Don't panic! These are just suggestions and you are under no obligation to follow them — but keep in mind that others may decide to change your pages' names, links, and content to match these guidelines. We are trying to create a flexible, creative environment, but also one without a whole lot of confusion. This guide is a work in progress - if you have opinions on the matter, please add them to this page!
We never want guidelines to interfere with your ability or motivation for expressing yourself and getting your ideas out. Your ideas are the most important thing. This is a style guide, which means it's just the style we try to aim for to make sure we're all on the same page when it comes to conventions. In other words, style is arbitrary and not absolute; different sites and publications can have styles different and still be perfectly acceptable as long as they're internally consistent.
For general best practices around creating and consuming content more effectively, see the Best Practices page. For specific how-to information can be found at the Help Page.
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General Naming Rules
- Street names should be fully spelled out. Eg Robbinwood Avenue or Collingwood Boulevard. If you'd like, you can make a redirect for the shortened version, eg Collingwood Blvd.
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Unless it is part of the actual business or place name, the word "Toledo" can be omitted from most page names. Because this is the Toledo wiki, pages can be assumed to be Toledo-centric. EG rather than "Toledo Weather", just call the page "Weather". On the other hand, business pages should always be the name of the business. "Toledo School for the Arts" for example, has the word "Toledo" as the title and should be named as such.
Order of Lists
- Generally, when listing a bunch of links or just making a list in an article, they should be organized alphabetically, unless there is a good reason to do otherwise.
Simple conventions
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Avoid use of the words "I" or "me" unless you are attributing text to yourself.
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Want a fact checked? Write [[Include(FactCheck)]] next to something you want checked. Want a photo taken? Write [[Include(PhotoRequest)]] next to something you want a photo of. Doing this will allow for determined folks to easily search for the phrases factcheck and photorequest to find things to do.
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Names of books and movies are italicized rather than underlined. Underlining is reserved for writing things by hand or by typewriter when italics are impossible. Names of smaller, shorter works such as articles or songs within an album are surrounded by "double quotes." Also, punctuation marks always go inside the quotes unless you are posing a question which contains a quote. Ex: Did he really say "you're a floozy"?
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Avoid the use of "click here" or "go here" for link names. Descriptive and integrated names are best. Imagine that the page you're writing on is printed on a piece of paper. Would all the text still make sense?
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Capitalize in a standard English style on all pages which you expect to be useful. (Do as you like on your personal page.)
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When captioning a photo, be informative instead of interpretive. For example, it is better to say where the picture was taken or who the subject is instead of making a joke. Overall, be mild, explicit, and not flippant.
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I disagree with this. I will try and see if I can find this old photo guideline that was down at the california aggie.
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Numbers larger than ten should be represented by figures. Don't start a sentence with a figure.
Example: Bob has two bikes. Alice has 11 bikes.
Date Conventions
In the U.S. people usually write dates as MM-DD-YY. The two-digit years caused the Y2K panic. Incredibly, people seemed to learn nothing from that and still write MM-DD-YY. This is especially confusing with low years, as they can be confused with month or day numbers. For example, when is 01-05-11? Parts of Europe use DD-MM-YY, other places uses YY-MM-DD, it can be ambiguous. Imagine looking back from 2050 and needing to determine when a document dated 01-05-11 was written.
It turns out there is an international standard for dates. It's called ISO-8601 and was developed by the International Organization for Standardization. Simply put, it is YYYY-MM-DD. It was determined not by political means, but by scientific (rational) means. It has these advantages:
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Putting Most-middle-least significant order means dates can be easily sorted, especially if the dates begin the line.
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Using dashes instead of slashes avoids confusion with 1's in handwritten dates, i.e. 11/1/11.
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Using four digit years removes century ambiguity.
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Having fixed field widths (always -02- never just -2-) facilitates sorting and has other advantages.
It's easy for Americans to learn the new system since the month and date order don't change.
This is the format used by Wiki comments, BTW.
Templates
Although it is not a requirement to use templates, it is preferred if a page can be fit into a template appropriately. It speeds up the process that the page becomes integrated to the structure of the site (i.e. templates includes "see also" links). Also, it helps the pages adhere to this stylistic guide to cut down on the amount of editing across the board.
Make Use of the Headings (Appropriately)
For sections within the page, use "Heading 2." Subsections of those use "Heading 3." If you need further subdivisions or distinguishing features to your title/subtitle/notes, feel free to make use of underlining, italicizing, numbering, bullet points, or a combination of the above. If you need more complex markup, use the html or contact someone on the Help Page.
If there's a lot of headings in the page, or certain links refer to specific parts of another page, use anchors to guide the reader. For help with using anchors, see the section on anchors on the help page.
Picture Size
Pictures are nice add-ons to pages; however, they should not overtake the page. Size pictures appropriately. Dimensions should be within X by Y and A by B (Note: Haven't tested good dimensions, so make your best judgment for now).
