Help:Style

Obviously, all contributions to HeroesWiki are welcome and appreciated, but to present the most professional content possible, editors should follow consistent style guidelines when editing articles.

Style Basics

• Use full sentences at all times.
• Properly punctuate your sentences.
  • Be careful with contractions and possessives.
    • Contractions always have an apostrophe (isn't, doesn't, it's).
    • Possessive only do when they are the possessive form of a noun (Nathan's campaign). Possessive pronouns do not use apostrophes (His, hers, its)
    • The possessive of a single noun always adds an apostrophe and an "s", even if the single noun ends in "s" (D.L. Hawkins's car)
    • The possessive of a plural noun which ends in "s" adds only an apostrophe to the plural (The Hawkinses' Home, The Bennets' Home)
• Write in the third person at all times.
• Be mindful of pronouns and antecedents. Generally, a pronoun refers to the last appropriate noun (i.e. the last noun of the appropriate number and gender for the pronoun used) which precedes it. Sentences like "Hiro and Ando walk through the casino, where he sees a roulette table" are ambiguous, and if the writer intended to mean that Hiro saw a roulette table, incorrect.
• Preview and spellcheck articles before saving.
• Provide an edit summary.
• Use consistent section headings. Check other articles in the same category.
  • Typical section headings: "Character History", "Powers", "Notes", "Fan Theories"
• Use consistent formatting:
  • Write a short lead section—that is, a section that appears ahead of any section headings—and bold the article title in that section.
  • Apply sidebars and navbars consistent with other articles in the same category. For a list of these elements, see Category: Templates
  • Link to all relevant articles the first time they appear in each section

Categories

Assign appropriate categories and be sure to sort the article properly (exclude articles, last name first, etc.)

• To assign a category, simply link to it anywhere in the article. For example, [[Category: People]] will assign the article to the "People" category.
• To link to a category page, be sure to precede the word "Category" with a colon, like [[:Category: People]]. This prevents the category from being assigned to the article you are editing. This is especially important when redirecting to a category
• To change the category sort of an article, pipe the preferred sort method after the category assignment. For example, [[Category: People|Petrelli, Nathan]] will cause the article to appear under "P" rather than "N".
  • Sort people by last name
  • Sort plot points and unnamed characters to exclude articles ("Exterminator, The" instead of "The Exterminator")
  • Sort episodes by production number (101, 102) in [[Category: Episodes]] and by sequence within the season (01, 02, 03) in [[Category: Season (#) Episodes]]

Images

Whenever possible, provide images to accompany your article. Follow the Upload File link in the toolbox or press Alt-U for the update screen. When adding an image, remember to provide a description with appropriate links, and a source if necessary.

• Try to keep images roughly the same size and shape as images for other articles in the same category.
• The first image should be at the top of the article or in a sidebar, floated to the right, and thumbnailed or framed. For example, [[Image:Picture.jpg|thumb|right]] will float a thumbnail to the right, and [[Image:Picture.jpg|frame|right]] will display the image full size in a right-floated frame. You may also specify a pixel width to scale the image, like [[Image:Picture.jpg|250px|right]]
• Provide a caption for your image by piping it at the end of the image link. Your caption can include other links, like [[Image:Picture.jpg|thumb|right|A picture of [[Mr. Bennet]].]].
• Articles with several images should use the <gallery> tag. A properly formatted gallery looks like this:

 
<br clear="all">
==Gallery==
<gallery>
Image:Picture1.jpg|Caption for picture 1
Image:Picture2.jpg|Caption for picture 2
</gallery>

• If you aren't able to provide an image for your article, be sure to add the {{noimage}} template so other editors will know the article needs images.

Tense

Whenever possible, write in the present tense. This provides consistency between articles and makes narratives more clear. Obviously, references to future and past events relative to the time you are writing about should use the future and past tenses respectively.

It's appropriate to use the past tense for deceased characters, depending on context. "Charles Devaux is Simone's late father" is appropriate, because "late father" refers to his present condition. Conversely, "Robert Fresco was an oncologist at UCLA" is appropriate because "an oncologist at UCLA" describes his past condition, not his present condition. ("Robert Fresco is crispy" would use the present tense, of course.)