Age of Empires Series Wiki:Manual of Style

This Manual of Style outlines a standard of clean, consistent formatting for articles in Age of Empires Series Wiki. The formatting described here is a guideline and can be overridden where circumstances warrant it. These guidelines will never be unerringly perfect for every situation. However, these are guidelines that should be observed when editing content pages. Please try your best to keep to the advice outlined in this article so others may use your edits as an example when creating and editing their own articles.

These guidelines are a summary of the most important guidelines for the Age of Empires Series Wiki, but a more expansive set of guidelines can be found on Wikipedia at Wikipedia Manual of Style.

Articles
The Articles constitute the most important part of the wiki, and should be written in a way anyone interested can understand it and be able to easily find the information of interest.

Naming
Note that Wikia handles capitalized words differently than lowercase words. Entering them into search will bring up two different articles.
 * Article names should be in singular form, not plural.
 * Unless the name of the article contains (or is) a proper noun, none of the words should be capitalized.

Civilizations, Units & Buildings
There are a few simple rules to follow when naming a civilization, unit or a building article.
 * Articles titles for a unit should not include titles or ranks (Elite, Royal), only the original name. Titles should not use abbreviations; abbreviations should be left to redirects.
 * The titles of articles about individual unit should be the name by which the unit or building is officially known in their corresponding game.
 * If more than one article should be name the same the difference should be noted after the article's name and between parenthesis, i.e. Villager (Age of Empires II), Villager (Age of Mythology)

You may want to create disambiguation pages for commonly named articles, i.e. Town Center (disambig), Jaguar Warrior (disambig), with its proper disambig template on top of the article.

Administrators may move articles without consultation if they do not conform to the Naming article policy.

Grammar and punctuation
When writing articles it is important to follow these rules of the english language:
 * 1) Don't use netspeak or any similar slang. We are compiling a professional and encyclopedi resource for Age of Empires Series fans.
 * 2) Keep your writing around a 6th Grade reading level. You don't need to fill it with big words just to make it sound smarter, especially if you're not certain how the word should be used.
 * 3) Vary your words. When writing, try to vary the words you use and the length of your sentences. It makes things sound more interesting.
 * 4) Capitalize words when appropriate. (see below)
 * 5) Use correct punctuation. This includes commas, periods, quotation marks, and apostrophes. (see below)
 * 6) Know the difference between homophones: there, their, and they're; here and hear; it's and its; who's and whose.

Capitalization
For a full list visit Capital Community College's Guide to Grammar and Writing''
 * 1) Capitalize the first word of every sentence. (eg. Unique units are special units granted by some Advisors.)
 * 2) Capitalize proper nouns. (eg. Ensemble Studios)
 * 3) Capitalize the first and important words in a title. (eg. "Age of Empires")

Punctuation
In addition to basic punctuation, it is important to know how to punctuate titles. Titles are always either in italics or inside quotation marks.

Italics
Italics can be used for large works like games, expansions, franchises and books.
 * Examples:
 * Age of Empires
 * The Conquerors

To use italics on Wikia place two single quote marks before and after the title:
 * Age of Empires Online

These are single quotes ('), not double quotes ("). Alternately, highlight the title you want to put in italics with your mouse and click the "I" button in the toolbar above the edit box (in between the B for bolding and AB for the Internal link).

Images
Please see Help:Images page for more information.
 * Images are preferred to bet Right-alignment to left-alignment. Although this is allowed when other objects interfere or make it visually unappealing.
 * Any given article shouldn't have too much Images. If there are too many images in the article, consider making a gallery with a level two heading at the bottom of the article (After the Skin gallery if it is a Champion Article).
 * Use captions to explain the relevance of the image to the article.
 * Large images should be reduced to an appropriate size; preferably small so it doesn't overshadow the article, but not too small so the image loses their appeal.
 * Complete sentences in captions should always end in a period. If the caption is not a complete sentence, it generally should not have a period at the end. Captions should also not be italicized.

Uploading images

 * Please name your files descriptively to avoid confusion. Uploading an image with the name "0239235jgjgkdgdf.jpg" will be deleted or moved according to the opinion of the administrator.
 * Do not upload images we already have. If you plan on uploading an image, look around the Age of Empires Online Wiki first to see if it has already been uploaded by someone else.
 * Avatars, Technolgies, Unit Screenshots and any other image should be in .jpg, or .png format. This is in order for pages to load faster.

To change image extensions, if necessary, it may be used the preferred application, it is recommended the following:
 * CoolUtils.com Image Converter
 * Online-Utility Image Converter

Protected images
To make edits or uploads to the following images you need to contact an Administrator first:

Links
To link to another article inside Age of Empires Series Wiki, you must put around it. To link to an article in other Wiki, use w:c:NAMEOFTHEWIKI and put the article title inside. If an article does not exist by that name, the link will show up as dark red. External links will show up as blue.

You only need to link to another page once in any given article. Most of the time this is the first time that article's title comes up, but there are some exceptions to this.


 * Examples:
 * Morgan Black
 * the Wiki for the latest game.

Perspective
The perspective of writing in articles generally fall into two categories: in universe and out of universe. Put succinctly, in universe writing is written as if a person from within the Age of Empires Series universe wrote it. Out of universe is written by a person who knows that Age of Empires Series is fictional. The latest being the one used in the Wiki. Use tense the same way a standard encyclopedia would.

Deletion
Reasons for deletion include, but are not restricted to, the following (subject to the condition that improvement or deletion of an offending section, if practical, is preferable to deletion of an entire page):
 * Copyright violations and other material violating the non-free content criteria.
 * Vandalism, including inflammatory redirects, pages that exist only to disparage their subject, patent nonsense, or gibberish
 * Advertising or other spam without relevant content (but not an article about an advertising-related subject).
 * Articles for which thorough attempts to find reliable sources to verify them have failed.
 * Redundant or otherwise useless templates.
 * Categories representing overcategorization.
 * Files that are unused, obsolete, or violate the Non-free policy.
 * Any other use of the article, template, project, or user namespace that is contrary to the established separate policy for that namespace.
 * Any other content not suitable for an encyclopedia.

User-related Manual of Style
When it comes to the user's pages (talk, profile, sandboxes, etc.), the user can be creative, but there are a few restrictions.