and simple (can you see? I don't know if different skins of the site use different fonts where this is not apparent). I think explicitly noting here that quotation marks around dialogue should not be italicized would make the wiki look a whole lot better. Minor Edits 22:59, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

I see no way to implement this policy, you can't have bots do it as it would be impossible to distinguish quotes from the rest of the article, and more importantly we have been doing it for so long it would be hard to change this habit as nearly every article with in-game dialogue on it already is like this, making it nigh impossible to have an editor do this. The best case scenario with this is that we have widely differing styles between articles that recently got more information and the older ones. I would prefer to follow the current style instead of bothering with this. --AKB ^{Talk Cont Mail} 23:05, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict × 2) I'm not too keen on the idea, mostly because I'm incredibly lazy. While it makes sense, I don't see the point in changing it. It looks pretty much the same to me, and would be a pain to change. Legoless 23:08, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

I think it's fair enough to have a "preferred style" - that's what Style Guides are for. Personally, I've used the second version purely because it seemed more natural while I was editing, but I'm certainly not wedded to it.

Getting a bot to change all existing pages would be tricky; having a user make them all would fill RecentChanges so quickly it would make your eyes bleed. If there's consensus for one format over another then it would be fair enough to allow the quote format to be changed as part of a larger edit, but I really wouldn't want to see somebody doing that kind of edit on its own. Having spent more time at Wikipedia lately, I get sick of seeing the edit summary "[made pointless changes] using AWB". rpeh •T•C•E• 23:18, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Certainly; I'm no advocating a massive project, just one of those low-priority "while you're editing something else, if you think of it" sort of things. Minor Edits 23:22, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

I'll probably have a look to see if RoBoT could make the change, but I shudder at the number of pages that would be affected. It's probably much better as a background thing. rpeh •T•C•E• 00:02, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

I missed this discussion entirely, but posted my honest opinion here, after notifying AKBabout lack of Italics in his dialogue quotes. As far as I'm concerned, we keep doing what we have been doing for the past two years and stick with Italics. --Krusty 11:19, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

The style I use is for the inverted commas to be in 'normal' font and the actual dialogue in italics. I don't think it makes sense to make massive changes for such a small thing. I reckon the single policy we should have in this case is to have the same style throughout a page, to avoid confusion. --SerCenKing ^Talk 11:39, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

And that is what I think this discussion is actually about - and we had that discussion years ago and agreed to what you just said. Quotes should always be in italics, while the colons may differ. --Krusty 11:46, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

Policy on the capitalization of classes

Capitalized and uncapitalized seem to be used interchangably, is there a definitive policy on this?--Catmaniac66 07:18, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

We're changing them to uncapitalized as part of the OBNPCRP. rpeh •T•C•E• 07:44, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

Gotcha, so if I see it capitalized I dont need to worry about uncapitalizing it as this will be done as part of a larger edit to the page and would only clog it up, correct?--Catmaniac66 07:46, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

Yup. Although if you see a page that has largely been completed OBNPCRP-wise, then feel free. rpeh •T•C•E• 07:52, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

From what I see on the pages, I assume this applies to uncapitalized class names in the main text, but capitalized in the summary chart/box on the right hand of the page? Nikomis 13:21, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes. rpeh •T•C•E• 15:03, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

Epicine They

In the UESPwiki writing style, is it preferred to use an epicine they or "he or she" when the gender is unknown or could be either male or female? For example, which of the following is preferred?

• When you speak with your spouse, he or she will offer you a home-cooked meal.

• When you speak with your spouse, they will offer you a home-cooked meal.

In general, most modern experts accept either. There are still a few "conservatives" who accept or prescribe the traditional use of the male pronoun in a generic way, but most or all authoritative modern style guides absolutely prohibit this as sexist language (style guides to scholarly writing such as the American Psychological Association Style Guide and the Modern Language Association). The most common advice is to first see if the issue can be avoided by rewording: In your example, we can do this easily: "Your spouse will offer you a home-cooked meal." If the dropped element of the sentence needs to stay, we need something like, "When spoken to, your spouse will offer you a home-cooked meal."

However, in many cases, this is not so easy to do, or results in a complicated, tangled sentence. In that case, "he or she" is considered by some to be better (more "technically correct"), but most will say that when this looks cumbersome or is repeated to many times (e.g., "Ask him or her if her or she will put his or her thing in his or her other thing"), then "they" or "their" is preferred. As I wrote above, however, many professional writers and experts consider the use of "they/their" a completely acceptable to resolve the issue. Jreynolds2 00:32, 28 December 2011 (UTC)